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This is an essay, a page containing the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints, and they may be heeded or not based upon your judgement and discretion. |
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It is proposed that this page be promoted from its status to a policy or guideline. Please see the discussion on its talk page. |
A coatrack article is a Wikipedia article that ostensibly discusses the nominal subject, but in reality is a cover for a tangentially related bias subject. The nominal subject is used as an empty coatrack, which ends up being mostly obscured by the "coats".
Enforcement of the policies on biographies of living individuals and what Wikipedia is not makes it clear that "coatrack" articles are a particularly pressing problem where living individuals are concerned.
Coatrack articles can be created purposefully to promote a particular bias, and they can accidentally evolve through excessive focus on one aspect of the subject. In either case the article should be corrected.
Coatrack articles run against the fundamental neutral point of view policy: in particular the requirement that articles be balanced. When a biography of a living person is a coatrack, it is a problem that requires immediate action. Items may be true and sourced, but if a biography of a living person is essentially a coatrack, it needs to be fixed.
Contents |
Typical coatracks
Examples of coatrack articles include:
All About George
In an article about XYZ:
George Washington visited/slept/worked/ate at XYZ; George Washington was a terrible general and a lousy President, he owned slaves, lied about chopping down a cherry tree, and… (many following paragraphs all about George with little if anything to do with XYZ).
A Journalist Mentioned It In Passing
Joe Q. Random is a journalist. One day he wrote an article about Conspiracy Theory X. The main points of Conspiracy Theory X are as follows… followed by paragraph after paragraph about the conspiracy theory.
Some Dude Did It So It Must Be Good
Jim B. Ean is an athlete. One day he converted from religion X to religion Y. Isn't it nice how he saved his soul that way? Here are some more fun facts about religion Y, the greatest religion in the world: …
The Mono-Topic Fringe Biography
Dr Fronkensteen is a doctor known for his extensive research pioneering wongo juice as a cancer cure … Article then glosses over normal biographical details, except when useful as appeal to authority, and instead focuses on material relating to wongo juice.
The Criticism Gambit
Criticism section used to connect otherwise unrelated issues.
A halibut is a species of fish. Brief factual information about halibuts.
Criticism
It has been reported(crackpotreference)(nutcaseblog)(outofcontextquote) that halibut may be evil invading robots from outer space. I shall now take this opportunity to give you a long lecture on extraterrestrial robots: …
The Attack Article
- Further information: Wikipedia:Attack page
Wikipedia policy specifically prohibits articles whose primary purpose is to disparage a particular person or topic. Articles about a particular person or topic should not primarily consist of criticisms of that person or topic. For example:
John Doe works as a journalist. He has given over 30 years of long and faithful service to his newspaper. However, one day, he made the terrible mistake of nearly reporting an unchecked fact that came within a whisker of ruining an innocent person's life. Because he did this, he is an evil person. Here is some more information about this incident… (and so on, and so forth).
Isn't it funny
Joe Bloggs is a person. He runs what was recently voted America's worst literary agency. ZOMG! Isn't that funny… (and so on for the rest of the article about how useless Joe's literary agency is, despite the fact that the article is supposed to be about Joe).
There have been genuine cases where only the first sentence of an article is really about the nominal subject, with several paragraphs following about the bias subject. The "literary agency" example quoted above is a paraphrase of the content of a typical coatrack that was speedily deleted, and the decision to delete endorsed at Deletion Review.
"But it's true!"
The contents of a coatrack article can be superficially true. However, the mere excessive volume of the bias subject creates an article that, as a whole, is less than truthful. When confronted with a potential coatrack article, an editor is invited to ask: what impression does an uninitiated reader get from this article?
- If an article about a journalist mostly describes a conspiracy article he once wrote, the reader will leave the article with the false impression that the journalist's career is mostly about that conspiracy theory, and he is a vocal advocate of the theory.
- An article might have a disproportionately large "criticism" section, giving the impression that the nominal subject is hotly contested by many people, when in fact the criticism is merely selected opinions and the section creates an artificial controversy. This, too, gives the reader a false impression about reality even though the details may be true.
The coats hanging from the rack hide the rack—the nominal subject gets hidden behind the sheer volume of the bias subject. Thus the article, although superficially true, leaves the reader with a thoroughly incorrect understanding of the nominal subject. A coatrack article fails to give a truthful impression of the subject.
Fact picking
Often the main tool of a coatrack article is fact picking. Instead of finding a balanced set of information about the subject, a coatrack goes out of its way to find facts that support a particular bias.
A common fact picking device is listing great amounts of individual peoples' quotes criticizing of the nominal subject, while expending little or no effort mentioning that the criticism comes from a small fraction of people. That small fraction thus gets a soapbox that is far larger than reality warrants.
Even though the facts may be true as such, the proportional volume of the hand-picked facts drowns other information, giving a false impression to the reader.
What to do about coatracks
An appropriate response to a coatrack article is to be bold and trim off excessive bias content while adding more balanced content cited from reliable sources. In extreme cases, when notability is borderline, and there is little chance the article can be salvaged, deletion of the entire article may be appropriate.
Editors are not required to fill out the article so that more time is spent on non-bias matters in order to keep bias content. Instead, editors may fix an article by balancing it out with more facts but are in no way required to do so. It is inappropriate to "even out the percentage of bias" by adding fluff, such as minute details of a subject's life. These are considered scarves, hats, and gloves, and along with the coats, obscure the coatrack, and are also good candidates for removal.
What is not a coatrack
An article about an astronaut might mostly focus on his moon landing. A moon trip that took only a tiny fraction of the astronaut's life takes up most of the article. But that does not make it a coatrack article. The event was a significant moment in the subject's life, and his main claim to notability. A reader is not misled by the focus on the moon trip. In some cases where an event in a persons life is the only notable thing about them, it may make sense to only have an article on the event and not have an article on the person at all.
An article with a title that can have several meanings, or a term that is used differently in different fields of study, is not a coatrack if it only covers one definition. In this case, the article should be properly framed by beginning with "In {the field of X} topic Y is…" or by using a specific title possibly using parenthetical disambiguation, to show the article's limited scope. When the article is properly framed this way, it is not necessary to expand the article to cover every possible usage for balance – that content can be added over time and either merged or split through normal editing.
See also
- User:Weregerbil/Coatrack, the original source of this essay that was copied-and-pasted here one day because someone thought it really rocked.
- Wikipedia:Fringe theories
- Wikipedia:Stay on topic
