Wikipedia:Midden

This is an essay. 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.

Any Wikipedia article which becomes a midden is no longer very useful to readers.

Signs of this include, but are not limited to:

1. Laundry lists in the body or lede of an article of minor facts or events relating to the main topic of the article.
2. Unreadable sections in any article (see Gunning fog index) which make the article unusable by a large percentage of users.
3. Lists of references which are as long or longer than the article itself.
4. Overcitation, especially where a single word has ten or more number cites attached.
5. Lists of trivia which do not improve the reader's understanding of the article's topic.

The primary aims of Wikipedia are readability, and making topics clearly and accurately presented with a neutral point of view. Each of the situations given above makes those aims less possible in any article.