4 ms·

This entire lengthy discussion is based upon the premise that the story is true. But in addition to Tom Scott's failure to find a historical contemporary sourc

by JdeBP 6y ago

This entire lengthy discussion is based upon the premise that the story is true. But in addition to Tom Scott's failure to find a historical contemporary source for any of it, mentioned elsewhere on this same page, there's the 2010 challenge to the article on the Wikipedia talk page. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscraper#Possibly_an_urban_legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscrap... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscraper/GA1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscrap... It turns out that John Kelso was in the same boat as Tom Scott: having failed to find any contemporary evidence whatsoever for this. All of the supposition in this thread about how it could have happened has the unstated premise that it even did happen in the first place, for which no supporting evidence has come to light. The sad thing is that the article went through Good Article review and was rewritten with the intention of making it clear that the majority of the article was an unsubstantiated local myth; yet here we have people on Hacker News who have clearly not absorbed that from reading it. The rewrite has not achieved its goal.

singlow 6y ago
The Wikipedia article certainly does not make clear which parts are fact and which are legend. There is a disclaimer early on, but after that, many statements are made and some of them are obviously factual, while others are related to the myth. After all, the building was built and it is 4 stories tall. Was the legend just that the original plan was accurate, but misleading, when it could have been that the original plans actually represented a much larger building? Were there not really investors who claimed to have been misled? Was there a lawsuit or not? Seems like there should be some record of that if it happened. If in fact the majority of these facts are possibly just made up or of questionable origin, there should be no discussion of the details beyond the statement that there is a local legend and its general substance. The detailed accounting of it should be omitted entirely, or moved to a subheading that delineates the entire discussion of the urban legend apart from the verifiable facts.

by JdeBP 6y ago

singlow 6y ago

The Wikipedia article certainly does not make clear which parts are fact and which are legend. There is a disclaimer early on, but after that, many statements are made and some of them are obviously factual, while others are related to the myth. After all, the building was built and it is 4 stories tall. Was the legend just that the original plan was accurate, but misleading, when it could have been that the original plans actually represented a much larger building? Were there not really investors who claimed to have been misled? Was there a lawsuit or not? Seems like there should be some record of that if it happened. If in fact the majority of these facts are possibly just made up or of questionable origin, there should be no discussion of the details beyond the statement that there is a local legend and its general substance. The detailed accounting of it should be omitted entirely, or moved to a subheading that delineates the entire discussion of the urban legend apart from the verifiable facts.