[WikiEN-l] The Economist on "notability"

[Michel Vuijlsteke]

On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 8:50 AM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
> An encyclopedia can't be about absolutely anything that anyone wants
> to add it would rapidly descend into farce.


Yes it can, and no it wouldn't. You're thinking of Wikipedia as if it were a
printed set of volumes. If it were, the mass of pop culture related content
would stick out. As it is now, it doesn't. Nobody reads wikipedia from cover
to cover.

You're totally free to go about adding content to the Bismarck-Napoleon-Hans
Delbrück side of Wikipedia, while someone else is adding biography stubs
about every single character in Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns. Or, you
know, TV's Seventh Heaven. :)

It does no harm to have loads of articles on things that do not matter to
you and that would never ever be in the crosshairs of Brittanica. Neither
you nor I have a crystal ball and can predict what will be relevant in twnty
year's time; if we continue as we're doing right now, we're doing ourselves
a huge disservice.

So what if there are 500 Pokémon character biographies? They're not harming
anyone.

Notability is harming Wikipedia. There is no absolute notability, and we
should stop trying to autistically cram everything into neat little boxes.
Let history sort things out, not bots and singe purpose accounts.

Michel