User talk:Pompous stranger

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Lee Corso

The section in question said the following:

"In 2000, a game between Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech was postponed[3][4] (and later canceled[5]) when Corso's rental car was struck by lightning in Blacksburg, Virginia."

Most of the links were dead. A few were not. I checked the links. The game was canceled because of lightning. The game was not canceled because Lee Corso's car was struck by lightning. (Just because A and B happen, both caused by C, does not mean A caused B.) At least this is not something I have been able to determine from any of the active links. As such, it violated the Wiki rule that all content must be verifiable. If you have links that show that I did this in error, I'd love to see them, and apologize in advance if it turns out it was true. However, even if it were verifiable, it may be removable on different grounds, as it seems to add very little to the discussion of Lee Corso. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rms869 (talk • contribs) 19:09, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"I do not believe it would be grossly inaccurate to claim the game was canceled due to lightning striking Lee Corso's car. "

I'd have to say that's about as grossly inaccurate as you can get. You're completely mistaking cause and effect. The answer to the question "Why was the game canceled" (put another way 'what was the cause of the game being canceled?'), would most certainly not be "because a lightning bolt hit Lee Corso's car." The answer would be "because there was severe lightning, which would endanger people playing a football game."How could we show that it was severe? It was hitting people's cars. It's completely irrelevant, however, that it hit Lee Corso's car, in the course of a cause and effect analysis. Thus, that sentence is grossly inaccurate.

Moreover, that is completely irrelevant to the article as a whole. The -pedia suffix in Wikipedia certainly demonstrates that this is intended to be an encyclopedia. As such, the fact that Lee Corso's car was hit by a lightning bolt the same day a game was canceled has no notable aspect to it; at least not enough that it should be in an encyclopedia article. Put differently, if one were looking to find out information about Lee Corso (ie., "who is he?" "what does he do?" "how did he get there?" "why is he famous?"), they would be able to come to his page and find out those things. If people want zany trivia about something, this is not the place to go. That's why Google was invented —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rms869 (talk • contribs) 05:51, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]