On 10/3/05, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 10/3/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
My point is that far too often, it's not "someone else" doing the writing. Hence the use of the word vanity.
If this is true in general of non-notability deletion listings of articles about comics, bands, schools and whatnot, it's news to me. Are you absolutely *sure* that non-notability deletions on Wikipedia are usually simply because the person writing the article is not a third party but is someone associated with their production, operation or distribution? Because that's what you seem to be saying.
Even if there was a notability requirement there'd still be a lot of this arguing going on. I don't get involved in VfDs often, usually only when an article I've got watchlisted gets nominated, but one I'm currently arguing is a good counterexample; the article about the guy in the US National Guard who changed his name to Optimus Prime. The only reason that's been put forward for deleting his article is that he isn't notable aside from his unusual name. Well, why can't having an unusual name be notable? I certainly consider it notable enough to have had the thing watchlisted for over a year now.
Anyway, I actually think that the current policy is a great approach, if people would just pay attention to what was already there. In my poking around with the policies in arguing this case I noticed that not only is "non-notability" not a criteria for deletion, but it's explicitly listed in the policy as something that shouldn't be dealt with by VfD. Under the title "*Problems that don't require deletion*" is the entry:
Problem: Such a minor branch of a subject that it doesn't deserve an article Solution: Merge he useful content into a more comprehensive article and redirect
So really, most of these "non-notability" issues shouldn't ever be brought to VfD in the first place - just merge them into main articles, like that traffic circle case from a few days back, and let the wiki process determine whether the merge was adequate or not. If peoples' beef is really with the _information_ being in Wikipedia, that's also something that can be sorted out via the wiki process - articles get trimmed and streamlined and split into sub-articles all the time without going through a voting process. _______________________________________________
It's certainly worth an article a few months back I came across an article on a Scandinavian kid who'd been called B (or something similar by their parents) but the government wouldn't allow it. Their alternative wasn't much better. The fact unusual names are quite uncommon makes any such name officially recognized by a country's government quite notable. What was their argument for it not being notable?
--Mgm