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Krakow Post
I was reading the Krakow Post the other day, when I came across an interesting article on Polandball.
How Polandball can of taking over the internets
Hope this is useful for improving the article. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:56, 22 May 2015 (UTC).
Country humans?
Apparently there is a sub community that is part of The whole country balls thing. It’s called country humans. Why is it not mentioned here.CycoMa (talk) 02:32, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
- Because this is not a countryhumans page, but i wish it exists — Preceding unsigned comment added by Junkie257 (talk • contribs) 17:24, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
Requested move 5 September 2021
- The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: moved.
4 editors (including the proposer) support this move, and provide search engine results and RSs to support this per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NAMECHANGES. 2 editors oppose the move (HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith having withdrawn their opposition), apparently per WP:PRECISE, but I'm unable to follow their reasoning. Accordingly, I find a consensus to move. (non-admin closure) Havelock Jones (talk) 15:04, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
Polandball → Countryballs – lorem ipsum Gaioa (T C L) 16:16, 5 September 2021 (UTC) The name has shifted over the years. Most existing sources are a few years old, but presently the format clearly known by the latter name. Google results are 1.2M vs 3.5M, Google News results are 1k vs 4k. Gaioa (T C L) 16:16, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- Support countryballs is the common name for this now in popular culture. I know this because I am father of a kid who is obsessed with them. And in case an argument based on personal experience isn't valid, the Google search hits agree. Mr248 (talk) 22:01, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- Support Years ago Polandball was more common/right name for that "stuff"/"Internet phenomen". Based on statistics which we can observe at Google trends for images we can say that this accident can qualify to Wikipedia:Name changes. Maybe this is not the best comprasion but calling it Polandball in 2021 is apart like calling nk.pl still as nasza-klasa today. Personally I do not think it is too early to change title of the article and personally I think the name "countryballs" is right with current content of the article. Dawid2009 (talk) 19:47, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Should be more neutral/less controversial too (but I guess the controversy petered out years ago anyway as this shifted from making fun of one country to making fun of all them...). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:32, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose. I don't think Google search results are a valid argument here, because 'country balls' or 'countryballs' might just be turning up unrelated objects or toys. As far as I can tell, every popular board dedicated to the style calls them by the name 'Polandball,' with the word 'countryballs' mainly used when referring to multiple characters (ie: "I drew a couple of countryballs"). Without actual reliable sources, I don't see grounds for a move. --HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith (talk) 18:53, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- @HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith: Please see the paper doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2018.03.010 which is a high quality reliable source (an article in a peer-reviewed journal from a respected academic publisher, Discourse, Context & Media) which uses both "Countryballs" and "Polandball", but prefers to use "Countryballs" as the name for the art style as a whole, and reserve "Polandball" as the name of the specific Facebook page which played a big role in originally popularising the style. Allow me to quote the second last paragraph of their introduction section (emphasis is mine not theirs):
Meme pages such as POLANDBALL or Polandball 2.0 might be viewed as ‘light communities’ (Blommaert and Varis 2015, p. 54) i.e. focused but diverse occasioned coagulations of people that converge around a shared focus, be it an object, a game, another person, an event, or, as in this case, a shared interest – creating, sharing, appropriating, and evaluating a particular type of internet memes, namely geopolitical satire memes known as Countryballs or Polandball2 comics. Countryball comics appear in a very simple, easy-to-draw format featuring ball-shaped characters in colours denoting both contemporary and historical states/countries/regions, while the narrative usually revolves around reinterpreting and reinventing geopolitical events and international relations in a satirical manner, mostly by drawing on national and socio-cultural stereotypes. Throughout its history, the Countryball format has kept its recognizable communicative patterns and scripts based on the reiteration of these stereotypes, which represent a set of communicative resources that are available for meaning making, identity work, and managing interpersonal relationships (power relations). Despite the plain design of the Countryball format, it therefore contains within it a differential inequality that is exploited by ‘vigilantes’ as a normative benchmark. Participants of course differ in the degree of their access to such resources and the historical trajectories through which these resources acquire specific functions and values (Blommaert, 2010), hence their communicative input might prompt vigilant gatekeepers into action if it is viewed as insufficient or not in line with expected communicative competence
- As the emphasised parts make clear, the authors consider "Countryballs" and "Polandball" as interchangeable names for the genre, but they prefer "Countryballs" over "Polandball". They also explain in their footnote 2 that "The present study prefers the term ‘Countryballs’ instead of ‘Polandball’ in order to avoid confusion with the name of the actual Facebook meme page". However, putting aside their desire to avoid such confusion, I still think they would not have written a paper repeatedly calling the art style "Countryballs" if that was not a widely accepted name for it. This paper is a quality reliable source which supports the evidence of Google hits and also various editor's anecdotal experience (including my own). Mr248 (talk) 02:05, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- Addendum: Here is another journal article, doi:10.1017/S0047404519000812. If you read this one, you will find out they exclusively call the art style "Countryballs", and never once call it "Polandball". They reserve "Polandball" as the name for (1) the Facebook page, (2) the countryball for Poland. So that's two academic papers calling the art style "Countryballs", one of which acknowledges "Polandball" as an alternative name for the art style, the other not doing so. Mr248 (talk) 02:10, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- @Mr248 I see your point. I realize now that the title is referring to the style of drawing in general. I rescind my opposition. HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith (talk) 00:30, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose. To lead, if we look at the hits on Wikipedia; the "Countryballs" redirect page has 117 hits in the last 30 days, while the "Polandballs" page has 18,000. Meanwhile, most articles discussing this use "Polandball" rather than "Countryball". Finally, while internet searches do reveal slightly more results for the later, the numbers are sufficiently large that WP:GOOGLELIMITS come into play, and is not particularly useful in this case. BilledMammal (talk) 04:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- I am not sure what you do mean. Of course redirect "Countryballs" gets more hists than redirect "Polandballs". I also do not think WP:GOOGLELIMITS apply much here. According to WP:Name changes the most important thing are reliable sources. Countryballs gets slightly better results in Google Scholar for 2017-2021, and the most reliable source used in the article (Reference number 13, book from 2017) uses "Countryballs" as wider and primary concept. Changing name would not be recentism especially if we take into fact that at least in "YouTube community" countryballs have been common name since 2013. I do not consider myself as authority of the subject but I will note that Piotrus who has educational backgrounds related with "sociology of the Internet" supports the move. Dawid2009 (talk) 08:00, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- BilledMammal, the number of page hits doesn't really tell us anything, given that if I type "Countryballs" into Google, the first result is to this article. You can't tell if someone clicking on the "Polandball" article got there by searching "Countryballs" or "Polandball" or by searching something else or by not searching at all. Google Trends shows that, globally, "Countryballs" has been the more popular search term most of the time over the last 12 months. Here is their data by year:
- Oppose – To add onto the above arguments opposing the move, the name "countryballs" is definitely used conventionally by online users when creating a single 'cartoon' comprising many countries (or balls), but not necessarily 'official', nor was it the original founding name. Per Wikipedia:Article titles, article titles are to bear recognizable names – in this instance, Polandball and countryballs are both widely recognized. However, per WP:CRITERIA, "countryballs" lacks the precision part, and is rather oblique and wide-ranging. I think the current lead entry is explanatory. Perhaps when the name "Polandball" is discontinued, then this discussion/vote will re-emerge. Merangs (talk) 07:31, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Regarding the Polandball image
I noticed you reverted my edit changing the image back to the old one. I realize the .svg file is higher "quality", but it's a well-established feature of Polandball comics to have the art drawn in the shaky-mouse, amateurish style that the original image had. Changing the image to a more professional-looking image misses the point, in my opinion.
Sources:
- From the front page of the official Polandball Reddit: "Wiggly mouse-drawn comics where balls represent different countries"
- Rules page: "Comics should look like they are made in MS Paint! It doesn’t matter what program you use but comics should still look like they are “wiggly mouse drawn comics” made in MS Paint. We can tell if you used a tablet or a mobile app."
- From https://culture.pl/en/article/polandball-a-case-study: "[The original creator of the first Polandball image] used basic MS Paint tools to draw a ball resembling an inverted Polish flag. [...] The countryballs are all limbless and featureless, hand-sketched with a brush tool, giving them a pitifully handmade look."
- From http://www.krakowpost.com/9279/2015/05/how-polandball-can-of-taking-over-internets: "In 2009, British user FALCO posted a series of comics featuring the crudely drawn, grammatically atrocious, incorrectly colored circle character [...] Are they shallow stereotypes? Yes. Do they look like they were drawn by a six-year-old? That’s part of the joke."
In my opinion, the new image fails to convey the actual style of the comics. --HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith (talk) 15:38, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- @HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith: I understand your concern regarding the "handmade" drawing style, which is crucial to polandball comics. However, I believe the SVG still properly illustrates this style. The ball is still handdrawn and does not break any of the conventions set out in the "official polandball tutorial". It is also consistent with many of the comics posted on the Subreddit today, where the countryballs are drawn as 3D objects (not flat like the previous version), with some having shadows. See Ex 1 and Ex 2. Nonetheless, if you feel the shadows and the shading are a bit too much, I can probably edit the SVG to remove them. Yeeno (talk) 🍁 05:47, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- @Yeeno: I see. I mainly just object to removing the original image entirely, since it leaves out a lot of the earlier style. As a bit of an in-between measure, I propose keeping the new image in its place at the top, but putting the original image into the Background section, as it nicely represents how that era of the format looked, and the section could do with some images. Does that sound good? --HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith (talk) 16:48, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
- @HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith: Sure! We can call it a "Polandball drawn in MS Paint" or something, since it was drawn in 2018 to emulate the early style. Yeeno (talk) 🍁 21:07, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
- @Yeeno: I see. I mainly just object to removing the original image entirely, since it leaves out a lot of the earlier style. As a bit of an in-between measure, I propose keeping the new image in its place at the top, but putting the original image into the Background section, as it nicely represents how that era of the format looked, and the section could do with some images. Does that sound good? --HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith (talk) 16:48, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
- Keep old one: This is the classic and most well known image. Removing it would just be unnecessary.Dunutubble (talk) 19:38, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
Poor name
Now, this is mainly just food for thought, not an actual move proposal. But I have never, ever heard someone seriously refer to this a a "countryball". In fact, the fandom really hates the term "countryball" to describe the whole idea. See Polandball Wiki or r/polandball to understand what I mean.
I've been interested in this subject for a long time, and I think that the title betrays a lack of actual knowledge on the subject. The Adventures of Tintin have more than one character than the one suggested in its title, but that doesn't mean we have to change the article name. Dunutubble (talk) 19:34, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
- I agree about "polandball" being prevalent inside the fandom, but "countryball" is a more catch-all and neutral term (and has far more results on Google). I'd prefer the title to stay. -Vipz (talk) 23:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
add a section for unusual countryballs
Someone should add a section for countryballs that are not shaped like a ball like israel and kazakhstan
Poopykibble (talk) 22:56, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
- Exceptions are already listed in the brackets of the first sentence. Wikipedia is just a summary about the topic, it doesn't need to go into details of why these countryballs aren't spherical. People who want that kind of information will go to Polandball Wiki instead. -Vipz (talk) 03:58, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
- ok sorry
- Poopykibble (talk) 02:15, 26 January 2022 (UTC)