![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Ahoy. I recently re-wrote the entry on spoo, and put a similar version over on the Great Machine B5 wiki and the B5 page at wikicities.
Of note, I have removed the entire text of JMS's spoo post, but included many, many links. The reason I did this is because it seems unencyclopedic to just copy and paste a resource, and though JMS indeed said his post can be copied anywhere online, it is still in violation of the copyright rules here, as well as the spirit of the wikipedia itself as an encyclopedia rather than a regurgitator of resources. In addition to the many, many links, it can be found in the history. -- Jeffrey O. Gustafson 09:27, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Do I get it right? -- Stone 11:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm one of the ones who thought it was an April Fools joke .. :) -- 68.146.186.92 05:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I didn't catch it was an April Fool's joke at first because it showed up about 6 hours before April Fool's on my time. Still a funny article to get featured. -- SeizureDog 06:04, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Happy April Fool's Day! Huangdi 16:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I thought it was an April Fool's joke, because 1) I've never seen Babylon 5 and 2) Spoo is another word for semen (short for "spooge")
Regardless, great call for the April 1st "cover" article. Bobak 22:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
"Spoo" as a featured article? Haha, congratulations and well done! ComaDivine 23:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
From reading this article there seems to be some similatities with Spice from Frank Herberts Dune. I was just wondering if there was any link? Clearly Spoo is less harmful etc but almost as soon as I started reading it I could see similarities. Zarboki (Talk) 00:39, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to put back the old reference formatting for now - the old one looks better I feel. -- Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 01:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Woop, the below got cut off because we saved at the same time with the same header:
I notice that the edit conflict that I stepped on while finishing converting the referencing formatting was a reversion of the first half of my conversion work. Well, obviously I disagree. Aside from the subjective matters of personal preference, the new reference format allows for multiple references to the same note to be combined quite easily; see the "JMSspoopost" reference, which previously had three copies in the reference section. The previous version looked less tidy. Bryan 01:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Bryan in that the Cite.php extension is superior to the older templatized systems, and is now considered, in the footnote guideline, to be "best practice" (where numbered references are used). However, I would suggest that the day when the article hits the main page is probably not the best time to introduce changes like this, especially when there is some opposition from at least one regular editor of the article. Irrespective of what system is eventually used, would you have any objection, Jeffrey, to increasing the font-size of the refs? I understand the benefits of a smaller font for the refs section, but 84% is simply too small, IMHO, particularly for high res screens. 90 or 92% seem to ensure visual clarity across most monitor settings, while preserving the benefits of having smaller sized refs. Would 92% be acceptable? Regards — Encephalon 01:29, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there an equivalent of vegetarian haggis?
Jackiespeel 21:41, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Am I the only one who recognizes the Spoo as a shameless ripoff of Al Capp's SCHMOO? http://www.deniskitchen.com/thestore/bios_shmoo.html Adamdavis 02:02, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
He said so in this one "Dilbert" cartoon by Scott Adams. Dilbert appears to be the only engineer that doesn't know how to lie. OneWeirdDude 21:57, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Pronunciation needed or add the word to Wictionary too, please. -- Snek01 07:32, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I always assumed the etymology of Spoo in Babylon 5 was related to Bill Mumy (who played Lennier in the series).
In 1979 Barnes & Barnes ( Bill Mumy and Robert Haimer) recorded the song "Three Drunk Newts" which begins with the two of them yelling what I always thought was "Spoo!". When spoo references started appearing in Babylon 5, I assumed it was some sort of inside joke between Straczynski and Mumy. -- Circumjacence 03:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
This article refers to sources that are considered unreliable. No idea how this article ever came to become a FA. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 03:00, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't the 'taste' paragraph mention that there is Bab5 episode which does mention how it tastes: I'm not sure, but as I recall, G'kar is introducing a human dish to another Narn, who tries a bite and asks with surprise "where did you get fresh spoo?" G'kar insists it really is a human delicacy, "swedish meatballs". (This is the same episode which claims Spoo-like dishes have independently turned up in all major cultures.) Can anybody confirm this with a reference? Not-just-yeti 03:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)not-just-yeti
As far as I can see, that's not a template. Is it just trolling? I have never seen a box like that before. -- Ifrit 19:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
To clarify at the outset, I'm not pushing for the removal of any references. Knowing how this article's referencing is controversial, however, and because it's sometimes difficult to imagine what the article would look like otherwise, I've created this page for future reference as to what the article would look like without message board, e-mail and blogging discussions. FWIW, it would IMO still be a good article, still with real-world perspective. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 00:20, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
There is another occurrence of "spoo" in popular culture, the slightly cultish obsession surrounding the phrase "My spoo has too much fleem.", which occurred in a Dilbert comic (date unknown). If anyone could help elaborate or perhaps even link to the comic so that the rest of the world could enjoy it, it would be greatly appreciated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MyOwnLittlWorld ( talk • contribs) 23:51, 10 March 2007 (UTC).
The urban dictionary of sexual slang [1] offers correlative data for a sexual/slang origin (which may have followed common linguistic "reduction" from "spooge" to "spoo"). Also, this seems to have crossed over to computer jargon (as "bad output") as can be seen at: spooge:
Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spooge [I'm new to Wikipedia; please to pardon all blunders.] Beofluff 09:51, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Consensus is based on a system of good reasons. So, what are the good reasons for keeping information that has nothing to do with Babylon 5 spoo in the article about Babylon 5 spoo? Once again, several people in the review indicated that this information is irrelevant; I saw no rebuttals. Punctured Bicycle 13:09, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
The section of the article covering etymology is about the word Spoo. It is not about the word Spooge. We have seem to come to the agreement that Urban Dictionary is not a reliable source. Finally, the source provided for spooge (even though, once again, this is about Spoo) does not contain anything readable: it is 180 some odd blank pages. This would be an acceptable addition if some reliable source noted spooge is a derivative of spoo, or that the definitions are identical. It should be noted that the slang definition of spoo similar to the one trying to be introduced for spooge is already there in the section. Continuing to re-add the definition of a completely unrelated word makes no sense. -- Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 06:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I was just looking through the recent history of this article (the 3 September FAR, and the 12 September AfD), and what happened there is just embarrassing. In the Featured Article review, some of the arguments raised in favour of keeping this article featured were 'any subject that deserves an article deserves a featured article' and 'issues of notability are not settled at FAR' - in other words, since the article has not been deleted, it deserves to be featured. In the AfD, many of the arguments for keeping the article were, essentially, 'It's Featured! How can we delete it if it's one of Wikipedia's best articles?' - in other words, since the article has not been de-featured, it deserves to be kept. Basically, this article was kept based on a circular argument.
I'm not about to nominate it for deletion again - it's too soon, and would probably just bring accusations of trying to overturn consensus or game the system or something similar. But I'm just using this talk page to voice my concerns about this article: I'm appalled that it has passed AfD (and worse, FAR) in its current state. From this outsider's point of view (admittedly, I know nothing about Babylon 5, and am not part of its fandom), it seems to fail WP:FANCRUFT on just about every level. If this is one of our 'best articles', we should be embarrassed by what that says about Wikipedia. Terraxos ( talk) 20:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Ahoy. I recently re-wrote the entry on spoo, and put a similar version over on the Great Machine B5 wiki and the B5 page at wikicities.
Of note, I have removed the entire text of JMS's spoo post, but included many, many links. The reason I did this is because it seems unencyclopedic to just copy and paste a resource, and though JMS indeed said his post can be copied anywhere online, it is still in violation of the copyright rules here, as well as the spirit of the wikipedia itself as an encyclopedia rather than a regurgitator of resources. In addition to the many, many links, it can be found in the history. -- Jeffrey O. Gustafson 09:27, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Do I get it right? -- Stone 11:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm one of the ones who thought it was an April Fools joke .. :) -- 68.146.186.92 05:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I didn't catch it was an April Fool's joke at first because it showed up about 6 hours before April Fool's on my time. Still a funny article to get featured. -- SeizureDog 06:04, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Happy April Fool's Day! Huangdi 16:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I thought it was an April Fool's joke, because 1) I've never seen Babylon 5 and 2) Spoo is another word for semen (short for "spooge")
Regardless, great call for the April 1st "cover" article. Bobak 22:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
"Spoo" as a featured article? Haha, congratulations and well done! ComaDivine 23:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
From reading this article there seems to be some similatities with Spice from Frank Herberts Dune. I was just wondering if there was any link? Clearly Spoo is less harmful etc but almost as soon as I started reading it I could see similarities. Zarboki (Talk) 00:39, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to put back the old reference formatting for now - the old one looks better I feel. -- Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 01:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Woop, the below got cut off because we saved at the same time with the same header:
I notice that the edit conflict that I stepped on while finishing converting the referencing formatting was a reversion of the first half of my conversion work. Well, obviously I disagree. Aside from the subjective matters of personal preference, the new reference format allows for multiple references to the same note to be combined quite easily; see the "JMSspoopost" reference, which previously had three copies in the reference section. The previous version looked less tidy. Bryan 01:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Bryan in that the Cite.php extension is superior to the older templatized systems, and is now considered, in the footnote guideline, to be "best practice" (where numbered references are used). However, I would suggest that the day when the article hits the main page is probably not the best time to introduce changes like this, especially when there is some opposition from at least one regular editor of the article. Irrespective of what system is eventually used, would you have any objection, Jeffrey, to increasing the font-size of the refs? I understand the benefits of a smaller font for the refs section, but 84% is simply too small, IMHO, particularly for high res screens. 90 or 92% seem to ensure visual clarity across most monitor settings, while preserving the benefits of having smaller sized refs. Would 92% be acceptable? Regards — Encephalon 01:29, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there an equivalent of vegetarian haggis?
Jackiespeel 21:41, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Am I the only one who recognizes the Spoo as a shameless ripoff of Al Capp's SCHMOO? http://www.deniskitchen.com/thestore/bios_shmoo.html Adamdavis 02:02, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
He said so in this one "Dilbert" cartoon by Scott Adams. Dilbert appears to be the only engineer that doesn't know how to lie. OneWeirdDude 21:57, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Pronunciation needed or add the word to Wictionary too, please. -- Snek01 07:32, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I always assumed the etymology of Spoo in Babylon 5 was related to Bill Mumy (who played Lennier in the series).
In 1979 Barnes & Barnes ( Bill Mumy and Robert Haimer) recorded the song "Three Drunk Newts" which begins with the two of them yelling what I always thought was "Spoo!". When spoo references started appearing in Babylon 5, I assumed it was some sort of inside joke between Straczynski and Mumy. -- Circumjacence 03:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
This article refers to sources that are considered unreliable. No idea how this article ever came to become a FA. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 03:00, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't the 'taste' paragraph mention that there is Bab5 episode which does mention how it tastes: I'm not sure, but as I recall, G'kar is introducing a human dish to another Narn, who tries a bite and asks with surprise "where did you get fresh spoo?" G'kar insists it really is a human delicacy, "swedish meatballs". (This is the same episode which claims Spoo-like dishes have independently turned up in all major cultures.) Can anybody confirm this with a reference? Not-just-yeti 03:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)not-just-yeti
As far as I can see, that's not a template. Is it just trolling? I have never seen a box like that before. -- Ifrit 19:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
To clarify at the outset, I'm not pushing for the removal of any references. Knowing how this article's referencing is controversial, however, and because it's sometimes difficult to imagine what the article would look like otherwise, I've created this page for future reference as to what the article would look like without message board, e-mail and blogging discussions. FWIW, it would IMO still be a good article, still with real-world perspective. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 00:20, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
There is another occurrence of "spoo" in popular culture, the slightly cultish obsession surrounding the phrase "My spoo has too much fleem.", which occurred in a Dilbert comic (date unknown). If anyone could help elaborate or perhaps even link to the comic so that the rest of the world could enjoy it, it would be greatly appreciated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MyOwnLittlWorld ( talk • contribs) 23:51, 10 March 2007 (UTC).
The urban dictionary of sexual slang [1] offers correlative data for a sexual/slang origin (which may have followed common linguistic "reduction" from "spooge" to "spoo"). Also, this seems to have crossed over to computer jargon (as "bad output") as can be seen at: spooge:
Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spooge [I'm new to Wikipedia; please to pardon all blunders.] Beofluff 09:51, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Consensus is based on a system of good reasons. So, what are the good reasons for keeping information that has nothing to do with Babylon 5 spoo in the article about Babylon 5 spoo? Once again, several people in the review indicated that this information is irrelevant; I saw no rebuttals. Punctured Bicycle 13:09, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
The section of the article covering etymology is about the word Spoo. It is not about the word Spooge. We have seem to come to the agreement that Urban Dictionary is not a reliable source. Finally, the source provided for spooge (even though, once again, this is about Spoo) does not contain anything readable: it is 180 some odd blank pages. This would be an acceptable addition if some reliable source noted spooge is a derivative of spoo, or that the definitions are identical. It should be noted that the slang definition of spoo similar to the one trying to be introduced for spooge is already there in the section. Continuing to re-add the definition of a completely unrelated word makes no sense. -- Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 06:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I was just looking through the recent history of this article (the 3 September FAR, and the 12 September AfD), and what happened there is just embarrassing. In the Featured Article review, some of the arguments raised in favour of keeping this article featured were 'any subject that deserves an article deserves a featured article' and 'issues of notability are not settled at FAR' - in other words, since the article has not been deleted, it deserves to be featured. In the AfD, many of the arguments for keeping the article were, essentially, 'It's Featured! How can we delete it if it's one of Wikipedia's best articles?' - in other words, since the article has not been de-featured, it deserves to be kept. Basically, this article was kept based on a circular argument.
I'm not about to nominate it for deletion again - it's too soon, and would probably just bring accusations of trying to overturn consensus or game the system or something similar. But I'm just using this talk page to voice my concerns about this article: I'm appalled that it has passed AfD (and worse, FAR) in its current state. From this outsider's point of view (admittedly, I know nothing about Babylon 5, and am not part of its fandom), it seems to fail WP:FANCRUFT on just about every level. If this is one of our 'best articles', we should be embarrassed by what that says about Wikipedia. Terraxos ( talk) 20:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)