One of the interesting parts of Wikipedia history is the decision to drive away "fan cruft" related to many popular cultures. I have always thought that this was a partial mistake, certainly as far as well referenced material goes, because there were enough active people interested in the subjects to curate the content. Of course the communities created their own wikis, many of them on Wikia, driving advertising revenue for that site (and containing many back-links to Wikipedia).
It seems to me that one of the motivations was to avoid Wikipedia being seen as a fan-site, or at least as not serious, perhaps by avoiding the type of claims discussed in WP:Wikipedia has more... Well the claims came anyway, and no-one in the mainstream press (including the BBC interview with Jimbo, but excluding Peter Thonemann in the TLS) questions the ipse dixit statements.
Perhaps the decision you refer to ("to drive away 'fan cruft'") was made prior to 2006, when I became a very active editor, but this is news to me. I'm not aware of any (current) Wikipedia policy or guideline that says that popular culture topics aren't allowed to have their own Wikipedia article if well-referenced - does such a policy or guideline exist? Formerly existed? Otherwise, exactly how would one "drive away" those inclined to put up a well-referenced article about popular culture? -- John Broughton(♫♫)00:17, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think he's talking about things like the infamous decision to delete all articles on individual Pokemon and collapse a fraction of the content into List of Pokémon; there was a major push against so-called "fancruft" in the 2000s. Conveniently, of course, this drove fannish editors onto ad-clogged Wikia. I think inclusion guidelines have softened since then, but I'm sure a lot of people would like them to soften further. ∴ ZX95[discuss]20:55, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Even then, there's still a problem with the 'fan cruft' when you use the Pokemon test vs. pro wrestling. The most notable difference: One of the more controversial decisions in the pro wrestling wiki 'fan cruft' claims would be the deletion of the NXT tag team Street Profits' wikipedia page, with the argument "they haven't made a WWE main roster debut, so they're not notable enough.' A few weeks after this decision was made, WWE 2K19 announced the roster who will be in the game, and since WWE games often involve the top stars from NXT, the two members of Street Profits made the video game cut. By Wikipedia's arguments, Street Profits are more notable as video game characters than they are as real people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8805:AB00:D0:34A8:CCB0:BFEE:77D0 (talk) 00:35, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a very well written and good article and I agree with almost all of it, I'm a WPWrestlng editor myself and I agree that wrestling storylines and the "shoot" events should be separetd in articles, like for exaple I think there should be a split in "kayfabe" and real life accomplishements in articles. But I do have one probem with this, that is that I don't think it's true that modern wrestling in any way presents itself as an actual competitive sport in modern day, that just isn't accurate.★Trekker (talk) 15:45, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this comment. They only really present it as being "real" during the shows themselves, where it can be considered in-universe. Outside of shows, the industry is pretty clear that it's a show, albeit an art form with some unique conventions. oknazevad (talk) 01:13, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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