MarioWiki:Trivia

The Super Mario Wiki provides a multitude of information in all of its articles. Normally, information can be placed in specific sections of an article, but some information does not meet the requirements to fit into any of the clearly-defined sections. Instead, special sections are created to house this kind of information. These are the miscellaneous sections and trivia sections.

Adding trivia

The Super Mario Wiki allows users to expand articles with all the information they can get, and they usually create trivia sections to add interesting information that does not fit in with the general content. However, this method is discouraged because trivia sections have been overused. They often become cluttered with large amounts of information that can actually be placed in the main content ("Summary" or "History" sections mostly), or simply removed because such information is already mentioned in the main content, or takes the form of speculation, opinion pieces, or otherwise irrelevant factoids. Any information within a trivia section should also be strictly relevant to the article it appears on. For example, miscellaneous information about a character's appearance in a game would best belong on that character's respective page - not the game's page.

It's recommended that the {{trivia}} tag be applied to overly long trivia sections, which indicates to other users that they shouldn't add more information, but rather, find convenient places for the preexisting trivia points elsewhere on the article.

Adding miscellaneous content

Another helpful way to deal with the excess of trivia is to create sections that are meant to contain miscellaneous information in a more structured fashion. Most facts that don't fit in the "History" sections or introductions can be placed in the "General information" sections of in-universe pages (characters, species, items, places, etc.); the equivalent section for non-fictional pages (games, consoles, series, TV shows, films, real-life people, etc.) is titled "Miscellaneous". These overall sections can in turn have sub-sections if there are large amounts of information about a certain specific topic. For example, "General information" sections on character articles usually have sub-sections for personality, physical appearance, and powers/abilities. "Miscellaneous" sections can contain content about reception and reviews, cultural impact, merchandise and promotional products, software and hardware development, and more.

One important detail when adding miscellaneous content is citing the information given. The references must come from professional and reliable sources that reinforce the validity and longevity of such content, preventing bias and inaccuracies. Not giving a source for the information will make it seem questionable and it may eventually be deleted.