Wikipedia:"In popular culture" articles
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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline, it simply reflects some opinions of its authors. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page. |
Many articles contain sections called "trivia." While not specifically forbidden, trivia sections are discouraged: see WP:TRIVIA. In many articles, there is a section that lists references to the subject in popular culture. Usually, this section is called "In popular culture" or "Cultural references," to distinguish it from other "Trivia". Trivia sections in articles should be avoided, but some trivia items can be thought of as facts pending integration and kept around for that purpose.
It can be very difficult for the editors of pages that attract trivia to keep such information under control. In many cases, a large "In popular culture" section is forked to a new article named X in popular culture, Cultural references to X, Cultural depictions of X, or X in fiction, etc. This is to keep the main article on-topic, at a reasonable length, and free from these indiscriminate collections of information. Sometimes editors include HTML comments in the part of the article where cultural references are usually added:
<!-- ATTENTION EDITORS: PLEASE DO NOT ADD CULTURAL REFERENCES TO THIS SECTION, AND INSTEAD ADD THEM TO [[X in popular culture]], PROVIDED THEY ARE NOTABLE AND SOURCED. -->
In many cases, the forked out article is a good candidate for deletion, because it contains little but trivia, and usually no references. Sometimes, this creates an endless cycle:
- Pop culture section added to article
- Pop culture section gets too big
- X in popular culture article created to eliminate pop culture section
- X in popular culture article deleted at AfD.
- Pop culture section added to article, etc.
Part of the reason for this cycle is the way that AfD debates (which usually come to the strongly supported conclusion that lists of trivia are to be avoided) are more centralized and attract more attention from core Wikipedia editors than editing disputes on talk pages. One way to avoid the AfD cycle is for editors to resist the temptation to fork out popular culture sections, and instead keep them out of articles (or at least, significantly restricted and monitored). This cycle is harmful for a couple of reasons: first, this kind of continuing source of deletable articles is a maintenance problem. Second, trivia sections can serve a useful purpose (per WP:AVTRIV) as facts needing integration, but this goal is avoided by moving trivia to another page.
Not forking out trivia sections can lead to difficulties in the main article, but has advantages in that trivia is available for integration into the article if relevant, and in that the main article is more likely to be closely monitored than the forked out page. See Wikipedia:Trivia#Recommendations for handling trivia and Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles for some suggestions on dealing with trivia sections in articles.
