Talk:James Parry (Usenetter)

Good Bio;
Such a well written piece, on someone who sounds intriguing. I have never heard of the man, but anyone who designs typefaces is brilliant as far as I'm concerned. The piece is well timed and paced. Just long enough for an encyclopaedia entry. Some, I find go on much to long, but here the article says exactly what needs to be said and then is finished. Ten out of ten I say. Five gold stars. --Tapsell 20:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Changed/added archive.org links rather than CoralCDN links
The version on CoralCDN changes as the page changes, therefore linking to the CoralCDN version (nyud.net:8080 or :8090) only shows the geocities bandwidth used up version. Why not just link only to the CoralCDN version next month, or whenever geocities restarts the bandwidth allotment? Or is the version on archive.org better? Also There's like three versions on archive.org, would someone else figure out the diff, or add links to all the different versions, or link to his sig directly on google groups? Family Guy Guy 18:47, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Removed Personal Nerd Fluff
Kibo is the nickname, username and e-mail address (kibo(AT)world.std.com or kibo(AT)kibo.com) of James Parry (b. July 13 1967), a Usenetter known for his sense of humor, various surrealist net pranks, an absurdly long .signature, and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for joining any thread in which his nom de guerre is mentioned (to "kiboze"). His exploits have gleaned him a multitude of enthusiasts, who celebrate him as the head deity of the joke pseudo-religion kibology, centered on the newsgroup alt.religion.kibology.

James Parry grew up and lived in Schenectady, New York before moving to Boston, Massachusetts about 1990, where he lives today. He initially was a Computer Engineering major at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY, but when he moved to Boston attended Emerson College, where he studied videography and graphic design. At that time, he also worked as a typeface designer and for the world.std.com internet service provider, whose praises he sings on his website (in a rare moment where he is not being outrageously tongue-in-cheek). He has a great artistic eye for typeface and developed several fonts in use today.

Many assume his nickname is derived from the acronym KIBO, although Parry himself has repeatedly denied this. Another rumor has it being short for King Body, a pseudonym he very briefly used on computer forums as a freshman at RPI in the mid-1980's.

Kibo is a supertaster, and has prosopagnosia. He frequently dyes his hair, which as of late 2004 is bright orange. Kibo likes bacon, but greatly dislikes cheese.

Why the 'Personal Nerd Fluff' Stays
Because silly as it is and sounds, all of this is true! There was even an article/interview in Wired magazine several years ago about it all.

I went to RPI the year and a half that Jim "Kibo" Parry went there and used to visit him in Boston a lot, that is how I was able to write all the stuff in the Wikipedia entry about his college days and quantify his work in type face design and with world.std.com (he may still work there, I've only corresponded with him very occasionally in the last 5 years or so). If you go to his website (since this was 7 years ago it is probably in a very obscure part) and look hard enough you will actually see a brief "tribute" section to my wedding which he attended; it is likely the only part of his weird and crazy website other than his world.std.com praising that isn't tongue-in-cheek and is actually serious. If you can't find it go to Google and type in the search "Happy Honeymoon Harry and Lisa" and it will come up. I am amazed to see that he is actually famous enough to be a Wikipedia entry but three cheers to him! Hairymon


 * It may well be true, but there are thousands of geeks with their own geeky foibles out there. Do they belong in encyclopaedias?


 * If you actually don't know whether Kibo is notable or not, I recommend checking his mentions in the media as a start. They include Wired, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury, Playboy, the Boston Herald, the London Times, and many others. If you can find thousands of geeks who are as notable as Kibo, please make articles about them. Factitious 17:20, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

He finally took off my "wedding" page. He had to do it very recently because my half-sister told me last month how she put my name in Google and was surprised to see that page come up. I think almost 8 years is long enough :-) hairymon 04:16, February 3, 2006 (UTC)


 * The media, in the last 50 years, has mentioned billions of people and things. Not all of them deserve their own webpage on wikipedia. My grannies house was flattened in the hurricane a few years ago, and as a result of her losing her house she was in dozens of publications, newspapers and newsreports. She ran a knitting class and died her hair blue (as of 2005). Get my point? JayKeaton 22:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, yes, we get it. You don't care for this article, and you're responding to years old discussion to make that point repeatedly. Either renomininate it for afd yet again, or don't, or improve the article, or don't. :-) Cheers, -- Infrogmation 22:53, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Permission has just been granted. Thank you, mwah! JayKeaton 03:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

External link

 * Kibo's website

Kibo as in "eye-bow"
How is this pronounced then?! It could be bow as in "bow and arrow" or bow as in "bow to pressure"! I presume the former, but this needs clarifying Bobbis 14:02, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Although this has been changed to be clearer (one hopes), I've added the IPA to avoid any ambiguity. --moof 19:23, 13 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Might the term "Klippoth"(Qliphoth) be the source of the name "Kibo"? 173.28.244.122 (talk) 03:26, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Supertaster statement
While it was a wild ride paging through Kibo's signature file, what credible sources can corroborate the contents of this article? Specifically, how can one verify that Kibo is a supertaster? Can&#39;t sleep, clown will eat me 22:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Kibo himself has claimed to be a supertaster. The message is archived in Google Groups. [Here is a direct link.] The relevant quote is at the bottom: "Now, as far as being a supertaster goes, that's another tiny genetic difference that makes me better than the Muggles, even if it makes dark chocolate taste really nasty." I'll change the article to say that Kibo claims to be a supertaster, instead of saying that he is one. -- DocSigma 14:16, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Kibo being, well, Kibo, claims a lot of weird things - probably that he invented pickles, that he is the ghost of France (the real one having died in a skiing accident twelve years ago), that he can hear purple, etc. No, none of these are actual Kibo claims, that I know of, but are in the same vein as his humour.  Unless, in one of his rare moments of sanity (and as "James Parry", since that section is more about Parry than his "Kibo" alter-ego) he has claimed it in all seriousness, it should either be removed, or moved to a section more about Kibo (and maybe reworded as "Among Kibo's many claims are that he ... ").  Those that have contributed that have met Parry (amazing how many have come out of the woodwork to comment in the comments section!) could probalby confirm or deny these weird claims being attributed to Parry (rather than Kibo) --Canuckguy (talk) 05:00, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Page title
I undid User:Cool Cat's moving the article from "Kibo" to "James Parry" for 3 reasons: 1)a look at "What links here" shows the relevent artlicles are linking to "Kibo" 2)In contexts he's well known for, I seldom if ever see him refered to as James Parry (though sometimes as James "Kibo" Parry is not uncommon). 3)There was no discussion of the move on the talk page. I'm certainly open to changes if someone sees a problem with the current title or article, but please explain moves if the reason isn't obvious, and in this case please discuss first, thanks -- Infrogmation 16:11, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I entered "Kibo" expecting to be linked to the Japanese Experiment Module going up on the current Space Shuttle mission, or at least some description of what the word meant in Japanese, or a disambiguation page. I certainly didn't expect to get this page. I think it would make a lot of sense to direct Kibo to the disambiguation page, rather than this one, or even directly to the JEM page (even though the Japanese Kibo is actually spelled with some fancy symbols like "ō").

Ignoring the whole AfD debate, I think it's mainly a bit of Usenet trivia that the majority of WP users are probably not going to be familiar with, or even particularly interested in learning about, and so making it the default page for "Kibo" is a bit silly.

For example, doing Google searches on "kibo space" returns about 190K results, and "kibo space station" about 68K results, while "kibo usenet" only returns about 19K results.

Perhaps the title, rather than being changed to James Parry (as much as that idea makes sense to me), could just be changed to Kibo (Usenet). I don't know what Wikipedia's policy is on these sort of things, I'm just a reader. --69.227.178.191 (talk) 10:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I've decided to move this to James Parry independently of any prior debate due to the prominence of the space probe. As a compromise to previous status quo I won't redirect Kibo directly to the space probe at this time.  If "James Parry" seems a bad title, perhaps you can move it again to "Kibo (Usenet persona)" or "Kibo (Usenet alias)"? Wnt (talk) 22:49, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Dumbest thing on Wikipedia?
I nominate this... --66.82.9.82 09:56, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
 * You must be new here. —rodii 13:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah! Congratulations for your new computer! Welcome to the interwebs! --Boborok 23:18, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * You're allowed anyway. AdamFunk (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:16, 24 November 2009 (UTC).

I nominate this, too - User: Cyberman
 * lol

I also nominate this page as the dumbest on wikipedia. Rawk rawk rawk, you must be a usenet use that wishes he was old enough to actually be a part of the original usenetwork boborok. Yes, this page is dumb and should only be a small footnote in another webpage on wikipedia, it doesn't need it's own page. When articles that don't deserve their own page get a whole page to themselves, the page gets filled with bullshit that reads like a 12 year olds own geocities webpage JayKeaton 22:16, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

"knack"?
Personally, I was amazed when I found out there was some guy who grepped ALL OF USENET and replied to any message mentioning his name. I would guess that anyone who started using the internet in the Google era might not appreciate how unusual this was 15 years ago -- and since that's the whole reason he gained notoriety, it probably deserves more emphasis.


 * Well, he grepped the directory the newsfeed was in. It wasn't some magical act of scripty prowess. A newsfeed wasn't that big, especially if you did it one day at a time. Henry Spencer tried to archive every posting that ever reached U of Toronto, bless him.  &middot; rodii &middot;  16:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

He was very before his time Net-wise. As a fellow college freshman he introduced me to what was then Internet email....in September of 1985!!!--hairymon 19:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * All the people he grepped must have died before Google came along, because a search of "Kibo" brings out under 700,000 results, "kibo" with "usenet" brings under 70,000 results and "James Parry" gives under 40,000 results (and I might add that only one of the front page results has to do with this kibo at all"). The fact that searching for "my anus" brings back almost ten times as many results seems to suggest that really this guy wasn't anybody at all. The little presence he has left is only made by probably 10 or 12 die-hard usenet geeks. I propose this kibo page be merged with another usenet page, giving him the footnote he really needs.


 * Not an official proposal for a merge, just a proposal for a proposal. On the grounds that his "early life" section is completely inconsequential to ANYTHING at all and because of the following items quoted from this page "nom de guerre", "known for his sense of humor, various surrealist net pranks, an absurdly long .signature,[1]", "multitude of enthusiasts, who celebrate him as the head deity", "He frequently dyes his hair, which as of late 2005 is bright red", "For reasons unknown, after constant daily changes for over a decade, his personal website stayed stagnant from late March 2004 until late December 2005. It has since been updated, though not nearly as often as years past. Kibo has hinted at a possible site redesign."


 * My favourite is the part about how he likes to colour his hair and that it is last known to be "red". Can we get his height, weight, favourite popstar, what he eats for breakfast and maybe also we should add which book he is reading at the moment. By the way, I was being sarcastic in that last sentence JayKeaton 22:43, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, this guy was, and is, somebody. If Usenet is significant, then Kibo is; Kibo is one of the more significant figures in Usenet history.  Sorry you weren't there and missed it.


 * The assertion that a discussion in a biography of the subject's early life is "inconsequential" is too absurd to merit further comment.


 * The assertion that the comments on his hair dyeing and the state of his web site are edit-fodder, on the other hand, I fully agree with. -- Rsholmes 18:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Lifted from the Jargon file?
This copy sounds *really* familiar. If we *did* lift it from JARGON; oughtn't we credit it? --Baylink 22:17, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Erm, no, unless the Jargon file's entry has been cut down substantially over the years: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/K/KIBO.html

Website/blog
I cut this from the article: "Some net historians could argue that many aspects of his site make him the first blogger, as he gave regular updates on himself on his site (albeit tongue-in-cheek most of the time) since the early 1990's."

Kibo's activity in the early 1990s was most notable on Usenet. He was not particularly early in establishing a personal webpage (I recall a good number of Kibologists had such before Kibo), and the site never was in blog form. It postdated robotwisdom by years. I don't know anyone who has seriously tried to stretch the definition of blogging to include Usenet postings. -- Infrogmation 14:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Organization
I tried to organize this a bit, to make it easier to read & edit. What do you all think? Mdotley 21:00, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Mention the Self-Importance Problem?
Long-time Kibo watchers will probably recognize his 'decline' after the Wired article, the Joel Furr replacement-Kibo election, and other dramas, where I saw a lot of Kibologists gave up due to his increasing self-importance attitude becoming a problem for his writing-- harassing people for doing things that interfered with his real-world merchandising efforts, etc. Anyone have enough to write a critical section? --203.14.156.193 19:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The rec.hunting.kibo story was another example of his ego overriding everyone else's.. 203.14.156.193 10:22, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Tone
I've removed the tag. Although the content is inherently somewhat lightweight, the tone reads fine to me. If someone disagrees, please provide concrete examples before (or at least when) adding the tag back. --Jtl 05:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia often has to deal with people who have had no training in professional and technical writing, who really have no idea what unbiased or informal language is. These people often assume that language does not fit within the parameters set by Wikipedia just because they happen to have a nebulous negative reaction. When asked, they are often unable to respond with specifics, so I am afraid that, even if someone actually recognized some failing in the construction of this page, they would not or could not tell you what it might be. I love Wikipedia, but you have to deal with a lot of this type of thing when you post an article here, because, for the most part, the people who comment on such things lack the necessary training and knowledge. TyFrost 03:18, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Kiboinside.gif
Image:Kiboinside.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 22:07, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Non-trivial coverage?
How many instances are there of non-trivial coverage from reliable third party publications about this individual? Was there ever anything more than what was found in Wired? JBsupreme (talk) 19:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Whitehouse.gov reference
Whitehouse.gov launched in October 1994, making it unlikely that a press conference mentioning it occurred in March 1992. (I also wouldn't expect that the Bush White house would have said something so flippant in the midst of a losing election. I can see Stephanopoulos saying it a year or two later, though.) Not sure what to exclude from this section, since the only reference I found at all for this event is on Kibo's website —Preceding unsigned comment added by Patrickbowman (talk • contribs) 02:23, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Fail to see how this article merits inclusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability First article I've ever seen that was obviously not needed for inclusion in the encyclopedia. I see it's been nominated for deletion prior and I think it's time to reconsider that action again. -- milsorgen 11:16, November 18 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.60.3.17 (talk) 18:19, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the person above me, this article really has no purpose on Wikipedia. BlackbeltMage (talk) 13:46, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. Anyone who doesn't see the need for this to be included is failing to be objective. . . it's as though someone proposed an article on Torquemada, and you nominated it for deletion because you think that the fact you've never heard of the Inquisition means it was only worthy of a footnote somewhere else. Any cultural history of the Internet that doesn't include Kibo and Kibology is an incomplete and poor history indeed. AtomDebris (talk) 17:38, 16 April 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.83.106.254 (talk)

What's he doing now?
Parry was an exceptionally prolific poster to Usenet for many years, and maintained a web presence after leaving college, etc. But what did he do after leaving college and what is he doing now? His website hasn't been updated since 2009, by the looks of it, and in any case he has clearly been much less of an online presence in recent years, compared to the old Usenet days. Beorhtwulf (talk) 22:26, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm the person who went to RPI with him (somewhere in this discussion I mention how my wedding was on his page back in the early 2000s). He wouldn't merit a "normal" encyclopedia entry, but since Wikipedia is a product of the Internet age, and he was a significant figure (for better or worse) in the early days of the Internet, I'm glad the article stayed.  By the way, although it looks like he last updated his site on Christmas Day of 2009, it does say "Copyright 2011 James W. Parry" on the page so I assume he is at least editing that at least once/year.  I've always wondered what happened to him, I am in Facebook contact with some of his other RPI friends and some friends who knew him in the late 1990s in Boston who are in other parts of the country now and they wonder too.  Hairymon (talk) 00:51, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Please come back and tell us if you ever get an update. Better still if you can write it up somewhere and it can be included in the article. Beorhtwulf (talk) 12:10, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The copyright on the site now says 2014 and the last modified date is still the same. The copyright year is probably coming from a script that is just outputting the current year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OMPIRE (talk • contribs) 18:58, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

One page on the website was last updated 27 July 2016. I can't see anything changed after that. http://www.kibo.com/links/useflink.shtml Cancerward (talk) 07:05, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Merger discussion
[Transcluded] from source page. GenQuest "Talk to Me"

Kibology is not independently notable. It is an obscure group that is best known for being James Parry's fan club. &#8213; Susmuffin Talk 17:12, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Support As wikipedians tend to disbelieve in the existence of Usenet, let alone its significance, I expect this will end up as deletion.  But a merge would be better than two articles. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:15, 29 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Kibology is independently notable if such things as "internet memes" and "internet culture" are notable. Dingley makes a good point that Wikipedia seems to have a preponderance of editors who seem unaware and generally uninterested of the fact that there was an internet long before the start of Wikipedia. Kibology was hardly just a "James Parry fan club" (while founder and star, he periodically disappeared from the group for times in the '90s and a.r.k kept going strong).  I'm not completely opposed to the concept of a merger, but am unsure of which would be the more notable topic. -- Infrogmation (talk) 07:47, 18 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Sheesh, I hadn't looked at the Kibology article in years, and I see it has been hacked down to minimal (and uninformative) size. Perhaps we can set up a bot for all "Internet culture" related articles. On the 10th anniversary of the article's creation on Wikipedia, the article will automatically reduced down to 2 or 3 sentences and downgraded to "low importance" status.   Other suggestions to help suppress any knowledge of there having been any sort of vibrant internet culture before the current calendar year?  -- Infrogmation (talk) 08:06, 18 August 2019 (UTC)