Talk:Hampster Dance

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Cleanup[edit]

Does someone want to tackle a clean-up of this article? It's disorganized, poorly written, and nearly undreadable. Moncrief 00:13, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

More information is needed on the origin of the sample, with full credit to Roger Miller's "Whistle Stop" recording, possibly mentioning the repeated airplay a version of it received on the Dr. Demento show in 2000, beginning in August, and several times since 2000.

My God, what a poorly-written, disorganized, jumbled, unhelpful article. Help! Moncrief 17:50, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

I could try cleaning it up Mark77711 (talk) 23:29, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just rearranged the info into a more logical arrangement. I didn't add anything new but made it easier to work with. Also, could we get an image of the hamsters new look, this could put in the history area and would be usefull to show the reader how they look now. Lastly, could we try to stop putting random links to articles, I found that someone had linked the word television. Please only link if it would be helpful to the reader. Mark77711 (talk) 23:49, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

External links[edit]

I removed sixsixfive.com from the external links, as it almost certainly not the "Creator's page." Neither the site itself or Google suggests any kind of connection, and the author of Hampster Dance was apparently a woman anyway. Revert if you know better. -- Anonymous

See Spot Run[edit]

This article should note that the Hampster Dance remix was featured in the soundtrack of the movie "See Spot Run", which I for some strange reason wasted over an hour of my life watching. -- 4.254.113.191

Internet Archive link[edit]

The current Internet Archive link has broken images, whereas this version doesn't. Maybe we should use the latter instead? jareha 22:51, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It was changed twice already. The problem seems to be variable reliability of the Wayback Machine. I know the version that was there originally worked. --Dhartung | Talk 08:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
There seems to be an IPFS hosted recreation of the site linked at the bottom too, which is at least functional, though of dubious origin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.4.175.242 (talk) 21:29, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

UK Chart position[edit]

pretty sure this reached number 1 in the uk singles chart, not #4 as stated...

nope, only number 4, read it and weep. Cliff Richard, Westlife, and I think Bob the Builder all had a hand in keeping it down... though it beat off 35 other songs in that chart! :) (whilst we're at it, can we ditch the 'citation needed' bit off the mainpage, that is a bit petty as i've usually seen it as a statement of 'prove it or we will assume you are lying'.. the position is historical fact, but tracking down chart archives is a bit more difficult, so can we just leave it?)
I've got a wierd feeling it was the B side to that "you and me baby aint nothin' but mammals" song which the band later became famous for. Whoever they where. Or did they do a cover? 89.31.50.92 (talk) 11:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Argh. Wiki-inaccuracy at it's finest. I may come back and fix the article later, but I have other things to dash off and do... So, in short.
The song that went to #4 in the UK (Christmas) Chart was "Cognoscenti vs Intelligentsia" (C vs I), by the Cuban Boys, a knowingly jokey and sample-heavy bit of dance music. It was a single all by itself with two completely different B-sides of its own. As far as I can tell, it predated the Hampton version by quite a bit, which was a cash-in following the unexpected and out-of-nowhere popularity of C vs I. The Hampton version advertised itself as "The Real Hamster Dance" (with CvsI knock-off cover graphics no less), as whoever lashed it together managed to get clearance for the ACTUAL Whistlestop sample - though AFAIK the original Cuban Boys version also used this sample (in early versions played e.g. on the John Peel show MONTHS before release, which created the fan clamour for it's eventual appearance), they were unable to get the "official" sound cleared (via hamsterdance.com, then disney, then the original artist, etc) - at least in time for a Christmas release - despite the presence of all the other old film clips in the record, and so relied on a re-recorded facsimile of it featuring one of the band members.
Bloodhound gang have nothing to do with it. Hampton has nothing to do with it, and is arguably a rip-off of the original, whose origins lie in a humour-led band making it for a bit of fun rather than to make money. And it did get to #4, which was a considerable coup for something so annoying and repetitive that first saw the light of day on the John Peel show.
Source - long standing fan of the band from first hearing them on said show around late 98/early 99 (remember playing a tape of some of their radio-sourced stuff in a car borrowed from my mother on the way to school, which plants the event in early 99), through the appearance, development and release of C vs I, bought the single, bought other singles, bought the album, followed the solo projects / follow on bands after they split, etc... Though their own identities remain obscured, they always had good fan communication about the actual music and what they were doing, over the radio and the internet. They're reportedly put out, but understanding about the hampton copy.
That'd be, for one thing, www.cubanboys.co.uk (should it still exist) and www.myspace.com/cubanboys. also Spray. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.46.180.56 (talk) 14:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Virtual band?[edit]

anyone else think that the hampsters should be considered a "virtual band?" woulds have to look up their discography, but I think I have a source.

Robin Hood song[edit]

Not sure how many people actually realize it, but the Hamster Dance song is the beginning part of the song the Rooster is singing at the beginning of Disney's "Robin Hood". It's been sped-up, of course, but it's the same song. Probably explains why RadioDisney is playing the HamsterDance song so much.  :) --Undrhil 07:14, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, apparently, I didn't read closely enough. Yes, it's already in the article.  :) --Undrhil 07:15, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
not the now ones, look the music on the start of hampstersong2.com site, on the old music the hampster song "ti ti ti ta ti ti tou tou ti..." and the new ones is "ti ti ti ta ti da dou dou ti..."

I find it a bit ironic that the original song was taken down for copyright infringement, while the Robin Hood film that had the original song also includes an uncredited performance of Happy Birthday to You, which is famous for the huge fees the copyright owner charges for public performances. JohnWhitlock 00:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

speed of hampster[edit]

how much faster the hampster song is compared to the robing hood song, its not 2x (tested), its less, but I don't know how much.

My guess is that it is a record played at a faster speed than it was recorded. Since the record speeds are 33⅓, 45, and 75 RPM, then some good candidates are 1.35x or 1.67x. It was a lot of fun to play records this way when I was a kid, and with the right setup you could record the faster version to cassette tape, or even to the audio input of your sound card. JohnWhitlock 00:01, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
78rpm, mate. So your factors might be 1.35, 1.73, or even a good 2.34x. My bet is one of the latter two; speeding up from 33 to 45 produces a relatively mild effect (it's approximately a major third), mainly making certain male voices sound female (and vice versa if you play a single at 33; one particular "double" I've found that way is Bruce Springsteen (LP) vs Dolly Parton (7")). As the source material was more than likely on a 7" single, and speeding up human voices by more than about 2x renders them fairly unintelligible, I'd go with 45 to 78 for a 1.73x speed up. Pending getting hold of the samples themselves to shove into an audio editor and compare, of course.
Though in the case of the Hampsterdance site, there's no real reason why it would be a turntable based speed-up; vinyl sales were at their nadir in the mid 90s, and it's just as likely that the effect might have been achieved using the high speed dubbing function of a tape deck, 2x playback on an old VCR, or most particularly the easy playback speed adjustments made possible by digital sample manipulation. Once recorded into the computer, even the very basic Windows Sound Recorder would allow you to change speed faster/slower by factors of 2, or alter the playback format to one of a certain few set sample rates (generally multiples of 8000, 11025 or 12000Hz), and shareware programs like Goldwave or CoolEdit would allow even finer control over the replay speed without actually materially editing the sample itself in any way, just changing the "frequency" value in the file header. 146.199.0.170 (talk) 13:47, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hampster Dance Band?[edit]

Should we make an article about the fictional hampster dance band? --AAA! (AAAAAAAAAAAA) 10:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling[edit]

It's spelt "Hamster" by the way, lol. Janipewter 01:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but its intentionally spelled hampster. DemonWeb 01:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sample Origin[edit]

When I first saw the Hampsterdance site, my impression was that the music loop was taken from the beginning of a techno track called 'Bad Base' by B.T.B., off of Best of Techno Volume 2, published by Profile Records. The intro of this track has an identical sped-up, repeating loop of the Robin Hood song. Best of Techno Volume 2 was published in 1992, and the track itself in 1991. 4.246.36.147 01:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting... the chain from origin to destination isn't always as clear cut as it looks! Never heard of that one despite having a few techno compilations around, will have to hunt it out. 146.199.0.170 (talk) 13:49, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The track in question materialized on Youtube in November 2018. It is surely likely that it is the source of the sample. Jorpho (talk) 20:13, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Video?[edit]

On YouTube there's an animated music video of sorts depicting four hamsters visiting America, Australia, England, India, and Egypt in that order. What's the story on this? It doesn't look fan-made and says "LPB Productions" at the end. - Kooshmeister

You would probably have more luck asking the person who posted it to YouTube. (This page is for discussing improvements to The Hampster Dance article.) --Dhartung | Talk 18:27, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If its anything like the video I'm imagining, it's probably a fan-created one combining a song with seperate clips taken from the Hamtaro cartoon show... and though there's obviously good planning and intent behind it, the execution isn't quite spot-on.
That's (as far as I know) the official music video for The Hampsterdance Song, as when it was popular here in Australia it was played almost every week on Video Hits (music video show) for about two months, and there was an official album release that came with it which had the same hampsters in the video and on the original Hampster Dance website. Donniedarkofan2006 10:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect origin date[edit]

I am absolutely certain that the origin date listed, August 1998, is incorrect. I had already graduated high school by then, and I remember the first time I saw this was when I was in my high school library, doing research for a paper that was due. Unfortunately I have no proof of this, but someone should look into this.


--- Y'know I too would have thought it was earlier from what i remember first being aware of it. maybe nearer to 96. 97 or earlier?

Rrose Selavy (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 23:57, 14 January 2009 (UTC).[reply]

The "Hampton and the Hampsters" website at hampsterdance.com claims it is copyright 1997-2011. 173.35.212.151 (talk) 06:05, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would swear blind that the original was already up by 1995. Geocities was around from late 1994, and my own first brush with the 'net was sometime around 95. The Hampsterdance Site was already popular and well known enough to feature in a WWW guidebook held by my school library and made available to anyone booking time on their one and only internet connected computer. 1997-98 feels far too late. By the time C vs I (never mind HtH) came along in mid-'99 (or even late '98?) it was an established, even seemingly "old" and worn-out online craze, in a world where even internet culture didn't churn as quickly as it does now, thanks to a lower overall level of integration, lower cultural penetration, and generally quite slow connection speeds. By '98 we had the internet at home, at a whopping 56k (well, 33.6 most of the time), and the early days of poking at the net and seeing what happened were long past... both me and my brother had our own rather terrible Geocities homepages, and by '99 I was already on to my second Yahoo Mail account... I'd strongly suggest that the quoted dates are incorrect, for whatever reason may have caused that. I mean, even the quoted "August 1998" is rather at odds with the "1997-2011" copyright. Maybe that's the date when it moved off Geocities onto its own dedicated server? 146.199.0.170 (talk) 13:55, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Then again, who knows. Human memory can be a funny thing. The earliest webarchive capture is 5th October 1998, where it doesn't look entirely functional (no images, only placeholders, until you skip forward a few days), and the datestamp on the sound file is "14-Aug-97". Possibly it had been up in some form for a year before the wayback machine archived it (the archive had been running since late 1996, but maybe hadn't taken the step of crawling Geocities straight away?), but it would be difficult to build a page based around an idea spawned by an August '97 audio file any earlier than, well, August '97. The copyright date at the bottom of the page does say 1997, though, and one would expect that a page updated in late 1998 wouldn't be quite as hazy on its actual start date than would-be internet archaeologists trying to figure it out twenty (!) years later... there's a linked update page from sometime in 1999 (though the link itself exists on all the 1998 versions) which talks about the actual Hampton and Hado hamsters having had babies, and the site having received more than a million views (to the point where it was stressing even the Geocities servers ... back in the days when a single hosted site out of thousands could still cause serious "slashdot" type headaches for an entire hosting service), so it would seem its mega-popularity was established well before 1999.
One thing it does do is confirm that the sample was from Robin Hood. Maybe it went via the BTB compilation, but it could just be a coincidence that the site creator's sister recorded the acapella off the same VHS version and then sped it up by the same amount (e.g. a straight doubling of playback frequency). 146.199.0.170 (talk) 14:27, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed merge[edit]

Someone proposed merging in Hampton and the Hampsters Single - The Hampsterdance Song. I say go for it. Mdotley 14:42, 18 August 2007 (UTC) I think this is a great idea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.9.8.21 (talk) 17:13, August 30, 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to register my dismay and annoyance at this decision. It's now not possible to reference either the website, or the single, which were rather separate things. One's a website, the other is a cash-in single made to exploit that (and was probably only made after C vs I became a hit), yet the latter is what (at least visually) leads off the article if you do any kind of wiki search for the terms "hampster" and "dance" attempting to find the former alone. It's like merging the death of Princess Diana and the rewritten "Candle in the Wind", or the mid 20th century Fiat 500 with Lush's "500 (Shake Baby Shake)". Is there any way, 11 years down the line, to split them back out? This is the internet after all, there's no lack of space and it's pretty easy to just embed a mutual link between the two of them. 146.199.0.170 (talk) 13:22, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly concur with 146.199.0.170; the merger was a terrible idea for the reasons stated above. The presentation together is confusing and misleading. —Undomelin (talk) 16:17, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I gave a quick stab at cleaning it up, starting with moving the page back to the original title and moving the song stuff to a separate heading further down on the page. -- Ned Scott 00:07, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hampsterdance is credited to Hampton the hamster[edit]

I went to radio disney's website, looked in songs you could request, and found this:

Hampton the Hamster, "Hampsterdance Song"

The song "Sing a simple song" can also be credited to Hampton. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.89.251.243 (talk) 16:20, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Infringement[edit]

Does anybody have a source on the infringement part? Was there a court case? I'm speculating that it was taken down as a result of pressure from Disney alleging infringement. Any source pointing one way or another would be appreciated.--Ernstk (talk) 18:33, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rabbits?[edit]

As of now the description of the site says it has dancing hamsters and rabbits. To my knowledge, there are no rabbits, only hamsters, so I'm editing accordingly. If one of them is actually a rabbit, or if there's some other reason for including rabbits in the description, feel free to change it back but please include some justification on the talk page. Greatersam (talk) 05:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hampster/Hamster[edit]

There seems to be some confusion in the article as to whether this is Hampsterdance' or Hamsterdance, since it switches from one to the other. Could someone who knows something about this fix it? DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:22, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For posterity, it's the former. The original website used the "mp" variant spelling, and so that has stuck with any works derived from it, even though the form with "m" but not "p" is the more common. 146.199.0.170 (talk) 13:23, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yahoo photos[edit]

I believe yahoo photos featured 4 hamsters dancing as their 'waiting cursor', showing the text 'please wait while our hamsters perform this task'. Since Yahoo photos is now Flickr this may not be on the site anymore. Someone may whish to research a reference and add this. --Blonkm (talk) 18:41, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jesus & Mohammed Dance[edit]

Did you guys like delete all the knock offs? I mean, isn't that like this sites whole claim to notability : It gan an enormous amount of attention briefly, appeared in some TV ad, and started a long running silly internet meme? You should mention the various knock offs, I only remember jesusdance and mohammeddance, but I know there are tons more.

Confusing paragraph[edit]

I am having trouble figuring out who did what in this blurb:
"LaCarte failed to register the Hampsterdance name, and for some time the hampsterdance.com domain was owned by humor business Nutty Sites. Initially, hamsterdance.com was used, and later hampsterdance2.com. hampsterdance2.com was registered and by 2002 had sold the rights to Abatis, Inc. which later acquired control of the first domain."

Here's how I interpret this, drawing on surrounding info on the page:
[LaCarte wanted to move her GeoCities page to its own domain. However,] LaCarte failed to register the Hampsterdance name, and for some time the hampsterdance.com domain was owned by humor business Nutty Sites. Initially, hamsterdance.com was used for LaCarte's site, and later hampsterdance2.com. By 2002 LaCarte had sold the rights and hampsterdance2.com domain to Abatis Inc., which later acquired control of hampsterdance.com as well.

So if someone tells me they agree with my understanding, I can edit the paragraph to read as above, with or without the GeoCities text in brackets (I think it's helpful to connect the dots there, assuming it's even correct). --Iritscen (talk) 17:39, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is this about the Meme or the hampsterdance.com?[edit]

The original meme is something unrelated to hampsterdance.com, though the website is obviously meant to piggyback off the meme's success. I recommend that discussion of the website, its characters and discography be moved to a separate article.--Catch153 (talk) 05:12, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What meme? The Hampsterdance website was in existence from sometime in the mid 1990s, possibly pre-1995. It was one of the first websites I ever visited, using my school library's brand new shiny 14.4kbit modem connection to the nascent Information Superhighway, back when you still got paperback books listing "the internet's 100 best sites" (...which is how I found it). It predates the coining of "meme" as "a dumb but humorous thing spread around the interwebs", rather than it being a niche term used only by followers of Dawkins. Any mid-late noughties meme involving dancing hamsters and the Whistle Stop riff is a 10+ year late rip-off of the old Geocities site, and probably a second generation one via Hampton and/or the Cuban Boys at that. 146.199.0.170 (talk) 13:29, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Erin Andres the voice of Hampton[edit]

Howcome nowhere here does it mention that Erin Andres (born 1938) was the voice of Hampton the Hamster? She can still confirm it if one wishes to get in touch with her. Eric Ramus — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.195.166.103 (talk) 12:45, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what this is about. The original voice is Roger Miller sped up. Where does Erin Andres fit in?--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:18, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The original vocals in the song 'come on everybody now here we go, it's the brand new version of the docy do just stomp your feet and clap your hands..." etc was Erin Andres. For that, Erin's voice was not spead up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.195.166.103 (talk) 21:25, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, that was one of the few times that Erin's voice was not spead up, she only provided Hampton's voice a couple times and provided the voice of a news anchor in another Hampton the Hamster song "even hamsters fall in love"

Eric Ramus — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.195.166.103 (talk) 23:39, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't find any sourcing on this. Is Erin Andres the right spelling?--♦IanMacM♦ , (talk to me) 05:49, 15 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I guessed that there was no source, and it is spelt andres. It's pronounced like Anders but is spelt andres. I learnt this when talking to her a little before I was scheduled to do a flight from Vegas to Winnipeg. I had asked her why she wasn't credited, and she said that she wasn't sure, but isn't overly bothered by it. For the record her birthday is in 1938 if that helps you at all. thanks

It's probably because the single is a second generation, cynically commercial rip-off of a sardonic in-joke rip-off of a website that was never meant to be anything more than a cheap joke between friends, so giving anything more than the legally mandated minimum credits probably wasn't in the forefront of the creators' minds. 146.199.0.170 (talk) 13:32, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]


Eric Ramus

Update on Ms. Andres's health. I'm sad to say that Ms. Andres, the voice of Hampton the Hamster has been diagnosed with mesothelioma as of December 19th. We're hoping that her treatments go well and that she has a speedy recovery. Best wishes to her and her family. Eric Ramus

From my very outdated knowledge on Wikipedia, you might have to find some local newspaper to report on this fact before editors at Wikipedia can include such fact into the Article according to some guidelines. You can try to contact someone at their talk page so that they can help adding that in the Article. (Can someone help sign the above two edits? I forgot how to do so. Thanks.) akoo (talk) 01:16, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Who even is she, anyway? Like, is there anything more famous we'd know her from, before or since the HtH records? I ask that with all good intentions and curiosity, by the way, as I've never heard of her and the internet in general has Got Nothing (even after refactoring my google searches several ways, the only positive hit I get is... this talk page), but the way you present the issue is as if she's a well known voice actress who we should be easily able to get hold of with just name and birthdate. I'm intrigued, and particularly would like the record to be set straight if she's actually a prolific and well known VA (or guest vocalist / sessionist on various records) of times past that the online record has somehow managed to pass by. Especially if she has any form of life-limiting cancer, as it'd be nice to do that whilst she's still around to witness it. 146.199.0.170 (talk) 13:37, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I saw the name in the credits of a What's With Andy episode as well as a few episodes of The Raccoons, she voiced Ms. Murphy in What's With Andy and did additional voice son The Raccoons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.101.61.34 (talk) 01:31, 5 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Weird Al Yankovic[edit]

He did a Hampster Dance video using Sailor Moon clips. Very strange. Not sure which version of the song he used, this could be worth a mention, if someone knows. 2A00:23C5:E0A0:8300:B091:D7DF:5185:1227 (talk) 13:49, 9 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Parady?[edit]

I'm sorry this may be a stupid question but is this song a parody of cotton eyed joe. I'm surprised no one has asked this already as they sound identical to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.126.105.216 (talk) 08:48, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

They are not identical and I don't think that the composer of Cotton-Eyed Joe (if still alive) would have much luck suing Roger Miller for plagiarism. This requires two pieces of music to be almost note for note the same. They have a similar feel because they are both country and western dance tunes.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 09:28, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]


French external link, since 1999 ![edit]

There is a no-profit organization who hosted an copy of the original website, always online since 1999 :

-=> [1]https://hamster.wda-fr.org/hamsterdance.php

Mathieu CHARREYRE (talk) 13:48, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

--Mathieu CHARREYRE (talk) 13:48, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Use {{Sic}} in introduction?[edit]

I think that an {{Sic}} tag for the text "Hampster Dance" should be added in the introduction paragraph. While the article does mention the (intentional) misspelling in the "Background" section, I'd say it's still important to add a quick little note at the start that unobtrusively clarifies that this is not a mistake. This especially applies to the intro paragraph, which is the only thing that many people will actually read.

(mention: User:162 etc.) — gabldotink talk | contribs | global account ] 04:45, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've re-added the tag due to WP:SILENCE here. Feel free to discuss further. — gabldotink talk | contribs | global account ] 17:28, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The article has the correct title, the sic is unnecessary. If the title was wrong, every other spelling in the article would be incorrect as well.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 17:57, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Ianmacm The sic indicates that the title is not wrong—that what might be considered a mistake is intentional. Adding a sic notifies readers that it is supposed to be "Hampster Dance," not "Hamster Dance," and that a mistake on Wikipedia was not made here. The tag isn't needed later if we've already covered this, so no, it's not needed on every instance of the word "Hampster." My editorial opinion is that having a sic would be beneficial to readers, which is what I'm trying to argue here (in order to avoid an edit war). — gabldotink talk | contribs | global account ] 18:36, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The article has existed since April 2004 with the exact same title. There is no need to hold the reader's hand by pointing this out.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 19:15, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Something having been one way for a long time is not, alone, a reason to not change it.
  2. The vast majority of readers will not look at the edit history at all.
  3. I'm not proposing to change the title, just to add a short tag to the intro paragraph.
  4. It's common to "misspell" this as "Hamster Dance," even among professional publications such as Newsweek (here) and CBC.ca (here). Considering this, I would say the mistake is common enough to warrant a tag.
  5. Adding this is not "holding the reader's hand"; it tersely keeps the reader from requiring further research (which is not bad! but it is inconvenient) to verify the spelling.
— gabldotink talk | contribs | global account ] 19:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]