Slim Virgin wrote:
There are people for whom there's what Fred called
"spot coverage,"
because they did something interesting, but they're not overall
notable.
This is some fallacious concept being cooked up. Either you're notable
or not.
Along the lines of "John Smith is a British
schoolteacher who
came to public attention after being discovered on the floor naked
during a geography class, having asked his pupils to draw a map of
Europe on his genitals."
Which is notability, whether we like it or not.
I think we could fairly easily come up with a working definition of
"notable borderline," where George Bush is at one end of the scale and
our geography teacher at the other.
Not at all.
The point is that no news organization or encyclopedia would publish a
biography of the geography teacher just because of that one incident.
Well, if a news organization isn't reporting it, we're not including it.
That seems to be a valid standard to work with in terms of biographies
of living people, even if we go way too far with it already. We're more
than your standard encyclopedia, and we cover what's possible to cover.
If John Smith is in the news, he's notable and we should consider
inclusion.
We're currently asking the question "Why
shouldn't Wikipedia publish
biographies on everyone for whom reliable sources can be found?" but I
think we should turn that on its head and ask "Why *should* we, given
that no else does?"
Because we're better than everyone else, and we're better than to cow to
the demands of our subjects.
If we were to adopt an opt-out clause for borderline notables, I think
it would generate significant goodwill among the public, because this
is seen as one of our major problems.
Among who? Our problems deal with reliability, with vandalism, and with
trust. "Borderline notability" is hardly on the radar when you consider
factual issues, Sinbad/Sieganthaler-style vandalism, and issues like the
Essjay incident.
Building an encyclopedia is about building a wealth of knowledge, not
creating some goodwill. If we're in the market for goodwill, then start
a goodwill project, not an encyclopedia.
-Jeff
--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW:
http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
because you kind of get the impression she
sang every song either about or to her cats.
They seem to be the driving force in most of
her creative process." - Chuck Klosterman