Crap articles

CrowsNest
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by CrowsNest » Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:06 pm

London station group (T-H-L)

What is it for?

WHAT IS IT FOR?

(You'll see the same queries made repeatedly in the talk page, with no apparent success in gaining an answer).

Wikipedia is full of junk like this, the product of nerditry and original research. This one of course is just the moderately less crap child article of the nerd-heaven that is Station group (railway) (T-H-L). Don't be fooled by the title, that article of course only covers Britain (mainland), and most likely only after a certain date (the nerds aren't so nerdy that they know (or care) to include such basic historical information).

If Wikipedia was an encyclopedia, and its editors were, well, editors, then this article would be titled Railway stations in central London (T-H-L), and it would cover the history, have a list, and in a small, so tiny you almost don't notice it, section on the use of the term London Terminals on railway tickets.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:46 pm

Shen Wansan (T-H-L), a very wealthy private individual of the Ming period. The article is written in atrocious English, and sourced to four weblinks none of which is currently accessible. The section
Wikipedia wrote:Historic evaluation
Among all the historic events, the story of Zhu Yuanzhang and Shen Wansan is the only one which is about the battle between a great politician and a great businessman. The imperial power above everything won the battle inevitably.
I think that what this is saying is that his life was the only occasion in (Chinese) history when a wealthy private citizen came into conflict with an imperial official. If so, this is plainly untrue.

The article is the work of Nnu-12-22100550 (T-C-L), a member of the Wikipedia:School and university projects/NNU Class Project/Winter 2012 (T-H-L), an article creation project involving students from Nanjing Normal University, China. The lead organiser, Anna Frodesiak (T-C-L) wrapped it up as follows:
Anna Frodesiak wrote:Many are far from perfect, but what the heck, they've all had a lot of eyes on them, and are in reasonable shape. Factchecking is unrealistic, and I think we just need to assume good faith.
Let me just repeat that:
Factchecking is unrealistic
Quite so, after all, it's not as if this is an encyclopaedia or something.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by CrowsNest » Sun Feb 11, 2018 6:19 pm

Two clicks on Random.....Scat Records (T-H-L). Frankly, it's nothing more than a business directory listing, and has the edit history to match. Unreferenced, of course. Added during Peak Wikipedia, of course. Creator and main editor (such that this even means anything) is a US East Coast video game fan and software engineer, who has risen through the ranks of Wikipedia all the way to Beurocrat. OF COURSE.

It previously contained a list of bands signed to the label, which has been removed in favour of a link to a Category. This is of course, not what policy says should happen, but has presumably been done so as to dissuade vandals and people wanting to add their as yet non-notable acts to it.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by CrowsNest » Sun Feb 11, 2018 6:39 pm

Found after three clicks of Random....The Fulham Boys School (T-H-L)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =814935869

Gonna just quote the whole article (fair use defence:critical commentary) - the bits in bold variously made me laugh, cry, or scratch my head.

It was of course dumped on Wikipedia in one edit (by an SPA) way back in March 2014, and has only received trivial edits or vandalism ever since.
The Fulham Boys School is an English Church of England free school for boys aged 11 to 18. It was founded by a group of Fulham and opened in September 2014. Its initial temporary location will be in West Kensington in London.[2]

The Fulham Boys School offers an education specifically geared towards boys. Its website states: "Through the application of our Christian values, mutual respect, supportive pastoral care and inspirational teaching, we will help every boy to find his unique talent and realise it, for the benefit of all."[3]

The head teacher is Alun Ebenezer, who joined in September 2013. He was previously Deputy Head at St Teilo's Church in Wales High School, a large secondary school in Cardiff.[4]

Although it is a Church of England school, 50% of the places are offered to boys of all faiths and none.[5]
Anyone left wondering if this school even exists, or what its vital statistics are, of course are better served by going to their official website's About page....
Founded by local parents and teachers, it opened with its first Year 7 (age 11-12) boys in September 2014. It is growing year on year and will be at its full capacity of 800 boys in 2020, when the first year group reach the Upper Sixth (17-18).

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by CrowsNest » Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:21 pm

After another two clicks of Random....Marginella epipolia (T-H-L)
Marginella epipolia is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Marginellidae, the margin snails.
Other than the taxobox, that's literally it. This micro-stub was added by a scraper bot in 2010, which apparently harvested the contents of the World Register of Marine Species (T-H-L). Despite the bot helpfully including empty Description and Distribution sections, helpfully tagged with 'empty section' tags, it seems nobody wants to play Wikipedia in this case - it has been edited a grand total of five times since creation, three by actual bots, once by Rich Farmbrough, who is just a human bot, and finally by an actual human, who merely added the Category "Animals described in 1921", and had to use a script to even help them do that. It strikes me that even that could have been part of the scraper bot's coding (it was created six months previously).

All told, this is just a sad example of the failed idealism of the Wikiprats believing they have something better to offer the world than the people who conceive, create and maintain resources like the World Register of Marine Species.

Their idealism just means people have to waste their time looking at these shitty pseudodatabase entry type pages, or scrolling down past them in Google (whose own proprietary data box is of course fooled into using Wikipedia as the source, not the register).

And there isn't, of course, an entry for Marginella epipolia in wiki species. Whoops! At least Fram all be happy.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by CrowsNest » Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:29 pm

Two more clicks, and I got Sar Cheshmeh, Khuzestan (T-H-L), another shitty microstub.
Sar Cheshmeh (Persian: سرچشمه‎)[1] is a village in Jahangiri Rural District, Central District, Masjed Soleyman County, Khuzestan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its existence was noted, but its population was not reported.[2]
Interestingly (lol), reference 1 is not a reference, but a note explaining how to find this place's entry on the GEOnet Names Server (T-H-L). The note is almost as long as the "article".

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by CrowsNest » Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:39 pm

Next click fittingly found The Black Hole (2006 film) (T-H-L). It's a poorly referenced article on a 2006 television movie, wnich throws some particularly nasty shade at St. Louis.
The film is noteworthy for using many distinctive pieces of St. Louis architecture as locations in the story.
Ouch!

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:49 pm

CrowsNest wrote:After another two clicks of Random....Marginella epipolia (T-H-L)
... This micro-stub was added by a scraper bot in 2010, which apparently harvested the contents of the World Register of Marine Species (T-H-L) ... All told, this is just a sad example of the failed idealism of the Wikiprats believing they have something better to offer the world than the people who conceive, create and maintain resources like the World Register of Marine Species.
Rather than having bots scrape these sites, it might have been more efficient to write an API once and for all that links into the database and returns the most up-to-date answer in text form in all the various wiki-languages. Of course that wasn't done, for several reasons. Firstly it would have required some central coordination, which could only have been done by the WMF, and they are too idle and unadventurous to do it, and too incompetent to succeed. Secondly, it would have required some sort of interaction with the owners of the databases they wanted to scrape, which would have required a certain amount of humility and real-world negotiation, coming down from their holier-than-thou Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Thirdly, it would have deprived them of numbers they could tout to tell everyone, and especially the big donors, how successful their projects were. Fourthly, anyone else could have incorporated their open-source code into a better and more authoritative interface system. Fifthly, the more articles, the more work for the addicts.

So, five good reasons why these sub-stubs exist. Benefit the readers? No, not on the list, guv.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Ming » Sun Feb 11, 2018 9:21 pm

CrowsNest wrote:Found after three clicks of Random....The Fulham Boys School (T-H-L)
What is especially crap about this article is that the only significant difference between the initial version from 2014 and the present is that someone changed all the future tenses into the past. In fact the school is (from what Ming can tell) not in its original temporary location, but is now located in a former police station, and it has not been without controversy, starting with the whole idea of the thing, but especially a huge flap last fall when a Rasta kid was told to cut off his huge mass of dreads. The Guardian seems to really have it in for the place, using the word "Tory" at least once a paragraph in one story that Ming came across. The Ofsted folks liked it, well, they did back in May before the dreads incident. So there's a lot of narrative there, pretty much none of which figures in the article because it's really still frozen back at the point when the school hadn't opened yet.

Oh, and all the bizarre English goes right back to the very first version of the article.
Last edited by Ming on Sun Feb 11, 2018 9:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Ming » Mon Feb 12, 2018 1:15 pm

CrowsNest wrote:Two more clicks, and I got Sar Cheshmeh, Khuzestan (T-H-L), another shitty microstub.
Sar Cheshmeh (Persian: سرچشمه‎)[1] is a village in Jahangiri Rural District, Central District, Masjed Soleyman County, Khuzestan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its existence was noted, but its population was not reported.[2]
Interestingly (lol), reference 1 is not a reference, but a note explaining how to find this place's entry on the GEOnet Names Server (T-H-L). The note is almost as long as the "article".
Part of an apparently several month long dump of an Iranian census table, cross-indexed with GNIS, on the part of Carlossuarez46 (T-C-L). At least, he spent all of October and part of September, and that's as far as Ming was willing to look. Several hundred articles were being dumped in a day, most of them redirects.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Mon Feb 12, 2018 2:56 pm

CrowsNest wrote:London station group (T-H-L)

What is it for?

WHAT IS IT FOR?

(You'll see the same queries made repeatedly in the talk page, with no apparent success in gaining an answer).

Wikipedia is full of junk like this, the product of nerditry and original research. This one of course is just the moderately less crap child article of the nerd-heaven that is Station group (railway) (T-H-L). Don't be fooled by the title, that article of course only covers Britain (mainland), and most likely only after a certain date (the nerds aren't so nerdy that they know (or care) to include such basic historical information).

If Wikipedia was an encyclopedia, and its editors were, well, editors, then this article would be titled Railway stations in central London (T-H-L), and it would cover the history, have a list, and in a small, so tiny you almost don't notice it, section on the use of the term London Terminals on railway tickets.
The article does not explain the significance of the group, but it is indeed an important concept. For most stations in this country, responsibility for maintenance rests with the primary train operator using the stations. However, for a limited number of very important stations, Network Rail takes responsibility. This article is about those London stations covered by this. "Railway stations in central London" would include stations not covered by this.
"The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly" - Nietzsche

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by CrowsNest » Mon Feb 12, 2018 5:20 pm

Poetlister wrote:
CrowsNest wrote:London station group (T-H-L)

What is it for?

WHAT IS IT FOR?

(You'll see the same queries made repeatedly in the talk page, with no apparent success in gaining an answer).

Wikipedia is full of junk like this, the product of nerditry and original research. This one of course is just the moderately less crap child article of the nerd-heaven that is Station group (railway) (T-H-L). Don't be fooled by the title, that article of course only covers Britain (mainland), and most likely only after a certain date (the nerds aren't so nerdy that they know (or care) to include such basic historical information).

If Wikipedia was an encyclopedia, and its editors were, well, editors, then this article would be titled Railway stations in central London (T-H-L), and it would cover the history, have a list, and in a small, so tiny you almost don't notice it, section on the use of the term London Terminals on railway tickets.
The article does not explain the significance of the group, but it is indeed an important concept. For most stations in this country, responsibility for maintenance rests with the primary train operator using the stations. However, for a limited number of very important stations, Network Rail takes responsibility. This article is about those London stations covered by this. "Railway stations in central London" would include stations not covered by this.
I very much doubt that is the purpose of the page. And even if it was, why the focus on London? Network Rail manages 17 stations in total, 8 of which are outside of London (source: Wikipedia nerds). This fact is no more significant to an encyclopedia than the idea some of them fall under the catch all London Terminals term for the purposes of ticketing. These are of niche significance when contrasted to the general information about what stations exist in central London, and their history etc. Both of these niche significances would warrant only small sections in a nominal article titled Railway stations in central London (T-H-L).

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by CrowsNest » Wed Feb 14, 2018 2:07 am

More railway nerd porn....

United Kingdom railway station categories (T-H-L)

That's not a formatting error, this is an article about real world categories. The nerds have, of course, also created a Wikipedia category tree to replicate this real world category scheme. Because, well, why the hell not?

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Ming » Wed Feb 14, 2018 10:39 am

OK, here's a whole new level of crappiness for Ming: nearly every "citation" in Orlando's Summer of Love (T-H-L) is as long as the text of the article, and there are fifteen of them.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Wed Feb 14, 2018 4:08 pm

Ming wrote:OK, here's a whole new level of crappiness for Ming: nearly every "citation" in Orlando's Summer of Love (T-H-L) is as long as the text of the article, and there are fifteen of them.
The article is up for deletion. It needs to be preserved for posterity.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Thu Feb 15, 2018 10:07 pm

Some crap BLPs.

Jean-Paul Votron (T-H-L), a Belgian businessman. The three Sources are all weblinks, all defunct.

James Bovard (T-H-L), a libertarian author. The References section is empty.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:40 pm

Renée Bagslint wrote:Some crap BLPs.

Jean-Paul Votron (T-H-L), a Belgian businessman. The three Sources are all weblinks, all defunct.

James Bovard (T-H-L), a libertarian author. The References section is empty.
I think we need a separate thread for unsourced or poorly sourced BLPs. A BLP can be well written and cover all the important points even if the author has neglected to give the references.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:32 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Renée Bagslint wrote:Some crap BLPs.

Jean-Paul Votron (T-H-L), a Belgian businessman. The three Sources are all weblinks, all defunct.

James Bovard (T-H-L), a libertarian author. The References section is empty.
I think we need a separate thread for unsourced or poorly sourced BLPs. A BLP can be well written and cover all the important points even if the author has neglected to give the references.
Of course it can. It can also be wrong from beginning to end, complete nonsense, or maliciously filled with deliberately libellous falsehoods. How could you tell? That is why Wikipedia has a clear policy that such things should not exist on their site at all.

More to the point, how is it that Wikipedia can so easily be found to be hosting such articles when it has such a clear policy that such things should not exist on their site at all? I suppose it's for the same reason that there are thousands of such articles already tagged by Wikipedians but not cleared up. Because there's no process to ensure that such things are remedied, and there's no process, and no progress, because nobody cares enough about truth, knowledge and all those old-fashioned things, to put in the hard work.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Fri Feb 16, 2018 7:25 pm

Governor Greene Cemetery (T-H-L), a late colonial cemetery located in Warwick, Rhode Island. Sourced entirely to findagrave.com, contrary to
Wikipedia:Citing Find a Grave wrote:As a reliable source: Almost never.
Incidentally, there are 4,452 pages referring to findagrave.com

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Feb 16, 2018 9:14 pm

Renée Bagslint wrote:Incidentally, there are 4,452 pages referring to findagrave.com
I think that most such references are not used to source anything in particular.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Fri Feb 16, 2018 9:53 pm

Maybe not. Finding one with one random click suggests they are not exactly scarce either.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by LynnWysong » Sat Feb 17, 2018 1:46 am

Renée Bagslint wrote:Governor Greene Cemetery (T-H-L), a late colonial cemetery located in Warwick, Rhode Island. Sourced entirely to findagrave.com, contrary to
Wikipedia:Citing Find a Grave wrote:As a reliable source: Almost never.
Incidentally, there are 4,452 pages referring to findagrave.com
I use Findagrave. What the Hell? The person's dead.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Sat Feb 17, 2018 7:13 am

Wikipedians have ruled Find-A-Grave unreliable, because it's a compilation of amateur observations with no reason to trust the accuracy, reliability, integrity or honesty of the contributors. Just like Wikipedia, really. But they use it anyway, and have no process for ensuring that their own decisions are adhered to. As you say, What The Hell!

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Ming » Sat Feb 17, 2018 1:28 pm

Renée Bagslint wrote:Wikipedians have ruled Find-A-Grave unreliable, because it's a compilation of amateur observations with no reason to trust the accuracy, reliability, integrity or honesty of the contributors. Just like Wikipedia, really. But they use it anyway, and have no process for ensuring that their own decisions are adhered to. As you say, What The Hell!
The problem with using gravestones as a source is (a) ensuring that you are looking at the right one, and (b) the information on them is notoriously inaccurate if not intentionally false. They are a marginal source at best for genealogical data of last resort. Ming doesn't know anything about the research done on Ming's family, but one on-line genealogy gives an origin for the first American Ming in Yorkshire. After years of not being able to find this place, Ming looked again somewhat differently, and came to the conclusion that the likely place is actually in lowland Scotland. But really, there's no way for Ming to tell. But you can be sure that the information lists in detail where every one of these supposed ancestors is buried.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Johnny Au » Sun Feb 18, 2018 5:14 am

gategroup (T-H-L)

I have never seen an article that has the references and the portals embedded inside a single cell of a much larger table!

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Ming » Sun Feb 18, 2018 1:43 pm

Phish tours (T-H-L) is, as anyone can guess, an orgy of fannish detail, with one nugget of actual interest: their "Musical Costumes" schtick of covering an entire album of some other band for Halloween. However, Musical Costumes (T-H-L) doesn't go directly to that section, which is waaaaaaay down at the end of the lists of all the places they have ever played, and it doesn't even show up on the first page of contents unless you have a very tall screen. (There is a single sentene on it at the end of the lead.) And then there's this "sources" section, separate from the references, which Ming feels ought to be seen in its entirety here:
The first Phish concert setlist archive was "The Helping Phriendly Book", a section of the fan-based Phish.net website unveiled on the Internet in 1991. Two books, The Pharmer's Almanac and The Phish Companion, contained detailed collections of Phish setlists, the first appearing in six volumes between 1995 and 2000 and the latter prepared to release a third volume in 2016.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Ming » Sun Feb 18, 2018 1:44 pm

Ming wrote:Phish tours (T-H-L) is, as anyone can guess, an orgy of fannish detail, with one nugget of actual interest: their "Musical Costumes" schtick of covering an entire album of some other band for Halloween. However, Musical Costumes (T-H-L) doesn't go directly to that section, which is waaaaaaay down at the end of the lists of all the places they have ever played, and it doesn't even show up on the first page of contents unless you have a very tall screen. (There is a single sentene on it at the end of the lead.) And then there's this "sources" section, separate from the references, which Ming feels ought to be seen in its entirety here:
The first Phish concert setlist archive was "The Helping Phriendly Book", a section of the fan-based Phish.net website unveiled on the Internet in 1991. Two books, The Pharmer's Almanac and The Phish Companion, contained detailed collections of Phish setlists, the first appearing in six volumes between 1995 and 2000 and the latter prepared to release a third volume in 2016.
Oh, and they also tell you how to get tickets.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Sun Feb 18, 2018 5:49 pm

Glyphipterix climacaspis (T-H-L) is a moth in the family Glyphipterigidae. It is known from South Africa.

That is the complete text of the article, with a reference to afromoths.net. If the author had paid more than cursory attention to that web page, they would have seen the reference to pages 296-297 of Edward Meyrick, "Descriptions of South African Microlepidoptera" Annals of the South African Museum 17 (1920) 273–318, which is available online and provides a complete description of this species. Why should Edward Meyrick (T-H-L) be deprived of the credit for his herculean efforts in lepidoptery, and why should the reader be deprived of the opportunity to learn more? So that Ruigeroeland (T-C-L) should have time to produce more thousands of these "articles".

Found after 3 clicks of "random article".

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Sun Feb 18, 2018 7:11 pm

Si Tsong, Si Tsang (T-H-L), a Philippine television silent situational comedy. No references.

Found after 3 clicks on "random article".

Parlung Zangbo (village) (T-H-L), a village in Tibet. No references.

Found after 2 clicks on "random article".

Leech line (T-H-L): the entire text is Modern sails may come with a standard leech line (leech control) that runs under the back edge of the mainsail. One picture. No references.

Found after 2 clicks on "random article".

The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies (T-H-L). Unreferenced.

Found after 3 clicks on "random article".

Summary: ten random articles, four unreferenced, one substub.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Sun Feb 18, 2018 8:59 pm

Johnny Au wrote:gategroup (T-H-L)

I have never seen an article that has the references and the portals embedded inside a single cell of a much larger table!
Just a stupid formatting error; Mangoe (T-C-L) has fixed it.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:36 pm

Zopa (T-H-L) is a firm that organises peer-to-peer lending and promises a high rate of return on investment.

You would look in vain in the article for many signs of the criticism that this firm has received. For example, it only recovers 10-15% of bad debts, often leaving investors badly out of pocket.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by CrowsNest » Mon Feb 19, 2018 7:26 pm

Poetlister wrote:Zopa (T-H-L) is a firm that organises peer-to-peer lending and promises a high rate of return on investment.

You would look in vain in the article for many signs of the criticism that this firm has received. For example, it only recovers 10-15% of bad debts, often leaving investors badly out of pocket.
Consulting Wikipedia for advice on investment decisions seems like a bad idea. Not that there is any good reason to consult it for anything.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:49 pm

Second inauguration of Manuel Roxas (T-H-L) reads in its entirety:
Wikipedia wrote:The Inauguration of Manuel Roxas as the fifth President of the Philippines and the first president of the Third Philippine Republic occurred on July 4, 1946. The inauguration marked the commencement of Manuel Roxas's only term as President and of Elpidio Quirino's only term as Vice President, when the Philippines gained independence from the United States.
The article is unsourced.

Why is the title "Second inauguration", when the text refers to "The inauguration", and "only term" (my emphases)? Why does the article on Manuel Roxas (T-H-L) state that he "served as the third and last President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines from May 28, 1946 to July 4, 1946, subsequently becoming the first President of the independent Third Philippine Republic after the United States ceded its sovereignty over the Philippines" when this article refers to him as fifth President? In short, what exactly is supposed to be going on here?

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:46 pm

I suppose that his first inauguration was pre-independence and his second was post-independence and the author got thoroughly confused by this.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Johnny Au » Wed Feb 21, 2018 3:04 am

Melodica in music (T-H-L)

It's completely unorganized and filled with original research.

Even a TV Tropes entry is better organized (and some TV Tropes entries are less organized than a tornado ripping through a scrapyard)

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Re: Crap articlesThis article was initially translated from

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:45 pm

Podolanka, Czech Republic (T-H-L) is a village and municipality in Prague-East District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. That's the entire article. The References section has no references but states "This article was initially translated from the Czech Wikipedia." Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not a Reliable Source.

Found in 2 clicks of "random article".

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Re: Crap articlesThis article was initially translated from

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:44 pm

Renée Bagslint wrote:Podolanka, Czech Republic (T-H-L) is a village and municipality in Prague-East District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. That's the entire article. The References section has no references but states "This article was initially translated from the Czech Wikipedia." Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not a Reliable Source.

Found in 2 clicks of "random article".
it also says "This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Czech. (July 2009)". Evidently, in nearly nine years nobody thought it worthwhile to expand the article. Actually,the Czech article has abundant references, so at least the relevant ones could have been copied over.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Ming » Sat Feb 24, 2018 2:24 pm

Ming, Destroyer of Articles, was cruising AfD, looking for victims, when Ming came across A Program for Monetary Reform (T-H-L). Notice something odd about the ToC? Click on "Text", then go over to the right and click on "show".

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Sat Feb 24, 2018 6:34 pm

Ming wrote:Ming, Destroyer of Articles, was cruising AfD, looking for victims, when Ming came across A Program for Monetary Reform (T-H-L). Notice something odd about the ToC? Click on "Text", then go over to the right and click on "show".
Interesting: " A copy of the paper was apparently preserved in a college library.[citation needed] Copies of the paper, stamped on the bottom of the first and last pages, “LIBRARY – COLORADO STATE COLLEGE OF A. & M. A. – FORT COLLINS COLORADO” were circulated..." I suppose that it is original research to deduce from the fact that it apparently came from Colorado State College that it was preserved there.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Sat Feb 24, 2018 6:45 pm

"Copies of the paper ... were circulated at the 5th Annual American Monetary Institute Monetary Reform Conference (2009) and the images were scanned for display on the internet.[1]" The link is to a PDF file apparently a scan of a typescript done on an IBM golfball typewriter, and certainly not a document from 1939. Indeed, the scan finishes with the words "The document is preserved in a format as close to the original document as reasonably possible." In other words, it is a typed copy of the alleged original, and the statement in the article is between mistaken and misleading. While the paper cited in the AFD shows that this document did exist, there is no current reason to believe that this is it.

So -- hoax, deliberate manipulation or incompetent article-writing? The Wikipedia triad.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by lonza leggiera » Sun Feb 25, 2018 8:41 am

Renée Bagslint wrote:"Copies of the paper ... were circulated at the 5th Annual American Monetary Institute Monetary Reform Conference (2009) and the images were scanned for display on the internet.[1]" The link is to a PDF file apparently a scan of a typescript done on an IBM golfball typewriter, and certainly not a document from 1939. Indeed, the scan finishes with the words "The document is preserved in a format as close to the original document as reasonably possible." In other words, it is a typed copy of the alleged original, and the statement in the article is between mistaken and misleading. While the paper cited in the AFD shows that this document did exist, there is no current reason to believe that this is it.

So -- hoax, deliberate manipulation or incompetent article-writing? The Wikipedia triad.
Links to Wayback machine archives of what appears to be a genuine scan of the original document are given in the references section of the article, so I see no good reason for supposing any hoax.

On the other hand, at least two of the three sites* linked to in the external links section of the article appear to have been run by strident advocates for the proposal which is the subject of the article—or proposals similar to it. Thus one could well be forgiven for taking the somewhat gratuitous disclaimer,
Ernest Whiteside wrote:…. The article is about the document and does not advocate or oppose reforms.
, included in the edit summary given for the article's creation, with a rather large grain of salt.

* The second of the two links seems to be no longer associated with the Kettle Pond Institute, whose name adorns that link in the article. Here's an archived copy of the linked page as it stood 3 months after the link was included in the newly created Wikipedia article.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:39 am

Bay_of_Plenty#Population (T-H-L): The usual problem of keeping articles up to date:
The regional population is projected to increase to 277,900 by the year 2011.
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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Ming » Sun Feb 25, 2018 3:02 pm

Renée Bagslint wrote:Parlung Zangbo (village) (T-H-L), a village in Tibet. No references.
Part of a huge dump early on by Dr. Blofeld (T-C-L), who by the way quit just two days ago. Of course large quantities of them are dots on mountain sides.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Anroth » Sun Feb 25, 2018 5:42 pm

Ming wrote:
Renée Bagslint wrote:Parlung Zangbo (village) (T-H-L), a village in Tibet. No references.
Part of a huge dump early on by Dr. Blofeld (T-C-L), who by the way quit just two days ago. Of course large quantities of them are dots on mountain sides.
Any idea why he quit? His contribution history is not showing the usual burnout you get when long-time editors hit the retire button. None of the content/project disputes in recent history appear to be particularly angry etc.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Ming » Sun Feb 25, 2018 7:01 pm

Anroth wrote:
Ming wrote:
Renée Bagslint wrote:Parlung Zangbo (village) (T-H-L), a village in Tibet. No references.
Part of a huge dump early on by Dr. Blofeld (T-C-L), who by the way quit just two days ago. Of course large quantities of them are dots on mountain sides.
Any idea why he quit? His contribution history is not showing the usual burnout you get when long-time editors hit the retire button. None of the content/project disputes in recent history appear to be particularly angry etc.
Judging from his contribs he had an article coming up for FA which he had taken out of the queue because of the likelihood that it would grow an infobox as soon as it appeared.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by DanMurphy » Sun Feb 25, 2018 7:34 pm

Ming wrote:
Anroth wrote:
Ming wrote:
Renée Bagslint wrote:Parlung Zangbo (village) (T-H-L), a village in Tibet. No references.
Part of a huge dump early on by Dr. Blofeld (T-C-L), who by the way quit just two days ago. Of course large quantities of them are dots on mountain sides.
Any idea why he quit? His contribution history is not showing the usual burnout you get when long-time editors hit the retire button. None of the content/project disputes in recent history appear to be particularly angry etc.
Judging from his contribs he had an article coming up for FA which he had taken out of the queue because of the likelihood that it would grow an infobox as soon as it appeared.
This is at least his fourth "Retirement."

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Sun Feb 25, 2018 7:47 pm

lonza leggiera wrote:Links to Wayback machine archives of what appears to be a genuine scan of the original document are given in the references section of the article, so I see no good reason for supposing any hoax.

On the other hand, at least two of the three sites* linked to in the external links section of the article appear to have been run by strident advocates for the proposal which is the subject of the article—or proposals similar to it. Thus one could well be forgiven for taking the somewhat gratuitous disclaimer,
Ernest Whiteside wrote:…. The article is about the document and does not advocate or oppose reforms.
, included in the edit summary given for the article's creation, with a rather large grain of salt.

* The second of the two links seems to be no longer associated with the Kettle Pond Institute, whose name adorns that link in the article. Here's an archived copy of the linked page as it stood 3 months after the link was included in the newly created Wikipedia article.
Fair enough -- I think the lesson to learn here is that whenver a group of critics look at a Wikipedia article they have very little difficulty in working togther to promptly identify major issues and then to identify fixes for those issues. Unfortunately the crowd-sourcing model, which is touted as the magical solution for all these problems, does not appear to be capable of doing so. An illusatration of the fundamental, unfixable, systemic flaw at the heart of Wikipedia.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Renée Bagslint » Sun Feb 25, 2018 8:58 pm

Makedonia (dance) (T-H-L) "a form of the Greek folk dance Hasapiko that has evolved over the years to the patriotic song "Makedonia Xakousti" (Famous Macedonia), unofficial anthem of the Greek region of Macedonia." That's the text (transcriptions removed). No references.

Anything to do with the dispute about Macedonia and its Greek history is automatically a subject for further scrutiny, and requires careful attention to reliable sources by impartial writers. There appears to be nothing about thus dance in reliable sources, and the fact that books robo-scraped from Wikipedia are the top scorers on Google books is a pretty bad sign. It seems likely that this dance was created recently and this article is a deliberate attempt to create a false history for it to further some nationalist agenda.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Kingsindian » Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:40 pm

Interestingly, Famous Macedonia (T-H-L) is a related article with only one reference.
Famous Macedonia (Greek: Μακεδονία ξακουστή, Macedonía xacoustḗ) is a military march, often regarded as the official anthem of Macedonia, Greece,
The reference cited actually says:
Danforth (1995) cites a popular song sung by Macedonian Greeks as Greek Macedonia's own "national anthem". This is an overstatement.
[The note goes on to explain some linguistic nuances.]

In other words, the sole reference cited explicitly argues against the statement for which it is being cited.

I find your theory plausible that some kind of nationalist editing is the culprit here. I don't know any Greek, so this is just speculation.

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Re: Crap articles

Unread post by Poetlister » Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:49 pm

Kingsindian wrote:Interestingly, Famous Macedonia (T-H-L) is a related article with only one reference.
Famous Macedonia (Greek: Μακεδονία ξακουστή, Macedonía xacoustḗ) is a military march, often regarded as the official anthem of Macedonia, Greece,
The reference cited actually says:
Danforth (1995) cites a popular song sung by Macedonian Greeks as Greek Macedonia's own "national anthem". This is an overstatement.
[The note goes on to explain some linguistic nuances.]

In other words, the sole reference cited explicitly argues against the statement for which it is being cited.

I find your theory plausible that some kind of nationalist editing is the culprit here. I don't know any Greek, so this is just speculation.
Presumably Danforth (1995) could be cited as a source supporting the claim.
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