"a small but interesting fact"

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CrowsNest
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"a small but interesting fact"

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Oct 27, 2019 10:32 am

Genesis

Jimmy edited the encylopedia! Always an exciting moment. Seems like Wikipediocracy missed this, they're usually all over examples of Jimmy being a rubbish Wikipedian, but maybe they're so hampered by being self-assessed awesome Wikipedians themselves, they actually saw nothing wrong with this edit.

Anatomy Of An Edit

Put simply, contrary to Jimmy's claim, "adding a small but interesting fact", is the fact that the CEO of HP Inc. is a pilot who owns his own small plane, really all that interesting?

And in the unlikely event you do find it interesting, do you think Jimmy's rather bland addition does the source material justice?
Weisler says: “As an existing, proud and active owner-pilot of a 2017 PC-12 NG, I am amazed by the substantial innovation improvements in what I thought was an impossible aircraft to improve on. I am thrilled to be customer number one for the new PC-12 NGX. Pilatus has done it again – reimagined aviation, taken an already-perfect aircraft and magically redefined perfection.”
Boys and their toys, eh?

Is it even really all that small a fact, when by number of words alone, recording it on Wikipedia means it now comprises 11 words of his 63 word biography?

More to the point, why does Wikipedia only have 63 words to write about the life and times of the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world? The "world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales" according to an unreliable encyclopedia I know of.

On the bright side, they can at least now separate the main article body into the usual three sections.......
Dion Joseph Weisler (born *******[3][4][2]) is an Australian-born businessman, the CEO of HP Inc. since November 2015 when HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise split into separate companies.[2][5][6][7]

Early life and education
Weisler has a bachelor's degree in computing from Monash University.[7]

Career
{{Empty section}}

Personal life
Weisler is a pilot who owns and flies a Pilatus PC-12.[8]

Weisler is married with two children, and lives in Palo Alto, California.[9]
.......although I guess we might have to wait a while before the Career section gets filled out, eh!

Analysis Of The Conditions

I'm loving the fact that his marital status and fertile testes are also considered interesting facts, as well as his aviation interests. Wikipedia is certainly a gold mine for potential kidnappers I guess. Fly low and slow, and drop the bag full of unmarked bills at these coordinates, and your kids will be fine!

I hope the lack of information about this white western business dude isn't a result of all the focus on creating and expanding coverage of all the other demographics. Although tbf I don't recall the now departed bastions of Traditional Wikipedia, the Dennis Browns and Eric Corbetts, who took massive huffs and eventually ran for the hills as they saw all them uppity wimmin' getting involved, having spent that much time on this sort of topic before they legged it. The article's creator is certainly still active and engaged.

Foggy Bank

Worth noting that at the time Jimmy inserted his factoid, the biography already had two free to access secondary sources of some depth, a Fortune profile piece, and an interview with the Telegraph. Neither makes any mention of his love of aviation, which is what a highly competent and super experienced Wikipedia editor (translation: has read the manual) would use to indicate this factoid's relative importance to a general encyclopedia, or lack thereof. What they do confirm, both as first and third person accounts, is his love of surfing, and how it directly influences his business decisions. I guess Wikipedia's readers will have to wait for that piece of knowledge to be added, together with the shit-ton of material in those sources which is even more relevant to a Career section. They're only five and three years old, respectively.

A Gruesome Interlude

The good news is that some rando thinks Weisler is going to be immortal, so there's plenty of time. Although tbf the rando made that edit before a certain enthusiastic bearded Wikipedian could tell the world he's a pilot. Naturally, it being a small plane, Wikipedia doesn't list all the ways random business people have died horrific early deaths in this specific type, or any kind of accident statistics for it. Wikipedia prefers to see far higher death tolls, or much bigger pieces of flying metal being written off, before those sort of things are considered interesting facts worthy of recording.

If Wikipedia did bother to write up at least the most deadly incident involving this type of aircraft, and if they did bother to fill out biographies like this from the sources they have already located, they might be able to put two and two together and estimate the risk of a competitive creature like Wiesner killing his children because he's too focused on completing the mission rather than the chain of errors he's in the midst of. Or indeed make the counter-point that a logical and methodical man like that would never make such a mistake. But I think we've entered a world that Wikipedia doesn't occupy. It's not their job to obsessively analyze deadly air crashes. Except it totally when examining the product. They just have to be big.

Weisler can at least console himself with the fact that Wikipedia genuinely has a rule that if he does actually die in an air crash, presumably in his own plane, the fact that Wikipedia contained 63 words about his life before the inevitable obituary driven expansion, means their repository of knowledge could actually also have an article on the crash, something they don't usually do for small planes. The fact he might probably also have killed his wife and two children won't matter in the slightest to the Wikipedians, but how could be be upset at that, he'd be dead!

I love interesting facts about Wikipedia, specifically the Wikipedians and their weird ways. So thank you Jimmy for giving me something to think about in the extra hour in bed afforded me on daylight savings day.

A Life Less Ordinary

Wikipedia eh? 63 words. You can't say you don't get what you pay for! You didn't pay for this shit, and clearly Weisler and HP have better things to spend their money on than paying disgruntled nerds or sharp eyed marketeers the money required to do basic shit like add actually relevant information to Wikipedia, hopefully in a neutral manner. What is or will ever be written on the site, is what interests the Wikipedians.

Now, other lesser critics might choose to focus on why Jimmy is editing the biography of a silicon valley CEO, leading them to say some quite mean and very unsubstantiated things about potentially innocent people. I'm more interested in knowing why Jimmy was even reading Flight Global? We know he's not a rich man, having eschewed the fortunes amassed by other silicon valley boss-men so he could gift the world this lovely compendium of, uh, knowledge, so why is he torturing himself looking at the things he could have had?

Regrets. He's had a few, I bet.

Acknowledgements

I dedicate this piece to the dearly departed Kumioko, and all those who flew in him.
Last edited by CrowsNest on Sun Oct 27, 2019 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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sashi
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Re: "a small but interesting fact"

Post by sashi » Sun Oct 27, 2019 11:50 am

It's genesis, Crown. Beggining you're poast with a mis-spilt werd mite jes' lede pea-pull 2 beleave it (snot-worth reeding).

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Re: "a small but interesting fact"

Post by Graaf Statler » Sun Oct 27, 2019 12:15 pm

And in name of what misty fraction are you speaking, sashi? Or are you representing only yourself :roll:

And if so, why all that juicy tree house trolling with a mysterious princess if it is all so unimportant what Crow writes :?:

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Re: "a small but interesting fact"

Post by sashi » Sun Oct 27, 2019 12:22 pm

Graaf Statler wrote:And in name of what misty fraction are you speaking, sashi? Or are you representing only yourself :roll:


Just one (w)eighty-second. :shock:

Yes, by all memes, cre8 more mis-spilling! :arrow: :twisted:

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Re: "a small but interesting fact"

Post by Graaf Statler » Sun Oct 27, 2019 1:01 pm

The three house spellings brigade of Wikipedia is of course one of the biggest DSM-5 issue's of Wikipedia, sashi................. :roll:

Not reading what someone writes, but only being focused on a small misspelling.................. :shock:

The linguistic proficiency and someones writing skills are measured by this kind of trivial details, sashi...... :?

The wiki drama is called mental defects, sashi. :!:

Because of the mental defects of many, many of the partisans in combination with free beer and free lunches lovers has formed itself some absurt Federico Fellini subculture what is sooooo far drifted from the real world.............. To far, sashi.

This community's can't be saved, shashi, they have to be destroyed, there is no other option.

There is simple no future for them left.

And that is what both Crow and I try to explane you guys.

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Re: "a small but interesting fact"

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Oct 27, 2019 6:02 pm

Fixed. I'm gonna blame over-exposure to Kumioko recently, some of his retardation must have rubbed off on me, because I actually looked at the word for a while and convinced myself it was spelt correctly.

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