Bruce's recent activity

  1. Comment on The Internet Archive fixes nine million broken links on Wikipedia in ~tech

    Bruce
    Link
    Oh goody, I get to be provocative about Wicky-Wacky! (N.B.: If you're a certain hirsute ham radio operator in Rock County, Wisconsin, you need not read this, because you've heard this rant from me...
    • Exemplary

    Oh goody, I get to be provocative about Wicky-Wacky!

    (N.B.: If you're a certain hirsute ham radio operator in Rock County, Wisconsin, you need not read this, because you've heard this rant from me already.)

    The linked article easily and correctkly knocks down the straw-man argument that "people can deliberately post false information to Wicky-Wacky." That, however, is not my main complaint (of which I have several); here are a couple that are more or less relevant to this article:

    (1) The article itself shows why Wicky-Wacky's preference for online sources rather than sources in deadtreespace (i.e., paper) is counterproductive. Links rot; littera scripta manet. Of course, the site doesn't forbid deadtreespace sources -- yet -- but the Pigs (well, what would you call the higher-ups with extra privileges on a farm where all the animals are equal but some are more equal than others?) do tend to sneer at one if one uses such sources, and to prod one to produce a link instead.

    (2) The article seems to assume that (cue Wizard of Oz soundtrack) "if I only had a link," then we could, in the words of the article, "prove" the "veracity of the information" being footnoted. Well, no, that's not how scholarly referencing works. One problem with Wicky-Wacky's pretense that all of the "editors" (sic), whether a distinguished professor of Chinese history or a 14-year-old kid, are equal (except for the Pigs, of course), is that it ignores the fact that the distinguished prof, having read lots and lots of sources, is much more likely to be able to tell the difference between a good source of information and a lousy one, whereas the kid may just post a reference to the one and only middle-school textbook of world history that they have ever read.

    To give an extreme example, one could write (oops, I mean "edit") in Wicky-Wacky that "certain ethnic groups are inherently evil," and cite (an online version of!) Mein Kampf as "proof," and bingo, all of Wicky-Wacky's demands and preferences are met. There's a footnote! It's a link to something online! How dare anyone remove it and replace it with a different source? Wouldn't that be "original research" (God forbid!)?

    And OK, that's an extreme example, but I ran into that problem when trying to correct an article that relied on an online secondary source whose information was just flat-out wrong -- not genocidally wrong like Hitler's magnum opus, but just wrong on a detail that the article quoted as fact. My attempt to correct it was "original research," and I had to go back two spaces, lose a turn, and burn in Wicky-Wacky Hell.

    So, one wonders, how many of these 9 million repaired links are actually worth repairing in the first place.

    But then, what do you expect? We all know the adage "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two." Wicky-Wacky is very cheap (they brag about that), and it's fast (its name encodes that claim), and uh-oh, we've used up our two choices already.

    Okay, Wikiphiles, bring it on.

    5 votes
  2. Comment on What is the most recent thing you consumed? in ~food

    Bruce
    Link
    Breakfast: Steel cut oatmeal with fermented black beans, dried tiny shrimp, soy sauce, and Chinese hot pepper paste. "'No anchovies'? You've got the wrong man. I spell my name 'Danger'!"...

    Breakfast: Steel cut oatmeal with fermented black beans, dried tiny shrimp, soy sauce, and Chinese hot pepper paste.

    "'No anchovies'? You've got the wrong man. I spell my name 'Danger'!" --Firesign Theater, "Nick Danger: Third Eye"

    2 votes
  3. Baseball rules/scoring question

    It's the bottom of the 9th. Bases are loaded, and the home team's cleanup batter hits a home run. What is the final score? Does the game end immediately at 1-0 when the first runner crosses the...

    It's the bottom of the 9th. Bases are loaded, and the home team's cleanup batter hits a home run. What is the final score? Does the game end immediately at 1-0 when the first runner crosses the plate, or is it 4-0 with all runners allowed to score?

    5 votes