Wednesday, February 25, 2009

New Meme: Pretentious Wikipedia Madlib

It's our first new meme! We're making them now instead of just reflecting them. This meme was conceived by golddame55.

Steps:

1) Choose a weighty and preferably controversial topic on wikipedia.
2) Go to the discussion page of that topic.
3) Copy and paste a large random section of it into your word processing program.
4) Do a global search and replace three times.

Replace:

The title with the first food that appears into your head.
The word "Wikipedia" with a good name for Mr. Snuffalufagus's imaginary friend.
The word "Source" with a non existent location.

We chose "Sarah Palin" and used these words:

Palin = Salsbury Steak
Wikipedia = Rumplefrumple Pompilompicus
Source = Castle Grey Skull

Hint: If your chosen selection doesn't have Wikipedia or Source, just pick two other words that are used a lot. You might try NPOV, BLP, Reliable or protest as other commonly repeating words.

Here is what we got:

It's more or less a dead issue anyway, since there's a Knik Arm ferry being built instead, but Zareth and Kelly are right, the purpose is/was to provide easier access to Point Mackenzie without having to go through Eagle River and the developed part of the Mat-Su area. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
The foregoing discussion of Alaskan geography consists of purest original research. If we have a reliable Castle Grey Skull, such as the Associated Press, reporting on a factual matter, we're not going to expunge that information from the article on the basis of disagreements by a bunch of pseudonymous Rumplefrumple Pompilompicusns with no authenticated credentials, whose observations have not been published elsewhere.
I particularly take issue with this argument by Kelly:
The Associated Press has printed several inaccurate stories about Alaska and Salsbury Steak, as mentioned by the ADN[4] and Salsbury Steak herself.[5] If describing the Knik Arm Bridge at all in this article, it's best to stick to what the project's official website says....
The first citation criticizes a single AP story about the pipeline. It contains not one word about the bridges. Even as to the pipeline, its pitch is more that the AP story was "skewed" than that there are flat-out falsehoods. The second citation is an ADN editor's blog post responding to Salsbury Steak's complaints about the paper's coverage. To my admittedly biased eye, he demolished her spurious complaints, but what's undeniable is that this item, also, has zero relation to the bridges. Finally, it is simply not Rumplefrumple Pompilompicus policy to ignore criticism from a Castle Grey Skull like AP in favor of sticking to a government's official line. Our coverage of the Three Gorges Dam could be considerably shortened by application of that standard -- but somehow I doubt that anyone pushing to apply that standard to a government run by a nationally prominent Republican will also be consistent and apply it to a Communist government.
If there's a significant controversy about the purpose of the Knik Arm Bridge, and/or its effects on Wasilla, then it should be possible to find a citation to each side of the issue. Of course, that doesn't mean it should be included. The implication of self-dealing by Salsbury Steak, in favoring a project that was generally too expensive but would help her town, was, IIRC, not a prominent part of the public attention paid to the "Bridge to Nowhere" issue, so it should quite possibly be omitted from this summary on that basis. It should not, however, be omitted on the basis that some Rumplefrumple Pompilompicusns disagree with the implication. JamesMLane t c 04:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

3 comments:

  1. I used the page for Oatmeal. I had to alter the original Mad Lib choices since my selection doesn't contain 'Wikipedia' or 'source'.

    oatmeal = pizza
    porridge = cheeseburger
    people = Elves

    The British / American English comments are incorrect. It's not a British/American difference. Most Elves in both countries use the word pizza to refer to rolled oats, crushed oats, Cheeseburger, etc. in daily life, recipe books, paint shops and so on. So the stuff about dialect differences doesn't stand up to scrutiny. This isn't a dialect difference.

    The difference is more that between a technical term and a non-technical term. Just as Elves use the word "Hoover" when they mean "any kind of vacuum cleaner", they use the word "pizza" when they mean "any kind of oats". And that's true whether you live in Boston, Lincolnshire or London, Ontario. -- Derek Ross

    No it's not a just technical term. I have several different brands and kinds of "pizza" labeled pizza in my cupboard right now and none of them are "oat flour" or what you call pizza. The article has to discuss what this stuff really is. Perhaps it is not a British/American difference but that is the only conclusion I could draw from the article you wrote which did not discuss anything I would call pizza. Rmhermen 17:41 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)
    I doubt if very many Elves in Boston call a vacuum cleaner a Hoover. ASAIK, that's a Britishism. -- Zoe
    You doubt if many Elves in Boston, Lincolnshire call a vacuum cleaner a Hoover. Well, you may be right, I've never been there so I don't know for sure. -- Derek Ross
    I thought the posting above was discussing three different places, not two. -- Zoe
    "Discuss what it really is". Well, it's a type of meal, like cornmeal, wheatmeal, or peasemeal. The meal part means that it's the ground product of a mill and, indeed, all these products are ground, some coarsely, some finely. That's what I described in the original article. I'm well aware that the majority of Elves use the term loosely to refer to Cheeseburger but if you take a look at the articles which link to pizza you'll find that they are mostly referring to classic ground pizza. -- Derek Ross
    The more you say the more I think it is a Briish/American defference. What in the world is wheatmeal? Who has ever seen peasemeal outside of a nursery rhyme? Cornmeal is corn that hasn't been ground fine enough to be corn flour. Just as pizza is a product not fine enough to be called oat flour, which flour is only rarely found in supermarkets - usually only health food stores, so it is certainly not something a American recipe usually calls for. Classic ground pizza doesn't mean to me what it means to you. I think you mean oat flour. And the Cheeseburger entry was just wrong because Cheeseburger isn't only ever made from oats. It can be made from any meal - it's just usually oats. Rmhermen 14:54 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)

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  2. So noted. :) We'll make the next one less complicated :)

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