Philip Sandifer wrote:
On Mar 6, 2008, at 4:16 PM, David Gerard wrote:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789354
Yes, (the Wikipedia jargon meaning of) notability is suitable material for a business- and economics-oriented news magazine.[*]
I will repeat my conviction that our notability guidelines are the biggest PR blunder we engage in.
On a personal level I've found that my own editing activity has gone way down in the months since I found out about the swath of devastation that had been cut through our television-related articles on "notability" grounds. I don't do editing in that subject area myself, I generally prefer to gnome in more technical areas such as categories and templates, but nevertheless it cast a sense of gloom over my work. I just don't feel as proud about Wikipedia as I used to.
Editors spend a lot of effort crafting and contributing quality material under a free license for the whole world to use, readers enthuse about how comprehensive Wikipedia is to include such things, and then we throw it all away and chide people for having contributed it in the first place. Depressing.