[WikiEN-l] Notability and ski resorts (was: Newbie and not-so-newbie biting)

[Surreptitiousness]

Charles Matthews wrote:
>
> At present we are still holding to some version of 
> the old idea that "less is more": we don't allow articles that scroll on 
> for ever, and we try to have people adopt a concise style with good 
> focus. There will always be the argument that this is faintly 
> ridiculous, and "more is more". But there are huge advantages to the way 
> we now operate: we can for example think in terms of off-topic pieces of 
> information as "weeds", i.e. plants in the wrong place. It is certainly 
> true that there is maintenance to be done when topics are not allowed to 
> ramble. But I think a Wikipedia in which info was just "appended" 
> somewhere, rather than quite carefully placed by definite topic, would 
> be harder to use.
To carry on the plant analogy, there are instances when sometimes plants 
get too big, either for their pots or for the garden.  The approach 
takjen depends on the plant.  Some plants you split, some plants you 
prune and some plants you re-pot. I'm not sure I'd ever see a garden 
manual direct you to never split a plant, so I'm not sure why we should 
have guidance which can be used to claim you should never split an 
article.  I fail to see why it cannot be left to editorial judgement as 
to when to split, and to consensus as to whether the split is a good 
idea or not. It's all well and good framing an argument for the worst 
possible instances, but that misses the point that we're really looking 
for best practises, and best practise would be to do what's best for the 
encyclopedia. To go back to the idea that books have chapters, we can 
use that approach on Wikipedia, and view each article as a distinct 
chapter.  Obviously this requires effort and thought, care and 
attention, but I think it is better than the approach which only allows 
notable subjects to be spun out. After all, once you have spun out all 
the notable sunbjects from your main article, what have you got left 
there?  And let's not forget that if we're looking at books, we have to 
take into account appendixes, something you have to fight to justify on 
Wikipedia.  That list you want to split from your large FA?  Hmm, is it 
a notable list? That list you want to include in your paper based 
subject specific encyclopedia?  Certainly, Appendix A. I don't pretend 
to have any answers, all I'm asking for is thought and an attempt to 
address the actuality in front of editors rather than underhand attempts 
to protect an entire empire of rules.  But I think on that at least we 
agree. We both appear to want fewer rules.