Wikipedia

[womzilla]

agrumer had a short but densely amusing post yesterday about Wikipedia which I will quote in its entirety and then add a couple of comments:

The umlaut gazes also

Ah, Wikipedia! Sure, the stuffy old guard may doubt your accuracy (though the Encyclopædia Britannica might not be any better), but how many encyclopedias have not just an entry on the umlaut, but a separate entry on the use of the umlaut in heavy metal rock band names? (“At one Mötley Crüe performance in Germany, the entire audience started chanting, ‘Moertley Crueh!’”)

Tip: Wikipedia’s search function is kinda slow. I just do a Google search, adding in “wikipedia” as a search term.

First comment: The Wikipedia entry on "Heavy Metal Umlaut" is, indeed, terrific, but it didn't mention my favorite metal-parody name ever, which is "Bräss Ümlaut". Can anyone remember where that name originated?

Second comment: The Corante discussion Avram cites includes a mention of the "Wikipedia Challenge"--"I pointed to the Wikipedia page on Syracuse, NY where he apparently lives, and suggested he change something on the page, to make it provably, factually incorrect — and see how long it lasted." This inspired me to look at the Wikipedia page for Yonkers, New York, to which I ended up making a few additions, notably in the "Image" section but also in History--I've long been very proud of the fact that Bakelite was invented here. I resisted the temptation to add info about famous rat breeders.

(Another note: I just discovered Firefox's "View Selection Source" function, which allows you to select a portion of a web page and see the HTML source just for that selection. That let me cut-and-paste Avi's links without having to add them by hand. Bitchin' cool.)

Comments

[sraun]

You do know that if you do an Advanced Search at Google, you can limit your returns by domain? So you can say 'only pointers to wikipedia.org'?

[avram]

I know that, and I suspect Kevin does too, but the method I use involves less typing, and the results are just as good.

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

or just from the google box: site:en.wikipedia.org "search terms"

Firefox is sweet. I need to make myself use it instead Safari for a couple of weeks.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about "view selection source" before, that's very cool. Yeah!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

My experience is that Wikipedia may have a lot of huge gaps in coverage (both within and between articles), but that it's got a lot more info than other online encyclopedias, and it's pretty accurate, too. In subjects I'm knowledgable on, it's entirely lacking in the absolute howlers that characterize a lot of printed books.

[readwrite.livejournal.com]

The amusing thing about Spinal Tap's name is that one cannot make the umlaut over the "n" any way I know of in ordinary text. In Quark you can make it by typing the "n" and the "¨" separately and then setting the tracking to a negative number.

Thanks for that Firefox tip. I think I'm about to learn a whole bunch more html...