User talk:Cyclopia/Infinite loop motif

Neverending song

The article Neverending song is not suitably titled for its stated purpose,

A neverending song is a song that never ends. This page is intended to be a place to put such songs.

and is being converted to a redirect (tho it might later become a Wikipedia:disambiguation page), i've started discussion of that here, rather than leave it less accessible at Talk:Neverending song (where i left a note linking here).
--Jerzy(t) 19:29, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

• "Neverending song" is IMO not a clear enough title.
  1. It's not adequately descriptive, since (the above dict-def's self-confidence aside), the intent seems
     • to be to embrace either songs
       • that demand infinite identical repetition, or
       • whose infinitely many verses are deterministically specified,
     • (but perhaps to exclude those that continue without limit
       • using some random mechanism to choose the sequence or content of verses, or
       • with the singer improvising freely or within a clear formula.
  2. Nor is it well established as having this sense, since the commonest senses on Google seem to be
     • metaphors for
       • an unflagging emotional state, or a
       • vast variety of expressive works, or
     • games involving either serial or parallel collective composition, or
     • something even more tenuously related, in the very well known case The Neverending Story, which seems to be evoking "a story that is real life, and thus (potentially) unimaginably longer than a story" rather than potential endlessness, or even a three-level nesting of story within story within life.

--Jerzy(t) 19:29, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

• I think merger with this article is an adequate fate, even though we may eventually find occasion to make "Infinite-loop motif" into a section heading, and rename the article to include the concept of an infinite sequence of variations.

(My doubt that a rename will ever be needed reflects my conjecture that only "excessively long" is both interesting and achievable, and that "indefinitely long variation" must be so trivial as to be emotionally equivalent to "indefinitely long unvarying repetition". Case in point:

• 1. It was a dark and stormy night. Three men sat around a campfire eating peanuts by the handful. One of them said "Cap'n, tell us a story." The captain began,
  2. "It was a dark and stormy night. Three men sat around a campfire eating peanuts by the cup. One of them said 'Cap'n, tell us a story.' The captain began,
  3. '... by the pint....
  4. "... by the quart....
  5. '... by the gallon....
  6. "... by the peck....
  7. '... by the bushel....

and by the time you reach "kiloton", you're too bored to think about where the speaker is likely to stop, let alone enumerate the further levels or even calculate how far off the last is likely be.)

--Jerzy(t) 19:29, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

---

Lamb Chop's Play-Along - TV Series - TV Tome is not an ideal place to ext-lk for the full text of "The Song That Never Ends", if we eventually describe it rather than quoting it in full: it's a vector for pop-up or pop-under pages. --Jerzy(t) 19:29, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

---

It's obvious you care more about the subject than I do so as far as I'm concerned, as creator of Neverending songs, do as you please. I couldn't find a decent place to put that song and a seperate article on such songs that don't end seemed appropriate. Cburnett 21:00, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Please update the link on Lamb Chop's Play-Along whenever you get a chance and things straightened out.

Could possibly move the verses to that page and link to Infinite-loop motif.

And, for what it's worth, "Infinite-loop motif" isn't the phrase I'd search for in looking for a song like the Lamb Chop's Play-Along song. Cburnett 21:06, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm not at all committed to that title, but i think there are many subjects that don't have good titles available, so searching out a better one is not a priority for me. But after some vague mulling, and 30 seconds' thought, Infinite loop (literature) comes to mind.

I still have this on my plate (the window has stayed open over a week! -- tho i'm not sure i read the above until today).

I agree with what i think you say: individual songs of this type should not have individual articles.

As to the link, yes; i'm still mulling the principle of minimum surprise in figuring out how to provide smoothly for the needed redirects, and toying with this structure:

• Shari Lewis and List of Shari Lewis shows would lk to each other.
• Each show would redirect to List of Shari Lewis shows.

This would avoid, e.g., redirecting Lamb Chop's Play-Along to (surprise!) Shari Lewis, in contrast to List of Shari Lewis shows which is unconfusing even if the reader never heard her name, since the Play-Along sounds a lot more like a show than a person. My feeling so far is that the fictional characters, on the other hand, can redirect directly to the list of shows rather than to a List of Shari Lewis characters (or to less ugly but longer titles for that concept).

--Jerzy(t) 21:17, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

Possible picture?

In a conversation about this picture: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v499/nonvocabulum/hasselhoff426.gif

I was reminded of the song "The Song That Never Ends" and decided to look it up... only to come across this article. I don't know if you can use the picture or not, but I thought was an interesting (if disturbing) illustration of the idea.

• I think maybe that would be more suited to the fractal article. But, I guess they are related. --Max 09:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

No academic references

I can find no academic references to Infinite-loop motif anywhere. I suspect that this term was made from whole cloth specifically for this article. If nobody can provide an authoritative reference, I recommend that this article be deleted.Jarhed (talk) 18:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)