Talk:Hotel toilet paper folding

Charmin'

What a charmin' article. alanyst ^/talk/ 05:25, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this truly exemplifies the best that humanity can be. - Dravecky (talk) 00:23, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

All joking aside, I think the subject does touch on some interesting sociological and anthropological aspects of humanity. Cla68 (talk) 01:02, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

LOL

Funny...the things hotels do these days to attract customers. ResMar 13:57, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Name-change objection

User:Simply south has changed the name of the article removing the hyphen from "Hotel toilet-paper folding" with the edit summary "(dash not needed)". I thought about this when I created the article: The hyphen is normally used to connect two nouns acting as an adjective, and I think it removes a little potential confusion. I created a redirect early on, so it shouldn't be difficult for someone who forgets the hyphen to type in the name and get to the article. It's a bit more common for British English to drop hyphens, but they're used in both the UK and the US. Here's what American and British English differences#Punctuation has to say about it:

It is sometimes believed[citation needed] that BrE does not hyphenate multiple-word adjectives (e.g. "a first class ticket"). The most common form is as in AmE ("a first-class ticket"), but some British writers omit the hyphen when no ambiguity would arise.

It's not that important. If anyone cares, please add your opinion here, and we'll go with whatever consensus says. -- Noroton (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I think actually i'll move it back because of it saying somewhere in policy that if it is first written in that version of English on neutral articles, it should stay in that version, or something like that. I removed the dash\hyphen based on the toilet paper title. Simply south (talk) 19:55, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Noroton (talk) 20:02, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I noticed the hyphen independent of the discussion here. Since the article Toilet paper doesn't have a hyphen, it seems strange to me that we add a hyphen when it's folded. I think removing the hyphen makes sense and doesn't create ambiguity. However, if I bother to pursue this particular point of punctuation about this particular article any further than these comments I have already made please remind me to shoot myself. --Boston (talk) 02:03, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

That's not the same. Toilet paper = Adjective + Noun. Toilet-paper folding = compound adjective + Noun. Most compound adjective take a hyphen to prevent ambiguities: toilet paper-folding would be someone doing origami when in the loo, and "toilet paper folding" would be ambiguous. (Similarly, a wild-goose chase is not the same as a wild goose-chase.) — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 02:34, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

MOS for headings

A few words about this weird revert[1] of Noroton:

• In image tags, it was pointless to force or restore the "right" tag since that's the default. FAC articles never use it. Only "left" is needed and useful.
• In refs calls, it was pointless to move the main citation at the top of article, the page was working perfectly well. A main citation (the one carrying the full text of the reference) does not have to be the first of its series and can be located anywhere in the article including after several named calls to it – cf WP:REFNAME. It is thus convenient and customary to put the main ref somewhere practical in the body of the article, and to use only the shorter calls such as <ref name=meme/> in the lead or in the infobox, where long references are impractical. (Actually, since the lead and infobox and supposed to be only summaries or recap of information that must be found and sourced in the body of the article, they should normally not carry main references at all, such as <ref name=meme>...stuff...</ref> that belong to the body of the article; lead and infobox should only use calls such as <ref name=meme/> that re-use information sourced in the body of the article.)

I won't waste any more time with the points above, and sorry I did the first time. However:

• Per MOS, newspaper titles such as The Age etc. take ital, not quotes as you reinstated.
• I explicitely said in my edit summary [2] that I was fixing the typo "Fountainebleau" to Fontainebleau in Fontainebleau Miami Beach, typo that you put back twice.
• WP:MOSHEAD is clear that "Section names should not explicitly refer to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. For example, Early life is preferable to His early life when His means the subject of the article; headings can be assumed to be about the subject unless otherwise indicated."

So I'll fix it again, and thank you for all the fish. — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 11:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of WP:MOSHEAD. Thanks for pointing it out. I thought the original subject titles were more pleasing, but it's certainly not worth arguing about. It seems to me that it's more convenient to keep the "main ref" information in the first instance, so I moved the "Imponderables" footnote info to the lead. I didn't think footnotes were needed in the lead, but WP:LEAD seems to disagree, so since someone put them there, I see no reason to remove them. Near the bottom, I changed the section heading "Comments" to "Humor and opinions", which is less vague, but someone can probably improve on that name. The problem is that with at least the first source mentioned, there's both humor and some apparent serious commentary, but it's difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. Both the humor and the serious commentary seem to be significant reactions worth mentioning. Thanks for your expert help and your explanation. Please try to remain WP:CIVIL on this very controversial topic. -- Noroton (talk) 17:54, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• I like a running gag like anyone else but it's not used in Wikipedia headings and I don't think it's necessary to make an article pleasing. Actually, straight encyclopedic treatment of such topic is probably in itself a more efficient form of deadpan humor (cf. John Cleese, or the Criminologist narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show).
• Major claims need to be sourced every time they're used, including in the WP:LEAD. The lead doesn't absolutely require as much sourcing as the rest (since it's supposed to be an abstract, a self-contained summary of the sourced article) but it's better when its main claims call back the notes used to source them in the body (even more when they're used for a DYK hook). Your moving all main refs to the lead doesn't change anything to the article's output, and doesn't make it more convenient editing-wise since a mere CTRL+F can bring you to the main ref anywhere it is located – on the other hand it now makes the lead's code be bloated, harder to read and edit, and unfriendly to new/unexperienced editors, but that's your call.
• I won't change "Humor and opinions" though I still think that "Comments" was enough ("Comments" or "Reactions" seem to be the most commonly used catch-all headings for that sort of section), precisely because it doesn't need to make any POV evaluation about what's humor or serious; and also because the contents of the section can evolve freely without having to rethink or retitle it. However, I deleted its entire last part, because a reader's comment posted below an online article isn't a source (anyone could anything then quote it here).
• I don't think this is a "very controversial topic": it's well-known and documented and not controversial at all. But similarly to the article about Human feces, it could uncontroversially be a magnet for sophomoric vandals trying to be a PITA. If you want controversial, see Toilet-related injury and the heavily disputed inclusion of Elvis in its list of "Famous toilet-related deaths". — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 01:59, 16 April 2009 (UTC)