InfoSearch:"In popular culture" articles

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Image:Text-x-generic with pencil.svg This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it.
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Image:Nutshell.png This page in a nutshell: In popular culture sections should be carefully maintained and contain sourced examples demonstrating a subject's cultural significance. Per Wikipedia's summary style, when sections grow excessively long they should be split into subarticles.

Many articles about subjects with broad cultural impact have sections titled "In popular culture", "Trivia", or "Cultural references", which exclusively list references to the subject in popular culture. When these sections grow excessively long some wikipedians spin them off into separate articles in order to declutter the main articles.

There is ongoing debate about this issue. Some claim that such lists distinguish Wikipedia from more traditional encyclopedias in a good way, are verifiable, and contain facts of genuine interest to the reader that wouldn't otherwise become known. Others claim that they are useless or trivial cruft, give Wikipedia a bad reputation, and are poorly maintained by those who profess fondness for them. Detailing the impact in popular culture can be a quality part of a topic when this kind of content is properly sourced and consistent with policies and guidelines. However these lists can attract non-notable entries and should be carefully maintained.

Contents

Guidelines

List content

Unselective and exhaustive lists are discouraged. Some degree of selectivity should always be used when adding items, and passing references to the article subject are usually not good examples. "In popular culture" lists should contain verifiable facts of genuine interest to a broad audience of readers.

Although some information can be verified from primary sources, this does not demonstrate whether such information has been discussed in independent secondary sources. If a cultural reference is genuinely significant it should be possible to find a secondary reliable source to attribute that judgment. Quoting a respected expert as attesting to the importance of a subject as a cultural influence is encouraged.

Content formatting

Information in lists should be presented in a logical and understandable way. Related items should be grouped together and the article should flow. Alphabetical, regional, date, media type and other forms of organization should be applied, and where possible, lists should be avoided in favor of prose.

Cleanup

Sections or articles that list too many non-notable popular culture or fiction references may be tagged with {{cleanup}}, {{cleanup-section}} or {{fictionrefs}}. In many cases an excessively long section can be trimmed by removing entries unlikely to have verifiable evidence of significance. Entries that make only passing reference to the subject can usually be removed.

Creating "In popular culture" articles

Per Wikipedia's summary style guidelines, when "In popular culture" sections grow excessively long they are split into subarticles. This allows the main article to stay at a reasonable length and focus on the most essential aspects of its subject. The new article is usually called "X in popular culture", "Cultural references to X", "Cultural depictions of X", or "X in fiction". Many of these articles can be found in Category:In popular culture. Advantages of this split include:

  1. The main article stays at a reasonable length.
  2. It keeps the main article focused on the most essential aspects of its subject.
  3. Editors are better able to maintain the main article if extraneous information is kept away from it.
  4. Editors of a featured article or good article have one less reason to fear it losing that status.
  5. Further addition of popular culture content can be discouraged with HTML comments in the areas of the article where cultural references are usually added, e.g. <!-- Dear editor: Please do not add cultural references to this section, and instead add them to the article [[X in popular culture]]. -->

Articles for deletion

Below are some of the most common reasons that numerous "in popular culture" articles are nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. There is currently a lack of consensus on the entire class of articles, so the merit of each is discussed on a case-by-case basis; a significant number of such cases end in deletion, as can be seen at Deletion sorting/Popular culture. Sometimes, this creates an endless cycle:

  1. Pop culture section gets added to article X
  2. Pop culture section becomes too large
  3. X in popular culture article created to eliminate pop culture section
  4. X in popular culture article deleted
  5. Pop culture section gets added to article X
  6. Etc.

This cycle is harmful for the following reasons:

  1. It is a waste of time and maintenance resources.
  2. It is harder to integrate trivia items into the main article if worthwhile content is forked.
  3. Constant creating and deleting of pages confuses page histories.

A reason for this cycle is that AfD debates are more centralized and attract more attention from editors familiar with policy than editing disputes on talk pages. A way to avoid the cycle is to resist the temptation to fork out and abandon popular culture sections. In some cases, a fork may be appropriate, but deletion is near-certain if the fork is abandoned (especially if no clean-up is attempted). If it is not abandoned, it may be possible to bring the quality of the forked article up to an acceptable level.

See also

External links

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