Wikipedia:Abundance and redundancy

This is a policy writeup; as yet unofficial - see Talk

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Abundance and Redundance is informal policy dealing with similar material being shared among separate articles, and debates over the removal of said materials on the basis of context: It is a preferred solution that material be included rather that excluded to resolve an edit war. In many cases, edit wars are based on a premise, that: "such material doesnt belonghere, because it belongs in another article." Instead of removing content, it is preferred to have abundance and redundancy of content

Table of contents 1 Size and ease-of-reading issue 2 Solution to NPOV disputes 3 A hypothetical example 4 Editing is just as much about exclusion, as inclusion

Size and ease-of-reading issue

Since most articles are very small (under 10k), and size, therefore, is not an issue, there is no valid reason to exclude material on the basis of its redundancy of external material alone. Ease of reading is facilitated by the inclusion of relevant material, rather than disinclusion. In fact , if we were'nt "redundant", following this logic, every article would be chopped up into tiny little bits - each of which would link to very specialized articles that you had to piece together.

Solution to NPOV disputes

More often this situation involves a disagreement about the validity of facts and/or their sources. Or, often, its about the inclusion of points of view that differ. These tend to be examples of where materials that contradict the material already present in the article are contested. It's a reflex tendency of someone attached to a topic to want to exclude facts that seemingly contadict other facts in the article. It is often a flaw of human nature to want to simplify contentious topics by merely excluding points of view that disagree with it. This in fact, is the reason for the NPOV policy. Even in these cases, abundance and redundancy as a rule of thumb can lead to a solution.

A hypothetical example

The "Geminye Cult" article: The Geminye Cult claim to have recently produced a working model of cold fusion. "User:JoeX1000" adds this claim to the article, under the lead, as a claim. A anonymous Geminye Cult member, however, "555.454.x.x", has removed this information to the "ColdFuzers" article; about a subsidiary company of Geminye. A small "revision-war" errupts over the inclusion of this material...

This represents a common scenario: In these cases, an enourmous amount of time and energy is wasted on the exclusion of something, as opposed to simply including it. "555", claims that this would be" redundant", but he is incorrect - "redundancy" only detracts if its on the same article. As a rule; if the material is factual, and if its not entirely irrelevant to the topic, it should not be excluded.

Editing is just as much about exclusion, as inclusion

"555" wanted the facts to be handled in a discorporate way: to isolate elements that are controversial: So that if they eventually are found to be false, can be disassociated from the "Geminye cult". Although it doesnt seem to be logical to worry about a Wikipedia article, people do battle over history and the way it is written all the time.

In a completely different context, this is the basic idea behind Enronomics; the moving of accounting defecits from the main company to subsidiaries in order to make it appear as if there are no conflicts. All particulars aside, this type of confusion of issues is a form of fraud.