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Repeating internet nonsense

[1] The following was added to the haiku article:

A well-known self-referential haiku reads,
 
    To express oneself
    In seventeen syllables
    Is very diffic-

If you don't know haiku, this was the equivalent of adding a bit of doggerel to the Wikipedia limerick article that didn't have the aabba rhyme structure nor the rigid meter required by the limerick requirements, but you still called it a famous limerick. There are numerous examples of very similar pseudo-haiku on the internet, but that doesn't make them a haiku. With its humorous intent, it is closer to being a senryu, but senryu require both humor and poetry, and the "haiku" above is just a plain sentence that has been sliced into the 5-7-5 syllable format of yuki teikei haiku.

Stuffing something into a 5-7-5 syllable form does not automatically make it a haiku—if by "haiku" we mean a poem based upon the criteria and traditions of the Japanese poetry form haiku. A haiku should almost always have a kigo ("season word"), or a sense of season or place or time. Most haiku also have a kireji ("cutting word'), which is a strong semantic break in the text. Even if they do not have a kireji, they will usually have some sort of comparison, contract, or juxtaposition between different images or ideas.

The 5-7-5 syllable format has, in fact, been mostly abandoned by modern English-language haiku poets for two reasons.

1. What the Japanese count is not syllables, but morae.
2. The English language packs more information per syllables than the Japanese language, so that to match the brevity of Japanese haiku, English-language haiku should have fewer syllables—around 13 syllables is the recommendation from one expert.