Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> wrote: I disagree, for several reasons. First, I see an encyclopedia as a compendium of all human knowledge that is interesting or useful to a significant number of people. My dream last night, and the fact that I keep my notebook in the right drawer of my desk, are both stored in my brain, so they are part of human knowledge. They are interesting/useful to me, but not to anyone else, therefore they don't belong in an encyclopedia. A biography of an unimportant person is interesting/useful to almost no one, therefore it doesn't belong either. Second, facts about unimportant people are not checkable. I could write that my father once fell from a horse, and no one could ever disprove this false claim. If an important person falls from a horse, it leaves a trail. Third, and related, it is impossible to write a biography of an unimportant person from a NPOV, since essentially only the very partial point of view of the immediate family and friends exists. Axel __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com

At 09:07 PM 25/09/02 -0700, Stephen Gilbert wrote: I also agree. One of the first things I did when the new Wiki software came along with its lovely User: subspace was to delete my old "home article" completely; I don't belong in an encyclopedia, I'm nobody important (yet :). Yes, Wikipedia has effectively unlimited space, but even so there are things which aren't IMO appropriate for inclusion in an encyclopedia no matter how big it is. They distract rather than inform. Encyclopedias are an overview of human knowledge, not the sum total of it; that's what the _rest_ of the library is for.

Axel Boldt wrote: I am sympathetic to this idea, though not wholly convinced that it would be a good idea to try to formulate policy around it. Where do we stop, and why? How about the mayor of New York City? Famous enough. How about the mayor of Atlanta, Georgia? Probably. Mayor of Juneau, Alaska? How about the city councilpersons? It seems that virtually every college town (all the ones that I lived in) has _the_ local semi-professional permanent activist/student. These folks are always making the news locally. Why not an article about them? It just seems very hard to me to be able to draw any particular line. Many professors are well-known and important _in their field_, but completely unknown otherwise. Most authors are unknowns, but some are not. That's probably mostly true, but then again, if an article just sticks to the basic facts, it should be fine. My grandmother is not a famous person. Yet, she founded a private school that existed for many years and had a great impact on many people in her community. If you were writing a history of that community, then if it was sufficiently detailed enough, you'd want to include her story. --Jimbo

On 25 Sep 2002, at 19:53, Axel Boldt wrote: How do you measure the importance of someone ? Imran

On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 16:53, Axel Boldt wrote: What's your quantifiable metrics of "interesting", "useful", and "almost no one"?

Axel Boldt wrote: I actually tend to agree with Axel here. I think it would be difficult to specify a quantifiable metric, but I also think that this doesn't preclude us from acknowledging the general point. For the 9/11 victims, if someone were to challenge an entry by saying "Who is this person? Why is this person's biography interesting or useful? Who cares?" then there's an answer: "This person is one of many _otherwise_ ordinary people who was a victim of an event of first-rank historical importance. Part of what makes his story interesting is precisely that he was so uninteresting (from a encyclopedic perspective, not, obviously to his friends and loved ones) before." I do think that if someone starts writing dozens of biographies of random people who are not of any encyclopedic importance, not even tangentially as in the present case, we'll have to worry about how to deal with it. But this is surely just a specific example of a more general problem we will face eventually, i.e. as all of the 'important' topics are covered, we will find that people are more and more writing on 'unimportant' topics, moving from the histories of big cities to the histories of small towns to the histories of each particular anonymous bland subdivision, to the history of Del Boca Vista West Phase III. It'll be pretty exciting if we get to the point where the only things left to do are have ideological fights over existing articles on controversial subjects, add articles on new inventions, and add articles on useless topics. At that time, I think a significant proportion of volunteer energy will turn naturally towards "packaging" the raw content for various purposes. (For example, a paper version would have space constraints which would demand that we leave things out that are in the raw version.) --Jimbo

On 9/27/02 1:01 AM, "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia(a)math.ucr.edu> wrote: As long as you let others have different strategies, then that's great. I say that each individual should do what they enjoy and are good at doing; if someone wants to focus on one topic, and make it incredibly precise and comprehensive, then I think that person should do that. It's important to recognize that we have the law of large numbers on our side; we can have individual goals that are not identical to collective goals.

On 26 Sep 2002, at 13:53, Axel Boldt wrote: What is "almost no one", one, two, ten, a hundred people ? Should we get rid of any articles which get less than X hits a year as they're "interesting/useful to almost no one" ? Imran

Just a point-by-point reply. On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, Lars Aronsson wrote: I think this is a misuse of the word. "Liberal" yes; "anarchical" no. The *mere* having of standards does not *in itself* militate against having a maximally liberal project. I respectfully disagree. Wikipedia has succeeded as well as it has, and Susning has arguably benefitted indirectly thereby, by carefully defining what it is--and what it ain't. As Jimbo never tires of telling people, this is true: if you want to write a wiki about such-and-such, by golly he'll set it up for you. But if you want to participate in Wikipedia, pitch in and help support the basic standards that at least define the project *as* an encyclopedia. ^^^^^^^^^ Radical in the sense of being radically collaborative and democratic; not necessarily radical in the sense of being anarchical. That's an important difference. Since there are hundreds, or thousands, of very fully 21st-century people pursuing and supporting this project, calling the basic defining characteristics of our project (well, that's what it sounds like you're saying) "19th-century" and "obsolete" is a little odd. Yes! Who could disagree with that? I personally agree with this in spirit. After all, who couldn't be all for the rapid expansion of the availability of all sorts of information online? (OK, other than certain governments.) We can agree strongly with this while grudgingly admitting that at times, in order to keep a certain well-defined project on course, we've got to trim a little fat. *Very* little. ====== As to the issue at hand, I'm in Axel's camp, though I could be convinced otherwise. At *present*, most people are not appropriate subjects for encyclopedia articles. The vast majority of people live out their lives impacting only their immediate family, friends, and workmates. Admittedly, quite obviously they are very important people to those around them. Admittedly, in the large scheme of things it is quite arguable that distinguished politicians, scientists, etc., are no more important than any of the rest of us. We can admit that and still maintain that the scope for encyclopedia biographies should not be expanded to include biographies of every person on Earth. That's not to deny that that would be an interesting project worth some consideration. But it's not *our* project--which is to say, expanding the scope of possible biographies to include everyone's implies that we'd be engaged in a completely different project than the one we are now engaged in, one that is not even very much like our project. I also agree with Axel that where the line should be drawn is not one that we need to work out right now, if we ever do. One last point: as Wikipedia expands, I can see the line being pushed in the direction of admitting greater and greater obscurity. Suppose, for example--what, admittedly, is pretty absurd, but it's not unimaginable --that Wikipedia becomes *the* central reference work for the entire world, such that everybody who's anybody and many bodies who are nobody is working on it, improving it, etc. In such a case, I can imagine that everyone who wanted one could have an entry about him- or herself; in that case, the notion of a universal biographical database would be feasible. We aren't quite to that point yet, however. Larry