Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Dead man's hand in popular culture

Preservation of Trivia Collections
Unfortunately the popular culture wiki project is no no longer active.

The reason is perhaps that these types of collections tend to be the result of independent research, whilst the interest group is generally composed of those who are not, or at least not yet contributors.

The collections in my experience as a parent and teacher particularly appeal to young persons who’ve watched a Movie and want to find out more about a concept. Movie and TV show references are perhaps more relevant to most young persons than the literary references from books they are never likely to read except when mandatory in an educational context.

For these young persons the rules used to just deletion would in my view as an educational professional, prove opaque, confusing , and lead almost inevitably to subsequent deletion of any contribution they might make.

Concepts like “No original research” are straightforward in a commercial or academic scientific environment, but when the “research” amounts the a rudimentary observation, citing the relevant sources , it’s less clear that the ban is helpful. in relation to the popular culture section on the dead man’s hand article itself this objection was raised in relation to the observation that variants of the “deadman’s hand” had been used in a variety of military and law enforcement patches and crests.

The information is relevant in establishing the extent to which a concept like this has passed into popular culture. For a marketing professional, behavioural scientist or communications professional, such insights can become critical.

An absent or minimal popular culture section, fails to establish that a concept is likely to be widely understood by a target population. Even accross the Anglophone countries, the relevance ot terms like deadman’s hand can vary immensely. The likely hour of a refence being understood by a particular audience changes over time as well, so popular culture references form an important educational resource insofar as they help young people understand the cultural references and current meanings behind the subject of a Wikipedia article.

Im almost certain you will ultimately hugely restrict both the involvement of future contributors and ultimately your user base.

A few decades back when it would have been unthinkable to suggest the decline and ultimately the obsolescence of the dominant printed multi-volume Encyclopaedias.

This kind of information is routinely found as the subject matter in Television game shows like the UK “Mastermind”. It’s exactly the kind of material you might see in a specialist subject section.

Those shows are still popular but youth culture is evolving more rapidly. I once championed Wikipedia as an educational resource for students in schools and universities, when almost Uk universities and schools at the time roundly condemned its use. It is one of the few online resources I’ve donated to myself

Im sad to say the resources is heading rapidly to becoming just another echo chamber, that is increasingly losing the credibility it had briefly established atvpost graduate level in certain subjects. More importantly among the Young people I’ve spoken to recently it’s become something they briefly look at simply because it’s often near the top of search engine results on the subject involved.

Recently I’ve notice increasingly that the search engine position for many topics is now so low that I would need to enter Wikipedia as part one the search terms.

Deleting information like this is part of the problem. I have little doubt that the ever smaller group of contractors will carry on down this route.

very sad Zxtzxt (talk) 12:25, 2 August 2023 (UTC)


 * @Zxtzxt You do realize that next to nobody will even notice your comment posted in this particular venue? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:04, 3 August 2023 (UTC)