Wikipedia talk:Fancruft

Fancruft's impact on external Wikis

Because of the ban on fancruft, pretty much every major fictional universe with a serious fanbase has its own Wiki. Every single Star Trek article links to the corresponding article on Memory Alpha. The articles are usually pretty much identical, though Memory Alpha usually has more detail that anyone searching for a minor Star Trek character like Willard Decker or T'Pau (Star Trek) probably wants to know. To me, this just seems like a wasted duplication of effort and an inconvenience to readers. Provided it were technologically feasible, I'd like to see these special-purposes Wikis integrated as subsets of Wikipedia. I guess my real question is: why bother having an entry on Wikipedia for these sorts of things at all, if a superior entry (ie, appealing more to the tastes of those who wish to find it) exists elsewhere? -Anþony 05:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

A problem I encounter long ago. Lets me express why it isn't alway a good idea to get rid of article only becuase there's external Wiki existed. While I have no problem with external Wikis with well-organize staff, some aren't good as it should be. If external Wiki existed for whatever fiction, I would want to see it more reliable with staff who keep de-speculation and hoax from articles. If it isn't good enough, contributors here most likely ignore it. And sometime the contributors at extarnal Wikis even copy stuff from here, Wikipedia. And I can tell you, have your article deleted because someone copy your own stuff and put it in minor site leave nothing but bitter taste. In short, I think it's nice idea if we trimmed down some articles and put link(s) to external Wiki with better information offer, but deleted it only because there is external Wikis on the subject is bad.L-Zwei 05:37, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

We've tried this with WikiFur. The trouble I've found is that people sometimes delete the links because they're to another wiki. More often, of course, they just delete the articles here because they are viewed as being on non-notable topics. Perhaps a better approach is to write summary pages that link to the other wiki for more information, but then you end up with articles filled with interwiki links. I wouldn't mind that so much, as it dissuades trivial recreation of the articles here on Wikipedia, but I just know people are going to view that as undue promotion of a wiki that doesn't meet Wikipedia's expectations of verifiability. The only reasonable solution I see is some kind of interwiki search engine that presents results when an article is not found, but warns explicitly that the site is a different site from Wikipedia, with different rules. GreenReaper 08:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree with anpony. Wikipedia should allow for the inclusion of fictional universes. Both because of practical purposes and because it IS what wikipedia was originally to do. It doesn't matter if there is too much trivia on a page. There is always too much minutia in life as well. Wikipedia should grow up and refrain from obsessively controlling content. It shows both intellectual inferiority and all the time wasted arguing about it could be better spent. -Chinatown —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chinatown670 (talk • contribs) 21:30, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with anpony. Even though some articles are very similar or duplicates, that doesn't mean Pokémon isn't relevant for Wikipedia. As wiki is a term not just for Wikipedia, I think it isn't fair to call them "subsets". Pokémon is relevant to a Pokémon wiki, so is a minor character like Ritchie, who isn't relevant enough for a page but would still be given a small mention on a separate Wikipedia page. Also, some "external" wikis are very poorly written, especially on Wikia, where you can create a wiki at will, and they have about three pages, which are all poorly written stubs. This is Mkbw50 signing out! 21:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mkbw50 (talk • contribs)

Doesn't getting rid of 'fancruft' (what a dumb term) kind of go against...uh...the whole principle of Wikipedia as a source of all the information you could possibly need/want on whatever subject it is you've looked up. I can't tell you the number of times I've come to Wiki, looking for info, and not been able to find it because of this strange rule. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.14.214.100 (talk) 22:38, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

When fans tip the scale

The bad thing about fancruft, is that articles such as the ones in World of Warcraft are nearly impossible to either delete or merge, whenever there is any voting, fans of the game overwhelmingly vote for Keep, or no consensus is ever reached. What should be done in such cases?, should those little articles about every little detail in the game stay just because they can dubiously survive a delete vote? (thus proving to be somewhat important), should a special voting be called upon?. This whole issue is intriguing in that sense, id like to hear some ideas on this. For more info heres a nice link [1] , notice how fast the no consensus was called upon (in less than a day). My all time special favorite article that was somehow not deleted was the "corrupted blood" article, the discussion can be seen here [2].

Why should one article be treated differently from another in an AfD debate simply because of the content? Jtrainor 14:55, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Because of the importance of the content, but i see your point.

I propose adding a section explaining (or suggesting) how and when you should create a subpage

Such as the Brokeback Mountain awards page, and Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky career achievements pages. People who come here may not be aware you can even do this. If this isn't done fancruft can become like an infection or virus which spreads incessantly killing the host page. See this previous version of Dwyane Wade for an example (go to the bottom Awards/Honors section). Quadzilla99 07:36, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

This would be useful, as using this essay as an excuse to remove reasonable content needs sorted. Bowsy 18:39, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge

Wikipedia:Listcruft is just an extension of this article. It should be merged with this page or the two pages made into one page dealing with cruft. Any objections? Bowsy 13:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Listcruft is independent of fans. One is a general phenomenon related to a certain datastructure (lists) which for some reason people love to add to, and the other refers to the activities of certain subgroups of people. --Gwern (contribs) 21:17 20 February 2007 (GMT)

Then should they both be merged under the heading "Cruft"? Bowsy ^{(review me!)} 19:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Not unless the existence of two separate pages on cruft is so repugnant that it may only be suffered to exist as a single consolidated page on all things crufty. --Gwern (contribs) 21:29 23 February 2007 (GMT)

Oppose. Listcruft is quite a bit different from fancruft, and too common to be part of the fancruft article. -- BlastOButter42 ^See Hear _Speak 04:00, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this would be entirely appropriate to make one Cruft page because cruft is an abstract concept just used by editors as a way to try and get things they don't want on Wikipedia off it. Better to keep stuff like that in one place. Bowsy ^{(review me!)} 09:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. First, fancruft warrants its own essay if there are policy issues specific to it and not other types of cruft, which I think is true. Second, based on my experience, it is a notable phenomenon within the wikisphere. __ø(._. ) Patrick("\(.:...:.)/")Fisher 01:19, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

fancruft alert

see Talk:Unending —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.72.144.19 (talk) 19:21, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

WP:FICT rewrite

A rewrite of WP:FICT is being proposed at Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)#Rewrite proposed. Needs polishing, clarification, and so on, but it's a start. — Deckiller 22:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Valid reasons for deletion, Not

Quote "This is primarily due to the fact that things labeled as fancruft are often poorly written, unreferenced, unwikified, and non-neutral - all valid reasons for deletion." No - these are all valid reasons for editing! Articles don't get deleted just because they are unwikified, for example. 81.92.18.58 (talk) 22:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:Be bold! I've fixed it, but the sentence could probably use some expansion as to why such articles can be deletion-worthy. -- Ddxc (talk) 08:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Guideline

Ive proposed this for a guideline on count if it is put as a guideline it would make articles with a fan basen more professional.EE 01:07, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

• This is a blatant POV essay. If it is intended to be a guideline, it needs to be renamed and rewritten from a vaguely neutral perspective. I fully support removal of the "proposed" tag. Alansohn (talk) 03:14, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
• This is not intended to be a guidelines of any sorts, it merely strives to define what "cruft" is for the convience of editors. Ditch the proposed tag and just leave the essay one. We already have plenty of guidelines to show how to deal with "cruft", such as WP:V and WP:NOTE. -- Sabre (talk) 14:29, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

• Both of which have so far miserably failed at keeping unsuitable stuff at bay. Everyme (was Dorftrottel) (talk) 16:54, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Because there is no consensus as to what "unsuitable stuff" is. BreathingMeat (talk) 05:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

• We can't make this a guideline, it's just too arguable, and easily inferred differently from person to person. One man's idea of fancruft differs from topic to topic. In fact, this whole idea of fancruft is trash, simply because anything that someone who is uninterested about or has no desire to learn about can be slapped with the label of being fancruft. All this term creates when it gets mentioned on article talk pages is arguments and anger. Zell65 (talk) 16:34, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, if everything was always left to so called "professionals" nothing would ever get done. The British were the "professional" colonizers of America, but in the end the "fans"(Americans) won out because they knew better than some fools thousands of miles away. I would agree that in some cases there are groups of people who are waaaaaay to deeply into a subject and they take it to seriously, to the point of being unhelpful, but in most cases, the fans are just more knowledgable, and if they throw in information not interesting non-fans, so F---ing what? If it is in fact so unbelievably repugnant to your way of tastes/that broomstick up your ass, then click the magical "back" button on your browser and forget it was there. It is not your job to decide who is giving "too much information". Nor is it anyone's. Until the internet "runs out space" leave the couple extra sentences about random factual trivia alone. Zell65 (talk) 16:34, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

• OK. If you'd just tell your founding fathers to keep their World of Warcraft trivia inside the video gaming domain and out of the Giant Panda article that'd be fine with me. BreathingMeat (talk) 21:15, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Another way of dealing with Fancruft

Since removing of Fancruft is going to cause problems and potentially pressure people into resigning out of disgust, which I did when I had chosen to quit as an official user it will just create a potentially unstable working environment. Personally I think of conducting a verifiability test and moving what can be proven to a separate Wiki would be a good choice since it can give what both sides of the conflict want and help with dealing with Wikipedia's criticism especially since the one thing I value more than keeping these article that people call Fancruft on Wikipedia is to move them to an appropriate site since many of these Wiki's are in bad shape and could use the help. -71.193.181.210 (talk) 00:37, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

WP:FAN redirecting here

I think this essay contains some good info, but is unnecessarily complicated. Basically I think many new and existing articles/sections simply fall under this straight forward and effective description:

"Has excessive trivia, irrelevant praise, criticism, lists, or collections of links"

There's no need to introduce the "cruft" term which is foreign to most users. What is the purpose of describing it as hacker neologism, when you can succinctly use the description above? There's also no need for all the other cruft and Star Wars/Star Trek references. This essay comes across as being very hacker-ish, Sci-Fi focused, when something like excessive trivia/praise can apply to pretty much anything.

Don't you think it would be more effective to just say "Has excessive trivia, irrelevant praise, criticism, lists, or collections of links" rather than having to explain what cruft means?

Futhermore, I don't understand why WP:FANSITE redirects to wp:external links, while WP:FAN goes here.

I find many articles in need of cleanup where the fansite tag seems appropriate, but I don't like this as the landing page.

Perhaps the best thing to do is just create a new essay for WP:FAN and let this one stay? I don't know.

Thank You

--Omarcheeseboro (talk) 14:48, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I can't understand the criticism. You are upset because this web page has too many hacker and sci-fi references. I would suggest that you are much too serious and need to invest in a sense of humor. e.g. LIGHTEN UP>>>> I say this because an unknown reference is an opportunity to learn something new, not to criticize because it's esoteric or in this case trivial. But I do agree that this page is not required. Neither is the "excessive trivia" patch. Stop trying to control content that is neither wrong or non-factual. Keep the debate to worrying about whether a new post is factually accurate. That is the only concern of wikipedia. While succinctness is important, we seem to be wasting an inordinate amount of time arguing about it. --User:Chinatown670 —Preceding undated comment added 21:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC).

I added "pejorative" to fancruft is a term

I added "pejorative" to the first sentence. Ikip (talk) 11:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Removal of "Positive aspects" section.

The positive aspects section basically says "the upside to calling something 'cruft' is that it encourages people to improve the article so it's not deleted". No. There are better (and more official) ways to point out that an article needs improvement (eg. referring to Wikipedia:NOT) without resorting to the ambiguous and confronting term 'cruft'. There are no positive aspects to calling an article cruft that cannot be better achieved in other ways. I believe the "positive aspects" section should be entirely removed. --Irrevenant [ talk ] 13:15, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Fancruft

this essay has a lot of potential to becoming a guideline. If we try to make this in a Guide, it might be able to become policy if it's structured well.

things we could do is add more about WP:INUNIVERSE WP:BIAS WP:TRIVIA and self published source topics into here. Bread Ninja (talk) 19:30, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Cruft is, always has been, and always will be a pejorative term. As the essay says, it is fundamental uncivil, and it has no connection to what ought to be the real considerations such as sourcing or notability.

To get rid of all three of those aspects would be to reduce the essay into nothing but a pale copy of some existing guideline or policy, and so would be otiose. It cannot be a guideline, much less a policy. --Gwern (contribs) 19:42 30 November 2009 (GMT)

ALl it needs to do is be written in a NPOV. Still many other guidelines relate to other guides. why cant we just try? well nevermind, i can see you wont want to.Bread Ninja (talk) 15:48, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

What about music?

This article mainly discusses fans of movies or TV shows but I'm running into pages of musicians and musical groups that include extremely long lists of every single song/record the artist contributed to and even every single TV appearance the artist has made. Clearly a lot of work went into compiling all of this and, as a nonfan, I'm reluctant to pick and choose what is important and which is of interest only to hardcore fans.

Also, on some actor's pages, there is a list of every single TV appearance the actor made which, in some cases, can lead to a list of 50 or 60 titles, making the page resemble IMDb rather than an encyclopedia entry. Are there guidelines about this? 69.125.134.86 (talk) 13:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I suppose it all just ends up being guided by WP:V - if there isn't a reliable source to verify that a particular fact is true then it really can just be removed. Otherwise, it seems like WP:INDISCRIMINATE applies. §everal⇒|Times 15:46, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Pejorative, violates WP:CIVIL?

Soooo...basically, we should strive to avoid fancruft in articles, yet not use the TERM fancruft to describe fancruft, because that might seem pejorative, thus violating WP:CIVIL and potentially earning you a block.

Sweet. So glad we have these well-organized essays around to clarify things. Bravo Foxtrot (talk) 04:40, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, this essay does miss the point a bit about the term 'fancruft'. What seems like more of a WP:CIVIL violation (and a violation of common courtesy, for that matter) is to use the term to absolutely dismiss any idea without further discussion. Usage of term itself shouldn't be offensive unless it is used in an uncivil context. §everal⇒|Times 14:31, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

More often than not, I've seen editors blank entire sections or even entire articles stating "Blanked..Cruft" or something like that. The use of the term "Cruft" (which in some connotations literally means "garbage") is in itself uncivil. To blank entire articles without a word of discussion is even worse...yet it does happen. -O.R.^Comms 02:25, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

What about video games?

There should be more discussions about video game cruft, especially with the GamerGate controversy. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 02:20, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

I've found video game articles coming under quite a bit of attack lately. The entire policy on game articles needs to be reviewed. Too many articles are being essentially blanked under the term "Revert..Cruft". I am certainly not the one to start the battle, but I think it does need to be discussed. -O.R.^Comms 02:25, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I must agree. Inclusionists' and deletionists' views should both be considered and for each case, a thorough discussion is needed. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 02:25, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

GAR input sought; possibly Fancruft related

I'm posting this here as this appears the right place to discuss the issues of Fancruft. :-) I must admit that I've not been aware of this term or its usage in Wikipedia before yesterday, so I'm new here.

It has been suggested to me by editor Coretheapple in the Discussion area of a current GA reassessment that the review be brought to the attention of a wider audience. The article in question is Hyacinth Graf Strachwitz; no specialist World War II knowledge is required to be able to contributed to the GAR.

The article has been described as "Fancruft" by the editor who suggested I seek more opinions, while another editor described it as ""Nazi Fancruft".

I would welcome a review of the article to see if it still meets Wikipedia:Good article criteria and whether it should be retained or delisted as a Good article. I would also welcome any feedback you'd be willing to share. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:57, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

It might be fancruft to me, despite it not having to do with a fictional work. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 00:25, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Jimbo limit for Fancruft

Hi, Jimbo Wales mentioned in the edit summary of this diff that a plot summary of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child should be about 300-350 words. I think this essay would benefit from putting that sort of rule of thumb in there, not only because Our Benevolent Dictator mentioned it, but because it also seems pretty reasonable. I should note the important caveat that this would only be a rule of thumb, and could very well change from article to article based on a consensus in the respective talk page. Thoughts? Icebob99 (talk) 16:27, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

I should add here that the exact numbers I mentioned in the edit summary were my own view. I doubt if I made them up out of thin air, but I can't find now a reference to a guideline with those exact numbers. I suspect the least controversial number to use will be 400-700 words, from Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Film#Plot. But in general, I do think adding that guidance to this article will be helpful, as many people are sent to read about fancruft and the more concrete help we can give them, the better they will be able to do the right thing going forward. Update: I found where I got my numbers, here. I think this actually is accurate. The 400-700 is for films, the 300-350 is for writing about fiction, and this is a published work of fiction. It's a play and not a novel, and the guidelines don't seem to distinguish.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:40, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Jimbo Wales: I can't find the 300-350 guideline in the link you provided, is there another page which mentions it? Either way, the idea of having a guideline on plot summaries has seen significant discussion, see

• birth of the film guideline
• a question that led to some discussion Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 2#Plot word limit clarification
• a discussion of the film guideline writing Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 5#Proposed rewrite of "Plot"
• rebirth of the 400-700 guideline
• a discussion Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 6#Plot Length
• an unsuccessful challenge Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 7#400-700 word limit in guideline
• an unsuccessful challenge Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 10#My suggestion on film plot summaries
• an unsuccessful challenge to remove lower bound of 400 Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 11#Plot summary length
• a question that led to some discussion Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 12#Word count

Icebob99 (talk) 16:26, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Well @Jimbo Wales: You should be consistent as well and this applies to all works. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 01:24, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Articles about fictional works

I ran across Major characters in The Railway Series from the books The Railway Series. Even though it is primarily sourced I could see some importance from a children's point of view. I also saw Wikipedia:WikiProject Thomas and a Should I create an article, or not? section that includes "...it is not necessary to create a new article for every single place, person and concept in the stories.". I saw an AFD for Minor characters in The Railway Series and thought, "now it is spreading" and then ran across the unsourced The Small Controller also at AFD. There is the unsourced (single source but dead link) Annie and Clarabel, the single primary sourced only Bertie the Bus, the unsourced (reference is to a general site about a Sikorsky S-55 helicopter and nothing on the subject) Harold the Helicopter, and the primary sourced Terence the Tractor. The railroads are the single primary but dead linked North Western Railway (fictional) that is complete with an almost full page drawing of the fictional railway, the large general sourced (no inline citations) Skarloey Railway, and the rest, Culdee Fell Railway, Arlesdale Railway, Mid Sodor Railway (totally unsourced), and The Sodor & Mainland Railway. I can add the totally unsourced and ambiguously named The Other Railway and there are most likely others.

I think this "list" of articles on fictional characters has gotten out of hand and should be added to the other examples already in the essay. Otr500 (talk) 13:14, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Sections and factoids

This essay assumes that fancruft refers to whole articles. I usually come across it as sections or factoids within an otherwise viable article. Would anybody object if I rephrased parts of the essay accordingly? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:08, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Fancruft as portions of articles?

Hi all,

Is the statement "information that is trivial and of importance only to a small population of fans" supposed to be read as "a small population" of all fans who are likely to read a given page, or "a small population of fans" across the entire Wikipedia readership, and in either case how is that measured? For context, how does Fancruft apply in the context of a section intended as an article appendix? As an example, this former edit of a page covers the details of a specific class of Australian locomotive. At the end was a section for "model railways", which I thought was reasonably concise (while the table was collapsed). Putting aside issues of other policies e.g. WP:Promotion, WP:OR, WP:NOTACATALOGUE etc. for the sake of this discussion, was it correct to remove the section on grounds of WP:Fancruft?

Anothersignalman (talk) 18:27, 24 November 2023 (UTC)