User:Masem/cruft-essay

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Well, there's two basic issues. Ok, to some extent, there are problems with cruft leading to statement that violate V, NOR, and NPOV. But presently there's a lot of articles on fictional aspects that don't do this, so the question of what's wrong with cruft leads to these two issues. The first is NOT - we have a notability guideline which requires significant coverage in secondary sources across the board. Most of the "cruft" we have cannot met this. If we loosen the requirement for fiction, we open the way for similar cruft in other fields - science, math, history, etc. Fiction cannot be treated as a special category without opening too many cans of worms for other fields. The other issue is that most "cruft" is non-free content used as fair use: plot summaries, characters descriptions, etc. While the Foundation has stated that media (images, sound files, etc.) have to have certain restrictions, they haven't said anything on text works. Someone way back points out two lawsuits where publishers that printed unauthorized guides to fictional works (one being Twin Peaks) that simply summarized epsidoes, plots, and characters, were lost by the publishers. WP (best we know) hasn't come under this, but combined with the "free content" mission, such "cruft" should be kept to a minimum and/or backed with "educational" aspects that teach the reader about the real world aspects of the works -- that is, we go back to notability again.

WP has had much more detailed coverage (without real world notability) of fiction before but the consensus has been to move away from that and suggesting that info go to off-site wikis which can be linked in. The problem is is that those not involved with editing WP day-to-day have come to expect that WP is a fan guide, which, for the most part, it typically can't be. We just need to make sure the process of what some have come to expect and where they can get the same information is as transparent as possible. When articles are merged, redirects should be left to point to where the merge occurred; deleted articles point back to a reasonable point, and we make sure ext. links contain appropriate wiki links. I've been trying to work out a version of WP:FICT that gives more leeway and good faith improvements that can be made to fiction articles so that they aren't swept away in a blink, though still, at the end of the day, urges the use of notability and real world information balanced with plot. It will not satisfy all (if it did, that version would have been in place already), but we have to work to balance what WP's mission is, and what some have come to expect of it. --MASEM 01:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)