Of Wikipedia and Widgets

As I teach my kids about the internet as an information repository, we have spent a fair amount of time talking about Wikipedia. Certainly it is a place to find out about anything, but it is a full of information whose veracity and neutrality are often called into question. My own position on the site, and the lesson I teach my children, is to treat it as resource but not a source.

This opinion is shared by many institutions. I checked with a high school English teacher of mine, Malcolm Flynn, now Assistant Headmaster at my alma mater Boston Latin School. He responds that school policy is that students may read it for general background but may not cite it as a source.

The issue of citing Wikipedia arose for me as I was browsing through a recent issue of 1to1, a marketing and customer service magazine I receive. I spotted this wondrous quote from an article by Jeremy Nedelka:

A widget, or more precisely Web widget, is defined by Wikipedia as a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any Web page by an end user without requiring additional programming.

My first problem here is, not surprisingly, the phrase "defined by Wikipedia." I'm not sure how a writer, a technology writer moreover, can get away with defining anything out of Wikipedia. Donna Shaw, in the American Journalism Review, sheds some more interesting light on Wikipedia in the newsroom in this article . Too bad the editors at 1on1 did not encourage Nedelka to see Wikipedia "more as a road map to information than as a source to cite."

Now I suppose I can get over an occasional slip of citing Wikipedia, but lets look at the definition itself. Yeah, read it again. Now everyone together... "Huh?"

Had Nedelka dug just a bit deeper into the Wikipedia article, he would have found some better ways to explain widgets. Here are two much clearer definitions found in sources listed right on the same Wikipedia page, just one click away each. BusinessWeek:

Widgets are small, easy-to-forward bundles of software that let users play with graphics and information online.

And even better, Clearspring:

These movable mini-applications are used by consumers to craft custom experiences on their desktops, start pages, social networks, blogs and more. Widgets can be almost anything, common examples include games, stock tickers, video and audio players, quizzes, slideshows, personal productivity tools, system utilities...

Finally, of course, one major problems of citing (and quoting) Wikipedia is that it is an unstable text, constantly chaging, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the not-so-good. The definition used by Nedelka in his piece is now no longer quoted the same as it was. The page has been edited more than two dozen times in the last three months.

So, my children, let this be yet another lesson for you in the proper use of citation, quotation, and the wiki-ization of the world.

Nonsonguitur

Why is the song commonly known as "Teenage Wasteland" by The Who actually entitled Baba O'Riley? Neither a Baba nor an O'Riley is mentioned anywhere in the lyrics, nor is it clear that song has anything to do with either or with a Baba O'Riley, whatever that might be. It's all about a teenage wasteland... but that's not the title.

As it turns out (more info at songfacts.com), the title is a tribute to two major influences on Pete Townshend, Meher Baba and Terry Riley, and the song was penned as an opening for Townshend's next rock opera.

I can't find a suitable name for this type of pop culture constriction--a song whose title is not part of the lyrics--so I have invented the word "nonsonguitur." Needless to say, it is a corruption of the phrase"non sequitor" from the Latin meaning "it does not follow." In this case, a nonsonguitur is a song whose title does not follow from the lyrics, or more precisely, whose title is not found in the lyrics.

While Baba O'Riley is likely the most prominent nonsonguitur of the rock era, there are many other notable songs whose titles are not significantly part of the song lyrics, if mentioned at all.

Absolute Nonsonguiturs
One might even say there are shades of nonsonguitur. Some like Led Zeppelin's Black Dog or the Mamas and the Papas Creeque Alley, both like Baba O'Riley, wherein there is absolutely no apparent reason for naming the song. Black Dog (Hey hey mama say the way you move/gonna make you sweat gonna make you groove) was apparently named for a black dog that wandered into the studio as they were recording. Creeque Alley, an autobiographical song of the formation of the band, was named for a road in the Virgin Islands where the band had played.

Other songs that fit this category of nonsonguiturs are:

Neil Young's After the Gold Rush (Look at Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen seventies). See this article for some speculation on the meaning of both the title and the haunting apocalyptic lyrics.

Unchained Melody, perhaps one of the most popular love songs of all time (Oh, my love, my darling/I've hungered for your touch), first made famous by the Righteous Brothers, was named because it had been the theme song for the 1955 film "Unchained."

For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield (Stop, hey what's that sound/everybody look what's going down). See an analysis here of song and lyrics.

Danny's Song, written by Kenny Loggins, and charted highest by Anne Murray (Even though we ain't got money/I'm so in love with ya honey), never mentions a Danny in the lyrics. It was reported written by Loggins for his older brother Dan.

Logical Nonsonguiturs
Other nonsonguitirs are more logical, such as The Ballad of John and Yoko by the Beatles and Space Oddity by David Bowie. In these songs, the title implies the subject of the song, or some other reference to the story contained in the lyrics, even though the title does not appear verbatim. The Ballad of John and Yoko (Christ you know it ain't easy, you know how hard this can be/and the way things are going, they're gonna crucify me) details the marriage and honeymoon "bed-in" of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Space Oddity describes the adventure of astronaut Major Tom though his conversations with ground control.

Others in this group include

Life During Wartime by the Talking Heads, (This ain't no party/this ain't no disco/this ain't no fooling around) See this interesting link

A Day in the Life by the Beatles, known for it's opening line I heard the news today oh boy
interesting link

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, a most eclectic rock symphony.

Land of 1000 Dances was recorded most successfully by Wilson Pickett. Earlier versions had a verbal introduction that explained that the singer was going to take you to such a place. See the story here.

Non Nonsonguiturs
On the list of songs that I don't consider to be nonsonguiturs are songs which have a lyric used as a parenthetical subtitle, such as The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy) by Simon and Garfunkel or R.E.M.'s So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry).

Similarly, if a song title is reflected essentially in the lyrics, even though it is not verbatim, it really can not be a nonsonguitur, as the title does follow from the lyrics. Examples of this include Billy Joel's Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (Abottle of red, a bottle of white) or Bobbie Gentry's Ode to Billy Joe (Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge).