I have a strong bias to admit. I can't stand the "In popular culture" heading that certain articles have, which which become a hodgepodge list for every time a major historical event or theme is mentioned in a TV show, movie, Japanese cartoon, video game, rock song, or science fiction novel.
Does this make me a bad person? Do others feel this? I feel as if these sections should be hunted down and exterminated. They could, of course, be broken off into separate lists (as I did for [[Mad scientist]] => [[List of mad scientists]]), but is that list then encyclopedic? It is feasible that it will ever be comprehensive? Would there be a point to a list of instances in popular culture of the [[philosopher's stone]] -- a common and reoccuring theme since at least medieval times?
[[Nuclear weapon]] is another entry which has such a section. I've tried to make it, over time, less of a list and more of a descriptive paragraph. But it still is quite unpleasant and not very useful. I feel somewhat bad cutting a whole list out of an entry, though. With something like "nuclear weapon" (a major cultural motif of the late 20th century), it feels ridiculous to try and add every instance of its being invoked. But where to draw the line? I edited out a line somebody added about the fact that the prog-rock band Rush wrote a song about nuclear weapons on the basis that this was hardly notable enough to be mentioned in an encyclopedia article. But is "Sum of All Fears"? "Godzilla"? I don't know.
Do these sections help you understand the article in question? I don't think they do. I'm happy with the article for the movie "Sum of All Fears" saying that it involved a nuclear weapon, but the other way around seems quite silly. My general feeling is that this is an issue of "importance" (very subjective) and "specificity" (less subjective); "Sum of All Fears" (the movie) is far less important than "nuclear weapons" (writ largely), and while the "Sum of All Fears" invokes the larger trope of the "nuclear weapon", the opposite does not, in my opinion, occur (most people do not see the word "nuclear weapon" and think, "Oh yes, that movie!").
I think that if the subject of an article really warrants a section on its impact in "popular culture," it should be something more along the lines of describing the way it is invoked (i.e. "Nuclear weapons have commonly stood as metaphors for the harnessing of the powers of nature by science, and are often invoked as apocalyptic symbols, etc.") rather than a list of occurences.
Is anybody else with me on this? Have I lost my mind? Should I be more respectful to aspects of "popular culture" that I obviously disdain? Am I a cruel and unfair editor? I'm interested in your thoughts. This is clearly a matter of taste (and perhaps a little reasoning), though, and I'm not proposing any hard policies.
I do understand the *reason* such sections exist: a lot of users don't have a whole lot to contribute to an article on "nuclear weapons", for instance, besides their associations in popular culture. Everybody wants to pitch in, as best they can. However, "all contributions are equally valid and must be kept" is clearly not the Wiki philosophy (egalitarianism here is reserved to the ability to contribute, not the information contributed itself), though I feel bad saying, "Look buddy, I'm sorry you don't know anything about this except that it was featured in an HBO weekly show. I understand you want to help. But you're just not up to snuff, if this is the only information you can offer." I'd feel like such a snobby academic historian saying that sort of thing, a very un-wiki sentiment. Alas! Does anybody have any thoughts?
FF
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 20:18:58 -0500, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I have a strong bias to admit. I can't stand the "In popular culture" heading that certain articles have, which which become a hodgepodge list for every time a major historical event or theme is mentioned in a TV show, movie, Japanese cartoon, video game, rock song, or science fiction novel.
I strongly agree with this and the rest of what you've entered here.
I don't feel that they are ALL bad or should always go, but they can, and are, overused. The rule of thumb to be used is "Is this fact notable enough to be in this article?" In the example of nuclear weapons, for example, listing every movie, book, or whatnot that ever mentioned one is clearly going beyond the bounds of notability. Listing examples of them that had SIGNIFICANT effect on the popular knowledge or opinion would be a different manner, and quite acceptable.
Meanwhile, in an article about something much more obscure, mentioning a cultural reference might be much more valuable, since it may be one of the few ways in which a member of the general public has heard of the topic. E.g. in the article on the [[Toyota 2000GT]], a rare 1960s Japanese sports car, the fact that one appeared in a James Bond movie may be quite relevant, since it's the only place that most of us are likely to have seen one.
In a sense, this is a special case of a meta-problem: trivia. The extent that Wikipedia articles should include trivia - and how this should be done - isn't properly defined.
-Matt (User:Morven)
Matt Brown wrote
In a sense, this is a special case of a meta-problem: trivia. The extent that Wikipedia articles should include trivia - and how this should be done - isn't properly defined.
Yes. But it's 'starting a hare'. If we ever had a big debate on exactly what counts as 'trivia', we'd never get finished and it would be a (probably) pointless use of time.
I note that trivia used to be called 'general knowledge'; before Trivial Pursuit fairly much broke the mould of the older type of quiz question. There was a certain type of democratisation when facts about sportspeople, soap stars, B-list royalty, one-hit wonders, Pikachu, actors within six degrees of Kevin Bacon etc. all were added into the brew.
Mostly trivia neither add much to nor detract from WP; they may be weed-like, growing in the wrong place.
Now, I hope we can agree one thing - no astrology column on the Main Page ...
Charles
Charles Matthews wrote:
Now, I hope we can agree one thing - no astrology column on the Main Page ...
No, that would go next to the crossword on Wikinews.
AQUARIUS: Your habit of looking in newspapers for guides to how to live your life today may indicate a shallow grasp of personal responsibility and an excess of gullibility. Read more Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan. Lucky number: 0.
- d.
From: Matt Brown morven@gmail.com Reply-To: Matt Brown morven@gmail.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:36:51 -0800 To: Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Culture glut
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 20:18:58 -0500, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I have a strong bias to admit. I can't stand the "In popular culture" heading that certain articles have, which which become a hodgepodge list for every time a major historical event or theme is mentioned in a TV show, movie, Japanese cartoon, video game, rock song, or science fiction novel.
I strongly agree with this and the rest of what you've entered here.
I don't feel that they are ALL bad or should always go, but they can, and are, overused. The rule of thumb to be used is "Is this fact notable enough to be in this article?" In the example of nuclear weapons, for example, listing every movie, book, or whatnot that ever mentioned one is clearly going beyond the bounds of notability. Listing examples of them that had SIGNIFICANT effect on the popular knowledge or opinion would be a different manner, and quite acceptable.
For example the movie ''On the Beach.''
Meanwhile, in an article about something much more obscure, mentioning a cultural reference might be much more valuable, since it may be one of the few ways in which a member of the general public has heard of the topic. E.g. in the article on the [[Toyota 2000GT]], a rare 1960s Japanese sports car, the fact that one appeared in a James Bond movie may be quite relevant, since it's the only place that most of us are likely to have seen one.
In a sense, this is a special case of a meta-problem: trivia. The extent that Wikipedia articles should include trivia - and how this should be done - isn't properly defined.
Some trivia is interesting, some not
-Matt (User:Morven) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fastfission wrote:
[snip screed]
Actually, I agree with you.
I agree with you completely, and most of these sections should be deleted. It is one thing for Wikipedia to be the online Encyclopedia of Popular Culture with articles on every Pokemon character, TV episode, forgotten (or never known) song or CD, every obscure corner of every fictional universe, etc, etc, ad absurdum, ad nauseum. But when all this starts bleeding into other articles, it becomes a major problem and makes Wikipedia look like it has no sense of proportion at all.
Your example of [[Nuclear weapons]] is perfect. If there were a section on public opinion about nuclear weapons, which would be quire reasonable to have, and there were some movie, book, or other item of popular culture that had a significant impact in influencing this public opinion, then the book, etc, should be mentioned, of course. But just a list under "in popular culture" listing movies and books that nuclear weapons in them, is ridiculous. Next thing you know, there will be a section in the article "Nuclear Weapons In Star Wars", describing the use of nuclear weapons in Star Wars, and so forth. The article is currently missing this important aspect of nuclear weapons.
Perhaps the "solution" is just to concede that Wikipedia is really just the online encyclopedia of popular culture, throw in the towel, and delete the 20% of so of it that is about reality. You know off-topic stuff like [[Nuclear weapons]].
Seriously, how does one go about deleting these sections? Someone is going to insist that it is "removal of information" and , therefore, vandalism to remove them.
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 20:18:58 -0500, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I have a strong bias to admit. I can't stand the "In popular culture" heading that certain articles have, which which become a hodgepodge list for every time a major historical event or theme is mentioned in a TV show, movie, Japanese cartoon, video game, rock song, or science fiction novel.
Brian M wrote
But when all this starts bleeding into other articles, it becomes a major problem and makes Wikipedia look like it has no sense of proportion at all.
As far as I can see, WP doesn't have a sense of proportion. It has a sense of mission. The mission is not proportionate to anything conventional.
It would certainly be quite wrong to read anything into relative coverage. I think the positiion is like this: after a certain point pop culture can become spam. Just like a bot creating a page for each prime number would be spamming WP, after a certain point. We have no idea where that point would be - it's a judgement call, it makes little odds to the merit of WP one way or another. Information about the uninteresting is not the threat that disinformation about the interesting is - by a factor of at least 100. We don't need to have a page about every Magic the Gathering card, but if they proliferate it would be much better to purge them en masse some day, than to clog up VfD-type processes.
Charles
Brian M wrote:
I agree with you completely, and most of these sections should be deleted. It is one thing for Wikipedia to be the online Encyclopedia of Popular Culture with articles on every Pokemon character, TV episode, forgotten (or never known) song or CD, every obscure corner of every fictional universe, etc, etc, ad absurdum, ad nauseum. But when all this starts bleeding into other articles, it becomes a major problem and makes Wikipedia look like it has no sense of proportion at all.
Or it makes WP more attractive to readers because it has information that can't be gotten from other sources.
Robert Collison's history makes mention of a decision by Britannica (for the 9th edition?) to include topics like farming, metalworking, and so forth, not because they thought they had suddenly become "encyclopedic", but to try to sell EB to middle-class people that didn't have so much of a need for complete coverage of Marcus Atilius Regulus and medieval German literature. Even so, we now know that EB simply failed to report on great swathes of their own culture.
Nuclear weapons are one of the areas where 20th-century geopolitics has impinged on the general consciousness, and popular culture references are a reflection of the fears they've come to engender in ordinary people. Not only are the references themselves manifestations of the artists' feelings, but the very urge to add the references tells you something about the fears of WP editors. (There's also a good argument to be made that the desire to delete all the cultural references is a different kind of editorial response to the same fears.)
So yeah, if a reference is trivial, maybe it doesn't need to be there, but it would be good to exercise a light touch, keeping in mind the breadth of our audience, and that many (probably most) readers will be far more interested in the culture stuff than the mathematical equations.
Stan
On 3/11/05 7:20 AM, "Brian M" brian1954@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with you completely, and most of these sections should be deleted. It is one thing for Wikipedia to be the online Encyclopedia of Popular Culture with articles on every Pokemon character, TV episode, forgotten (or never known) song or CD, every obscure corner of every fictional universe, etc, etc, ad absurdum, ad nauseum. But when all this starts bleeding into other articles, it becomes a major problem and makes Wikipedia look like it has no sense of proportion at all.
Ack! No!
Your example of [[Nuclear weapons]] is perfect. If there were a section on public opinion about nuclear weapons, which would be quire reasonable to have, and there were some movie, book, or other item of popular culture that had a significant impact in influencing this public opinion, then the book, etc, should be mentioned, of course. But just a list under "in popular culture" listing movies and books that nuclear weapons in them, is ridiculous. Next thing you know, there will be a section in the article "Nuclear Weapons In Star Wars", describing the use of nuclear weapons in Star Wars, and so forth. The article is currently missing this important aspect of nuclear weapons.
The answer is to separate distinct concepts into different pages. There's no reason there shouldn't be [[Nuclear weapons in Star Wars]] (except that it's not clear that there really are any--the Death Star, for example, seems to use some kind of collimated maser? You know, the kind that makes a zapping sound in DEEP SPACE. Ack.).
Perhaps the "solution" is just to concede that Wikipedia is really just the online encyclopedia of popular culture, throw in the towel, and delete the 20% of so of it that is about reality. You know off-topic stuff like [[Nuclear weapons]].
There's no need to delete knowledge. Interesting how you don't think popular culture is real. Worrisome, actually.
Seriously, how does one go about deleting these sections? Someone is going to insist that it is "removal of information" and , therefore, vandalism to remove them.
It's good that somewhere you recognize how misguided your impulse is.
Look: Wikipedia is going to be full of knowledge that any one individual person will find utterly uninteresting and/or irrelevant to that person's interests or life--but that selfsame knowledge will be interesting and/or relevant to someone else--most likely many other people.
Remember that all information in Wikipedia has been added by a reader, so we *know* at least part of the audience feels that it's relevant. As long as the information is objectively verifiable and is coherently presented, it deserves place in Wikipedia. Where to put it and how to present it is a perfectly reasonable topic for discussion.
I think I should clarify one thing about what I was trying to say:
I'm not against the ==In popular culture== sections if they are coherent sentences, narratives, etc. about the impacts and representatiosn in popular culture. Popular culture is important (though of course I worry that "popular culture" simply means "US and UK popular culture" but anyway that's for the CSB people to worry about).
I'm against *lists* where people just hemorrage "trivia" in a non-interesting, non-useful function.
Sure, a reader thought the fact that a song called "Manhattan Project" by the prog-rock band "Rush" was relevant and interesting. But I think most people would find that to be "trivia", and not very interesting trivia at that.
Of course it is an individual judgment call. But if someone really thought it was important, they could add it back in with an expanded line about WHY this is notable (i.e. "... and this song became the anthem of a generation, featured prominently as the official UN song about nuclear weapons" etc.), and suddenly, it's not trivia any more! I feel that everything in an article should be there for a reason, and if that reason isn't apparent, it should be spelled out. Within reason, of course.
FF
Fastfission wrote:
I'm not against the ==In popular culture== sections if they are coherent sentences, narratives, etc. about the impacts and representatiosn in popular culture. Popular culture is important (though of course I worry that "popular culture" simply means "US and UK popular culture" but anyway that's for the CSB people to worry about). I'm against *lists* where people just hemorrage "trivia" in a non-interesting, non-useful function. Sure, a reader thought the fact that a song called "Manhattan Project" by the prog-rock band "Rush" was relevant and interesting. But I think most people would find that to be "trivia", and not very interesting trivia at that.
That would be ideal to shunt off to a disambig page, c.f. [[Lilith]] vs [[Lilith (disambiguation)]].
If the present sections are currently unfinished lumps of data, then reworking and polishing is in order, rather than removal - something that will solve the problem forward rather than attempting to wind it back, 'cos that trick's not going to work if so many people want to put stuff there.
- d.
The Cunctator wrote:
The answer is to separate distinct concepts into different pages. There's no reason there shouldn't be [[Nuclear weapons in Star Wars]] (except that it's not clear that there really are any--the Death Star, for example, seems to use some kind of collimated maser? You know, the kind that makes a zapping sound in DEEP SPACE. Ack.).
This seems like the right answer to me.
My personal pet peeve is that nearly every short-lived country or obscure semi-sovereign-at-one-time region has a section on their stamps that is larger than the section on the area itself. And of course, this information is interesting if you're a philatelist, and shouldn't be deleted---but should be somewhere like [[Stamps of Blah]], rather than making up 80% of the [[Blah]] article.
But I think this is really a somewhat minor organization issue, not a huge problem with our focus and content.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
My personal pet peeve is that nearly every short-lived country or obscure semi-sovereign-at-one-time region has a section on their stamps that is larger than the section on the area itself. And of course, this information is interesting if you're a philatelist, and shouldn't be deleted---but should be somewhere like [[Stamps of Blah]], rather than making up 80% of the [[Blah]] article.
Hey! You're dissing my material! :-)
Actually, I did this because the short-lived entities tend not to have their own lengthy articles - their story is usually subsumed in the history article for the modern-day country, which is sometimes sensible, sometimes less so. So instead of creating two cross-connected stubs, I just made a single longer article. Note that all such have a [[Postage stamps and postal history of Blah]] redirect, to facilitate future splitting. I think I'm the only one that has done such a split however.
Stan