[WikiEN-l] Comic book articles and fancruft (was: Pattern copyvios involving...)

[Earle Martin]

On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Earle Martin wrote:
> > I think Phil is speaking from having read numerous fictional character
> > articles, not implying that his feelings stem from this incident. (I
> > happen to agree with him; the amount of blithering fancruft is
> > astonishing.)
>
> Yet he's using this incident as his "excuse" for it. If this incident
> itself had nothing specifically to do with his proposal and he was just
> tossing in an old dream of his, why was it initially focused on just
> Marvel comics characters?

Because a wise man once said, "Pick the low-hanging fruit." Everything
has to start somewhere, jihad on fancruft included.

> There's reasons why BLP is "ruthless" with
> regard to biographies of living people and those reasons are completely
> inapplicable to biographies of fictional characters. If you want to
> propose being equally "ruthless" for fictional characters I want to see
> a reason that's just as strong.

I thought having an encyclopedia that didn't suck was a pretty strong
reason. Do I need to elaborate on what I think that entails? I hope
not; I would have thought it was fairly self-evident.

> Also, the definition of "fancruft" is far less clear than the definition
> of "libel." I'd want to see something solid and widely accepted for that
> as well.

Okay, then, I'd like to throw that one out to the list, but I'll start
with: unnecessarily verbose, gushing and hyper-detailed recitation of
trifling details about a fictional element, contributed with a
reverence better reserved for factual information. (Or, in the terms
that I prefer, the dull and witless prattling of socially-impaired
nerds, but that's only my opinion, and not a recommendation for policy
wording.)


-- 
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/