2009/8/18 WJhonson@aol.com:
It's a question of the amount of coverage we want to give to fiction details. Let's say we have an article on Superman, and also on each of the various Superman comic runs that have appeared in the past 50 years. Now make an article on *each* comic issue, and then in that article describe the plot, characters, moral, date, number of issues, etc. *Now* for each character make an article for them, describing each issue they were in, with the plot details, and link them all together. You'd have something like three to twenty thousand articles on Superman. Many people would see that as overwhelming in scope and most relevant for a specialist work.
Yes, that is one side of the argument. It doesn't explain why the argument exists and is so prevalent.