Talk:Godwin's law

Sorry, but this page is very self-indulgent and needs editing by someone who is not Mike Godwin
Firstly, he named 'Godwin's law' after himself, which isn't really the done thing. Usually an acknowledgement like this is coined by somebody else.

Secondly, there is just too much Mike on the page - unnecessarily.

Perhaps someone could edit this page at arm's length so that it is informative and not what looks to be an ego trip?

The picture of Mike himself gives the impression that it is indicative of a PR, self-promotion rationale for the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luxxikins (talk • contribs) 02:13, 15 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't think the picture really matters. It shows Godwin clearly, the inventor of the law. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ButterCashier (talk • contribs) 22:12, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I removed the photo since I agree. The focus isn't on Goodwin here, it's about the context of Godwin's Law. If needed, I'll be glad to partcipate in a consensus if there's disagreement. – The Grid  ( talk )  01:33, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The picture is appropriate and lends context. It should go back. --evrik (talk) 04:50, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Context is what way? They can find out more information about him at Mike Godwin. His picture on here doesn't really add much to what the law is about except it's named after him. – The Grid  ( talk )  18:49, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed with The Grid. A picture of Mike Godwin would do nothing to help illustrate this article in a meaningful way, since it is about an aphorism and its meaning and application, not about the person who wrote it. Note that there is no photo of Robert Metcalfe at Metcalfe's law or of Christopher Hitchens at Hitchens's razor, nor (more broadly) of J. R. R. Tolkien at The Lord of the Rings or of Aerosmith at Toys in the Attic (album).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

The article discusses content that is cited. If you feel something needs be rephrased or redone, please add content you can cite. Until then, I think the article is going to stay pretty much the way it is. Leitmotiv (talk) 01:36, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. The fact that Godwin named it after himself is entirely typical of humorous adages like Brandolini's law, Stigler's law of eponymy, etc.; I think Luxxikins is confusing them with scientific laws and principles (theorems, algorithms, paradoxes, equations, medical conditions, species and other taxonyms, etc.) which are usually honorifically named after someone later. WP is not in a position to name GL something else, contrary to WP:COMMONNAME and all sourcing. The article is not "self-indulgent" since Godwin did not write it (he was WMF staff counsel and knows better than to edit this article or his bio here). As for whether it's simply indulgent, the article necessarily includes Godwin's own statements relating to meaning, intent, and applicability of GL. That's pertinent contextual and history information. Problems arise from non-encyclopedic editing here, as at any article. I recently fixed the WP:OR of someone trying to rewrite GL's wording in the lead of the article. I also removed another bit of OR, the inclusion of a Putin-related tweet by Godwin that  like it could be a GL reference, but for which there is neither a primary source from Godwin confirming this nor any secondary coverage of any kind indicating this is of any encyclopedic interest in the first place. See also thread below, where someone wanted to inappropriately coatrack an unrelated "Godwin witticism" (with no secondary coverage) to this article on the basis of name similarity, and I've deflated that idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Godwin's Second Law
The article needs the addition of Godwin's Second Law:

https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/1504687870006620163?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1504687870006620163%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstory%2F2022%2F3%2F19%2F2086873%2F-Godwin-s-Law-corollary-because-wokeism

"Drawing Bayesian inferences after extensive sampling, I've determined that it's 99-percent certain that anyone who uses "woke" as pejorative will turn out to be a fuckhead. Please don't blame me for pointing this out--it's just science."

S C Cheese (talk) 13:48, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * It's funny, but unless it's covered by reliable independent sources, it does not belong in a Wikipedia article. Godwin's tweet is a reliable primary source that he actually wrote it, but it is not an independent or secondary source indicating that the world has taken any notice of this,. This new bit, or a snippet from it like "it's 99-percent certain that anyone who uses woke as pejorative will turn out to be a fuckhead", has no usage currency in the public that has been demonstrated. So, it would be indiscriminate trivia to include here. Especially as it does not closely relate to Godwin's law of Nazi analogies and the point that he was making about the usual inappropriateness of such comparisons (both because they are almost always exaggerations and because doing it trivializes the Holocaust). This new coinage, which is more of a joke than an adage, is about something else entirely, the usurpation of a self-identifying term of one group by the groups' opponents and the latter's mis-use of it as a dismissive label, coupled with Godwin's own socio-political position against the latter group. They're just nothing alike other than being wit from the same author. To come at this from another angle, Godwin himself collected various corollaries to Godwin's law and published them (via EFF's newsletter and other means) back in the '90s, but our article does not enumerate them because reliable sources do not cover them, so they are not encyclopedic material. (We mention one briefly only because one or more sources have confused it with GL itself, so our readers need the clarification.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * i think the fact that its confusing at all means it warrants clarification and specification. am i going to have to PAY a NYT author to write about it or can we all agree that citing a tweet in this context should be acceptable THEtransArsonist (talk) 18:06, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

17th Citation points to the wrong tweet?
Seems the citation points to the parent tweet and not Godwin's tweet about the matter, and the archive did not catch Godwin's tweet either. I'll substitute it as soon as I figure out how to archive it.

paulsd (talk) 04:34, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Any update? And referring to "17th citation" isn't a good way to address citations, since the order of them can change any time. Even the presence of them can, so better to just copy-paste the citation you mean.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:44, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Hard to understand the opening sentence
I don't really understand why we needed to use 'Approaches 1' (a mathematical term where 1 = going to happen), which is not obvious to an uninformed reader and certainly not in encyclopaedic tone, when we could've just gone with 'the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler increases.' If I receive no dissent within a few days I'll go ahead and make the edit. GreatGambino (talk) 12:28, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * "We" as in Wikipedia did not come up with that language; it is the original formulation of Godwin's law, so any unnecessary nerdiness of it is the geek-humor intent, or writing fault, or whatever you like to think of it, of the original author. Wikipedia editors are not in a position to rewrite it ourselves, per WP:NOR. Someone actually attempted subtly to do that by removing the quotation marks around it and making some changes to the text, but this is wrong and has been reverted.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Is this an error about invoking Godwin's Law ending the argument?
The article correctly notes the most famous part of Godwin's Law, the 'corollary' that whoever makes an unjustified comparison of their opponent to Hitler ends the discussion and loses the argument.

But later, it says something very different, "He rejected the idea that whoever invokes Godwin's law has lost the argument". I'd never heard the claim that *invoking Godwin's Law* - i.e., the person who accuses their opponent of violating the law - is punished. It is mis-written, where they meant to say 'whoever invokes Hitler without justification'? Does Godwin not agree with that more famous 'corollary'? Craig234 (talk) 22:04, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Why is the first para highlighted?
It’s highlighted on Chrome and Firefox on an iPhone 11. VickiMeagher (talk) 15:27, 29 February 2024 (UTC)