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I 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 c
by mixmax 15y ago
I 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.
- Helianthus 15y agounless you take the obvious extension to how humans process worth, significance, interest, and unusualness in order to derive "famous." in which case it is clear that the topic asks why porn stars are more famous than scientists. and that it is also clear that the topic asks why porn stars are considered more significant than scientists given the numerous noble achievements given to mankind by scientists. let's take a step back for a second and see if we can re-read "noble achievements given to mankind" without snickering. In short, whatsoever gets attention on wikipedia deserves attention by dint of it having gotten attention. that's the whole point, innit? So we're really just complaining when we try to draw more attention to scientists. Just as we're complaining if we're irritated that pokemon trivia gets more lengthy treatment on Wikipedia than important historical battles/chemical reactions/poems.
- yichi 15y agoWikipedia actually doesn't really care about you being "worthy" of notice or interesting. What it actually cares about is that if there are reliable sources that could back up your claim, which is what Notability is mostly about. It's there for a more pragmatic reason, of writing a encyclopedia where contents could be verified by an external source.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jphackworth 15y agoI'm guessing that since The Lord Of The Rings movie, Viggo Mortensen is the most famous Dane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viggo_Mortensen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viggo_Mortensen
- brm 15y agoI'd put equal money on Helena Christensen
- bitops 15y agoDepends on generation too. Some might have said Victor Borge. And also, does "outside of Denmark" mean "in the US"?
- ansgri 15y agoIn the HN bubble, almost yes.
- peterjs 15y agoThat's an easy one. The best known Dane is obviously Peter Schmeichel :) The bubble of football/soccer fans is a quite populous place.
- gcp 15y agoObviously it's Bjarne Riis, everyone knows him.
- TillE 15y agoNo way, it's gotta be Nicklas Bendtner. At least according to Nicklas Bendtner.
- itmag 15y agoMorten Lund should be an obvious name to HNers, I would think.
- bjoernbu 15y agoThe first Danes that came to my mind were actually the Laudrup brothers. But I guess that proves the point of how biased one is. I am a German who grew up in the 90s. I gotta know football stars from my childhood. However, I'm unable to think of anyone from Argentina that is more famous than Maradonna even if I try to be as objective as possible, the only competition I can think of is Messi.
- gcp 15y agoAsk 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. s/random stranger/random male stranger/
- tzs 15y ago> 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 One of those might be the most famous Dane known to people on HN in the sense that if they made an ordered list of all the famous people they know of and then went down the list checking nationalities, one of those would be the first Dane. However, if you actually asked them to name the most famous Dane they can think of, I think there's a good chance none of those would be named. Until your post, I had no idea any of them were Danes. Most of those names are common in several countries, and I'd have guessed most of them were from Germany, Sweden, or Norway.
- brc 15y agoRound my parts the most famous Dane is Prince Frederik (sp?), because he picked up a real estate agent while on holidays and turned her into a princess. Still the classic holiday romance story. The trash magazines are full of the royal couple and their children, and they get regular mentions on the nightly news. You can laugh all you want at Royals and Royal Weddings, but they still have a positive impact on international relations, which I'm pretty sure was their original use case 10 centuries ago.
- microarchitect 15y agoAre you suggesting that wikipedia should choose articles for inclusion based on what is recognizable to laypersons? I think this is rather ridiculous. We don't decide what goes into scholarly journals based on a public poll, I don't see why we should do that for an encyclopedia. EDIT: If one accepts the premise that even wikipedia requires curation and cannot simply include all submitted articles, then it follows that one of the tasks of the editors is making value-judgments about what knowledge is interesting and important to wikipedia's readers. I assume the guidelines about notability, conflict-of-interest and whatnot are attempting to set forth policies that assist in making these value-judgments. You appear to be arguing that the only basis for making this value-judgement is recognizability to a layperson. I'm having a hard time understanding why this is a suitable metric. I doubt that having lots of information about porn stars will benefit wikipedia's readers. It might entertain them, but I don't think it has any scholarly benefits. At the same time, I don't see how removing information about scientists benefits wikipedia's readers. I can see that in some extreme cases having lots of articles about little-known scientists might clutter wikipedia. However, I don't see how holding articles about published scientists to a higher standard than articles about pornstars benefits either wikipedia or its readers.
- hcles 15y agoTo most Americans, the best known Dane would be Dane Cook Prince Frederik for Australians.
- biot 15y agoThe greatest Dane? I'd have to go with Marmaduke.
- sneak 15y agoUpvoted by the HNers For Humor coalition.
- dlib 15y agoPrince Hamlet might very well be the most well known Dane, albeit ficticious.