Talk:Dance Marathon

Comments
Shouldn't this contain information on depression-era dance contests called dance marathons? Wdarkk 10:01, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The article should be merged/redirected to marathon dancing which describes the traditional depression-era dance contests. The article itself seems to be specific to the Penn State Dance Marathon.  -Ichabod 04:47, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Dance Marathons are different from marathon dancing, thus the suggestion is inappropriate. Events that raise millions each year for charities deserve to be separated from a historic practice.  Rather than merging, there should be a disambiguation.  For instance, this should become Dance Marathon (Fundraiser) or something similar.  Additionally, the links at thew bottom of marathon dancing to modern Dance Marathons should be removed from that page.  Also, the current Dance Marathon page should possibly be edited to reflect the more general concept of the modern fundraiser.  There is no evidence of links between the Great Depression dance marathons and the modern fundraisers, so I see no reason for the merge. cowsandmilk 03:52, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't get the distinction. In both cases people are trying to dance for long periods of time as a feat of endurance.  The main difference is that the original dance marathons were contests with cash prizes.  And I know its not direct evidence, but I think it's fairly plausible that the idea for the first Penn State dance marathon in 1973 might have drawn at least some inspiration from the popular 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.  As it stands this article is similar to having a separate article about charity golf tournaments that makes no mention of the fact that any other type of golf ever existed.Burnmp3s 04:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I see the distinction from golf tournaments being that people who participate in charity golf tournaments do so partly because they play golf. People don't participate in Dance Marathons because of some depression era practice.  Additionally, the events are distinctly different.  In a charity golf tournament, you do the same thing you do in a regular game of golf.  In most Dance Marathons, the people are required only to stand, as opposed to marathon dancing, where the people truly danced for long periods of time.  Other differentiations come as charity golf tournaments raise money mainly through registration fees, while Dance Marathons raise money in a myriad of ways beyond the day-of activities.  These include alumni and faculty events, silent auctions, and, at Penn State, the recycling program actually feeds money into their Dance Marathon.  That's why there's that place with the clarification tag where it says "Dance Marathon is an all year round activity".  I think there is no doubt that Dance Marathons came out of the idea of marathon dancing, especially as the earliest ones had cash prizes, but it has grown into something distinct to deserve its own article.  The comparison is more like the idea of combining baseball and softball into the same article, not golf tournaments and charity golf tournaments.cowsandmilk 18:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

It is my opinion that the page Dance marathon should have information about all kinds of marathon dancing, detailing its history from the earl 1900s up to the form it is in now in its present day, and Marathon dancing should redirect to it (or vice versa). The current Dance Marathon page should then be either merged into the general information page or be at Penn State Dance Marathon.

I do not support any arguments that the term "Dance marathon" is different from "Marathon dancing". That's just splitting hairs and playing with semantic differences. A cursory Google search turns up numerous references to the depression-era events as "Dance marathons", and I myself came looking for information on the history of dance marathons after having watched the film, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They" and so was really confused by the page being about the Penn State one. For now, I'll just add a disambiguation link. H. Carver 22:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * This is absurd. Someone decides to bring back dance marathons, with money going to charity instead of the dancers themselves.  I'm all for it.  At some point, for whatever reasons, they decide not to compel participants to actually dance.  Yet the name remains "Dance Marathon."  In the name of charitable inclusion, I'm okay with this; in any event, it's a fact.  The part I think any reasonable editor should have is that this non-dancing contemporization becomes the default definition of the term in an encyclopedia, relegating the historical usage to a non-intuitively titled article and redirecting general searches away from that historical article.


 * I see the problem with the analogies already given. A better example may be the Olympics. If you search for "The Olympics", you are redirected to "Olympic Games", which gives a broad overview of the history.  If you enter "Olympics", you are taken to a redirect page.  It is not assumed, simply because it is 2008, that what you are searching for in an encyclopedia is the 2008 Summer Olympics.  Germane to the point of dance marathons, the history of the Ancient Olympic Games was separated from the modern history by millennia.  (The "modern" history begins over a hundred years ago.)  Now some participants earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in commercial endorsement deals; now professional athletes like the Dream Team participate in the games; yet these recent reimaginings of the original concept or intent have not resulted in an article under the general name "The Olympics" which focuses on the current state of the games while virtually ignoring the history.


 * If, as it seems to me, "Dance Marathon" is the full and complete trademark or official name of a specific student organization or group of organizations, then it deserves its own article but needs an alteration of that article title to indicate the official co-option.


 * To say there is a page on "Marathon dancing", so "Dance Marathon" needn't address that history with anything more than a passing couple of sentences is ridiculous, and for this dismissal of history to be defended by supporters of an educational organization is perverse. "Marathon dancing" is read as a verb (perhaps an active verb participle?), and "dance marathon" as a noun.  While indeed these contemporary "Dance Marathons" do not seem to involve marathon dancing, the historical marathon dancing was not some kind of spontaneous or compulsive act, it was a regimented activity done at Dance Marathons.  A previous comment reads, "people who participate in charity golf tournaments do so partly because they play golf. People don't participate in Dance Marathons because of some depression era practice".  People in The Great Depression didn't enter dance marathons for the sake of (or out of a love of) dancing.  They entered the competitions for a similar reason as today: to get money for a worthy cause.  Then, the desperate beneficiary was themselves and their families; today it is an organization which administers the funds to others.  Those marathon dancers also stood on bread lines, showed up early in the morning at factories and such just for a chance to work as day laborers, and ate their shoes.  It wasn't all the result of madcap eccentricity, and I'd hardly call standing in these lines, or dancing in these competitions, a "practice".  It's precisely this kind of poor grasp of the events of the past that they, and any contemporary usages, need to be addressed in their historical context in a centralized article, with more specific usages spun off into peripheral articles with links.  People (today) participate in Dance Marathons in which they don't dance because the noun phrase "Dance Marathon" existed in the lexicon due to the Depression era events.  Otherwise, in 1973 Penn State would have begun "Stand-a-thons" or some other usage of the concept of marathon which was not modified by the word dance, if they didn't forego the marathon entirely and go with "Stand-ins" as a play on the Sit-ins of the day.


 * As an altruist, I can appreciate the desire of those wishing to promote these fundraisers and the contemporary concept in general to have their events get major coverage. I think it's wonderful that students have an opportunity to be actively involved in helping others, and I think it's wonderful that a hundred million dollars has been raised in this way.  As an editor, it's intellectually misleading to have a search for "Dance marathon" automatically wind up at this overly specific contemporary variation.  I have already changed the redirect of "Dance marathon", small "m", from "Dance Marathon" to "Marathon dancing".  I will not alter the names of these two articles until others have a chance to weigh in.  I do not propose merging the "Dance Marathon" and "Penn State Dance Marathon" articles, as it is my judgement there should be an article which gives an overview of the various schools' participation.  My proposal is for the article currently entitled "Marathon dancing" to be changed to "Dance marathon," and that the article currently entitled "Dance Marathon" be changed to "Dance Marathon student organization" or some other such qualifier which those more familiar with the events will find appropriate.  If someone wants all of these names to redirect to a disambiguation page featuring all variations, so surfers and researchers can and must choose among them, that seems reasonable as well, as long as a general, historical article is the primary listing.  Abrazame (talk) 06:53, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I would support a merge, although I'd prefer "Marathon Dancing" were moved to "Dance Marathon", and this article here moved to something like "Penn State Dance Marathons" or similar. Ford MF (talk) 19:42, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Removing unencyclopedic tables and links
I removed a great deal of unencyclopedic information and links sourced to non-notable primary websites or fundraising companies. Please source per WP:RS or review WP:SPAM. Flowanda | Talk 10:28, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Tables
Whoever the idiot is messing with the tables, please speak up. I'm not talking about whoever deleted them or anyone who made intentional vandalism, I'm talking about whoever created the current tables. First of all, a Wikipedia article should not contain an inline citation asking for sections of the article not to be deleted. If you have a problem with edits, seek moderation or start a page of discussion, don't make absurd pleas on the main page. In addition, what you wrote is not a "disclaimer." Get a dictionary. Also, the categories are ridiculous as currently listed. In addition, I suspect whoever edited the chart is also responsible for the massive amount of mistakes now present, with the decimal numbers for almost an entire column for "money raised."

There will be major changes if you do not respond promptly. Since I do not feel like learning how to construct a table similar to the current one, able to be sorted by any chosen category, I will most likely delete the current table and replace it with the most recent version of the previous table; I will do my best to compare it to the current table to keep it up to date.

If it is important to you that your school be on top because you feel that your school far surpasses others in terms of money raised or amount of years participated-- too damn bad. This is an encyclopedia not a promotional brochure. We do not frame our information around promotion of a particular entity. --Dr.queso (talk)
 * I rolled back all the edits containing unsourced non-notable information, figures and links, including the table mentioned above. Please only add information that can be sourced to significant news coverage (i.e. an article in a national or non-local or other unaffiliated recognizable news source) and stop adding external links to individual sites. Please review pertinent Wikipedia guidelines at WP:RS, WP:EL and WP:NOTADIRECTORY and discuss here before making further edits. Flowanda | Talk 05:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)