[WikiEN-l] fancruft

[Michael Hopcroft]

Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>   
>> There are a number of reasons to do this.  One is that it helps lessen
>> the amount of "fancruft".
>>     
>
> First it behooves to demonstrate what's actually wrong with "fancruft"
> before trying to come up with arbitrary limitations intended to reduce it.
>
> For quite a while now I've been using Wikipedia first before IMDB when I want to know whether a movie or TV show is worth watching, a synopsis is rather important in that regard.
>   
As anyone who's been in a college literature course can tell you, there 
are many important things to ask about any work of art that go well 
beyond what happened in it and who was involved in tis creation. "why is 
this important?" "why do people talk about it, and what about it do they 
discuss?" "what does it mean, both intrinsically and in the context of 
the times and situation in which it was created?" "what reasons do those 
who dislike or dismiss it have for doing so, and how valid are those 
reasons today?" "has the way the work has been percieved changed 
signficantly between the time in which it was created and now?" The same 
can be said in many respects for the creators of a work; "Why was 
Shakespeare?" and "Why does Shakespeare matter?" are even more vital 
questions for a scholar (and encyclopedia writing is an essentially 
scholarly exercise) as "Who was Shakespeare?"

There are many things that would be readily accepted in an article about 
Macbeth that would dismissed as "fancruft" in an article about The 
Sopranos -- but there is no fundamental difference between the purpose 
of those two articles. None at all. "Why does The Sopranos matter?" is 
just as important a question as "Why does Macbeth matter?", just as "Why 
is The Sopranos the way it is?" is just as important a question as "Why 
did Shakespeare write macbeth the way he did?". Just because a work is 
newer, is less mainstream, or is more poorly regarded in the mainstream 
does not make it any less worthy of this sort of examination. Sometimes 
quite the contrary, at times: if one is writing an article on Plan Nine 
from Outer Space, the low-budget science-fiction film of legendary 
shoddy awfulness, it is important to provide some reason WHY it is worth 
talking about -- as an example of delusional hubris on the part of the 
idiot auteur Ed Wood, or perhaps as an example of the perseverance and 
improvisation that enabled Wood to complete the film in the face of 
innumerable obstacles like the death of his only remotely qualified actor.

Meanwhile, many wikipedia writers seem to be letting relatively minor 
things occupy more of their attention -- not because those things should 
not be included, but because they stop with them and do not go any 
further. I find this most common the biographies of actors, particularly 
LGBT actors. The last time I checked the article on Raymond Burr, one of 
the most significant actors in early American television, the only point 
mentioned other than a bare stub was his homosexuality -- a fact that, 
while worth noting, is utterly irrelevant to his legacy or, for that 
matter, to what made raymiond Burr a significant figure. Although if you 
want to examine the life of Raymond Burr his sexuality would matter, the 
article must still answer the question "Why is Raymond Burr important? 
What did he do and what did it mean? How is the world different than it 
would have been had Raymond Burr not existed?"

To partly answer that question: Burr matters because he was one of the 
first true "TV stars", because he had a knack for combining gravity with 
subtle humor which brought to vivid life one of the seminal characters 
of the medium of television, and his charisma enabled him to trancend 
the mold of the "leading man" stereotype of the era -- helping prove in 
the process that the new and not-well-respected medium WAS worthy of the 
attentions of a serious actor. In short, if you want to understand the 
way mass media developed in the United States, Raymond Burr is VERY 
important. Yet only his sexuality was considered important by whoever 
did his wikipedia article (unless it has been edited further since I I 
read it).

When writing a pop-culture article, even a stub I wish would be 
completed by others, I have made a practice of showing, as best I could, 
exactly what about my topic is significant. Because anyone who 
approaches editing cultural Wikipedia with any degree of serious should 
realize that they ARE scholars -- even if they're scholars of the 
Collected works of CLAMP rather than The Collected Works of George Orwell.