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<font face="Courier New" size=2>"Stan Shebs" <shebs@apple.com> schrieb:</font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman" size=3>> Beware of genealogical publications though. My mother's side of the </font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman" size=3>> family is </font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman" size=3>> Mormon, and they have lots and lots of confirmable people and dates. </font><br>
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<font face="Courier New">I also have at least two books that have been written of certain parts of my descent. I even</font><br>
<font face="Courier New">used one of them as my source for a (Dutch) Wikipedia article (although for someone who</font><br>
<font face="Courier New">had a more important claim to fame than just having been born and died and gotten</font><br>
<font face="Courier New">a family in between).</font><br>
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<font face="Courier New" size=2>> So I think you do need some notion of importance. One of the ideas I've </font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> thrown</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> out is to count the people to whom the article subject matters in some </font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> way; London</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> is in because it affects billions of people, the cat in the tree is out </font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> because</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> it only affects the people on the street and the writer for the newspaper,</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> 100 people tops.</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> </font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> I've been testing this mentally on various topics, and a number somewhere</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> between 500 and 5,000 seems plausible. I don't think it would make sense to</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> try and pick a number and impose it as a rule, but it makes a good sniff </font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> test</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> for things that seem obscure. For instance, most consuls of ancient </font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> Rome are</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> very obscure today, but once upon a time they ruled millions, and are </font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> for that</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>> reason encyclopedia-worthy.</font><br>
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<font face="Courier New" size=2>I find this kind of rule little convincing. 'Affected' is much too</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>ill-defined. My mailman delivered post to hundreds of addresses today.</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>Leif Ericsson made a colony of a few dozen people in North America, and</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>fought with what may have been not more than a similar number of natives</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>there. So does this mean that my postman should be in, but Leif Ericson</font><br>
<font face="Courier New" size=2>should be out? Don't think so...</font><br>
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<font face="Courier New" size=2>Andre Engels</font><br>
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