On 5/30/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
K P wrote:
Yes, nothing false about Doc's analogy. California lottery numbes and
the
weather in the Bay Area are reported in the Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, the San Diego papers, the Reno papers,
and
the Bay Area weather is reported in hundreds of papers all over the
world
and on weather sites on the web--plenty of nontrivial sites.
But it's also irrelevant. Even given for purposes of argument the rather dubious notion that ordinary weather and lotto numbers are "notable" by Wikipedia standards on the day that they happen, and granting that all notability is permanent and therefore they remain notable on days subsequent to the first one, we still wouldn't write Wikipedia articles about such things.
The reason is because notability is not the sole determinant of whether something gets a Wikipedia article or not. If we were to come up with a policy declaring that it is valid to have articles about red things, it does not logically follow that we must therefore have articles about every red thing that exists. These policies don't exist in isolation, there are lots of different criteria that can apply.
And also note, BTW, that I don't actually agree that ordinary weather and lotto numbers are "notable" even on the day that they happen. IMO that would be silly.
Yeah, probably only some lottery numbers are notable, like Hugo's.
The problem is there is no policy that fist all BLPs, there aren't many one-size-fits all situations, in fact. Ultimatley these biographies will be kept or not based on the opinion of the few folks who are willing or not willing to fight the deletionists.
But notability isn't a function of whether or not there is research available today on the web, either.
KP