[WikiEN-l] Culture glut

Fri Mar 11 12:47:19 UTC 2005

--- Brian M <brian1954 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with you completely, and most of these sections should be
> deleted.   It is one thing for Wikipedia to be the online Encyclopedia
> of Popular Culture with articles on every Pokemon character, TV
> episode, forgotten (or never known) song or CD, every obscure corner
> of every fictional universe, etc, etc, ad absurdum, ad nauseum.  But
> when all this starts bleeding into other articles, it becomes  a major
> problem and makes Wikipedia look like it has no sense of proportion at
> all.

I enthusiastically agree, and I'm glad I'm not the only one that has noticed
and been (mildy) irked by this phenomenon -- phew! Perhaps we could propose a
[[Wikipedia:*]] advice page cautioning against this trend?

> Seriously, how does one go about deleting these sections?   Someone is
> going to insist that it is "removal of information" and, therefore,
> vandalism to remove them.

Yes, I can see that happening :( But just like questioning accuracy or
neutrality of material, I think it's quite legitimate to question something's
importance (relative to the topic) in an article. There's a trade-off at work
here, something like:

* The benefit of the information provided;

versus

* The risk of bloating the article and making it less useful as a concise
survey of a topic.

This is quite a different dynamic to VfD, because trivia parceled up in its own
separate article is much less harmful to other content (some might even say
harmless).

On a large scale, we can be guided by the balance that other people have
thought workable, for example, themes that are covered in other encyclopedia
articles, books, textbooks, surveys, etc. Ultimately, though, the best any of
us can do is to make a heuristic judgement about how "trivial" such information
is -- it might be controversial, but we can try and discuss things and arrive
at consensus (yes, I'm an optimist...)

-- Matt

[[User:Matt Crypto]]

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com 