Wikipedia:xkcd in popular culture
From the page:
The popular webcomic xkcd is famed for its Internet-savvy plots and references to obscure science and cult fiction. As a result, people often take subjects which xkcd has covered, run off to Wikipedia and add "xkcd covered this" to a section called "In popular culture" or the like.
Most of the time, this isn't actually helpful. Popular webcomics do impact popular culture, but not every time they mention a random subject. The best way to treat "in popular culture" sections of articles is to use them to cover examples which have actually influenced the way that the public looks at the subject. Just adding in any random time that a subject is mentioned in your favourite TV show or comic leads to these sections quickly becoming unmanageable cruft which would be far better placed on TV Tropes or the like.
How to tell when you've hit the big time: your fanbase vandalizes Wikipedia enough that you get your own page for it.
Just a note to say that it isn't an "official position" as such; it happens to reflect the general consensus on how to treat this crap, but nobody's technically bound by it. That said, I'm heartened to see that people have run with it; it's helped to lower my blood pressure by giving other people a nice link to point people at.
ReplyDelete-Chris