[WikiEN-l] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist

[Samuel Klein]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Steve Bennett<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Carcharoth<carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> But still? A local library? I find it useful to look at things in
>> context with other similar institutions. So, I try and think of famous
>> libraries. The British Library, the Bodleian Library, the Library of
>> Congress, and so on.
>>
>> And then I try and think where my local library fits in on that scale.
>>
>> And I conclude: no article.

Well, WP isn't paper. If your world is your town, then the history of
your local library - from how it raised the million dollars needed to
break ground and build it to its design and placement in the town, to
the special collections and the services it provides, are both useful
to locals, educational to visitors, and free knowledge about an
institution designed to last for centuries.

> A local
> library is certainly not "must have" or "important". It's not really
> even "contributes to depth of knowledge".

Why would it not contribute to depth of knowledge?  That seems like
the definition of the phrase... just another layer of depth.  I would
dearly like to know the nuanced history of my city's landscaping,
zoning principles, and architecture over the past 5 centuries -- and
would be delighted if I could zoom into the specific details of any
given building or greensway of significance.  Would you prefer to spin
off a separate project such as
"http://local-free-encyclopedia.org/en/cambridge" for this purpose?

> US. Now is your local library in the top 10,000,000 articles?

Why should WP not have 30M topics instead of 3M?  I wish that growth
had not slowed; there is so much yet to be covered.  It's useful to
have a balance among articles, and not to have a million detailed
articles on buildings and none on major cities in Africa, absolutely.
But notability standards have been steadily shifting for years...

SJ