On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, tarquin wrote:
Matthew J. Brown wrote:
On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, tarquin wrote:
So what happens when readers from other countries write up articles on every single kidnap victim? Do any UK writers wish to create articles on [[Milly Downling]], or the [[Soham girls]]? Both those cases got plenty of media coverage here.
If someone wants to write about them, go right ahead. Wiki is not paper, and all that. I can't see as such articles detract from Wikipedia.
So can I write about the cat that was stuck up a tree in the next street from me? The local press gave in plenty of coverage!
I've been trying to determine for myself a good rule of thumb to answer this very question: when is something too trivial for inclusion in Wikipedia?
An obvious example for exclusion that I believe all of us can agree on are the occasional articles that pop up about average people & promptly get deleted. Likewise, there are thousands of individuals mentioned in historical records only once, & of whom nothing more can be known or guessed.
On the other hand, sensational crimes have always been with us, & will always attract interest. One example that deserves at least a mention in Wikipedia (although I can't lay my hands on the proper citation) is of actual legal cases where thieves have brought a dispute over the fair division of their theft. (This has actually been recorded as happening at least twice - once in Roman law, & another time in Medieval Common law!) And the reason that a given sensational crime will be of perennial interest is that they enter the realm of popular culture or literature, & further allusions to them tickle the curiousity of new readers. For example, the other night on the tv show "Law & Order" one of the characters made a reference to "Burking", which I had to explain further to my wife; how many people could we expect would be curious about this murderous practice & perhaps look for an article about William Burke (1792 - 1829) or his partner William Hare, even though their career in crime happened almsot 200 years ago?
The point I am trying to make is this: we should keep in mind that Wikipedia, because it is an encyclopedia, is a reference work. People will want to consult it to answer questions about people, events or facts. This leads to the critereon that before adding an article, one should consider whether it would be of interest beyond a clearly limited audience.
By "clearly limited audience", I mean just that: no one outside of my family cares to know the dates of birth, marriage & death of any of my great-grandparents. It may be of interest beyond this limited audience to know that I have a relative who came to the northwest (Vancouver, Washington, to be precise) on one of the last wagon trains, but it is clearly of interest to a wider audience if I were to state that settlers arrived here as late as the 1880s by wagon train.
Does this offer a useful test by which we can avoid sliding down this slippery slope of inclusion?
Geoff