On 02/05/06, Sam Pointon free.condiments@gmail.com wrote:
Some people use 'cruft' (me, for example) in the original sense - it's the word for that dust and fluff you pull out from under furniture. It is, outside of Wikipedia, most commonly applied to badly written and messy programming. Back in Wiki context, the term (when used in this sense, at least) makes no assertion of notability, but rather suggests that the article is in need of a major rewrite and/or cleanup.
You probably wouldn't use the term to describe a bunch of articles recently written by an enthusiastic young contributor to Wikipedia, who simply needs to be guided towards areas of Wikipedia more in need of his energy, then.
It's really hard to avoid causing offense when you're nominating an article for deletion, or even supporting a nomination. Pity that some people don't even try :/
Steve