Wikipedia:WikiProject Popular Culture

WikiProject Popular Culture aims to preserve "In popular culture" and "Trivia"-type information in Wikipedia in a manner that does not compromise Wikipedia's core principles or its quality.

WikiProject Popular Culture

Category	In popular culture
Wikimedia Commons	Popular culture
Project banner template	{{WikiProject Popular Culture}}
Userbox	{{WPPC}}
Assessment	List of project articles

Principles

• Information is information. "Trivia", "In popular culture", and similar sections are often excised from Wikipedia. "In popular culture" articles were, at one time, deleted even more routinely. We feel this is a case of a vocal minority overriding the interests of a scattered majority. The prevalence of such sections demonstrates a broad interest in having such information on Wikipedia.
• Every article its reader. The principles we embrace match those of the five laws of library science – in particular, "for every reader, his or her book" and "for every book, its reader". Given that Wikipedia is not paper, there is no justification for deleting speciality-interest information from the encyclopedia because a subset of our readers do not share those interests.
• We uphold Wikipedia's core content policies. All material in Wikipedia, "trivial" or not, must be verifiable, neutral, and well-organized. Note that there is no overarching policy on how Wikipedia must be organized -- this is an organic principle, brought about by the collective effort of many thousands of Wikipedia editors.

Goals

We seek to:

• Preserve compliant content. If material is verifiable, neutral, and well-organized, we feel deleting it is an inappropriate act -- an expression of personal distaste not in keeping with the goal of creating the world's best encyclopedia.
• Make articles more compliant with core content policies. If we come across information that is unlikely to be verifiable, we shall delete it. If we see a fact could be moved to a more relevant section of an article (or a more relevant article), we will integrate it. If we come across a large and disorganized "In popular culture" list, we will sort and subcategorize its entries and take other steps to improve its presentation. If we can find sources for any trivia or pop-culture information (including primary sources, with some restrictions), we will add a citation to it. Work of this sort can also be done via a related project, WikiProject Trivia Cleanup.
• Work with others to forge sustainable "trivia" and "pop culture" practices and policies. We agree with other editors that Wikipedia's coverage of "trivia" and "pop culture" interrelations should not distract from our basic coverage of any given subject. However, it is not desirable to restrict our coverage to "basic information"; any information that is compliant with core policies and well-organized improves the value of Wikipedia overall. We hope to establish a manner of organizing and presenting this content that is acceptable to the broad community of editors.

Active tasks

General summary of trivia and popular culture on Wikipedia

See the quick summary about trivia on this project's subpage.

Article improvement

This project is devoted to improving sections and articles that are solely focused on the pop-culture influence of subjects. These articles are like any other article, and they should describe the subject in a clear and informative way. The article should have a logical flow; related items should be grouped together, and unselective lists are discouraged. Alphabetical, regional, date and other forms of order should be applied. Where possible, lists should also be avoided in favour of prose. Some articles also need to present the subject with a more worldwide view.

Most of the articles covered by this WikiProject should be in Category:In popular culture or one of its subcategories. List "In popular culture" that need immediate attention for sourcing, better organization, introductory context, etc.:

• Japanese historical people in popular culture
• Cockroach#Popular_culture
• Mental illness in fiction
• 555 (telephone number)
• Classical elements in popular culture
• Satan in popular culture
• Orangutans in popular culture
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• Augustus in popular culture
• Nero in popular culture
  • This book has been suggested as a possible source for the above two articles; the link takes you to its listing in Worldcat, where you can search for a copy of it in your local or university library.
• Pirates in popular culture
• Climate change in popular culture
• Adaptations of the Epic of Gilgamesh
• Paradise Lost in popular culture
• Illuminati in popular culture
• Cthulhu in popular culture
• Cultural influence of Star Trek - It's done in a much less list-y format and avoids the "in popular culture" title but it is similar content, it has some references but they probably need to be in-line citations to see how much is sourced and unsourced, I'm sure a lot more sourced info could be found. Could be a good place to start working.

Good article nominations

This sections is for articles nominated for GA status that could use some additional attention and surface editing.

• Jayne Mansfield in popular culture - On hold pending improvements, see the article talk page

Category maintenance

Category:In popular culture should be cleaned up and put into good order. Articles that should not be in the category can be removed, and articles should be grouped into categories based on topic, like science, art, music, people, fictional characters, ect.

Articles facing deletion

Please list ongoing debates here. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Popular culture for past debates.

• Fibonacci numbers in popular culture (discuss)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (American TV and Comic) (discuss) - listing here per David Mansour, "Sonic the Hedgehog," From Abba to Zoom: A Pop Culture Encyclopedia Of The Late 20th Century (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2005), 450.

Articles facing deletion review

Please list ongoing reviews here.

• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 July 1#Cheshire Cat in popular culture

Trivia cleanup

This project also encourages integrating "Trivia" sections and eliminating the backlog of articles in Category:Articles with trivia sections. See the related Wikipedia:WikiProject Trivia Cleanup

Information salvage

List now-deleted trivia and popular culture sections here that could have been sourced, organized, and integrated more in compliance with Wikipedia:Trivia sections. Try not to start battles over "trivia" in these articles; just improve their content in ways that hopefully can be considered uncontroversial.

Article statistics

• List of project articles by quality
• Log of project activity

Members

Joining the project is easy! Simply click the "edit" link above this section and add your name to the bottom of the list. It should look like this: * ~~~~ If you like, leave a short comment and then save the page and you are done. Welcome to the project. All you have to do is grab a shovel and start digging through pages that are part of the project scope.

Ways you can participate include:

1. The list of project articles is a good place to start. Scroll to the bottom of the list and look for any articles which have not been assessed.
2. You can improve these articles by making useful edits (See Wikipedia:"In popular culture" articles for more information on how you can improve these articles).
3. Also, if you know of any good articles that haven't been tagged, please add the tag to their respective talk pages. Please assess them when you do, but if you're not sure, it's ok to leave the assessment fields blank. The project tag and other useful templates can be found at the bottom of this page.

• Father Goose 22:50, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
• NickPenguin_(contribs) 23:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
• Ned Scott 00:26, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
• DGG (talk) 00:56, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
• Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 01:34, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
• ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 03:01, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
• Think outside the box 10:24, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
• Ozmaweezer 12:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
• John Carter 17:21, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
• MattHucke^(t) 15:21, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
• Law Lord 23:40, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
• Captain Impulse 02:18, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
• Stardust8212 15:58, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
• Moheroy 09:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
• --Alien joe 00:29, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
• Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 10:25, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
• Pomte 11:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
• Doc Rocktopus
• ErgoSum88 (talk) 06:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• Joshuarooney (talk) 11:47, 11 March 2008
• Dorftrottel (vandalise) 19:01, April 11, 2008
• Casliber
• Durova^Charge! 16:24, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
• 23skidoo (talk) 02:36, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
• SatuSuro 10:18, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
• Agree on the principle of verifiability (e.g. Lost in HL2E2) Sceptre ^(talk) 17:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
• Fractious Jell 23:22, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Project templates

Userboxen

These are userboxen showing your support for WPPC. Feel free to make and add your own creations.

Syntax	Userbox
{{WPPC}}	Template:WPPC
{{User:ErgoSum88/trivia}}	This user likes "Trivia" and "In popular culture" information, and supports their inclusion.

Project notice

Articles within the scope of WPPC should be tagged with the template. For instructions on usage see {{WikiProject Popular Culture}}.

Barnstar

Users who make significant contributions to the project may be awarded the WPPC Barnstar. For instructions on usage see {{The Popular Culture Barnstar}}.

		The Popular Culture Barnstar
		For outstanding work in the field of Popular Culture. --John Q. User 10:30, 29 June 2008 (UTC)