On 5/5/06, Sigvat Stensholt <sigvats(a)mi.uib.no> wrote:
In some cases we do have a consensus. We automatically
include all articles on
any thorp, hamlet or village, even if there only live 5 people there. A few
AFD debates have pretty much determined that all railway stations and subway
stations are not subject to notability requirements. When the Hippopotamus
Defence article was kept, it pretty much determined that all chess openings
are worthy of articles, no matter how obscure they are (although I and some
others have boldly gone ahead with some merging the subvariations of various
openings).
Great, so all we have to do is to formalise this a little bit. Rather
than saying that "in some cases notability requirements are
overlooked", why not just put a list of specific exceptions on the
notability page? eg:
Articles on the following subjects are exempt from notability
requirements. For particularly obscure examples, combining several
subjects in one article may be appropriate:
- Currently functioning railway or subway stations
- Chess openings
- Monarchs or heads of state of any kingdom or country, past or present
- ....
On many other things, we will probably never form a
consensus but all is not
lost since we can learn by trial and experience. We don't have a consensus to
keep all verifiable schools, but most have acknowledged the futility of
trying to delete them.
It just doesn't seem fair to delete an article on one school of a
given type while keeping others. And I suspect "notability" there is
very much dependent on the social milieu of the voters...
Not really a major problem. Well written articles on
borderline notable
subjects don't really do much harm to the project. At best such articles
illustrate the depth and vastness of information which lies in Wikipedia, and
as long as they are verifiable, neutral and tertiary, they don't really do
much harm.
They do harm in that they set a bad example. "Oh, I saw this great
article on fighting game terms, why can't I have a list of strategy
game terms?" and the accompanying cries of favouritism that emerge.
For all the standard reasons like Wikipedia is not paper, inclusion of
any single article does almost infinitesimal direct harm.
"Moving out of Wikipedia" is a term I would
reserve for transwikis.
Got another?
Steve