Talk:Mark-Paul Gosselaar

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This page was mentioned today (7 February) in a The Onion article [1], which claims that it was obviously written by Gosselaar himself, on those grounds. (as with his IMDB trivia). For the record, he seems in fact to have been rather modest. (Not that I'm sure how you measure the length in "pages" of a single web page.)

Journalists these days. Don't they do any research? Last year's piece by Larry Groznick on "Weird Al" Yankovic's wikipedia article was at least accurate.

--User:136.142.22.65

There was a link in our article to the Onion article, but I removed it on the grounds that it's more about WP and The Onion than about Gosselaar.

Funny mention on http://www.theonion.com/content/node/45124

--Toby Bartels 15:49, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

• sigh* The Onion is a satirical web-paper and not based on reality. Are people really this dense?

I think the above-mentioned grounds are unfounded. The brief is most definitely about MPG, and it adds something to the entry. Furthermore, it is a good-natured satire, noted as such, and is in no way damaging to MPG. BabuBhatt 23:14, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Avoid self-references. There's no need to mention it; it adds nothing to the article. It's semi-humorous, but NOT ENCYCLOPEDIC. Ral315 (talk) 18:30, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I've scanned Avoid self-references and do not see where it applies. If i am mistaken please point out where. This is not a case of any Wikipedian talking about Wikipedia, it is a case of a real-world satiric reference to the subject of the article. You wouldn't find it in Britannica, but if I had missed the Onion's brief, I would be glad to find a link to it here. Are you saying that all references to the Onion outside of The Onion should be deleted? BabuBhatt 19:02, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

The point is that if we were an encyclopedia other than Wikipedia, we would never consider mentioning Wikipedia in the Mark-Paul Gosselaar article. So we shouldn't. Mark^{your words} 19:42, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think a mention of Wikipedia in the article is warranted. That's not what I meant to indicate. BabuBhatt 20:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that the Onion link is worthy of inclusion. This is parody humor, and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The reference is unencylopedic as it says nothing true about the subject of this article. Unless you want to add a section about "humorous references to Mark-Paul Gosselaar" and come up with several more such links, the link should be removed. The argument we should be using isn't about self-reference, it's about unencyclopedic content. Canonblack 13:34, 11 February 2006 (UTC)