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"May contain nuts" is a short-cut way of saying that a Wikipedia article, or a part of it, resembles, or is as boring to read, as the ingredients-listing of a supermarket sandwich - where the only part that arrests the readers eye is the well known statement.
“May contain nuts.”
If an article contains one long paragraph (or God forbid, more) with a comma, or semi-colon separated list of items, then it's an ingredients list, and the description applies.
If tagging this line to the offending part of the article would drop the penny in the readers mind that it is similar to, or is as boring as the back of a supermarket food pack, then the article qualifies.
It may be applied to articles where the most recent editors:
- appear to confuse concise meaning with compactness of text on-screen
- appear not to realise that white-space aids readability
- may have expressed sentiments that a re-edit to unpack densely detailed text into another form “takes up to much room”, perhaps not realising that white-space does not use storage-space
- appear to confuse the same or lesser amount of text spread over a larger area of screen with verboseness
Food Labelling
editThe text-layout of statutory information etc. on foodstuffs is not concerned with readability, it is primarily concerned with space-saving on the label. This is not a good model for Wikipedia entries. White-space is good.
Usage Guidelines
editTo show off your second-hand wit, link to this page from the talk page of any article, along the lines of:
- I think the article lead fits the "May contain nuts" description.
- I think this part of the article now fits the "May contain nuts" description.
- I think you probably fit the "May contain nuts" description.
- Add "May contain nuts" to the 'list of ingredients', and if no one notices, then it fits. Remove this when point is made, and recover.
- Your mother says you fit the "May contain nuts"description.
- You are so anal you probably wrote this "May contain nuts" article.
Origin
editUser:HarryAlffa coined this usage and defined it between 6am and 9am, on the morning of Sunday, 3rd August, 2008, while drifting in and out of sleep, with a slight hang-over, and dehydrated due to the consumption of alcohol and an Indian balti meal eaten too close to bedtime. It was inspired by an “Edit War” two days earlier on the Solar System article lead.