User:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Rants/Trivia

Although many find trivia interesting and entertaining, Trivia sections can easily end up superfluous or filled with speculative information. Spermologists should have a healthy respect for the difference between Trivia, trivial facts, and other trivia. Here are 3+1 usable principles to follow:

Principles

1. Trivia should stick to known facts and avoid theorizing.
2. It is trivial unless it is both relevant and notable.
3. Coincidences are always trivial.
4. Developer confirmation trumps all other principles; used sparingly, consensus can override all other principles

Corollaries

1. Facts, not theories
   • Avoid passive voice and speculation (e.g it is unknown if or it is possible that).
   • Lacking developer confirmation, present Trivia as facts and let readers draw their own conclusions.
   • When there are multiple sources, we can't know which inspired the developers. Therefore, present at most:
     • One original source (e.g. Shakespeare's Shrew) and
     • One popular source (e.g. 10 Things I Hate ...).
2. Relevance
   • Just because it is true does not make it worth presenting.
   • There should be several points of comparison between the in-game target and the outside-game source.
3. Coincidences are trivial.
   • Similarities of names are trivial.
   • It is coincidental when the same actor voices roles in different games.
4. ANet staff are always correct. And: the community can decide to make exceptions.
   • Developer intent is not required to note an important RL connection.
   • The community can decide that something in-game is a reference to something outside the game, even if this was not done deliberately. i.e. we should avoid speculation, but it's also fair to note the obvious without evidence to back it up. (Personally, I prefer this to be done more sparingly than most of the community. Even so, to-date, we do not have too much speculative information and only the occasional contributor attempts to use these as precedent for adding their own pet trivia as Trivia.)