[WikiEN-l] Culture glut? On the contrary

Fri Mar 11 14:53:29 UTC 2005

On 3/11/05 7:20 AM, "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.

Ack! No!

> Your example of [[Nuclear weapons]] is perfect.   If there were a
> section on public opinion about nuclear weapons, which would be quire
> reasonable to have, and there were some movie, book, or other item of
> popular culture  that had a significant impact in influencing this
> public opinion, then the book, etc, should be mentioned, of course.
> But just a list under "in popular culture" listing movies and books
> that nuclear weapons in them, is ridiculous.    Next thing you know,
> there will be a section in the article "Nuclear Weapons In Star Wars",
> describing the use of nuclear weapons in Star Wars, and so forth.
> The article is currently missing this important aspect of nuclear
> weapons.

The answer is to separate distinct concepts into different pages. There's no
reason there shouldn't be [[Nuclear weapons in Star Wars]] (except that it's
not clear that there really are any--the Death Star, for example, seems to
use some kind of collimated maser? You know, the kind that makes a zapping
sound in DEEP SPACE. Ack.).

> Perhaps the "solution" is just to concede that Wikipedia is really
> just the online encyclopedia of popular culture, throw in the towel,
> and delete the 20% of so of it that is about reality.   You know
> off-topic stuff like [[Nuclear weapons]].

There's no need to delete knowledge. Interesting how you don't think popular
culture is real. Worrisome, actually.

> 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.

It's good that somewhere you recognize how misguided your impulse is.

Look: Wikipedia is going to be full of knowledge that any one individual
person will find utterly uninteresting and/or irrelevant to that person's
interests or life--but that selfsame knowledge will be interesting and/or
relevant to someone else--most likely many other people.

Remember that all information in Wikipedia has been added by a reader, so we
*know* at least part of the audience feels that it's relevant. As long as
the information is objectively verifiable and is coherently presented, it
deserves place in Wikipedia. Where to put it and how to present it is a
perfectly reasonable topic for discussion.