everything is illuminated

[burnunit]

I like Wikipedia as much as the next guy, probably more. But what I really think i love about it are the Talk pages. Man, that is some wild stuff. People criticize Wikipedia for having extended content on trivial material. But saying that, they miss the gold that lives behind the trivial material in the form of incredibly long discussions about the nature of the article qua article (and then the occasional, foolish and rude interruption by someone who wants to discuss the appropriateness of the subject matter). The debates can be so abstracted as to be positively theological, which is awesome. See today's example.

Seriously now I was legitimately wondering about "money shot"! I overheard someone use "money shot" in conversation and I thought "I wonder where that actually comes from" entering money shot into wikipedia actually takes you to the entry for the pornographic meaning of the term, with a short mention of the term's non-pornographic history.

But the Talk page is, as usual, totally awesome. The discussion on whether or not there should be a photo (GFDL, at that) pales in comparison to the debate about spelling:

I don't suggest that we blindly follow the Google count, but I think it is an interesting data point on frequency of use: "come shot"=22,000 hits (not all porn related) "cum shot"=4,440,000 hits (seem to all be porn related). WP:NAME, which is the policy on article naming, does state: "Convention: Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things. Rationale and specifics: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)" Johntex

Remember, when reading Wikipedia, if you want a deeper picture of the material, and perhaps a window into additional truths, always click the discussion link at the top of the article. Always.

Comments

[echoegami.livejournal.com]

funny you should mention this, just yesterday i stumbled upon the discussion link on a wiki entry i was ready. there just wasn't enough info on the main page and, remembering there was a talk page, click it to see if there was disputed info that might shed some light on the info i was after. sure enough there was.

also funny is the fact that just over a week ago, over a lunch time meeting, the new president of the company i work for used the term "money shot." i just about choked on my pizza. he had no idea what the term meant and i have no idea what the non-porn definition of the term is.