User:Alex2539/Trivia Style Guide proposal

This is a proposed style guideline for Trivia articles. Please see the talk page for discussion.

Many articles contain Trivia Sections near the end. These sections are meant to hold any small bit of trivia relevant to that article. However, due to the ambiguous nature of trivia it is sometimes unclear what should or should not be included. Before adding an item to an article's Trivia section, please consult these guidelines first.

Writing trivia

• Trivia should be short, clear and concise. All trivia sections are styled as bullet points, not paragraphs. If the trivia item you are writing seems to have a particularly long description, consider instead summarizing it briefly and linking to a source with more relevant information.
• Do not post images or videos unless absolutely necessary to prove a point. Most trivia are self-evident and do not need a visual aid. If it is absolutely vital that a video be included, it is better to link to the video than to embed it for trivia. Images should be shown as thumbnails.
• All trivia should still uphold the rest of the Style Guide. This includes grammar, spelling and formatting.

Removing trivia

Before removing trivia, first consider whether or not it is indeed trivia by following the guidelines below. If it is found not to be trivia, then it should be removed. Please don't forgot to state why it isn't considered valued trivia in the summary. If the information is relevant in some way, but not trivia all the same, consider finding a way to work it into an existing article. It is always possible that an item that is not trivia is in fact relevant information for another article.

What if my trivia is removed?

If your own addition to a trivia section is removed, do not immediately add it back into the article. First check the article's history to see who removed the item and if they left a reason in the edit summary. If the person did not leave a reason or if you do not agree with their reason, consider asking them for an explanation or elaboration on their talk page. If the matter is not resolved, make a new post on that article's talk page and state your case as to why your item is valid trivia. The resulting discussion will determine the final fate of that trivia item. If it is decided that a trivia item's removal was justified, do not ignore this decision. Repeated adding of a removed trivia item and ignoring the reason for its removal can be grounds for a temporary block from editing the Wiki.

Guidelines for trivia

The following is a set of guidelines to follow when writing trivia. Before making an addition to a trivia section, try to make sure that the item follows these guidelines. If you believe an item might qualify as trivia but are uncertain, feel free to post on the article's talk page and ask for opinions.

What is trivia

• Trivia items should be interesting facts about the item in question. They may only be tangent to actual nature of the article in question, but should be have a direct relation nonetheless.
  

Examples:

Good trivia: The Engineer's favorite equation is in fact part of the equation that governs character lighting in-game. (From The Engineer)
This item is not about The Engineer himself, but expounds on one of the pieces of information available about The Engineer. It is interesting but has no place in the main article and as such is placed in the Trivia section.

Poor trivia: 'Razorback' is also the name of a minor Spiderman villain who coincidentally, uses electricity to ward off foes who sneak up from behind. [1] (Removed from The Razorback)
This item is not about The Razorback itself, but about the namesake of The Razorback, which is a kind of Australian feral pig. While the coincidence is amusing, it is not relevant to the article and was removed.

• Trivia items should be new information that is not already available in the infobox or article. It should also be information that does not belong in the infobox or article.

Example:

Poor trivia: This item does not have a kill-icon related to the item. (Removed from The Frying Pan)
The kill-icon for the Frying Pan is already plainly visible in the infobox on the right-hand side of the article. This item merely restates what is depicted in the infobox.

• Trivia items should be interesting and/or helpful. This can be tricky since "interesting" and "helpful" are somewhat subjective terms. In general a trivia item that displays a non-noteworthy example of something or whose relation to the article is tenuous at best will be considered uninteresting. Trivia items are looking to receive a reaction similar to "Wow! I didn't know that!" from the reader. If most readers' reactions to the trivia item are similar to "Meh, who cares?" then it is likely not a good piece of trivia.

Examples:

Good trivia: "Dalokohs" is "shokolad," the Russian and Ukrainian word for chocolate, spelled backwards. (From The Dalokohs Bar)
This item is of great interest to players who do not speak Russian or Ukrainian as it gives a simple, logical reason as to where the Dalokohs Bar's name comes from.

Poor trivia: The weapon is labeled 'wood_machete' in the game files. (Removed from The Tribalman's Shiv)
It is rather obvious that the Tribalman's Shiv resembles a wooden machete. As such, noting that the game files call it this is not particularly interesting or surprising. While some in-game items may have revealing file names, this one does not.

• Trivia items should be factual, not guesses or conjecture. It is preferable if there is a verifiable reference, but due to the fact that some items may come from game-play experience that has gone unrecorded or private chat sessions or e-mails from developers is it understood that this is not always possible. However, if an item can be cited, it should be.

Examples:

Good Trivia: Bill's Hat has its own intricate back-story, which reads as follows: "While conducting a science experiment on parallel dimensions, Bill's Hat fell off a table into the Team Fortress universe." "Pre-Order Giveaway Madness", TF2 Official Blog, November 2, 2009. (From Bill's Hat)
This item is a hard fact about the history of Bill's Hat. The claims made by this item come from an external website - the Official TF2 Blog in this case. Because the information is readily available and linked to, anyone can independently verify that the item is indeed factual. (Note: In the article itself, the reference is placed between <ref> </ref> tags so that it appears in the list of references at the bottom of the page.)

Poor Trivia: The Heavy's boxing related items (Killing Gloves of Boxing, Gloves of Running Urgently and Pugilist's Protector) may be a reference to the similarities between him and Russian heavyweight boxer Nikolai Valuev (Removed from The Heavy)
While it is possible that The Heavy's boxing paraphernalia reference the boxer Nikolai Valuev, there is an equal chance that they reference any other Russian boxer, or no single boxer in particular. This item is entirely a guess and an assumption of Valve's intentions. While the fact that Nikolai Valuev is a Russian boxer is referenced via a link to Wikipedia, the trivia item itself is not based in fact.

What is not trivia

• Trivia items should not be obvious to anyone who has played Team Fortress 2 for a reasonable amount of time. Unfortunately "obvious" may have a subjective definition as veteran players may have a different opinion on what is obvious compared to novice players. Something that is inevitably discovered simply by playing the game or casually studying the subject in question should be considered "obvious" and thus not trivia.

Examples:

Good Trivia: The Pyro has the same voice for English, German, Spanish, French and Russian versions of Team Fortress 2. (From The Pyro)
This item is not considered obvious since most players will likely only ever play the game in one language. No matter how long they play, they could never discover this fact since they will only ever hear their language's version of the Pyro and never make the connection to another language.

Poor Trivia: The Eternal Reward is currently the only replacement for the Knife. (Removed from Your Eternal Reward)
It is obvious that this is true since all of the other unlockable items for the spy are either revolvers or watches, none of which would ever be classified as melee weapons. This information is readily apparent to any player familiar with the Spy's arsenal and is easily deduced by reading through the Spy's list of unlockables.

• Trivia should not state how a characteristic of an item relates to the characteristics of others. This includes, but is not limited to, listing other items that share a certain characteristic, listing items that that do not share a certain characteristic, stating that an item is the first or only item to have a certain characteristic, etc. Often this will be in the form of "This is the first X to ...", "This is the only X to..." or "This is one of N Xs to...".

Examples:

Poor trivia: Currently this is the only hat, besides the Polycount Pack hats, which has its own blueprint.(Removed from The Bonk Helm)
It should not be stated that The Bonk Helm is the only craftable hat. Not only is it unfair and unnecessary to exclude the hats that are part of a set, but this information is also essentially embodied by the fact that it has a crafting blueprint visible on the page whereas most other hats do not.

Poor trivia: This is one of three 'hatless' hats with the others being Texas Slim's Dome Shine and Baseball Bill's Sports Shine. (Removed from Ritzy Rick's Hair Fixative)
It is not necessary to list every "hatless" hat as they are all visible on the Wiki. This item was nothing more than simple counting.

• Trivia should not be a bug or glitch with the item, especially if it is not noteworthy such as a visual glitch or a quickly-patched bug. Any noteworthy bugs should instead be places on the Glitch or Exploit pages. Trivia should be about the item addressed in the article, not the mistakes the developers made in the implementation. If it is a statement on the way an item used to function, then it should be placed in the Previous Changes section of that article.

Example:

Poor trivia: There is a Glitch when you hold R {to reload the weapon} and shoot, it does part of the reloading and shooting at the same time. (Removed from The Shortstop)
This is a very minor visual bug and not worth mentioning in the article itself.

• Trivia should not be a simple observation of the item. If it can be deduced by simply looking at the item, then it is not trivia. This includes, but is not limited to descriptions of the item, resemblances the item has to something or comments on the in-game appearance of the item.

Examples:

Poor trivia: If you paint the Hound Dog with the Australium Gold Paint Can, the Heavy sort of coincidently resembles Johnny Bravo. (Removed from The Hound Dog)
The visual similarity between the painted Hound dog and the cartoon character Jonny Bravo is only of interest to readers familiar with that cartoon character. Since the visual similarity was not intentional, it is not interesting or relevant to any other reader. The similarity is also made obvious by the available image of the painted Hound Dog on the article's page. Commenting on what can easily be seen is not necessary.

Poor trivia: If the player decides to paint the "Master's Yellow Belt" with the paint "A Distinctive Lack of Hue" the player's "Master's Yellow Belt" would look very similar to a stereotypical ninja's black headband. (Removed from Master's Yellow Belt)
This item states the obvious: that painting the hat black will make it black. This is again easily seen in the images of the painted hat in the article itself. Any similarities the painted hat has to another object can easily be drawn by the reader.

See also

• Help:Style guide
• Trivia Wall of Shame