MarineMeat

It has existed since 2005, the only reference is a CNN article (now ten years old),
and a Google search reveals almost nothing about this story--other than links back to
Wikipedia mentions of it.......

(Yes, Will Beback has been watching this article )

And BTW, I might also point out that the erotica and pornography websites category is a
sad, miserable little abandoned thing. There are probably tens of thousands
of top-domain porn websites, and yet this "encyclopedic" list contains only 79 of them.
One could say similar things about the sex-scandals category.

Happily, it's up for AFD and looks doomed.

quick! someone move it to Encyc.

AFD nominated by none other than Cyclopia....who then withdrew it.

Several hours later, it was renominated by Dethlock99......

Oh yeah, what a well-run "encyclopedia-ish thingy".

I thought I proved the subject was notable the first time around, but I suppose we'll go through it again. Some deletionists would say the French Revolution isn't notable--it's "too soon to tell", remember?

Y'see, EK, the whole problem with Wikipedia is that stupid little things like this end up in it based on one or two online news items that nobody remembers, but which ultimately lower the intellectual and moral level of the whole enterprise. This is a completely stupid subject for an encyclopedia article, any way you slice it, and I fear that by trying to have it kept, you just look like... well, a moron.

I guess it's better than copying and pasting it all into the main article on the US Marine Corps, but c'mon. Is this really the sort of thing you want to be selling?

The question is more: What is the purpose of Wikipedia?

If the answer is: Be a repository of the sum of all human knowledge; then this article is perfectly fit for inclusion as it is a piece, albeit minuscule, of human knowledge.

If the answer is: Contain information more than five people will care about in 100 years; then this article fails terribly as no one in 100 years will care about an incident covered in a total of two news articles.

So it is all a matter of how you define the terms.

That's nice. Find some references, dammit.

I did! But I suppose the LA Times isn't good enough. It needs to get an article in the 2109 Encyclopedia Britannica, then maybe we can talk.

Eight years in! One would think the purpose would be pretty clearly defined at this point...



Well, the contents of my backyard, everyking's toilet bowl prior to a flush, or any other observation made by any human, anywhere would also qualify.

I have a few terabytes of observations I could upload right now. Most other people have many hundreds of gigabytes. Government databases -- criminal records, driving licenses, real estate holdings and such are much larger. But commercial databases would dwarf the lot. Surely the sum of human knowledge must include the contents of every last cash register transaction at every Wallmart in Ohio for the last 30 years.



EK says at the second nomination that "It's clearly notable based on the press coverage."

This suggests a third purpose of Wikipedia: to parrot the contents of the main stream media, no matter how trivial, puerile, inane, nasty, and utterly useless it may be. If a quorum of for-profit media fruitcakes find it in their financial interests to print a story of some freak of society, then thats notability right there, defined by the editors at CNN and the Los Angeles Times! How dare mere editors at Wikipedia, uppity losers the whole lot, attempt to exercise editorial discretion! EK and other lunatic inclusionists to the peons: stop thinking and start working, slaves.



There are no doubt fourth, fifth and nineteenth purposes. I've heard of something called a "leader" which has one function of focusing the organization to its fundamental core objective. He resists unwarranted "mission creep" and other distractions.

Maybe one day Wikipedia will get one.

Stick an "Article Rescue" tag on it and tap Benjiboi -- that should bring out the Keep brigade.

Better yet, somehow connect it to bacon so ChildofMidnight will come running.

Only the truly insane ones would say that.



Nigel Hawthorne, R.I.P.

This isn't the ideal thread to be discussing Big Picture issues, but a while ago I was looking for something and happened upon this interview with Jimbo from August 2006, which contained this tidbit:
I would imagine that most people would say this could be safely ignored, since Jimbo no longer has the power to unilaterally pull the plug on WP and is largely incoherent anyway, most of the time. But it's clear that he's making a distinction between "knowledge" and "human knowledge" - why? And what's the distinction? And why would that distinction apply to the idea of trying to maintain articles on every living person on Earth?

In fact, it's a meaningless distinction, and probably a misstatement on his part (it would hardly be the only one he's made, after all). If you had to make distinctions of that nature, you'd want to start with "raw information" and work your way up to "knowledge of general value to humanity," like so:

1. Raw information (i.e., every piece of data ever produced and stored by humans in any form)
2. Processed information (raw data replaced with aggregates/summaries/reports)
3. "Useful" processed information (the first distinction that requires human qualitative filtering)
4. "Useful" knowledge (first distinction between information and knowledge, knowledge being both the information and the conclusions, etc., drawn from it)
5. Generally-useful knowledge (knowledge that's potentially valuable to everyone)
6. Knowledge of general value to humanity (knowledge that actually is valuable to everyone)

Part of Wikipedia's problem is that in order to present the appearance of "neutrality," it has to appear to present information, not "knowledge," at least as I've defined it above. But this goes against the stated goal, and besides, all distinctions become qualitative once you get past the point where you're merely presenting information.

In other words, the social pressure on Wikipedia is always going to be to make it a mere information storehouse, in order for people to maintain neutrality and also circumvent qualitative review - thereby including more not-generally-useful stuff. So, does that serve to trivialize/marginalize the entire "project"? Or does it matter at all, since the added publishing cost borne by Wikipedia/WMF for any given article is effectively zero?

More importantly, at what point does "stupid" enter into it? It often seems to me that doesn't factor into their thinking in any way whatsoever.

Ditto! I saw in the West End production of "Shadowlands" and it was one of the greatest theatrical performances I ever witnessed. I was furious that Anthony Hopkins was cast in the film version.

He made me snicker as Sir Humphrey Appleby, chuckle and hiss as Dr. Raymond Cocteau and almost weep as King George the bloody Third. A magnificent talent and much missed.

Oh the topic, yes...I used to be an Eventualist and Darwikian. But I see little chance that Marine Meat will evolve into anything of interest over the course of the next hundred, or thousand, years.

If I gave a flying fuck, I'd be in the Mile High club...I'd also vote delete con fuego.