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(a)dpbsmith.com> wrote:
Subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Trivia" sections in articles
To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
Message-ID: <43FD53A3.7050804(a)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.
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