[Ads-l] Phrase: drop-dead gorgeous - NYT obit for Richard Corliss and OED

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Jesse Sheidlower
> (I am the person who made that change. When I do edit Wikipedia, I do so
> anonymously, because I have no need for self-aggrandizement; I never do
> anything that could possibly be regarded as a conflict of interest.)

Jesse deserves praise for updating the Wikipedia entry and removing
the fallacious information about the phrase "drop dead gorgeous".
Thanks! You have helped many people.

Perhaps I should clarify my earlier remarks which were not aimed at
the precise correction of Wikipedia discussed above. The comments
below might be relevant to other researchers who disseminate results
via webpages.

Wikipedia has a policy called "No original research". One is not
supposed to perform original research and attempt to place the results
into a Wikipedia article.

Also, one is not supposed to link one's own website. There are
policies against "External link spamming" and "Citation spamming".

I am not criticizing these policies in this note. The underlying
rationale for these policies is understandable.

The Quote Investigator website is packed with original research (in my
opinion). In principle, all the supporting citations on the website
are verifiable. In practice, many are difficult to verify. One needs
to gain access to major research libraries and rare book libraries.
One also needs access to databases which are primarily available at
major research universities, e.g., ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Volunteer editors at Wikipedia and Wikiquote happily link to the Quote
Investigator website. I am glad to have these links. Admittedly, the
incoming traffic from these two sites is a minuscule fraction of total
traffic.

To simplify my life I do not edit any public-facing pages of Wikipedia
or Wikiquote. In the recent past, I did place a message on a
non-public-facing "Talk" page about an egregious error with the hope
that another editor would examine the evidence and fix the problem.
Eventually a thoughtful editor did fix the problem.

Garson

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