Forum:Trivia on Wikis

I edit a lot on Nitrome Wiki since I am one of the admins there. One of my concerns there is the fact that our Games pages have sections called Trivia, which sometimes seem to go out of hand. On some pages, especially the recently released games, Trivia seems to become a free for all, with users adding their own opinions about how they feel about the game, spoilers to the game's ending or claiming that the game is a reference to another game that they play, even though it is never mentioned in the game itself.

I once took initiative to remove massive amounts of Trivia, but a user questioned why I was doing this, claiming that "people like to read Trivia". How do other Wikis control what goes in their Trivia sections? What should go in a section called Trivia? Should Trivia, like other sections of an article, be backed up with verifiable resources? (I'm so full of questions! =D)  Random - Story Keeper   07:56, November 27, 2011 (UTC)
 * Wookieepedia has a corresponding trivia policy, which forbids the creation of trivia sections if they are badly organized and unselective lists; information contained therein also needs to be sourced and must not contain speculation. As for the user claiming that trivia's popular: he did not back up his statement, so it can be challenged. Cheers! 10:29, November 27, 2011 (UTC)


 * Bleach Wiki has a strict attitude to trivia sections. We decided to allow things like character theme songs, where they came in official popularity polls, comments the author has made on certain characters in interviews, differences of their appearance in the anime and manga versions. The sort of things we dont allow are character x is one of the three characters to do Y (they get outdated very quickly in an ongoing series, not to mention they are messy), speculation, x is similar to Y from series Z (unless stated in series/interviews), character's name might be derived from/is the same as xyz in another series, trivia that area more than 2 or 3 sentences long/rambling. Each wiki is different and you might want to have a discussion on your wiki about what your users think are/are not appropriate points for trivia. We had a discussion on a forum page some time ago and cleared out the wiki's pages as a result of it. In many cases we moved them to the talk page, telling people that if they thought a particular trivia point was worthwhile to discuss it there and prove it was worth keeping. Some got added back in, most did not. Since we have that forum still, I find that when undoing new additions of a poor trivia point to link the user to that forum so they can see for themselves why we do not allow them (link to said forum). It is maybe something you sort of have to take a lead on and drive yourself as much as possible, as some people just dont understand that they might be the only people to find something interesting. Trivia is supposed to be interesting, not something banal or obvious from reading the page it is on. 14:46, November 27, 2011 (UTC)
 * Very good points Yyp! I believe, though, that trivia should also be sourced to prevent speculation and organized, not a bulleted list of random viewpoints (&ldquo;some fans&rdquo; think&hellip;). Cheers! 16:15, November 27, 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I will try and start a discussion on the Wiki some time soon. =)  Random - Story Keeper   19:48, November 27, 2011 (UTC)