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Archive 1

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Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Ha-ha. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

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Ha-Ha and Ha-ha (garden)

Both Ha-ha (garden) and Ha-Ha i am a water buffalo discuss the same thing. They should be merged. Grstain 23:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes -- sorry, I could not get to the original text due to circular re-directs. Hopefully now sorted out, with the correct text in Ha-ha (garden), which is a clearer title. quota

Ha-ha is actually the clearer title, the one a Wikipedia user would enter. (garden) would be needed if there were another Ha-ha article. --Wetman 15:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
(Previous discussion is a year old.) There was .. that was the problem. And there's 'haha' and 'ha ha', even now. If someone kew it was hyphenated, they'd probably not need to look it up :-). quota 16:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Washington Monument

An 8/22/2006 article in Salon about "new" techniques for urban security says:

"In 2001, the National Capital Planning Commission rejected several bulky plans to protect the Washington Monument, including one proposal to surround the site with a ring of almost 400 bollards. Instead, the commission -- which had thrown up Jersey barriers at the monument after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, another temporary measure that had become permanent -- chose a brilliantly invisible plan by the Philadelphia landscape architecture firm Olin Partnership.

Olin proposed using an 18th century fortification called a ha-ha, a long, low wall sunken inside a trench used by European gardeners to keep animals corralled without visible fencing. Olin designed a series of granite ha-has along the pathways leading to the monument; the simple system, which keeps the site safe from vehicles in a way that's friendly to people, was installed in 2005."

Seems worth mentioning on this page to me.

Etymology

Removed this: However it's worth noting that the French for 'hedge' is 'la haie' as there is no connection to the word haie.

The English is a borrowing from French, but from the independent word "haha" or "ahah" (an expression of surprise). In 1631 the word is used of "tout obstacle interrompant brusquement un chemin" (any obstacle suddenly interrupting a way) and in 1738 as an "ouverture faite au mur d'un jardin avec un fossé au dehors afin de laisser la vue libre" (opening made in the wall of a garden with a ditch outside to leave the view free) - "marquant la surprise de celui qui découvre l'obstacle" (marking the surprise of the one who discovers the obstacle). Le Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé -- Picapica 13:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Nominate for Best Hatnote

"Not to be confused with laughter." Said with a straight face. --Elijah (talk) 06:34, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Images

The penultimate section displays horribly with the Classic Wikipedia skin. Anyone know how to fix? quota 16:50, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The Hoho

Terry Pratchett has an amusing bit about another version of the haha, built by his "insane architect" character Bloody Stupid Johnson. The point of a hoho is that it's like a haha "only deeper", about fifty feet deep. (See "Monuments and landscape design" on the BSJ page.) I feel like it would be neat if this were mentioned on the haha page, but I'm not sure where. --24.46.164.83 23:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe in a "in popular culture" section. Ingolfson 06:33, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Why not at Terry Pratchett, where it's actually relevant to his mindset? --Wetman 09:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Because here, it actually has context? Not that it would be a cricitcal part of the article in any way. Ingolfson 10:02, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Origins - The Archers???

In February 2007, a ha-ha was mentioned in the radio soap The Archers on BBC Radio 4, when Nigel Pargetter decided to restore it in the grounds of Lower Loxley.

Like the above, this could be put in the 'popular culture' section, but until then, it is completely irrelevent to where it is situated (it was placed in 'Origins'), and I have removed it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.11.204.51 (talk) 20:16, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

A deer leap is not a ha-ha

I've removed the sentence that said a ha-ha is sometimes called a 'deer leap'. A dear leap is a vaguely similar shape to a ha-ha but it was used for an entirely different purpose - to allow deer into a park but not out again. Whereas a ha-ha was used to exclude the deer from a garden without spoiling the view, the deer leap was a way of bringing them into, and confining them to a park. Also the deer leap had two sloping sides rather than a vertical wall, see here Richerman (talk) 23:55, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Examples

Is Korean_Demilitarized_Zone#Korean_wall considered notable enough for inclusion ? I guess the list isn't meant to be exhaustive ! Special:WhatLinksHere/Ha-ha comes close ... --195.137.93.171 (talk) 17:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)


In Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon", Dixon mentions dealing with ".. ditches, both regular and ha-ha style.." in an early conversation with Mason regarding his surveying career. Mason is unimpressed with this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.47.34.2 (talk) 17:13, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Relevance

The ha-ha fit well with Chinese gardening ideas of concealing barriers with nature, but its European origins predate the European discovery of Chinese gardening.[4]

If its European origins predate the European discovery of Chinese, then why is it relevant whether and how a haha fits well with Chinese gardening ideas? Why bother mentioning it? 122.109.143.205 (talk) 12:34, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Pictures not of ha-has?

Several of the pictures on this article - the Yarra Bend one and both the Beechwood Asylum ones - seem not to be of ha-has. A ha-ha has the wall built into one side of the ditch, and therefore invisible from the side it is closest to; these pictures all show a wall exposed on both sides, though perhaps with a ditch or mound on one side in order to minimise visibility from a distance. This might be a valid ha-ha variation deserving of one photo, but I think it's a problem that nearly half the photos on this page are of things which wouldn't generally be recognised as ha-has. I think the Yarra Bend one is the clearest, so I'll remove the other two unless someone can justify their inclusion. TSP (talk) 16:49, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

The Beechworth one has two pictures to show it from either side - which is something that is difficult to do with a normal ha-ha as the whole point is that there is nothing much to see from one side. I don't see any reason to remove them as it's obvious from the citation that they are called ha-has in Australia so, presumably, people from there would recognise them as such. Richerman (talk) 17:41, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
I think the pictures help clarify the configuration of ha-has, and should remain until/unless better ones can be found. They show the usage of the structure in Australia as a less-obtrusive way to isolate mental asylums, which is a relevant development of the concept. Reify-tech (talk) 17:58, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the change, that's a lot more balanced now it's in a gallery. I didn't object to them being represented, but it seemed like a problem when pictures illustrating this very distinct kind of ha-ha stretched across a considerable portion of the article, despite most of the text not applying to them. I'm still not quite sure why the Beechwood example would be called a ha-ha at all - it isn't enclosed by earth on either side, so I'm not really sure what distinguishes it from a wall - but the Yarra Bend example seems valid, and I don't mind them if confined to their own section like this. TSP (talk) 15:30, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

“No dude”

@Johnbod:, why is deleting a bunch of random literary mentions of ha-has with no secondary sources wrong? Dronebogus (talk) 13:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Please explain how they are "random", and how the various physical examples mentioned are not? Johnbod (talk) 14:48, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Because they’re trivial mentions; physical examples… um… exist. Dronebogus (talk) 16:27, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
I was asking about "random" - we can come on to trivial. Johnbod (talk) 04:06, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
I don’t think this odd digression about semantics is important here. Circling back to my original question, why did you restore unsourced, trivial fancruft? Dronebogus (talk) 08:02, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

It was restored because it was a long-standing list of examples where ha-has are a plot device in well-known works of fiction, which like all good "in culture" sections demonstrates the spread and depth of the concept. Which is why I have restored them. There could be arguments about certain elements and sourcing added, but it ain't dismissable fancrust. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:17, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

  • Some solid entries - Dawson, Stoppard, Pratchett - and a few more lightweight but defensible ones. Could possibly stand thinning but it's not a case for wholesale removal. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:27, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
    • Yes, thanks both, "unsourced, trivial fancruft" is a ridiculous description, and you refuse to back up or explain your description as "random", not to mention "trivial". I've added an academic reference for the Mansfield Park ha-ha. Johnbod (talk) 14:35, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
      I’ve removed several that were just “hey this appeared or was mentioned in a famous novel!”, but if they were really notable they should all have independent references. Dronebogus (talk) 14:42, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
      • You seem to suffer from the common misapprehension that all the content of WP articles has to be "notable". WP:NOTABILITY applies only to the subjects of articles, not what is in them. There has been an attempt to develop a concept of what is "noteworthy", as something the content needs to be, but this is in its early stages. Flinging random pejorative terms at content you don't like doesn't advance discussion. Johnbod (talk) 15:11, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
        Usually individual items listed outside of pure exemplification are expected to be notable. Otherwise I could just as easily put “there’s a ha-ha at my local college campus” or some obvious WP:MILL nonsense like that as I could put in fancruft. Dronebogus (talk) 01:56, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
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