Wikipedia:Beware grandstanding text

This essay, Beware grandstanding text, relates to placing words or phrases in high-visibility locations, beyond the relative importance of that text to the topic being described. The use of grandstanding text is an issue to consider when maintaining WP:NPOV neutral text within an article.

The use of grandstanding text has been very common in the lede intro text of articles (see WP:LEDE), where mention of some lesser-known tangent topics and names, or also-ran candidates, would be inappropriate for the level of detail in that portion of that article. Another example would be wp:overquoting, such as inserting long quotations from a book, to give extra prominence to one source document over other opinions. A related example is the declaration of minor topics as section header titles, to elevate the visibility of some issue, beyond the appropriate balance for the topic.

The use of grandstanding text has been very common in the English Wikipedia. However, not all instances should be considered as malicious, because many users merely think some news topic, or new song, should be announced in a big way, to readers of a related article, who might be interested in that extra text.


 * [ This essay is a quick draft to be expanded later. ]