Wikipedia talk:Handling trivia

Proposal to develop a content guideline on encyclopedic relevance
{{{archivetop|NAC: There is rough consensus that a content guideline on encyclopedic relevance should be developed. There was no specific proposal as to what it should be, so that discussion should take place on this talk page. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:03, 24 July 2015 (UTC)}}

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, and could usurp the 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 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:
 * 1) Community opinion on whether to proceed with this plan; and
 * 2) Ideas on how to go about it.

— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:18, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Comments

 * support. there is a good deal of consensus. time to codify. -M.Altenmann >t 15:21, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I have oft-looked for a WP:Editorial discretion for what usually comes down to the use case that a WP:Relevance would cover--that is that certain content doesn't need to be included in the content regarding a particular topic. (Editorial discretion however could cover cases where e.g. some WP:RS are wrong or do not seem very well researched for a particular use and so Wikipedia declines to use that RS as a source for a particular topic.) --Izno (talk) 20:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * And I seem to have discovered that such a page exists. Probably another for the bucket of pages to consider below. --Izno (talk) 20:28, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

On the proposal

 * Note: I'm aware, in suggesting the development of such a guideline, that one of the various essays mentioned above was previously a failed proposal along conceptually similar lines. But it dates to a period when thousands of articles still had "Trivia" sections, WP:Notability was not well-accepted yet, and there was a great degree of WP:Inclusionism. A  has changed in the intervening years.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:36, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * This is so obvious, it's a wonder we don't already have such a guideline. We have, as you indicate, a number of essays which float around the edges, but don't tackle the issue head on. I think the key is to use the term "relevance" rather than "trivia", as material which may be trivial to one article may well be important in another, purely because of the relevance. I think the reason we have never had a focused guideline is because we have never really defined trivia effectively, but this approach of looking at the relevance of the material seems spot on.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  16:43, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Yep. Relevance goes beyond trivia, but starting with that is easy, to get the ball rolling.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:31, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

On how to go about it

 * Rather than a merge-and-massage, I'm thinking we should create a WP:Relevance proposal working page, and start with an outline, working in the major elements of these essays we think should be included, grounded in the WP:Core content policies, while avoiding the question of exactly how prescriptive/restrictive to be until later. That issue will be where tempers flare, so we want to get the basics done first so that arguments over details do not derail the entire effort. After a basic consensus that the outline is good enough start with, begin "importing" and guideline-phrasing material from essays that we think has Wikipedia-wide general acceptance; constructing appropriate examples, creating an adequate intro/summary; and cross-referencing relevant policies and guidelines to the extent that wouldn't be done already (some are obvious while some, like Manual of Style/Images, are more obscure). Then work last on what level of permissiveness vs. restrictiveness is appropriate (and I would advocate that we try to be when we can: "Many city articles contain a list of notable residents... [how to not make them suck]" vs. "Lists of notable residents should not be added to city articles"). That should mostly emerge naturally and conclusively, if the entire thing is rooted from the beginning in the core content policies, without any emotive "I hate trivia / I love trivia" material. I'm willing to do plenty of the grunt work, and have a lot of experience at this sort of WP technical/policy writing (I wrote much of MOS:ICONS, as well as the bulk of some topical notability, naming, and style guidelines; totally rewrote WP:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines from scratch; was a significant contributor to the formulation of WP:Notability; etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:18, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * starting the text from scratch is a good idea. basing it on precedents and analogues in existing policies would be a naturally genetic evolution of the spirit of wikipedia as community sees it.
 * as the very first step, i would suggest to simply list the issues for the guideline to consider. -M.Altenmann >t 15:27, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * talk pages for the essays in question are good source of pros&contras to expect .-M.Altenmann >t 15:49, 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)
 * Good article criteria 3b: "it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style)"
 * Featured article criteria 1b: "...and places the subject in context"
 * WP:CONSPLIT - The "Content split" section of Splitting
 * WP:TOPIC - The "Stay on topic" section of Writing better articles
 * WP:MERGEREASON - The "Reasons for merger" section of Merging


 * All sounds good to me. I'm actually working on writing an article almost entirely from scratch, so not sure when I'll get back to this, but feel free to start without me. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:33, 16 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I like this idea, so I probably will start putting some ideas down.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  07:44, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

A philosophy for inpopcult material
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):


 * A fictional or semifictional portrayal of an article's subject is worth noting or discussing in the article on that subject to the extent that reliable secondary sources demonstrate that the portrayal adds to an understanding of the subject itself or of the subject's place in history or popular perception. Examples:
 * The play Macbeth'' is what most people know about the historical Macbeth
 * The film Lawrence of Arabia'' taught most people everything they know about T.E. Lawrence
 * ''The Dylan song "Hurricane" probably was a strong reason that Ruben Carter's case was reopened
 * War and Peace'' powerfully affected Russians' view of Napolean's invasion seventy years earlier, and did so with sufficient permanence that echoes of its thematic elements were incorporated into Russian propaganda of World War II
 * Turgenev's Fathers and Sons'' was a catlyst, in late 19th-century Russia, for discussion of social and political conditions, and would certainly have a place in an article on events leading to the Russian Revolution
 * The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' would certainly be covered in a discussion of the history of popular perceptions of Judaism
 * Any comprehensive history of slavery in the US would include a discussion of Uncle Tom's Cabin''

EEng (talk) 03:09, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Given weight to the matter - how is this "trivia" meaning "of little importance". None of those could possibly be considered trivia by anyone with even a decent understanding of a subject. I've seen some people call homages and designs of "in-universe" fictional topics "trivia" as a means for the uneducated and uninformed to dismiss even single lines as "fancruft/trivia". Is that not what this discussion is really supposed to be about: the connections of tangential connections that comprise a greater whole with lower meaning and importance than the original article's topic? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:39, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * What in the world are you talking about? The bullet list is stuff that isn't trivia. EEng (talk) 22:38, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Relevancy is paramount. Your list is typo-ridden and has several issues. I understand the idea, but the list serves no useful illustrative purpose. If you do not understand a topic you cannot make proper connections and judge relevancy. Thus a list of "examples" serves no practical purpose. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:54, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Misspelling catalyst and Napoleon in a 200-word discussion post isn't "typo-ridden".
 * The word you're looking for is relevance.
 * "If you do not understand a topic you cannot make proper connections and judge relevancy." Well, duh! That's true in any situation, so what's the particular relevance (or, as you would say, relevancy) of this deep observation to what we're talking about?
 * "Thus a list of 'examples' serves no practical purpose." Huh? The list illustrates the kinds of things that would pass muster under the proposed standard. By your apparent reasoning examples "serve no practical purpose" in any situation.
 * Other than that your comments are unintelligible word-salad nonsense e.g. "the connections of tangential connections that comprise a greater whole with lower meaning and importance than the original article's topic". Truly, you soar to rhetorical heights undreamt of by mere mortals!
 * EEng (talk) 03:08, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I tried word-salad once, but it kept me awake. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:44, 1 July 2015 (UTC) "Trivial objections are a special case of a dead heron."