User:Auto movil
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From Ichthypedia, the Fish's own Godey's Ladies' Book.
Nothing here but us Popeyes. Ag-ag-ag-ag! [Proceed to the Talk Page.]
Some articles written or top-to-bottom reworked:
Inter alia, and if you'd like to hear a good one while I pour us up some tea, 'Oceanic Whitetip Shark' was leveled in an x-tr33m holy-crap carpet bombing after I self-nominated it as a featured article candidate last summer. (Lesson learned: Run silent; run deep.) The above link leads to the cratered and debris-strewn version, now abandoned by all decent people and myself.
The most startling thing at first was the redundancies that started peppering the article, such as one phrase that appeared in the first graf, "It is named after both its oceanic habitat (living in deep waters), and the white tips on its fins." It's also a shark, btw. Put it all together, and you get an Oceanic Whitetip Shark. I stared at the new phrase for a few moments, checked the prior version for any ambiguities, ocean- and tipwise, and imagined a ten-year-old at some far keyboard jolted into gleeful attention, waving his arms and crowing, "I know why it's called that! It's because of the ocean and the fins!" and typing the addition right up-top where everbody could see it.
But what actually happens when you boost an article into the potential-featured arena, or otherwise call public notice to it, is that dozens of intelligent people start skimming it looking for any detail that might confound the universal, hypothetical 'reader' of college writing classes and provincial newspaper desks — that ever-restless cipher who 'doesn't understand' things, and who's liable to throw his paper down in a huff unless each idea is a simple declarative that comes boinging out of the text like a comedy snake from a peanut-brittle can.
Nobody really is that reader (because boobs that dense don't read), but a lot of people internalize him when editing. He's supposed to grow quickly bored by writing that unfolds gradually or in stages, but also to be frustrated at unfamiliar locutions or quick tonal shifts. Humor and metaphor put him in a bad mood, while truisms sing to his ears like gentle rain. In short, many people learn to exorcise qualities from the writing that they're called upon to judge, that they'd ordinarily find interesting or engaging — while suggesting changes that they know, intellectually and aesthetically, to be dumb. I don't mean you; I mean that guy over there. Although I sometimes catch myself doing it as well.
One hastens to interject that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is named after both Texas (taking place in the southern US), and also a massacre shown in the film using a chainsaw. According to many, salad tongs are named both after their being tongs and also for their role in tonging salad. And so, down that route in a handbasket, went the shark article.
The most gainful stylistic improvement to the article was this one: "The species name longimanus translates from Latin as 'long hands' due to the shape of its pectoral fins." This was evidently written by a fan of 1920s Yiddish theatre, since its notion of 'because' so closely parallels the old corker,
Schlemiel: Close the door; it's cold outside!
Schlimazel: So if I close the door, it'll be warm outside?
Oy. Rimshot. Seltzer bottles. It occurred that I could play that game as well, querying the writer, "So if the fins were about medium-sized, the Latin word, longimanus, would translate as 'ordinary hands?'" But I'd nominated the article in the first place, and rather than be an ingrate, I decided to let the process guide itself.
Eventually the process began to attract another common sort of troublesome editor — the piler-on of irrelevant detail. Carefully-worked text began to be split up and shuffled to make way for blocs such as this one:
"Its non-English common names include apoapo (Samoan), cazón (Spanish), galano (Spanish), galha branca (Portuguese), Hochsee-Weißspitzenhai (German), ikan yu (Malay), köpek baligi (Turkish), marracho (Portuguese), marracho oceánico (Portuguese), marracho-de-pontas-brancas (Portuguese), oceanische witpunthaai (Dutch), opesee-wittiphaai (Afrikaans), parata (Tahitian), patíng (Tagalog), rameur (French), requin à aileron blanc (French), requin blanc (French), requin canal (French), squala alalunga (Italian), tiburon oceanico (Spanish), valkopilkkahai (Finnish), weißspitzenhai (German), yeshalifes (Carolinian), yogore (Japanese), and zarlacz bialopletwy (Polish)."
This speaks, I think, to the distinction between information and data. Some other additions were pretty good, but I conceded defeat, withdrawing the article on Zarlacz Bialopletwy (or Cazón) from consideration. And that's how old Auto Movil became a grouchy get-off-my-lawn crankpot with bushy gray eyebrows, chez Wiki.
In any case, the original Oceanic Whitetip article looked like this:[[1]].
Now you see what I mean. That was a cranking, well-tempered little 1911 Britannica dealie there, wasn't it? Someday I'll try another one like it. Never, friend, allow anything to be nominated as a featured article unless you're happy to watch quietly whilst a hundred people set it on fire and bounce the flames out with steel-tipped pogo sticks. I'm not saying it was perfect. Here's your tea.
There are also lots of food articles and a bunch more on marine life, and on alchemical stuff and quirky products such as Clamato, and I forget what else.
There's also the ever-popular shit, with its dwarf polar twin shinola. To discuss, please feel free to swing by the uniquely-aptly-named Wiki page, talk:shit.
Best (and get off my lawn, you kids), -Moto Oval, the friendly goblin that lives in the trash can
