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Donkey Kong will look in the pit, and laugh menacingly if he wins.
I was never really a huge fan of trivia sections in this wiki. Theoretically, they're supposed to be areas where you are supposed to plop interesting, miscellaneous information that cannot be fit elsewhere in the article, such as information from pre-release builds of the game, developer interviews, and maybe some easter eggs on courses. More often than not, they've been the target of a lot of nonsequitur, badly organized content with the following consistencies I tend to see them have:
This is the First Time seeing Toad and Toadette Barefoot
Low-quality observations that are easily convoluted and twisted beyond belief to have a significant meaning.
Yoshi is the reason why the famous Pokemon series is still here today.
Tied to references that are not actually there.
In the demo version of the game, luigi can be heard laughing in the background of the boss battle music. This feature does not happen in the real game. This may be subliminal marketing, annoying the player to the point of buying the game.
Bad speculation and observations.
The Observatory is one of the only rooms with no Boos in it.
Statements that can easily be integrated into the body article somewhere.
The Donkey Kong at this stage is Cranky Kong
Statements already made in the body article or in another article.
Of course, this list isn't exhaustive, but 9 times out of 10, Trivia points seem to fall under one or more these trends listed above.
It's extremely telling we even have a policy page that specifically discourages use of them to begin with and we arbitrarily limit their length, in which practically no other area in the wiki has a limit this strict on the amount listed. Why do we arbitrarily limit them? Because it's in tandem with all of the bad writing quirks above that make them undesirable sections to begin with: they're a cluster---- of random, badly organized tidbits of information consisting of weak observations that have no value to an encyclopedia and most of them would be interesting in their own right in the body article should there actually be a miscellaneous part.
Trivia sections tend to be lazily written, and so many times, editors who write in trivia sections find their edits getting reverted because the sections encourages poor edits and that there's no specific guideline in place to what exactly constitutes as a "good" trivia, not even the policy page itself is very specific and mostly relies on experienced editor judgment to make the call.
Over the past few days, I had been removing Trivia sections, making a point on how useless they really are, and only extremely few times I found it a bit more difficult to incorporate information, but even then, those information that I did found a bit difficult to implement elsewhere have strong work-arounds regardless. For examples, levels that have significant pre-release variants of them, those are worthy enough to have their own section in the game article devoted to it: short sections aren't necessarily a bad thing: if it's too short to sustain a section, they can easily be fit in the article's intros.
Best case study out there? Explore our Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense page. Observe how many of those have been the result of bad Trivia points. The infamous "[New Super Mario Bros. Wii] is a reference to the book Super Mario Bros. 3: Happy Birthday, Princess Toadstool!."? A bad trivia. I also remember sites like TheMushroomKingdom.net lambasted us for our use of the words such as "strangely" or ironically", and those are massly congregated in Trivia sections as well.
So, what my solution is? I think we should work towards removing Trivia sections entirely, incorporating all information they have into the main body. The strongest purpose they serve is to be a convenient spot for adding Did You Know Information, but that honestly isn't a strong argument for its existence, since it had housed horrible Trivia points before. Too many times are edits to Trivia sections counterproductive than they have been useful, and there's a reason Wikia wikis Trivia sections are horrendous eyesores as well as Trivia sections not being used in the most popular wiki, Wikipedia: because it runs to my points I've listed all above. If there's something actually interesting, it would be simply written as it is in the main article: after all, interesting information is a reason we draw readers for wiki articles to begin with, and the information we present are strong enough to hold on their own without needing a tacky, nonsequitur list of trivial (hah) factoids at the end of every article.
I was never really a huge fan of trivia sections in this wiki. Theoretically, they're supposed to be areas where you are supposed to plop interesting, miscellaneous information that cannot be fit elsewhere in the article, such as information from pre-release builds of the game, developer interviews, and maybe some easter eggs on courses. More often than not, they've been the target of a lot of nonsequitur, badly organized content with the following consistencies I tend to see them have:
This is the First Time seeing Toad and Toadette Barefoot
Low-quality observations that are easily convoluted and twisted beyond belief to have a significant meaning.
Yoshi is the reason why the famous Pokemon series is still here today.
Tied to references that are not actually there.
In the demo version of the game, luigi can be heard laughing in the background of the boss battle music. This feature does not happen in the real game. This may be subliminal marketing, annoying the player to the point of buying the game.
Bad speculation and observations.
The Observatory is one of the only rooms with no Boos in it.
Statements that can easily be integrated into the body article somewhere.
The Donkey Kong at this stage is Cranky Kong
Statements already made in the body article or in another article.
Of course, this list isn't exhaustive, but 9 times out of 10, Trivia points seem to fall under one or more these trends listed above.
It's extremely telling we even have a policy page that specifically discourages use of them to begin with and we arbitrarily limit their length, in which practically no other area in the wiki has a limit this strict on the amount listed. Why do we arbitrarily limit them? Because it's in tandem with all of the bad writing quirks above that make them undesirable sections to begin with: they're a cluster---- of random, badly organized tidbits of information consisting of weak observations that have no value to an encyclopedia and most of them would be interesting in their own right in the body article should there actually be a miscellaneous part.
Trivia sections tend to be lazily written, and so many times, editors who write in trivia sections find their edits getting reverted because the sections encourages poor edits and that there's no specific guideline in place to what exactly constitutes as a "good" trivia, not even the policy page itself is very specific and mostly relies on experienced editor judgment to make the call.
Over the past few days, I had been removing Trivia sections, making a point on how useless they really are, and only extremely few times I found it a bit more difficult to incorporate information, but even then, those information that I did found a bit difficult to implement elsewhere have strong work-arounds regardless. For examples, levels that have significant pre-release variants of them, those are worthy enough to have their own section in the game article devoted to it: short sections aren't necessarily a bad thing: if it's too short to sustain a section, they can easily be fit in the article's intros.
Best case study out there? Explore our Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense page. Observe how many of those have been the result of bad Trivia points. The infamous "[New Super Mario Bros. Wii] is a reference to the book Super Mario Bros. 3: Happy Birthday, Princess Toadstool!."? A bad trivia. I also remember sites like TheMushroomKingdom.net lambasted us for our use of the words such as "strangely" or ironically", and those are massly congregated in Trivia sections as well.
So, what my solution is? I think we should work towards removing Trivia sections entirely, incorporating all information they have into the main body. The strongest purpose they serve is to be a convenient spot for adding Did You Know Information, but that honestly isn't a strong argument for its existence, since it had housed horrible Trivia points before. Too many times are edits to Trivia sections counterproductive than they have been useful, and there's a reason Wikia wikis Trivia sections are horrendous eyesores as well as Trivia sections not being used in the most popular wiki, Wikipedia: because it runs to my points I've listed all above. If there's something actually interesting, it would be simply written as it is in the main article: after all, interesting information is a reason we draw readers for wiki articles to begin with, and the information we present are strong enough to hold on their own without needing a tacky, nonsequitur list of trivial (hah) factoids at the end of every article.
