[WikiEN-l] The Economist on "notability"

[Wily D]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 7:20 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 3:18 PM, White Cat
>
>
> <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > True. But say in 50 years from now we probably will have the technology to
>  >  observe even the most distant stars, we will have data and great deal of
>  >  material. When that happens we will have more articles on stars than on any
>  >  other topic combined.
>  >
>  >  I am not suggesting we create five trillion articles in two days, what I am
>  >  saying is we should be ready for five trillion articles that will be
>  >  eventually (say in the next 50 years) created and expanded. Whenever a topic
>  >  gets an impressive amount of coverage, weather its highways or townships or
>  >  TV episodes, people panic and try to mass remove them to keep them more
>  >  "manageable". This notion is wrong.
>  >
>  >  In 5 years wikipedia grew so much, in the next 5 years it will shrink if
>  >  this redrectifying madness continues as it is.
>  >
>  >  I picked astronomy for my example as it is an endless source of articles.
>  >  Any other topic is finite.
>  >
>  >    - White Cat
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >  On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 8:24 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  >  > On 10/03/2008, White Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >  > > There are over trillions of stars in the are of space we can see via
>  >  > naked
>  >  > >  eye or instruments. The analogy generally used to describe is that
>  >  > there are
>  >  > >  more stars in the universe than sand in the beaches of this entire
>  >  > planet.
>  >  > >  Clearly a star is a notable object in space worthy of an article. And
>  >  > it is
>  >  > >  feasible to write entire articles on each and every one of them if
>  >  > something
>  >  > >  as dull as Proxima Centauri (
>  >  > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri)
>  >  > >  is any indication. We should not dump them for being "Astronomy cruft".
>  >  > We
>  >  > >  should expand them instead.
>  >  >
>  >  > Proxima Centauri is near to earth so we can actually study it in some
>  >  > detail. Thus while objectively it might be considered a bog standard
>  >  > red dwarf from the POV of humanity it is very interesting.
>  >  >
>  >  > --
>  >  > geni
>  >  >
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>
>  What's wrong with manageable?
>
>  There's nothing wrong with redirecting tons of permastubs to a single,
>  manageable list. That would be true of stars in a galaxy, [snip]

A list of a few hundred billion items is not manageable.  For
asteroids, we've cut the list into chunks of 1000, and for
maintanence, they're actually ten transcluded lists of 100.  And the
"main list" only includes some fraction of the information known about
your average "Joe Asteroid".  In addition, for any given asteroid or
star, I can probably make a worthwhile graphic or two, or maybe find a
relevant image that's free.  Probably no articles exist that can be
ideally compacted into a list without losing some value.

WilyD