Wikipedia … Maciej on Antarctica … ¡Cabrón! 8th of March, 2006 POST·MERIDIEM 01:58

I just picked nits on the subject of Wikipedia over at Languagehat’s page, http://​www.​languagehat.​com/​archives/​002295.​php , and I suspect people read it as my hating the project. I don’t; I think it’s a magnificent resource, incomparable in its breadth—as Des noticed recently, no other information source is likely to list the mock Latin names of Mr. W. E. Coyote episode by episode, and indeed I find, for example, its articles on Warner Brothers cartoons in general fascinating and comprehensive.

But I only rarely edit it or add to it, even on those subjects I have some confidence about. It is tedious to have the English pronunciation information for Jökulhlaup removed from the corresponding article for no good reason , or to have well-sourced coherent criticism of Richard Stallman taken out of his article by his cheerleading team, or to have coherent edits taken out without notes as to why by someone writing incoherent things himself on the corresponding talk page. Arguing a point is essentially marketing work for your point of view, convincing other people of something you’re aware of already; I don’t like most strangers enough to consider that worthwhile.

Anyway. Jamie Zawinski linked to it, so you’ve probably seen it already, but if you haven’t, Maciej Cegłowski wrote an excellent, and in some places screamingly funny, article on the Antarctic yesterday. Go read it— http://​www.​idlewords.​com/​2006/​03/​ruling_antarctica.​htm .

Word of the day: el cabrón  is Spanish for “billy goat,” and can often be translated by “bastard”; буз means “goat” in general in Tajik.