Wikipedia talk:Fancruft/Archive 1

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Any non-pejorative uses?

Fair enough, but can you show me one place where the term fancruft is used in a non-pejorative sense? --Phil | Talk 12:40, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

I've had a go at making this a little more even-handed. It surprised me to find that it was a Wikipedia neologism, but that's the Google indication anyway. Andrewa 10:30, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How about, uh, every time I use it? What you're asking for me is the impossible task of proving a negative, proving that I do not have any intent to insult when I use the term. Just because pejorative meaning can be read into the term does not mean that you can assume bad faith and accuse everyone who uses it of having pejorative intent. -- Antaeus Feldspar 05:47, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My simple advice is: If you can explain your vote without using such terms, do, and if you can't, don't vote. Just a suggestion. There are lots of other jobs to do. Andrewa 19:56, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

My suggestion is that you stop assigning yourself the privilege of determining which terms can be used and which can't or who should stop voting because they don't do it your way. -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:23, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As I said, it was just a suggestion. No such privileges are assigned or claimed. I guess in hindsight there wasn't a lot of hope that the advice would be helpful to you, but as it's a public forum, I'm still hopeful it may help others. Peace! Andrewa 01:04, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What is fancruft, and is it bad for us?

Has anybody ever tried to squeeze out any objective answer to these questions, no matter how incomplete? No, really. I'm interested. Forget about consensus for a moment—let's not try to get "policy" passed for now. I'd just like a philosophical discussion on one aspect of what Wikipedia is not, beyond people just shouting links to each other.

Why are people so strongly opposed to fancruft? What do we consider to be fancruft in the first place? (For the moment, I hope we can postpone the PC discussions on whether "fancruft" is a pejorative term or not—if you don't like it, read "expertism" instead, or something.) What unconvential aspects of Wikipedia, compared to traditional encyclopedias, play a role in its inclusion or exclusion?

Before proceeding, check egos and actual fan dedications at the door, please. No grudge matches and no proposed policy discussions in this section. Humor me. JRM 01:08, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

More to the point, why does it matter? Wikipedia already has plenty of relevant policy (and precident) regarding what should and shouldn't be included, without having to resort to the definition of fancruft. Use of the word fancruft just gets noses out of joint. Shane King 06:50, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

I don't dispute that, but if people are using this single word to apply a specific instance of that policy, I want to know why they're doing it and what it means. There's no use in pretending this value judgement doesn't or shouldn't exist, that people are fundamentally wrong in using it, and that we should all stick to established policy and precedent anyway (the latter is of course quite contentious, since we make policy and precedent ourselves).

I'm actually glad people are using it. Otherwise it just all boils down to "notability" again, and that's even more vague and ill-specified than "fancruft". At least with that, people are implying a more-or-less specific reason why they don't consider it notable. JRM 09:01, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

There are plenty of reasons people could be giving when they vote delete on what they describe as "funcruft" that aren't "non-notable". There are dozens of inclusion criteria that don't boil down to notability. That's my complaint: by calling it fancruft they're just avoiding their obligation as described at the top of the vfd page of explaining their reasoning. Fancruft isn't a valid reason, since it's not listed anywhere as being a valid reason. I'm opposing any move to make it policy that it should become a reason, because it's an ill-defined word that is completely unneccesary. If we want to fix the "people vote fancruft and we don't know what it means" problem, we really should do it by discarding all votes that don't list a reason for keep/delete that can be referenced to policy. I'm not holding my breath though, most people seem to not care about policy and instead only care about their own deletionist or inclusionist ideas. Shane King 03:19, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Good questions. I'll just deal with the two in the title for now, I think the question of why are people so strongly... is also a key, but I'd like to do some groundwork first.

As to what is fancruft, I think in one way it depends on the user, like any term. At the risk of retreating into philocruft, the precise definition of terms is an Aristotelian concept. Aristotle didn't formalise this in any way, he rather assumed it could be done; Prescriptive linguistics and naive set theory both followed this lead, and both were finally abandoned following the work of Wittgenstein, Austin and Kripke in the mid 20th century. But just as the consequences of this to Mathematics, which started with Russell's demolition of Frege at the start of the 20th century, still haven't made it into the classroom (and may never do so), so the consequences for linguistics (and semantics in particular) haven't hit the public mind. Most people still think that defining a term in a prescriptive or legalistic way is a useful thing to do.

As a final shot here, I think it's fascinating that the venerable OED was originally descriptive not prescriptive. This is perhaps especially relevant to we encyclopedists?

Lewis Carroll was 'way ahead of us when he has Humpty Dumpty say When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less. Communication is both imperfect and cooperative. So the question is, what do the users of this word intend it to mean, and is there any consensus among them?

That makes your second question, is it bad for us, hard to answer. I would have to say sometimes.

Wikipedia succeeds whenever someone finds the information they want, and fails whenever they look and don't find it. Whether the experience is positive in other ways, such as great-looking pages, is important too but secondary. The primary goal is to deliver the information.

For this to happen, the information needs to be there (and of course accurate) and they need to find it. It's the second problem that can make detail excessive, by making the desired information harder to find.

I think that's enough from me for a start. I hope this helps. Andrewa 18:50, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't see a clear line...

I don't see a clear line between literary criticism, and "fan cruft", except for the "I know it when I see it" theory.

For example, I think that no one would object to an article discussing Romeo and Juliet (The well known play by Shakespeare). If I was contributing to that article (which I have no plans to do) I certainly might include some background on the Capulet and Montague familes.

Why for some of us is that somehow more appropriate than an article about the various characters in Dragon Ball Z?

(To answer my own retorical question) because Shakespeare has somehow entered our Cultural literacy (in E.D. Hirsch's usage). This is clearly a subjective question. Notice also that I said "our" two sentences ago. We don't all come from the same culture. Maybe for some of us (in Japan perhaps) Akira Toriyama is much more well known (and a part of the Cultural literacy than William Shakespeare.

Maybe for some of us things like a 'Get out of jail free card' and 'Do not collect two hundred dollars' have entered the culture. For others, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards are more a part of the culture.

I also fail to see the negative consequences of leaving the fancruft in the wikipedia. I don't think that it reflects poorly on the other articles. Morris 03:22, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

Your observations are keen, and especially valuable in regards to the (supposed?) culture-neutral angle our encyclopedia adopts. (Itself of course subject to massive discussion, i.e. there's a de facto cultural bias anyway in our readers, so why not our writers...)

However, if we consider Wikipedias in other cultures, I think this can't be the whole picture. Shakespeare is notable in all Wikipedias because he was notable in English literature, and English literature is itself a notable topic (of course, more directly, Shakespeare has been massively translated and has entered new cultures that way). Can we say the same for (still random example) Dragonball Z?

Perhaps we can claim that has entered into cultural literacy if we consider a specific subculture, but of course that means anything goes, anything at all for which fans are sufficiently tight-knit to form a subculture. And in these days of massive online communication, fans meet up excessively easy.

So, is it really that "fancruft" is just what you call things you're not interested in, and you should basically reformulate it into other terms (like "notability", another shibboleth)? Of course "notability" can be made "objective" more easily: just start counting interested people... JRM 09:22, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

I agree entirely. There is a discussion on VfD currently in which nearly all the participants ridicule a comparison of Portia with Pokemon characters. But they are looking at it from a narrow perspective, I think. I'd venture to suggest that far, far more people interest themselves in Yu-Gi-Oh cards or the Simpsons than in Tale of the Tub, which it would be fair to say is probably not even particularly widely read. There's a large element in yelling "fancruft" of "I'm not interested". But hey, we have articles on fairly minor areas of mathematics and science, which are not particularly expandable (or interesting to anyone but mathematicians or scientists), and yet if you tried to list them, with the reason "mathcruft", you'd get your arse kicked. "Notability" is all too often a codeword for "I don't know what it is", when it isn't just a way of saying "I have no reason as such for not wanting this in, it just doesn't fit my idea of what should be in an encyclopaedia". The latter would at least be honest!Dr Zen 05:17, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

My problems with fancruft

I see two problems going on in the Wikipedia where fancruft is just the most obvious example. First is the atomization of topics down to articles on topics that only the most rabid fan or aficionado cares about. Often this stuff is done better elsewhere on the internet (witness the multiple Startrek projects).

The other side of this atomization is that I've often seen where the smaller articles have information that should have been left in the larger article (which when removed means that there is not much reason to keep the smaller article).

Why is this a problem? Part of it is the reputation of the Wikipedia. Do we want to be known, for example, as a place where high school students can find accurate and comprehensive articles on topics that will help them complete their schoolwork. Or do we want to be known as the place to find long articles on characters from Frank Herbert's Dune novel, as well as on video game characters?

Another problem is that too many editors for the Wikipedia seem to lose sight of the fact that the Wikipedia is ultimately for the casual user and we should do everything to make it easy for them. For example, if you go to The Tale of Genji#The tale article you can see a link for the main character Genji. If you go to that article, however, most people will probably have the same reaction that I had when I found that all there was in the article was a repeat of some of the info in the main article and a little bit of trivia. My reaction was "That was a complete waste of time". Even though the Tale of the Genji article is pretty good, the last impression, and the one that many people may keep on the Wikipedia may be the "waste of time" impression. There is absolutely no reason to have a separate Hikaru no Genji because everything important about him should be in the main The Tale of Genji article.

What I personally think needs to be done is that another sister project to the Wikipedia be developed--a "Wikipedia of the Imagination" (Wikimaginarium perhaps?), and then fans can go crazy entering anything and everything that they want down to the minutest bit of triva. For the main Wikipedia, however, the criteria for entering articles about characters should be: Does the character have significance outside of the source that it came from. Using that criteria, there really are very few characters that will qualify. Examples would include Sherlock Holmes as the über-example, plus others such as Holden Caulfield, Ishmael, Cinderella, Don Quixote, Fagin, Faust, Robin Hood, Tarzan, and Uncle Tom. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 10:45, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You make good points, and some disputable ones—I'll just touch on the obvious stuff for now, because I'm talking too much here anyway. (I pwnz0r this page! :-)

I think the reputation argument is indeed important in the eyes of many people (I'm not saying I agree, but that isn't the point of this discussion anyway). Just one quick quote: Do we want to be known, for example, as a place where high school students can find accurate and comprehensive articles on topics that will help them complete their schoolwork. Or do we want to be known as the place to find long articles on characters from Frank Herbert's Dune novel, as well as on video game characters? Have we already established that we can't possibly be known as both and get away with it?

What do you mean with the Wikipedia is ultimately for the casual user and we should do everything to make it easy for them? You're not talking about the lowest common denominator here, right? ("Hey, the casual user doesn't need to know about Gödel's incompleteness theorem, and who the hell cares about Praise-God Barebone anyway?") Can you clarify a bit? Are you just talking about the fragmentation of articles and the level of detail?

Re Wikimaginarium: not enough time to give this idea the full thought it needs. I'll leave the room to other speakers for now. JRM 11:04, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

re: Do both: If someone was to attempt to judge the Wikipedia by the quality and subject matter of the articles that they find by hitting the Randompage link, their verdict might be that the Wikipedia is for unexpanded gazateer entries and fancruft. It would be difficult to measure, but my sense on the matter is the fancruft entries are expanding faster (much faster?) than the Wikipedia as a whole. Thus it is quite easy to find articles like: Cyäegha, Sol Rosenberg, Hasimir Fenring, Cyan Garamonde, and Nately's Whore's Kid Sister. In my opinion, none of these particular articles deserve an encyclopedia entry, and if mentioned at all, should be in an annotated "List of ..." article.

re: "casual user": that was a bad choice of words. What I meant was anyone who was not a regular or even casual Wikipedia editor. I certainly didn't mean any reference to a "lowest common denominator" for users. It was meant to refer to anyone who might want to turn to the Wikipedia and who expects it to be a reliable, comprehensive, unbiased source of encyclopedic information that might help with school homework, solve bar bets, provide information on interesting or unusual subjects, etc.--that is, all the sorts of uses that the Encyclopedia Britannica or Encarta are also used for. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 12:35, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have the honor and pleasure of being a father of fifth grade and ninth grade students. I have introduced them to wikipedia, and they have sometimes found it useful for their research. (The biggest problem, compared to paper reference works is the need to have an exact spelling of something, but I discuss that elsewhere.) I think that they may be what GK meant by 'casual user'. They are not at all bothered by 100,000 articles that they are not going to read. The division of an article into many small articles is not really a big problem.

I would consider the The Tale of Genji#The tale (as described above) as just an article that should be improved by an editor. That could apply to any field of knowlege. I would guess that a poorly written section is more likely in an area with few editors.

In the case of my kids, the systemic bias is likely to work in their favor, as they are interested in (mostly) relatively well studies aspects of American and Western European history.

If the problem is with perceptions of wikipedia, maybe we should get rid of teh random page button. Or maybe give each page a weight based on something like the number of distinct people who have edited the page, or looked at the page. Morris 15:02, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

I think gK was just referring to one way of judging Wikipedia's quality: random probes, with "random" meaning equal distribution. Arguably, it's not a very meaningful way (nobody browses Wikipedia like this to get information, except perhaps trivia nuts), but the point can be made without the random page link (or suggestions for fixing it—that's yet another good discussion, but separate). That said, the objection that fancruft might make the encyclopedia appear to be of poor quality to people who judge it by the statistical distribution of topical article counts (can you still parse this? :-) seems to cry out for new ways of measuring Wikipedia, not weedling "overrepresented" articles down or removing them outright to make the statistics nicer. Random probes might be a good judge of (say) Britannica, but that's because it's a paper encyclopedia. The Britannica editors simply couldn't afford articles like Characteristics of common wasps and bees (impossible to look up) or Lost Springs, Wyoming (precedent to include every named place on earth, which makes all the rest impossible to look up), whether potentially useful to readers or not. Wikipedia has no such problems, by virtue of its medium; Wiki is not paper. That's not meant as an end to the discussion (for once :-), just to point out that the article distribution will always be anomalous compared to traditional encyclopedia, and that that's not in itself a good reason for change. JRM 17:19, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

I think that part of the problem with "fancruft" is that a potential new user, or someone evaluating wikipedia might very well decide to push the random-page button. I tried it a few times. I get mostly articles about more-or-less ordinary small cities in various parts of the world (primarily the central part of the US), with a few articles about minor characters in sci-fi or fantasy television shows. I'm just suggesting that we shouldn't do anything to go out of our way to point out the article distribution. Morris 05:08, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Here's an easy solution: remove the random page link. Since every debate on this topic seems to inevitably boil down to "someone might hit the random page button and find wikipedia to be crap", removing the random page link would seem to solve it once and for all. At the very least, it would make us focus on the real issues. Shane King 03:24, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

That (removing the random page link) was my suggestion a few paragraphs above. I have yet to read any other coherent reason for disallowing stuff.

The fact that wikipedia has a lot of information about one sci-fi tv series does not set a precedent that it is inadequate if it does not cover every other series to the same level. (The same argument applies to high schools, small towns, and pretty much anything else for that matter). Getting to the systemic bias issue, we have a lot more material on Star Trek than we do on William Shakespeare. What does that prove? That the editors are more interested in some things than in others. Wikipedia may become known as the place to find information about certain areas of popular culture. I don't know if that is what the founders had in mind, but it is okay. As I tried to say above, my pop-culture, might very well be your classic. Morris 04:22, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Oops, missed it in my rush to be sardonic. ;)

Anyway, I think the whole systemic bias issue is overplayed. The fact that there are so many articles on Star Trek compared to Shakespeare to me says our editors are more interrested in Star Trek. Our editors are drawn from our readers. By extrapolation, our readers are also likely to be more interested in Star Trek. I agree with you on the idea that we should embrace this. To do otherwise reeks of intellectual snobbery to me. Shane King 04:36, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

We are in agreement. Morris 05:20, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Neutrality

I think the issue at stake here is whether we are neutral in the value we ascribe to different things. As long as the article complies with the other policies, I think it's fine to have articles on Japanese card games. I really don't think that the issue of respectability is one we should worry about. When we unpack that concept what we find is that we are worried that users will think less of us if we don't agree with them about what is important or interesting. Let the user beware if they press the random page link - they may get great literature, or they may get star trek trivia, or perhaps a small american town the no-one has ever heard of. If they didn't want to take that chance, they shouldn't have pressed 'random page'! Intrigue 03:10, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A random sample of randompages

Here are twenty consecutive pages obtained using the randompage link, starting from the first that I received.

1. Ashley (Power Rangers) - typical fancruft, does not explicitly mention that this is about fiction
2. Thomas Kirk - biographical stub
3. Thomas M. Reynolds - biographical stub
4. Seven Persons, Alberta - geographical microstub
5. Lesseps class land battleship - typical fancruft, does not explicitly mention that this is about fiction
6. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base - quite nice article of a more or less geographical nature
7. List of anime - meta-fancruft
8. Abdullah (Afghanistan) - biographical stub
9. Velocipede - stub
10. Edward MacDowell - biographical article
11. Maxi Mounds - biographical stub about a porn model noted "for her extraordinarily large breasts"
12. Northern cities vowel shift - stub about a linguistic topic
13. Second dealing - poker-related stub (fancruft?) Intrigue
14. Mountains of the Moon - short geographical article
15. Bridge of Sighs (Oxford) - geographical stub
16. LVMH - article about a major international company
17. William Broomfield - short biographical article
18. Sound logo - stub
19. Maternity - dictionary definition
20. West Midland Bird Club - article about an ornithological society

Thus, we have:

• three fancruft articles, two of which do not even mention that they are about fiction
• one dictionary definition
• six biographies, including one porn star noted for extraordinarily large breasts (though not about fiction, this one seems to fit in the category of "small, specialised audience", therefore it is more like fancruft than like a valid article)
• four geographical articles/stubs
• six other articles

If I were a casual reader, this selection would not leave a favorable impression. This is just not what I expect in an encyclopedia. Kosebamse 11:38, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• What's the argument here? That the random link should go? That what you consider fancruft should go? That stubs should go? That Wikipedia contributors should hold themselves to higher standards in general? I'll give you the last one and I'm getting more convinced that the random link is a completely bogus way of evaluating Wikipedia (we have more rubbish than quality, now there's a surprise for a mass-edited online encyclopedia), but I don't quite see what the relevance is in this discussion. Are you advocating that we should delete everything that looks bad because it will make the remaining good stuff look better? Are you arguing that the bad articles are beyond saving anyway? Are you getting tired of me second-guessing your motives yet? :-) JRM 12:08, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)

I did this out of curiosity and don't make a specific argument here. However, unscientific as it is, the list gives an impression of the amount of 1) low-quality work (which doesn't bother me at all, that's how many articles start); 2) manifestly unencyclopedic articles even by our standards - Wikipedia is not a dictionary; 3) uninteresting trivia (while erotic actor is an interesting article, articles about individual porn stars are usually not, and we have far too many such articles); 4) fancruft. I have long stopped worrying about the ever increasing amount of ever more idiotic trivia in Wikipedia; but a casual reader looking at a random page will probably not like it. We tend to forget that we are making an encyclopedia for ordinary people (as opposed to slashdotters). It may be a good idea to remove the randompage function, because more often than not, a random article just makes us look silly. Kosebamse 12:43, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Let's remove the "Random page" function

As Kosebamse suggests above, I think that the Random page button should be removed. My unscientific experiment gets comparable results to his report above.

If that happens, then (for the most part) only people looking for fancruft articles will find them, and presumably they won't mind.

If I am evaluating or reviewing an encyclopedia (paper or electronic) I might try opening it to a random spot, and reading to evaluate the quality of the writing, but more likely I will look up topics where I think I have some specific expertise, and evaluate a few articles. Wikipedia looks good based on the second test, and if someone finds it lacking on their topic, well, that is at least a fair evaluation. Morris 14:39, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, y'all. I ask for no policy discussions and what do I get?! Damn wiki concept. :-) Seriously, though, if this is going to be discussed in earnest, this is not the page to do it. I expect opposition along the lines of "just because Wikipedia looks crap doesn't mean we should hide it" and "keep it, it lets me find all the fancruft and put it on VfD" and "the random page link is my life, or what most resembles it in any case", most of which is utterly tangential to this discussion. Take it to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), please. Start a new page if you have to. JRM 14:49, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)

Your point is well taken.Morris 15:40, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

It's nevertheless silly and impolite. I should have referred you to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), of course. I also sound like a boor when I Command people to Start New Pages. Apologies for that. JRM 16:11, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)

What about a tag that stops a page being shown on random? Or maybe altering random pages so that by default it does not show stubs? Although, on the other hand, I think many people use rand to find and fix stubs. Intrigue 18:36, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

OK, pretend I'm starting a new page. Hmm hmm, hmm hmm... Done. So the rest of my comment is on this new page, if you will.

The tag idea has been discussed, and if I remembered where, I'd point us to the discussion. Darnit!

Using rand to find and fix stubs is pretty silly. There's a reason we have Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub. Don't tell me you've tried all the links on there and found nothing to fix. I can see how lazy or opportunistic people would just hit rand enough times to get there, but that's still silly. More importantly, that has nothing to do with the idea discussed above that rand is harmful to our public image... Oh wait, there is no above, as I've put this on a new page. Never mind... :-) JRM 18:57, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)

I would suggest not to remove the randompage function, but hide it from non-logged-in users. That way the causal reader will be spared the hideous truth, yet users who like to use it still can. How about that? And the tag thing can be handled separately, I guess it would mean much more work. Kosebamse 11:39, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I strongly support keeping the randompage function. I often encourage people to use it to get a flavor of what is here. And if you think it is more likely to turn up crap than a worthwhile article, then work to make Wikipedia better! -- Jmabel | Talk 20:34, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

We should keep the random page function for all. Maurreen 19:27, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Jmabel and Maurreen. The random page function is one of Wikipedia's best points. Yes, you turn up crap. But then you can edit it! Wicked! Dr Zen 05:22, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)