1665: City Talk Pages

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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City Talk Pages
"I don't think the Lakeshore Air Crash Museum really belongs under 'Tourist Attractions.' It's not a museum--it's just an area near the Lake Festival Laser Show where a lot of planes have crashed.
Title text: "I don't think the Lakeshore Air Crash Museum really belongs under 'Tourist Attractions.' It's not a museum--it's just an area near the Lake Festival Laser Show where a lot of planes have crashed.

Explanation

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: First cut, please help with explanation
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

The comic makes fun about Wikipedia-talkpages. In the Wikipedia every page has also an discussion-page called talk-page in the English Wikipedia. In this case the comic talks about the talk-page of a city. While some of the topics are quite normal for such a talk-page (e.g. the quality of the images) others are not (e.g. too many murders and mine disasters in the city).

The topics show a common problem of wikipedia-talk-pages: People think that the talk-page is for talking about the object, but it is for talking about the article.

The infobox is a short fact-sheet that many articles in the (English) Wikipedia have; it has usually a picture and the question which picture exactly (because it is so prominent) can cause edit-wars.

Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer.

Zootopia is a 2016 Disney film.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is an English composer famous for writing The Phantom Of The Opera. (Weber is also known for writing the music for Starlight Express, a rock opera about anthropomorphized trains, which is probably another factor in the train station joke.) Meanwhile, Frank Lloyd Wright, who has a somewhat similar name, was an American architect, who designed more than 1,000 structures.

Transcript

I love reading the Wikipedia talk pages for articles on individual cites
Contents [hide]
1 Origin of city's name?
1.1 Idea for a better name
1.2 Not how Wikipedia works
2 Too much promotion of the lake festival
3 Should we mention the murders?
3.1 Not that notable
3.2 All cites have murders
4 Quote verification: even if voltaire did visit (unlikely) why would he get so angry about our restaurants?
5 Discuss: new picture
5.1 Current one looks awfully bleak
5.2 Gray sky
5.3 What about this
5.4 Also bleak
5.5 Maybe this place just looks that way
5.6 Found a better picture, more colorful
5.7 That's a shot from Disney's Zootopia
6 "Mining disasters" section too long
6.1 Not really Wikipedia's fault
6.2 Why is this town so bad at mining?
7 Infobox picture: I just realized you can see a murder happening in the background
7.1 This city is terrible
7.2 Photoshopped out murder
7.3 Can someone just take a better picture
7.4 Okay, uploaded a new picture
7.5 Wait, never mind, I just noticed there's a murder in this one, too
8 1982 secession still in effect?
9 I think the murderer is reverting my edits
10 Why does this article take ANY position on correct condom use, let alone such a weird and ambiguous one?
11 Train station "designed by Andrew Lloyd Weber"?
11.1 They probably mean Frank Lloyd Wright
11.2 I thought so too but it's apparently not a mistake
11.3 Didn't know he did architecture
11.4 Roof collapse


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

I redid the numbering in the transcript to be consistent with the comic. Unfortunately that added blank lines around the indented section, which looks a little awkward. Perhaps someone with better markup skills than me can fix it.NotLock (talk) 16:51, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

You didn't need to say font color blue over and over. Just once for the whole list was enough. Numbermaniac (talk) 00:32, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
That wasn't me NotLock (talk) 02:40, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

So now does Wikipedia have to lock down every talk page to prevent xkcd-inspired vandalism edits? Z (talk) 17:14, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Aren't all of these points based on actual wikipedia talk pages? I came by to find the links to them. Maybe this is a big Whooosh for me, but i'd bet i'll not be the last person to think this. Harodotus (talk) 17:23, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Not ACTUALLY, directly based, no. I believe that Randall is engaging in what Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory declared as being called "reductio-ad-absurdum", taking an idea to an extreme in order to then make fun of it. It's definitely an xkcd staple, we see it often. In this case, Randall has seen ridiculous talk pages, and has come up with even more ridiculous "suggestions" if you will (for example, I doubt there's any city with such a huge murder problem that nobody can find a nice picture without a murder happening in the background). People here could find ridiculous city talk pages and link them here as examples, but it's unlikely any/many will have these exact entries, so linking them would be more of an opinion ("Here's one I personally find ridiculous"), which makes it less than ideal for linking to in what should be a fact-based environment. - NiceGuy1 108.162.218.154 18:07, 8 April 2016 (UTC) I finally signed up! This comment is mine. NiceGuy1 (talk) 09:29, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
"What sheldon on the Big Bang Theory called" *facepalms hard* Reductio ad absurdem was a logical fallacy and rhetorical tactic long before that godawful show. 173.245.54.64 21:37, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
Well, of COURSE I know they didn't invent it, I'm just pointing out a more accessible place where people may have heard the concept. And I didn't say he called it that, I said that he DECLARED that it's called that. I never suggested I thought he named it. That's one thing I love about the show, that it brings intelligence out to the masses. - NiceGuy1 108.162.218.154 10:58, 9 April 2016 (UTC) So's this! NiceGuy1 (talk) 09:29, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Andrew Lloyd Webber has two "b"s. Shakhteremeslo (talk) 17:41, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Wonder if it is a mistake or to make it look real. Talk pages are probably often filled with spelling errors and mistakes that do not get fixed. So maybe it was intentional. Else it might get fixed in an update later. Mentioned this in the explanation now. Kynde (talk) 19:27, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Is the "it's apparently not a mistake" line a possible reference to citogenesis? 173.245.54.47 17:43, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Probably, that seems to be the only logical explanation for how it's possible for that NOT to be a mistake, LOL! - NiceGuy1 108.162.218.154 18:10, 8 April 2016 (UTC) Also my comment! Oh, and 978: Citogenesis NiceGuy1 (talk) 09:29, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I assume the reference to the 1982 secession is referring to Key West, FL, which "seceded" from the United States and formed the Conch Republic in April 1982, to protest Border Patrol roadblocks in the Keys. It makes sense to me -- If you have to deal with the Border Patrol, you must be leaving the country. They still celebrate Independence Day every April 23. Miamiclay (talk) 21:57, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

"Mining disasters" section too long

Why is this comic so bad at mining? 108.162.242.134 17:46, 8 April 2016 (UTC)


I just *couldn't resist* coming to the talk page of this particular comic to say "hello world". LOL -JP 108.162.218.41 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I think that's why we're all here. 173.245.54.44 14:06, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I tried clicking on [HIDE] but it didn't. 162.158.72.197 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Too blue (DISCOSS!)

The article has too many hyperlinks. Can we make them green instead of blue? Mike (talk) 22:38, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Nah they should be red Moderator (talk) 01:39, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the murderer is here now

He's also reverting my edits? 108.162.218.239 00:15, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Random examples

Wikipedia has a special page for random pages in a category. This link finds random pages related to cities, which might help in finding amusing talk pages. .42 (talk) 00:20, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

I just had to go check out the talk page on my hometown. Oh my goodness, I didn't realize... 108.162.221.65 02:03, 9 April 2016 (UTC) sam

Notability

Notability is not really a criterion for including material in articles. It is a criterion for whether to create an article based on a particular topic. Big difference there. There is plenty of information that will never meet notability thresholds that is perfectly fine to include in an article. Complicating this problem is the fact that many Wikipedians do not understand this distinction. It is therefore an entirely plausible situation that some Wikilawyer would try to suppress useful information by denying its notability. This would not be an actually tenable position, though, and therefore the above "explanation" of it is incorrect and incomplete. 162.158.142.139 02:42, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what is the wikipedia rule then that prevents facts like "On 12 August, 1989, Famous Person X had a Turkey on Rye sandwich, featuring mustard and pickles" or "City Z has many fire hydrants. Here are the GPS coordinates of each fire hydrant: ..."? Although, that fire hydrant edit would be interesting.... NotLock (talk) 06:48, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
While the common-sense is most time enough, there is a rule that you can only include things for which you have a source (and not every source is ok, blogs for example may be problematic). There are also rules about the scope of an article, which kind of articles are ok (that topic differs MUCH between the several Wikipedias) and for what Wikipedia is not in general. --DaB. (talk) 12:17, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
Possible Link to XKCD 463?

While it isn't particularly likely, is it possible that this comic references Voting Machines? The article taking a position on correct condom use is odd, but it is possible there is some metaphor (such as the one in Voting Machines) that involves condom usage that is in the article but isn't visible to us. On a related note, I would love to see this hypothetical Wikipedia article. 108.162.237.254 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Andrew Lloyd Webber vs. Frank Lloyd Wright
Randy, Please add them to the next Bracket! 108.162.237.165 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Randall did updated Webber's last name in the original comic, maybe this page is up for update (I am not sure how ot properly do it, so can someone who is more experienced in editing do this?) 108.162.219.63 16:50, 16 September 2016 (UTC)