Wikipedia also has this unfortunate tendency to go by anything someone on a campus somewhere tells it. With the effect that a large number of entries are very misleading.
Now I'm going to give just two examples, and these are from areas of interest that I have, and which I don't expect others to necessarily share as particularly 'interesting' in and of themselves. But nevertheless, they are still good examples that demonstrate what I mean by 'misleading.'
As a side-note, though, I know there are still a few people coming in to look at the post for the 24th of April, and so I will briefly repeat the link that is contained there:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uW7p1fk0thQm0LXceAi4mZya20MV3BIz
...Which has nothing whatsoever to do with today's subject! But anyhooo...
On matters of culture and 'cultural folklore,' it's not genuinely justifiable to suddenly come out of nowhere to gainsay what the currency of that folklore already is - merely because you have some academic process of 'verifying' some odd thing here or there!
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| 'Jimmy the Hat' Allard |
...I mean, 'Jimmy the Hat' is already a well-known race-track identity, you can't suddenly turn around and suggest his name 'ought to be' for instance, Jimmy the grey mustache!! And just because it happens to be a most certainly verifiable fact that he does indeed possess a tiny grey hint of a mustache, just plain does not allow anyone to change his actual folkloric name.
But this is the kind of thing going on in Wikipedia all the time - some academic puts up some undoubtedly 'true (-ish)' thing, and all of a sudden, the really important key matter disappears altogether, in favor of some utter, and highly misleading, balderdash - that is, with respect to the significant issue entailed in having a Wiki entry at all.
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| Damien Oliver's (winning) riding style |
Take this example: Damien Oliver is recognized around the world as one of the greatest race horse jockeys in the world. Now I know D. Oliver - his brother rode horses for me, and many a time early in the morning my sister and/or I would drive Damien or his (now deceased) brother Jason to and from track-work. I have no idea who posted or contributed to the entry for Oliver in Wikipedia. It has become, as a result largely of Wikipedia, a 'fact' repeated in the sports media, that Oliver won his first ever race as an apprentice licensed rider on a horse called 'Mr. Gudbud' at a track called the Bunbury Race Track in Western Australia. And that is true, and it is 'a fact.' And that is all that is recorded in Wikipedia.
And it is grossly, and I mean, from a racing expert's point of view, grossly misleading.
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| Lengths in front as he wins, you see... |
The whole point about the prodigy that Oliver is, is not that he won at his first ever race ride anywhere - it is that he won at his very first city track race ride on a main race day, against seasoned, and very good, senior riders - and he beat them pointless.
He rode 'Massingham' and I was there. The first actual mainstream race ride ever by Damien Oliver was on 'Massingham,' not 'Mr. Gudbud.' And he rode against senior riders of note, and he beat them pointless. ...It is extremely misleading to merely note that he won at some nondescript early stage in his training as an apprentice, a weak bush track race against no one.
Wikipedia, in failing to record this, is forgetting and failing the owners and trainers of the city horse Massingham, failing the memory of Oliver's riding teachers, failing him as the prodigy rider that he truly is, and failing in the understanding of just what a talent he possesses. Not only did he beat the other senior riders on the day - it was the way he beat them: his horse made three runs in the race (a nearly impossible thing for any horse to do), the other riders trying to block him and intimidate him, and he slipped through hard and incredibly fast, the horse going for him (meaning co-operating and running fast for his instructions as a pilot, which generally means the horse has confidence in him and trusts him), on the extreme inside against the rail after slipping in and out around traffic up the straight. It was literally impossible to make out the difference between the rider and the horse itself - they were 'as one' going past the post first.
And he's never stopped being that good since.
Second example - and this is taken directly from the Wiki entry on Pierre Lorillard IV:
"While it has been reported that Lorillard's son, Griswold Lorillard, introduced the then-unnamed tuxedo to the United States in 1886 at the Tuxedo Club's Autumn Ball, this is now known to be incorrect."
'Known' - by whom? Where is any citation at all to this bald assertion?
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| Here's a bald assertion for you - at almost Seventy, I'd still cast SLJ as James Bond, and I'd make millions doing it; because he's AN ACTOR. |
Tuxedo Park, is for one thing, originally named and owned by the Lorillards. The entire span of all common folklore about tuxedos is that they were commissioned and hence instigated as upper class formal evening attire by Lorillard at Tuxedo Park, and made by Henry Poole & Co of Savile Row. There are crucial aspects to do with color and fabrics used that are particular to Lorillard and to Poole. There is no other tradition. Period.
What are these present-day 'academics?' Cultural iconoclasts with nothing to substitute for that which they are egotistically removing, or seeking to remove by manipulating the media and information archives.
Why? What's the point of all this? It obtains right throughout a very large number of subject matters as they are represented in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a first-call reference for almost everyone these days, but you have to be very careful about reaching conclusions based on what you will find there...
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