City Talk Pages
City Talk Pages
[Caption above the panel:] I love reading the Wikipedia talk pages for articles on individual cites
[A list of contents for a Wikipedia talk page regarding an article about a city. Except for the header and the square brackets, which are written in black text, the rest is in a blue font.] Contents [ hide ]
The comic makes fun of Wikipedia talk pages. On Wikipedia, every article has a place to discuss the content of the page, called a " talk page ". In this case, the comic talks about the talk page of an article about a city. While some of the topics are quite normal for such a page (e.g. the quality of the images) others are not (e.g. too many murders and mine disasters in the city). The topics discussed suggest that the city has many problems and is a bad place to live in or visit.
The topics show a common problem at Wikipedia's talk pages: People often use them as a place to talk about the subject of the article, but it is for talking about the article itself. Someone at the top of the talk page is suggesting a better name for the city.
The article repeatedly refers to "the murders", suggesting that the city might be well-known for them. It seems that the editors cannot agree on how notable "the murders" are. "Not that notable" refers to Wikipedia's general criteria for including information in articles. Material which is not noteworthy should be removed; however, different editors often disagree about what is notable, resulting in conflicting edits as text is inserted and then removed (an "edit war"). Someone replies that "all cities have murders". While true, many cities in low-crime countries would not have a series of them so well-known that when someone talks about "the murders" any reader could be expected to know what they are talking about, making this sound like an attempt to make the city sound nicer than it is. "I think the murderer is reverting my edits" suggests the murders are being committed by one person who is influencing how they are shown on Wikipedia - perhaps trying to prevent Wikipedia from publishing evidence of them or possibly publicise them by adding more information about them. This raises the possibility that the discussion of the murder visible in the infobox picture may have been initiated by the murderer .
The infobox is a short fact sheet that many articles in the (English) Wikipedia have; it generally includes an image illustrating the subject of the article. The question of which picture is best for the infobox (because this image is so prominent) can cause edit wars. It emerges that the photograph of the city has a murder in it. Instead of forwarding the picture to law enforcement, someone uses the image editing software Photoshop to erase the murder so the picture will be less objectionable. It appears that murders are so common in the city that any random photograph of the city has a chance of showing a murder, to the point where a second photo proposed as a replacement for the infobox picture is found to show another murder.
Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer. As a prominent and very opinionated intellectual, he gets a lot of quotes falsely attributed to him ; most famously, he did not actually say "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (that was Evelyn Beatrice Hall ).
It seems that the people who are editing the article are getting desperate to find a non-bleak picture of the city. When a non-bleak picture is added, it turns out to be from the 2016 Disney film Zootopia . The fictional city which is the setting and title of the film has a distinctive look which is far from bleak, but is not a picture of the city. (Zootopia is called Zootropolis in many European countries for trademark reasons.)
The city apparently is a mining city and there have been some mining disasters. An editor is complaining that this section is too long, but another editor points out that this is because there have been so many mining disasters that a large section is needed to cover the topic.
1982 Secession refers to Key West, Florida seceding from the United States in 1982 to form the Conch Republic , a micronation .
A known problem on Wikipedia is "coatracking", where people use articles to promote topics that are not strictly the subject of the article (perhaps by writing far more about them than is necessary, when they could just be mentioned in passing). Here, it emerges that the article on a city expresses a dubious opinion on condom use. This is against several Wikipedia policies: it would be irrelevant to the article and sounds like an editor's attempt to publicise their views.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is an English composer famous for writing The Phantom Of The Opera . Webber is also known for writing the music for Starlight Express , a rock opera about anthropomorphized trains, which is probably another factor in the train station joke. Meanwhile, Frank Lloyd Wright , who shares his middle name and last initial, was an American architect, who designed more than 1,000 structures. As it turns out it was the composer who was responsible for the train station. Another editor announces he's putting a mention of a collapse of the station roof (presumably recently), the implication being Andrew is a lot better at composing than architectural engineering.
It is complained that the article is promoting the "Lake Festival Laser Show" too much. In the title text, it emerges that the laser show is so impressive that it has caused a number of aeroplanes to crash. This probably refers to the fact that laser pointers should not be aimed at aircrafts, as they can be distracting to the pilots. The article has been promoting this area of crashed planes as the "Lakeshore Air Crash Museum", despite it not having any educational purpose.
[Caption above the panel:] I love reading the Wikipedia talk pages for articles on individual cites
[A list of contents for a Wikipedia talk page regarding an article about a city. Except for the header and the square brackets, which are written in black text, the rest is in a blue font.] Contents [ hide ]