User:Abigailgem

I am a Quaker living in England, interested in Iris Murdoch, Doctor Who, fantasy, and Scottish Country Dancing. I use Wikipedia a lot, and if I see an improvement I can make to an article I consult, I make it.

(here to be fine-tuned before putting on Village pump)

Many articles have sections listing references to the subject of the article in fiction or arts.

I submit that certain headings for these sections imply a judgment that a work is high-quality, or is Literary, or is low-brow. I submit that these judgments are not ones we are qualified to make, as verifiable sources disagree, and there is even disagreement as to what popular culture is: whether it is less important or less valuable than "High culture" or what kinds of "culture" might not be "popular culture". Does "popular culture" comprise artistic works which do not require particular education to appreciate them, and if so, do such works exist?

Examples: Experience machine- "In literature", (literature sounds high-brow) referring to a story in Amazing Stories, and the film The Matrix. Dresden bombing "In popular culture" (sounds low-brow) and I found the novel Slaughterhouse-five outside this heading. This illustrates how invidious the judgment is. Whether a school could exclude it from the school library on moral grounds reached the US Supreme Court. Thomas Becket "Legacy" includes Murder in the Cathedral, a play by TS Eliot so arguably High culture, and churches named after him.

Is it worth creating a policy for a single heading for such parts of articles?

Advantages for such a policy: there would be no judgment, express or implied, on a work, whether it was written for a specific public, or was high quality, or was high-brow or low-brow. The judgment would only be whether it was significant enough to be included- I see this is not a question of WP:Notability.

Proposed heading:

In culture. I propose "In culture" to include literature and all other arts, to include "high-brow" or "serious" or "quality" or "politically correct" culture, and works which are arguably not. Abigailgem (talk) 15:58, 13 December 2013 (UTC)