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Comment by pierrec | Hacker News Reader

There's this crazy thing that always strikes me about Wikipedia articles. I read or skim through the text in a linear way, out of habit. Until inadvertently, I get to the "In Popular Culture" section, and it seems the article turns on me and attacks me with ridiculously nerdy content.

Pinky and the Brain? Heck, this is beyond nerdy. I don't even know how to qualify it, but it always makes you snap back to the fact that you are not reading a normal run-of-the-mill encyclopaedia. (And it makes me wonder, who even takes the time to write this kind of incongruous cross-referencing?)

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Nerdy shows are more likely to reference the sorts of things you'd read about on Wikipedia, hence the frequency with which you might see shows like Futurama show up in the popular culture sections of Wikipedia articles. And, of course, Wikipedians are likely to be nerds who catch those references and rush to update the appropriate article.

This is why Wikipedia is great unlike stuffy and backward encyclopaedias.

What's the point of reading about a bridge in the middle of nowhere. Absolutely nothing. Except it's a great story.

Which is why derivative stories are also interesting.

Was the Pinky and The Brain story boring. Yes.

Was the Falling Down story interesting. Yes. It was about a hidden Easter egg referencing the bridge and the location it’s in.

As someone else points out who cares about lists of Olympians from 30 years ago, no one. Some random name ran around a track. Who cares about fictional ducks. Most people. Donald Duck alone must get a lot of the population, he has had a real (good/bad) but remembered impact to most people’s lives.

You're taking about a quality issue. Not a nerdy issue.

If you think that's bad, have a look at TVTropes, which is basically Wikipedia's "In Popular Culture" cranked Up To Eleven and turned into its own separate encyclopedia.

It's a bit of a problem that Wikipedia has a list of fictional ducks, but doesn't have a lists of olympic athletes -- because an olympic athlete is not notable.

Er...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Olympic_competitors

Bit more useful organization:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Olympic_competitors_by...

Thank you! I was wrong and I'll have to stop using that example. How ever, it took a lot of arguing to get those archers from 1904 to be included. I think the discussion is on village pump.

The problem seems to be with discovery. Notice it's "Olympic Competitors" and not "Olympic Athletes". Most people would think to search or look for "athletes" and it takes a bit of Google-Fu to even find the competitors list.

So I can understand thinking it didn't exist! It actually took me a good 10 minutes or so to find it on Google (and most searches take < 30 seconds!)

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