On 17/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
From the wiktionary entry on "notable" ( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Notable ):
As an adjective: "Worthy of notice; remarkable; memorable; noted or distinguished."
As a noun: "A person or thing of distinction"
You believe that distinction is objective?
Nobel laureates are, objectively speaking, "worthy of notice", "remarkable", "distinguished" and "a person or thing of distinction". As are heads of state, popes and winners of Wimbledon. These aren't subjective opinions, these are *facts*. While there are many things whose notability is entirely subjective, to suggest that there are no categories of articles that aren't inherently notable is ludicrous.
There is no objective, but that's a matter of philosophy and epistemology and is starting to go off-topic. You think winners of Wimbledon are notable to the general indigenous New Zealand culture? What about in 300 years time - say tennis is a dead sport - will it then be no longer objectively notable? Surely something objectively notable cannot become non-objective based on changes in culture? In which case, things can only be intersubjectively or collectively notable.
The "philosophy" of wikipedia invites all sorts of debates about what exactly notability is, and that can easily lead to these lines of thinking. However, if the encyclopedia are to function at all, you have to remain at some level pragmatic with your opinions. And the fact is, both pragmatically and philosophically, there are categories that are, objectively speaking, inherently notable.
I don't think the proselytisers of notability are being pragmatic. The fact is that disk space is "cheap" and we are not paper. As far as I know, it wouldn't be too much of a burden to be several times the size we are now. So what if an article about a school is only of interest to people who come across it in real life? That's still a potential audience of thousands. If we can easily verify information about that school (so hopefully being factually accurate), why not include it? That article would make Wikipedia very useful to thousands of people (assuming there are few other broad, objective sources on that school).