Talk:Veni, vidi, vici

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[edit] I thought it was Alexander the Greats quote

Damn. It would have made more sense.

-G

[edit] Marlboro

Marlboro used to have "veni vedi veci" printed on the front of every pack of their cigarettes as part of the Phillip Morris logo which is also the seal of the British Royal Family.Could somebody find the old logo and post it and work it into the article? THANKYOU!

[edit] Pop cult

Can this generally silly section be cut or at least pruned? Marskell (talk) 23:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

If you look at the page history, you'll see this is the remnants from a very long trivia section. This content was forked into Veni, Vidi, Vici in popular culture, which then got deleted in an AFD debate; see the last version of that article. I think the VVVIPC content is more valuable to the reader than this disjointed paragraph. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 23:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

How about we split it out into a better-written and better-sourced IPC article? That really does strike me as the best option.--Father Goose (talk) 03:01, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that the content that got deleted in the AFD debate was more valuable than what we have here. This "rather disjointed paragraph", as NickPenguin calls it, gives an overview of the major cases where the phrase occurs in popular culture, without going into a tedious recitation of trivia. I guess a proper investigation of the occurrence of the phrase since 47BC might warrant an article, and I wouldn't oppose that by any means. I would, however, oppose putting all that stuff back into this article, and would also oppose removing all mention and examples of the longevity and continuing popularity of the quotation from this article. --Slashme (talk) 09:38, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess a proper investigation of the occurrence of the phrase since 47BC might warrant an article, and I wouldn't oppose that by any means. How can this be true if you nominated the last VVVIPC article for deletion? Especially when you nominate it only minutes after you forked the content out of this article? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 15:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I haven't been following this discussion lately. To reply: The "in popular culture" article was by no means a proper investigation of anything. It was a laundry list of trivia. And as for nominating it for deletion, I figured that the closest thing to "due process" would be to strip out the trivia section (which is discouraged by policy) and then nominate it for deletion so that our impartial peers could discuss the issue properly. There was a clear consensus against putting it back into this article, and that's what I've been policing here. --Slashme (talk) 05:59, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Forgive me for asking a stupid question, but what is wrong with a "laundry list of trivia" anyway? Some Wikipedia users, myself included, actually like such things. You don't like them, I do, how about leaving the content up for those of us that do think it has a place? Part of the joy of Wikipedia is that it hosts information that wouldn't be in other encyclopedias. A big list of VVVIPC (as a separate article) fits into that category. If we don't make a list such as that, who will? Parkingtigers (talk) 22:31, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I for one agree with you (as others will know by now). The principles I embrace happen to be two of the five laws of library science: every reader his or her book, and every book its reader. Articles that are not specifically a detriment to the encyclopedia (by being unverifiable, non-neutral, or unreadable), should be retained as long as they can be shown to have interested readers (though redundant content should be merged).--Father Goose (talk) 05:58, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, "every reader his or her book" is a good principle. Let's look at what we have at the moment: A balanced article which gives the origin of the sentence, with some historical context, and an overview of the continuing popularity of the sentence in its original and some varied forms through the ages. Neither section is out of balance or proportion with the rest of the article. This version has a short historical introduction and a long, tedious, hardly organized recitation of references to the sentence in popular culture, which took up most of the article. The policy Wikipedia:SUMMARY suggests moving such sections to their own articles, which I did, and summarizing the content in the main article, which I did. I felt that the new article was awful and unencyclopedic, and I suggested it for deletion, for which there was sufficient consensus. If you feel that the content really deserves an article, re-create the article with more discussion of the topic, or as a list (of which Wikipedia has a good number, and for which there is precedent) and fight for it to be kept. However, there was clear consensus during the deletion debate that that content should not be merged back into this article. --Slashme (talk) 14:59, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I agreed with splitting out the "uses of the phrase" section, but not with subsequently deleting it. I did rework the article during its AfD -- organizing, expansion, sourcing, fact-checking -- as a fairly good-quality list article, but the AfD closure failed to take that into account. I do continue to advocate having VVVIPC as a separate article, linked to from this one -- and the lede of that rewritten article would work as a better summary of the subject than the melange that is presently being used in this article.

The attitude toward such lists of examples or uses often seems to be "this is useless", but it has its academic value -- William Safire, for instance, has a weekly column in which he traces the evolving usage of phrases. As long as the subjects are handled in a way that keeps each article focused on a coherent topic, the more detail we provide, the better Wikipedia is, IMO.--Father Goose (talk) 21:22, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I won't nominate the pop culture article for deletion again if you intend to work on it. What might make your case stronger at AFD would be to first resurrect the article as a subpage to your user page, invite everyone who feels strongly about it to join in and help, and get it up to a standard where it can survive an AFD vote, then upload it again. --Slashme (talk) 12:22, 27 May 2008 (UTC)