Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-08-06/Wikipedia Plays

What does "(This is) a theatricalized exploration of language following the academic model that Wikipedia and other encyclopedias present," by Andrew Kircher mean? Remove the "It should be said that these plays are not based on the Wiki entries in full, but rather simply the titles." sentence, since the links in the article is what it's all about? -- Jeandré, 2007-08-08t22:48z


 * I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what you're actually trying to ask about the meaning of the Andrew Kircher quote. I can go through it on a word for word basis, but I don't know where it's not being clear. The problem with common assumptions - I know what it means so I can't see which part is losing it. As to the second issue, regardless of whether the links and information in an article are the important things, the main point is that the articles were based merely on the titles, and the content of Wikipedia, while it might be used for research, was not the basis for the content of the plays; only the title was. --Thespian 07:19, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I understand "theatricalized exploration", "of language" is dicey, and I don't know what "following the academic model that Wikipedia and other encyclopedias present" means. Links/cross references?
 * "these plays are not based on the Wiki entries in full" is correct, but "simply the titles" is wrong since the links in the articles are used to get to the next subject, and the series of plays are based on the links from one article to the next: article 1 has a link to article 2, article 2's title is used, article 2 has a link to article 3... The titles weren't randomly chosen, the links in the article were used to get to the next title. -- Jeandré, 2007-08-12t11:36z
 * Except that it doesn't actually contradict it. While they got the path from the previous article and the next article, the play itself was based only on the title, and not on the series of links. In addition that is the exact sentence. I'm afraid that it can't just be removed or rewritten, and since that's coming from someone who was there from the creation, I'm afraid I do take that as an accurate description without more proof that that's not indeed what 'these plays were based on'.


 * As to the academic model; an academic model of a thing is a theoretical example of an entire paradigm - that is, if I say, 'this os how waterpumps work, I can show you an 'academic model' of one, that will outline things like the pump, spout, etc - the things that all waterpumps have in common, whether they're a hand pumped one in a village in Africa or a digital one at a swimming pool. While they used Wikipedia as the main sampling source, what they were trying to illustrate was the basic academic model of how people with some time to just randomly follow words explore; hence: "theatricalized exploration of language following the academic model that Wikipedia and other encyclopedias present...". Does that clarify things a little? --Thespian 07:28, 13 August 2007 (UTC)