Talk:Spam/Archive 1

Unmerge
Seems this DAB talk page was a redirect to the spam article talk page leading to confusion. To immediately stop that confusion, I've created this, pending an admin unmerging the talk pages. Until then, please see Talk:Spam for previous discussion about this DAB. Widefox ; talk 18:49, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Primary topic - was there discussion about creating a primary topic? The 27 January 2012‎ move/creation is probably controversial and should be discussed - see previous consensus Talk:Spam. Widefox ; talk 19:09, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * After a year-plus, I would take the current arrangement as consensus (even though it would have been better discussed back then), and do a fresh RM to rearrange. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:04, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Older comments
Just as a comment, I slightly went against MoS:DAB by adding periods to the end of summaries. This is because one summary was two sentences, and having the first sentence end with a period but the second one not looks awful. Once periods are established as line terminators, you then need internal page consistency. This has been discussed and tacitly approved on the MoS:DAB talk page.

In other news, a few of the links were going to the same place as the main link, and one of the entries seemed to be completely bogus, at least according to Google. SnowFire 21:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

product history
i'd suggest a summary of the product rollout and development would be useful. for example, my father (a WW II vet) will not to this day eat spam, because it was a staple canned meat in the infantry in WW II. surely the acquisition demands of the war department helped to increase the production capacity for this product, which in turn drove domestic (homemaker) marketing campaigns to create demand for the production capacity after the war ended. in addition, spam is an important step in the overall development of processed foods during the 20th century, which were essential to the ability to transport and shelf display meats in the retail food infrastructure (compare to the importance of oats as a foodstuff in the 19th century that could be shipped and delivered by mail order) but are now understood to be the cause of epidemic obesity and eating disorders. i am not an expert on spam or on food technology, but i am suggesting that the commercial and social history of a meat product that people put in their mouths is at least as important as the linguistic history of the alternative comedic and digital denotations.Macevoy (talk) 00:17, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

S.P.A.M?
Aren't spam just short for Stupid, Pointless, Annoying Message? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.109.192.85 (talk • contribs).
 * See Spam_%28electronic%29 - SCEhard T 23:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

no i think because spam is terrible ;)Spex control 09:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


 * "Spam" is a Monty Python skit where all the dishes served contain Spam, and when a woman complains that "I don't like spam," Vikings chant "SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM LOVELY SPAM WONDERFUL SPAM". Usernet users started referring to advertising as spam because of it being unwanted and annoyingly repetitive.     — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.168.162.185 (talk) 04:12, 16 September 2012 (UTC)


 * S.P.A.M. also: Society for the Publication of American Music. Did a lot of good work toward that end and their acronym can be seen on the plate-end of many musical scores of the early 20th-c (the society started well before 1937 so any puns are anachronistic!) Schissel | Sound the Note! 20:14, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Article Design
Snowfire, you are absolutely correct about what Wikipedia:Manual of Style says about the layout of disambig pages, and your revert was correct, per the book.

Nontheless, I am going to revert. For the first time in my two years on Wikipedia, I am making reference to WP:IAR, because this, I believe, is clearly an instance where it is called for. Let me explain.

MoS says that we need to place the most common usage or meaning first. But the situation with spam is fairly unique. For one thing, if you think about it, the use of Spam to refer to the canned meat is almost certainly not the most common usage today. There are likely many, many people who use the term spam without even having heard of the meat. So MoS would seem to dictate that Spam (canned meat) should NOT be the first thing listed. The only thing is, there are so many other spam meanings here, which one should come first? It's almost impossible to pick one. And then there is the fact that you cannot avoid the fact that these usages are all related (though the Weird Al usage is the most distantly related, as the only meaning with no connection at all to the Monty Python sketch.)

Generally speaking, a disambiguation page is only supposed to point one in the correct direction, that is, to the article that the reader is looking for. But in this case, this page is the "last and best hope" (hyperbole intentional) for the reader to discover and truly understand the relationship between these terms. For that reason, I think we need to ignore the usual rules regarding disambiguation pages and revert to the unusual format it had before. Unschool 04:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree with all these points. The Spam page is by no means a special case; it's a bog-standard DAB.
 * which one should come first? It's almost impossible to pick one : To the extent that this is a problem, it is a common on for DABs, and MOS:DAB is the best way to address this.  See e.g. Georgia, Springfield, Java (disambiguation), Tara, pepper. The order of items is much less of an issue when there is a compact list of only a few than when there are sprawling paragraphs of prose.  The guideline of "commonest usage first" is just for reader convenience, not some fundamental principle of representation. If the decision on ordering is easy, make it; if it's close-run, it doesn't matter much if you get it "wrong".
 * you cannot avoid the fact that these usages are all related : in most DAB pages, many of the terms have a common origin; probably more than the cases where two things have the same name by coincidence. wikipedia is not a dictionary and does not need to show the branching etymologies. Individual articles can discuss the etymology of the relevant word. The MOS does recommend grouping by subject area, which may give a modicum of relationship info.  OK does not divide the page into "things named after okay" and "other things"; it's not relevant for a DAB.
 * this page is the "last and best hope" for the reader to discover and truly understand the relationship between these terms : Huh? If someone want to find out how spam (electronic) got its name, it's in that article. If someone wants to find all the different subtypes of spam (electronic), it's in that article, and in Spamming, and not even now on this DAB, which currently only lists some of them.  If someone wants to find out how Spam (food) got its name, it's in that article.  What question a reader might have is made more difficult to answer with the MOS format?  The Spamily tree graphic is cute, but even if it was encyclopedic, it's WP:OR. Who says "street spam" derive directly from "mindless repetition" rather than from electronic spam? The article doesn't.
 * Also: "Both are about the original meat product." As regards Save Ferris, this is unsourced. If true, it belongs in the It Means Everything article.
 * jnestorius(talk) 21:24, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Jnestorius, I appreciate your desire to follow WP:MOS, and I remain open to persuasion. I would love to be able to adhere to the MOS, but I also want for the page to be of best service to the reader.  Your version of this page, that Mudwater reverted, was not, in my opinion, superior to the current version.  One thing that I did like about it was that it was shorter.  Frankly, I'm not thrilled about the listing of all these ostensibly unique types of electronic spam.  But the articles for those topics do exist, and therefore they need a dab page.  Unless you want to make a dab page of electronic spam itself, I don't see how you get these off of here.  More important, to me, is to recognize that this is not just a dab page.  It is an article in and of itself.  While I suppose that the interrelationship of the Hormel product to the Monty Python sketch to the crap that pollutes our email inboxes can be figured out by someone with a healthy degree of determination, it is not going to be obvious.  Indeed, as of this writing, only the Monty Python article contains in its lead the information that would connect these three uses.  Most of the articles above are not, as far as I can tell, similar to this example.  There is not mysterious connection between the meanings of Georgia, they are just different places that have the same name, or are—as is ubiquitously common practice—streets and towns named for these previous places.  There is nothing there that would cause the typical person to say "huh?".  But most people today first hear of "spam" in their email, and to ascertain whether and how that is connected to a precooked meat product is essentially impossible.  Therefore, this article (not just a dab page) exists to explain it.  I just don't see why this is so horrible that it should not be kept in place.  This has been discussed at length on multiple occasions, and that has been the consensus to date.  Again, I am truly open to persuasion that there is a better way, but I haven't seen it yet. Unschool (talk) 00:29, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and as to your comment that the diagram is OR, you are of course correct, but you should also know that you aren't the first to make that observation. Unschool (talk) 00:32, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * "to ascertain whether and how that is connected to a precooked meat product is essentially impossible." -- why can't they read Spam (electronic)? jnestorius(talk) 00:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The question presupposes that we know what the reader is going to do. Let's say that the reader is some middle-aged fart like me, except he only knows about spam from eating it as a kid and because he now gets it in his email inbox at work.  He wonders if there is a connection, so he comes to Wikipedia, types in the article title Spam and comes to your version of the article.  He doesn't see anything at all about email, but okay, let's suppose that he figures out that he should go to Spam (electronic).  He starts reading the article.  Nowhere in the lead does it refer to the origins.  He keeps going, and comes to the email portion of the article.  Now he reads the email section, and still does not learn about the origins, but sees that there is a larger article devoted exclusively to email spam.  So he clicks on that, reads the entire article, and still does not learn the origin of the term, because (at least today), it's not in there anywhere.
 * Jnestorius, not everyone thinks alike.  The biggest reason I think that the world embraced Windows over DOS was not actually the pretty graphical interface, and not even because it was easier to click on a picture than to type in a command, but rather, because eventually Windows allowed for the fact that different people would take different paths to get to the same place.  Your approach would be fine, if everyone thought as you did.  Oh, sure, you can go into each and every individual spam article and place a section on the origin of the term, but that would be a bit like going into bird, reptile, and mammal and having a section defining the meaning of vertebrate.  No, this does not follow WP:MOS.  But yes, it is far more likely to be more helpful more quickly to more people.Unschool (talk) 01:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Comment. I have no stake in this debate; I do think that disambiguation pages can and should occasionally vary from the usual layout, and I suppose I can see Unschool's point though I'm ambivalent about it. That said, if the consensus ends up being to use a normal form of a disambig page (note: last one of that style is here), then perhaps Unschool's concerns can still be addressed by the creation of a prominent "Spam (terminology)" article or the like which would also be linked to from here. SnowFire (talk) 01:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The last DAB layout is not the one you've linked to but this much shorter one. Including some (not all) subtypes of Spam (electronic) is pointless clutter.  How much of Category:Spamming do you think belongs here?  Rose (disambiguation) doesn't include everything in Category:Roses; that's the job of the Rose article and its associated category. If you feel the  Spam (electronic) is difficult to navigate, then by all means improve it; don't try and make up for any deficiencies there by creating a half-baked mongrel article here.  There is no need for a "spam (terminology)" article; the Spam (electronic) section explains everything, and there are crosslinks from Spam (food), Spam (Monty Python), and Spam (Monty Python).  This is not a labyrinth, people; it's three articles. jnestorius(talk) 01:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Pardon, but are you responding to me? I am confused by your first line above:

The last DAB layout is not the one you've linked to but this much shorter one. Your link and mine appear to be identical. Am I missing something? I am certainly confused.
 * No, that was addressed to SnowFire. jnestorius(talk) 13:10, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Now I provided you with a very specific and very probable scenario in which a reader would be completely frustrated by your proposed set-up. Might you first be able to respond to that? Unschool (talk) 01:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I said "If you feel the Spam (electronic) is difficult to navigate, then by all means improve it".  For example, move the Origin section to be the first subsection; or add a mention of the origin in the introduction. In any case I find your scenario implausible. Someone might perhaps skip over the Table of Contents, thereby missing the mention of section 4.2; but it's implicit from the article's organisation that that E-mail spam is a type of Spam (electronic), and hence that the word "spam" will be discussed in the parent article rather than the child.  You wouldn't expect the etymology of Leopard to be explained on the Snow leopard page. jnestorius(talk) 13:10, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm going to continue to stay out of the debate over how this page should be presented, but I disagree strongly that at least some specific types of spam should be linked to. DAB pages are meant for convenience, and forcing people to pointlessly make more clicks is not part of that.  Many people when they type spam are referring to "e-mail spam" which is way more prevalent than the other types of electronic spam.  I'm not saying that the Electronic Spam article shouldn't exist, but there's absolutely no harm in letting people get right to the meaning they meant right away.  It's the difference between...  if Cat was a disambig page, then yes, the first link should be the family Felidae, but "Cat" also refers to the domesticated (house) cat, which is also a type of cat.  Both are called "Cat."  Many people will be interested in e-mail spam which is just called "spam," so a link is entirely appropriate.  (As it happens, the specific "house cat" meaning is so overwhelming that's what the Cat article is, but if there was a disambig page there, it would absolutely merit links to both.)  Another example is that Will links not just to Will (philosophy), but various specific meanings like Free will.  Sure, we could force people to click more, but why? SnowFire (talk) 02:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Well said. Unschool (talk) 03:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I will concede I was too extreme. I can see the benefit of leaving E-mail spam on the DAB for the reasons you specify; but not of including spamdexing, spam in blogs, etc. jnestorius(talk) 13:10, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Here is a proposal to address these concerns:

Spam may mean:
 * Spam (food), a canned meat product sold by the Hormel Foods Corporation
 * "Spam" (Monty Python), a comedy sketch set in a restaurant where every dish contains spam
 * Spam (electronic), unsolicited or undesired bulk electronic messages (named after the sketch); in particular:
 * E-mail spam, unsolicited or undesired bulk email messages
 * "Spam" (song), a song by "Weird Al" Yankovic
 * "Spam", track #9 on It Means Everything, 1997 ska album by Save Ferris
 * Flyposting ("street spam"), illegal blanket advertising in public places

Any comments? jnestorius(talk) 13:10, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, in fact, two of them.
 * First of all, thank you for your good faith efforts to work out a compromise that takes into consideration others' concerns.
 * Second, I am intrigued. I just now looked at it, and it's definately an improvement over your previous version.  I'm willing to consider something pretty close to this, but I would like to let others comment before I make some minor suggestions for alterations (and I really do mean minor.  Nothing to worry about.) Unschool (talk) 03:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If you have any suggestions, don't wait for us. Suggest away. — Mudwater (Talk) 03:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Minor changes to proposal
Spam may mean:
 * Spam (food), a canned meat product sold by the Hormel Foods Corporation
 * "Spam" (Monty Python), a comedy sketch set in a restaurant where every dish contains Spam, the above-mentioned canned meat product
 * Spam (electronic), unsolicited or undesired bulk electronic messages (named after the Monty Python sketch); in particular:
 * E-mail spam, unsolicited or undesired bulk email messages
 * "Spam" (song), a song about the canned meat product, sung by "Weird Al" Yankovic
 * "Spam", track #9 on It Means Everything, 1997 ska album by Save Ferris
 * Flyposting ("street spam"), illegal blanket advertising in public places


 * Well, the extra detail doesn't seem necessary to me, but I won't make a big deal out of it. If nobody else objects, fire away. Regards, jnestorius(talk) 13:39, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Not a huge deal, but can we leave out the term "above-mentioned"? — Mudwater (Talk) 02:10, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have to admit, that did feel a bit awkward to me as well. So is this what we're talking?:

Spam may mean:
 * Spam (food), a canned meat product sold by the Hormel Foods Corporation
 * "Spam" (Monty Python), a comedy sketch set in a restaurant where every dish contains Spam, the canned meat product
 * Spam (electronic), unsolicited or undesired bulk electronic messages (named after the Monty Python sketch); in particular:
 * E-mail spam, unsolicited or undesired bulk email messages
 * "Spam" (song), a song about the canned meat product, sung by "Weird Al" Yankovic
 * "Spam", track #9 on It Means Everything, 1997 ska album by Save Ferris
 * Flyposting ("street spam"), illegal blanket advertising in public places

Requested edit
Link R.E.M. should link to R.E.M. (band) --Passargea 02:40, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. Unschool 03:03, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Wrong redirect
Since SPAM is the registered trademark of Hormel Foods Inc., surely the SPAM page should redirect to Spam (food), not this one. Hormel doesn't mind "spam" (sentence case) being used for UCE and such, as long as their trademark is always spelled in upper case. -- 217.171.129.74 (talk) 04:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has not been in the habit of having corporations determine their policies on naming articles, redirects, or anything else. There are perfectly valid reasons—overwhelming, IMO—for having the redirect come here.  Unschool (talk) 05:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Addressing concerns of Mudwater
Mudwater, you are of course totally correct about removing the extra link in that first entry. I noticed when it was placed there, quite some time ago, and just failed to deal with it. I support your removal of the extra link.

However, I am going to revert the formatting on this. To understand why, please read the comments above. This is a case where strictly following a conventional format does a disservice to the reader, and I think separating the uses in the manner they were prior to your edit better informs and better serves the reader. I would be happy to discuss it further if this is at all unclear. Cheers. Unschool (talk) 03:03, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I can see that considerable thought has gone into this, and you've got some valid points, but I think your goal can still be achieved while showing the actual article titles, by changing this:


 * Spam originally referred to a canned meat product sold by the Hormel Foods Corporation. Since then, many other uses of the term have emerged.


 * to this:


 * Spam originally referred to Spam (food), a canned meat product sold by the Hormel Foods Corporation. Since then, many other uses of the term have emerged.


 * How about it? — Mudwater (Talk) 03:27, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Very nice. I think the honor of the edit should be yours.  Cheers. Unschool (talk) 03:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, we're all set. Thanks. — Mudwater (Talk) 11:17, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Trimming verbosity
The recent edits by RoySmith are generally well-considered, and improve this dab page. However, there are two of the entries that I'm going to return to the old wording, for reasons which I will now explain. This dab page used to be a lot longer, and was shortened to its current length by the efforts of Mudwater and others. When trimming it back, one point that all agreed upon was that it was important that on this dab page we make clear the link between the Monty Python sketch and the electronic crap we get, like email. So I'm putting that connection back in. Secondly, I think that because there are two songs named "Spam", that we should list the artists' names. The purpose of a dab page, after all, is to guide a person to the article they are looking for, and we fail this, IMHO, if we do not include Weird Al's name. Un sch  ool  18:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)