[WikiEN-l] The Economist on "notability"

[Ian Woollard]

On 06/03/2008, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I will repeat my conviction that our notability guidelines are the
>  biggest PR blunder we engage in.
>
>  Which is all the more frustrating given that the problem with most of
>  these trivia sections seems to be an interface problem rather than a
>  fundamental content problem. Because we've adopted too many artifacts
>  of print like purely linear article design and spatial arrangement on
>  a single page we're stuck with masses of data and side notes being a
>  distraction to the articles. As a result we steadily delete valuable
>  content that is not reproduced elsewhere and will not be reproduced
>  elsewhere.
>
>  Go us?

An encyclopedia can't be about absolutely anything that anyone wants
to add it would rapidly descend into farce. It's not about space, it's
about reputation, quality and scope.

And as soon as you have ANY criteria, people WILL complain.

If notability did not exist we would be forced to create it.

It's part of the DNA of the wikipedia, if you don't like the DNA of
the wikipedia, nothing is stopping you from forking it and changing
the DNA and going from there. Good luck with that.

Which isn't to say that our notability criteria can't be improved
though; but it's destined to remain imperfect. We should aim for
perfectly imperfect. ;-)

>  -Phil

-- 
-Ian Woollard

We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly
imperfect world things would be a lot better.