Thus we can say, "come back when c, b and a have been fulfilled to
some extent".
To which the obvious answer is "there is no reason not to start *here*."
My thinking was that following the "insignificance principle" (see my correction to the typo) could help follow the "vanity principle". Simple example: imagine that there are 11 articles about businesses in Wikipedia. 10 are fortune 500's. The 11th one is Bill's Fish & Chips [1]. Bill is ridiculously "overexposed" and will get some sort of attention he doesn't really deserve. Hence he becomes more notable by appearing in Wikipedia. However, on a Wikipedia with 11 million articles on businesses, he deserves to be there - he's not out of place, and is no longer "vanity". Regardless of what his business turnover is.
We are not running out of disk space in any way at all, and 100000 "fancruft" articles don't make it any harder for me to find, e.g., [[EXA]] or [[Xenu]].
This is not a book. If someone makes a book, they can take care of it how they wish (e.g. the Category system).
I just wanted to stress that I'm not proposing these guidelines. I'm proposing them as expressions of unwritten guidelines that I suspect are in use. That way perhaps we can debate the actual merits of them.
Fancruft does not bother me if it follows the insignificance principle. However, I would rather see a very broad coverage of all TV shows before seeing the level of depth we see on one or two.
[1] An actual fast food shop.
Steve