Wikipedia:Cruftcruft
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Cruftcruft or
What is cruft?
Before moving on to "cruftcruft", one must first analyze "cruft" on its own. An example !vote at AfD might say:
- Delete as cruft. –Crufthater 03:03, 3 March 2003 (UTC)
"Cruft" originated in hackerdom, where it was used to mean "something which [is] badly designed, poorly implemented, or redundant." It was picked up in popular culture, where it has been defined as "useless junk or excess materials", and ultimately to describe "material which is typically lacking in quality, selectively biased, of a poor nature and of interest only to a small audience."
Unfortunately, this definition's lack of any objective criteria leaves "cruft" in the eye of the beholder. Rather than being anything meaningfully unencyclopedic, "cruft" can become any topic, subject or article that the beholder is uninterested in.
Don't call things cruft
While declaring something to be "cruft" in itself is not a rational argument for deletion, vast amounts of specific information on topics of little notability
Wikipedia editors are a pretty diverse bunch and as such pretty much everything is hated by some editor somewhere. Hating a music style is no reason to argue that an article on a band who play that style of music (providing they meet the relevant verifiability and source criteria) should be deleted, as music tastes are incredibly subjective and one person's cacophony is another person's symphony. The same applies to any issue of personal preference; some editors hate trivia, but what constitutes trivia is a subjective opinion and as things stand there is no concrete policy setting down what is and is not trivial, nor is there a policy stating that trivia should be deleted. Other editors hate
Arguments that the nature of the subject is unencyclopedic (for example individual songs or episodes of a TV show) should also be avoided in the absence of clear policies or guidelines against articles on such subjects. Perhaps the most common example of this kind of argument is the oft-used argument that articles/categories/whatever should be deleted as
Characteristics of cruftcruft
- Almost always used as justification for a delete !vote in an Article for Deletion discussion.
- Options other than delete not often considered.
- Often accompanied by the two-letter abbreviation "NN" (non-notable) as a justification for deletion.
- Use of the word "Cruft", commonly found in portmanteau forms, such as "listcruft", "gamecruft", and the nearly all-inclusive "Vanispamcruftisement".
- Wikipedia policies and guidelines are seldom referenced.
Cruft essays
Various essays have been created to describe supposed variations of the "cruft" problem:
- Wikipedia:Discussing cruft
- Wikipedia:Fancruft
- Wikipedia:Listcruft
- Wikipedia:Schoolcruft
- Wikipedia:Vanispamcruftisement
Editorial and policy issues of cruftcruft
Cruftcruft covers editorial and policy issues including the following, though anything corresponding to relevant Wikipedia policy is traditionally ignored:
- Wikipedia:Notability
- Wikipedia:Verifiability
- Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
- Wikipedia:Conflict of interest
- Wikipedia:Copyrights
- What Wikipedia is not:
- Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought
- Wikipedia is not a soapbox
- Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files
- Wikipedia is not a directory
- Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information
See also
- Criteria for Speedy Deletion
- Conflicts of interest
- Guidelines on external linking
- Wikipedia:Copyrights
Other Wikipedians' commentaries on this area
- Wikipedia:Complete bollocks
- Wikipedia:Vanispamcruftisement
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day
- Wikipedia:Spam Event Horizon
- User:Jamyskis/Wiki-Hell
- Wikipedia:Wiki-Hell
- Wikipedia:Listcruft
- Wikipedia:I wouldn't know him from a hole in the ground
- User:GlassCobra/Essays/What Wikipedia is
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress
- Wikipedia:Article development
- Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/Archive 35#Why inclusion matters
- Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 24#Why inclusion of fictional subjects matters
- Wikipedia:What Isn't Grounds for Article Deletion