Spinn

All Hail Lord Squidi

What Sean Howard really needs is an agent, a publicist, and a lawyer. His problem is that he tries to be all three in addition to being an artist. He takes personal offense when someone mentions him on the web and feels responsible for everything that is said about him. He has to protect his art personally from people who want to make avatars which resemble his work, and he has to handle everything about his image himself. Some cases you settle out of court, some you ignore, and some battles are worth losing. This is why celebrities have managers.

And the sad thing is the more he messes with the article the more he stirs things up. If he's just leave things be instead of trying to threaten wikipedia to delete the article by claiming some clause of a privacy act or fighting over wording changes, this whole thing would die down. Some battles aren't worth figthing no matter how stubborn you are. --BigCow 02:39, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

What he really needs is some prozac. And I only say that, mm, like 20% jokingly. I mean, just read him...he gets unreasonably angry, he contradicts himself, he has a serious disconnect between his actions and how people react to him. He tries to convince people of his point of view, but he insults them while he does it. And he can't comprehend the problem with that. I mean, not even from the civility point of view...you don't try to sell someone a car while you're punching them in the gut. --Spinn 04:50, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Looks like the article is nearing its end. A few lessons I've learned from this:

• You can't beat the internet. You can't control what people say or think about you, and you can't beat a whole web of people who might want to use your characters as Avatars. You either adapt and learn to deal with that, or you spend all your time fighting a losing battle.

• You're only popular because of your fans. I'm not sure Squidi has any fans at this point, he's attacked the community of people who started their own forums after he shut his down, he's gotten mad at people on his blog who don't use the same definition of pixel art vs sprite comics as he does, and he's picked on the people who support him the most and care about his comic the most.

• Any publicity is good publicity, if you use it right. Trying to be the guy who makes a landmark case over derivative pixel artwork and being defensive about it and refusing to let go rather than using it as an opportunity to introduce people to your comic... not such a good idea.

Working on the Sean Howard article was one of the first things I did when I came to Wikipedia, guess it's time to move on to bigger and better things.--BigCow 17:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh, yeah. Ah well, some drama can be fun for a little while, anyway.

I actually have a fair amount I can say about Squidi, fans, etc., but eh. No use going over all of it again. Really, it basically normalizes down to: the guy's just a blockheaded bastard. --Spinn 18:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

re Spinnwebe deletion

Yeah, really. I think it's nuts deleting stuff like that, even if it is maybe marginal, because Wikipedia is WP:NOT paper. But there's so much cruft put in that people get a little edgy and pull the trigger too easily sometimes. Herostratus 03:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

SpinnWebe has been nominated for AFD again

As a heads-up, SpinnWebe has been nominated for AFD a second time at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SpinnWebe. I strongly encourage you to participate in the discussion. SchuminWeb (Talk) 03:02, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Please check your facts!!

Per your contributions at SpinnWebe, you stated in an edit that "[Galcik] changed the name of the site to "SpinnWebe" in April 1995."

However this Usenet post archived by Google Groups clearly shows that the site was known as "SpinnWebe" as early as February 21, 1995, and that Galcik was clearly promoting the site in Usenet newsgroups as such.

You may want to research this topic further to make sure you have all of the facts correct before making any further contributions. KWH 08:55, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, well crap, you're right. I was going by the comp.infosystems.www.announce post. I will be more mindful to doublecheck my SpinnWebe primary sources in the future. --Spinn 12:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Whoo hey Wiki drama (SpinnWebe AfD)

Wow, thanks for the research, KWH...though really, now that he's gotten his pound of flesh I don't think all that was necessary. But I think even the main DFC article cinches it because it says "SpinnWebe...uses Keane's cartoons".

I didn't even remember I was in the Washington Post for the Nipple Server. Huh. Did you LexisNexis this, or something? --Spinn 04:28, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Cheers, good times... though Scribs probably deserves it (sorry). I used some database at the library called America's Newspapers, LexisNexis probably would have done better/found more.

I think that some of these individuals are getting some emotional payoff which I can't understand from banging out these pithy "Delete - nn, terminate it" messages on AFD. It's like they're earning notches in the handle of their battleaxe. I think this is something that needs to be reformed. There's a problem with a lot of crap articles being created, but to me these people should stop being so know-it-all vigilante... hypothetically if the article says the website was created back in 1995 when you happened to be 9 years old, maybe you should just recuse yourself from this decision and let someone else with more subject matter expertise say whether it's notable.

I think it stands to reason that if there's some encyclopedic article on a theory in Quantum Electrodynamics with equations you don't understand, you shouldn't tear in and say "Delete I googled this and only got 723 results, nn neologism-PLONK". But if you're a qualified physicist and you know it's dreck, then you should be able to say Delete with authority, and why you know it's non-encyclopedic.

There's also a serious problem I see in that I really don't think Wikipedia is giving proper weight to the early history of the Web. People who read the world wide web and history of the Internet articles don't gain an actual perspective of 'being there' whatsoever. If we looked at it as a matter of generations, the generation of sites which are popular now are "getting served" - they get an article recording their details since they happened to be popular now, when lots of people are writing articles on Wikipedia. The previous generation is like a blind spot.

Also, I've got something to say about this bit at WP:WEB - "The content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself." - how much writing was there about website content in the early Web era? It was "Hey, here's the link... it's a great site, it's got "foo" if you click on the foo link, and the "bar" page is very good too... here's a tiny screenshot." Nobody was deconstructing the medium back then, so pretty much any media mention is going to consist of a brief review and link.

So that's my rant. KWH 06:02, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, for the most part you're preaching to the choir. But for your last paragraph, I think...well, if something's significant in history, there will be some writings that make their way to us in the future, usually. Not always, but having a historical footprint will generate some sort of documentation, typically.

As for Scribs...yeah, I know. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered to suggest the page should be created. In researching the defense for the SW entry I've learned more about Wikipedia inclusion standards. Still, it just royally pissed me off the highly obvious way JD presented it on a completely different AfD page. It was so obviously being offered as a deal, you know? I read it and actually said out loud to my monitor, "okay fine, I'll burn the other article to keep the one I want." And predictably, within hours, the Scribs AfD went up, and JD's edits to the SW AfD stopped. --Spinn 06:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

A deal? I offered no 'deal'. The reason I stopped writting in the SW afd was because it is already a huge afd by any standards and it shouldn't be a talk page. With regards to KHW's 'citations' for one thing they are not verifiable. All KHW seems to say is 'Spinnwebe was quoted here....here...and here...". Which means little if there is no actual link to the print publication (as there was with Wired article). Second, in the Wired article again SW is only put in the context of DFC and as a matter of fact in those unverified articles that KHW brings up he always says they are in context with DFC. The fact that DFC was somewhat popular in the mid 90s doesn't warrant an article for SW, it warrants an article for DFC with possibly a mention of SW. SW is more than just that parody comic and if the other parts of the site can't stand on their own then why should Spinnwebe have an article? We have had several similar problems with people from web forums thinking that they deserve an article, several use the tactics of getting a bunch of people to vote yes from their site to influence afd votes and I've seen many of them win to keep articles that way. With regards to Concerned, well maybe I did pull the trigger to fast considering the alexa rating, but look at it from my point of view. I see an article, written by the same group of people that immediately come to the defense of certain related articles put up for afd. I go to their forum and their they are talking about creating an article of it, which leads me to think 'vanity'. I use search engine searches and can only find stuff about it on the notmydesk.com website and on the comic's own website. The article itself has no references outside of the webcomic's own website. What do you expect me to think? Honestly? And if I am wrong about the notability for any article, well then fine correct me on it and I'd change my vote as I always do with these types of problems. We aren't children here that have to keep these kinds of silly 'internet grudges'.--Jersey Devil 21:35, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I expect you to do some research, and not engage in ad hominem judgments: you just said you saw an article associated with the same people, and therefore made assumptions. That forum link you posted, they're not even talking about creating it: corey didn't say he created the article, he said he was linking it. How can a short thread of people saying "neat" "cool" be logically interpreted as people talking about creating it? Did you even consider a sanity check on whether Corey on the forum (with msn address "Danielconnery1" one click away from the post) is the same as User:Bjelleklang (with msn addess "chafsahl")? If you don't accept they are different people, and it was one person using two "personalities" to try to trick future editors, isn't that assuming bad faith in about the most paranoid way?

And really, so what if fans entered the article anyway? What research did you do to determine Concerned's notability? Since I can pretty definitively tell you there is plenty of backup there, determine how your research fell short.

Please, please, please do the research before you continue dropping AfDs across Wikipedia. For some of my friends this is the first exposure they've had to its inner workings, and they've come away frustrated, deciding that Wikipedia isn't worth the electrons it's printed on. I show them the issue, show them the backup research, and show them your refusal to accept the information presented, and they're left shaking their heads wondering why anyone cares about WP at all. This Concerned AfD is a blatant example of your jumping the gun. Please accept it as a learning experience on the need for proper research. --Spinn 21:50, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Other notes:

• You keep saying SW is only referenced in terms of the DFC: even if I accepted that logic (which I don't), you keep ignoring further, non-DFC proof. If you can't accept the New Yorker article, then you're saying no print evidence can be accepted. This is just clearly wrong. Information accessible via the Web is not the sum total of human knowledge. You can only not accept it if you think people are lying about it. Are you not seeing all the times people say Assume good faith?
• I can't accept your "silly interet grudges" admonition when you use "I see an article by the same people I just argued with" as part of your rationale for your AfD. --Spinn 22:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)