[WikiEN-l] fancruft

[Alphax (Wikipedia email)]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> Trivia sections must die, in all articles, period. If you see one, do
> Wikipedia a favor and move it to the talk page (or remove it
> entirely).
> 

I made much the same point back in February; if I was online I'd pull
out the link to the archives.

Here's one of the useful (ie. not "OMG WP:NOT paper") replies:
>> Subject: [WikiEN-l] "Trivia" sections in articles
>> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
>> Message-ID: <43FD53A3.7050804 at gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> They look ugly and unprofessional. Can we get a policy or something to
>> suggest that they be renamed "Miscellaneous information" or merged  
>> into
>> the rest of the article?
>>
>> And while we're at it, can we get rid of "{{PAGENAME}} in popular
>> culture" sections?
> 
> Much if not all of much of this content is unreferenced. People  
> apparently just toss in stuff off the top of their head. Like lists,  
> I think they become a game in which people try to think of something,  
> anything that isn't there already.
> 
> We should be proactive about putting {{unverifiedsect}} tags on these  
> sections, {{fact}} tags on the unreferenced items, and removing them  
> after a reasonable period of time and in a fair way. That will go a  
> long way to solving the problem.
> 
> I personally believe these items are valuable and interesting _if  
> referenced._ Incidentally insisting on reference is also a reasonable  
> filter against subtrivial cruft; if the Statue of Liberty appears _in  
> an important way_ in some movie, Ebert or someone is likely to have  
> mentioned it somewhere; if it is just a cameo appearance to establish  
> that a ship is approaching New York, nobody is likely to comment on  
> it outside of a personal blog or forum, and finding a reference will  
> be hard.
> 

My initial complaint was that "trivia" sections were ugly and stupid.
The insight of dpbsmith was that they are *harmful*. Sadly, everyone
forgot about it.

-- 
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