Michael Hopcroft wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 7/21/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
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.
No one, but no one, is claiming that synopsises of TV shows are fancruft. Fancruft is the documenting of the entire fictional universe in detail. Out of control fancruft is documenting not only the official fictional universe, but subsequent fictional universes created by fans (fan-fancruft).
Which si no less relevant to the question I asked about: "Why does (subject of article) matter? Why are you even reading this article? Why did someone reasonably believe that it was worth his time and effort to write it?"
The problem with fancruft** is one of distraction and dilution. I think the best way to sum this up is that in almost every case the reader has come looking for something else and the fancruft gets in the way. For the enthusiastic fan it is likely that they already knew this bit of trivia (or in the case of our Harry Potter articles actively disagrees with the crufty bits added by someone else so they need to add a crufty counter example). It is rather like the Monty Python sketch that gave unsolicited commercial email its name when it starts to spread out into other articles.
Now as to the articles about the fictional universe in question. If I am a big enough fan of stargate that I am entertained by reading about all of the different kinds of space ships on the show. Then (A) I am better served by a single page to document them all. No one of them is going to ever have enough information that meets the other inclusion guidelines to have a full article. (B) I don't need to know every episode that an instance of said craft was used. If I am such a big fan as this then I have all the DVDs and know of 3 or 4 places on the Internet where such information is appropriate.
Fancruft if about wishing everyone though the things you like are as important as you think they are. In some cases this leads to a desire to have an article on every little detail as proof of its importance. But, the results are bad for wikipedia and they are bad for the coverage of the show or book. The rounding up and merging of Harry Potter articles that has been going on has had a very significant impact on the quality of our HP coverage.
** I am using the term fancruft to mean the inclusion of specific details of a fictional universe where they are not necessary or even detract from the encyclopedic point being made. Especially when found in articles on unrelated subjects.
Dalf