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Wikipedia:"In popular culture" content

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Many articles about subjects with broad cultural impact have sections titled "In popular culture", "Cultural references" or "In fiction", 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 if properly written, 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.

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.

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]]. -->

However, it is important to use caution in splitting out such articles. If you do make such a split, please

  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 unlikely to happen afterwards.
  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 meanwhile, editor time is wasted.
  • The "In popular culture" section of the Wikipedia article for wood is referenced in "#446" of popular web comic XKCD. In reality, this section is non-existent, as the use of wood in popular culture isn't notable as per WP:N

See also

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