[WikiEN-l] fancruft

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 7/21/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> 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.

/me stabs Bryan

We're not talking about crufty articles about movie/TV show FOO.
People expect some amount of directly related trivia and even
subtrivia in pop culture subjects, and sometimes find it useful.

We're talking about when someone goes to an academic subject.. like an
article on electron spin, an article on a Nobel prize winner, or an
article on a prestigious university and adds something like  "In
episode 9543 of [[Real ultimate OMG coolness]] the main character, Mr.
Bubbles, mentioned X in passing"... and these inclusions pile up.

Unless you happen to read the entirety of Wikipedia (or at least the
what links here on the movie page) you're not going to see these
things... so I doubt that you're talking about the same thing.