Talk:The Chronicles of George

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

This page was listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion and deleted.

  • The Chronicles of George - not quite sure about this one. Dysprosia 23:17, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
    • Didn't we already delete this article a week or two ago? -- JeLuF 05:08, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
      • KEEEP IT! The site is really funny and very popular. BL 22:24, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
        • I don't know as to its popularity, but the site itself seems to consist of just screenshots of the same form with different text - George and the Chronicles author may be one in the same - anyway...is it of encyclopedic significance? Dysprosia 01:47, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
          • Maybe if it was described in terms of a cult phenomenon? 12.208.169.63 06:13, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
    • Alexa.com reveals that nanc.com (which includes George, but lots of other websites as well) is ranked 425,251. By comparison, Wikipedia is ranked 2,140. Thus, I believe it fails the Alexa test, and can be deleted. However, the site could be listed at technical support, tech support, ticket (computing), or some such. Martin 11:44, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)


It was then listed on Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion and undeleted.

  • The Chronicles of George - Was listed on VfD and thereafter deleted without a consensus. I liked the page. BL 12:57, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • I liked it too. But it isn't a big enough phenomenon to warrant its own article here. -- Cyan 19:21, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • I want it to be deleted, but if BL is objecting, then there's no consensus, so it should be undeleted. Martin 09:07, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[edit] funny and popular?

Yes it's funny, but that's irrelevant. Wikipedia is not a jokebook, and we don't include (or exclude) articles based on the comedy value of their subjects.

No, it's not popular. Google gets me 1,700 hits for the exact phrase, compared to just under two million for Wikipedia. PageRank is 5/10 to Wikipedia's 7/10. The alexa test shows that it gets too little traffic for them to measure, even unreliably, and a rank of 425,251 is tiny.

I'd like to hear BL's response to these two issues. Martin 20:17, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

My response is that Alexa ranking doesn't count. I don't think their statistics are revelant. And I think you are expressing an antiquated view of information where stuff that noone gives a damn about that is in encyclopaedias is more important than stuff people care about that is not in them. 1,700 hits is plenty. BL 16:28, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Alexa measures the amount of traffic to a website - what better way is there to measure the popularity of a website? Put another way, there are 425,250 websites that are more popular than "George" - would you want us to have articles on all of them?

I'd agree that 1,700 hits is plenty for something that you wouldn't expect to have a high web presence - like someone who was born and died a few thousand years before the internet was created. But for a website, whose only existence is online, it's indicative of marginal impact on people's browsing. Even I get just over 500 hits... Martin 19:43, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Heh. Brain in neutral anyway so I reviewed the George site. By the way, I suspect the name is taken from a mispronounciation of "Chronicles of Gor."

The site's content is sophmoric and unsuitable for publication on the web (or elsewhere, for that matter). I find little humor in the misspellings and grammatical errors of those for whom English is not a first language. And I imagine the material is published counter to the wishes of both its original writer and the company who employed hir. There isn't sufficient humor or other value to be gained in publication to justify the violation of privacy.

Moreover there are much better examples of genuine humor in the help desk industry. There are acutal cases of people using CD player trays as coffee cup holders, DJs spilling diet coke into the turntable at the radio station, and the like. The best one that ever crossed my desk was a writeup from a meter reader who was using a handheld computer to enter the numbers read from water meters. He was attacked by a dog and the dog ended up taking his computer and tearing it apart. The computer was sent in for warranty repair with a summary of the incident, which was precious. I've also encountered equipment damaged under suspicious circumstances apparently during labor disputes.

So, back to the site itself, I doubt if it will be around in a year or two. Even if it were, it would yet utterly fail to rise above the teeming morass of personal web sites with their banal content.

Let's not delete the article. Let's rewrite it into something like help desk humor. I have a hilarious MP3 of a satirical song on my computer. The refrain is something like:

Don't call me/I'm not Bill Gates/I'm tech support

The song depicts the frustration of a help desk guy trying vainly to help a clueless user do some mundane task like connect to the Internet. Ed Poor

help desk humour would be a good idea. I'd support a move there, if someone could write an intro and a little on non-George-related topics. Martin 14:35, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Howdy. I'm the webmaster of the CoG, and I'd like to pop in here for just a moment and throw my own opinion into the mix.

I'm happy that someone thought the CoG was worthy of a Wikipedia entry and that's fine and dandy, but I'll be the first person to agree with what Martin said about its Wiki-worthiness. It's fun as hell to manage, and we have a wonderful community in the message boards, but there's nothing particularly amazing about the site or its content; though it's brought me a ton of laughter and a ton of new friends, at the end of the day it's just a humor site. I have no political views to espouse, no philosophical revelations to share, I can't cure any diseases and I ain't selling anything.

In the nearly three years the site has existed, I've gotten a lot of feedback, mostly positive, but some negative, and some extremely negative. People find humor in different things--hell, my own parents once walked out of a showing of "Holy Grail", and I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a movie I think is funnier--and relevance is...well, relative. The site tends to strike a chord with the working-class IT folks, the phone-monkeys and desktop support guys (and girls) who do the heavy lifting of the user support world. Managers, executives, and trainers are more likely to be offended by the site, and that suits me fine--according to the Peter Principle, George ought to be reporting in as their boss any day now.

I'll not defend the site from the penultimate poster's criticisms except to correct the factual errors in his/er suspicion about title's origin--no, it isn't--and his/er assumption that George is not a native English speaker--yes, he is. As to the rest of his/er criticisms, the site must stand or fall in the reader's eyes on its own merits.

Include it in Wiki or don't--I'd be honored if its entry is allowed to remain, but I won't be crushed if it's judged unworthy, irrelevant, or otherwise insignificant. In fact, I'm going to get some Chee-Tos.

Angela undeleted this on 6th September. RickK objected to this on Votes for undeletion so it was relisted on VfD. Martin then sensibly made it a redirect so Angela unlisted it from VfD.

Stop calling me sensible: you'll ruin my reputation... ;-) Martin 15:48, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../t/h/e/Talk%7EThe_Chronicles_of_George_74b3.html"