Stripping all useful note country pages like:: Useful Notes.The United States

Given how Eddie removed all the information from UsefulNotes.The United States, does that also apply to all the other useful notes country pages? There's a thread here complaining about UsefulNotes.Canada and comparing it to UsefulNotes.Britain, but if you go by the United States precedent, UsefulNotes.Britain should be one sentence saying "if you want information, go to an encyclopedia".

For the record: Information removed:

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The United States of America—commonly referred to as the United States, the US, the USA, the US of A, America, or the States—is a constitutional federal democratic republic occupying a large part of the continent of North America. It borders Canada from the south and Mexico from the north in its main territorial area. It also contains, off the mainland, the Hawaiian islands of the Pacific Ocean and a large area in northwest of Canada called Alaska that shares a sea border with the Russian Federation. In all, the country consists of fifty states, one state-neutral capitol city called Washington, D.C. (for "District of Columbia"), and assorted smaller commonwealths and protectorates. It is so huge (third largest overall, behind Russia and Canada respectively), in fact, that it would take days on end to drive from one opposite end to the other. One state of the fifty, Texas, the largest state in the mainland, is almost three times as large as the entire United Kingdom. So if you're planning to come here, don't expect to hit all the widespread landmarks in one trip unless you have a lot of time to spend and don't mind paying for many flights or sitting through long car drives (we don't have all that many passenger trains here anymore).

Colonized by Europeans from the 16th century onwards, thirteen of the British-ruled colonies on the eastern coast declared independence in 1776 and combined to form their own country. The new nation then expanded westwards (to the unhappiness of the previous native population that it came into conflict with), acquiring land from France, Britain (not Canada), Mexico, and Russia, annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii, and small territory gains from military conflicts with Spain (now Cuba) and Japan.

Over the course of the late 19th century to the present, the United States became a superpower and is now technically the most powerful country on the planet — it is technologically advanced and possesses a huge industrial base, a colossal military, and immense financial wealth. It is the largest exporter of modern media, its products being seen the world over.

The country's government consists of three branches, with the head of one of these (the executive branch) being commonly viewed as a main political leader: the elected President of the United States, currently Barack Obama.

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The comment was "Not an encyclopedia, my friend."

edited 4th Aug '11 9:55:52 PM by arromdee

Well, it's the problem we have with a lot of Useful Notes. A lot of them read like dry encyclopedia recitations of history. I'm sure a Useful Notes page can be written on it, but it would have to have more of a trope-oriented standpoint. For instance, something like Eagleland is how America is portrayed fictionally—a Useful Notes could contrast with a real life perception of the country, from the viewpoint of foreigners and domestics.

Keeping that neutral would be rather hard I can see locking it after it's complete.

On another note Canada vs Canada Eh might want to be looked at too (And World War II and a lot of other Useful Notes.)

edited 4th Aug '11 10:45:56 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Canada Eh is a trope, and does seem to be fulfilling most of its trope-ly duties. As far as Useful Notes/Canada, I opened a TRS about that. While it has a more cultural outlook that is far more useful for trope reference, it uses first person and is highly nationalistic, with questionable biases and a sort of confrontational nature about other countries.

Personally, I think these general questions should be asked about Useful Notes:

• Is the information "useful" for the purpose of storytelling and understanding stories involving the subject matter?
• Is the information more easily and logically found at The Other Wiki?

Looking at the Britain page, the first several paragraphs seem OK... though maybe they should be reduced to something like "See Britain Versus The UK", which is actually where those paragraphs end up, eventually.

The paragraphs beginning "Modern Britain" and "Democracy in Britain" strike me as mostly stuff we should let people read about on The Other Wiki.

Looking at the excised America stuff, there are nuggets of good stuff that a glance at Wikipedia won't tell you right off the bat. Like a paragraph on "America's really big" would be apropos, for instance. (A wise person once told me "The main thing Americans don't truly grasp about Europe is how old it is. The main thing Europeans don't truly grasp about America is how big it is.)

edited 5th Aug '11 7:37:37 AM by suedenim

Jet-a-Reeno!

You may want to read this thread.

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

"Democracy in Britain" is kinda required knowledge for watching some shows like The Thick Of It.

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Not really. That's the history of British Democracy, which isn't really necessary to enjoy something like Yes Minister or the above show (which I'm unfamiliar with).

A "Here's the gist of how the British government works in practice" paragraph would be OK (but we evidently have separate pages for that too - British Political System, e.g.)

Jet-a-Reeno!

Ok then... Second time today I didnt bother to read the actual page first...

The only thing I could see that for is explaining how it worked in eras of popular works like Elisabeth and Shakespeare

edited 5th Aug '11 7:56:06 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I would tend to say that we should avoid Useful Notes for anything not specifically media-related (or which lacks stuff that could be directly relevant to how it's treated in the media), since there's nothing we can really offer there that improves on an encyclopedia entry.

Good: Useful Notes on a company that goes into detail on how that company has invested in influencing its media appearance.

Bad: Useful Notes on a country that just try to provide you with generic information about that country.

(My gut feeling is that most Useful Notes are like the latter — I feel that a lot of tropers love having the chance to show off their knowledge about obscure things. But we're not really designed to be an encyclopedia, and don't really do sourcing or anything like that, so if we allow that, what we're mostly going to get are pages filled with personal opinions, gut feelings, skewed perceptions of foreign countries viewed through the lens of their media, and so on.)

edited 5th Aug '11 8:48:20 AM by Aquillion

The fact remains that the type of information removed from UsefulNotes.The United States is standard on a lot of other useful notes pages. Should we strip those too? Or did Eddie just make a mistake?

I disagree that stripping them is what needs to be done—but reworking them, certainly.

So should it be restored to the United States page and reworked there as well?