Talk:Jerry Holkins

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[edit] picture

this picture looks quite old. can anyone get one from PAX or something? --DannyBoy7783 02:22, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Parentage

"Additionally, his grandmother is a horse. His grandfather is two horses." Do I even have to ask about this? --Steneub 18:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I still prefer Kendrick7's first revision: "He has indicated that his grandmother was a horse, citing Wikipedia." fruitofwisdom 18:59, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Humorous, sort of, but not a good edit to keep. --Fastfission 19:36, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I saw that he linked to this page, and the goodly folks here had removed all equine references other than Dark Horse Comics, so I corrected that. I find the topic fitting to Holkin's style because it's a circular reference. His grandmother is a horse because Wikipedia says it is, and the wikipedia mention cites Holkin's reference to wikipedia as the author of legitimate truth. --DavidBeoulve 12:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

His grandmother is not a horse, and Wikipedia is a serious encyclopedia, so it's not complicit with Penny Arcade's gags. I've removed your edit and will continue to do so. I would, however, like to say "Welcome to Wikipedia!" I'm glad to see that you've registered a user name, and I hope you continue to edit, but please treat Wikipedia as a real encyclopedia. TomTheHand 13:23, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

How is it not useful to at least mention the lengthy series of edits that resulted from his offhand comment? This whole business is seeming less like a productive use of time and more like someone's personal problem. 192.91.171.42 23:01, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

In the extremely few cases in which we mention edits made to Wikipedia articles on those articles themselves, we do so because the article subject is relevant in some way to Wikipedia (or, more accurately, vice versa). In this case, it was a joke, and a lame one at that. We do not need to document every joke that results in moronic vandalism. Powers T 02:13, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Equine relatives

Is the bit about his grandmother being a horse going to be left in? It's noted by the man himself in today's post (Sept. 11th, 2006 http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/09/11). (EDIT: Never mind, I'm slow at tea time.)

No. Whether or not content helps someone else's jokes is not a criterion for content here. Though frankly it would allow many strange possibilities if it were so. ;-) --Fastfission 19:35, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

He doesn't seem to mind. Check the news post for September 11, 2006.

I think it would be best to just put in somewhere that he states that his grandmother was a horse, but evidence is yet to be brought forward. That way, we can leave in the whole horse bit and bring some of his humor into the article, with out worring about the accuracy to the Wiki.

The only evidence presented to date is that his grandmother -is- infact a horse. He himself is the only source available on the matter, unless you manage to seek out any other woman claiming to have sired his parentage. And chances are that would be considered Stalkery.

Actually, I think that would be Original Research, and well, WP:NOR. 64.247.206.184 15:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Listen, sometimes this shit happens. If he says his grandmother is a horse, whose to contradict him? The chain of events that led to his heritage is beyond our control. 207.206.233.173 16:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh please. I am President of the United States, who are you to contradict me? It does not do to take a baldly incorrect statement and write it here as fact.
Being a horse myself, I'm slightly offended by your anti-horse sentiments. Urbanriot 02:40, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Er, no? It's not original research to point out that, on his own website, the person claims to be related to a horse. Irrelevent trivia? Sure. But we can cite it just fine. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.206.231.102 (talk • contribs) .
The Original reasearch comment seams to be a joke about the stalkery comments immediatly preceding it.--LaughingMan42 12:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Hey fellas? You done got your link wrong. Try this one, maybe? (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/09/08) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magicflyinlemur (talk • contribs) 05:28, 28 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Pretentious?

Is there a source for calling Holkins' writing pretentious? Since this was added on the same day PA linked the article, and pretentious is a pejorative in most cases, I'm suggesting it be removed, but thought I should ask for consensus first.

-Being a long-time reader of penny-arcade, I think "pretentious" is a completely accurate word to describe his entries. ~random person

--I don't think his writing is pretentious, but "pretentious" is a big and fancy word and Tycho frequently uses big and fancy words. Therefore, the word describes his writing style by example instead of by definition and it should be left in. YAYitsAndrew 20:00, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

---The preceding comment makes no logical sense. Yes, Tycho uses “big and fancy” words, but that does not mean that any “big and fancy” words automatically describe his writing style, by example or any other way. If you were to describe his writing style as “obfuscatory,” you would be incorrect, even though that word is suitably big and reasonably fancy. His writing style should be described by the appropriate words; their length is irrelevant. 17.201.116.248 21:07, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

---This isn't the time or place for logical sense. YAYitsAndrew 23:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the definition of "pretentious" being used there is "Uses words that are longer than I (the editor) am comfortable with". "Jerry writes in a verbose style, and frequently inserts wordplay into his posts." is a fact. The next sentence is just some guys opinion about verbosity, and contributes nothing to the article.

--Pretentious means "unwarranted claim to importance or distinction" or "ostentatious; intended to impress others" (at least according to or own Wiktionary). Thus, I would say that his writing style is indeed pretentious by both of those definitions. This doesn't mean that the author himself is pretentious- but Tycho, his alter-ego, definitly is, and he writes from Tycho's perspective. Paladinwannabe2 14:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

---I would say that the intent is not to impress or claim importance, but to be amusing. Those who think he writes this way just to impress people seem to be missing the joke. In any case, arguing about the authors intent is bordering on the ridiculous, and this seems to fall pretty clearing into the category of opinions of people's work, which I think would be solved just by removing the entire second sentence. We've covered that he's verbose, now let's move on.

I think "baroque" would be a better adjective. 63.107.91.99 14:46, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Baroque describes his style quite well, and implies less value judgement than the word pretentious does. --Starwed 17:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Original research?

Is it just me, or is the whole "writing style" section seem like original research? (not just the pejorative parts... the positive parts seem like they could only be backed up by forum posts) Sure, the only two "sources" for this article fall under it, but they seem more like examples of said behavior, rather than being reliable sources to back the assertion up. Unless someone mentions some remotely fathomable way this section could be supported by reliable sources, I believe the section should be removed. --Interiot 16:42, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I think there's a difference between original research and truism. Although I don't know if we're supposed to avoid truisms? Gorman 01:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] For Tycho, Not Jerry

It seems odd that people keep adding references to Jerry Holkins having a horse for a grandmother (which is obviously impossible and the reason for its continued removal). The post frequently referenced (at http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/09/11) is posted by Jerry under the comic character "Tycho": "As is reflected in my Wikipedia entry, my Grandmother is a horse - so these revelations hit close to home, or barn." One would assume that it would be more accurrate to edit the entry to include this reference under the section heading "Comic Character".

Ah, but he links to this artcle, which is about him, not his character. -- Kendrick7 20:57, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Impossible? ...or merely un-thinkable! 192.91.171.42 20:37, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

No,if he had wanted to say that his characters grandmother was a horse he would have linked to the penny arcade article.As it is right now the link directs you to his bio page,indicaing it is IN FACT him who is the horseboy

[edit] Mike Krahulik

Updated Is there enough evidence to say he was the orginal vandal? The original edit occured shortly before the blog/comic was published, and was reverted within 6 minutes, so the chances that someone else did this, about what just happened to be the topic of today's comic, and Tyco just happened to see it, is very slim. It's an interesting real-life version of how Skeletor was vandalizing He-Man's entry as portrayed in their comic last year. I've updated the trivia section to portray such reasonable suspicion, and to better categorize the links. -- Kendrick7 22:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I should mention only the part about the horse was immediately reverted. The part about his birthname being Keith Parkinson, the famous RPG illustrator, hung-around for nearly 3 hours (actually, since the 5th, but I mean since some eyeballs started showing up). It's interesting that by making the more outrageous claim about his being part horse, the merely ludicrous claim stuck around for a quite while -- Kendrick7 23:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Jerry's birthname really was Keith Parkinson. He adopted the surname Holkins upon his marriage. -- MysteriousStranger 7:47, 12 September 2006 (PDT)
MysteriousStranger appears to be correct. Take a look at the bottom of the Penny Arcade site archive from 1999: http://web.archive.org/web/19991004003112/http://www.penny-arcade.com/ "Penny Arcade Cartoons, � copyright 1998,1999 Mike Krahulik and Jerry Parkinson" Now, obviously that doesn't mean he actually IS the RPG illustrator. They just happened to have the same birthname. I don't know if this information is notable enough to re-insert though.. His Ryanness 02:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Praise of Wikipedia

Has anyone actually read the source for the quote "At the same time, Jerry Holkins has often praised the accuracy of the Wikipedia."? It is a scathing critique of Wikipedia, with not a shred of praise for wikipedia's accuracy (outside, perhaps the He-Man and Pokemon entries). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.165.117.96 (talk • contribs).

You'll actually notice that that was a recent edit; earlier today the quote said that Jerry has often criticized the accuracy of Wikipedia. Could we get someone who has a senior account to revert this please? -- PeterGarnett 21:50, 11 September 2006 (PDT)
Nevermind, it seems to have been fixed. -- PeterGarnett 21:52, 11 September 2006 (PDT)

[edit] Removed Wikipedia references

I removed the "Trivia" section, which would have been more honestly termed the "Wikipedia" section. If you're considering restoring it, please read WP:SELF first. When I think of Tycho, Wikipedia is not the first thing to come to mind.

Consider this: would an article about Jerry Holkins include his criticism of Wikipedia in any other encyclopedia? If not, then it has no place here, either. Jerry's criticism of Wikipedia is simply not an important aspect of his online persona. If he makes criticism of Wikipedia a major crusade, like PAX or Child's Play, we can include it. Until then, it's pointless. --Ashenai 11:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

> The more information, the better. He has in fact criticized Wikipedia, so it should be included. Suffice it to say, other details about his life or online persona may be more relevant, but to exclude factual information with the pretense that other encyclopedias would not include such content is irrelevant at best and probably more along the lines of pathetic. Who are you or anyone else to censor and ultimately decide was is most relevant and what needs to be in place before such information was included. I.E. if Jerry’s biography was more complete, say spanning several pages, then his views on Wikipedia may become more accepted for the article. Given that scenario, they should be included now.

Reading the WP:SELF, the reference to Wikipedia should be left removed. Ironically this is because the WP:SELF article requires ignoring the criticisms Jerry made in the reference under discussion. I don't think that pretending that Wikipedia is not a website nor is created by volunteers (the 'wiki' encyclopaedia, after all) is intellectually healthy or sound. Certainly not because Wikipedia may be put in print form one day. But I guess that's not for discussion on the Jerry Holkins talk page. --MajandraFan 17:24, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Correction: WP:SELF, has examples listed where you can reference the Wikipedia article in it's own article. See WP:SELF#Articles_are_about_their_subjects. The only requirement is that you write it from a arbitrary artile perspective. (I.E. Jerry Holkins once claimed his Grandmother is a horse, citing the wikipedia artcle about him as a reference. NOT Jerry Holkins once claimed his Grandmother is a horse, citing this article about him as a reference.--LaughingMan42 12:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Note of potential interest, and some commentary

The intertron article - dealing with a word that Jerry made up, which has been accepted into somewhat common internet usage - was vandalized by someone back in April to include a lot of pseudointellectual nonsense, before I rewrote it. Not really enough evidence to suspect that Jerry did it, as the IP address only had a few other edits, and may have been dynamically allocated. However, the writing is in a verbose, excessively-educated style that he often likes to spoof in his comics and newsposts...

I dunno, I guess maybe I just want to say a few things here.

Of course Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. Of course any given article has, at any given time, the potential to be filled with horrendous nonsense bullshit. What Jerry consistently fails to recognize, though, is that anyone has the potential to change it *back*, as well, and to improve it. That's something you don't get with more traditional information outlets. And if you take an average of the truth values of any given article over a long time period, at least to me it seems that it often (as many people are starting to note) comes across as at least as or even *more* truthful than peer-reviewed or heavily credentialed sources - and I believe this is because no one can use the institutions surrounding Wikipedia to create institutionalized bias regarding the kind of information that gets put into it.

Credentials carry with them a fair amount of power and respect in today's society. And that's why I always get a bit angry when people hold up peer-reviewed journals and credentialed sources as exactly the sort of thing that Wikipedia needs to emulate. Credentials often make people want to disregard new ideas, especially if those new ideas would be damaging to the ideas that the person with credentials built those credentials on. Peer-reviewed journals suffer from the problem that they have to be peer-reviewed, usually by people with credentials that often have the problem I just described, and often have anywhere from a little to a lot of mob mentality as well, which happens more often in academic thought than we'd like to think and is rarely the kind of thing that lends itself well to discovering the (often bizarre-seeming) nature of reality, or deep humanistic thought. I'm not trying to disparage these institutions as valuable sources of scientific research and/or humanistic thought - they have their place in our society, and said place produces a lot of highly viable research and/or thought - but so does Wikipedia. And it fills a niche that isn't really getting filled in present academic thought, catering somewhat to freethinkers and anarchist-thought types who I'd say, historically, have often had a lot of highly valuable ideas, but not necessarily the means to get those ideas to a wider audience, often because they've been dismissed by a "scientific community" filled with credentialed types suffering from the problems and bias I've discussed above. There are a lot of peer review journals and academic societies out there, and only one Wikipedia that's as well-known and (occasionally) respected as Wikipedia, as far as I know.

In the realm of other things I'm not trying to say - I'm not trying to say that Wikipedia doesn't suffer a lot of vandalistic attacks, and I'm not even trying to say it doesn't suffer some very sophisticated ones. I did hear about the U.S. Congressional...er, "rewrites". I also have a grandfather in politics, and I know that most political press releases are nothing *but* those kinds of rewrites. At least with Wikipedia no one's voice can be silenced in the long run - the edit history can't be changed by anyone except the very highest-level admins, as far as I know. I really don't think there's much damage to the kind of vandalism he seems to disregard Wikipedia for on anything other than a miniscule scale - I mean, if you look at his comic about Wikipedia vandalism, who would take the kind of vandalism in something like "He-Man is actually a tremendous jackass and not really that powerful" seriously? Even people who'd never seen the show and have no idea who He-Man is would be suspicious, I think, because encyclopedia articles aren't really written with that kind of tone. The recent horse-grandmother thing is the same way - I mean, who's going to believe that? So people look at it, they go "What the *#$@???", and go away confused...and I bet a lot of them come back in a few days, they read the article again, or maybe they even learn to look at the edit history and do a revert, and not only do they find out the real information about He-Man (um, so to speak, anyway), but they actually maybe learn the process by which Wikipedia articles are created - and knowing how your sources of information actually become sources of information is some of the best protection I can think of against the kind of dangerous, frightening, corporate-media-outlet-style "truth"-mongering that is getting worse and worse every day in our world.

I dunno, I wonder if Jerry isn't actually doing more damage to the cause he's trying to promote (getting people to believe Wikipedia is an easily vandalizable resource) with this kind of thing, than he's actually "helping"... ;) I mean, after all, his article is clean as a whistle right now, and protected from vandalism to boot. People who come linked in from his news post - which, hopefully, *will* stick around and direct people to read "information" about a horse grandmother that, thankfully, isn't there anymore and can't be re-inserted, at least for awhile - will see nothing but some reasonably accepted information about Jerry's business and personal life that no one is really disputing or has a problem with, at least as far as I know. And now he's got my interest up - I plan on coming back around to this article at various intervals, and seeing how this whole thing plays out, and I suspect many others do too!

And just to warn you, Jerry, if you do want to put in things about your grandmother being...err, something other than a human being, I *do* know how to revert an article, and I'm going to want to see sources on that! I love your comic, and read it on a hear daily-basis (even though it's only updated three times a week) - but I'm just letting you know up front! :D -Faseidman 17:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is peer based. The peers have no specialisation. You're comparing reality television singers with opera academies and saying that their equal pedantry makes them equal in merit.
You say 'vandalism' but the amatuerishness of the wikipedia writers makes their best intentions tantamount to vandalism. Perhaps even exactly like vandalism if a time-machine could show us just how the Vandals went about things. Ooh, ironically linking to the Wikipedia page on Vandals. Anyway, the point is that the data on Wikipedia ends up levelling out at the average knowledge of the contributors. The minority vandals get weeded out, perhaps, but they're only trying to spraypaint over street murals. You don't get much classic painting out on the streets. The graffiti metaphor is apt, actually: occasionally you will see some graffiti that could easily take its place in any museum. Basquiat is an example. But most people just don't have the time, energy, inspiration or talent to compete with the "credentialed" painters that hang in museums. --MajandraFan 20:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
1. Wikipedia endeavours to be an encyclopedia, not Shakespeare. It’s not actually important for it to be beautiful, just reasonably correct.
2. Wikipedia uses the Wiki-anybody-can-edit model because it works, not because they’re wedded to the idea. Many other development models for free-access encyclopedias have been tried and failed. This has, so far, on the whole, worked, and Wikipedia therefore continues to use it.
3. Your art metaphor is not apt; people who can write good prose could very well do it in a Wikipedia article, and if they did not write anything incorrect, the article would in all likelihood stay good forever.
--193.11.177.69 21:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
To respond to the original respondant - I'll freely admit that, if I want the end-all and be-all of a given subject (your "opera singers"), I'll go looking for research papers and whatnot, not the Wikipedia article - but I usually use the Wiki article as a jumping-off point to find said papers.
I don't really think many "Wikipedians", so to speak, would disagree that a good and reputable academic paper has a pretty great chance at containing much more and higher-quality information than the Wiki article. I probably should have said "comes across as at least as or even *more* truthful than many peer-reviewed or heavily credentialed sources" - in my experience, the better ones usually beat the tar out of Wiki for depth of information and reliability. They're also usually inaccessible to anyone without either a degree in the field, or else the relative insanity of someone like me to go over each page five or six times with a dictionary until I can figure out what they're saying; also you usually either have to be part of the society or else pay for them to get them, while Wiki is free. And bad academic sources tend to be absolutely horrendous - pseudo-masturbatory intellectual B.S., from what I've seen as well as heard. I may not agree with everything Wikipedia says, but I rarely find reading an article to be a waste of time, which can't be said about a substandard academic paper.
I'm not aware that it has to be a competition, really. Wiki is good for what it's good for, and so are peer-review journals and the etc. Why the need to disparage either? I think our time might be better served trying to identify the strengths and pitfalls of each, and making the best use out of each one that we can! And I do apologize for giving the impression that Wikipedia is more reliable than a high-quality academic source - that's not something I'd claim, though I would say that it still does avoid the problem of institutional bias, and I will freely claim that it beats the tar out of the bad ones, at least!  :D -Faseidman 00:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Typical Wikipedian zealotry. You admit with no compunction that any given article may contain wrong information at any time. If that's the case, then how can we trust any article on Wikipedia? 192.91.171.42 19:44, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Because the chance of any inadvertent error is small, and vandals tend to be obvious to anyone with half a brain. You could ask how we could trust any other source of information; anyone could theoretically have written that journal article or other source you trust. You trust something when the errors are unlikely or obvious, because there’s no such thing as an 100% error-free perfectly trustwourthy source.
--193.11.177.69 21:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)\
To the original respondent - do you know how to use the little "history" tab on Wikipedia pages? The current page might be wrong at any given time, but usually, the correct information can be found somewhere in the history. Things like, say, the local news, might be wrong at any given time, too, but there's no way to go back into the records and look to see why a particular feature was run instead of another. (Hence, why I don't watch the local news for informational purposes anymore...)
Both Wikipedia-style vandalism and institutionalized bias represent sources of incorrect information. The difference between Wikipedia and things like the local news is that, as the person using 193.11.177.69 said, most Wikipedia vandalism is easy to identify and delete. Most institutionalized bias is deliberately very hard to identify, as well as very hard to remove from the places where it exists.
I might also point out that you're in violation of our civility guidelines with the words "typical Wikipedian zealotry". (Can anyone provide a link to those guidelines, btw? I don't know the Wikilink offhand...) That's not a debate point; that's an ad hominem attack which distracts from the actual points we're discussing by trying to attack my credibility instead of my argument's. Personally, I don't care - my skin is tougher than that, and I tend to think that when people can identify ad hominem attacks for what they are, it generally tends to hurt the credibility of the attacker, not the target - but I just want to make sure that people who haven't heard of it can identify it for what it is! Cheers... -Faseidman 00:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

"Personally, I don't care - my skin is tougher than that" Then why make mention of it?Chewbacca1010 21:32, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diabetic

Does Jerry actually have diabetes, or is that just Tycho? Where is the line to be drawn with their similarities? Gorman 01:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

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