On 5/24/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
Monica's whole life is notable - there are basted biographies on her. There may be 'the incident' but the incident has made her whole life a notable, sources and verifiable story. We can write a biography. The same is true for the Olympic medal winner - notable only for winning medals, but because of that, a lot of biographical details that are otherwise notable, are already recorded in good sources.
But if the notability refers only to the incident and nothing else has really been recorded by good sources - then all we can write about is the incident - then we can't write a biography.
A good thing to ask yourself is: if this person died tomorrow, would any newspaper, or important publication in the subject area, print an obituary. If the answer is 'No - no chance' then we probably should not have a biography.
Yeah, alright, but then this isn't as black-and-white as some people seem to think it is. [[Crystal Gail Mangum]] did have other details (like her GPA), but in that case the right thing seemed to be to redirect to the incident. So up to a certain level of "fame" for one incident, we want to include only things related to that incident (and possibly redirect the biography to it); once a person passes that level, we want to include as much background information as possible to try to balance the biography. But where we put the level is a subjective decision.