I think the fun facts are getting entirely out of hand. It used to be that we listed only easter eggs -- remember those days? Now in sbemail
virus, we have fun facts taking up somewhere between a quarter and a third of the page (temporarily split into "Fun Facts" and "References", but for our purposes this is a Fun Facts section). I know that "virus" had a disproportionate amount of references to other H*R (and possibly non-H*R) stuff and other things to take note of, but come on!
The reason I'm really writing about this is because despite my efforts to try and contain this, people are
still adding silly Fun Facts, for instance, a little while ago somebody noted that Edgarware (in sbemail virus) reported "a new record" because Strong Bad never ran the program before. I take issue with this "fun fact" because anybody who has looked at that part of the transcript or seen the e-mail can easily see that for himself, so it's not fun. Moreover, it's not necessarily even a fact. What if Edgarware had a preprogrammed starting record (like an arcade game with a preprogrammed starting high score)? Kind of a silly counterpoint, I know, but it doesn't help any. This "fun fact" just doesn't belong.
Then we get "fun facts" that are just a little too obtuse or silly. I'm surprised nobody (as far as I know, anyway) wrote something like, "Strong Bad pronouncing the semicolon as if it were a question mark when he reads the e-mail aloud is a reference to the Greek language." I'm sure if more people knew that Greek uses a semicolon as a question mark, though, somebody would have put that there...
As I said in the thread about "virus" (which I won't dig up the link to, but I'm sure Jones or Tom will if they're not feeling lazy, but I am, so there), perhaps we should start a "fun fact approval process". We would have a single page, something like HRWiki:Fun_Fact_approval or something. (I'm sure somebody could come up with a better name, but the name isn't the point.) A fun fact would be submitted to this approval page under an appropriate heading instead of posted directly. There would be two exceptions to this rule: old pages with few fun facts can have more added freely (those with many should still use the approval process), and stuff that really,
really obviously belongs on the page can be posted directly. Stuff posted on the approval page can be added directly by the admins at their own discretion (they have a good sense of what makes a good fun fact); other logged-in users can vote on items that haven't been added yet. Sure, the page will be pretty messy, but it could regularly have stuff moved to archives. Moreover, better that it be a little messy for a few people than a huge mess to everyone. Yes, it will discourage the submission of fun facts, but hey, the way things are getting, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
By the way, what I mean by "obviously belongs" is mostly the
extremely obvious references to other toons. Nobody's gonna argue that the "FLAGRANT SYSTEM ERROR" is a reference to 50 e-mails, and nobody will argue that this should be noted. If, however, the poster has the slimmest of doubts that a certain fun fact is notable, it should go through the process. For instance, part of the table turning into a black and red grid may be a reference to StrongBadZone -- but it might not be. You may be pretty sure, but unless you're dead certain, and (this is a key point) unless you're sure everybody else would be dead certain, it needs to go through the process.
This is just one idea, though. Anybody got others? What do you guys think?
- Kef