Bloated Wikipedia Pages

September 28, 2007 9:42 AM

The 8 Most Needlessly-Detailed Wikipedia Entries
posted by brain_drain (66 comments total)

I found it quite interesting that we only need a few dozen people to die and the Norwegians take over my country, and if they crash on the way over then the Romanians move in. I bet Prince Peter of Yugoslavia wanks himself to sleep watching King Ralph every night.
posted by biffa at 9:51 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

That's my friends article. He's written a couple other things for cracked. (Links to his old stuff is in a blog post he made on about the story.) If you are interested in Canadian Media Issues he also runs MediaReform.ca.
posted by chunking express at 9:54 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

The entry on the line of succession to the British throne is amazing.
posted by amyms at 9:55 AM on September 28, 2007

Lists and tables? That's cheating.
posted by Artw at 9:56 AM on September 28, 2007

I saw this yesterday. It's interesting, but there's a good follow-up to be done on subjects that have been split into many, many articles that are far too long. I mean, yeah, Seventh Heaven ha-ha, but the episode guides and other articles surrounding Buffy the Vampire Slayer dwarf Seventh Heaven.
posted by Bookhouse at 9:58 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh the irony of the detailed get a life article.
posted by rolypolyman at 9:59 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

If that's the case, chunking express, please tell your friend that the line "incest, matricide and diabetes" made me laugh out loud.
posted by saladin at 9:59 AM on September 28, 2007

So it's a collection of wikipedia articles whose subjects he has little interest in, so he thinks that they're useless and that our time would be better spent doing other things rather than reading said articles?


Compelling.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 10:00 AM on September 28, 2007

{{prod | shit comedy article}}
posted by Artw at 10:02 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Cultural impact of QI

It's a fucking BBC4 panel game, you douchebags.
posted by cillit bang at 10:04 AM on September 28, 2007

I used to laugh about the length of the Wikipedia article on Monday Night Wars, which describes the battle for ratings between two pro wrestling shows from 1995-2001. It used to have the ratings (and wrestling) results for every damn week during that 6 year period. Sadly, it was trimmed out of the article.
posted by ALongDecember at 10:13 AM on September 28, 2007

Near the bottom, the Cracked article makes reference to the Wikipedia entry for "Anything." But they don't say what makes it worthwhile: the "See also" section for "Anything":

See also

* Nothing
* Something (disambiguation)
* Everything
posted by bicyclefish at 10:13 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

no Knuckles The Echidna?
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 10:15 AM on September 28, 2007

As a once-obsessive Star Wars fan, I'm actually surprised at the small number of Ancient Jedi on that page. There must be more.
posted by Anonymous at 10:15 AM on September 28, 2007

"S'diawae was a famous Jedi Master who lived sometime between the Ruusan Reformation and the Separatist Crisis. During the Crisis, in order to boost patriotism and historical recognition, Biscuit Baron released commemorative holocubes of S'diawae in their QuickSnack and QuickSnackLite bundles." It wasn’t written by George Lucas, but, dammit, it’s so pointless and crazy, it’s close enough.

Commemorative holocubes? QuickSnackLite?
posted by delmoi at 10:20 AM on September 28, 2007

List of Unicode characters! In order! That's brilliant! I'll never have to open those wretched PDFs from unicode.org again. Wikipedia is great.
posted by alasdair at 10:20 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Proof once again that the secret behind collecting sweet, sweet AdWords revenue from [Metafilter|Digg|Reddit] readers is by knowing the difference between an ordered list and an unordered list.
posted by ardgedee at 10:31 AM on September 28, 2007 [3 favorites]

LOLWikigroaning!
posted by jquinby at 10:33 AM on September 28, 2007 [4 favorites]

I will say this, when he says that cataloging every unicode character is like putting every word in the english language under "English," it makes me want to start an entry that goes like this:

Words used in the English Language:

The

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
posted by shmegegge at 10:41 AM on September 28, 2007 [7 favorites]

I give this article a ➓ (Dingbat negative circled sans-serif digit ten [U+2793])
posted by blue_beetle at 10:43 AM on September 28, 2007

I really appreciate the length and detail of the British succession list page. I mean, and I'm sure my fellow slash-fic writers will back me up on this, writing is so much more enjoyable when you have a large body of work to serve as a foundation.

Without this page, I could have never written favorites such as The Hon. Timothy Knatchbull, Man About the Towne; Groaning Skies, featuring Tania Saskia Naylor-Leyland and Georg Friedrich von Itzenplitz; or even Suck-Up, or Franziska Wassmann Climbs the List*.


* The first scene in this story was hard to write, but then again, most orgies are.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:44 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ok, that wikigroaning thing is amazing.
posted by shmegegge at 10:45 AM on September 28, 2007

Shrug. There's a Wookieepedia, about Star Wars trivia. I can't imagine bothering to visit it, because I haven't even seen Star Wars, but for any topic under the sun there's someone out there interested in knowing about it in exhaustive detail.
posted by orange swan at 10:52 AM on September 28, 2007

At least this time Cracked only stole the idea, and not both idea and content, from Something Awful.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 11:01 AM on September 28, 2007

You favourite {reference subject} sucks. And it's a wiki. If he really feels all those short pages should be larger than his list he should start typing.
posted by Mitheral at 11:03 AM on September 28, 2007

Some nice, kind, thoughtful, lovely person put a link to the webcomic I write in the Admiral Ackbar entry because, hey, there's a restaurant in it called Admiral Snackbar's and people think that's funny. We were guaranteed four-five visits a day from people who actually spent time on the site and explored it.

Then one day, someone shows up and deletes the link:

Most of the other media is unofficial references, and the Robot Chicken ref would only be notable if Robot Chicken were made by Star Wars staff members (it's a fan ref of an internet meme.)

I, of course, take offense at this because hey, people that visited the site seemed to think it had some value and reverted it. My reversion, of course, was undone quickly and I just resigned myself to a simple fact: Wikipedia is run and mostly maintained by douchenozzles of the highest order.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 11:09 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

All I got from this article is that the author likes looking at Anna Kournikova, and believes that most things could be made better by being placed near photos of her is increasingly skimpy outfits.

I find this to be a compelling argument.
posted by quin at 11:11 AM on September 28, 2007 [6 favorites]

beaucoupkevin - some linkspam got deleted? That's TERRIBLE! Clearly the system is flawed.
posted by Artw at 11:16 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Artw - I didn't put it there in the first place. I've had other links from Wikipedia that stayed forever and had much less value. Thank you, however, for being a nozzle yourself.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 11:18 AM on September 28, 2007

This thread is useless without Anna Kournikova pictures.
posted by EarBucket at 11:20 AM on September 28, 2007

beaucoupkevin, I cannot imagine that you just said "douchenozzle." My bartender and I were just talking about how we have to spread that word around as a replacement for doubchebag about a week ago. I totally thought we were original!
posted by shmegegge at 11:23 AM on September 28, 2007

I first broke it out about a week ago myself.

WE ARE ALL ONE HIVE MIND.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 11:26 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

List of Unicode characters! In order! That's brilliant! I'll never have to open those wretched PDFs from unicode.org again. Wikipedia is great.

Seconded. Granted, I'm biased, as a developer, but that's one of the most useful pages I've seen on Wikipedia. And this guy lists it as the most useless? Does that qualify him as a douchenozzle?
posted by Brak at 11:30 AM on September 28, 2007

cillit bang, yes but with Stephen Fry, that makes it important.
posted by Grod at 11:44 AM on September 28, 2007

The first scene in this story was hard to write, but then again, most orgies are.

Nonsense.

"Dear Penthouse,

None of us in the line of succession to the British crown believed these letters were real..."

---OR---

"It was a dark and stormy night, and everyone was in a big pile on the floor fucking each other. And Franziska Wassman was on the bottom of that pile, sucking her way up."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:49 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

When I saw the FPP I thought I was on Digg for a second.
posted by Foosnark at 11:55 AM on September 28, 2007

How about a separate page for every Star Trek episode ever made in every series?

Look! These two are stubs - you can help Wikipedia by expanding them!

When ever some delete-happy idiot recommends some decent if slightly obscure page for deletion, I just think of these pages and steam with rage. And I like Star Trek.
posted by jb at 12:18 PM on September 28, 2007

Nerts to that, the Unicode entry is a godsend.

Or, as they possibly say in Thaana: ޗޓޏކޥޞ
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:19 PM on September 28, 2007

Access to the URL: http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News%26sid=2411 has been denied. (Your request was denied because of its content categorization: Humor / Comics, Provocative Attire, Streaming Media, Forum / Bulletin Boards.)
posted by neuron at 12:20 PM on September 28, 2007

I mean, yeah, Seventh Heaven ha-ha, but the episode guides and other articles surrounding Buffy the Vampire Slayer dwarf Seventh Heaven.

Yes, but the Buffy pages are needfully detailed, and more culturally relevant, besides.

It's a big, big Buffiverse.
posted by deCadmus at 12:29 PM on September 28, 2007

Douchenozzle has been slowly gaining a following at metafilter.
posted by drezdn at 12:49 PM on September 28, 2007

"It was a dark and stormy night, and everyone was in a big pile on the floor fucking each other. And Franziska Wassman was on the bottom of that pile, sucking her way up."

{{citation needed}}




beaucoupkevin: sorry about your referrals, but do you really think a throwaway pun rates inclusion? There is, after all, a formal external links guideline, despite your experiencing this as some random person trying to ruin your Google PageRank or something.

Anyway, regarding the article, I would have chosen anything related to Pokemon or any of the various battledroids universes, but he probably knew that wouldn't get anybody het up.
posted by dhartung at 12:53 PM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: unaware of her tainted style and her being a harlot.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 1:15 PM on September 28, 2007

dhartung:
Just like a douchenozzle to quote the rules which were, of course, created by douchenozzles.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 1:25 PM on September 28, 2007

Hmm, I wonder - theres a couple of forked wikipedia projects out there for people who think Wikipedia has too much triva and cruft and needs to be more grown up and responsible (like Citizendium), maybe theres one that's MORE freindly to triva and cruft, where the articles all have a detailed history of each time their subject was mentioned in a Joss Whedon show or minor Anime series, and Admiral Snackbar links are respected, dammit.

If so I'm about as likely to go there as I am to Citizendium for information.
posted by Artw at 1:47 PM on September 28, 2007

The entry on the line of succession to the British throne is amazing.

Yep. Reads like half of Germany is on it. In any case, definitely more Germans than Brits.
posted by sour cream at 1:58 PM on September 28, 2007

Huh. Last time I heard about Citizendium, it didn't exist yet.

Now that it does exist, I don't get the point. I just searched for about a dozen artists who have pretty decent articles on Wikipedia, and none of them existed on Citizendium. I thought Citizendium was going to start as a copy of Wikipedia.

But anyway, I'm all for the trivia-sections-only version of Wikipedia.
posted by roll truck roll at 2:12 PM on September 28, 2007

Sadly Gerhardt Messerschmitt Ramstein von Haupt, Duke of Thuringia, Earl of the Duchy of Westphalia, has passed away and is no longer on the list...

Yes, I wikied the full name and title and found it on what is no doubt considered by some a needlessly detailed page
posted by Artw at 2:12 PM on September 28, 2007

roll truck roll - I believe at some point they deleted all the articles that hadn't been edited by Citizendium editors, which left about a thousand articles.
posted by Artw at 2:14 PM on September 28, 2007

Hmmmm there's that trashy novel Temple by Matthew Reilly that I'm never going to read but wouldn't mind looking a plot summary to find out what it's about .... 'click'... ARGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:43 PM on September 28, 2007

Yep. Reads like half of Germany is on it. In any case, definitely more Germans than Brits.

Well, you know what they say about loose German women carrying the hemophilia gene...
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:45 PM on September 28, 2007

And now I've actually read the article... I remember recently reading the Jason Mewes entry and thinking 'Wow, has he done anything else apart from take a shed-load of drugs?'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:43 PM on September 28, 2007

If that's the case, chunking express, please tell your friend that the line "incest, matricide and diabetes" made me laugh out loud.

Agreed. Thanks to the snappy writing, the linked Cracked article was way funnier than it had any right to be.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:57 PM on September 28, 2007

"Douchnozzle" is a word I am unfamiliar with. In context, it seems to mean "someone who beaucoupkevin disagrees with." I hope I will also be allowed to join this quickly-growing club as soon as possible.
posted by grouse at 4:11 PM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

In theory, deleted-but-useful wikipedia articles can be moved to The annex, which will find a better place for them. In practice, it doesn't happen very often because not many people know about the annex.
posted by Tlogmer at 4:23 PM on September 28, 2007

Or, as they possibly say in Thaana: ޗ

Is that the Unicode for a fetus?
posted by smackfu at 5:04 PM on September 28, 2007

Does Cracked do anything aside form linkbait-ish "top 10" articles?
posted by elmwood at 5:43 PM on September 28, 2007

Well they tried to get their magazine going again but...

"after just three poor-selling issues, the failing magazine was cancelled in February 2007"
posted by Tenuki at 6:21 PM on September 28, 2007

Cracked will always be Mad's less funny cousin to me.
posted by PHINC at 8:59 PM on September 28, 2007

This link was useful if only because it directed me to the article on the british succession. My favourite part is when, after listing 489 people who are actually in the line of succession and hundreds others who might have been but have been disqualified, representing most of the royal houses of Europe as well as quite a few completely random people, there is a note: The foregoing are all descended from Victoria of the United Kingdom; the list continues with more remote lines and then goes on to list another 2000 or so relatives. I can hardly remember the names of my second cousins.

Also, I found out that there is still a house of Prussia. Didn't realise there was still so much random royalty floating around central Europe.
posted by mosessis at 10:18 PM on September 28, 2007

beaucoupkevin: Just like someone without an argument to resort to personal attack. You still sure you didn't put those links there yourself? You sure seem the type.

Reads like half of Germany is on it. In any case, definitely more Germans than Brits.

Recall that the House of "Windsor" is the renamed House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. If you look at Prince Charles's ancestry, on his father's side he's primarily German and on his mother's side he's only primarily English to the extent that you discount the German blood in the royal line. It's been said that because of Diana, the UK will have in Prince William its most genetically English monarch in four centuries.

Tlogmer: I will now suggest "transwiki to annex" in AFD debates where appropriate. Did not know that existed.

Incidentally, the List of ancient Jedi is on AFD, and I took the initiative to tag the Mewes article for undue weight concerns.
posted by dhartung at 12:25 AM on September 29, 2007

beaucoupkevin: Just like someone without an argument to resort to personal attack. You still sure you didn't put those links there yourself? You sure seem the type.

I'm sorry, apparently you didn't get the memo that I was joking. Next time I'll throw in an LOL or a Smileyface or, you know, maybe a completely over-the-top insult like "douchenozzle." I'm very sorry if you think I seem "the type" to go and place a self-link on Wikipedia. I haven't, don't, and wouldn't, but you seem like the type to think such a thing would be the crime of the century, a post-2000 Lindbergh Baby.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 7:08 AM on September 29, 2007

Only a douchenozzle would think that the word "douchnozzle" is a personal attack. I'm glad to see that my original interpretation of the word was correct.

I'm very sorry if you think I seem "the type" to go and place a self-link on Wikipedia. I haven't, don't, and wouldn't

Except for when you did. In fairness, you undid it about a minute later, but it's a bit much to say that you never would do this when you clearly have done it.
posted by grouse at 7:18 AM on September 29, 2007

Hey, I admitted to reverting to the original linked version. Right there.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 7:21 AM on September 29, 2007

I just discovered this entry. Apparently, Star Wars fans aren't the only obsessive SF nerds around...
posted by Skeptic at 9:05 AM on September 29, 2007

Yeah but unlike random Jedi names, documenting the history of Lister could be of critical importance. Failure to understand his background could lead to holy wars in which last for thousands of years.
posted by quin at 9:28 AM on September 29, 2007