You have 2 pages / 29% more content devoted to a fictional character in comic book than you do a fairly important President of The United States.
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Eh, just because Andrew Jackson is more important than batman doesn’t necessarily mean that there exists more information available on Andrew Jackson. It could be that those 7,800 words convey everything of note about Andrew Jackson, but Batman has so many different iterations that 7,800 words wouldn’t cover them all
[QUOTE=Leaper]
Plus, one could argue that there are ten thousand, and better, resources for Andrew Jackson out there. How many are there for someone who actually wants to know more about Batman?
[/QUOTE]
I agree with this 100%. An argument about mercantilism can go to the library. Where else are you supposed to take and argument about Mr. Belvedere?
I spend a lot of time editing firearms articles on Wikipedia (chances are, if I’m not here, I’m over there!), and the Trivia Deletion Gestapo are pissing me off no end.
I personally consider it interesting, relevant, and notable that the shotgun used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film Terminator 2 was a Winchester M1887/1901. Until that film came out, I didn’t even know there were lever-action shotguns- but if you try and mention that Arnie used an M1887/1901 in T2 in the relevant shotgun’s article, the Trivia Gestapo come along and delete it for being “Trivia” or “Non-notable”. :mad:
Gah, the whole thing pisses me off too much to maintain a civil tone; I’m going to have a drink instead now…
Out of curiosity, how many pages of information does the Encyclopedia Brittanica have about Andrew Jackson? How many about Batman?
Would it be possible for the Wiki-people to offer a separate “WikiTrivia” site for all the interesting factoids that don’t fit in main articles? I sometimes see links to WikiQuote and WikiSource. WikiTrivia could work similarly.
[QUOTE=samclem]
“Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 1888.
[/QUOTE]
Homer: Oh, and how is “education” supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and I forgot how to drive?
Marge: That’s because you were drunk!
Homer: And how.
-The Simpsons, 1994
[QUOTE=dropzone] samclem, I realize that, in your case, you’d have to retype it. Or scan and OCR it, if the paper isn’t too fragile by now.
[/QUOTE]
Nah, the clay tablets won’t fit onto the scanner creen.
I think it makes sense that Batman would have a longer article. He’s probably “lived” longer than Andrew Jackson and unlike a real person has plot twists once a week for the entire time span of his existance. And more importantly, everything that does happen is perfectly chronicled. Anything that Andrew Jackson did can only be pieced together from third person accounts and hearsay spread across thousands of letters and newspaper articles that have mostly disintegrated and are piled away in some big warehouse without any cataloguing. And anything you do infer from them requires some amount of guesswork, so there is no way to unequivocally state what is or isn’t “true” enough to put into a summary.
[QUOTE=Martini Enfield]
I personally consider it interesting, relevant, and notable that the shotgun used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film Terminator 2 was a Winchester M1887/1901. Until that film came out, I didn’t even know there were lever-action shotguns- but if you try and mention that Arnie used an M1887/1901 in T2 in the relevant shotgun’s article, the Trivia Gestapo come along and delete it for being “Trivia” or “Non-notable”. :mad:
[/QUOTE]
There has to be a boundary somewhere. If, say, I was obsessed with footwear, would Wikipedia be the place to list exactly which character wore what shoes? Should I make a list of all the games visible in the Arcade sequence? And I could add a list of every vehicle that appeared in the movie. Eventually, the kipple takes over and the article is worthless. I think the Trivia Gestapo do a pretty good job.
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin]
There has to be a boundary somewhere. If, say, I was obsessed with footwear, would Wikipedia be the place to list exactly which character wore what shoes? Should I make a list of all the games visible in the Arcade sequence? And I could add a list of every vehicle that appeared in the movie. Eventually, the kipple takes over and the article is worthless. I think the Trivia Gestapo do a pretty good job.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know, I rather like all that sort of stuff and find it quite interesting, to be honest.
I think inclusion should be warranted on whether or not the item was chosen for a reason besides “That was what was in the armoury/wardrobe dept./motor pool that day”. The shotgun in T2 was chosen for a reason (it could be flip-cocked), and it was a big part of The Terminator’s image in the second film. But the fact the main character in a film was wearing LA Gear sneakers, or driving a Toyota Corolla? Not notable, unless there’s a specific reason to the contrary (eg a plotline centres around the character having these shoes, or his insistence on driving a Corolla despite the fact he’s a Billionaire Playboy, for example). When in doubt, I think they should lean towards keeping Trivia rather than deleting it, but that’s just my opinion and one not shared by a majority of editors, from what it seems.
Why the need to delete anything in the first place? It’s not as if they’re running out of space. As long as everything is well-organized the trivia won’t get in the way; it will just be there if you want it. Aren’t we aiming for universal knowledge here?
[QUOTE=aldiboronti]
Why the need to delete anything in the first place? It’s not as if they’re running out of space. As long as everything is well-organized the trivia won’t get in the way; it will just be there if you want it. Aren’t we aiming for universal knowledge here?
[/QUOTE]
Wikipedia may be aiming for “universal knowledge” but all information isn’t knowledge. Consensus has developed regarding some sorts of information and its inappropriateness for Wikipedia. What Wikipedia is not sums it up pretty well. I haven’t actively been part of the recent anti-trivia section patrol but I strongly sympathize with their goals. Trivia sections are in large measure garbage magnets, especially when it comes to collecting inconsequential references to things “in pop culture.” I’ve been very heartened by the recent series of deletions of crappy “Foo in popular culture” articles that are nothing but lists of every time someone says “Foo” in a movie or TV show. They don’t add anything of value and they encourage people to lard articles with them.
But too many people are using this page only as a base. If they find no reason to delete within its guidelines, they invent new ones. For example, there’s no prohibition against trivia sections on this page - it’s something that was invented by the deleters. As I wrote above, you can always get a consensus for deletion because there’s a crowd who’ll blindly agree to any deletion. These people seem to feel that the goal is to make sure that Wikipedia is smaller every day than it was the day before.
If I was in charge, I’d implement a radical change. I’d start keeping a running total of how much every person has contributed to the project. And every time they wanted to delete something that amount would be deducted from their creation total. If you want to delete a thousand word article, you’ve got to add a thousand words to some other article first. So nobody would be able to delete until they created and nobody would be able to delete more than they created.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
As I wrote above, you can always get a consensus for deletion because there’s a crowd who’ll blindly agree to any deletion.
[/quote]
You must be frequenting a different AFD page than I am, because while there are people who will say to delete almost anything, there are also people who say to keep almost everything. Nothing’s a guarantee either way.
What a terrible idea. So if someone writes a thousand word hoax article on a person who never existed and I happen to be the one who spots it, I should be held in some way accountable for that person’s actions by having my “creation total” affected by its deletion?
[QUOTE=samclem]
“Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 1888.
[/QUOTE]
That was Holmes’ explanation for why he didn’t know whether the earth went around the sun or vice versa. Hardly a compelling case for the delitionist ideology of what Little Nemo so aptly called the “termites”.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
If I was in charge, I’d implement a radical change. I’d start keeping a running total of how much every person has contributed to the project. And every time they wanted to delete something that amount would be deducted from their creation total. If you want to delete a thousand word article, you’ve got to add a thousand words to some other article first. So nobody would be able to delete until they created and nobody would be able to delete more than they created.
[/QUOTE]
Excellent idea. It gets rid of the main driving force (“I can’t contribute anything worthwhile, so I’ll burn down other people’s creations so they aren’t better than me”) behind delitionism.
