Talk:Stone louse

Just for fun
--Auric (talk) 19:39, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

4 million views
Currently, the article contains the claim that The mockumentary has had 4 million views, despite the fact that it is only available in the German language. I’m about to remove this, but I first wanted to report here the results of some minor wiki archeology I did to figure out where it came from.

It was User:Scottperry who originally added a version of this claim, at the time reporting. 4 million views. This could be either a typo or short for 0.4 million views; the fact that it’s the latter becomes clearer two edits later, where linked to a YouTube video of the sketch. That video is no longer online following a copyright claim, but the closest Internet Archive version records 429,739 views. It seems clear to me, then, that this was originally meant to represent 0.4 million views, or ca. 400k views, on the YouTube video; of course, this doesn’t take into account the television viewers that this TV sketch originally enjoyed (nor would it include reruns or home video sales).

A few edits later, Scottperry added the half sentence that the view numbers were despite the fact that it is only available in the German language. This sounds absurd to me – is Wikipedia astonished that Germans… exist? and consume media? (This is the original reason I started looking into this sentence.)

Be that as it may, some three years later User:Ninjalectual flagged the number for clarification: is this a typo that's supposed to be four million? Or is it an obtuse way to say 400,000? If it's the latter, just say 400,000 rather than obfuscating ; two years after that, User:Dirkp5826 unflagged it and turned the. 4 million into 4 million, arguing that during the 60ies and 70ies, audience ratings had up to 90% - as there were only three programs in the FRG. Loriot, as avery popular show, really had 4 Mio viewers.

Throughout all of this, the number was never actually sourced. My conclusion is that it started out as original research (looking up view numbers of a YouTube video – which incidentally was later replaced with a different video by User:Alain.ternette) and then mutated by an order of magnitude through more original research (someone reckoning that another number was more plausible). None of this belongs in the article, and as such I am removing it now :) Galaktos (talk) 23:24, 13 June 2022 (UTC)


 * ✅ Special:Diff/1093002797 Galaktos (talk) 23:25, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Dear Galaktos,
 * you were right, I just entered the information for clarification. Sorry that the links are not available any more.
 * Please be aware, that the figures must not be seen as views of a youtube video.
 * In addition, you might read the text of the other editors in a different way as well. How about
 * 'Although only broadcast in German -speaking countries, the broadcast, in which the Steinlaus was first broadcast, reached several million viewers'
 * But,you will agree, it will be really hard to get data here.
 * Perhaps you will find a better alternative instead of the deletion. After all, the work of Loriot's is now a recognized part of popular culture and also had influence on our language
 * DirkP5826 Dirkp5826 (talk) 23:14, 15 June 2022 (UTC)