Talk:The Joy of Tech

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Removed the Nitrozac and Snaggy merge suggestions[edit]

Since Joy of Tech is itself a subsection of the Geek Culture web site, I don't think this is the best place to merge the authors' information. For now I would just keep them separate, but if we ever create an article for their main site then perhaps merge into that. –Abe Dashiell ^(t/c) 15:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for sources[edit]

I decided to look for sources for this webcomic. It's not nothing... The best I've found is this really crappy Fortune article, which features the ridiculous suggestion that this is "the second oldest (after userfriendly.org)... geek-centric comic strip." Mashable posts The Joy of Tech strips and writes blurbs for them, but don't really write anything about the webcomic. The authors seem to have published a book, but that doesn't help much with notability. In general, pop news websites like this webcomic, but it doesn't really have any notability, so I'm not complaining about the PROD. ~Mable (chat) 17:20, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Maplestrip and Piotrus: To counter this notion, I would suggest deeper Googling. The Joy of Tech has been around for 17 years - it's a legendary, well-established and still incisive tech-humor comic. The Best of The Joy of Tech was published by O'Reilly Media, a major producer of computer-related books in late 2003.

There are many references to JoT in print and around the Web, going back over a decade. For example:

Wired Magazine: "Live On The Web: Kevin Mitnick" (1/22/2003) which includes this: "The Joy of Tech created this comic as a play-by-play spoof of Kevin's first Web surf after completing probation... Mitnick also visited the Joy of Tech, which has cartoons about him."
USAToday Web Guide: "Hotsites" (2003)
PC World: "12 Terrific Tech Cartoons" (9/22/2009)
SF Weekly: "Joyless Comic Strip's NYT Parody Falls Flat" (5/1/2012)
AskMen India: "6 Times The Joy of Tech Nailed Apple"
Mashable.com: "Geeky Web Comics" (8/14/2010) notes, "Nitrozac and Snaggy's brilliantly illustrated and very funny Joy of Tech is essential reading as far as the online tech and geek world goes."
TodaysiPhone.com: "Scott Forstall’s dismissal parodied in comic strip form by Joy of Tech" (October 31, 2012)

JoT is currently listed on Patreon as a subscription option to provide future funding for the comic: https://www.patreon.com/joyoftech

--HidariMigi (talk) 04:03, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You found some good sources that I wasn't able to find. Maybe I should have filtered a bit more? Especially the SF Weekly article looks promising. The Patreon is rather irrelevant. ~Mable (chat) 11:22, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Patreon link provides a primary source in which the creators of the strip briefly describe the background of the strip, "We've been creating comics and content at GeekCulture.com since 1998, with over 2300 episodes of The Joy of Tech under our belts!" and their abhorrence for advertising, noting, "Over the past year, there has been a collapse of display advertising as a revenue source for sites like ours, and many have shifted to clickbait models. We are not willing to subject our fans to native ads, sponsored posts, and all that other garbage that's sprouted up almost everywhere, so instead we are asking for your help. " --HidariMigi (talk) 14:21, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Additional mentions:

Parody of JoT webcomic in a FoxTrot strip from 2008. (Note: FoxTrot is a well-known syndicated strip.)
Used by French TV news on France 5 in a report about Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, 5/15/2012.
MacWorld UK (12 Jun 12)

Print sourcing, via GoogleBooks:

The Cult of Mac (2004, Leander Kahney) - multiple references.
Twitter Means Business (2008, Julio Ojeda-Zapata) - long section on JoT.
Happy Clouds, Happy Trees: The Bob Ross Phenomenon (2014, Kristin G. Congdon, Doug Blandy, Danny Coeyman)

Is that enough to demonstrate notability yet? --HidariMigi (talk) 15:05, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it definitely seems like a PROD isn't good. I'll remove the tag (as you were allowed to do as well, btw, per WP:PROD). It would be nice to actually use some of these sources, though :p I may look into it myself at some point this summer. ~Mable (chat) 15:15, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and agreed that the article needs improvement (with better sourcing) rather than deletion. I didn't want to remove the PROD until others were able to weigh in on whether there were enough reliable sources to establish notability. --HidariMigi (talk) 15:20, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]