[WikiEN-l] My favorite Wikipedia article ever

[Ian Woollard]

On 07/07/07, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/7/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > One of my old favorites is up for deletion right now, for the fourth
> > time, and looks likely to go the way of the dodo this time around.
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Prime_%28person%29>. Just in time
> > for the release of the new Transformers movie, too.
> >
> > It was heavily referenced, non-controversial, and a fun little piece of
> > trivia. I really don't understand why some editors feel the need to get
> > rid of such stuff. There are days that Wikipedia makes me depressed.
>
> Why can't it be heavily referenced, non-controversial, fun little
> piece of trivia in the article for the character?  Why do we need an
> article just for him or for every fun little piece of trivia someone
> comes across?

Trivia is by definition... trivial. Do we want a trivial encyclopedia?
I would say not.

You can imagine information like a web, with connections between
pieces of information. In this case the web only connects to Optimus
Prime, the toy so it's sort of like a dead end in terms of the
connections; because the person probably isn't otherwise notable. I
could understand if it was in the Optimus Prime article, but even then
it's still essentially trivia.

I think we mostly want an encyclopaedia with articles with lots of
connections between things; something that is fairly cut-off like this
is probably not notable.

-- 
-Ian Woollard

"I think we all would have been a lot happier if they hadn't landed a
man on the moon. Then we'd go: 'They can't make a prescription bottle
top that's easy to open? I'm not surprised they couldn't land a man on
the moon. Things make perfect sense to me now.' "