Wikipedia Is Not Amused By Entry For xkcd-Coined Word 553
ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Today's xkcd comic introduced an unusual word — malamanteau — by giving its supposed definition on Wikipedia. The only trouble is that the word (as well as its supposed wiki page) did not in fact exist. Naturally, much ado ensued at the supposed wiki page, which was swiftly created in response to the comic. This article has more on how the comic and the confusion it caused have put the Net in a tizzy. It turns out that a malamanteau is a portmanteau of portmanteau and malapropism, but also a malapropism of portmanteau. All this puts Wikipedia in the confusing position of not allowing a page for an undefined word whose meaning is defined via the Wikipedia page for that word — and now I have to lie down for a moment."
Re:If by today's you mean yesterday's... (Score:5, Interesting)
Malapropism means to use a word in place of another word that makes the same sound, but doesn’t deliver an appropriate meaning, for example, odorous for odious, comprehended for apprehended and auspicious for suspicious and benefactors for malefactors. All these are Malapropos of each other. Now the second word portmanteau means to merge two words with each other in such a way that the sounds of the two words become merged as well as their meanings. In this case malamanteau is a portmanteau of portmanteau and Malapropism, whereas malamanteau is also a Malapropos of portmanteau. The meaning of the new word is still to be created properly.
The most scary part is the number of googleresults (Score:5, Interesting)
I still think that the most scary(And interesting) part is that google now have 152,000 hits for the word. So a: Google is fast at picking up new words. It really generated a lot of interest and there are quite some spammers with some effective automatic page generation systems.
Re:LOL (Score:2, Interesting)
The guy who went about deleting the wikipedia entry initially.
Read his wiki entry, what a douche.
this is not new (Score:5, Interesting)
screw wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
So, I use Wikipedia on a daily basis for quick reference and as a jumping point to the sources. However, as a community/culture, I think its really just sort of gotten out of hand. Arguing for pages and pages about something which is really sort of inconsequential? Who do they think they are, Slashdot? (but seriously...). I first realized a few years ago that there was no point in trying to actually participate when I watched a revision war/flame fest between some random Swedish guy and an exchange student friend of mine who was from Georgia (the country), over stuff in the Georgia article. J. Random Swede decided that being born in a country, growing up there, and having had 20+ years of first-hand experience wasn't good enough to contribue some relatively minor points to the article, iirc. It turned into quite the little bru-ha-ha between Soso (my friend) and that guy, who wasn't exactly a Slavic languages and culture scholar himself, either. There is some value in wikipedia, but not enough to justify a bunch of bored, pissed-off nerds thumping around like some stiff-collar Britannica editors at the East India Club.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. See also http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Bureaucratic_Fuck [encycloped...matica.com]
It exhibits no creativity. (Score:0, Interesting)
xkcd exhibits no creativity. The majority of the comics basically just take some semi-obscure geek-culture reference, and mention it.
People don't find xkcd funny because the comics themselves are funny. People find it funny because it makes a direct reference to something that somebody else has made funny in some way. xkcd is nothing more than a pointer to funny material.
Calvin and Hobbes is an intelligent, original and truly-funny comic. The Far Side is, as well. Dilbert is somewhere in between them and xkcd, where it makes references to other funny material, but does have significant originality and creativity. Then there's xkcd, which is unoriginal, and merely recycles the material created by others.
Re:If by today's you mean yesterday's... (Score:3, Interesting)
for example, odorous for odious, comprehended for apprehended and auspicious for suspicious and benefactors for malefactors.
I have a young cousin that loves to talk... and he does this all the time, nearly every other sentence he is using the wrong word for what he's talking about, yet it isn't difficult to understand what he's saying. I've noticed this more often on the reality shows (when I catch glimpses on talk soup), the reality stars are constantly doing that, replacing the wrong word for the word they mean.
What is a person that suffers from this linguistical malady called? There must be a more clinical and less pejorative term than 'idiot.'
Re:Best. Joke. Ever. (Score:4, Interesting)
All right then, since you find it so funny, could you explain the joke to me?
Because I have absolutely no idea what the joke is in the line "Ever notice how Wikipedia has a few words it really likes?", or even what it is trying to say. No, I haven't noticed Wikipedia having any words it particularly likes, whatever that means, and I have no idea what that has to do with a made-up funny word?
It's the 21st century all right. (Score:5, Interesting)
An internet forum is debating the proper formalism for creating neologisms on a user-edited encyclopedia.
Would I even be able to give my grandmother the slightest glimmer of what this is about?
Re:It exhibits no creativity. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Far Side is, as well. Dilbert is somewhere in between them and xkcd, where it makes references to other funny material, but does have significant originality and creativity. Then there's xkcd, which is unoriginal,
My test is this. I work in a scientific establishment - not a super-geeky-web type place but an "old established science" type place. Over the last 2-5 years, "xkcd's on the door" have largely replaced the yellowing Far Sides... maybe about 1/4 of the doors around here are thus infected independent of each other.
On my own door is this [xkcd.com] and let me tell you I get more people just stopping to say how funny that is -old guys nearing retirement shaking with laughter and saying "how true" - than with any cartoon I've had up over the years.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, I still think Encyclopedia Dramatica and Uncyclopedia are more useful for non-political-correct things, than Wikipedia and its false moral rules ever can be.
Face it: Wikipedia is a monarchy. What does not please the gods, does not get in. And this is why it’s fundamentally flawed: It’s centralized. I mean the one who thought that up must have never looked back at history. Ever.
It needs to peer-to-peer. It needs to be built upon a trust network. Or it will never surpass what is essentially a dictatorship over mindsets and ideas.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:NOT BBC NEWS! (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought this was blindingly obvious based on the fact that the author of TFA is clearly a pseudonym, there's a very low hit counter at the bottom, and the web design looks like it's from six years ago. Slashdot editors must be out to lunch on this one.
Re:Hair Trigger (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think they care about teasing, but XKCD fans continually vandalize pages. Any time *anything* is even *tangentially* mentioned on XKCD, within minutes you have morons trying to edit related pages to add in the XKCD reference. It creates a lot of bullshit work for them, and by this point in time, I wouldn't be surprised if Wikipedia just auto-reverted any edit that mentioned XKCD. After years of bullshit from XKCD fans, I'm not surprised they don't have a sense of humour about this any more.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Who cares about all that?
The most important thing about Wikipedia is that Old Uncle Lar's partner Jimbo Wales promised some wacky right-wing talk dame that he'd sanitize her (quite interesting) Wiki page if she'd tug on his johnson. That tells you everything you need to know about the dependability of Wikipedia, especially the biographical or political pages. It's good if you want to know the chemical symbol for sodium bromate or similar basic facts, you're probably OK, but letting armies of astroturfers loose to create a "comprehensive" encyclopedia which includes contemporary history is just not that great of an idea. You're better off at the public library, in the stacks of the New York Times. At least there you can adjust for the ideological windage with some degree of confidence.
It just goes to show what inevitably happens when a computer nerd gets in a position of wealth and power: First chance he gets he's gonna smoke some hay and beat up the coochie, preferably on his private Gulfstream G5. And if it means "being evil" in order to line up some third-tier wingnut poontang, well that's just a little speed bump.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:LOL (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate [citation needed].
The message there is basically, "I think whoever wrote this is wrong, but I'm too fucking lazy to look it up my damn self. Therefore, I'll shit this tag on it so one of my slaves can look it up later." Except there aren't any slaves, so the damned [citation needed] stays up for 6 years.
Look, if the factoid sounds like bullshit, you have two options:
1) Look it up your damned self and add a citation
2) Delete it
Don't shit tags all over the place. That's not fixing the problem, that's just adding to it.
Re:You people have no patience! (Score:3, Interesting)
I see that a lot in regular emails. Well, not "tl;dr", but I type at over 100wpm, so my dialogue can get rather verbose. from a slow typer, I may just get "thx". What's more annoying is when they do that where I'm asking a bunch of questions.
In conversation, is it presumed that an articulate speaker trying to convey a lot of information should have their questions responded to with "ok."? It only indicates that the listener (or reader) has the attention span of a 2 year old, and they cannot focus on a spoken or written conversation long enough to form a decent response.
At one job, they requested me to establish where our new datacenters were to be, and with what carriers. I gave them the 5 minute speech about connectivity, major peering locations, and locations that were most beneficial to the company. The COO didn't like that, and just wanted a short list. I repeated the city names that I had just said. He then said that he required "proof", rather than just my opinion. I put together an informative presentation of where all the major pops were in the US and international areas of focus for our customer base. I reviewed the access logs for one year and built a Google Earth model with vertical lines showing the density per area. I gave a list of what connectivity providers were in what hosting environments. That list got pretty big until I eliminated those who didn't have peerings in at least 4 diverse cities (i.e., San Francisco and San Jose don't count as diverse cities). I then showed what transoceanic fiber existed, their entry points to North America, and who operated those lines. I also showed the network maps for each provider. For the high ranking providers, I contacted them and got pricing from most. Some wouldn't give out any pricing information without a commitment.
With all of that information gathered, I suggested the space provider (with street address), bandwidth provider with how much connectivity they had at the location. There were 4 primary suggestions, one due to a particular large customer demand. There were two secondary suggestions based on a large minority of our customer base. My data spanned hundreds of pages. I compiled it into a well written 30 page document formatted for the attention challenged. The first page summarized everything. The supporting information contained all the important information gathered, including the maps and Google Earth images of the customer density.
He read the first few lines of the summary page, threw it down and said "It says the same thing you told me before. I don't believe you." i.e., how could my opinion be correct. I reminded him that I had already been doing this kind of work for over a decade, and had been paying attention to the providers almost constantly.
30 pages detailing the requested information, and all I got was two sentences calling me a liar.
He sent my report to someone who hadn't worked for the company for a decade. He was just doing freelance IT work, mostly repairing servers for small companies. He told me, "Your report looks good. I don't know why they asked me." For that, he was paid a few hundred dollars.
A few days later, a crappy provider called in. It was just a cold call. We had providers doing that all the time, so it wasn't anything new. They made huge promises that couldn't be delivered on. I referenced how far down they were on the list of suggestions. They were second to last. Their sales guys came in, made a winning presentation, and they got the contract. I had no financial interest in it, other than keeping my job. Either way, I was making the same salary. My only goal was to serve the interest of the company.
We were provided two GigE fiber drops into each cage. That implied that they had enough bandwidth to support them.
After the migration, things didn't go as well as they would h
Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
The message there is basically, "I think whoever wrote this is wrong, but I'm too fucking lazy to look it up my damn self. Therefore, I'll shit this tag on it so one of my slaves can look it up later." Except there aren't any slaves, so the damned [citation needed] stays up for 6 years...
Look, if the factoid sounds like bullshit, you have two options:
1) Look it up your damned self and add a citation
2) Delete it
Your first recommendation assumes its the responsibility of the editor to be an expert in every article. It's not. The contributors are responsible for doing the research, the editors are merely there to make sure the final article is of good quality.
Your second recommendation is actually sending the "I think this is wrong" message you dislike. "Citation needed" means just that: there are claims being made which are not supported by any given references. Leaving it untouched means that the editor isn't sure if this is, in fact, correct, so the information is left there for all to see with a reminder that if it is untrusted. On the other hand, if you just up and delete, that must mean that you know it's wrong.
I think the biggest problem with wikipedia are the people deleting shit. If it's vandalism, delete it. If you know for sure that something is wrong, and can post the factual information with citations, then delete it. Otherwise, leave it there (and add the [citation needed] tag where appropriate). I'm not sure why the tags would bother anyone, even if they are up there for six years. If nobody ever adds a citation, that means a citation is still needed, so the tag should stay there forever.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:not funny? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does *anyone* think xkcd is funny?
No. I think XKCD is rather witty, a more grown-up thing.