On 19/07/06, Michael Hopcroft michael@mphpress.com wrote:
You know, I haven't really seen a good working definition of the term "fancruft", yet I seem to have run afoul of the concept more often than I have failed to. Mind you, the areas of my expertise (animation and RPGs) are especially vulnerable to such claims, but I seem to be running into it far more often than most other editors.
I would say that I have an objection to some of the ways the policy has been applied, particularly to my own articles, but since I do not know what the policy actually entails (all things considered) it is difficult for me to form a rational response or objection to the times when I feel it is applied unfairly or unwisely.
Could someone give me a non-judgmental (because it usually seems to be applied to content that those who cite find objectionable for other reasons, as in the case of the possibly offensive Archbishop Tutu joke that Mr. wales cites) explanation of just what the term 'fancruft" means and entails as a matter of Wikipedia policy? (The apparently contemptuous nature of the term 'fancruft" itself also sticks in my craw as inherently judgmental, but that is neither here nor there.)
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Fancruft is the overdocumentation of certain fields of entertainment. Jimbo's extract is a good example of bad fancruft - inserting niche information into an article which won't benefit the reader.
Sadly, the word "fancruft" is too often levelled at anything the accuser doesn't like him/herself. In this case it is a form of elitism; the accuser claims that the articles a particular user is trying to write are somehow not worthy enough simply due to their subject matter. All you need to do is cite "Wikipedia is not paper".