The Index of the Giant's Comments IV - A Rich Source of Quotassium

[snowblizz]

The Star Wars thing is debatable (personally, I love the theme), but getting the plantain joke has nothing to do with being a native English speaker. Plantain is the name for a fruit native to Spanish-speaking Latin American countries; speaking German or Japanese or Hindi doesn't make the joke any more or less difficult to get (although perhaps Americans see/eat more plantains than Europeans or Asians do).

Edit: Scratch the part about plantains being native to Latin America; apparently they're originally from Southeast Asia, Oceania, and West Africa (which seems kind of random, but whatever), although they're frequently cultivated in Latin America these days. If anything, though, that makes the reference easier to get, not harder.

The joke becomes more difficult to get if one has never ever heard of a plantain and all yellow bendy things are "bananas".

Funny thread title is only funny if ppl get the joke. See below for another example. It's not that I mind Starwars jokes, it is just that if they are running so stretched it becomes hard to connect the dots they become pointless.

I agree with this. I usually have a google translate tab open when checking the forum. And even then I miss some puns. This one in specific would be so meta that I think I wouldn't get if I didn't already knew what plantain means.

Also, the current title is the ultimate banana+giant comments pun. We should, regretably, drop the banana theme, unless someone creates a better pun.

The fact that current thread titles is a banana joke is something I have never ever understood until now (I'll be posting in Things You Never Noticed Soon :P). Because I'm used to seeing it named "kalium", I always thought it was a Star Trek/Wars "Unobtanium" kind of joke. This is sorta what I was trying to high-light. I love a good pun, but give ppl a chance to get it too.

It gets complicated in a hurry....Plantains are starchy and bananas are sweet, but there isn't a formal botanical distinction between them. The banana plant was first domesticated several millennia ago, and while the two wild species had strong tendencies with regards to their fruit (Musa acuminata plants tended to produce "dessert bananas", while musa balbisiana plants tended to produce plantains or "cooking bananas"), hybridization between the two has been going on for so long that species alone isn't a good indicator of what variety of fruit is produced. And in some areas, a wide variety of cultivars produced enough distinct fruits that "cooking banana" vs "dessert banana" isn't a meaningful distinction...so the distinction isn't made.

Wait, there's more than one kind of banana? Never ever heard of anything but the typical sweet bananas then. Most peculiar.

[CalamaroJoe]

Can someone explain to me why this is funny? There's nothing humorous about it, as far as I can tell.

Honestly I think that at least it is a bit funny.
However for me it's mainly because:

That said, I don't really like any of the proposed titles, but On a Saner Forum, We Wouldn't Need this Index is okay I guess.

and I'm not in my best shape to:

You can propose a different title, if you prefer. "The Plantain Menace" overtook "Banana Republic" pretty quickly after it was proposed, so it could certainly work.

[littlebum2002]

No, I said there may be some sources that say plan-TAYN is okay, but they'll probably be from non-native countries. Given the statement "if P then Q", it is a logical fallacy to conclude "if Q then P".

People often pronounce things "wrong" but insist it's right, and they're not exactly wrong to say that, heh. Language is weird. But (agreeing with your experience, I think; the second and fifth lines contradict each other) every American dictionary I've looked at agrees that PLAN-tin is primary, and some don't list any other pronunciation at all.

My post was all messed up.

Yes, the 5th line was supposed to say that dictionaries have the stress on the SECOND symbol, but yes, now that I am reading them again I see you are right, the "correct" pronunciation of the word has the stress on the first syllable, regardless of where the speaker is from. I misread the dictionaries and thought the pronunciations were different in British and American English, your post makes much more sense now!

The fact that current thread titles is a banana joke is something I have never ever understood until now (I'll be posting in Things You Never Noticed Soon :P). Because I'm used to seeing it named "kalium", I always thought it was a Star Trek/Wars "Unobtanium" kind of joke. This is sorta what I was trying to high-light. I love a good pun, but give ppl a chance to get it too.

I mean, yes bananas are "a rich source of potassium", but so are lots of other things. To be honest, when I first saw the title of the thread I thought it was from a breakfast cereal advertisement. I didn't think about it being about a banana until you just mentioned it

Wait, there's more than one kind of banana? Never ever heard of anything but the typical sweet bananas then. Most peculiar.

bananalink.org says there are over 1,000 varieties of banana. I know my local Whole Foods has at least 4 (regular sweet bananas, little tiny yellow bananas which are about 2 inches long, these weird red bananas, and plantains, which are un-sweet bananas.

[Bird]

I'll toss in a vote for "On a Saner Forum, We Wouldn't Need this Index"

(I'm pro-banana pun in general, but only if they also relate to the thread's mission, as "A Rich Source of Quotassium" does.)

[thatSeniorGuy]

I'm also tossing in my support for the "On a Saner Forum" proposal.

[pearl jam]

I've never looked up the pronunciation in a dictionary, but I had no idea that PLANtin was the "preferred" pronunciation.

("Correct" is a questionable distinction, particularly when you're talking about English.)

[Yendor]

I think it might help if we put together an unofficial FAQ, especially since the official one is hopelessly out of date. It would cover the most common questions, and also cases where the answer can be found in the strip itself, with supporting quotes from the Giant as necessary. It might take some of the strain off this thread, though there could still be some dispute over what's sufficiently obvious or common.

(On a personal note, I'm slightly embarrassed that my "saner forum" comment has taken off like this.)

[Lissou]

I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced PLAN-tin in the US, I've only ever heard plan-TAYN. So I would think that from my experience, the "preferred" pronunciation is not the most common one, although it may vary from one region to the next.

[unbeliever536]

Let's be honest, here: I've been known to remember relevant quotes that weren't in the Index, because I recalled unrelated text in the same post from when I came across it years prior. I seriously doubt I'm typical of the intended audience of the Index Whether I think something's useful to note down or not probably has little correlation to whether it'll be useful to anyone the Index is intended for, so I'm loathe to put my own opinion in an elevated position.

And I think that's where our views split. It appears you prefer exact, strict guidelines instead of consensus gathering; whereas I think the innate value of community input is what makes this worth having a thread for at all. Making use of all sorts of perspectives I wouldn't necessarily have thought of, without requiring them to be codified into some sort of rule, makes the Index more generally useful than I could reasonably expect to accomplish on my own.

Some of the multipage discussions that mentality leads can be tedious to sift through, yes; but by and large I wouldn't say they're bad. I certainly wouldn't consider cutting them off with rules as an improvement...and that's assuming rules could actually cut them off, I somehow expect long discussions on a quote would become discussions on the rule (using the quote as an example) of at least equal length.

Re: rule F2... I genuinely do not remember what my point was about that. I had some reason to bring that up, but for the life of me I could not tell you what it was.

Consensus gathering is great, when there's a consensus to gather. But in a number of the last few discussions here I have felt like there is a real gap between different members of the community over what the nature of the index is or should be. I think a lot of what's going on in the argument over the afterlife tweets (and what I recall of the quote on the Roy/HPOH fight being the start of this book) is people arguing over whether a quote is in line with the purpose of the index, and that purpose does not seem clear. The current statement of purpose above the rules feels like it should guide that sort of discussion, but I don't think it's clear enough. For example, I treat the index as primarily the place where OOTS canon is documented, plus a useful place to find the Giant's opinions on related topics (effectively, as an extended Q&A with the Giant). Thus the afterlife tweets seem perfect for inclusion, and I opposed the inclusion of the "this is not the end of the book" quote. I suppose that fits under the "research aid" definition in the statement of purpose, but a number of people here seem to take it to mean something along the lines of "a faster way to find quotes than the forum search", hence the strong concerns about clutter.

Shorter and less garbled: I think we could reach a consensus more easily if we had a clearer sense of what we are actually trying to do here, and I don't think "research aid rather than trivia collection" is the appropriate distinction to draw. As was discussed in the last thread when Rule C became that statement of purpose, "research aid" could mean any number of things (some of which the index clearly is not). As of now, the research vs trivia distinction does not seem to me to bear on the arguments that reference the purpose of the index, despite those arguments clearly coming from people using the index for different purposes. Because of this, I agree with Kish that we need some kind of new rule or purpose statement to guide things.

edit-
Also, my (mid atlantic US) experience re: plantains accords with Lissou's. I don't recall ever hearing someone say PLAN-tin, only plan-TAYN.

[Kish]

I will reluctantly cast a vote for "the Plantain Menace." I'm not wild about either of the two leaders, but I...really don't agree with the implication that most of Rich's informative posts are things it makes no sense to want to remember.

[DemonRoach]

Another vote for the Saner Forum title.

[Quild]

I'm sad that "Organized Stalking" did not catch.

Fine, we'll just keep pushing toward fundamentally different goals until this thread turns into a snarl that eats us all. Don't say I didn't warn you when it happens.

Oh, maybe we could have done something with that too.
Index The Index of the Giant's Comments V - Thread Slowly turning in another Snarl

[Lord Torath]

Oh, maybe we could have done something with that too.
Index The Index of the Giant's Comments V - Thread Slowly turning in another Snarl

Ha!

As applicable as that title is, I'm going to throw my support behind "On a saner forum..." I like the fun it pokes at ourselves.

[Zherog]

I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced PLAN-tin in the US, I've only ever heard plan-TAYN. So I would think that from my experience, the "preferred" pronunciation is not the most common one, although it may vary from one region to the next.

This.

Another vote for the Saner Forum title.

Also, this.

[littlebum2002]

It doesn't really matter if "Saner Forum" or "Plantain Menace" wins. I'll just vote for whichever loses next time.

[Mightymosy]

I have a request:
Can we limit all this meta-dicussion and just collect author quotes here?

Simply put, whenever I get bored waiting for new comic strips, I look into this thread to see if there is at least interesting author trivia or behind the scenes explanations I can read and think about.

And roughly 90% of the time what I find instead is endless discussions about whether certain quotes should be included or not and similar stuff.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for baseline democracy and stuff, but you may find in a couple of years looking back, that spending all that time on discussions and arguments if certain posts are to be included in a thread in a webcomic forum, well, may appear to be a less useful use of your time than you may wish.

Just my 2 cents. If you take great enjoyments from these discussions, go for it and have fun. I just sometimes get the impressions that people take stuff a little to serious. I'd just collect all quotes for future reference, and be done with it!
(That said, thanks for the maintenance of this index. It's a neat source of reading).

[tomandtish]

OK, let's see...next thread title....

• The Plantain Menace - 11
• On a Saner Forum, We Wouldn't Need this Index - 7
• The Giant Writes Back - 3
• Banana Republic - 1

Am I really that menacing?

---

As for the two tweets....

Assessment for Afterlife Memory Tweets
PROPONENTS	OPPONENTS
Sniffoy	Gwynfrid
2.5 cats	Keltest
unbeliever536	Peelee
littlebum2002	Cizak
snowblizz	Grey_Wolf_c
pendell	Kalmegil
tomandtish	Emanick
137ben	Lissou
DaggerPen	Pyrous
Ron Miel	FujinAkari
ReaderAt2046
ORione
Zherog
Gilphon
Ruck
Porthos
Markozeta
ChristianSt
Kish
SaintRidley
Totals
20	10
Current Disposition
INCLUDE

At this rate, it could get in without the possibility of a vote being called on it.

---

I'm...going to have to ask you to express your view on the quotes without resorting to conditional statements, before I can count it.

Put me down for Plaintain Menace.

The quote also clarified things for me as well and should be included.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I have a request:
Can we limit all this meta-dicussion and just collect author quotes here?

No, because the author told us to be more selective about what gets collected here. Therefore, we introduced a process to determine what quotes were relevant enough (voting). There is disagreements on where to draw the line, and the only way to resolve those disagreements is to have meta-discussion.

Grey Wolf

[Kalmegil]

No, because the author told us to be more selective about what gets collected here. Therefore, we introduced a process to determine what quotes were relevant enough (voting). There is disagreements on where to draw the line, and the only way to resolve those disagreements is to have meta-discussion.

Grey Wolf

Can you point to where he said this, please?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Can you point to where he said this, please?

Link.

Especifically, I'm thinking of this: "I can only make pronouncements that will be relinked and analyzed by the whole community. The end result of that will be me not talking about anything, because that makes me uncomfortable. So if your interest is in reading my thoughts on the creative process, linking them here is a surefire way to guarantee I never share such thoughts again."

And indeed, since he warned us about this, Rich has quite significantly decreased his participation on the boards. I don't think this thread is the only reason, but by his own words, it was a significant concern. This is one of the reasons why I oppose adding anything that is not absolutely essential.

Grey Wolf

[littlebum2002]

I'm amazed how long it took you guys to go through the first thread, compared to how fast we go through threads now.

[SaintRidley]

I will reluctantly cast a vote for "the Plantain Menace." I'm not wild about either of the two leaders, but I...really don't agree with the implication that most of Rich's informative posts are things it makes no sense to want to remember.

Yeah. Voting for Plantain Menace not because I like it but because the other option seems to be a joke that actually puts down and belittles what this thread is and is for. It's a bad fit for this kind of thread.

[orrion]

Link.

Especifically, I'm thinking of this: "I can only make pronouncements that will be relinked and analyzed by the whole community. The end result of that will be me not talking about anything, because that makes me uncomfortable. So if your interest is in reading my thoughts on the creative process, linking them here is a surefire way to guarantee I never share such thoughts again."

And indeed, since he warned us about this, Rich has quite significantly decreased his participation on the boards. I don't think this thread is the only reason, but by his own words, it was a significant concern. This is one of the reasons why I oppose adding anything that is not absolutely essential.

Grey Wolf

Same here, really.

The irony is that the one you linked that to pretty much wants everything added for the explicit purpose of gleaning stuff about the writing process.

[The Linker]

Link.

Especifically, I'm thinking of this: "I can only make pronouncements that will be relinked and analyzed by the whole community. The end result of that will be me not talking about anything, because that makes me uncomfortable. So if your interest is in reading my thoughts on the creative process, linking them here is a surefire way to guarantee I never share such thoughts again."

And yet, the quote under discussion now seems to fit squarely in the realm of stuff he does want recorded; it's about OOTS, he said it in a very 'on the record' manner, and its only use is to stop potential arguments about the topic (and as we've seen, it is definitely an area that lends itself to argument).

He says himself the 'line' is when he's talking about other topics, and "If it’s not about OOTS and/or it’s not in the OOTS board, I'd ask that it not be in the index." This isn't in that category at all, barring the fact that since he mentioned it on Twitter it's technically not on the OOTS board. This seems exactly like what he wants documented, because it could prevent more people from asking him "I thought Roy couldn't remember specifics of the afterlife," as that one user did.

This has nothing to do with his 'thoughts on the creative process,' so documenting this does not really put us at risk of him never sharing that stuff again. I feel like that post you've linked has been grossly misinterpreted—particularly every time it's used to try to prevent a quote which will help stop argument from being included.

He said quite specifically, "I am fully in support of this project to document stuff I’ve said about OOTS." This is something he's said about OOTS. There are other reasons to argue against this quote's inclusion, but I feel confident that creeping out the Giant is not one of them. This is the sort of thing he wants recorded; or at the very least, does not mind being recorded.

[rodneyAnonymous]

I have a request: Can we limit all this meta-dicussion and just collect author quotes here?

This comment is doubly ironic. First, it is itself meta-discussion. Second, asking people not to discuss a topic is almost guaranteed to generate discussion about that topic. (At least discussion of the request itself, but often the subject of the request, in addition.)

Also: No. As others have described, the consensus opinion is that the meta-discussion is valuable and necessary.

[ThePhantasm]

I'm amazed how long it took you guys to go through the first thread, compared to how fast we go through threads now.

1) Rich didn't post as much at that time.

2) There wasn't as much debate about rules, quotes, thread titles, and the proper pronunciation of "plantain"

[Grey_Wolf_c]

2) There wasn't as much debate about rules, quotes, thread titles, and the proper pronunciation of "plantain"

It was also before curatorship rules, so the threads were not dependent on committee decisions but on the will of the (mostly benevolent) dictator that ran each thread. Committee decisions take a beastly long time.

its only use is to stop potential arguments about the topic (and as we've seen, it is definitely an area that lends itself to argument)

It is also superfluous, since any potential arguments about the topic should be answered with the existing canon. By turning every comment Rich makes about the comic into a "better than actual canon" quote, we stop him from being able to casually talk with his readers. Instead, we turn everything he says into "words from on high", even when he is being superlative - and he has expressed frustration that because everything he says is taken as Word of God, even when he is just being over the top, he instead chooses to not post.

GW

[ThePhantasm]

It as also before curatorship rules, so the threads were not dependent on committee decisions but on the will of the (mostly benevolent) dictator that ran each thread. Committee decisions take a beastly long time.

Indeed. I understand the reasoning behind it but it does make things more complicated.

The funny thing is that my original intent for the index was abandoned or voted down a long time ago (while I was the curator). My opinion on which quotes deserve to be included now seems a minority opinion. As I said on the last page, I don't resent that - this has always been a community project. But its one of the reasons I had to bow out, as I simply couldn't maintain the workload of updating the index with these broader guidelines on quote acceptability.

[Jasdoif]

Well.

• On a Saner Forum, We Wouldn't Need this Index - 21
• The Plantain Menace - 17
• The Giant Writes Back - 2

With a margin of four and only a couple posts left for a turnaround, I don't think another two posts could change the standing....So Saner Forum etc. it is!

The Index of the Giant's Comments V - On a Saner Forum, We Wouldn't Need this Index (which turns out is only two characters short of hitting the character limit on thread titles) is now open! Carry on discussion what constitutes signficance quotes and/or proper(?) pronunciation of plantain over there, if you would.

[kengleong]

Thanks for sharing the information :)