This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Handling trivia page. |
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Essays Mid‑impact | ||||||||||
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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose that we combine the best parts of the WP:Handling trivia ( WP:HTRIV) and WP:"In popular culture" content ( WP:POPCULTURE) essays, and work them into a formal WP:Proposal for a content guideline on relevance.. These two essays taken together are the closest thing we have to a guideline on encyclopedic relevance (other than brief style guidance at MOS:TRIVIA). This might or might not entail a WP:Merge, depending on how much material will turn out to be guideline-worthy vs. too essay-ish in nature even after attempts to reword it.
There is no question that the Wikipedia community has a general consensus on the handling (mostly rejection) of trivia, and on the fact that not all popular culture material is trivial, and that material on cultural influence/impact is a necessary part of encyclopedic coverage of a topic. The material would need some revision (for sarcasm and other essay-tone issues) or could be written up anew from an outline; a balancing of prescriptiveness (which will be the most controversial/difficult part); and programmatically illustrative examples, like other guidelines provide. The effort should also probably pull key points from
WP:Out of scope,
WP:Relevance emerges,
WP:Relevance of content,
WP:What claims of relevance are false,
WP:Coatrack, and
WP:Indirect relevance is sometimes OK. Many of these are long-standing essays with some well-accepted advice, rationales, and best practices. The eventual proposal, if accepted, would be tagged with {{
Subcat guideline|content guideline}}
, and could usurp the
Wikipedia:Relevance (
WP:RELEVANCE) disambiguation page.
On example material: I already added some rubrics, with examples, to WP:POPCULTURE yesterday to give a more general approach to avoiding pitfalls associated with pop-culture sections, since the extant material was mostly highly specific examples. The two extended "good" xkcd examples that essay gives are highly unusual, and don't really represent what is typically found in such sections when they appear, well written, in good articles. It's often more like "was the subject of a three-part BBC documentary called ...", "was used in the soundtrack of the film ...", "lead to a national-level scandal in ...", etc. Notable stuff, but not as clever geeky insider as the extant examples the essay gives (though I wouldn't drop them, just add more typical ones). Some of the example material in the WP:HTRIV is better, though (due to the wider scope) necessarily more general in form.
I advocate a descriptive as much as prescriptive/restrictive approach: Codify existing best practices, rather than introduce new rules against this or that kind of alleged trivia.
I'm soliciting:
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:18, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Additional pages worth consulting (or linking to):
Guidance on when material may and may not be relevant would be helpful to all editors, and would also help in deciding when to split and when to merge articles. I think key to aiding editors make a judgement if material is relevant is the use of reliable sources. How many sources mention the material, is it mentioned in passing, does the source deal with the subject of this article or with the subject of another article where the information may be better placed? SilkTork ✔Tea time 18:16, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
In case it helps, here's an approach I've used successfully several times in discussions of inpopcut material in various articles ( Lizzie Borden, lobotomy, and some others which evade my recollection just now):
EEng ( talk) 03:09, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Handling trivia page. |
|
Archives: 1, 2 |
Essays Mid‑impact | ||||||||||
|
{
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose that we combine the best parts of the WP:Handling trivia ( WP:HTRIV) and WP:"In popular culture" content ( WP:POPCULTURE) essays, and work them into a formal WP:Proposal for a content guideline on relevance.. These two essays taken together are the closest thing we have to a guideline on encyclopedic relevance (other than brief style guidance at MOS:TRIVIA). This might or might not entail a WP:Merge, depending on how much material will turn out to be guideline-worthy vs. too essay-ish in nature even after attempts to reword it.
There is no question that the Wikipedia community has a general consensus on the handling (mostly rejection) of trivia, and on the fact that not all popular culture material is trivial, and that material on cultural influence/impact is a necessary part of encyclopedic coverage of a topic. The material would need some revision (for sarcasm and other essay-tone issues) or could be written up anew from an outline; a balancing of prescriptiveness (which will be the most controversial/difficult part); and programmatically illustrative examples, like other guidelines provide. The effort should also probably pull key points from
WP:Out of scope,
WP:Relevance emerges,
WP:Relevance of content,
WP:What claims of relevance are false,
WP:Coatrack, and
WP:Indirect relevance is sometimes OK. Many of these are long-standing essays with some well-accepted advice, rationales, and best practices. The eventual proposal, if accepted, would be tagged with {{
Subcat guideline|content guideline}}
, and could usurp the
Wikipedia:Relevance (
WP:RELEVANCE) disambiguation page.
On example material: I already added some rubrics, with examples, to WP:POPCULTURE yesterday to give a more general approach to avoiding pitfalls associated with pop-culture sections, since the extant material was mostly highly specific examples. The two extended "good" xkcd examples that essay gives are highly unusual, and don't really represent what is typically found in such sections when they appear, well written, in good articles. It's often more like "was the subject of a three-part BBC documentary called ...", "was used in the soundtrack of the film ...", "lead to a national-level scandal in ...", etc. Notable stuff, but not as clever geeky insider as the extant examples the essay gives (though I wouldn't drop them, just add more typical ones). Some of the example material in the WP:HTRIV is better, though (due to the wider scope) necessarily more general in form.
I advocate a descriptive as much as prescriptive/restrictive approach: Codify existing best practices, rather than introduce new rules against this or that kind of alleged trivia.
I'm soliciting:
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:18, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Additional pages worth consulting (or linking to):
Guidance on when material may and may not be relevant would be helpful to all editors, and would also help in deciding when to split and when to merge articles. I think key to aiding editors make a judgement if material is relevant is the use of reliable sources. How many sources mention the material, is it mentioned in passing, does the source deal with the subject of this article or with the subject of another article where the information may be better placed? SilkTork ✔Tea time 18:16, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
In case it helps, here's an approach I've used successfully several times in discussions of inpopcut material in various articles ( Lizzie Borden, lobotomy, and some others which evade my recollection just now):
EEng ( talk) 03:09, 28 June 2015 (UTC)