Talk:Red herring
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[edit] Links
I noticed some of the items in the list don't have links to the kinds of red herrings they refer to. — Daniel 01:10, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Red Herring Artists
I have added an entry for Red Herring - The Artists collective and a link to its page DavidP 13:16, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
There may be a reference to red herrings in the movie MirrorMask. A character is forced to give a riddle in order to save their life. The riddle makes no sense given the answer, and only serves to send the target on a fruitless chase for an answer.
"What's green, hangs on a wall, and whistles?" "A herring." "A herring isn't green!" "You can paint it." "A herring doesn't hang on a wall!" "You can nail it." "A herring doesn't whistle!" "I just said that to make it less obvious." 70.176.194.33 11:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Just stopping in, and noticed this line:
"The phrase is believed to originate from the practice of saving a hunted fox by dragging a red herring across its trail to cause the pursuing hounds to lose the true scent and follow the false odor of herring instead."
My question is this: is the odor of the herring really "the false odor of herring"? It seems like it would be better put simply like this, "... and follow the odor of the herring instead."
- Funny I must have been changing the line as you were reading it, It now reads:
"The phrase is believed to originate from the practice of saving a hunted fox by dragging a red herring across its trail to cause the pursuing hounds to lose the true scent and follow the false trail of herring odour instead."
- hope the English spelling of odour is acceptable :)
Anon - November 20, 2005
[edit] Nuetrality?
The example "(e.g, that Iraq was a threat to the U.S.A.)" is rather biased and out of place.
[edit] Not really disambiguation page
It has become an article about the origin and meaning of the word, etc. I don't have time at the moment to change the disambiguating part at the moment, though. TimBentley (talk) 18:45, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
This article deals entirely with the term/phrase regarding a "misleading diversion or distraction", as described on the current disambiguation page. The meanings in this article all fall easily within the scope of discussing "red herring" as a term. The only things you could try to move to the disambig page are ignoratio elenchi and macguffin, and those are just results of multiple overlapping terms. Renaming this page to red herring (term) would fix the issue definitively, but I don't think that's neccessary.
[edit] Disambiguation information
The entire first section of this article belongs on the disambiguation article since it is differentiating between different kinds of red herring. This page should be about the fish, not the logical fallacy. A page for the logical fallacy should be set up, unless it already exists (Red herring (logical fallacy)). — Chris53516 (Talk) 17:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, actually, there's no such fish as a 'red herring'. There are certainly herring, but the 'red' is the result of smoking for preservation, similar to bacon. This was a traditional and common food staple, as noted in the reference. However, that's covered thoroughly in the kipper article.
Note also that the bulk of the article discusses the 'false clue' meaning, not the logical fallacy - and indeed, the logical fallacy is covered, briefly, on the ignoratio elenchi page.Tofof 09:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Da Vinci Code
I'm Italian, and "Aringarosa" does not mean "red herring" but "pink herring". Gspinoza 14:30, 18 January 2007 (CET)
