[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as culturally assumed

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>:

> joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu wrote:
>> 3 isn't trivia, it is cultural references. May I ask what is wrong with
>> letting
>> as you put it "teeny boppers" know how what things are referring to? 
>> I've seen
>> kids become more interested in history and other subjects after they 
>> learn how
>> many references the Simpsons, Family Guy and similar shows make to 
>> elements of
>> the Western canon. So what is wrong with such sections other than that you
>> don't like reading them?
>
> 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.

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.