[WikiEN-l] A thought about "in popular culture" sections

[Matt R]

--- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

> The question of whether "in popular culture" or "trivia" sections
> should be included in articles has been raised many times, and I don't
> want to hash over the whole debate again (My version of the
> discussions is something like: "Are they encyclopedic?" "Maybe not,
> but it's the only way some people can contribute. Also, it makes us
> more hip and up to date than EB." "Well, I think they are crap."
> "Well, we agree to disagree.")

I guess I would distinguish between "analysis" sections, and straight out "list
of trivia" or "list of pop culture references" sections. With the latter, an
alternative solution is to split out too-trivial stuff into a subarticle. We
did this with [[NSA in fiction]], to avoid having things like --

* In the 1999 Highlander: The Raven episode The Rogue, Bert Myers claims to be
from the NSA.
* In the 2000 Nintendo 64 video game Perfect Dark, Trent Easton, the corrupt
head of the agency, uses agents to do his dirty work.

cluttering up the main [[National Security Agency]] article.

I think it's a reasonable solution because A) no information is lost (which is
otherwise something that upsets many); and B) the main article on the topic is
better off for sticking to the important stuff.

Listing verifiable facts in an article like [[Space colonization in popular
culture]] is not an NOR problem, IMO.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com


		
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