[WikiEN-l] The Economist on "notability"

[Ian Woollard]

On 13/03/2008, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13/03/2008, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 6:40 AM, White Cat
>  >  <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >  > Reliable sources? For an episode? Let me think how can we get that... Hmm...
>  >  >  Hmm... Oh RIGHT! How about the episode itself? Its quite reliable and
>  >  >  verifiable. Each time you watch it it is the same story, same plot.
>
>
> > That is not a reliable, independent, secondary source.
>
> And sourcing is not a bureaucratic checklist. The source text being
>  discussed is obviously relevant to an article and, if objectively
>  checkable, certainly citable.

Yes, I completely agree with that. Provided the conclusion drawn is
not synthetic- it has to be totally unarguable from the source, then
the piece itself is a very good source on what it said.

But that's very different from notability. Notability is whether what
it says or is is actually important, rather than what it exactly says.

And it's critical that these not be confused.

In other words, notability is about whether we are violating NPOV by
even mentioning it in the wikipedia. Are we giving it undue weight by
making an article about it?

If you have (say) 3.5 million articles in the wikipedia and somebody
makes an article on a random star in the sky, it had damn well better
be the case that that star is about as important as the other 3.5
million other articles.

>  - d.

-- 
-Ian Woollard

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