It's a trivial little factoid for something that rarely if ever comes up in modern Western mainstream culture, the diorama. Whats the harm?

If someone ever googles that Simpsons episode, now, they may learn something about 19th century European theater.

They used to say "Knowledge is power". No it appears "Knowledge is The Simpsons."

To be fair, we must acknowledge that this episode makes a significant contribution to the BLP debate.

Is a Simpsons "plot device" really encyclopedic?

The quotes in my signature also come from a recent episode.

Sometimes I wonder if Matt Groening or someone who works on The Simpsons reads the Review!

Ah yes, I recognize that exchange, one of the good ones.

I also recognize a familiar quote from a very psychotic villain, one of my favorites in fact!

"I will exterminate everyone and everything." (Kefka)
"People will keep rebuilding the things you take away from them! (Terra)
"Then I will destroy these too. Why do people rebuild things that they know are going to be destroyed? Why do people cling to life when they know they can't live forever? Think how meaningless each of your lives is! (Kefka)
"It's not the net result of one's life that's important. It's the day to day concerns, the personal victories, and the celebration of life... and love! It's enough if people are able to experience the joy that each day can bring! (Terra)
"And have you found your 'joy', in this nearly dead world of ours? (Kefka)
"Yes. I know what love is...! (Terra)
"I have learnt to celebrate life... and the living. (Locke)
"My family lives on inside of me. (Cyan)
"It is my dream to build a kingdom in which I can guarantee freedom, and dignity. (Edgar)
"I have come to experience anew the love of my brother. (Sabin)
"I've met someone who can accept me for what I am. (Celes)

The Simpsons did an episode on the LDS (Mormon) Faith. Is that mentioned in the article on the LDS Church?

The articles on Mormonism seem to be completely lacking an Pop Culture Reference sections. Even the Criticism of Mormonism lacks any sense of humor (unless you count the neutrality disputed tag) and certainly no pop culture refs, favorable or otherwise. Instead you just get stuff like this:

In 1982 the church presidency issued a proclamation saying "The First Presidency has interpreted oral sex as constituting an unnatural, impure, or unholy practice."[164]

And thus has god spoken. No, no, no, Mormons. Back to your jello. And leave it on the table!

I have been researching Vapor Lock and in the Wikipedia article the Simpsons appear again:

"In The Simpsons episode Bart Star while Bart is upset about his poor quarterback skills, Joe Namath's car breaks down nearby; Namath's wife reveals that the vehicle was merely immobilized due to vapor lock."

That is also the classic example of the editors adapting to new rules. Some time ago was the Great Purge where Trivia Sections were considered undesirable. So now they have been renamed to Cultural References. With a gazzillion or so episodes of the Simpsons being made, I should guess that most items in the universe have been referenced.

Someitmes popular culture sections can be interesting, other times they're like, "what the fuck is this for." I just finished reading Dental braces and they list every fictional character to have ever worn braces. I just stared at the screen and wondered, "Who in the fuck cares about this?!"

Of course there is not fix for this problem, because tastes and interests vary. I might have just the opposite reaction to the stuff you do, finding the interesting things dull and vice versa.

The only thing one can do is try not to be deletionist, but rather take material as it becomes more and more marginally related, and spin it off into {{main}} sub-articles which are essentially "Trivia sections" (whatever you wanted to call them) were essentially embedded lists. There's nothing wrong with a list, per se, if a list is what the information "wants" to naturally be. And there's nothing articles which are primarily lists. So if a list of marginally related stuff attempts to take over article space, just spin it off as a LIST article, and leave a ref in the See also section. But the interested reader should be left a trail of breadcrumbs. Somebody is going to want a compilation of any single cartoon episode where people wear braces. If somebody else did the work, we'd hate to waste it. I hate wasting any kind of information. That's one reason why I find an encyclopedia with no space limits so fascinating.

...oh, and the Bewitched reference is really, really stretching it.

...oh, and the Bewitched reference is really, really stretching it.

I know, who cares about or watches Bewitched anymore.

Someitmes popular culture sections can be interesting, other times they're like, "what the fuck is this for." I just finished reading Dental braces and they list every fictional character to have ever worn braces. I just stared at the screen and wondered, "Who in the fuck cares about this?!"

I love my trivia, but it belittles the encyclopedic quality if every tangentially associated item gets stuffed into the article. I agree with the list principle - why not have a link to trivia about Pink (no Simpsons there yet - why isn't the weekly feature of the car mentioned - and I haven't checked Sofa. But it is rather unsettling that every article can be the target for this chiff chaff.

Well, you're describing my brain, there, so watch it.

In theory, you could construct an encyclopedia which could be read on the top levels as a Super General Encyclopedia, and as you follow the hyperlinks down, as a series of topical encyclopedias (Encyclopedia of 18th Century Ships, Encyclopedia of Wood Waterproofing Agents), and finally to Encyclopedias of Cultural References. Or even of Pieces of Knowledge Too Short to Use (by analogy with the dead miser's house found with a drawer labeled "Pieces of String Too Short to Use").

As you know, there's a major fight over what is Wikipedia's major proper role. It's CALLED an encyclopedia (with people assuming, without foundation, that this means, or should mean, general encyclopedia), but its size has quantitatively made it into something QUALITATIVELY different, although to be sure, if indexed properly, the General Encyclopedia is (ideally) still there, on top, as an index of indexes of indexes. A lot like some multivolume encyclopedias already have, as a one or two volume General Knowledge Summary. Except with Wikipedia, it's that way all the way down through a hundred levels.

Do we get upset about this? No, mostly we get annoyed when there's failure of indexing by relative importances, as when you're looking at the general article on Algebra and you come across some remark that Lisa Simpson mentions Algebra, in episode #621. So is the solution to simply remove this to the article on Simpson #621?

Well, maybe not quite, some of us suggest. Not only should a there be a way to get to Lisa Simpson's remark about Algebra by searching on Lisa Simpson, or Simpsons Episodes, but even a way to get to it by starting with the Algebra article, and clicking down through levels till you get to Late 20th Century US Pop Culture, TV References, Cartoon, Mentions of Algebra.

This is not so much vision of Wikipedia as standard encyclopedia, as it is of it as hypelinked database of all human knowledge, all of it passed the filter of human minds, and hyperlinked and indexed properly so that no fact (we're going to ignore privacy issues for the sake of simplicity) is more than 6 or 10 or 14 or (whatever) links/clicks from any other fact. What is that maximal magic number N? Interesting question, eh? Even if you take out all the WP:NOTS (which are, if you think about them, rather silly and irrelevent — if you're going to DO this, you might as well go whole-hog).

Now, you might think the web and google is already something like this. But not really. Google is not intelligent. The links haven't been put in place by minds and many of them are missing, or wrong, or irrelavent. You have to understand things if you want to index them perfectly. The second thing is that Google results may be somewhat hyperlinked, but the levels of links are not comparable but represent only the heavily traveled trails in a 3-D (or N-dimentional) web of random knowledge. Here the number of clicks to get from one piece of web knowledge to another, without having to go back through Google, might be in the hundreds. Or like the old joke, you might not even be able to get "there" from "here".

So the WikiWikiWeb (nevermind Wikipedia per se — it's just a good example of a WikiWikiWeb), is a new type of computer database. It's been assembed by minds, not computers. It is not limited in size. And it's hyperlinked at all levels up and down. Not perfectly — maybe not even well. But getting better. And interesting for its own sake.

M.

Is a Simpsons "plot device" really encyclopedic?

If it's not sex, it's Simpsons!

One of my main problems with Simpsons articles is that they're horribly short. The average size of an episode article is about 32kb. Some episode FAs are bigger: Through the Looking Glass (Lost) and Trapped in the Closet (South Park) edge on 50kb, and The Stolen Earth (which I'm taking to FAC after it's copyedited) is around 42kb. Simpsons FAs are around 17kb. I've written good articles longer than that. Are they really as "comprehensive" as the featured article criteria dictate?

Good question. A quick review of the Reception section in "[[You Only Move Twice]]" is only two paragraphs long, which includes commentary from the writers of the show themselves. Were there really only four critics who reviewed this episode? We only see "rave"-style reviews for this episode. It just doesn't seem comprehensive to me, and the entire article, with footnotes, is only... 16kb!