Steven Walling wrote: That should tell you something about what interests the public. He's right to be pissed off. Only the self-righteous ones. If Wikipedians generally had that precise understanding we wouldn't be having this discussion now. How about the kind of things that make the Guinness Book of Records such a best seller. They don't lack for people trying to put the stupidest imaginable records in there. A trivia section is good in and for an article because it keeps this information separate from the rest of the article. The importance or value of the information depends more on the reader than the editor. Sure a lot of crap gets into these sections, but that's a reason for getting rid of the crap, not the whole section. I didn't think we were talking about whole articles, only about a specific section in some articles. Ec

On 11/25/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: What kinds of trivia do you think are best in their own section? I think we can distinguish between: 1) Generally pertinent information that could be integrated somewhere. e.g., someone's childhood best friend was the famous author xxx. 2) Real trivia that simply isn't that interesting, e.g. the fact that someone won some event on whatever day was only the 3rd time that's happened since blah blah blah. 3) Trivia that's only trivia for ignorant teeny boppers (there was a reference to this extremely well known painting in whatever episode of the simpsons, or there was a character named after this extremely well known 17th philosopher in whatever computer game). 4) ...you're proposing a category of trivia that is interesting but can't or shouldn't be integrated? (Personally, I hate 3) the most. They make me grind my teeth.) Steve

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: I think he's talking about putting the trivia about Family Guy or the Simpsons into the article on the philosopher, rather than the other way around. Ie, if there's a fictional character named Pascal on the cartoon Porcupine Commandos, we might quite reasonably put "Pascal is named after the French philosopher [[Blaise Pascal]]" into the article [[Porcupine Commandos]], but putting "The cartoon porcupine in [[Porcupine Commandos]] is named after this philosopher" into the article [[Blaise Pascal]] is the sort of trivia that even I think is probably a little too obscure to warrant inclusion.

Quoting Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca>ca>: I'm going to have to disagree somewhat. If a kid say has to do a report on Pascal he won't find out that interesting tidbit that gets him to actually care about the subject if he reads the Pascal entry if we only have that in the entry on Porcupine Commandos.

You apparently don't think its important that the writers of a contemporary computer game know something about some particular important philosopher, and expect at least some of the players to appreciate the reference. Other people may think it quite significant. Those interested in the philosopher are generally interested in his further reception, and can be expected to find it fascinating that he has made his way into that part of our culture. Those interested in the games culture will be interested to know what sort of figures are used as referents--whom the authors assume they are writing for. I as an educator find it very valuable & heartening to know that at least in some superficial level there is a continuation of the intellectual tradition. As I don't have much direct familiarity with most computer games, I learn out most of what I do know about that aspect of things from Wikipedia. It's easy to denigrate the importance of the part of the world we're not interested in. It's been decades since I've seen a televised wrestling match, and I intend to never see one in the future, but if I ever do want to know about them, they'll be in WP. I never expect to be on the Kuala Lumpur Monorail, but I might want see a news or fiction reference someday to something that happened there, and want to know about the stations. On 11/25/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

On 11/26/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm talking about when some kid thinks it's a crazy coincidence that the character Voltaire in their favourite computer game has the same name as an actual historical figure. Or when some level in a computer game is named after an actual place...omg! They'll be in WP, tucked away in that dirty corner I don't go into it much. Do you really want to see links to wrestling articles from history articles because some wrestler decided to name himself Alfred the Great or something? it just depends how significant the reference is. If one single KL monorail station was the setting for an entire series of books that was a cult classic in Mexico, it might be worth noting. If that station was the first time that Joey and Sandy snogged after Sandy broke up with Jimmy in the two-bit anime series "The KL Klub", I don't want to hear about it. Steve

On 26/11/2007, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well, not really. The inclusion of "also by this name" things on disambiguation pages is well-accepted, and I know of a few cases where disambiguation pages have been created just to get a silly "see also" phrase out of an article.* But the presence or absence of a disambiguation page with the information won't stop people wanting to include it in a trivia section - different motives. Headnotes/disambiguation are there for the cases where you want to take an incoming reader and direct them to the place they really wanted to go. Trivia sections - or at least this aspect of them - are for informing the reader who wanted to read about this particular topic about how it links to another unrelated topic. If your goal is to make sure that people looking for Voltaire the wrestler get there, you use disambiguation. If your goal is to make sure that people reading about Voltaire learn this neat thing about there also being a wrestler, you use a trivia section. And I think most of the additions are from people wanting the latter, not the former. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk * see: "squirrel", "Beirut". Long story.