Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trivia sections/Archive 4

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Does one size fit all?

Regarding popular cultural references of "high culture" topics (literary, religious, philosophical, etc.), do the guideline and template even make sense? Both prongs of the choice presently offered seem inappropriate. On the one hand, it would be completely inappropriate to integrate reference to (say) a Biblical figure in a videogame into the main body of article on the Biblical figure. It would also be essentially impossible to have a meaningful "popular culture" section, because all that can really be sourced is a collection of isolated references - any effort to make a comprehensive statement or commentary would generally be original research. And do we really want to simply delete all popular culture references, which seems to be the only practical alternative in these cases? If we want don't want popular culture references in articles on high culture topics in cases where there are no commentaries or other things we can say about those references, we should say so plainly. --Shirahadasha 13:19, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Pop culture topics are probably over-covered on Wikipedia, but in my opinion, there are two ways of covering them well. First, they can be covered in a real article. Here, we have to be pretty conservative, because good articles on popular culture are rare, and for good reason: for most topics as they "appear in popular culture" there will not be any sources discussing the matter holistically. So, "War in popular culture" or "Religion in popular culture" would probably be doable, but "Cheese Whiz in popular culture", not so much. For this kind of article, we have to watch out for OR, and it shouldn't be prose that just lists examples, but actually writes about culture. Alternatively, they can be covered via lists... as long as the lists are selective and organized, I don't think this guideline argues against them. So I think lists of "pop culture references to X" are bad, because there is no minimum threshold (and "notable" references doesn't really work either, it's too subjective). But many other topics are doable, like "Fictional works about X" or "Continuity errors in X", et cetera. Mangojuice^talk 16:13, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

To Trivia or Not to Trivia

I fail to see the point of arbitrarily tagging articles for their trivia sections. I think most people can agree that the majority of articles on Wikipedia contain trivia in one form or another. I mean, that's the exact reason I use Wikipedia, to find information that I won't be able to find anywhere else. And, thus far, it hasn't let me down. Then is this just a campaign against the Trivia sections?

As for the argument that Wikipedia has to be a "scholarly" and "reputable" encyclopedia, I also must not concur. It's safe to say that Wikipedia, being an open source encyclopedia, will never be without flaw (or completely free for that matter). I mean, we must not forget that that's exactly what wikipedia is - an open source database - and that is what makes it so great and unprecedented. There will always be proponents and cynics (although I think everyone must know in the back of their minds that Wikipedia is a great source whether they admit it overtly or not!)

I have yet to see some good rationale and argument for why these tags are needed. Such tags will make people question the credibility of entire articles. To be fair, however, I must also admit that some trivia sections need cleaning up! aNubiSIII ^{(T / C)} 21:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

>>Such tags will make people question the credibility of entire articles.

Sounds good to me! --Android Mouse 21:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I disagree for the reasons stated above, also this discussion probably belongs on Template talk:Trivia incidentally. When I first came here I kind of liked trivia. However, then I started taking this place seriously and seeing the potential it has. Needless to say I don't see a need for Trivia sections. Quadzilla99 21:49, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that the trivia template doesn't mean that any material in the article is too trivial and should be removed for that reason. Rather, it means that the article has not yet been formed into a smoothly flowing, connected and easy-to-read narrative. It's about the form of the article, not its content. If some material is irrelevant, it can be removed by the same processes that irrelevant material in paragraph form is removed. I like having lots of information included. People who don't want to read long articles can skip parts of them, while people who are disappointed that the information they want isn't there have little recourse. --Coppertwig 21:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. The idea isn't for widespread removal of trivia it is for widespread integration of trivia. If it can't be integrated then chances are it doesn't belong. --Android Mouse 21:56, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

A lot of information is one thing, unencyclopedic junk is another. I guess it depends if you take Wikipedia seriously or not. First thing I noticed when I came here was the Ciritcism and Trivia sections, you would never see either in Britannica. Marcus Taylor 21:59, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Anubis3, a lot of trivia is important ... dates of birth, occupations, and so on. As I see it, the purpose of the trivia tags is only to encourage a better organisation of content (and, of course, the removal of "junk" content). Information should not be placed in "Trivia" sections except as a temporary repository. That's the message that the tag ought to convey (whether it does is currently under dispute at Template talk:Trivia). -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Marcus Taylor: are you suggesting that those who do not take Wikipedia seriously are the ones who want to delete trivia, or the ones who want to keep trivia? I think people with both tendencies take Wikipedia seriously. In any case, the policies such as What Wikipedia is not should be used to decide what gets deleted. The Trivia policy is about the form of the article, not about what is or isn't appropriate to keep. --Coppertwig 23:37, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

81.152.43.179 20:03, 7 July 2007 (UTC) The Trivia Sections are the best pieces of information, usually rare and not known on other websites or encyclopedias. I believe that the section is very useful, and if you need quick facts it is very helpful.

Susinct and Diverse

Trivia sections are often the most susinct way to include a diversity of views and give a better all round view of a subject. The obsession with bland Britanica Encyclopedic style limits Wikipedia to be the lesser of the two and aspires to an undesirable goal - copying something that is already there. There are indeed stylistic problems with disorganised lists and trivia lists are more likely than many to fall apart structurally. However, advocates of this policy must realise that it is not being applied in a nuanced way, but in broad strokes of what is essentially - censorship. If you think lists are hard to organise efficiently and keep structured, try paragraphs! Seriously, lists are faster and easier which is sometimes a good thing.

I came across this discussion after having seen the tag a few times and found it an annoying preface to the most interesting section of an article I was reading. I decided to comment when, after reading a Jimmy Buffett article, I found almost no useful information except in the trivia section, that had this authoritarian brand above it about removing trivia. In fact, most of the rest of the article was trivial, much more so than the 'trivia' section! A list of dates in rambling and unreadable paragraph form. A bunch of random facts strung together in sentances without any context. I was trying to find out what 'Jimmy Buffett' means. Not when and where every tour was. Or worse, a 'neutral' version of his resume!. Why does David Cross reference him? What is the cultural phenomenon associated with him? Well, the parrotheads article gives some indication. But it is only slightly mentioned so was hard to pick out. Now obviously I could improve this article by editing the article myself - putting the parrotheads link more prominent and getting a bit more emphasis on the meaning instead of the paragraph sections of trivia. But, I know very little on this man and frankly don't care. The format of wikipedia is the problem. Or rather the format that some people are trying to make it become. I see that this 'remove trivia' brand is there to not help the article but to go backwards in the wrong direction.

There is something very arrogant about the rationale that lists are a preliminary stage in writing an article only. There is no evidence for that conjecture. It may also be a good way to plan out writing but it is not only that. Since when was wikipedia a final product? Since when was some bad prose listing with commas better than wrapped lines? Since when did bullets lack meaning and all sorts of "and" "also" "then" have signifigance. Not every writing is meant to be a British Poem. Poems also come in lists. Quality writing is not about having indented paragraphs. It is about using your letters - including the newfashioned letters of the computer bullet, italics, bold, wikilinks - effectively. To not use the tools at your disposal is bad writing, limited and weak.

To take out the geeky internet flavour of diversity that includes trivia, To change it to even more trivial 'facts' of dates in paragraph form... In short, this policy is not trivial. It represents an attack on what has made wikipedia great. Lists are susinct and trivia is diverse - one mans trivia is another's mandatory background. Open labelling of articles and sections is what allows wikipedia to encompass broad landscapes of information. We don't have to make every fact agree because we can put different sections which argue their own merit and allow disagreement. By limiting this honest labelling of trivia we remove the honesty from the debates. We censor those who want to contribute but don't want to impose their facts in the linear paragraph form that is so oppressive at times. I'd like to ask who instiuted this policy and how do I try to change it if I want to. What is this about a vote? Votes can change? 51% Agree that voting is great.--Rusl 18:29, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Let me be the first to agree that our article on Jimmy Buffett leaves a lot to be desired. I'm actually quite amazed, considering that it's a pop culture topic, that it is in such bad shape. That's an excellent example of an article where simple removal of trivia would be bad... but on the other hand, integrating the trivia would be well worth it. For instance, there's an item there about the "Save the Manatees Club", that Buffett started. I seem to recall hearing Buffett's name in connection with lots of charity causes, but the article doesn't talk about them at all. So you see, the guideline encourages me to integrate that, and in doing so, I will have to improve the article in order to set up the framework for integration. Mangojuice^talk 18:55, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Time out

Ok, enough. In the last four days or so there have been a lot of attempts to edit the page to either (1) try to make it more explicit that this guideline doesn't actually advocate a hard-line stance against trivia, or (2) to try to counter that. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm sick and tired of being reverted. I've tried several times now to come up with compromises, because there is a feeling among a number of editors here that the guideline needs clarification. However, those that object to clarification (for what reason, I really can't understand - clarification is not a change in the guideline, after all) have not chosen to be at all productive, but simply reverted all attempts at anything, without engaging in meaningful discussion. That said, there is no reason to be rushing to edit the guideline, and discussion is long overdue here.

First, I think we can all agree that the guideline does not advocate for or against trivia - see Dcoetzee's descriptions of the guideline, which he wrote. Instead, this guideline is about the organization of information. We all agree, right?

Second, objecting to a clarification as "unnecessary" is just not sufficient, when others view the clarification as necessary. I think those of you against it will have to do better. From my perspective you are talking like the guideline is wonderfully written as is, and the clarification makes it less elegant or something, which I suspect is not your real objection.

I think the clarification is necessary so that when people act a bit over the top in removing trivia, we can point them to explicit language advising against it in the guideline they claim to be following. Without something like that in the guideline, especially when the guideline actively gives a justification for trivia removal, addressing that behavior problem becomes very difficult.

Okay. Finally, if I see any more reverts I'm going to WP:RFP. Enough is enough with that. Mangojuice^talk 03:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Only if you don't get it protected on the Wrong Version! But seriously, maybe an WP:RFC or a posting at the policy pump is worth a shot first. I'll do it soon if I think we're going nowhere.

Separately, all this is making it increasingly clear to me that Wikipedia needs at least an attempt at defining "relevance". We've got WP:NOT covering certain classes of material and WP:N covering notability of subjects as a whole, but no governance concerning individual facts as they relate to a specific topic. WP:HTRIV is a start, but hasn't gone through the consensus mill needed to become "official", so this guideline's the closest we've got on the subject, and right now, it's not even allowed to mention that a consensus view of relevance has not yet been established.

I've got some ideas about how to start up a discussion of a definition of relevance. I think I'll have it ready for tomorrow.

--Father Goose 06:45, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Placing of trivia category.

I have just looked at Tosca and noticed that the article with trivia category has been shoved at the front of the list of categories. If you have to have to categorise articles in this way, put it to the bottom of the list. Readers are going to be a lot more likelyto be interested in goign to other operas by Puccini than to other articles with trivia.

Please think of the effect on the usability of the articles being tagged. --Peter cohen 18:09, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

That happened because categories are sorted according to what order they appear in the article. Normally all categories go at the bottom, but the Trivia one was imported via the "This article contains a Trivia section" template/banner, which came before the main category section.

In this case, the prominence of the category greatly improved the usability of the article: it brought the problem to your attention, and subsequently to mine, and I moved the trivia section out (along with the category) since it was a paragraph of material which was much more about Hitman: Blood Money than about Tosca.--Father Goose 19:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes in this case it's not the sort of thing that a typical opera fan will be interested in and, as you say, is better placed in Hitman: Blood Money, assuming it is of interest to the readers over there. There is, however, an anecdotes section, which contains things that look suspiciously like trivia to me. But in this case many opera fans will be interested in the tale of the bouncing soprano and of the under-rehearsed firing squad.

Anyway I've raised this now in Wikipedia talk:Cleanup because I think this sort of problem with an article is better placed on the talk page than on the article page. It's about presentation and choice of appropriate material rather than about major issues of reliability and belongs in the same sort of place as similar quality issues such as an article being start-class, another indication that it needs some work.--Peter cohen 19:33, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

What is relevance?

As I've been hinting at for a couple of days, I think it's about time we started trying to work toward a common definition of "relevance", so that we can try to offer consensus guidance regarding it. I came across this page of Bill Clinton trivia, and I'd like to use it as a test case. What material from this list would we retain-and-integrate into a Bill Clinton article (hypothetically -- not necessarily into the specific one that exists right now), and what would we remove?

I've removed the entries from the list with obvious non-trivial significance and summarized the list here (to avoid copyright violation; incidentally, it appears to be a copyvio of IMDB's list: [1].) You may wish to refer to the full list linked above to evaluate each entry. I've made comments under each summarized entry as to how I'd treat them, and I ask others to add their opinions at the bottom. I hope this is a workable approach to this discussion.

• coin-collector

This is a good case for establishing a border line. It's a somewhat interesting fact that I didn't know. But without more information to lend it significance, it's just a data point; this is arguably excluded under WP:NOT#INFO(Statistics). Even with more information, it might be nothing more than a (bloated) data point. And with Clinton in particular, it'd compete for space with far more important material in his article.

• Most Intriguing People

For some people, this could be used to establish notability, but for Clinton, it's of tertiary importance.

• golf and saxophone

Golf is a common pasttime for Presidents. However, Clinton was famous for his mulligans. Unfortunately, that bit of info is often brought up to impeach (ahem) his honesty and is thus NPOV. But it could merit inclusion somewhere in Wikipedia, provided it was presented in an NPOV manner; maybe at mulligan itself. Or American Presidents and golf, if we ever get that looney... which we will.

That he played the sax was an emblematic, well-publicized trait of his, and is thus relevant. Furthermore, he once considered being a sax player professionally, making it more significant.

• Left-handed.

Another data point. There is more relevance to the fact that Clinton was at the time the 4th out of the last 5 presidents to be left-handed, which is covered at left-handedness.

• Co-Man of the Year 1998
• Man of the Year 1992

Being Time's Man of the Year has some significance, even to a President. This could definitely fit within the Awards and Accolades section in the current Bill Clinton article we have.

• Comedian Harmonists/High Noon (1952) favorite movies

Data point. For a film scholar (say, Martin Scorcese or Roger Ebert), "favorite film" would be significant.

• collects saxophones

That he played one is significant in Clinton's case; this could arguably be added to any section which covers that.

• Pardoned his half-brother

This is covered in List of people pardoned by Bill Clinton and elsewhere.

• fluent in German

Maybe if this were part of something describing his scholastic background, or if it were significant to his life or otherwise publicized (such as John Kerry's French fluency from attending school in Switzerland) it could be included. But by itself, it's a data point.

• Attended a national prayer service for victims of 9/11

This is a typical Presidential or ex-Presidential activity.

• Portrayed on "Saturday Night Live" by 6 actors

Every President gets imitated, on SNL and other shows. Possibly worth mentioning at Saturday Night Live.

• first Rhodes Scholar to be President

Could certainly be integrated into the article somewhere.

• Secret Service codename was Eagle.

Covered at Secret Service codename.

• Arkansas Black Hall of Fame

His status as "the first black President" is fairly well-known, and this could certainly be mentioned as a part of that.

• look-alike puppet in "Guignols de l'info, Les"

Les Guignols spoofs all political figures, so a mention of Clinton isn't even necessary there, let alone in the Clinton article.

• possible pairing with Rush Limbaugh or others (ultimately Dole) on 60 Minutes

Surprisingly, there's no mention of his guest speaker stint on 60 Minutes in the current article. But the list of "names considered" to appear opposite him is probably too much detail and/or speculation.

• 1988 Democratic Convention keynote speech/Carson spoof

One of the things he was notable for prior to the Presidency. I don't even remember this, yet it's pretty significant. Quite surprisingly, it's not covered in the current Bill Clinton article.

• young Clinton shook hands with Kennedy

As part of a section underscoring his early political ambitions, yes (I remember seeing this picture in one of the promotional films aired during the DNC), but not as an isolated data point. The picture itself might have relevance in an article, provided there were no copyright issues.

• last US president of the 20th century/first president of the 21st

A coincidence which signifies nothing.

• Shares birthday with Tipper Gore

Another coincidence which signifies nothing. Indirectly covered at August 19#Births.

• 42nd President of The United States of America

I'm having trouble figuring out what the signficance of this is.

• Considered becoming a Jazz musician

This is relevant to his early life story, and is also a good intro for all that jazz about saxophones.

• Attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II

Typical Presidential activity.

• only the second United States President who has been adopted

False, as far as I can tell.

• Brother of Kappa Kappa Psi

Boring data point to me, although it's in the current Bill Clinton article. It certainly seems reasonable to mention at Kappa Kappa Psi.

• not adopted by Roger Clinton/used the name "Clinton" when he started school

Worth including by way of explaining why he doesn't use his birth name (William Blythe).

• Cousin of Congressman James A. Lockhart

Weak coincidence; Lockhart served in 1853 and is a third cousin twice removed.

General rules about relevance that might be formulated from the examples above

Now to the nitty-gritty. Can we establish (and agree upon) a set of general rules that would adequately cover the above cases? We'll need to evaluate trivia sets relating to other subjects, too; video game trivia is likely to be very different from Presidential trivia, for instance. But we'll start with this.

Here's the initial list "things not meriting inclusion" I'd try to make from the above examples:

• Anything excluded by other policies (WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, WP:BLP, WP:OR, etc.)
• Isolated facts which don't establish any significant traits about the subject ("data points")
• Traits or actions which are commonplace in subjects of the same type
• Information more significant to other subjects or more specific to related sub-articles (should be moved to those articles if not already there)
• Coincidental traits which form no particular pattern (this will probably need to be expanded on)
• Traits which only loosely connect two subjects (this is covered a bit at WP:HTRIVIA)
• Personal information about living people, unless it is widely reported by reliable sources (more or less per WP:BLP; the details of that policy is still emerging)

An additional rule to consider: can isolated traits (significant or otherwise) be included in the form of categories? (For instance, Category:coin collectors?) I'd be okay with this, although it'd be hard to pair citations with it: HTML comments next to the category tag is about the best I can think of, but that's not readily accessible to readers.

Also not yet covered: which basic descriptive traits are okay (i.e., stuff that might appear in an infobox)? I'm thinking this might be best left up to editors at specific Wikiprojects, such as the discussion of height at Template talk:Infobox actor/archive2.

I'm eager to hear others' views on this. It'd probably be best to add them below, to make it easier to see who's saying what. --Father Goose 05:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a very well thought-out discussion. It goes beyond the original point of "integrate trivia into the article" and discusses "what merits inclusion, and where should it go?" Assuming the fact is true and obeys our policies, it's clear that some facts are absolutely meaningless, some facts are notable in some contexts but not others, some facts are notable only in contexts which do not yet have articles, some facts are utterly tangential and only notable in contexts that wouldn't have articles, and some facts deserve integration into primary articles. The discussion seems useful, but making the call seems like a very subjective thing that should be left to an individual editor. Also, this discussion may extend beyond the bounds of trivia to general inclusion guidelines, which are probably covered in other areas. To me, many of the facts you mentioned are potentially borderline, such as his fraternity membership, golf and coin collecting hobbies. Some things, like his portrayal on SNL, might be useful as specific examples to back up relevant claims such as "Clinton was often mocked in popular entertainment". It's fuzzy. Dcoetzee 04:12, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia does already have the policies WP:Notability and WP:NOT, but they cover the relevance of whole articles and specific classes of information, respectively. They establish several fairly non-subjective rules for what should be in the Wikipedia and what shouldn't, and limit themselves to just those points for which there is a broad consensus. I think the a similar thing could be accomplished as regards the relevance of content -- at the very least, the establishment of a couple of "no-brainer" rules about relevance. Do you disagree with any of the provisional "rules" I suggested above? More importantly, do you agree with any of them?

Your opinion on what's borderline seems similar to mine. Relevance depends a lot on the available context, so the "relevance" rules that we might be able to establish should probably center on that, i.e., "Can context be provided for fact "x" that relates it to the subject in any kind of defining way?" I'm certain we can state a general rule that covers, for instance, "The fact that Clinton had two legs does not need to be mentioned." We can build from there.

One could separately argue that we don't need any more rules, but the ones we have on Wikipedia so far are for the most part useful. Establishing common standards helps blunt pointless fights like the ones we've been having over this guideline. In the end, I suspect we'll find most of us have similar standards regarding relevance. More than anything I want to get rid of the foxholes for the "delete everything" and "keep everything" stances, so we can get on with building this million-headed beast.--Father Goose 09:27, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I recommend two additional rules: (WikiLen)

1. Trivia, or any content, added to an article must be directly related to the topic of the article:

• Directly related indicates the content is supplying details centered on the subject itself of the article.
• Indirectly related indicates the content is supplying details centered on something the article happens to mention.

The line between direct and indirect can be difficult to see when a detail is very compelling. A film provides a good example. Details about a character's behavior in a film are directly related to the film — the context is the film. A fact that an actor being investigated for criminal activity is indirectly related to the film — the context is the actor. Reporting the behavior of the actor—although newsworthy—is a detail about the actor, not the film. The obvious exception is when an actor's behavior impacts the film and is so reported by published reliable sources — becomes being about the film. —WikiLen 18:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

2. Topics of much greater interest or importance shift the boundary of what is relevant into areas that would be normally be unacceptable for lesser topics. —WikiLen 18:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

... but datapoints are useful!

Actually, the "Clinton 42nd president" case, above is a good example of how a fact that seems like pointless trivia to a casual observer can be essential encyclopedia material. You might be forgiven for thinking that the exact number is irrelevant and tells us nothing meanigful about the subject, but the “President number” is a standardised, agreed biographical detail taught to US schoolkids, and it's something that they are expected to be able to find out and quote for school projects.

It's also often used in Washington as an unambiguous way of identifying holders of the office: Etiquette in some circles says that past holders of the post retain the title of "President" (it's like being an Olympic Gold medallist, they don't take the title away from you when someone else wins), so if Clinton was to visit a university to give a speech, and the person introducing him wanted to avoid the confusion of referring to him as a "President”, the workaround would be to introduce him as "the 42nd President of the United States". It avoids confusion over whether you are introducing the sitting president or a previous president, and if so, which one. If you're the student tasked with making this introduction, you'll want to be damned sure that you get the number right, and the logical thing to do, to be absolutely sure, is to look it up in an encyclopedia.

The official “president numbers” have also become a useful disambiguation tool for distinguishing between President George Bush and his father ... President George Bush. If you're a White House staffer, it can be important to be able to yell out that you have “Bush 41” on the phone rather than “Bush 43”. At the moment, "President Clinton" is an unambiguous name, and his "42" isn't often necessary except for protocol, but if Hilary got the nomination and won, we'd then also have two living "President Clinton"s, both occupying the White House over the same dates – we'd have two President Bushes and Two President Clintons! Staffers and lawyers would find it handy to be able to distinguish between Presidential directives issued by "Clinton 42" and "Clinton 44". So Clinton's official "President Number" is exactly the sort of standardised information that should be listed in his encyclopedia entry, and an encyclopedia that didn't list it on his cv would be negligent.

I think the general rule ought to be: unless you know a subject extremely well, don't ever delete any information from it on the grounds of assumed triviality, because you won't necessarily be aware of the background details that are required to make that decision. Even if you have no use at all for a piece of information, there may be others out there who need it, and have a reasonable expectation of finding it listed here. ErkDemon 21:55, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Another counterexample, of an "isolated fact which doesn't establish any significant traits about the subject" but is still considered worth including is a person's exact birth-date. To the overwhelming majority of people reading a biography, it makes no different at all whether someone was born on the tenth of the eleventh of a month, but printed biographies and encyclopedias always include this information where available. Why? because it's usually "hard" unambiguous data, it doesn't take up much space, it's easily skipped over by people who don't care, and because for a tiny minority of readers who are using the article for hard research -- checking back geneologies or court records or other legal documents -- birthdate is a critical piece of information that they expect to be able to find, even if it's of no interest to the other 99% of the readership. People do expect to find information in printed encyclopedias that isn't of any interest to them: they put up with it because with that additonal breadth comes an increased expectation of finding nuggests of obscure information that might not be useful to most people but are interesting to them. ErkDemon 22:10, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

This is a style guideline about trivia sections and the suggestions made by Father Goose are meant to help with the organisation of lists of facts in trivia sections. Isolated facts, such as birth dates can exist elsewhere in the article like infoboxes. Items like the number of the president are already mentioned in the main paragraph of the article. A trivia section is not the correct place for this kind of information.

Your point about people not knowing a subject is interesting, but if a user believes that the information violates WP:NOT, WP:V or other policies on content then it should be removed. The editor that's adding facts that may appear trivial without the background being expanded should simply go ahead expand the background. This style guideline suggests trivia sections as "construction sites" for information like that before being integrated into the rest of the article, but if something trivial's been there for a while and nobody's attempted to expand it, then I dont think it should be left there on the chance it might be expandable. Perhaps editors should be urged to add a note or comment on how the information can be expanded or built up to ensure non-trivial information isn't deleted.

In the end, the content of Wikipedia is governed by policies elsewhere. ●BillPP ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:43, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I have to apologize to you, ErkDemon, for unintentionally "luring" you into commenting about this one point. That entry was the single definitely non-trivial entry I left in the list (along with a sarcastic comment); I found it funny to see it included in the original "Clinton trivia" list. If there's one trait about Clinton that makes him notable, it's that he was the (42nd) President of the United States. And, yes indeed, the number is necessary, to establish not just that he was President, but which President.

I brought up the point of inclusion of basic data later in my post; I didn't go so far as to specify what basic data should be included, but things like age, profession, etc. are certainly very basic and should not only be in the article, but be put in the lead. A "relevance" guideline could certainly specify various types of basic data that should be included by default. On a separate note, the inclusion of a specific birth date is actually recommended against for less-notable individuals in WP:BLP, for reasons I more or less agree with. However, Clinton, and his birth date, are widely known, so that portion of WP:BLP doesn't apply in this case.

For every bit of "trivia", it all comes down to what kind of context can be provided to relate it to the subject of the article. For instance, trivia of the type "X is also the name of a Y" ends up not being about the subject; the right approach for these entries is a disambiguation page. By contrast, "plays the saxophone" is a fairly prominent trait of Clinton's, and putting it in amongst other information about his early life, like in the current Bill Clinton article ("I loved music and thought I could be very good, but I knew I would never be John Coltrane or Stan Getz... But I knew I could be great in public service.") broadens what that one fact tells you. A fact is fine, but a fact which helps paint the "bigger picture" is even better.

To BillPP: the content of Wikipedia is covered by several policies, but incompletely so. If you go to Wikipedia:Relevance, it directs you back here (WP:TRIVIA). And the only thing this guideline has to say about relevance is "delete stuff if it's too irrelevant". The question of "what to do with trivia" is being addressed very aggressively on Wikipedia right now (perhaps even coercively), yet we still don't have a basic answer to "what is trivia?". Ultimately, it's not trivia that's being evaluated here (which is a mere label), but relevance. I think we'll have great trouble resolving the question of "what to do with trivia" until we nail down some common standards for "relelvance".

I'll be moving the proposal I've been assembling here to Wikipedia:Relevance soon. I'm hoping that'll get the discussion started up in earnest.--Father Goose 00:26, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

It'll be good to expand Relevance or a guideline on article content. Something like that would be useful as WP:NOTABILITY only covers topics as a whole. I can imagine it'll be very difficult also though. ●BillPP ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:24, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad Father Goose brought up this subject. Here's another approach: How about taking a step back and asking why we want to include some things and not others? I think what it all boils down to is: What is most useful to the reader? Suppose, for example, that 5% of the readers of the article are searching for one particular fact; they're willing to scan the whole article to look for it, and they'll be satisfied if they find it and disappointed if they don't. And suppose the other 95% are not interested in this fact at all and have to waste time skimming over it or scrolling past it. I would add up the cost/benefit like this: For 5% of the people, the fact is worth spending 2 minutes searching/reading the article. For 95% of the people, the fact wastes 2 seconds of their time skimming/scrolling past it. So the total value of including the fact is $(0.05\times 120)-(0.95\times 2)$ seconds or an average of about positive 4 seconds per reader if I calculated correctly, and should be included because the value is positive. Of course, in most cases a lot fewer than 5% of the readers will be searching specifically for that fact, and some others will get at least a mild entertainment value out of it. However, the idea is to use the collective judgement of Wikipedian editors, in discussion with each other, to guess what fraction of the readership will be interested in the fact and how intense that interest will be, and make an include/exclude decision on that basis.

So, the policy doesn't have to give a lot of specific rules, but just an overall rule about providing useful information.

Whether to present the information in paragraph form or in the form of a ("trivia") list or infobox can be made on the same basis: which is most likely to be most useful, pleasant and satisfying to the majority of readers? Some information is best presented in the form of lists. The trivia policy exists because Wikipedian editors find it easy to make lists much more often than readers (presumably) find those lists useful; that doesn't mean lists are never the best way to present things.

Sudden brainwave: How about doing some sort of survey or scientific study, such as asking a random sample of people some questions about the last time they consulted a Wikipedia article: were they more bothered by not being able to find enough information, or by being overwhelmed with too much? Did they find what they wanted? Did they read to the end of the article? Etc. However, with or without the results of such a study, I think it boils down to the collective judgement of Wikipedians about what is relevant for a given article. --Coppertwig 17:33, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

"In popular culture"?

The reference to "popular culture" sections was recently removed [2] - I'm not sure what my opinion is, but given that there are large numbers of articles with these sections (many of which are labelled with the trivia template that directs here), it seems there ought to be some consensus here? Should we still be labelling these sections as trivia? Mdwh 23:31, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Hard to say. One of the options for integration is to move trivia into a more focused or targeted list, and "in popular culture" is such a list (albeit a rather broad one). On the other hand, there is a tendency to add irrelevant trivia to these sections. There are two cleanup approaches for these lists: one is to simply remove the more irrelevant trivia, leaving the more relevant stuff. The other is to organise it into a section broadly discussing how the subject is represented in popular culture, using the "trivia" points as specific citable examples. A good example of this can be found at Death_(personification)#Death_in_popular_fiction (although I find I need to constantly trim the more trivial examples from this section). Dcoetzee 00:08, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I am the user who deleted the reference to "popular culture" (and similarly named) sections from the list of what is considered "trivia". I know that at one point (I am not sure when), "popular culture" (etc.) sections were not listed as part of "trivia", so I was actually restoring an older formulation that I think makes a lot more sense. "Popular culture" sections do present some issues (such as, do we really need to include every reference made in certain animated tv series) and these sections do have to be watched to make sure they do not get out of hand, but these issues are different enough from those presented by "trivia" that I don't think they should be lumped together. As for the "trivia template", I wish someone would create a bot to remove it wherever it appears -- as mentioned above, the template refers to this guideline but it does not correctly represent what the guideline says, even about "trivia" sections -- but at the very least it should be removed from "popular culture" sections. A few hours ago, I started removing the template from "popular culture" sections, but I got exactly one article into the process (Apollo) and then looked at the rest of the "What links here" list for the template and realized that it would take approximately the rest of my life to complete the task. So hopefully the wonders of modern technology (which, at least in this case, are beyond my abilities) can be employed to undo this ill-conceived mass tagging. 6SJ7 08:19, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree - and I say this in no uncertain terms - "in popular culture" sections are not trivia sections. However, one can reasonably ask: 1. how much of the guidelines for trivia also apply to cleaning up these sections; 2. should this guideline cover them? Dcoetzee 09:34, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

"In pop culture" sections are tough. Unlike trivia sections, it is probably not a good idea to remove pop culture sections and integrate their content into the rest of the article. (Although, to some people "popular culture" means anything they have heard of, so often these sections have some items that are appropriate for integration.) In some cases, pop culture sections aren't warranted at all, because there really isn't anything worthwhile to say about X in popular culture. I do think pop culture sections can have organization problems, though, which is really what this guideline is about. We should be able to do better than just having a "pop culture" section that acts as a catch-all. Mangojuice^talk 14:15, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Pop culture sections should not be labeled as trivia, because they can contain notable information that doesn;t fit elsewhere. If there is some info there that isn't notable, then there are templates like Template:Fictionlist (for pages not primarliy about works of fiction that are taken over by lists of nonnotable fictional references) and Template:Fictioncruft (for articles about fiction that just have excessively nonnotable references all over). Template:Examplefarm might come in handy in some circumstances also. DreamGuy 20:56, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

• Except for one problem. These sections can and do also contain trivia. If they do, they should be tagged under the same rules to tag any other trivia section. Vegaswikian 18:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
  • As I understand it a "trivia section" is not so much a section containing trivia as an unorganized and indiscriminate collection of facts about a topic. "In popular culture" sections are not indiscriminate, in that they restrict the scope of the facts to popular culture. Dcoetzee 22:34, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

These sections restrict themselves to the worst aspects of trivia — bullet lists of times any TV or video game character mentions the article topic. Example: Broccoli in popular culture. The current version of this article retains the "In popular culture" section, but it is no longer a trivia section — trivia is deleted outright, and list structure is replaced with a paragraph that makes a point, just like WP:AVTRIVIA used to recommend.

Removing "In popular culture" from WP:AVTRIVIA's list of trivia sections is a mistake. It should be restored. (When the edit warriors get tired.) / edgarde 23:07, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Edgarde, why is it a "mistake"? The discussion above shows the distinction between "popular culture" sections and "trivia" sections. There obviously is no consensus to treat them the same way. As for "edit warriors", I see no edit warring on this point. Perhaps it occurred at some point in the past, but as far as I can see, I changed it, and nobody changed it back. Until you, nobody even said it was a bad idea. 6SJ7 19:29, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

It is a mistake because "In popular culture" sections benefit from being scrutinized for trivia, and pruned per WP:AVTRIVIA. I linked two examples. I wonder if it is possible someone looked at those examples and still does not understand my point. / edgarde 19:55, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree that "popular culture" sections would benefit from being scrutinized for trivia. However, following your reversion of the guideline, that is not what it says. It says that "popular culture" sections are trivia sections. Even with that, I would not mind the change so much if it were not for the tags that have been placed on the "popular culture" sections of many articles. These tags says that these sections "should" be integrated or removed. If there was a separate tag for "popular culture" sections that mentioned that they should be scrutinized, that would be ok -- although I think such tags should be on the talk page, not the article itself. However, the situation as it stands is unacceptable -- there are all these tags equating popular culture sections with "trivia" and stating that they shouuld be integrated or removed. Are you going to remove or modify all those tags, Edgarde? 6SJ7 22:31, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't realise you were new here. When you find the time to read some of the comments on this talk page, you might notice I haven't been a big supporter of the mass tagging.

However, removing the "In popular culture" examples[3] does not remove any tags. It only discourages editors from considering such sections for trivia, so in net it just makes things worse. Blaming me for the tags won't be very productive either, but compared to this edit to AVTRIVIA, at least it's less destructive.

Also, the page does not call these sections trivia. Here's a completely redundant quote for anyone who can't be bothered to read linked examples:

A number of articles contain lists of isolated facts, often grouped into their own section labelled "Trivia", "Notes" (not to be confused with "Notes" sections which store footnotes), "Facts", "Miscellanea", "Cultural references", "Cultural depictions", "Subject in popular culture", "Other information", etc. This style guideline deals with the way in which these facts are represented in an article, not with whether or not the information contained within them is actually trivia...

/ edgarde 01:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree with the initial comment. "In popular culture" has become the place where people come to document anytime anything is mentioned in a tvshow/book/movie. Mitsubishi vehicles in media - tries to document every time this car is on TV. These are in no way encyclopedic and are purely trivial Corpx 06:52, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Opinions vary

I object to this revert by Matthew on the following grounds:

• The discussion on the talk page overwhelmingly supports including the words "but keep in mind that opinions vary". (See "Removal of text" section, beginning where I express support for these words in a version by Mangojuice.) The only dissenter was Marcus Taylor whose only argument was to call the words "unnecessary", but who didn't respond when asked to clarify/expand that one-word argument.
• The edit summary is "rv. uncited junk, opinions vary on lots of things."
  • The use of the word "junk" to characterize words preferred by another editor (or in this case, several other editors and the majority of editors commenting on the talk page) is unproductive.
  • Citations are not required for material on policy pages.
  • It has already been agreed among editors who approve of and who oppose including these words that opinions vary on lots of things.
  • No convincing reason for deleting the words is given.
• The editor gives no sign of awareness of extensive discussion on the talk page of these words.
• The editor gives no arguments on the talk page supporting this action.

I ask that Matthew restore the deleted words. (As far as I'm concerned anyone else is also welcome to restore them.) --Coppertwig 18:21, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I support removing that junk text, per Marcus Taylor. I suspect if we put this to a vote, you'd find the majority do. (Unless by overwhelming support you just simply mean the most verbose writing on this page.)

"Opinions vary" weakens the imperative to edit trivia sections, like they deserve special treatment different from other editing. I realise that every The Simpsons reference is a Fabergé egg to certain editors, but the instruction to remove tangential, minor, or irrelevant items is sufficiently specific and should not be hedged. / edgarde 23:45, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

The specific instruction to delete irrelevant material needs qualifying, not simply weakening, to point out that it does not enjoy consensus support as an "imperative". I will stress once again that those of us who have raised objections to this portion of the guideline have not insisted that deletion be removed as an option. We simply seek that language be included with it which notes that no official guidance on "relevance" exists. It is our feeling that without that qualifying language, there is room to abuse this guideline as an official and open-ended policy on the subject of relevance. (Correct me if I have misstated our position.)--Father Goose 03:07, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

The most sensible approach so far has been a version suggested by Mangojuice which removed the entire line regarding "relevance", as no consensus for its inclusion exists at this time. Matthew, in a recent revert, weighed in against inserting disputed material, and for once, I agree with him, so I have reverted it to the version which omits the contended sentence. (In trying to retain ANNAfoxlover's unrelated changes, I accidentally reverted to the wrong version at first; 70.190.228.160 was kind enough to point out my error.)

In the meantime, I have made good progress on formulating a "Relevance" guideline, and hope to present it to the community for review quite soon. It is my hope that this will resolve our present dispute, which is ultimately about the absence of available guidance regarding "relevance".

--Father Goose 23:29, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I support this edit by Father Goose which removes material for the inclusion of which no consensus exists. ("Other entries may be too tangential, minor, or irrelevant for mention at all.") Although there may be consensus that it is true, nevertheless many people recognize that including it in the policy will result in different editing behaviour. It has been suggested that this sentence tends to be widely misinterpreted; it has also been suggested that it needs qualification. Simply deleting it as not being supported by consensus is a good solution. I personally am against the inclusion of this sentence if it is unqualified. If the argument applied by others to another edit is to be used, it can just as well be used here: one could say that this sentence is obvious and unnecessary and should therefore be deleted. --Coppertwig 13:07, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I most strongly disagree, as the removal of that sentence guts an extremely important part of the policy, and the fact that certain things do not belong at all should be uncontroversial to anyone who has read WP:NOT or WP:ENC (and if you haven't yet, go read those) and needs to be highlighted so that people can;t just move trivia elsewhere into some heading other than Trivia and think it's perfectly acceptable. DreamGuy 18:46, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

"Overwhelmingly supports" Copper? You must have ignored myself and Quadzilla99's earlier posts on the subject. As Quadzilla99 and DreamGuy stated it's necessary as it's listed as an option--as a matter of fact it's listed as the last in a line of options, I fail to see how this can be so misleading. Marcus Taylor 19:22, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In reply to DreamGuy: That sentence without qualification does not enjoy consensus. If you restore it, please also restore the qualifying phrase "but keep in mind that opinions vary" or similar equivalent. In reply to edgarde: Using the word "junk" to refer to words preferred by other editors is unproductive. Policies are determined by consensus, not voting. One way to avoid giving trivia sections "special treatment" is to delete the whole sentence. Obviously opinions vary on many things; the qualifier is a reminder of this, not a request for special treatment -- rather it is a qualification of the special treatment that may seem to be implied earlier in the sentence. In the opinions of several editors here, the words are not sufficiently specific but are too open to misinterpretation as recommending wholesale deletion of trivia sections, therefore the qualifier is considered necessary. I disagree with your statement that they "should not be hedged". --Coppertwig 19:30, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Of course the statement has consensus... see WP:NOT and WP:ENC already. Just because there are some people here griping about it doesn't mean that consensus hasn't already been well built on this subject. And your so-called disclaimer is wholly inappropriate as it implies that people can just ignore policies that have been long established here. You're completely out of step with how Wikipedia works here, and you don't get to change policy here just because you disagree with it. DreamGuy 19:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

It was not my intention to recommend a vote. My intention was to suggest that despite several verbose advocates, there is not a consensus (per the statement The discussion on the talk page overwhelmingly supports) for the clause "but keep in mind that opinions vary". There is also no consensus to remove "Other entries may be too tangential, minor, or irrelevant for mention at all." — and good reasons have been given to retain this description.

And in all this advocacy, I've not seen compelling reasons why

• a Talk page committee needs to be convened to for article cleanup if that involves a Trivia section.
• material "too tangential, minor, or irrelevant for mention at all" might need to be retained if it is in a Trivia section.
• other people's desire to keep unencyclopedic text needs special consideration if that text is in a Trivia section.

And at the risk of repeating myself: broccoli old current. / edgarde 20:14, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In reply to Marcus Taylor: Thanks for expanding about "unnecessary". As far as I can see, the arguments on the talk page at that time overwhelmingly supported the words "but keep in mind that opinions vary". I don't see where Quadzilla had commented on those words -- perhaps you could provide a diff link. You had given a couple of lines of comment, but the only argument I saw in them was the single word "unnecessary" -- actually, now that I look again, the word "redundant" is also there, so two words, though rather redundantly. :-) And "informal". OK, three. OK, I apologize: I admit to not having paid much attention to the single-word argument "informal". Please expand on it. The disputed text looks like ordinary English to me and I don't see informality as a reason for deletion. I don't understand why being listed as an option makes it necessary. Counterexample: I could add "or, you can carve some of the trivia into pumpkins" at the end of the paragraph and then claim that it's necessary to include that because it's listed as an option. It already says earlier that content policies apply. No Wikipedia policy (as far as I know) specifically says things that are too tangential etc. in paragraph form can be deleted; it's implied, not stated in policy. Things in lists don't need this special treatment. If the policy is being widely misinterpreted, then it needs to be clarified regardless of whether we all understand the thought processes of those misinterpreting it. Please use my correct full pseudonym. --Coppertwig 20:23, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Motion to revert to longstanding wording

(<<<outdent) I agree with edgarde that there is no consensus. I suggest reverting to the longstanding wording: "Some trivia is especially tangential or irrelevant, and may not warrant inclusion at all." which apparently stood in this guideline with very little debate for about 3 months, and before that a very similar version, "Some trivia is especially tangential or irrelevant, and may not warrant merging." for another couple of months before that. (The sentence was introduced by Centrx 3 Dec 2006 with apparently no debate before or after. The change to "inclusion" was by Mangojuice 27 Feb and in my opinion leaves the meaning pretty much the same and is a slight improvement; again apparently no debate around that time.) Starting about May 28, the amount of debate increased and various versions of the sentence were substituted. The current version of the sentence, "Other entries may be too tangential, minor, or irrelevant for mention at all." appears to have been introduced on June 2 by Mangojuice (only about 10 days ago) but there's been a lot of debate and editing since then. Personally I prefer the version with "but keep in mind that opinions vary" but I think the longstanding wording stands a better chance of achieving consensus at this point in time -- or to put it another way, if no newer wording achieves consensus it makes sense to leave the longstanding wording. --Coppertwig 18:24, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Again I'm misunderstood. I didn't say there is no consensus. / edgarde 19:05, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. You said "there is not a consensus ... for ..." You didn't say there wasn't a consensus about anything. --Coppertwig 21:41, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

No one seems to have objected to my suggestion to revert to the longstanding wording. Can we say there's consensus on that, and request page unprotection? --Coppertwig 19:57, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Would be helpful to hear from recent editors[4] to confirm this consensus. It's cool with me. / edgarde 20:21, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I have never edited the project page, though I have commented on this talkpage, somewhere, above. So, my two cents worth – The longstanding wording - "Other entries may be too tangential, minor, or irrelevant for mention at all." is clearest to me, and I would like it re-instated. Much comment above (and perhaps the proposed "Relevance", I only had time to read it quickly to date) discusses the nature of trivia, without getting a consensus in favor of, especially, having to justify deletion on the talkpage in every case. The longstanding wording should lead to more thorough scrutiny of entries, (it already did), which is a good thing (IMHO). Also, on a quick read only, the Relevance is well argued and could be productive, though its reliance on a number of currently topical examples may make it problematical over time. One step forward, half-step back (or something like that). $0.02 – Newbyguesses - Talk 23:39, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the older wording (I think I originally wrote it, actually). I like the word "may" in there: it gets the point across that there are differences of opinion, but without implying that all removals need to be discussed in advance, or implying that a higher degree of caution is warranted for this type of edit than for others. That's a problem some of the disputed wordings suffered from. Mangojuice^talk 02:19, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

To Newbyguesses: the wording you identify as "longstanding" -- "Other entries may be too tangential, minor, or irrelevant for mention at all." is the current wording. The longstanding wording is "Some trivia is especially tangential or irrelevant, and may not warrant inclusion at all.". You should clarify which you support.

I prefer the longstanding wording ("Some trivia is especially tangential or irrelevant, and may not warrant inclusion at all.") to the current wording. It's not necessarily what I'd choose if there were no dispute, but for the time being I support changing back to the longstanding wording. My attention is presently on the Relevance proposal as a possible outlet for a better long-term solution.--Father Goose 04:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

My apologies, and thankyou for drawing that to my attention. I have now cleaned my glasses and looked again at the projectpage, and all diffs since June 1 ( 58 entries in all ), and I, at least, am reasonably happy whichever way it goes. I would favour the wording I quoted,

"Other entries may be too tangential, minor, or irrelevant for mention at all."

Acceptable, if it leads to consensus, – "Other entries may be excessively tangential to the subject of the article, or irrelevant, and may not warrant inclusion at all." - edit of 1 June – and also – "Other entries that are clearly too tangential, minor, or irrelevant for mention may be removed." edit of 5 June, 20:16UTC expresses a view that I concur with though — "but keep in mind that opinions vary" — does not seem right to me. Any result which meets consensus is acceptable, and I did not mean to muddy this discussion. –Newbyguesses - Talk 05:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Also quite acceptable to me is - this wording - Some trivia is especially tangential or irrelevant, and may not warrant inclusion at all. –Newbyguesses - Talk 14:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Would anyone care to dispute that this motion has achieved consensus?--Father Goose 18:20, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

An argument against integration

Certainly, a good article should be structured with the most important stuff up front and clear so that a reader searching for the basic facts can find them quickly. But many readers want wider and deeper, indeed even trivial, coverage of some subjects, and there's no reason not to give them that when we can. Wikipedia is not paper. We don't have any space limitation here, so why limit the information in an article to what's significant or relevant by some standard that was created for paper encyclopedias? But integrating such trivia into the "main" body of the article is exactly the wrong thing to do, precisely because it will bloat what might otherwise be a clean, concise, article with distracting facts that most readers won't want. Isolating such things in a clearly labelled "trivia" section lets us serve both readers perfectly: the casual reader knows what to skim over, and the in-depth trivia hound will know where to look. Many of the quality standards of traditional encyclopedias have good reasons, but others just don't apply here at all, and limiting the scope of an article by some standard of significance or relevance is one that should not apply here. --LDC 21:36, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. If the "trivia" bloats or huts other sections of the article, then they should be removed all together. Very often trivia sections aren't really trivia sections, but just unsorted miscellaneous lists. This is why article integration is usually a good idea. Being unstructured and unsorted doesn't help the reader at all. Quality standards apply to us just as much as anyone else. We might have a larger scope of information, but we will always strive to present that information in an encyclopedic way. -- Ned Scott 21:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Again this is simply the wrong direction. A lot of the material in trivia sections really fills in missing gaps in other sections. Why split this stuff out? Write the article so it flows and like information is all in one place. Why encourage editors to throw encyclopedic facts that have a home in random places in the article? Vegaswikian 22:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

If the editor is following the guideline correctly, then they are not placing the information in random places. When ever I've seen this guideline in action it has resulted in a better article, with information that was easier to find. -- Ned Scott 22:20, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I still do not understand the intention of the policy to be honest. To me there seem to be two major arguments put forward: "I do not like unnecessary information" and "I do not like bullet points". Then there is a third which is kind of fuzzy: "I want wikipedia to be encyclopaedic".

For the unnecessary information argument, it can hardly be formulated as a policy, as it is up to each of us to judge what we consider unnecessary. It has to be handled at article level. It is kind of obvious that information that really is unnecessary should be removed.

For the bullet point argument - bullets are a very efficient way to structure data so it is quick and easy to get an overview of the content. Sometimes they are appropriate. Sometimes they are not. They take more place than dense text, so they are rare in paper encyclopaedias, which need to cram as much relevant information as possible into as little weight of paper as possible. Nevertheless, they are extremely useful.

For the encyclopaedic argument, I do not understand it at all. Has anyone using that argument ever used a paper encyclopaedia? I absolutely hate paper encyclopaedias. As a child I silently adored the beautiful leather bindings of Encyclopaedia Britannica, but as soon as I tried reading its articles, I found that they often contained information that was impossible to verify, that was likely to be wrong, plenty of POV, impossible to browse and in general a discouraging experience to anyone who wanted to actually learn anything. There were terms that were used in different senses in different articles. There were several pages with irrelevant ramblings about someone they considered an "important" person, while other slightly less important persons got no information at all. I have also used paper encyclopaedias in Russian, German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, French and Italian. They have all been depressing experiences. Some of them have been reasonably easy to browse, and you eagerly go from article to article, but then the articles are usually disappointingly short.

I have the deepest respect for the people who wrote and published those paper encyclopaedias. At the time they were gargantuan works. However, the limitation of paper as a medium made the result miserable, compared to what we can achieve today.

Of course paper encyclopaedias often contain pieces of information which we should integrate in Wikipedia. However, how anyone can say that Wikipedia today has much to learn in layout, style or content disposition from those dinosaurs, I simply cannot understand. Mlewan 16:17, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Bulleted lists are perfect for short sets of intrinsically-related items. They are problematic when they contain a long unsorted list of sentences covering facts both critical and incidental. If you converted an existing prose article into a bullet point format, it'd lose structure. More importantly, it'd lose its narrative: the best articles I've come across tell me a story about the subject, paragraph by paragraph. This is why I agree with the overall thrust of the "Avoid Trivia Sections" guideline.

• Impossible to verify
• Likely to be wrong
• Plenty of POV
• Inconsistent use of terms
• Disproportionate coverage

These accusations are probably truer of Wikipedia right now than of Britannica, so what you're trying to say with these points is unclear to me. However, Wikipedia is improving steadily, and these problems may be minimized in the years to come. Wikipedia does have the advantage over paper encyclopedias of potentially unlimited depth of coverage, and hyperlinking for ready access to related subjects. The hyperlinking is a technical advantage. But the depth advantage is not without its problems.

On some level, the general battle over "trivia" is a contest between depth of coverage and cohesiveness of coverage. Is there a point at which incidental references to a subject lose their value to that subject? Probably. Should the article on tar ever mention that in Moby-Dick, Queequeg throws a harpoon at a blob of tar to demonstrate his skills? I hope not. But I agree with you that it's up to each of us to judge, which is why I'm so uncomfortable with having the current guideline advise "delete if irrelevant" without acknowledging the absence of an objective standard for "relevance". I've been working on formulating just such a standard, but there's no guarantee that it'll handle the subject correctly, or that such a standard will ever exist.

--Father Goose 18:59, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

It's not really up to each of us, as there are some basic clear cut standards, even if some people oppose them out of hating encyclopedias in general and instead wanting this place to be a mere blog or fanlisting or trivia site or whatever. The vast majority of the things being removed from articles under this anti-trivia policy are things of no value whatsoever, even being extremely generous. It's possible some of those things could be incorporated into some other article completely, but nobody cares that some obscure band mentions a banana (or whatever) in some obscure song on line three, or that some Simpsons character once said the word "moxy" in an episode. This is sub-trivial, and it's this crap that's taking over the encyclopedia because it's wide open to contributors who have no skills or knowledge that would assist in making a real encyclopedia who feel the need to contribute something even if they have nothing to contribute, or who think that whatever odd obsession they have is worth discussing on every article on the site -- as if you could add an invisible "in Pokemon" to the end of every article name, because that's what they are adding. I wish the whiners who want their trivia would just go make a Wikitrivia site and leave the encyclopedia to encyclopedists. DreamGuy 19:08, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

FatherGoose: several of your comments make me feel like you are saying individual editors cannot be trusted to delete information from trivia sections — not without either an ad hoc committee process, or admonitions to be very cautious. Wikipedia would be a much smaller site if it were edited this way.

Putting such restrictions on editors discourages potential good edits (This is a bureaucratic mess I don't want to get involved in) more than it prevents bad edits (Haha!). Defining trivia cleaup as a necessarily political process makes a difficult task harder and less rewarding. If someone takes the initiative to perform an article cleanup — which, by the way, is in persistent and growing backlog — they should WP:BOLD, and let whoever else cares should review the edits. The way it's normally done.

I think having an uninhibited policy toward trivia cleanup is the only chance we have against the legions of trivia contributors that DreamGuy refers to.

Almost anyone is allowed to make bad edits — hoax articles, defamatory gossip, advertisements, et cetera are added all the time. Bad trivia deletions are subject to the same scrutiny.

I also feel like in "the general battle over 'trivia'", you are advocating for more stalemates. / edgarde 19:45, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I should probably clarify that I still think Encyclopaedia Britannica on average is better than Wikipedia when it comes to layout, style or content disposition. However, that is because Wikipedia has such a lot of rubbish articles. Good Wikipedia articles, and there are many of them on close to all important subjects, far surpass Encyclopaedia Britannica. That's why we should not look to EB for inspiration in that area. Mlewan 19:59, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Relevance

Okay, the draft of Wikipedia:Relevance is ready. Tear it to pieces.--Father Goose 04:50, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

toomuchtrivia

Was there ever an edit on WP:NOTE which put up "WP:NOTE= a multitude of secondary sources" Has the page-protection been lifted yet? No? My glasses are playing up, I clicked on WP:TRIV and it seemed to me that the – Text at WP:TRIV read "Any material not supported by sources yet may be challenged and removed at any time", or not, or then someone must have removed it. Again, I clicked on WP:REL and, again, Then the text what was read at WP:REL read, "Any material not supported by sources may/yet may be challenged and removed at any time", — whilsst, having a typo or two didnt look right, I would agree. Those edits to those pages, if they exist, are lost/not lost in pertinence/impertinence,(WP:Iar goes on for ever), but, then, notice, not once is the word T----- mentioned. – User:Newbyguesses - Talk 04:17, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Huh? I refactored your comment so it wouldn't take up so much space. But I still don't understand what you're saying. Mangojuice^talk 04:29, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

RELevance

Being ((BOLD)) - (not meaning to shout, please refactor if that helps,)

Re the proposed merger between the RELEVANCE and AVOID TRIVIA, since wp:iar, then (radical proposal)

- eliminate reference(s) all to the trivia "word".. (Its a label and labels dont describe anything experiential)

AVOID TRIVIA is akin to Dont do bad stuff which is more naturally expressed as "Do good stuff" ?/! So WP:TRIV speedy-deleted and WP:REL rules.

The policy proposal/ policy/ policy page/ policy proposal page/ could read "in toto"

Material, not supported by sources, may be challenged and , removed at any time.

alternatively, AND more positively, - Write well, from good sources.

and even this (radical) -

If the reader is challenged, its working. If the reader challenges, you work.  ?/! — User:Newbyguesses - Talk 04:45, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that flies. I much prefer the approach taken by WP:HTRIV, which tries to acknowledge that "trivia" is a label, and then discuss the issue in a value-neutral way. Mangojuice^talk 19:59, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The Relevance guideline is still being actively formulated, and may not progress beyond proposal stage, so it's my view that discussing a merger right now is jumping the gun. It would be another thing if Relevance were a fork of existing policies, but the path it's been charting so far has been largely untraversed, policy-wise.

I agree that trivia is mostly a label -- but I like this guideline as-is (with one previously-stated objection). Whether or not we nail down Relevance, I still think it's good to have a separate guideline which addresses a common problem (unsorted trivia lists) -- which often, but not always, involves questions of relevance.--Father Goose 21:04, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

HPTRIV

The approach taken by WP:HPTRIV is fine, and this article-page points there. Seems to have it covered. So The relevance guideline fits in where it fits, when fully formulated. The current version of this article page has no only one references to "Trivia" in the text, but still gets the idea across that all material must be relevant, and researched if necessary. Newbyguesses - Talk 03:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

suggested change

suggesting - "This style guideline deals with the way in which these facts are represented in an article." - leave in - but take out - "not with whether or not the information contained within them is actually trivia, or if trivia belongs in Wikipedia." -

This latter sentence fragment seems to me to give no useful information, and also wrong in the context of the paragraph it appears in and also the article it appears in.

Appearing at the top of the page, where it should be, is this - "You may be looking for Wikipedia:Handling trivia, to which WP:TRIVIA formerly pointed." - This is the only guideline I know about that deals with "if trivia belongs in Wikipedia"; or else, what other Shortcut or Link is there to such a debate, which in any case, is not part of the subject of this project-page. User:Newbyguesses - Talk 00:14, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

May I here: -(Quoting, - referring to Deco's suggested guideline, above, which is sustantially the current page called WP:ATSIA, )

Quote -->This is good, maybe a new draft should be named Avoid Lists of Facts? --Osbus 21:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC) -->endquote.

The suggestion made here, if it still be able to be agreed to by the user making it on that occasion, and by others, seems a suitable one to me, presently. The shortcuts, WP:TRIV, WP:AVTRIV would still go to this guideline/page, with a new shortcut, WP:REL, or WP:AIL (Avoid Irrelevant Lists) or — The informal use of the word "Trivia" would, no doubt, continue, but this guideline should not dicuss "the nature of trivia", or "whether trivia belongs on wikipedia" at all. This guideline should apply in general terms to all material submitted to WP, and therefore be renamed, to a suitable name as WP:AIL or such, if agreed — user:Newbyguesses - Talk 03:42, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

"Avoid lists of facts" is not bad. "Avoid irrelevant lists" is no good because they often contain relevant stuff, so that's an even worse label than "trivia". But you should also keep in mind that the sections in question are actually named "Trivia" more often than not.--Father Goose 04:43, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's it .--Father Goose -user:Father Goose. So a list of "trivia" items is culled, and the irrelevant ones are pruned. If the resulting items can be integrated properly into the article that's fine, if not then they can properly remain as a List of relevant items. Such as -Cameos, or, -In Popular Culture. Proper, relevant and useful lists are definitely a part of wikipedia. Only irrelevant items have to go. "Facts" is a dangerous word to use, best avoided, but some other formulation - AVoid Irrelevant Items ? (AII) could be better than AIL. I think irrelevant is crucial, open to other suggestions, Newbyguesses - Talk 05:13, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Changes to self-reference

It think {not with whether or not the information contained within them is actually trivia, or if trivia belongs in Wikipedia} needs to be spelled out, as a courtesy to readers who come to this article looking for exactly that information. / edgarde 04:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Good point - however, does not the redirection to WP:Handling Trivia cover that? Or else then I am not opposed to that phrase going back in. And which policy or guideline page is most appropriate for determining whether trivia belongs in wikipedia at all? That I would like to know, since it isnt this page. Newbyguesses - Talk 05:06, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Linking WP:HTRIVIA is helpful, but without the self-reference, one still needs to read this article to know that this is not an article defining trivia. Normally I'm in agreement with Quadzilla99's Strunk & White principle, but this is obviously a much-needed exception.

It's not initially obvious that an article about trivia sections is not about trivia itself, and the self-reference is the fastest way to set that straight. / edgarde 06:00, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, agreed to that, but I'm not going to edit the page again just now. But where does that discussion properly take place? – if trivia belongs on wikipedia at all – Newbyguesses - Talk 06:53, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

This guideline (AVTRIV) is a referendum on how content is presented (don't put facts in unsorted lists) and not a referendum on relevance. Wikipedia talk:Relevance is the best place to discuss relevance for now, and if WP:Relevance becomes a guideline in the future, AVTRIV can link to it: "This style guideline deals with the way in which these facts are represented in an article, not with whether they are relevant to the article."--Father Goose 17:56, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Changes to article title

I think the term "trivia section" in the title is fine. It's easy to understand, and (within the limits of a title) summarizes the point in a memorable way.

• Avoid Lists of Facts is wrong because it applies to many appropriate lists, such as the "personnel – role" lists in movie and album articles.
• Avoid Irrelevant Lists creates a new fight over what is "irrelevant", and really seems like a more vague way to say "trivia section" to me.

You can have a more accurate title by including Avoid organizing articles as lists of isolated facts only loosely regarding the topic in the title. But I think Avoid trivia sections gets it across pretty clearly. / edgarde 04:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Clarification

Newbyguesses, am I to understand that what you'd like to see is a guideline something along the lines of "Use lists of information in articles, but avoid irrelevant information"? If so, that essentially contradicts what the current guideline states. There are definitely places where lists are okay, but they're best for defined sets of closely-related things, not for agglomerations of facts.--Father Goose

Clarification: No, sorry, I did not mean to suggest anything like that."Useful lists are definitely a part of wikipedia" - I was meaning major lists, such as lists of topics, etc, there are many. These articles are almost entirely lists. So, I understand, as you state here, that 'There are definitely places where lists are okay'. Now, another type of list I mentioned -Cameos, etc, - since the guideline does suggest that as a reasonable way to go — "although in certain cases a narrowly-focused list may be appropriate, such as Cameos or Continuity errors." Though not ideal, it is suggested.

I was certainly not suggesting "Use lists of information in articles", except in these cases (Major lists, and where a list of items has at least some justification, as the guideline has it).

I was not here actually suggesting any change to the wording of the guideline at all, it currently has "Avoid organizing articles as lists of isolated facts only loosely regarding the topic." I think the guideline is pretty fine at present, and although I think that it could be made more general in application by being re-named, the drawbacks of that approach lead me to conclude at present that the name of the article, which I had been concerned about, is satisfactory. Hope that answers the point raised, Newbyguesses - Talk 23:08, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

It does indeed, thanks for the clarification.--Father Goose 02:38, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

SB XXIII Trivia Issue

I added a statement about Dick Enberg erroneously blaming 49er backup offensive lineman Chuck Thomas for a bad snap resulting in a 19-yard field goal miss by Mike Cofer, and that it was corrected to retiring center Randy Cross mid-way through the 4th quarter. With the recent crackdown on trivia, last week I removed all but one line mentioning the NBC error, which was then placed as a parenthetical in the summary. The next day, I saw that it was reverted. I just deleted that trivia entry again a few minutes ago; but need to know what I need to do in order to avoid having to do this again. WAVY 10 01:26, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, at the very least, you could probably reduce the trivia entry to "Randy Cross retired after this game, and went on to work as a broadcaster for CBS Sports and NBC Sports. Enberg and Cross were paired at CBS during the 2006 season." since the rest is in the Game Summary section. Long-term, the entire Trivia section will probably get culled by someone doing trivia cleanup.--Father Goose 04:31, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. WAVY 10 16:02, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Randy Cross retiring is not notable for the game. This belongs in his article and not the game. How did his retiring after the game, even if announced prior to the game, make this a notable event for the game? Vegaswikian 18:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I decided against doing anything else for now on the page. WAVY 10 23:08, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Vegaswikian: By first reducing the entry to just the Randy Cross retirement, you can more strongly make the argument that what remains isn't about the game, making its later removal easier to justify. I'm going to assume the reverts have caused the other party to have a personal stake in the matter, so waiting for that to die down a little first can't hurt. Especially considering this is just one entry out of several that need cleaning up. It's a question of picking your battles.--Father Goose 00:28, 22 June 2007 (UTC)