Category talk:Articles with trivia sections

I don't understand the cleanup tag that's been added. Anybody know what that's all about? - Zepheus (ツィフィアス) 23:56, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

A few comments
South Park and Simpsons seem to be the biggest trivia problems. Alot of their episode articles are huge trivia lists. I've only gone through some of the seasons, there is much more to check. So remember: if you make a television episode article: don't have huge trivia sections. RobJ1981 04:27, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I had just finished the cleanupon all the Treehouse of Horror episodes but User:Scorpion0422 came by and reverted every one of them with no explaination or edit summary. Glad I wasted my morning. ;) Cheers. L0b0t 18:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * In that case, take it to the talk page: a reversion indicates that a person disagrees, and as such, it should be discussed. —     20:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe the user who reverted your changes saw them as vandalism. It has never been agreed on the Wikipedia that all trivia sections have to be removed. It's just something a few people want to do because they have no more important thing to busy themselves with. --Maxl 10:06, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Rename of category?
Considering the guidelines of WP:AVTRIV suggests that trivia sections should be avoided altogether, shouldn't the category be renamed as per the template to "Category:Articles with trivia sections"? --tgheretford (talk) 21:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Trivia sections are generally fine; it's when they get to be big it's a problem. —     21:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * No, they aren't fine. They should be avoided. Recury 21:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree they should be avoided. People think Wikipedia is a guide to every little note, but it's not. Encyclopedia doesn't mean useless fan's guide to every little note, goof/mistake or trivia piece in the subject. RobJ1981 22:47, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

In regards to what has been said above, I have started a debate at Template talk:Toomuchtrivia on whether the template and this category should be renamed, as per WP:AVTRIV guidelines. --tgheretford (talk) 00:04, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

22nd October 2006
6Teen cleaned up - tag removed.

--ReviewDude 17:52, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Two things
First, the category needs something to count the overall total of articles rather than the first page of 200. Secondly, the trivia tags should be dated. --myselfalso 22:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

spam tag
Sorry to say... but that "trivia" tag is mostly used for spam. Most of the articles tagged with it only contain a small trivia section and not a large one. I think the tags should be removed from most of the articles because they usually are only annoying but not useful. --Maxl 10:03, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Or why not just follow the trivia advice and at least try to integrate the trivia information into the main text? 130.241.18.31 15:58, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * People are lazy and in some cases they'd have to research on an unfamiliar topic to see whether the trivia is true or significant and how. –Pomte 16:01, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Advice for Fixing Trivia
Hello everyone, and thank you for trying to deal with some of this massive problem. I've been working at the trivia pandemic for a couple of weeks now, and I thought it would be a good idea to list some ideas on how to make fixing trivia a lot easier. In general, this would be a list of advice/observations, aimed at helping get pages off this Category page. Please add anything you have found useful and provide feedback on older ideas.

Don't just add it to the main paragraph: Sometimes this is the only inviting spot in the article to put a given fact, but please consider it before you add it. Even if it can't go anywhere else, is this really the best spot for it? Maybe you would be better off creating a new section for several related facts.

Creating a new section out of trivia: Sometimes several of the sentences in the trivia section will be loosely related, but do not quite fit one another. Look at some other parts of the article and find another sentence or two that would fit with these ones, and create a new section. The aim here is to make the new section more focused, not just to "rename the trivia section", so you will probably have to edit some of the individual sentences, not just cut and paste them all together. In general, I would advice having at least three sentences or two small paragraphs before creating a whole new section.

Facts already somewhere else in the article: These are things that have been added to the main text by someone, but also independently been added into the "trivia" section. Often these duplicates can be dealt with by deleting the item from the trivia section, and perhaps merging a few words here and there. Generally these are very quick to fix.

Stuff not relevant to this article: Sometimes people have added a one line blurb that has little or nothing to do with this article, and would be more appropriate in another article. These can be fixed quickly by just moving the sentence/blurb to the other article. However, often you will discover that the piece of trivia is already in the other article, and so if the information isn't appropriate for the article you initially discovered it in, it can be removed.

Stuff that should be removed outright: Obviously this is extremely difficult to define, but it is clear that some facts have no relevance to a particular actual article. Thus, because each article is different, you have to use your brain to figure out if a fact should be removed. Try moving it to the talk page, see what happens.

Retagging the article: So you've just dealt with a trivia section, and now instead of having a trivia problem, it has some other problem. More often than not, it is a lack of citations. Before you "finish" with an article, don't forget to leave an appropriate so other people can easily find (and improve) the article where it is needed.

Where's the Trivia?: Once or twice I've found an article that has a trivia tag, but it really doesn't look like there's a trivia section that needs to be fixed. Checking the page history can reveal that different authors have already dealt with the problem over time. Take a look at the over all article, try and cleanup a few random things and remove the tag if it no longer needed.

Multiple Trivia sections: Sometimes there are two (or even three) places on the same article that have the trivia tag. This is probably not how the tag is supposed to be used, so maybe try and merge one trivia section into the article and let someone else do another section. If all else fails, merge the two trivia sections so that the stuff is at least consolidated into one place.

Work systematically: If you plan of working on a lot of articles with trivia section, the best thing to do is pick a given month/section of articles that have trivia sections, start at the top and work your way down. First, this gives you a goal ("please let me get to the end of this section", and a sense of accomplishment ("I can't believe I fixed 27 articles that start with the letter D!). If all else fails take a break. It's not like wikipedia will self destruct if the trivia isn't fixed by tomorrow.

Cooliris Preview: By far this is the tool I have found the most useful while fixing trivia articles. This is a plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer that allows you to open a link in a preview window, within the same window. Essentially, this lets you view a link without leaving the same page, so when you are dealing with a huge list of articles, you can quickly check one, and you do not need to open it in a new tab/window, which allows you to look at pages faster. Here's a brief overview of the plugin: http://www.cooliris.com/Site/previews.html, and a Firefox tutorial video from Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jt_mHvFzaY

Very long trivia lists (Movie/Tv shows/Baseball etc): I've noticed that these articles tend to have massive trivia lists (some not all), so much so that they can be very daunting. Needless to say, these are not ten minute fixes, and you will have to dedicate some time to fixing it. Remember that you don't need to leave an article in perfect shape, so maybe fix a few items and leave it for someone else to finish up.

Album details: Sometimes with albums, there are various "facts" that might be better served elsewhere. Sometimes you can fix these by adding them as details/footnotes to specific songs. Other times they can be merged into the main paragraph or another related article.

Anyways that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Please help solve the trivia problem by adding suggestions/ideas/revisions to previous suggestions. Remember that the problem won't go away by itself, and wikipedia needs people like you to help improve it's quality. Thank you again for your contributions, and happy editing! --Nick Penguin 17:06, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


 * You ought to copy all this over to Wikipedia talk:Handling trivia.--Father Goose 22:13, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I had no idea that such a place existed. Thanks for pointing it out. --Nick Penguin 22:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)