Talk:Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
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[edit] Her Little Friends
In this article it says there is a dispute over whether or not Virginia acutally wrote the letter to the editor, simply becuase they don't believe Virginia would say something like "my little friends". I completey disagree, you see, Virginia had the spirit of christmas, and she believed in Santa Clause, but her "little friends" (small-minded, in her view), shot her down and told her there was no santa clause. Virginia was talking about how lame she thought her friends were for saying that, not how old they were...come on, of course virginia wrote that, and yes, Virginia looks down upon her little friends.
[edit] External Link
Why was the source text replaced with an external link?
Because source text posted directly into wikipedia is editable, which casts doubt on the reliability of the source text even if it hasn't been noticeably edited. Plus, souce material isn't something that's supposed to be in an encyclopedia, encyclopedias are about this sort of thing rather than containing this sort of thing. Bryan Derksen, Wednesday, April 17, 2002
- Fair enough. I can see your concerns, but I'm not sure I agree with them. Since everything here is edittable, I could go and amend Wales, to read "a small island off the coast of Spain", and it wouldn't be a compelling reason to define Wales using an external link. If we treat any alteration of "historical" source as vandalism, is there a compelling reason to omit them? As to your second concern, well m:Wiki is not paper. I've no desire to duplicate Project Gutenberg, but I think (short) texts like this and A Modest Proposal are valuable here. I'm going to ask about general policy on such matters on the Wikipedia mailing list and see what the consensus is.-- User:GWO
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- Well, there is a significant difference between editing what the Wikipedia article on Wales says and what some quoted source material says. In the case of a Wikipedia article, there's an implied "The various random yahoos who edit Wikipedia say" at the beginning, whereas at the beginning of (for example) A Modest Proposal there's an explicit "Jonathan Swift himself, and Jonathan Swift alone, said." It's a lot worse if the latter gets modified than the former, since for the former it's expected as a normal part of how Wikipedia works but for the latter it turns the article into an outright lie. There's already been a fair amount of discussion on this matter, see Talk:WikiBiblion, Talk:William Shakespeare, Talk:The Origin of Species, Talk:Rambouillet Agreement Bryan Derksen, Wednesday, April 17, 2002
I must agree with Bryan here; without comment and/or annotation source material is just about useless in a wiki. Better to have a link to some static text -- then, at least, the reader can be reasonably sure that the text hasn't been changed. Of course, if wikipedia obtains the ability to display static non-wiki editable text then that will be a different story (I submitted a wikipedia feature request for this some time ago). --maveric149
There's nothing wrong with having an article which is entirely about some short saying. But I would like the title to be shorter than the entire text of the saying. Perhaps There is a Santa Claus for the old Sun's response to the little girl's letter: "Papa says if you see it in The Sun, it's so." Ed Poor
- I have never heard this piece identified without the first two words. Better we should move it to "Yes, Virginia", or better yet, leave it where it is. - Montréalais
[edit] Is this true?
"While this TV special very loosely based on the facts has been largely forgotten and has not attained the legendary status of Backus' Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol, it is still seen as one of the rare gems of television that can touch a viewer's heart."
Is this true? This is the first time I have ever heard of "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol", but here in Australia, the "Yes, Virginia" animated TV special is broadcast regularly.
- First I've heard of it, too. Methinks it's a joke.--Cmdroverbite 16:15, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
I changed the opening line. The headline above the original editorial read simply "Is There A Santa Claus", not "Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus" as was previously posted. That famous catchphrase was in the editorial itself, not in the the headline. Subsequent reprintings have often used that phrase in the headline, but the original did not.
[edit] Virginia
Does anyone know what happened to Virginia during the rest of her life? That would be a good addition to the article. Academic Challenger 01:40, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Vandalism
Recent vandalism (replacement of the name Virginia with "Vagina" throughout the article) has been removed.
