Talk:Towel Power

Towel Power

This article cannot describe "Towel Power" as general towel waving that started in Vancouver. "Towel Power" is not a general term employed by others to describe the towel waving and there was no citation to support that. "Towel Power" is a specific term only used by the Canucks to describe their towel waving tradition. Towel waving was invented by Myron Cope for a Pittsburgh Steelers playoff game in 1975. Dubbed the Terrible Towel, it regularly appeared at all Steeler playoff games in the 70s and quickly grew into a tradition at all games prior to its use in Vancouver.[1][2]

The ironic thing was we had it as just a generic Vancouver term but football editors insisted it be changed to a generic topic on towel power. Maybe its a Canada/US thing. But they do say tower power any time towels are being waved in any sport in any city on Canadian sports broadcasts. -Djsasso (talk) 21:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll remove the fact tag if that is the case. You rarely hear that down here in the lower 48 though. However, if the term "Towel Power" is going to be used as a general term referring to towel waving though, the article must mention the Terrible Towel. It is extremely misleading to suggest that "Towel Power", referring to the general phenomena of towel waving began anywhere but Pittsburgh, where it originated and has become "arguably the best-known fan symbol of any major pro sports team."[3] I think it is better to have the article lead with, and be specifically about the Canuck towel waving gimmick, just as the Terrible Towel has its own article, because I understand this article is primarily devoted to the Canucks and my intent is not to have this turn this into another Terrible Towel article. However, if it is to stay a general towel waving article, proper credit has to be given first to Cope and his towel. I think it is more than fair to say the Canucks were the first to coin the term "Towel Power", it may need a reference, but Canucks fans should get prominent mention for developing that term. For WP:Consensus sake, I leave it alone for a while to see what develops. CrazyPaco (talk) 22:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

oh, I see you reverted back, so never mind. I think it is good to have the Canucks mentioned first with the term "Towel Power" as it reads now. CrazyPaco (talk) 22:07, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah it dawned on me if we made it generic it would just be a replication of the other article, so might as well keep them seperate with seperate info and just mention the terrible tower. -Djsasso (talk) 22:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I fixed up the article to exclude an unrelated event. Saying this started from a one-time forgotten event is stretching it, as much as saying Canada invented Thanksgiving, just because there was a one-time Thanksgiving service generations earlier than the US. That Thanksgiving feast in colonial Canadian history was for immigrants celebrating the survival of their first Canadian winter. Really, everybody I talk to calls Towel Power just that, and they know nothing of the other event. The "earlier" event seems to have only become important AFTER Vancouver created the Towel Power tradition. And I guarantee nobody was thinking of gridiron in 1982 back when the tradition began. Unless you can come up with newspaper articles from Vancouver from 1982 that mentioned this other "earlier" event, leave the unrelated event out of this article. Now, here is the YouTube story about how the tradition started. It was a protest against the officiating of the game. It had *nothing* to do with what may have been a one-time gridiron event. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feomG_Jv-VU CalgaryWikifan (talk) 02:50, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

We've been through this before, the Pittsburgh tradition was not a one time event. It came before, took off immediately, and exists to this day. This has thoroughly been documented in many reliable third party sources, and well, is just the truth. Whether or not the Vancouver copied it or not, the Terrible Towel is the first, most predominant, and most widely recognized towel waving tradition. "Everyone you call" is not a resource. Resources are the NY Times, ESPN, CNN, on and on. Please refer to the Terrible Towel article, which is well referenced, if you want to further explore this, or simple just Google "Terrible Towel" which has almost 30X more hits than "Towel Power" (the majority of which aren't even about Vancouver). If you want to swap YouTube links, go here.

As long as the line: "It can also refer to the general waving of towels at stadiums and arenas in other sports in order to give a morale boost to the home team" exists in this article, it portends, at least in part, to be an article about general towel waving at sports events and therefore absolutely must reference the Terrible Towel tradition. Remove that line in the in the article opening, making it strictly about Vancouver's tradition, and I won't have a problem with removing the Terrible Towel wording there. CrazyPaco (talk) 05:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Before making changes, at least check the sources. Did you even watch the YouTube video? There is no mention of an earlier event, because the 1982 start of the tradition was the *start* of the tradition of waving towels at sports events. I did my research; you can do likewise. CalgaryWikifan (talk) 16:20, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes I did watch it. Vancouver's tradition started by putting towels up on sticks, hardly waving which occurred afterwords and 6-7 years after the Terrible Towel was started and well after is was already a well known tradition in sports. Apparently, you neither read the previous discussion, my reply, checked out the cited sources that are referenced in the Terrible Towel article (which is GA status), did any research with reliable sources on your own, nor bothered to follow wikipedia policy Wikipedia:Assume good faith or Wikipedia:Reliable sources. If this article is going to be half about general towel waving, it will have to mention the first and most famous towel waving phenomena in the world. My goal here is not belittle the Cannucks tradition, my goal is to be accurate. Keep the article just about the Cannuck's "Towel Power" and I don't care if you cut out the Terrible Towel and Hommer Hankie. Start sticking in other things about towel waving, and you are going to have to put in the Terrible Towel. CrazyPaco (talk) 18:16, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

To make this article accurate, I have removed all other mentions of towel waving in the lead in order to keep it primarily about Vancouver's "Towel Power" CrazyPaco (talk) 18:51, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

According to this article the Canucks tradition started in the 1980s. As far as I can tell this is the most reliable source concerning the Canucks towels so far. Hope that helps. blackngold29 03:15, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Towel Power/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Zanimum (talk · contribs) 20:21, 30 December 2012 (UTC) I'll take a read through this. -- Zanimum (talk) 20:21, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

You short form one of the references as "Raible 2010", but he's the third credited for the full citation, so it's a confusing at first glance. Did he specifically author that chapter of the publication? -- Zanimum (talk) 21:57, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes he did. The book is listed as the first two (Douglas & Kerr) as authors on the cover and publishing credits, but on the first page chapter about Towel Power it states "by Garry Raible". To be honest I was unsure how to do it so I listed the individuals from the publishing credits first since I figured they are considered the authors of the book and Raible third since he was credited in the book as writing this section. On the individual referencing I used Raible since he wrote the section I am referencing. If you think I should change it I could do that. Thanks --Mo Rock...Monstrous (leech44) 00:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I was tempted to suggest changing it to have Raible first of the three, but I think leaving it as is is okay. -- Zanimum (talk) 17:15, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Kudos, overall. On a personal level, it's nice to tie a variety of things I remember hearing about (Neale in the stands, the origin of the white towels) together into one story. I love that there's an image of the towels prepared for the fans, before people entered.

• Was there no RS indication of which three players were ejected with Neilsen? Or was this a conscious decision to omit their names?

none of the sources I have really say who was thrown out. I thought that there was a typo in one of the sources because it mentions three players by name, but then says two were thrown out. The book says something Neilsen was "escorted" off the ice by three players which I though was referring to the players ejected, but after a re-read I don't think that they were ejected but making sure the coach got off the ice and didn't do anything else rash. I change the wording to two in order to reflect this error. Long way to get there, but no the RS do not state exactly who was ejected.

• You might consider breaking the first paragraph of Aftermath into two, end with "extreme way for him to react", and start anew with the fan response. That said, I appreciate meaty paragraphs.

I went ahead and split them up.

• Any indication of when the Canucks organization itself started providing towels, as opposed to vendors and fans supplying their own? Was it in the 1980s, 90s, 00s?

None of the RS I have state when they began doing it as a franchise. I did some Google searches, but have been unable to find anything that says when they began doing it.

• You might consider listing what year the 20,500 stat is from, in the prose itself, unless they've produced exactly that amount every season since 1982.

The wording makes it sound that that is the number produced for every game, "they have been producing 20,500 of the towels for every game."

Otherwise, prose, pics, proper references, it's ready for GA. Most of the above are just "I'm curious", as opposed to necessities. -- Zanimum (talk) 17:14, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I have made some changes and replied to everything above. I'll try to see if I can find a time when the franchise began producing towels, but at this point I don't think any thing reliable will turn up. Thank you for the review. Cheers --Mo Rock...Monstrous (leech44) 18:12, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for the second delay, yes, this is now a GA. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:02, 28 January 2013 (UTC)