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Wikipedia Is Not Amused By Entry For xkcd-Coined Word
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."
The link in TFA: http://www.bbcnewsamerica.com/malamanteau-wikipedia.html
This site does not appear to be related to BBC News, it is actually registered to a guy in Pakistan:
Domain Name: BBCNEWSAMERICA.COM
Registrant:
Digghost.net
Shahbaz Ali (info@digghost.net)
DHA Lahore
Lahore
Punjab,54000
PK
Tel. +092.3218830642
Creation Date: 16-Feb-2010
For reference, BBC World News America has this website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/default.stm
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Some readers at the XKCD forums pointed out that the term may have originated from this MetaFilter thread back in 2007:
[blockquote]It's not spoonerism. More like a portmanteau combined with a malapropism. So I'd go with malamanteau or a portmanpropism.
posted by ludwig_van at 3:31 PM on July 17, 2007[/blockquote]
Apparently the malamanteau page may (or may not) be the place to pre-order battletoads. I was wondering what happened to the other battletoads pre-order site, now I know!
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
http://xkcd.com/195/
http://xkcd.com/249/
http://xkcd.com/426/
http://xkcd.com/681/
These seem reasonably original.
May the Maths Be with you!
Posted AC because xkcd has 10^3 kg of fanboys.
So that's like what, eight or nine Slashdotters.
Or your mom.
Bow-ties are cool.
Ummm, you must not read many non-technical pages, if you haven't seen Malapropism, Portmanteau, and Neologism a billion times each. Also, Wikipedia is itself a portmanteau of wiki and encyclopedia, with wiki being both a very recent neologism, and also, a loanword from Hawaiian.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Unfortunately, the sum of 4chan's > 3 million articles rarely diverts from the topics of penises and lolcats.
First-hand experience is not appropriate for Wikipedia at all, regardless of how good it is. That's because there's no way for anyone later to verify your friend's level of experience. All information on Wikipedia is supposed to be cited (or common knowledge). Do you really think it would be a good idea to just trust all contributors who claim to have knowledge of some subject?
The official name of this policy is No Original Research. "The term 'original research' refers to material--such as facts, allegations, ideas, and stories--not already published by reliable sources."
Disclaimer: I don't know about the particulars of your friend's edits, nor do I have any particular association with Wikipedia (beyond having an account with a handful of trivial edits).
The problem I have with Wikipedia is that it refuses to create strict rules and follow them. It has stupid 'Notability' nonsense instead where it's just totally arbitrary.
For example, I'd be entirely okay with the idea that fictional things do not belong on Wikipedia, period. No fictional characters, no fictional places, nothing.
But that's not the rule. You can find, for example, 'Sunnydale California' on it, the setting of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
But I'm sure there are plenty of TV shows that don't have their setting on there, and if you tried to put them on there, you'd be removed for notability reasons. Why one fictional place is more notable than the other, I don't know.
The problem with Wikipedia is that the rules are totally arbitrary about what is and isn't on there. And enforced in a completely random manner.
Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if they weren't operating with a single namespace. But they are.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The problem I have with Wikipedia is that it refuses to create strict rules and follow them. It has stupid 'Notability' nonsense instead where it's just totally arbitrary.
Do you know how many pages of rules (and whatnot) there are on notability?
$ make available