New subject: Cruft

10 Sep 2005

...
  From: Matt Brown &lt;morven(a)gmail.com&gt;

 I'm also tired of the use of '<whatever>-cruft' as a reason for  
 deletion.
 There's a certain mindset that seems to think that the existence of  
 articles
 on minor but factual and verifiable topics detracts from Wikipedia.  
 To that,
 I'd say: everyone's pet interest is a fringe interest to someone.  
 Whether a
 Wikipedia article should exist on a topic should have nothing to do  
 with how
 well one can disparage the subset of people interested in that  
 particular
 topic.

 That said, if there's not enough to say about a topic, it might not  
 deserve
 an article of its very own. I'm all in favor of e.g. grouping minor
 fictional characters together in an article 'Minor characters in  
 <novel>',
 or whatever.

 -Matt 
OK, this fool will walk in, donning asbestos suit, etc.

There are contributors, who enjoy contributing to
Wikipedia, who do not embrace or understand the
rudiments of scholarship.

Here's what I mean by "rudiments.

"List of people believed to have been affected by bipolar disorder"
which was originally just a completely unsourced
list of raw names; confirmed, plausible, asserted,
and unlikely, all mixed together. It was nominated for
deletion, and consensus was that it was OK _provided
that_ the list confined itself to names for which there
was _a verifiable source citation._ I.e. it is OK to tell the
reader that the source was Kay Redfield Jamison's book
and let the reader decide how credible Jamison is.

The opening paragraph was rewritten to say "This is a list
of people accompanied by verifiable source citations," etc.

On a fairly regular basis, people will simply add names to
the list with no explanation or citation. OR, they will add
names accompanied with statements like "he has been very
open about this" or "it's been in the news" or "One of his
songs is entitled 'Lithium.'" I've been fairly pestiferous
about removing unsourced entries, usually moving them
to Talk with an explanation, and trying to half-coach the
people who added them.

And indeed some of them have been surprised that I
mean exactly what I say, and that while "Adam Ant:
Has spoken openly on television about his condition"
will not do, a web reference to an arts.telegraph article,
"Adam and his fall," is just fine.

Other have felt that the onus was somehow on _me_
to research and provide references for the names _they_
had added, thought I was questioning their honesty
when they asserted the existence of references, etc.

Now, all this is fine as far as it goes. There are some
inexperienced contributors, I try to police the article
a bit, I try to help a bit, I try to coach a bit, some of
the inexperienced contributors "get it," some of them
don't. The article slowly improves over time. All
Wiki-good.

The problem occurs when you have a topic area that
attracts a very large volume of contributions from
editors who do _not_ get the idea of what it means
for an article to be well-researched, thorough, and
accurate.

Wikipedia depends on the notion that bad articles
will get improved. That implies a certain kind of
balance or equilibrium.

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.

Wikipedia works only when _most_ articles are
in at least a quarter-decent state, and articles
that are really just drafts or placeholders or
article _requests_ disguised as articles are a relatively
small proportion of the whole.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/

Re: Cruft