Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

Remove Cruft and Duplication

Once you’ve added a bunch of good stuff—content and sources—then you’re in a much better position to remove content that doesn’t add materially to the article. Some editors call such useless information cruft, and most readers hate it. Furthermore, per WP:NPOV, giving undue space to any particular aspect of a topic is a violation of the neutral point of view. It may be worth mentioning that someone has eight honorary degrees, but a list of them all is pure cruft.

• Remove trivia. Trivia, by definition, is not encyclopedic. Editors frequently remove trivia sections, sometimes pasting the content to the article talk page, and you should do the same. If a trivia sections happens to contain any important facts, you can work them into the rest of the article. Sometimes trivia sections masquerade under the names “Other facts”, “Miscellaneous”, and “In popular culture.” For details, see the guideline Wikipedia:Trivia sections (shortcut WP:TRIVIA).

• Remove unnecessary links in the “See also” section. As mentioned on ???, this section should “ideally not repeat links already present in the article”. At minimum, you should make sure it has no links to articles that are only vaguely related to the topic, or articles that don’t exist yet.

• Remove unnecessary duplication among sections that list sources. A “Further reading” section, if there is one, shouldn’t contain any sources used as citations—those are already in the “References” ...