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.

A perspective on why we need WP:MOS ~ less fillers

I decided to write this essay after struggling to explain why filler content should not be mentioned in lede of an article and better mentioned elsewhere. [1]

Per MOS, filler content in article's summary is generally discouraged esp when it belongs more appropriately elsewhere or distracts from the focus of the article. Or repeats commonly known or easily linked facts.

At first, that seemed obvious to me what was wrong, but was not so easy to explain to others why this policy exists. That made me reflect more deeply. After reading one helpful editor's insight[2], I realised that understanding whether something fits the MOS often means stepping back and seeing the forest, not just the trees. Also previously I read Manual of Style official guidelines but the issue is it tells you what to do. But it doesn't explain deeper why we need to do that. It may be easier to agree on how WP:MOS should be applied, and respect that policy when we understand the fundamental purpose and is the point of my essay. And when we respect MOS, we respect the reader's time and the purpose of each article.

I made this framework/explanation and tho it’s not perfect, I hope it offers a way to clarify our thinking about what belongs where - and why.

Think like a savvy reader

It helps to think like a savvy reader who uses Wikipedia well and easily. If you want to learn how long an Olympic pool is, you go to the Olympic swimming article. If you can't figure out that 100m race requires two laps of 50ms in the Olympics and need the article to also tell you that, then Wikipedia isn't for you. The site is a navigational platform and more a starting point for deeper research and learning about all kinds of topics.

But certain pages shouldn't try to fit absolutely every trivial thing or have much filler bloat. Example - A lede in an article about a particular Fina soccer match in 2020 shouldn't also be educating readers on whether the field is grass or how long the match will take (90 minutes). Such background info belongs in the body or in the main FIFA or football page - but not in the event summary. You expect a savvy reader to learn to navigate and find their way to their desired info reasonably easily.

Notability makes an exception

An exception applies if say there is a new inaugeration soccer match event where the rules are suddenly different and unprecedented like soccer players can now tackle each other for the very first time, then the unusualness of this context would be notable enough to be included in the lead of that historic first event.

However if the rules are just more of the same old, you can just navigate to the main FINA page to learn about them deeper, and not need them in a specific soccer match summary. If a reader suddenly want to know how a soccer match rules works, they should go read the Football (soccer for yanks and us aussies) article but, they should not be expecting to learn any of this on a page for a specific FIFA match like World Cup Finals 2020. You just end up annoying the soccer hooligans who didn't come here for a lesson on the obvious like how soccer works but want to get straight to the match's outcome lol

Another educational example is if you want to know a topic like a professional WBC title boxing match held the year - You don't add in any of the boxing rules in the lede. Or add historic trivia about the boxers themselves like what school they attended - unless it's exceptionally notable and central to the match itself.

Per Mos, you normally just say who fought and where and who won in the lede. If people want to learn the rules, they already have the option to go to the general boxing page for that. And if they want to know more about a particular boxer's education, then they just go to that boxer's personal page. But not in the boxing match article - unless it's central to that article.

The three questions

The point is millions rely on Wikipedia for fast, clear, well-structured information. Manual of Style exists to help us respect that: each article should focus on its topic, not dilute itself with bloated generic explanations. There's a page one can go to if they want to focus on a particular topic they want to learn about.

In summary - MOS isn’t about being elitist. It’s about being organized, efficient, and reader-friendly. Wikipedia works best when articles stick to their purpose, and rely on clear linking and structure - not filler - to educate.

So in a nutshell, this framework boils down to 3 questions we must ask ourselves;

Is this detail core to the subject?
Is it better covered in a general topic page?
Is it widely known or already easy to find in other articles via links?

Hopefully by answering these questions, it makes it easier to understand why WP:MOS applies in regards to filler content particularly in articles' summary.