[WikiEN-l] Culture glut

Fri Mar 11 09:32:07 UTC 2005

Matt Brown wrote

> In a sense, this is a special case of a meta-problem: trivia.  The
> extent that Wikipedia articles should include trivia - and how this
> should be done - isn't properly defined.

Yes.  But it's 'starting a hare'.  If we ever had a big debate on exactly 
what counts as 'trivia', we'd never get finished and it would be a 
(probably) pointless use of time.

I note that trivia used to be called 'general knowledge'; before Trivial 
Pursuit fairly much broke the mould of the older type of quiz question. 
There was a certain type of democratisation when facts about sportspeople, 
soap stars, B-list royalty, one-hit wonders, Pikachu, actors within six 
degrees of Kevin Bacon etc. all were added into the brew.

Mostly trivia neither add much to nor detract from WP; they may be 
weed-like, growing in the wrong place.

Now, I hope we can agree one thing - no astrology column on the Main Page 
...

Charles 