User:Friday/cruft
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] Where's the harm in cruft?
Why NOT have trivia, lists of every kind, and articles on every pretend band, bus stop, or street corner? If they're neutral and verifiable, it doesn't hurt anything, right?
That's sometimes a straw man question, since the articles in question are so rarely verifiable using reliable sources. However, many people don't see the harm in this kind of cruft. I've thought of what is (to me) a good reason to keep a lid on this stuff.
Cruft attracts editors who are not interested in making an encyclopedia. The kinds of editors who like the cruft quite often don't understand (or perhaps don't believe in) WP:V and WP:NOR. They want Wikipedia to be a collecting place for any and all information of any kind. I see this as a Bad Thing, because it will cause the encyclopedia will go down in quality over time rather than up. Rather than bending Wikipedia to suit the editors who aren't interested in an encyclopedia, those editors need to go somewhere else, like everything2, or their own blog.
None of this is to say we can't be a set of specialized encyclopedias as well as a general one. We already have coverage of many many things that would never be in a general encyclopedia. This is OK, we're not paper. But, not being paper should not mean abandoning all pretense of encyclopedic standards.
If you don't believe that the cruftlovers are mostly a seperate group from the encyclopedia editors, take a look at who's contributing to List of Internet slang sometime.
[edit] See also
Wikipedia is not google, we don't need to document everything that's ever been posted anywhere on the internet.
[edit] Feedback
- Excellent statement of cruft and why it is a Bad Thing. I agree completely and sometimes feel it is like trying to stop raindrops and I'm not allowed to use an umbrella. -- MrDolomite 21:58, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
