Wikipedia:Fancruft

This is an essay on the neutral point of view policy. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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This page in a nutshell: Avoid including information that is trivial and of importance only to a small population of fans. In-universe topics must demonstrate out-of-universe notability.

Fancruft is a term sometimes used on Wikipedia to imply that a selection of content is important only to a small population of enthusiastic fans of the subject in question. The term is a neologism derived from the older hacker term cruft, describing obsolete code that accumulates in a program.

While "fancruft" is often a succinct and frank description of such accumulations, it also implies that the content is unimportant and that the contributor's judgment of the topic's importance is clouded by them being a fan. Thus, use of this term may be regarded as pejorative, and when used in discussion about another editor's contributions, it can sometimes be regarded as uncivil.