MarioWiki:Trivia

From the Super Mario Wiki, the Mario encyclopedia
Revision as of 02:53, January 3, 2013 by Mario4Ever (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigationJump to search

The Super Mario Wiki provides great quantities of information in all of its articles. Normally, information can be placed in specific sections of an article, but some information does not meet the requirements to fit into any of the clearly-defined sections. Instead, special sections are created to house these kinds of information. These are the Miscellaneous sections and Trivia sections.

Creating Trivias

The Super Mario Wiki allows users to expand articles with all the information they can get, and they usually create Trivia sections to add interesting information that does not fit in with the general content. However, this method is discouraged because Trivia sections have been overused. They often become cluttered with large amounts of information that can actually be placed in the main content (Summary or History sections mostly), or simply removed because they are already mentioned in the main content, or are speculation, opinion pieces, or otherwise irrelevant factoids. It's recommended that the {{trivia}} tag be applied to overly long Trivia sections, which indicates to other users that they shouldn't add more information, but rather, find convenient places for the preexisting trivia points elsewhere on the article.

Creating Miscellaneous Content

Another helpful way to deal with the excess of Trivias is creating sections that are meant to contain miscellaneous information in a more structured fashion. Most facts that don't fit in the "History" sections or introductions can be placed in the "General Information" sections of in-universe pages (characters, species, items, places, etc.), and the equivalent section for non-fictional pages (games, consoles, series, TV shows, films, real-life people, etc.) is called "Miscellaneous". These overall sections can in turn have sub-sections if there are large amounts of information about a certain specific topic. For example, "General Information" sections on character articles usually have sub-sections for Personality, Physical Appearance, and Powers/Abilities. "Miscellaneous" sections can contain content about Reception and Reviews, Cultural Impact, Merchandise and Promotional Products, Software and Hardware Development, and more.

One important detail when adding miscellaneous content is citing the information given. The references must come from professional and reliable sources that reinforce the validity and longevity of such content, preventing bias and inaccuracies. Not giving a source for the information will make it seem questionable and it may eventually be deleted.