I've added some descriptions to FPS gaming items on the list. Anything on the list should be describing why such-and-such should/would be considered canon, so readers can get a feel for what makes something canon. It would be nice to get examples that describe the various reasons something can be considered, so we don't just repeat the same reasons for every item.
For example, I stated in one of my descriptions that being the first in a genre or causing a mod community to spring up were causes for a game to be considered canon, but this could be factored out to the main discussion.
I think the main discussion could be rewritten, as it rambles on a bit.
—Daelin, 2004–10–16, 09:26 EDT
If we're going to include a list, the article shouldn't try to list every item that could be within the canon. It should instead focus on either 1) items most any geek should at least be aware of/have exposure to, and/or 2) critical items for specialized topic geeks. e.g., I'd argue any geek should be aware of and have some knowledge of the details of, even if they've never read/played: Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland, the Jabberwocky poem, Dungeons and Dragons, and Doom. These are critical works in their genres, which shaped all following works, and are still redeemable today. Things get fuzzier when you get even as far as The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Do we include The Church of the Subgenius™?
On the other hand due to its nature, this list would be pretty damned boring if it didn't include more fringe stuff than not. Suggestions? -- Daelin 00:35, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
I find that the style of this article is rather refreshing, but there is no mention or analysis of sources within the text or at the bottom of the article, with some exceptions like the paragraph on the Lensman series and a short mention of why Neuromancer is important. Without the sources this article and its talk page become a discussion between geeks or between geek observers, which is something very far from the nature of an encyclopedic entry. In other words, you have to state why a particular work gets into the canon. This article sometimes goes towards that but stops short. For instance, the Lensman series by "doc" Smith is mentioned. But why that particular series of books and not others? A good foundation is Levy's book Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution (I am placing the ref at the bottom) which mentions the importance of that series in the 1950s at MIT, a traditional home of modern geekdom. Does an article in Wired on a particular item of geek canon mean that it should be included or is it the reverse since Wired is often very late in getting some things. This should probably get a mini-analysis. Is blog activity an arbiter of inclusion in the canon? Why? There are other categories of sources: Some elements of the geek canon might be too fluid to be in books, so then you count the Web sites and discuss this with other elements. Etc, etc. AlainV 06:46, 2004 May 9 (UTC)
Would things like comic books, manga, and hobby games fall in to the geek canon? I would think fantasy is as popular among geeks as science-fiction is (LOTR, specifically)
Novels
Video Games
Movies
Television
Nonfiction
Magazines
Websites
Software
I did a somewhat substantial rewrite, although there's still more work needed. Some commentary on the reasoning behind it:
Hi, I'm from Third Opinion, and this article was listed there three days ago. Has the argument cleared up or is my opinion still valueable? — Mac Davis] ( talk) ( Desk| Help me improve)
This article is mostly unsourced right now, which is fine for the frontiers of Wikipedia, except that makes it very tempting to add in your own ideas and favorites. I think that there is something valid to have an article here for- someone referencing Lord of the Rings or quoting The Princess Bride will definitely be immediately understood, and a list of the works that do that is reasonable. That said, to be canon there is an extremely high standard that must be reached. It either must be incredibly popular, or else was so foundational that everything afterward to some extent incorporated it. We're talking stuff on the level of Star Trek here.
I mention this because I recently reverted the second addition of this passage (along with WP:PEACOCK words on LotR):
The header of the article clearly lays out what is supposed to be done here. This is about works that are fundamental to a culture, the kind of things so commonly referenced that you need say but one sentence and everyone knows what you're talking about. If only a few "exclusive" geeks like it, it can't possibly be "canon"!
Here's a proposed guideline: If there is not a substantial Wikipedia article to link to, it's probably not geek canon, considering the number of geeks on the Internet and Wikipedia. That said, I think this article needs to be actually whipped into shape. Sources won't be easy to come by, but surely someone's done some kind of sociological study. Anyone feel up for looking? SnowFire 03:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I think both Giger, Martin Bigum and Tolkien has the right to be part of the Canon. Geeks are more than computer geeks. It's a culture concerned with fantasy, science fiction, roleplaying games, video games and comic books. (Comment added by User:Konzack - SF)
H. R. Giger is well-known. So is Tolkien. If you are not familiar with these two artists you are not part of geek culture, trust me. Trust me they spawned some imitators. Martin Bigum on the other hand is explicitly defined as very special, but it is still part of the comic book geek culture.
And you do not just erase what other people write.
That's the point!
Btw. Escher isn't all that popular among geeks. But alright I've seen some Escher fans out there among the geek culture. Not anything compared to Giger fans though. After all he designed the alien in Alien (film).
User: Konzack, August 23, 2006.
Please note:
First of all I agree that it need to be backed up. I will get back to that when all the other contributions cites their sources.
Yes, Tolkien is mentioned several times because he is important. But not his books, which was odd. Tolkien have influenced geek culture on every level. That is why he is so important. Giger is not just horror.
When editing one should try to make the best of it, not just erase what one does not like.
Read: Wikipedia:Resolving disputes
Konzack 23 August 2006
Just to clarify in case someone stops by for the third opinion, User:62.107.111.117 is a not signed in Konzack, so this debate is still between two people.
Let me stress again that this is not even remotely a "comic book geeks" type thing. Comic book geeks are crazily dedicated to Wikipedia- check out the extensively edited articles on random comic book characters no one has ever heard of over at Category:Comics some time. A legitimately well-known artist such as Jack Kirby has a large and well-done article with a fair amount of edits. Martin Bigum's article has a grand total of 3 edits, two by you, and the other by a formatting bot! Bigum has 11,500 Google hits. Teddy Kristiansen is also a minor Danish comics artist, but his article stub has edits by 8 different people, seemingly. He has 44,500 Google hits. Does Teddy Kristiansen get in as well? Or is Bigum the best kept secret fandom ever? (By the way, I was wrong above; I misread Bigum by an order of magnitude. "M.C. Escher" has 148 times as many hits as "Martin Bigum", not 14 times as I said before; it gets even worse if you just search for "Escher."
If you want to add something, then defend it. I don't like revert wars either, but I have posted detailed explanations as to why I'm doing this here. Surely you can defend your choices better than just telling me that I shouldn't delete things? SnowFire 02:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Not to be too snappy, but I'd recommend checking the reversions that have been going on for some time here, or the previous discussion. That's not quite it.
If this article is just a "add fandoms you like" article, then it is more appropriate for a forum somewhere, and we can put this up for AfD. SnowFire 20:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
It still provokes me that you just erased what you did not like. Ok, let's forget mr. Bigum even though he is quite interesting from a geek cultural point of view. Anyway, let us move forward. I think you are right when I say that Tolkien needs more attention. Because his way of thinking subcreation has influenced geek culture on different levels from movies to videogames. H. R. Giger is still important not just because he made the Alien, but because he made Necronomicon paintings and bio-technological art. He is admittedly much more accepted and respected in European geek culture than in American geek culture. Please read: * Geek Culture: The 3rd Counter-Culture Konzack 27 August 2006
Got this quote from Richard Bartle:
“The single most important influence on virtual worlds from fiction is J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Although it would be of huge significance merely for having established the genre of High Fantasy, its ultimate worth lies in its depiction of an imagined world. It's not the particular world it describes that is momentous (although Middle-earth is indeed classic source material for people writing new text-based games); rather, it's that creating a fully realized, make-believe world was shown to be actually possible. Prior to The Lord of the Rings, worlds of such depth were practically unknown”
Bartle, Richard (2004): Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders Publishing, p. 61-2
Konzack 28 August 2006
There is one thing that I'm unclear, why is Buffy the Vampire Slayer in quotes while the other stuff in the list is in italics? Illadar 05:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Frankly, this whole subsection is full of BS. It says that sites like Google, YouTube, and Myspace used to be popular with geeks, but that geeks now avoid them because they are too mainstream. As far as I know, Geeks have hated Myspace since day one (I know I hated it long before it was mainstream) and I know for a fact that many geeks frequent youtube and Google. In matter of fact among many geeks, Google is considered the corporation of geekdom--one to be lauded, not scorned. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.168.96.230 ( talk) 06:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC).
Let's get some cites pronto or a call for deletion is in order... 209.148.118.3 16:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm just a random reader, but why hasn't this page been killed yet? It's unencyclopedic, unsourced, and generally sloppy. While this is an interesting subject for discussion and could make some fantastic articles I don't believe that it's right for here. Not to mention that some of the entries can be highly debateable.
Firstly the quality of the information here is close to first rate, if not first rate. There doesn't appear to be any 'spare' items in the entries, the article doesn't appear to be in danger of having people add 'personal favourites' as the lists are quite lean, some having only two or three items/authors. As to the accusation towards original research I'm fairly certain that many many sources can be found and I will in fact commit myself to finding them, because I am just so sick and tired of good articles getting extermined by the wikipolice who DON'T HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUBJECT THEY ARE EDITTING. -- I 14:48, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
From NeonMerlin:
Mm. I didn't delete it, obviously; I redirected it, and nicely put a reminder over at Talk:Geek. If you want to make an effort to source this article, then great, but basically none of the current sources are any good (the only one on point is from Mr. Konzack above, and it's awful.). Ideally we want sources that don't just praise an item, but rather confirm that it's strongly referenced in a geek subculture. If these sources don't come along soon, I unfortunately will nom it for AfD, and I don't think it'll survive if the comments above are any indication. SnowFire 00:49, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I've added some descriptions to FPS gaming items on the list. Anything on the list should be describing why such-and-such should/would be considered canon, so readers can get a feel for what makes something canon. It would be nice to get examples that describe the various reasons something can be considered, so we don't just repeat the same reasons for every item.
For example, I stated in one of my descriptions that being the first in a genre or causing a mod community to spring up were causes for a game to be considered canon, but this could be factored out to the main discussion.
I think the main discussion could be rewritten, as it rambles on a bit.
—Daelin, 2004–10–16, 09:26 EDT
If we're going to include a list, the article shouldn't try to list every item that could be within the canon. It should instead focus on either 1) items most any geek should at least be aware of/have exposure to, and/or 2) critical items for specialized topic geeks. e.g., I'd argue any geek should be aware of and have some knowledge of the details of, even if they've never read/played: Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland, the Jabberwocky poem, Dungeons and Dragons, and Doom. These are critical works in their genres, which shaped all following works, and are still redeemable today. Things get fuzzier when you get even as far as The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Do we include The Church of the Subgenius™?
On the other hand due to its nature, this list would be pretty damned boring if it didn't include more fringe stuff than not. Suggestions? -- Daelin 00:35, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
I find that the style of this article is rather refreshing, but there is no mention or analysis of sources within the text or at the bottom of the article, with some exceptions like the paragraph on the Lensman series and a short mention of why Neuromancer is important. Without the sources this article and its talk page become a discussion between geeks or between geek observers, which is something very far from the nature of an encyclopedic entry. In other words, you have to state why a particular work gets into the canon. This article sometimes goes towards that but stops short. For instance, the Lensman series by "doc" Smith is mentioned. But why that particular series of books and not others? A good foundation is Levy's book Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution (I am placing the ref at the bottom) which mentions the importance of that series in the 1950s at MIT, a traditional home of modern geekdom. Does an article in Wired on a particular item of geek canon mean that it should be included or is it the reverse since Wired is often very late in getting some things. This should probably get a mini-analysis. Is blog activity an arbiter of inclusion in the canon? Why? There are other categories of sources: Some elements of the geek canon might be too fluid to be in books, so then you count the Web sites and discuss this with other elements. Etc, etc. AlainV 06:46, 2004 May 9 (UTC)
Would things like comic books, manga, and hobby games fall in to the geek canon? I would think fantasy is as popular among geeks as science-fiction is (LOTR, specifically)
Novels
Video Games
Movies
Television
Nonfiction
Magazines
Websites
Software
I did a somewhat substantial rewrite, although there's still more work needed. Some commentary on the reasoning behind it:
Hi, I'm from Third Opinion, and this article was listed there three days ago. Has the argument cleared up or is my opinion still valueable? — Mac Davis] ( talk) ( Desk| Help me improve)
This article is mostly unsourced right now, which is fine for the frontiers of Wikipedia, except that makes it very tempting to add in your own ideas and favorites. I think that there is something valid to have an article here for- someone referencing Lord of the Rings or quoting The Princess Bride will definitely be immediately understood, and a list of the works that do that is reasonable. That said, to be canon there is an extremely high standard that must be reached. It either must be incredibly popular, or else was so foundational that everything afterward to some extent incorporated it. We're talking stuff on the level of Star Trek here.
I mention this because I recently reverted the second addition of this passage (along with WP:PEACOCK words on LotR):
The header of the article clearly lays out what is supposed to be done here. This is about works that are fundamental to a culture, the kind of things so commonly referenced that you need say but one sentence and everyone knows what you're talking about. If only a few "exclusive" geeks like it, it can't possibly be "canon"!
Here's a proposed guideline: If there is not a substantial Wikipedia article to link to, it's probably not geek canon, considering the number of geeks on the Internet and Wikipedia. That said, I think this article needs to be actually whipped into shape. Sources won't be easy to come by, but surely someone's done some kind of sociological study. Anyone feel up for looking? SnowFire 03:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I think both Giger, Martin Bigum and Tolkien has the right to be part of the Canon. Geeks are more than computer geeks. It's a culture concerned with fantasy, science fiction, roleplaying games, video games and comic books. (Comment added by User:Konzack - SF)
H. R. Giger is well-known. So is Tolkien. If you are not familiar with these two artists you are not part of geek culture, trust me. Trust me they spawned some imitators. Martin Bigum on the other hand is explicitly defined as very special, but it is still part of the comic book geek culture.
And you do not just erase what other people write.
That's the point!
Btw. Escher isn't all that popular among geeks. But alright I've seen some Escher fans out there among the geek culture. Not anything compared to Giger fans though. After all he designed the alien in Alien (film).
User: Konzack, August 23, 2006.
Please note:
First of all I agree that it need to be backed up. I will get back to that when all the other contributions cites their sources.
Yes, Tolkien is mentioned several times because he is important. But not his books, which was odd. Tolkien have influenced geek culture on every level. That is why he is so important. Giger is not just horror.
When editing one should try to make the best of it, not just erase what one does not like.
Read: Wikipedia:Resolving disputes
Konzack 23 August 2006
Just to clarify in case someone stops by for the third opinion, User:62.107.111.117 is a not signed in Konzack, so this debate is still between two people.
Let me stress again that this is not even remotely a "comic book geeks" type thing. Comic book geeks are crazily dedicated to Wikipedia- check out the extensively edited articles on random comic book characters no one has ever heard of over at Category:Comics some time. A legitimately well-known artist such as Jack Kirby has a large and well-done article with a fair amount of edits. Martin Bigum's article has a grand total of 3 edits, two by you, and the other by a formatting bot! Bigum has 11,500 Google hits. Teddy Kristiansen is also a minor Danish comics artist, but his article stub has edits by 8 different people, seemingly. He has 44,500 Google hits. Does Teddy Kristiansen get in as well? Or is Bigum the best kept secret fandom ever? (By the way, I was wrong above; I misread Bigum by an order of magnitude. "M.C. Escher" has 148 times as many hits as "Martin Bigum", not 14 times as I said before; it gets even worse if you just search for "Escher."
If you want to add something, then defend it. I don't like revert wars either, but I have posted detailed explanations as to why I'm doing this here. Surely you can defend your choices better than just telling me that I shouldn't delete things? SnowFire 02:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Not to be too snappy, but I'd recommend checking the reversions that have been going on for some time here, or the previous discussion. That's not quite it.
If this article is just a "add fandoms you like" article, then it is more appropriate for a forum somewhere, and we can put this up for AfD. SnowFire 20:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
It still provokes me that you just erased what you did not like. Ok, let's forget mr. Bigum even though he is quite interesting from a geek cultural point of view. Anyway, let us move forward. I think you are right when I say that Tolkien needs more attention. Because his way of thinking subcreation has influenced geek culture on different levels from movies to videogames. H. R. Giger is still important not just because he made the Alien, but because he made Necronomicon paintings and bio-technological art. He is admittedly much more accepted and respected in European geek culture than in American geek culture. Please read: * Geek Culture: The 3rd Counter-Culture Konzack 27 August 2006
Got this quote from Richard Bartle:
“The single most important influence on virtual worlds from fiction is J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Although it would be of huge significance merely for having established the genre of High Fantasy, its ultimate worth lies in its depiction of an imagined world. It's not the particular world it describes that is momentous (although Middle-earth is indeed classic source material for people writing new text-based games); rather, it's that creating a fully realized, make-believe world was shown to be actually possible. Prior to The Lord of the Rings, worlds of such depth were practically unknown”
Bartle, Richard (2004): Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders Publishing, p. 61-2
Konzack 28 August 2006
There is one thing that I'm unclear, why is Buffy the Vampire Slayer in quotes while the other stuff in the list is in italics? Illadar 05:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Frankly, this whole subsection is full of BS. It says that sites like Google, YouTube, and Myspace used to be popular with geeks, but that geeks now avoid them because they are too mainstream. As far as I know, Geeks have hated Myspace since day one (I know I hated it long before it was mainstream) and I know for a fact that many geeks frequent youtube and Google. In matter of fact among many geeks, Google is considered the corporation of geekdom--one to be lauded, not scorned. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.168.96.230 ( talk) 06:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC).
Let's get some cites pronto or a call for deletion is in order... 209.148.118.3 16:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm just a random reader, but why hasn't this page been killed yet? It's unencyclopedic, unsourced, and generally sloppy. While this is an interesting subject for discussion and could make some fantastic articles I don't believe that it's right for here. Not to mention that some of the entries can be highly debateable.
Firstly the quality of the information here is close to first rate, if not first rate. There doesn't appear to be any 'spare' items in the entries, the article doesn't appear to be in danger of having people add 'personal favourites' as the lists are quite lean, some having only two or three items/authors. As to the accusation towards original research I'm fairly certain that many many sources can be found and I will in fact commit myself to finding them, because I am just so sick and tired of good articles getting extermined by the wikipolice who DON'T HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUBJECT THEY ARE EDITTING. -- I 14:48, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
From NeonMerlin:
Mm. I didn't delete it, obviously; I redirected it, and nicely put a reminder over at Talk:Geek. If you want to make an effort to source this article, then great, but basically none of the current sources are any good (the only one on point is from Mr. Konzack above, and it's awful.). Ideally we want sources that don't just praise an item, but rather confirm that it's strongly referenced in a geek subculture. If these sources don't come along soon, I unfortunately will nom it for AfD, and I don't think it'll survive if the comments above are any indication. SnowFire 00:49, 11 June 2007 (UTC)