[WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

Sun Sep 11 08:05:17 UTC 2005

I beg to differ, Dan.
My local mailbox is verifiable but certainly not worth a place in Wikipedia. 

On 9/11/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
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