[WikiEN-l] Notability in Wikipedia

[David Goodman]

The question isn't whether the material is verifiable. The question is
whether we want to include articles on all village churches, some of
them, or none of them.  The current answer is we include all of them
that are on official historical monument lists--which makes sense--
and also those that happen to have 2 findable references with
substantial coverage from  third party independent published reliable
sources--which is not necessarily based on anything fundamental, but
does offer a rough screen. The screen will use its usefulness when
Google Books Search gets all of published local history on record.

I mention that information from churches and schools and similar
institutions about their earlier history is not always reliable: they
tend to claim a long connection with prior institutions that may or
may not be correct, and a connection with notable bodies or
organizations that may or may not have been real.



David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 4:00 PM, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
>> In a message dated 4/27/2009 12:06:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
>> doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com writes:
>>
>>
>>> You are missing the point. I should not have to. If we have reasonably
>>> trustworthy information on something that commonsense tells us has some
>>> level of enduring significance, then finding a book should be unnecessary.>
>>> --------------------
>>
>> How can you have "reasonably trustworthy information" without a citation?
>> Maybe what you mean is, "I have a citation, it's just not on Google Books".
>> If that's what you mean, than of course you can use it.  You have to show
>> that the subject is notable, that is still up to the contributor.
>>
>> Commonsense is notoriously slippery.
>>
>>
>>
>
> Human life is slippery and subjective - and encyclopedia that wants to
> record and reflect it needs to take that on board.
>
> The initial scenario was an article, created from sources connected with
> the subject - sources that common sense tells us are fairly reliable -
> yet lacking "multiple third party sources" (or at least ones produced by
>  an afd).
>
> To be precise, the case study I had in mind was (and I can't find the
> afd - it was some years ago) an old village church. The sources were 1)
> a write-up on the church's website giving its history and some
> architectural details. 2) A similar page on the local village website.
>
> Now, the chances of those sources lying are fairly low. Yet, because no
> one could produce "multiple third party sources" we got people wanting
> to delete. There are quite likely to be written sources of local history
> - but they may not appear on the internet, in any case we have neutral,
> verifiable information of a building which will have some level of
> sustainable significance.
>
> Common sense says this is verifiable, neutral and accurate - indeed more
> so than the average borderline BLP with 25 hits on googlenews.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>