Wikipedia:"In popular culture" content

For the article on references to Wikipedia in popular culture, see Wikipedia in culture.

"WP:POPCULTURE" redirects here. For the WikiProject, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Popular Culture.

Many articles about subjects with broad cultural impact have sections titled "In popular culture," "Cultural references," or "In fiction," which exclusively contain references to the subject in popular culture. When these sections become lengthy, some Wikipedians spin them off into separate articles to keep main articles short.

When properly written, such sections can positively distinguish Wikipedia from more traditional encyclopedias. They should be verifiable and should contain facts of genuine interest to the reader. Detailing a topic's impact upon popular culture can be a worthwhile contribution to an article, provided that the content is properly sourced and consistent with policies and guidelines, such as neutral point of view, no original research, and what Wikipedia is not.

When poorly written or poorly maintained, however, these sections can devolve into indiscriminate collections of trivia or cruft. They should be carefully maintained, as they may attract non-notable entries, especially if they are in list format.

Content

"In popular culture" sections should contain verifiable facts of interest to a broad audience of readers. Exhaustive, indiscriminate lists are discouraged, as are passing references to the article subject. For example, a city's article may mention films, books or television series in which the city is itself a prominent setting, and a musician's article may name television series or films in which the performer has made several guest appearances.

When fictional characters are modeled after other people or characters, they should be included when the connection is identified in the primary source or attributed by a secondary source. Monuments dedicated to or locations named after a subject should be included.

However, passing mentions in books, television or film dialogue, or song lyrics should be included only when that mention's significance is itself demonstrated with secondary sources. For example, a brief reference in film dialogue may be notable if the subject responds to it in a public fashion—such as a celebrity or official quoted as expressing pleasure or displeasure at the reference.

Although some references may be plainly verified by primary sources, this does not demonstrate the significance of the reference. Furthermore, when the primary source in question only presents the reference, interpretation of this may constitute original research where the reference itself is ambiguous. If a cultural reference is genuinely significant it should be possible to find a reliable secondary source that supports that judgment. Quoting a respected expert attesting to the importance of a subject as a cultural influence is encouraged. Absence of these secondary sources should be seen as a sign of limited significance, not an invitation to draw inference from primary sources.

In determining whether a reference is notable enough for inclusion, one helpful test can be to look at whether a person who is familiar with the topic only through the reference in question has the potential to learn something meaningful about the topic from that work alone. For example, if a movie or a television series has been filmed in a town, the viewer is seeing a concrete representation of what the town actually looks like at street level; but if the town is merely mentioned in a single line of dialogue, the viewer hasn't learned anything except that the place exists.

Good and bad popular culture references

An excellent example of a source which provides both notable and non-notable pop culture references is xkcd, a webcomic which deals with subjects from obscure mathematics to ball pits. Some appropriate times that Wikipedia references xkcd are as follows:

• xkcd author Randall Munroe loves the Python programming language. He wrote a strip which implies that using Python is so easy that if there were a module called antigravity then you could just import antigravity and be flying in five minutes. So for Python 3, they actually added this module, which humorously acknowledges the notion by opening a web browser and navigating to the strip in question.
• Sean Tevis decided to promote his tech credentials by running an ad in an xkcd style during his 2008 State House race. It attracted attention from sources who wouldn't ordinarily be interested in such a race, and the campaign received over a hundred thousand dollars from online donations.
• Cory Doctorow is an xkcd staple, mostly because he's a famous early adopter of Internet memes and technology. So after xkcd portrayed him as blogging from a hot-air balloon in a cape and goggles, the presenters at an awards ceremony provided costume, and he actually dressed up like that.

On the other hand, xkcd routinely mentions dozens of other subjects without the reference impacting popular perception of the subject. Examples here would, sadly, basically be nose-beans, but at any given time there will usually be a few on special:WhatLinksHere/xkcd.

When trying to decide if a pop culture reference is appropriate to an article, ask yourself the following:

1. Has the subject acknowledged the existence of the reference?
2. Have reliable sources that don't generally cover the subject pointed out the reference?
3. Did any real-world event occur because of the reference?

If you can't answer "yes" to at least one of these, you're just adding trivia. Get all three and you're possibly adding valuable content.

Formatting

Information in a pop culture section 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. Bulleted list format should be avoided when practical in favor of normal prose.

Cleanup

Sections or articles that list too many non-notable popular culture or fiction references may be tagged with {{in popular culture}}, {{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:Topics in popular culture. Advantages of such a 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 variable to deal with in maintaining the article at that status.

Further addition of popular culture content can easily be discouraged with HTML comments in the areas of the article where cultural references are usually added, e.g. <!-- Please do not add cultural references to this section, and instead add them to the article [[<var>X</var> in popular culture]]. -->

However, it is important to use caution in splitting out such articles:

1. Attempt to pare the section down first. In some cases, the section is not so much a new article as it is just bloated. In others, the section should be split off, but paring down the section first will help the new article stand on its own. In addition, if there are any items in the section that can be integrated with the main article, try to do this before splitting, because it is less likely to happen afterward.
2. Before splitting, familiarize yourself with some of the precedents found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Popular culture. Be sure to read the debates, don't look only at the outcomes. Don't split the section out if you think it would likely get deleted.
3. Take responsibility for the new article. If you are considering creating a new article only to keep material you view as undesirable out of the main article, realize that this approach has been tried before, and can often backfire. One common pattern in such a circumstance is that the new article degenerates to the point where it gets deleted, and then the same content builds up in the main article again: the problem in the end remains unsolved and in the meantime, editor time is wasted.

See also

• {{in popular culture}}
• Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections
• Wikipedia:Handling trivia
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies/Cultural depictions of core biography figures
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Popular culture
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Popular Culture
• Wikipedia:xkcd in popular culture

External links

• "Wikipedia's pop culture addiction" (14-pages). From CNet. April 10, 2007
• Strip #446 of the webcomic xkcd.