I think it's simply that adding trivia is something that pulls newbies in to editing the site. Therefore, be careful of newbie-biting. Instead,encourage higher standards, and introduce them to the joys of research and WP:CITE!
On 2/23/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
Subject: [WikiEN-l] "Trivia" sections in articles To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Message-ID: 43FD53A3.7050804@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. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l