I think before we can really deal with questions of what should and shouldn't be sourced, what a good source is, and what is and isn't worth having articles on, we have to go back to brass tacks and answer "What is a good article?"
Once we understand what an article should be it becomes easier to write guidelines that point to that. And I mean this on a more basic level than what we have at [[Wikipedia:What is a good article?]]
To my mind there are three parts of a good article: it must be comprehensive, accurate, and interesting.
What do I mean here?
By comprehensive I mean that it covers what it should. We could write lots of tests for this (several present themselves), but for now, let's leave it at that. It's not missing anything. Note that NPOV is an aspect of comprehensiveness. This also covers excluding stupid trivia, to my mind. It also means that it provides a good start to research. This includes providing further places to look, i.e. "If you want to know more about Derrida, go read..."
By accurate I mean that nothing in it is incorrect. Currently we try to achieve this by sourcing, and in some cases that's obviously going to be necessary. Where those cases are is something we need to determine better. Sourcing should be used to back up things a reasonable reader might doubt.
Interesting is more intangible. We've unfairly demonized [[WP:ILIKEIT]], but usually what people are trying to say when they say that they like it is that they learned something from the article that they think is interesting. That's the point. (Incidentally, [[WP:INTERESTING]] is total shit. Seriously - somebody nuke that section stat. Actually, all of arguments to avoid in deletion discussions is crap - the page gives no sense of what an argument for keeping could possibly be other than the negative "it doesn't seem deletable to me.")
Interesting articles will establish context. They should be able to show why the subject is interesting to someone who isn't already a fan/scholar/whatever of the subject. I would particualrly note that I think we'd be in much better shape if we stopped talking about notability and started talking about interestingness. This would put us in a position to give more of a pass to well-written, thorough articles on odd but cool topics. This is good - it has demonstrably proven itself to be something people expect from Wikipedia. [[Heavy Metal Umlaut]] anybody?
Are there any problems that people can see with this formulation?
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
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