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It would be nice if someone could explain the usage of "COTTONPICKEN" in the German and subsequently the translation. I'm not sure if that is intentional or if it has some other meaning in German, but it does seem to have vaguely racial undertones, at least in American culture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.227.130.5 ( talk) 09:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
The question asked in 2008 was to explain the origin of the term. I seconded the question and asked to clarify it in wiktionary, in "etymology section, where it happens to be. There is nothing to discuss in this talk page. Article talk pages are about improving article content, not for general discussions. - Altenmann >talk 18:22, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Blickenlights have a very long history in science fiction cinema and television. If memory serves, they really got rolling in the '50s. There were certainly earlier lit, blinking gauges before WWII! kencf0618 ( talk) 18:51, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
@
Altenmann Please explain the exchange of an very good explaining photo with an an extremely outdated picture.
Also there is nothing deleted at all, actually i did the opposite since i created an all new category at commons and put all blinkelight images into it. --
Angerdan (
talk) 19:48, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
@
Altenmann You didn't edit the article since 2016, so please follow the rules and don't start two editwars.
Actually you didn't even care 9 years about unreferenced content, so instead of deleting it just keep it and reference it. --
Angerdan (
talk) 19:53, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
Since the article (at least now) is clearly about the concept of computerised blinking lights and the eponymous semi-humorous term of blinkenlights, the famous blinkenlights poster and its variants would appear to only still be relevant insofar as they seem to have been the origin of the term. Hence why they are—correctly—located in the Etymology section. No complaints thus far.
However, it seems pretty off-topic to then also recount this niche fact
ESR saw fit to mention in his
Jargon File releases, which is that some Germans came up with their own (counter-)version of the poster. I don't dispute that the latter may have existed (tho I'd not put it past ESR either to maybe invent stuff for teh lulz), but I submit said version was never as famous, and I don't see how it's relevant to the etymology of the term. The inclusion of the full text of that non-famous version of the poster in the actual article seems even more off-topic, if not awkwardly needy and defensive, in a NO U!, right back atcha and notice me,
senpai! kind of way. I know nothing about the nationality of anyone involved, but seeing this made me wonder whether any of this was
home bias-driven. Looking at the article history, the Teutonic retort text was
added way back in 2007, apparently for humour – which I guess is fair enough, and I don't normally tend to side with Team Deletionism, but here at least this content seems to be asking (for) a
Clash (question). —
ReadOnlyAccount (
talk) 21:22, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
IMNSHO this article was neither improved, nor became more likely to get improved by anyone else through the addition of a second identical {{ or1}} template – added too, without any attendant talk as to what ailed the editor. — ReadOnlyAccount ( talk) 21:40, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
Further to the edit summary on my most recent revert, I actually think the blinkenlights article could do with a history section – in addition to its existing Etymology section. A history section might be focussed on the history of computerised blinking lights, and could lead up to the present day, where many a blinking light UI has evolved into no longer just monochromatic but colour-changing LEDs, powered by ever-cheaper driver ICs and PWM. That's becoming more common. — ReadOnlyAccount ( talk) 14:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
I note, as per the hatnote on this article, there already is a separate article for the aforementioned
Project Blinkenlights, so that ground, though adjacent, need not be covered here.
I also realise however that a distinction could (but IMHO need not necessarily strictly and strongly) here be drawn between the thing itself ([computerised/electronic] blinking lights) and the term for it (blinkenlights). If it turned out that a broad consensus were to emerge for rewriting and renaming this into a (lamer) blinking lights article in generic non-hacker NPC luser terminology, then I would not oppose such a change, however I believe the hacker jargon term still at least ought to redirect and be included too, along with its etymology. That said, coverage of the term's etymology and memetic hacker humour origins need not be overegged to the point of off-topicness, as it presently still is; see the above sections. Note by the way that the normie comprehensibility of the term blinkenlights is greatly enhanced by its being near-homophonous with blinking lights. PS: I wonder if blinkenlights has yet entered the OED. Not that that's the be all and end all, but is someone in a position to check real quick? —
ReadOnlyAccount (
talk) 14:45, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
The inclusion of an autoplaying animated GIF in the Actual blinkenlights section, while not unique to this article, is distracting and IMNSHO worthy of criticism, here and wherever else like GIFs are found in article space. Is there a way to change animating GIFs to be click-through instead of autoplaying? (If not, then isn't that a feature MediaWiki maybe should have? Who do I kvetch to?) — ReadOnlyAccount ( talk) 15:24, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
The summary justification for
this edit (or
these two) strikes me as sophistry, no offence, because computerised blinking lights (or "blinkenlights", to use the titular eponymous jargon) are the enabling constituent technology front panels comprise; hence the
pars pro toto phrasing of this
metonymic usage is perfectly cromulent style in my book. I don't see what's wrong with it, and I certainly fail to see why this language should attract the accusation of being a "false and misleading statement".
Given the battle lines already drawn on this Talk page, above, it's difficult for me to not get the sneaking suspicion that this was just an excuse to delete explanatory prose from the lede that might have a bearing on the direction of the article. I'm not going to revert this myself, because that to me would feel too close to edit warring, but I would urge other Wikipedians to take a look and consider these points. —
ReadOnlyAccount (
talk) 14:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
This article was nominated for deletion on 9 October 2010 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep. |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
It would be nice if someone could explain the usage of "COTTONPICKEN" in the German and subsequently the translation. I'm not sure if that is intentional or if it has some other meaning in German, but it does seem to have vaguely racial undertones, at least in American culture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.227.130.5 ( talk) 09:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
The question asked in 2008 was to explain the origin of the term. I seconded the question and asked to clarify it in wiktionary, in "etymology section, where it happens to be. There is nothing to discuss in this talk page. Article talk pages are about improving article content, not for general discussions. - Altenmann >talk 18:22, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Blickenlights have a very long history in science fiction cinema and television. If memory serves, they really got rolling in the '50s. There were certainly earlier lit, blinking gauges before WWII! kencf0618 ( talk) 18:51, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
@
Altenmann Please explain the exchange of an very good explaining photo with an an extremely outdated picture.
Also there is nothing deleted at all, actually i did the opposite since i created an all new category at commons and put all blinkelight images into it. --
Angerdan (
talk) 19:48, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
@
Altenmann You didn't edit the article since 2016, so please follow the rules and don't start two editwars.
Actually you didn't even care 9 years about unreferenced content, so instead of deleting it just keep it and reference it. --
Angerdan (
talk) 19:53, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
Since the article (at least now) is clearly about the concept of computerised blinking lights and the eponymous semi-humorous term of blinkenlights, the famous blinkenlights poster and its variants would appear to only still be relevant insofar as they seem to have been the origin of the term. Hence why they are—correctly—located in the Etymology section. No complaints thus far.
However, it seems pretty off-topic to then also recount this niche fact
ESR saw fit to mention in his
Jargon File releases, which is that some Germans came up with their own (counter-)version of the poster. I don't dispute that the latter may have existed (tho I'd not put it past ESR either to maybe invent stuff for teh lulz), but I submit said version was never as famous, and I don't see how it's relevant to the etymology of the term. The inclusion of the full text of that non-famous version of the poster in the actual article seems even more off-topic, if not awkwardly needy and defensive, in a NO U!, right back atcha and notice me,
senpai! kind of way. I know nothing about the nationality of anyone involved, but seeing this made me wonder whether any of this was
home bias-driven. Looking at the article history, the Teutonic retort text was
added way back in 2007, apparently for humour – which I guess is fair enough, and I don't normally tend to side with Team Deletionism, but here at least this content seems to be asking (for) a
Clash (question). —
ReadOnlyAccount (
talk) 21:22, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
IMNSHO this article was neither improved, nor became more likely to get improved by anyone else through the addition of a second identical {{ or1}} template – added too, without any attendant talk as to what ailed the editor. — ReadOnlyAccount ( talk) 21:40, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
Further to the edit summary on my most recent revert, I actually think the blinkenlights article could do with a history section – in addition to its existing Etymology section. A history section might be focussed on the history of computerised blinking lights, and could lead up to the present day, where many a blinking light UI has evolved into no longer just monochromatic but colour-changing LEDs, powered by ever-cheaper driver ICs and PWM. That's becoming more common. — ReadOnlyAccount ( talk) 14:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
I note, as per the hatnote on this article, there already is a separate article for the aforementioned
Project Blinkenlights, so that ground, though adjacent, need not be covered here.
I also realise however that a distinction could (but IMHO need not necessarily strictly and strongly) here be drawn between the thing itself ([computerised/electronic] blinking lights) and the term for it (blinkenlights). If it turned out that a broad consensus were to emerge for rewriting and renaming this into a (lamer) blinking lights article in generic non-hacker NPC luser terminology, then I would not oppose such a change, however I believe the hacker jargon term still at least ought to redirect and be included too, along with its etymology. That said, coverage of the term's etymology and memetic hacker humour origins need not be overegged to the point of off-topicness, as it presently still is; see the above sections. Note by the way that the normie comprehensibility of the term blinkenlights is greatly enhanced by its being near-homophonous with blinking lights. PS: I wonder if blinkenlights has yet entered the OED. Not that that's the be all and end all, but is someone in a position to check real quick? —
ReadOnlyAccount (
talk) 14:45, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
The inclusion of an autoplaying animated GIF in the Actual blinkenlights section, while not unique to this article, is distracting and IMNSHO worthy of criticism, here and wherever else like GIFs are found in article space. Is there a way to change animating GIFs to be click-through instead of autoplaying? (If not, then isn't that a feature MediaWiki maybe should have? Who do I kvetch to?) — ReadOnlyAccount ( talk) 15:24, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
The summary justification for
this edit (or
these two) strikes me as sophistry, no offence, because computerised blinking lights (or "blinkenlights", to use the titular eponymous jargon) are the enabling constituent technology front panels comprise; hence the
pars pro toto phrasing of this
metonymic usage is perfectly cromulent style in my book. I don't see what's wrong with it, and I certainly fail to see why this language should attract the accusation of being a "false and misleading statement".
Given the battle lines already drawn on this Talk page, above, it's difficult for me to not get the sneaking suspicion that this was just an excuse to delete explanatory prose from the lede that might have a bearing on the direction of the article. I'm not going to revert this myself, because that to me would feel too close to edit warring, but I would urge other Wikipedians to take a look and consider these points. —
ReadOnlyAccount (
talk) 14:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)