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233 Comments
- freekylaugh, on 07/03/2008, -11/+415i didn't know word count was what made things important.....
guess i was wrong. - noof, on 07/03/2008, -9/+354Those are just silly. Did he even click the theatre links to the right on the WWII-page? There are LOTS of links embedded in the text that leads to other WWII-topics.
- AstroLemon, on 07/03/2008, -7/+190Something tells me they ran out of actual news to make this *****...
They combined the word count of all the Call of Duty games, and compared it to a single WWII page? C'mon, that's like comparing apples to chainsaws. - Konstantino, on 07/04/2008, -5/+150Besides that, does it really matter how long an article is? Aren't we going for quality vs quantity here? Let's be honest, Pokemon is a bit more complicated than Poker.
- Sverre, on 07/03/2008, -11/+117This is silly. Comparing word counts says very little about the information content of the articles, or how they link up with other articles on similar subjects.
And, even if we accepted that measurement, the article is still a big "So what?". Of course there are many gamers who love to spend time writing up on their favourite game, and fewer academics who bother to write a lot about their passions. But this is an online encyclopedia, and one article does not push other articles out because of limited space. There is no reason why articles on more obscure topics shouldn't exist. - hhswatkins, on 07/04/2008, -16/+111To save you time reading the article:
Knuckles > God
The End. - Xezial, on 07/03/2008, -10/+96The list is just comparing wikipedia articles by the number of words per article:
-Call of Duty (first three)(13069 words) > WWII (11884 Words)
-Pokemon (5721 words) > Poker (1857 Words)
-Master Chief (4463 Words) > 23% of U.S. Presidents (3334 Words)
-Starship Enterprise (8507 Words) > Automobile (6935 Words)
-Metal Gear Solid 4 (6818 Words) > War and Peace (5041 Words)
-Electronic Gaming Monthly (4429 Words) > Time Magazine (2274 Words)
-Compilation Final Fantasy albums (8058 Words) > Rock and Roll (3911 Words)
-Mega Man X Bosses (8058 Words) > Serial Killers (5602 Words)
-Minor Star Wars Characters (22463 Words)(!!!) > The Founding Fathers (3046 Words)
-Legend of Zelda Races (10611 Words) > European Ethnic Groups (4282 Words)
-Superman(10818 Words) + Batman(10641 Words) = [21459 Words] > Human (10835 Words)
-Umbrella Corporation (3384 Words) > National human Genome Research Institute (509 Words)
-Characteristics of Kirby (1512 Words) > Characteristics of a Dog (1148 Words)
-Mario's Legacy (444 Words) > Jesus' Legacy (418 Words)
-Knuckles (7832 Words) > God (3726 Words)
-Knuckles and Work (16457 Words) > God and Work (14330 Words) - soogy, on 07/04/2008, -2/+82Wikipedia has length guidelines. When an article or section gets too long, it needs to be split off into separate articles so as to not confuse the ***** out of the reader. Relevant information is what should be kept in one article, while extra details on particularities are put into other (often smaller, sometimes even larger) "child" articles, if you will.
The Pokemon article is also not just that one page. It has hundreds if not thousands of pages dedicated to the subject. Poker is just poker, but there are hundreds of articles on card games, probably still not as many as Pokemon though, as there are not nearly as many playing cards as there are Pokemon cards. Doesn't mean Pokemon is more important, it's just a more vast subject.
Just because Tolstoy's book is a behemoth doesn't mean the summary of it needs to be.
Basically, yes, there are more young people than academics who spend time editing Wikipedia. This is why I no longer edit there, you eventually get tired of dealing with kids who have little or wrong information about the article(s) you are trying to improve. But an article's length has nothing to do with its importance nor quality.
And the Starship Enterprise is more important than automobiles. Duh. - RyeBrye, on 07/04/2008, -2/+62The Call of Duty comparison is fallacious for one simple reason:
"On an encouraging note, we did have to add all the Call of Duty games' individual pages together to reach the crazy number above. "
Guess what? If you add together all of the World War II articles on the Wikipedia, you will have enough words to sink a small ship. Wikipedia articles are not meant to be gigantic - when they get to be too big, smaller sections are split out into other articles.
Word count on any given article is hardly an indication of its importance. There are a lot of other factors. You need ton consider child articles, word count on those child articles, number of editors, number of edits... etc. I know this is just for humor, and some of the trends are interesting - but I would hardly call any of these a WTF. - gothicform, on 07/04/2008, -3/+60Misleading though... you add CoD 1,2, and 3 together and then say it has more than WW2. Why not add the battles of WW2 together, then you'll find that WW2 has enough to fill books.
- slimscane, on 07/04/2008, -0/+57You're right!
Apples: 4155 > Chainsaw: 1747 - p13t3rm, on 07/04/2008, -17/+72Lame ass article. Buried.
- Roshz, on 11/27/2008, -4/+54that's why you can click the green "thumbs up" button ...fail
- dsheinem, on 07/04/2008, -0/+45This has already been done much better (and many times) by Something Awful:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/wikigroaning. ...
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/wikigroaning- ...
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/wikigroaning- ... - bradleyland, on 07/04/2008, -1/+38That's nice honey. Now please sit down and stop throwing your potatoes at daddy.
- Browzer, on 07/04/2008, -0/+36Yeah, it's a dumb story. Wikipedia articles about huge subjects like WW2 often provide a high level summary, but have branches that go to more detailed articles (i.e. The "Background" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II#Backgrou ... section of the WW2 article is only a page, but you can click a link to go to the "Causes of World War II" article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I ... which is huge).
I always have the same response to people who make this criticism: if you think a really important subject is getting short-changed on Wikipedia, go expand on it yourself. Otherwise, if you can't be bothered to do that, stop complaining that someone else hasn't done it for you. - Myonosken, on 07/04/2008, -5/+38Wasn't this stolen from Somethingawful?
- mohsenxp, on 07/04/2008, -3/+33I completely agree. Useless article.
- tr0y85, on 07/04/2008, -6/+36Dugg for Kirby being made out of "gloop" hahaha
- EvilFerret, on 07/04/2008, -0/+28I'm posting a comment.
- XBSHX, on 07/04/2008, -2/+25Yeah this is so ridiculous. There are so many different articles relating to WWI but he ignores them yet counts all the different CoD articles. Same with poker. he should have counted all the different types of poker there is.
- pakakapa, on 07/04/2008, -1/+22ads and misc banners (60% of page) > content (30% of page)
- Laiden, on 07/04/2008, -3/+23He equates words from a main article (which have tons of links to explanitory articles for brevity) as importance.
Rediculous. Buried. - hmunkey, on 07/04/2008, -1/+21If he did check it all, there would be 100s of 1000s of words.
- dunktim, on 07/04/2008, -7/+25Truthiness is alive and well.
- AlanFang, on 07/04/2008, -3/+21This article has one serious flaw, word count is a terrible way to gauge the importance of the something.
- 42Vindictive, on 07/04/2008, -0/+16I buried this because if you were to actually write EVERYTHING about World War II (like Wikipedia has in it's child articles) I have no doubt it would be approaching the millions of words. Having a million word article would a) take way too long to load b) be quite confusing c) be needlessly in-depth for people searching for only an overview or specific topic
Quantity =/= Quality. C'mon, does this guy know anything?
Also, think about this: Who uses the internet most? Gamers. They created the internet phenomenon as we know it today, they perpetuated pornography, video games, discussion about these topics. So of course game articles are going to be quite popular. It's like saying Bed, Bath and Beyond has more stuff about interior design than video games. - Namaha, on 07/04/2008, -1/+16I agree completely but...
"Ridiculous." - Nekura20x6, on 07/04/2008, -6/+21Yeah - this is a bankrupt premise. They say the USS Enterprise is written about more than "automobile", but they mean the generic term and not everything written about every make and model. Plus, wouldn't it have made more sense to compare the fictitious spacecraft to some real ones (the Space Shuttle, for example)?
I guess even gaming blogs have slow news days... - bosssmiley, on 07/04/2008, -2/+17Yea, verrily. The actions of God are a mystery unto me, but I have seen the glory and majesty of Knuckles with mine own eyes.
@Xezial: cheers mate. Your efforts are appreciated. - Harbinger67, on 07/04/2008, -0/+14There's plenty of news, it's just that GR is desperately trying to become the Cracked of the gaming world.
- FrankTheTank17, on 07/04/2008, -0/+13Dugg for the pictures describing the anatomy of a dog and kirby.
- butterslut, on 07/04/2008, -1/+13http://how-to-spell-ridiculous.com/
- sysop073, on 07/04/2008, -4/+15Your comment: 14 words
My comment about the word count of your comment: 26 words
Absolutely ridiculous. Clearly this comment should also make the front page - calebian, on 07/04/2008, -1/+12This doesn't mean anything. At one time the value of words meant more than the quantity.
- NathanielJ, on 07/04/2008, -0/+11Oh, it's got more serious flaws than that.
- The0, on 07/04/2008, -3/+14Word count hasn't been important since high school essays.
- AyaJulia, on 07/04/2008, -3/+13Sadly, it will make top ten anyway, just because it's about games.
- inactive, on 07/04/2008, -4/+13Dugg for Jesus bicycle kick.
- widgetmaker, on 07/04/2008, -0/+9Dugg for Starship Enterprise
- rationalist, on 07/04/2008, -3/+12Word count not equivalent to information value.
See: Digg. - Fafnir43, on 07/04/2008, -0/+9Nah, Cracked has more editorial integrity than this. Yes I went there. (They actually stole the idea from Something Awful, which tells you something... especially when the Something Awful version was better.)
- bosssmiley, on 07/04/2008, -1/+10*Psssst* Adblock. ;-)
- inactive, on 07/04/2008, -0/+9 All this means is that normal Wiki posts aren't as full of useless minutia as the topics that nerds like are.
- JCJW, on 07/04/2008, -0/+9Yeah- WikiGroans
- radsprack, on 07/04/2008, -2/+10He said "more obscure" not totally obscure. The obscurity he was talking about was the difference between what this article was comparing not something completely off base such as said turtle.
- punkcat, on 07/04/2008, -3/+11worthless, took me awhile to even understand what they were getting at it made such little sense.
- dstz, on 07/04/2008, -0/+8Word count is fine. BUT ARTICLES IN ALL CAPS ARE THE BEST.
- mickhead, on 07/04/2008, -1/+8I hereby establish the church of knuckles.
- LightSpeed4, on 07/04/2008, -0/+7The Call of Duty comparison is fallacious for one simple reason:
"On an encouraging note, we did have to add all the Call of Duty games' individual pages together to reach the crazy number above. "
Guess what? If you add together all of the World War II articles on the Wikipedia, you will have enough words to sink a small ship. Wikipedia articles are not meant to be gigantic - when they get to be too big, smaller sections are split out into other articles.
Word count on any given article is hardly an indication of its importance. There are a lot of other factors. You need ton consider child articles, word count on those child articles, number of editors, number of edits... etc. I know this is just for humor, and some of the trends are interesting - but I would hardly call any of these a WTF. -
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