[WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

Sun Sep 11 07:58:37 UTC 2005

On 10/09/05, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> More on mergism and "cruft": what I don't quite understand is the
> opposition many people have to merging small articles into larger
> ones: schools into school district articles, fictional characters into
> book articles, city landmarks into city articles.

I would imagine because smaller articles are more likely to be
expanded (people may look at a long article on lots of things and say
"ooo, that's long enough already").

> 
> With some articles you suggest merging and the creators respond as if
> you wanted to delete the article entirely. I regard merging as an
> improvement: information wants context, in order to be useful; maybe
> it doesn't add to your article count, but it adds to the usefulness of
> the encyclopedia.

You don't have to merge articles to provide context!

> 
> "Wiki is not paper" is often cited -- but it's a stronger argument for
> merging information than leaving small articles separate: since Wiki
> is not paper, redirects are easy, and we do not have to worry about
> someone having to pull out separate volumes and flip pages if directed
> elsewhere. We don't have to make sure there's a scrap of information
> at every conceivable search term; that's what redirects and the search
> function are for. Articles that are "cruft" on their own (and I do try
> to use the term only jokingly!) can be a helpful bit of detail in a
> larger picture.
> 
> It doesn't really *hurt* to have lots of small trivial articles (I'm
> deliberately ignoring referencing issues here; dpbsmith already made
> that position perfectly clear), but it's a case where the whole is
> indeed generally greater than the sum of its parts. Not only that, a
> large article which gets many visitors is far easier to maintain --
> keep updated, patrol for vandalism, etc. -- than a collection of small
> articles which get relatively few visitors each.

I'd argue the opposite - vandalism is harder to spot in oft-edited
pages, as if it's not picked up quickly, it's hidden on watchlists by
newer edits. It's well-known that collections of smaller articles are
easier to maintain.

Also, readers would most likely only read the same pieces of
information in a large merged article as they would have seperate
smaller ones - there's no particular reason why larger articles should
be updated more. If anything the opposite - larger articles often look
more "complete".

> Where such an article can't be merged into something larger, it's
> probably because it is too trivial for the next broader level of
> detail and probably shouldn't be included at all (for example, I
> wouldn't even be worth mentioning in my university's article: it would
> rightly get deleted were a sentence about me to be added) -- or if it
> should be included, indicative that we have a big gaping hole
> somewhere in our coverage and need to write the article for the next
> broader level (for example, an individual folk song from a country on
> which there is no "music of X" article yet).

What should and shouldn't be an article is covered by wp:verifiability and NOR.

Dan