Wikipedia
There's an article in this week's Micro Mart about Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit or add to.
Apparently Lenny Henry called the site the "Wrongipedia", as it contained some wrong facts about him. For those of you lucky enough not to have heard of him, Lenny Henry is considered by the BBC to be a comedian, which shows how out of touch they are with the majority of viewers. Lenny Henry is about as good a comedian as Stephen Hawking is a tennis player, yet the BBC still pay Henry a fortune to make (very bad) television shows. I mean, he's a comedian (or claims to be), yet the best dig at Wikipedia he can come up with is to call it "Wrongipedia". Oh my splitting sides :roll:
Anyway, I've heard people criticize Wikipedia before for being inaccurate, and for it's policy of letting anyone create or edit entries, so I thought it would make an interesting topic of discussion here.
Personally, I think Wikipeida is great. Yes, it's open to abuse, but that's the price you pay for involving humans - we're all biased to one degree or another, and even the best people, who try to supress their biases, can make honest mistakes. I think that people who are mislead by Wikipedia's inaccuracies are largely to blame themselves, at least if they know of the site's open editing policy. Whenever I want to know something, be it what something is, or which album or group relased which single, what a games I've heard of is like, etc, Wikipedia is almost always the first site I go on. When I found out I was diabetic, the first site I looked on for information was Wikipedia. But I didn't take the information there as absolute, I also checked on other related sites. And that's where I feel that people make the mistake - if it's an important subject then by all means use Wikipedia as a first step, but then read up on the subject on other, usually dedicated, sites.
I mean, according to Micro Mart, the BBC used "facts" about Ronnie Hazlehurst in their orbituary of him, but the facts turned out to be incorrect. But whose fault was that? Surely any good journalist ALWAYS checks their facts before commiting to print/e-mail/TV etc. By all means search Wikipedia (or any other source) for "facts" about the subject you are researching, but then try to verify those facts from other sources. Blimey, any site at all, any book, any first hand speech, etc, can be wrong, deliberately or accidently, so why expect Wikipedia to be 100% accurate.
Anyway, I really like Wikipedia. I think it's a great idea, well implemented, and I hope it stays with us for good. Yes, it's open to abuse, but most people wouldn't do that, and it's open nature makes it relatively easy to correct any errors, and let's be honest here, many of the subjects on Wikipedia wouldn't be documented anywhere near as well, if at all, on any other site. It's one of the bet sites on the 'net, and I hope it's detractors don't succeed in bringing it down.
Apparently Lenny Henry called the site the "Wrongipedia", as it contained some wrong facts about him. For those of you lucky enough not to have heard of him, Lenny Henry is considered by the BBC to be a comedian, which shows how out of touch they are with the majority of viewers. Lenny Henry is about as good a comedian as Stephen Hawking is a tennis player, yet the BBC still pay Henry a fortune to make (very bad) television shows. I mean, he's a comedian (or claims to be), yet the best dig at Wikipedia he can come up with is to call it "Wrongipedia". Oh my splitting sides :roll:
Anyway, I've heard people criticize Wikipedia before for being inaccurate, and for it's policy of letting anyone create or edit entries, so I thought it would make an interesting topic of discussion here.
Personally, I think Wikipeida is great. Yes, it's open to abuse, but that's the price you pay for involving humans - we're all biased to one degree or another, and even the best people, who try to supress their biases, can make honest mistakes. I think that people who are mislead by Wikipedia's inaccuracies are largely to blame themselves, at least if they know of the site's open editing policy. Whenever I want to know something, be it what something is, or which album or group relased which single, what a games I've heard of is like, etc, Wikipedia is almost always the first site I go on. When I found out I was diabetic, the first site I looked on for information was Wikipedia. But I didn't take the information there as absolute, I also checked on other related sites. And that's where I feel that people make the mistake - if it's an important subject then by all means use Wikipedia as a first step, but then read up on the subject on other, usually dedicated, sites.
I mean, according to Micro Mart, the BBC used "facts" about Ronnie Hazlehurst in their orbituary of him, but the facts turned out to be incorrect. But whose fault was that? Surely any good journalist ALWAYS checks their facts before commiting to print/e-mail/TV etc. By all means search Wikipedia (or any other source) for "facts" about the subject you are researching, but then try to verify those facts from other sources. Blimey, any site at all, any book, any first hand speech, etc, can be wrong, deliberately or accidently, so why expect Wikipedia to be 100% accurate.
Anyway, I really like Wikipedia. I think it's a great idea, well implemented, and I hope it stays with us for good. Yes, it's open to abuse, but most people wouldn't do that, and it's open nature makes it relatively easy to correct any errors, and let's be honest here, many of the subjects on Wikipedia wouldn't be documented anywhere near as well, if at all, on any other site. It's one of the bet sites on the 'net, and I hope it's detractors don't succeed in bringing it down.
Post edited by ewgf on
Comments
I recently started playing a game on it, '10 steps of wikipedia hypertext' whereby I would try to get from the featured article on the first page, to the page I wanted.
My most recent success was from Quarks (the featured article) to Atari 8-bit. Hmmm, it may have been cos I had the laptop on by belly and couldn't be bothered sitting up to type in the search field:lol:
It also somtimes enjoy reading it for pleasure and can often spent hours going from one document to another then another before realising, f*** me what time is it? I need to go to bed.
Those early shows of his were great. I remember loving the series where he operated a pirate radio ststion from the back of a mini cab office. i was only a kid then, but I still found it quite funny. His piss take of Thriller was awesome too but, the last time I looked for it on Youtube, it wasn't there :( The ting he did one Christmas where he was a genie was also very good too if I remember correctly.
I met him last year when he was here doing some Shakesphere (he got rave reviews all over the country for that role) and he was a very nice and very funny bloke. he held court in the pub for about an hour before going home.
His main problem these days is that not only has he not really moved with the times, but his main inspiration (and the source of most of his material), naimly Richard Pryor, died a few years ago and stopped doing comedy due to illness a few years before that (about the time Lenny got a bit shit!)
You mean this ... ;)
Yes, I liked his stuff back in the 80s. This was a good line of his: "The National Front want to give me a ?1000 to go home, Great its only 50p on the bus to Dudley."
I'm biased though. I'm from Dudley and I like to hear what he has to say about the area. I went to school with his cousins and they have a lot of good things to say about him. Dawn is a laugh, but her family... hmm.
What, the French?
D.
maybe cos he's from the black country....
not africa.
also yeah i like the facts but the science stuff can just be over whellming. there should be a wikipedia lite.
Oh, he's not that bad...
But I genuinely don't think he's funny, and to me this situation is simply the Hale and Pace effect all over again. See, Hale and Pace aren't exactly funny, but their programs contained some good laughs, due to the jokes rather than to the "comedians" (Hale and Pace) telling the jokes, if you see the distinction. A funny joke is still funny if it's not told too well, but it's funnier if told by a talented comedian. In fact, to me, the mark of true comedy talent is being able to get a laugh from really rubbish material. Look at Laurel and Hardy - much of their comedy was endlessly repreated and predictable, but it was still hilarious due to their skill and timing. Or look at Tommy Cooper, his jokes were rubish, the sort of thing you'd stop laughing at in primary school, yet he was so amazingly talented a comedian that he made them sound hilarious. If Lenny Henry told the same jokes as Tommy Cooper, do you think anyone in the entire audience would find them funny?
I'm not sure if this is meant seriously (I don't think so), but just in case, no it's not. I have nothing against black people, be they comedians, or any other sort (well, I hate lawyers and politicians of all colours, black, white or otherwise). I think Richard Prior was brilliant, Stephen K. Amos is good, and Reginald Hunter is fantastic (one of the best guests on Have I Got News For You and similar programs). I've argued before that we need more black comedians on TV, since laughter breaks down barriers (racial, or otherwise) better than most, if not any other, way. And there are almost no black comedians on British TV.
And tragically, Lenny Henry is the most prominent British black comedian by far, which does no good to the situation at all. He's just not funny. Alright, so maybe his scripts and jokes are, but who do you think would get a bigger laugh if they both used the same material - Lenny Henry or Jasper Carrot? Carrot has real talent, Henry is at best a filler comedian in a working man's drinking club.
Does anyone think that Lenny Henry deserves to be counted amongst names like Peter Cooke, Billy Connolly, Dave Allen, Frankie Boyle, Sean Lock, etc? There's no comparison. Yet he's the premier British black comedian, if you go by his C.V.
As I said in my first post, he demonstrated his lack of wit by calling Wikipedia "Wrongapedia". Do you think that any decent comedian would have settled for something so obvious and unamusing. I saw a program about racism once, and there was a clip of Lenny Henry on stage, doing his stand up routines, and some cretin in the audience made a monkey sound (obviously to imply that Henry, being black, hadn't evolved). Now a decent comedian would have said something funny and clever, to put the idiot in his place. But Henry stared at the bloke, failed to think of anything funny, so he just swore "*rse hole" at the moron. And the audience dutifully laughed.
That's the extent of Lenny Henry's meagre talent.
And look at his oh so hilarious adverts for some hotel chain or other, that he's doing now. They're rubbish, exactly what you'd expect from him.
Exactly, you sum it up well. Wikipedia is a great starting point for information, or to settle a pub bet, but if you want (or rather, need) factual information, then if you're smart you'll verify the information via dedicated sites.
07:31 to 08:35 in this clip:
:-P
:)
But seriously, you hardly ever see Lenny Henry these days - not because British TV is sidelining black comedians, but because Lenny Henry is past it when it comes to scripted comedy. And aside from his short scripted comedy series and Comic Relief, I don't think I see him elsewhere aside from those ads (which I highly doubt he wrote, so can't really judge him from those).
However, ignoring the painfully unfunny Gina Yashere (unfunny on TV, unfunny in stand-up), Stephen K. Amos and Reginald D. Hunter are great up-and-comers who really need another platform in addition to appearing on panel shows.
Well, there's this: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
(and before you say anything: no, I'm not calling you 'simple'...)
i'm not typing that into my browser every time. :sad:
I don't really remember much about his stuff earlier than Chef, and I've never watched all that much tv so I have no opinion on what his recent tv stuff is like, because I've not watched it!