Tony wrote:
Steve Summit wrote:
...As I wrote in my very first contribution as a registered user, during the July 2005 deletion nomination, ...true story: this morning I was idly curious about GNAA, and was pleased to discover the Wikipedia article, so that I didn't have to favor GNAA's site with an undeserved hit. Trolls they certainly are, and sad it is that they've become "notable", but like it or not, they are, and the article is wholly appropriate.
What definition of "notable" are you using? The only definition of that word that matters at Wikipedia is...
It's not so much what definition I am using, but rather, which one I *was* using in that discussion, last year. It was clearly different from the definition (as you say, the only definition) that matters today.
I do not want to re-open the deletion debate on this mailing list. Skimming the votes (and unless there was some vote-stacking), they look pretty convincing, in their way. I am not trying to dispute the result; I am merely lamenting it.
The point of my first-person account, in that discussion last year, was an empirical one: all speculation and armchair philosophy (about what Wikipedia "ought" to contain) aside, I was a reader who had come to Wikipedia looking for an answer, and was pleased to have found it. I saluted, then, the courage that allowed Wikipedia to supply that answer, contentious and unpopular though it may have been. On this point, I fear the project is the less, for lacking such courage today.