Kinda embodifies the main thing wrong with Wikipedia, doesn't it?

I wouldn't go that far, but it certainly is giving one anonymous critic on Wikipedia a hell of a lot of weight. For example, saying Murder by Contract is in fact an 81-minute deadpan joke is absurd without qualifications. I suppose that's one interpretation, but another critic might say that it "stood the visual language of noir on its ear by dragging it into the sunlight." Ect.

Much Some of it is solid though. Just need to be toned down in places and cited. No person's reputation is being harmed by letting it stand.

Identify Fiend or Foof


What are the names of the many levels in which the remarkable (and similarly unnamed) troubles reside?


"Writing an encyclopedia" is the superficial pretext of The Encyclopedia Game, in which the objective is to cleverly exploit the rules to get maximum lulz for yourself, whilst delivering gut-wrenching schpilkes to your mortal enemies.

I'd save the fights and threads for the big things that matter more, Will, like BLPs. I'd bet if someone spent a week on that block you removed they could source out most if not all of it practically as-is, from just looking quickly at it.

I'm not one to engage in wonkery over what should be an encyclopedia and how it ought to be sourced. I don't even regard WP as an encyclopedia nor do I think the rules and and processes they have are anything more than a mere pretext. Still I suspect that anyone who at all takes the idea of an WP as encyclopedia would be find Moulton's brief statement of just a couple of sentences troubling on many levels.

If not I suppose it is possible that I am the one who is clueless as to what WP's manifest policies and rules have to say about "writing an encyclopedia."

Heh. Would probably be self-published, and at least COI to bring it back. But yeah, if I were one to write work like this, I would just go to knol rather than fight to keep my interpretations in.

The prose is not bad. It might be original research, but it's better than most original research I've seen. Whoever wrote it knew what they were talking about. Back in the earlier days of Wikipedia, all articles were uncited like this. If this were sent back to 2004, it'd be a featured article, and probably one of the better ones.

The interpretations are sensible, if opinionated, and even the "popular culture" paragraph at the bottom is decent. Compared to the mountains of dubious crap on the site, I think this should get a pass.

I agree with Rootology.

EDIT; actually, let me go farther. Here are the facts as I understand them. After some random user dares to revert your removal of generally good but uncited non-BLP text, you revert him with the message "you've got to be fucking kidding me," then storm over to Wikipedia Review to tell us how that nasty revert embodies everything wrong with the project.

My question for you is: why do you want to be WR's version of JzG?

Jeez, three different people agree it should be kept. Spit in the face of core policy, why don't you?

Your cue, Mr. Rains …

Jon

Congratulations for using this site more than the talk page in your edit war. You even made a null edit just so you wouldn't have to type four tildes. Classic.

Please note, in re your comment about tags making unreadable, that it was a compromise. It was either demand cites for all the dubious stuff line-by-line or a section header.

I can't understand why you think this is anywhere near Wikipedia's worst work. Take any random lengthy, unloved article, and you could tag sections as thoroughly as this one. Film noir just looks bad because someone's actually gone to the effort of tagging it. Incidentally, note that the two users who were fighting uncivilly about tagging, Girolamo Savonarola and RedSpruce, both agree that the section is worth keeping even without cites.

Come back when somebody re-adds libel to an article. Those are worth getting pissy about.

A little harsh in tone, One, but I agree with you.

Sceptre: If this is just a random issue that could better be resolved on wiki, why bring it here, I'm wondering? This isn't the right place for routine items. Nor should it be.

Lar is catching on.

This thread appears to be more about one person's bête noire than about Film Noir proper, much less about any kind of Meta-Perspective on Wikioid Media — but now that I've had all the fun I can possibly have with the title, I'll give it the banefit of the doubt and relocate it to the Article Forum. Kinda makes you home[sic] for WP, don't it, Rory?

Jon

Not really. I've pretty much always felt that way.

Round up the usual suspects. And I believe that Obesity should find a Sydney Greenstreet avatar.

But no, we don't care about POV-pushing in film noir articles, unless it's by a Mantanmoreland sock. Watch for those. No, I don't think anybody we've looked at here is likely.

Let me try to salvage something here that comes out of some recent posts (mostly my own) on "deconstruction" and critical analysis of WP. This relates to WP using rules and policies about issues relating to creating an "encyclopedia" that act as a pretext for the MMORPG that is actually a more productive way of understanding Wikipedia. It is the distinction between manifest and latent layers of the project.

I think much of the groundwork on writing an encyclopedia was accomplished by Larry Sanger, who did a pretty reasonable job of it. Sanger was after all well qualified to develop the material. He had the misfortune of teaming up with a rich internet pornographer who shared none of his qualifications. But in that first period Sanger developed concepts of sourcing, original research, point of view and the like that made sense.

Then Sanger was informed that he was after all just the hired help. Mr. Wales (the rich internet pornographer) appropriated this work and incorporated the social networking community doctrines of The Well and Usenet. Remember when Wales (never Sanger) used to talk about systems of openly scoring the social worth of participants? An online economy is more consistent with a a literal MMORPG than it with a learning community where ideas contend and raise or fall on their merits. Once influence and alliances become the basis for decisions reasoned discussion goes out the door. Ultimately all you have left is participants that are incapable of grasping the acronyms they toss around in the "simulated" discussions they use to advance the play.

"One of the most notable films in the genre is [[The Maltese Falcon]], a hardboiled detective drama about a grossly overvalued lead bird. No other fictional work (save perhaps the [[Patrick Byrne|Sith Lord Conspiracy]]) so masterfully dramatizes the perniciousness of hype. (See also [[Pump and Dump]])."