-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
The problem is that most 'notability standards' are completely arbitrary. For example, why is a band that has released two albums on a major label notable, while a band that has released one album on a major label is not? (WP:MUSIC) To be honest, I don't see why we need any other standard than 'can we write a sufficient amount of verifiable, NPOV information about this topic?'
Cynical
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 4/7/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
Good luck on getting consensus on that. Attempts to define notability have been rather unsuccessful. Projects to define notability in particular subject areas, rather than globally, have had more success, but are still controversial and are explicitly guidelines rather than policy - because of the simple fact that any mechanical process like that will have false positives / negatives.
If we can't agree on even basic principles of notability, something is wrong. We must be able to explain why we don't want 50 articles on the same pokemon character. Even in broad, general, non-mechanical terms, there must be *some* binding common principle.
Thus an informal rule of notability: if not enough people are interested in writing about it, it's probably not notable enough, at least yet.
Maybe...when talking about ancient history topics, most people would agree that "the more the better", even if each only gets two edits per year.
- We do have physical standards
Clarify?
I meant physical limits. :)
- Articles on trivial topics damage the credibility of the
encyclopaedia as a whole
Controversial - and attempts to codify that have been roundly rejected.
Ah, any examples?
I believe one of Wikipedia's /strengths/ is its breadth of topics; people come to us partly because we have obscure articles.
On ancient Babylonian vase patterns, sure. On pro-pedophilia blogs no. On different nomenclature systems for describing 3 or 4 toed tree frogs, sure. On the initiation rituals of a fraternity in an unremarkable university in Wisconsin, no.
Then we need to explain how we determine notability, and how we decide what's in and what's out:
- For recent creations of mankind, newspaper articles are virtually a
requirement
Strongly disagreed. Many topics are outside the scope of newspapers.
If you extend that to the technical and specialist press, you have a stronger case, but still, I am very uneasy about that as an absolute requirement.
I'm just trying to make a starting point. What's the nearest statement you could make to mine that you would agree with?
- For societies, clubs etc, longevity and true notability compared to
peers are required
Agreed here - and some might be worthy of mention as a list item only.
Agree. I don't like the culture of "that's not worthy of an article, nuke from space". A better "vote" would be "how much space do we dedicate to this topic? two words? ok!"
- Our natural bias against popular culture
Please say 'my' rather than 'our' here. A casual study of Wikipedia would probably show a bias /towards/ popular culture.
Oh it's not "mine". People will "nn" a pop culture article more easily than a science, geograhy or literature topic, no?
SOME Wikipedia editors have a bias against popular culture. These people may even be quite influential. However saying that there is a CONSENSUS bias against popular culture is incorrect.
I need more convincing.
It seems like it might not be a bad idea to establish some precedents or borderline cases. "If your website is not at least as notable as foofoo.com, which has been repeatedly rejected, don't even bother".
Useful, but I feel it just moves the goalposts; there's no way to objectively reduce notability to a number for numeric comparisons against other subjects.
Tell me, you want to write about a topic, but fear it may not be notable. Short of asking someone, how do you find out?
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l