Tuesday, January 22, 2008

What's on Wiki?

This is the first of a weekly round up of feuds and debates going on in the discussions pages of Wikipedia

TheHYPO questioned the statement "Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker are the same person, in different states of mind" in the Stars Wars article on the 23rd of December, arguing that "There is no way to assess a characters "state of mind". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Star_Wars).
In the opinion of TheHYPO, the table of appearances on the main article is unnecessary. "I agree. The whole table thing really is stupid and pointless", said another Wiki editor, Padawan Animator. There are fears that this might lead to mass pruning of tables in articles. (citation needed)

Our main story, however, comes from the discussion page of X-Men 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:X-Men:_The_Last_Stand). Tenebrae and Rglong engaged in a war of words around a possible mistake in the credit roll about a character who may or may not be Quill. According to the Quill article on Wiki, there have been four characters with the name of Quill in the Marvel universe, but as the character in the film version of X-Men 3 is female, the only female character called Quill is most likely the subject of the heady discussion. The argument became truly epic, climaxing on the 16th of October when Rglong posted a transcription of the DVD commentary where director Brett Rattner and writers Zak Penn and Simon Hinberg confirm his argument. Happily the whole conflict was defused when ThuranX intervened, asking the participants to "cool down" and pointing out that "This is just Wikipedia." His advice was to "Take it seriously, but not so seriously you blow a gasket doing so." Words of wisdom indeed. It is a good thing that the X-Men 3 article on Wiki is being so sensibly administered.

In finishing, the discussion page for the article on Curling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Curling) is a prime example of what these pages are for. The most recent, nay controversial discussion on the table is a Minor Clean-up conducted in an orderly fashion by an anonymous Wiki editor: "I removed many "(See ________ below)" from the "Basics of the Game" section, as they really broke up sentence flow and made it harder to read" A modern day Superman? This reporter hopes so.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Ah, curling, a world class sport. One can only hope that some day the universe will come to recognise the benefits of curling as an alternative form of treaty brokering.