[WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

Sat Sep 10 16:22:39 UTC 2005

Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>I believe the "cruft" label, which I don't like and
>try to avoid using myself, is shorthand for
>"topic area in which low-quality articles are being
>created faster than they are being improved."
>
>Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution
>isn't clear.

Yeah, such areas are a problem, but I believe this doesn't really 
apply to a lot of the "cruft". Often it's just an easy starting point 
for newbies... it's much easier to write about a Harry Potter 
character than about most other topics, because the available 
knowledge about Harry Potter characters is very small and manageable. 
If it's easy to write the article, it's easy to improve it too.

But you mentioned a list of bipolar people. Yes, lists are deceiving 
to many editors: it looks easy to add to a list (Hey, I don't even 
have to write full sentences!), but if the list is to be useful, it 
has to have well-defined criteria for what can be included and what 
not, and suddenly things get much trickier.

         Chl 