Trivia is not encyclopedic. That said the information in trivia
sections isn't always destined to remain trivia, it could ascend to
actually worthy of being in an article. But having a section like that
is a giant magnet for dumping crap thats not ready for prime time.
On 9/10/07, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 9/10/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Brock, I've commented from time to time that the intent of at least
some of the people who are trying to delete trivia sections and
popular culture sections is to remove material on the significance of
themes and structure because of their personal view that such
information can never possibly be encyclopedic. A good deal of the
material in so called trivia sections is of this nature. People have
said I'm over-generalizing, that nobody wants to remove it all.
Many trivia section contain some junk as well, but to say that
everything in every one of them is worthless--well, I think you have
just confirmed what I've been saying. You do want to remove it all.
Personally, I'm there to write an encyclopedia for general use, not
just a collection of information for my own private purpose. WP:OWN
usually means articles, but you think you own wikipedia. If you want
your own wiki, limited to what you wish to have in an encyclopedia,
branch WP, and work at a project where you can safely call yourself
"we".
I can't pretend to speak for Brock, but as someone who opposes the existence
of trivia sections, I think a miscommunication has taken place. Perhaps
Brock and a few others think otherwise, but if you ask me, the problem is
usually not the content; it is how the content is organised. I do not like
trivia sections, but I never remove them wholesale unless all the
information in them is clutter (should, say, [[lesbian]] have a trivia
bullet-point along the lines of "character Y in sitcom X was a closeted
lesbian"? That information may be useful in [[sitcom X]], but not in
[[lesbian]]).
The usefulness of information depends almost as much on its context,
location and presentation as it does on the information itself. "George W.
Bush is the President of the United States" is almost always a useful thing
to know, but it is more useful in articles like [[United States]] than
articles like [[gecko]]. Trivia sections are a very poor way of presenting
information, and almost always lead to bad organisation of our information.
Eradicating trivia sections is not an end in itself; it is a means to better
presenting and contextualising our information. Wholesale removal of the
content in trivia sections defeats this latter end; removal of clutter and
moving around potentially useful information is what serves the end we have
in mind.
Johnleemk
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l