Wikipedia:Example cruft

This is too many gnomes for an article about the popular garden decoration to cover.

Encyclopedia articles are a summary of accepted knowledge on a given subject. Making an appropriate summary involves describing theories and observations that come from mainstream scholarship and news. Naturally, every theory can be demonstrated using examples or counter-examples. However, this tends to make articles less readable and reliable because mentioning too many examples, or exploring an individual example in an excessive level of detail, takes the article farther away from its original point.

Writing about examples of the phenomenon

Examples help readers advance their understanding of a concept by typifying it. One (or at most a few) examples about the subject matter under discussion should suffice. Before adding a further example to an article, pause to ask yourself whether doing so would help readers unravel additional facets of the article subject, or if it would only be adding details specific to that example, without advancing the readers' understanding of the central theme.

If the number of examples in an article become too many, consider pruning them, or creating a separate list at the bottom of the article. Where the list of examples as a whole has verifiable cultural significance, consider creating a separate article.

See also

Essays

• Wikipedia:Systemic bias
• Wikipedia:Overlistification
• Wikipedia:Writing better articles
• User:Uncle G/Cargo cult encyclopaedia article writing

Policies and guidelines

• WP:SPAMBAIT
• WP:TRIVIA
• WP:SYNTHESIS
• WP:WEIGHT
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists)
• Wikipedia:Fringe theories

Templates

• Template:Example farm
• Template:Example cruft editnotice