What is...
What is 'trivia'?
The original meaning of the word 'trivia' was, apart from referring to three roads meeting, to describe important information. This word has, since the mid-20th century, been revived by game shows in an intentionally-ironic manner to refer to information of no importance whatsoever.
Wikis that use trivia are known to go into unnecessarily-great detail to put a minor point across, or even repeat it. The zombie that attacks Leon in the police car in Resident Evil 2 has red hair; a trivia point made from that would be "this zombie has red hair". We already know this from the image of the zombie; it is unnecessary to add it. This point may even be added upon by saying "it looks like Leon" - this comparison has been made since the game came out.
The actual point of this wiki's 'trivia' section was to list notable information that had not yet been put into other sections. A point about a particular Tyrant having its heart on the opposite side of its body would be suited to a 'biology' section. As this may take time to re-organize the section to make room for this new point, it would be put in the 'trivia' section if the user did not have enough time. Unfortunately, it has descended into listing practically any piece of information, partly because of a gameshow-based view of the term, leading to worthless factoids being spewed out regardless of whether or not the information was already present. On Halopedia, for example, some weapons articles had trivia points as worthless as "it is a gun", which can already be inferred from the terms "firearm"; "weapon" and "gun" from across the article, along with screenshots of the item and game-footage of a player firing it. This is an example of a user intentionally listing unnecessary information solely for the purpose of gaining points.
What is 'further notes'?
"Further notes" is the intended successor to the 'trivia' sections, based around the removal of facts considered unnecessary for an encyclopaedia.
What is/isn't appropriate?
Appropriate testcase | Reasoning | Inappropriate testcase | Reasoning |
---|---|---|---|
"In the REmake, a red version of the Hunter α can appear." | This Hunter has not been mentioned anywhere else in the article, and is considered notable for its unique colouration in the game. | "X looks like Y from Z" | This is trivia based around a character's appearance to one from another game. A common example is "Morpheus looks like Sephiroth", which was made popular by YouTuber 'ShadowLeggy'. |
X-character was featured in Y-website's "list of most so-and-so in gaming". | These trivia points refer to websites that describe who they think are the best/worst game characters based on their own opinions. The only exceptions are lists that do not show opinion, such as Cracked.com's "easter eggs that took years to find" article. | ||
It is a game. |
We can decipher this even by skim-reading the page for a few seconds | ||
It is a film. | Ditto | ||
It is a gun. | Ditto | ||