Talk:Sturgeon's law

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There is a science fiction story called 90% of Everything by ???. --Anon

I heard once of a supposed corollary: 99% [sic] of everything on the internet is crud... -~~

That should be 99.999999679998654% of everything on the internet....87.194.30.174 (talk) 00:23, 18 May 2008 (UTC)


If memory serves me correctly, Harlan Ellison wrote in Again, Dangerous Visions that Sturgeon's original quote contained the word "crap:" a reporter asked him, "Mr. Sturgeon, isn't it true that 90 per cent of science fiction is crap?" "Sure, 90 per cent of science fiction is crap. But then, 90 per cent of everything is crap." (Perhaps someone who owns the book could confirm this?) -- HarmonicSphere)

The contents of the entry seem to be a word for word copy of the definition in the Jargon File (http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/Sturgeons-Law.html) Is this ok?


  • Not only is 90% of everything crap, 90% of the applications of Sturgeon's Law are crap. "Know Sturgeon's Law. Apply it recursively." DS 17:29, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

DS is on to something I myself have noticed. Sturgeon's Law/Revelation, if true, leads to paradox. It only applies in 10 percent of cases!Smiloid

This article begins by stating "[Sturgeon's law] is sometimes confused with Sturgeon's Revelation: 'Ninety percent of everything is crud.'" then goes on to mainly discuss the revelation, and confuse it with the law. Maybe the page should be re-named? (I'm not sure how to go about doing that myself.)

       --AliasXIII

Most modern uses of the term "Sturgeon's Law" are definitely referring to the statement that "90% of everything is (crud|crap)". The OED lists that definition now, too: "A humorous aphorism which maintains that most of any body of published material, knowledge, etc., or (more generally) of everything is worthless: based on a statement by Sturgeon (see quot. 1958), usually later cited as ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’." (OED as of 2005-12-14, notated as "draft entry June 2004").

I've quickly noted this at the top of the article, but some further restructuring is probably in order. Perhaps a section talking about the origins of the term in the Revelation but the bulk of the article using it unambiguously? --Dyfrgi 22:15, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Law / Revelation controversy

There's clearly some controversy as to whether the name Sturgeon's Law should be used for the "90% ..." observation. Equally clearly, this article as it stood was taking the side that it shouldn't.

I've rephrased it to be less outspoken. While the distinction between Sturgeon's Law and Revelation is an important one, and it is important to have a separate name for each, the fact that what most people who have heard the term understand as Sturgeon's Law is actually the Revelation is an important one that we shouldn't just dismiss out of hand. To do so violates NPOV.

I've changed it to say that it is 'more correct' to call this observation the Revelation. The article then continues discussing it using that name. I think this statement is justified, as this is clearly the name Sturgeon himself used to refer to it. But to imply that it is wrong to call it Sturgeon's Law flies in the face of the common usage, which in questions of language and naming is generally the wrong thing to do. JulesH 15:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalization

This article is named "Sturgeon's law" (lower-case l), but the article text consistently uses "Sturgeon's Law" (upper-case l) as well as "Sturgeon's Revelation" (upper-case r). Which is it? Should the article be renamed or the text changed? By the way, Sturgeon's Law already redirects to Sturgeon's law. Ehn 11:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

It should Sturgeon's Law.
Knowing that common nouns should not be capitalised in article titles, some Wikipedians will hypercorrect by failing to capitalise those nouns in article titles that generally are common nouns but in this instance are proper nouns. It looks to me like that's what's happened here. Binabik80 17:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
On the other hand, the list of scientific laws named after people consistently uses lower-case l. Why should this be different? Ehn 14:44, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sturgeon's Law with respect to WP:FAC

Some have suggested that Sturgeon's Law applies well to the featured article process on Wikipedia, as 90% of articles don't make it. Is this notable for inclusion in the article? — Scm83x talk 03:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

That would probably be a violation of Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, specifically "While we're often inclined to mention the Wikipedia community that we are all part of, as well as the website features we use in creating the articles, these confuse readers of derivative works. In particular, do not refer to the fact that the page can be edited, do not refer to any Wikipedia project page or process, do not use specialized Wikipedia jargon (e.g. "POV" in place of "biased"), and do not refer to any link in the sidebar or along the top of the screen, such as the talk page, What links here, or history. Remember, articles are part of an encyclopedia, not part of the Wikipedia project being used to create them." The 'Featured Article' process wouldn't mean much to a non-Wikipedian. Ziggurat 03:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. A "no" and link would have sufficed. We're not all newbies ;-) at least not anymore... — Scm83x talk 04:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Heh, sorry. I do tend to overexplain things. It all dates back to that time twelve years ago when... ;) Ziggurat 19:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bell curve?

"If there is any difference in "desirability", the bell curve of a normal distribution predicts that most experiences will involve average desirability, with roughly equal occurrences of excellence and gross inadequacy." I disagree: I think it would tend to follow a Pareto distribution with 20% of the books in a genre accounting for 80% of the worthiness of the genre as a whole. I think this is probably closer to what Sturgeon had in mind. NeonMerlin 15:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Explanation of the Law

Even if there is no redirect, an explanation of the Law as opposed to the Revelation should be present. Notably, does "nothing" mean "there does not exist such an entity" or "the entity of nothingness"?


[edit] Application

Is it worth writing nine crap novels to force some-one to write a good one?

[edit] Changed Revelation -> Law

I went ahead and rewrote parts of the article from the point of view that it is almost always the "90%" meaning that is intended nowadays when people use "Sturgeon's Law". I left in the information about Sturgeon saying that originally the phrase meant "Nothing is always absolutely so", but that hasn't gained any traction as an adage and I think that it is now of historical interest only. Mike Christie (talk) 10:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted Justification section

I deleted the following text from the article, as it lacked references, states speculation as fact and reeks of original research. If anyone disagrees please tell me why. Pyreforge 09:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Justifying Sturgeon's Law

If there is any difference in "desirability", the bell curve of a normal distribution predicts that most experiences will involve average desirability, with roughly equal occurrences of excellence and gross inadequacy. Sturgeon's Law is an observation that once humans are exposed to excellence, mere average desirability is disappointing.[citation needed] The more proper formulation might be something like "80% of everything is crud, and 10% of everything is crap." If one either defines crud to include crap, or else defines excellence and crap to each be about 5% of all experiences, then "90% of everything is crud" would be true.[citation needed]

However, most human affair involving individual participation do not follow a normal curve, but rather a Pareto distribution, where 20% of the individuals are responsible for 80% of the activity--however defined.

[edit] Alternative phrasing

Sturgeon's Law is often cited using crap or shit instead of crud but "shit" is more commonly used.

Conclusion: Approximately 41.8 percent of the above sentence is crap. —phh (t/c) 17:39, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Corollaries

The second corollary ("Except crap. One hundred percent of crap is crap.") is an exception, not a corollary. I'm not sure if the first one needs to be there either, but the second one is just incorrect. --206.248.165.237 (talk) 03:57, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

On second thought, since the first "corollary" is described in the interpretation section, I've removed the section altogether. Here is the edit if this needs to be un-done: [1]. --206.248.165.237 (talk) 04:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)