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Why are pornstars more notable than scientists on Wikipedia?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- smackfu 15y agoThe notability requirements for academics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(academics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(academics... The notability requirements for pornstars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(pornographic_actors)#Pornographic_actors_and_models http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(pornograp...
- VladRussian 15y ago>3.Has made unique contributions to a specific pornographic genre, such as beginning a trend in pornography; i bet it is much harder than produce a new scientific theory ( or may be it is just my Math MS talking :)
- kristopolous 15y agoI've often wondered who the Hitchcocks and Coppolas were of the Adult Film Genre. I've considered the idea that there are masterpiece films, dismissed for being erotic, that have gone unseen and unappreciated by the masses. Alas, I have yet to find a nice thorough list, akin to the AFI top 100 for the lewd. * If you know where this is, maybe you can also direct me to some reputable cult list; you know, that would have Todd Haynes and Kenneth Anger etc... inquiring minds want to know!
- patrickyeon 15y agoI don't know of a list, but I knew a girl in university who took a class titled "Sexuality in Film". She described it as basically the history of porn.
- the-cakeboss 15y agoThere's actually been much debate towards whether pornography can even be considered art, thus calling into question whether a Hitchcock or Coppolas of the Adult Film Genre can even exist. I personally am of the belief that porn isn't art, due to its use and audience. When someone views porn, the pornographic material is almost invariably acting as a means to an end, namely satisfying sexual desires of the viewer. Art on the other hand isn't a mean to any end. Art is to be appreciated for what it is.
- kristopolous 15y agoWhat about the porno chic movement?
- Helianthus 15y agoIf you're still categorizing art into "not art" and "art" you have a long way to go. As you say, Art is to be appreciated for what it is.
- sliverstorm 15y agoSomething can't be art simply by virtue of being called art.
- J_Darnley 15y agoA previous discussion showed us that it can. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3284760 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3284760
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- scarmig 15y agoBecause there are probably fewer brand name pornstars out there than people who hold a professorship of some kind?
- darth_static 15y agoDid you even read the article? Have a look at this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pornographic_actresses_by_decade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pornographic_actresses_... and try telling me with a straight face that all those actresses have a greater right to a Wikipedia page than the professors that the author mentions.
- sanxiyn 15y agoI think it's likely that more people have seen works(videos) of those pornstars than works(papers) of those scientists. Also that more people remember names of those pornstars than names of those scientists. So I think pornstars are more famous. Whether that should translate to more Wikipedia notability I have no idea.
- fatjokes 15y agoI have no knowledge of the actresses' area of expertise, yet I can fully enjoy their work. But without at least a MS (maybe a BS in some cases), I doubt I can fully appreciate the work of the professors. Personally, I believe the work of the scientists of course deserve more recognition. But if you were going to go down that road, I'd start with trimming the wiki entries of pro-athletes or generic Hollywood celebrities. Their lives and contributions affect me even less than pornstars.
- scarmig 15y agoIt's a question of why notability requirements are stricter on academics than pornstars. A fairly comprehensive list of pornstars will not be super huge, especially compared to academics, and will have fewer cranks trying to push a point of view through those articles. It comes down to a pragmatic point of view, not an actual argument that the least notable porn star on that list is more notable than the most notable scientist excluded from the list. I personally say let them all in, but that battle has been fought and lost long ago.
- andrewfelix 15y agoI find it perplexing that someone with a science background could have said this: "Gary Martin and Sean Ekins are personal friends so YES, I have close connections with the subject. And I believe I can objectively write a good article about them." He may have good information, and it's great that he's sharing that information. But being friends with the subject immediately rules out the authors objectivity. That information needs to be corroborated.
- mhartl 15y agoThe references are the corroboration.
- andrewfelix 15y agoYou can still reference biased writing. It won't make the angle any more objective.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- dotBen 15y agoAs apposed to someone saying "I've spent many hours enjoying videos staring adult performers Belladonna and Sasha Grey so YES, I have close connections with the subject. And I believe I can objectively write a good article about them."... ...which by Wikipedia's standards would then be ok. I'm pro-porn, but from my experience many of these 'fans' are so in awe of their idols they're far more likely to write biased entries than peer-scientists who are able to write about a notable scientist with a professional level of rigor. Factor in most adult performers have all sorts of controversy surrounding them that fans will happily defend/spin you have even more room for abuse and non-NPOV articles being written about adult 'talent' (for want of a better word, that is the official industry terminology).
- andrewfelix 15y agoBut I'm not commenting on that aspect of the argument. I'm simply pointing out that the author can not be wholly objective on the particular point I quoted.
- lmkg 15y agoBecause most porn stars have publicity agents, and most scientists do not.
- josscrowcroft 15y agoBecause, if you'll excuse the vulgarity, most people don't whack off to videos of scientists
- mixmax 15y agoI once had a heated discussion with a classical violinist about who the most known Dane was outside of Denmark. She insisted that it had to be Carl Nielsen, a composer, whom she was sure everyone would know. All her friends knew Carl Nielsen, and many of them could play his most known symphonies from memory. I'd only vaguely heard of him, and contended that maybe Hans Christian Andersen would be more known, since Disney had adopted his fairy tales and made them into stories that every child around the world would know. Or maybe Niels Bohr, since his contributions to atomic science were so great. She would have none of it, and insisted that everyone she talked to, both in Denmark and abroad would instantly recognise Carl Nielsen, but only some would recognise Bohr, and a few didn't really know Hans Christian Andersen, and certainly didn't know all his stories by heart like they knew Carl Nielsens symphonies. She lived in a bubble: Her friends and the people she worked with were all musicians, composers, or were otherwise deeply into classical music, so she made the obvious mistake of thinking that Carl Nielsen would be widely known, since everyone she met seemed to know him and his music well. If you asked people on HN who the most famous Dane is David Heinemmeir Hansson might be mentioned. Or maybe Bjarne Stroustrup who invented C++, or Rasmus Lerdorrf who invented PHP, or maybe Anders Hejlsberg who invented turbo pascal, Delphi and C#, or Lars Bak who developled the Chrome V8 javascript engine and was developer lead on Googles Dart language. You need to look beyond your own bubble to see who is notable in the general public. Ask a random stranger on the street how many pornstars he can name, and then how many scientists he can name and you'll see that the author lives in a bubble.
- sanxiyn 15y agoYou are right about random strangers on the street, but Wikipedia's official policy is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people) Within Wikipedia, notability is an inclusion criterion based on the encyclopedic suitability of an article topic. The topic of an article should be notable, or "worthy of notice"; that is, "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded". Notable in the sense of being "famous", or "popular", although not irrelevant, is secondary. So it's not all about being famous.
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- tptacek 15y agoBecause Wikipedia notability isn't a ranking function.
- patio11 15y agoWikipedia notability is also a social construct created by the kind of people who spend their time optimizing for Wikipedia cred, which co-relates with a bunch of stuff that is different from the population at large or, say, HN.
- jQueryIsAwesome 15y agoOne reason is because scholars will look up to the list of biochemists to know significant discoveries in that area; but the people looking lists of pornstars... they are just wasting time. The little relevance of the subject makes easy for a pornstar to create his/her own webpage on Wikipedia.
- oz 15y agoBecause pornstars are more notable among the masses than scientists. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but it is true. Ask most people to name a scientist, the only one they can name is Einstein. Ask most men to name pornstars, they can rattle of Jenna Jameson, Asia Careera, Ron Jeremy etc. For women, it will be the authors of romance novels.
- bane 15y agoIn other words, "popular". And thus the inevitable problem with using notability as a guideline. Once that becomes the principle inclusion/exclusion criteria (as it tends to be in most of the discussion in AfD), exclude lots of junk, but you also only include things that are so common that everybody already knows about them anyway -- thus making an encyclopedia as the "place you go to look up stuff you don't know" moot. This creates an irrational fear of including non-notable "false positives" (when bits are effectively free), and excluding perfectly good information that falls beneath some particular editor's personal interest radar.
- oz 15y agoIs there a better way to solve this problem?
- yardie 15y agoThe 3 you just listed is just about the upper limit of my knowledge on pornstars. As for scientists I think you can get 5 out of most people and probably 10-15 from most high school students. Most notable pornstars aren't any more notable than most notable scientists. If you go to porn conventions you know the people in the industry. If you go to academic conventions you know the people in the industry. If you do neither you only know by whats trending.
- jonmc12 15y agoWikipedia is not to blame any more than MTV is to blame for Jersey Shore - they are both simply catering content that reflects how their audience wants to expend attention. Looking at the numbers for perez hilton, farmville, facebook, television, porn, etc - paints a picture that the average mass consumer does not consider scientific knowledge to be notable.. or the inventors of this knowledge. I blame Edward Bernays. Watch the BBC documentary 'The Century of Self' which provides a historical context for why the amygdala of the typical consumer suckles all the attention, while the neo-cortex sits waiting like the runt of the litter with only a vague notion of scientific knowledge present in daily life.
- VladRussian 15y agoafter 20 minutes of staring into special relativity treatment of moving particle field interaction (the math is simple, yet as a math major i didn't have it as a part of my course and i'm interested in the corner case of small scale what is domain of QM) my amygdala took over again and i'm back at HN. I feel like my neo-cortex is complete chicken :)
- brudgers 15y agoSometimes, as is the case regarding 646 Pokemon, Wikipedia articles are suitable based upon completeness rather than notability. Historically, pornstars were somewhat rare and an readily accessible catalog compiled to pseudo-academic standards is an undertaking which is well facilitated by Wikipedia, while listing every chemist is a much more problematic task.
- duskwuff 15y agoThe "Pokemon argument" was never considered valid within Wikipedia, and indeed no longer applies -- a few of the best-known Pokemon have their own pages, but most are relegated to lists. Proof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon (The links are all to the individual names -- but most of those are just redirects to sublists, not individual articles.)
- rudiger 15y agoThe reason is they are more notable! As in, More worthy of attention or notice; remarkable. As a group, we certainly pass more remarks about pornography starlets than theoretical physicists.
- yichi 15y agoThe problem is, notability in Wikipedia is different than notability you are used to in general language. In fact Wikipedia notability is a misnomer.
- danso 15y agoI've noticed that social media experts (some of them whose blog posts rise to the front of HN) get their own pages, merely for having won awards or recognition in some social media BS ceremonies. In their case, I think it's the combination of online media savviness and the likelihood that no one will actually read their page that keeps their pages from being deleted. For how much Wikipedia is assumed to be a tech-geek lair, I'm surprised that being big in computer science/programming/etc doesn't guarantee you a spot. CoffeeScript has its own page but not its creator, for instance.
- spodek 15y agoName a porn star from the 1800s. Name a scientist from the 1800s. A bit easier, isn't it? People who can't name scientists from earlier times can't name porn stars from then either. Science isn't about popularity or notability. It's about satisfying your curiosity about nature, honestly reporting your results, and experiment. At least it is for me, which is why I got a PhD in physics. Porn stars thrive on publicity. A scientist without notability is like a fish without a bicycle.
- roel_v 15y agoMaybe the irony flies over my head, or are you seriously arguing that the absence of 'porn stars' from the 1800s makes scientists more important? 'porn stars' didn't even exist back then because the medium they use was only just invented! (I don't care about the actual discussion, but your reasoning is so flawed I was compelled to respond)
- dredmorbius 15y agoGo read a satirical work written from before the 20th Century. Take your pick. Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Gulliver's Travels, Dante's Inferno, anything by Shakespeare. There are endless references in those works, with varying amounts of veiling, to popular personages of the time. Some politicians and princes, but also what passes for the pop culture of the age, usually some mix of court personalities, criminals, and occasionally a notable artist or learned person ("scientist" wasn't quite applicable for much of this period). With the exception of arts, letters, and science, most of those names are all but lost. Porn, or gossip, or other intrigue, has a broad currency (many people find it accessible and/or interesting), but also a very temporal one. It's not that there weren't porn stars in the 1800s (vaudeville, "Little Egypt" at the Chicago World's Fair), but simply that you'd have no familiarity with their names (unless, say, you were an academic researching 19th century and prior pornography). Wear taller hats. You'll catch more.
- roel_v 15y agoWhat are you talking about? "porn stars" in this context refers to (at least somewhat somewhat) widely known performers in sex movies. There were no mainstream movies back then, 'movie actor' wasn't a profession yet, and there was no way to become famous by doing outrageous sexual activities and exhibiting them to a broad audience. In fact in most of the world one would be thrown in jail for showing in public what is nowadays shown on prime time tv. So, once again, it's ridiculous to suggest that porn actors are less important than scientists only supported by the argument that nobody remembers porn actors from that time. There weren't any! (note that I'm not saying that one is more important than the other, I guess it depends on the definition of 'important', I don't know nor care - frankly I find the question quite trite and boring. My point is merely that the argument is ridiculous.)
- drcube 15y agoIs a few bytes of text that expensive?? Why shouldn't they include an article about every person, place or thing someone cares enough to write about? It's not like it all has to fit in a volume on my shelf.
- kumarm 15y agoSame reason there is more literature on Hitler than on Gandhi.
- ComputerGuru 15y agoHitler is arguably a far more important historical figure than Gandhi. What's your point?
- kumarm 15y agoSame reason there is more literature on Hitler than on Gandhi.
- zemo 15y agobecause pornography is more intimate when you know about the people having sex, but knowing about Rømer won't change the speed of light.
- protomyth 15y agoBecause Wikipedia is the social media of encyclopedias. Sometimes you get really good stuff, but you also lose the serious but boring people and you get a weird social rules system.
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- codex 15y agoBecause man has an evolved urge to reproduce which is far stronger and more prevalent than the urge to do science. 100% of my ancestors have had sex. I doubt more than 0.1% have done any science.
- rjurney 15y agoChemists don't do anal.
- Havoc 15y agoHonestly I don't care who invents quantum teleportation as long as someone does (asap preferably). When googling a pornstar though, I'm looking for info on that specific person. Just put them all on wiki & call it a day. Add low search weighting to the un-notable ones if necessary.
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- moomin 15y agoThe problem is that real, paid for encyclopaedias used to use real, paid for experts in the field. Wikipedia repeatedly goes wrong when it insists on applying processes that work with subject matter professionals to well-meaning amateurs. There's not really any way they've got for resolving the situation where the intersection of motivated people and those whose work qualifies for inclusion is empty. And yes, Nielsen is definitely notable. But give me Sibelius any day.