On 7/2/07, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/1/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
But, to me, the key question is : what are they finding? If there are no encyclopedic (in the sense that I discussed above) sources to support an article, then we should not have an article regardless of the demand.
The way you have described encyclopedic sources, I'm not even sure they should be in the article in the first place. Except in corner cases (a topic which is notable for being notable), notability is a topic for discussion pages, not for the article itself.
I'm not sure you understand what I was getting at. I don't advocate a discussion of notability in the article, but the use of sources that establish notability, as opposed to sources that just provide raw data and do nothing more than establish the mere existence of a person.
Well, the majority of the sources for Brian Peppers do more than just establish his mere existence.
To ask whether or not the sources establish notability begs the question. You say a topic is notable only if its sources establish notability. But that doesn't say what it means to establish notability.
It is the mission of journalists and historians to satisfy that demand by creating secondary sources through synthesising primary ones like court documents, not ours. It is our mission to write encyclopedia articles once those secondary sources exist.
There are at least two secondary sources for BP, the Toledo newspaper article and the Snopes article.
Snopes is not enough to prop up an encyclopedia article, and this Toledo newspaper article, well, where is it? It's not in the article versions I examined, and the last time this issue came up on the mailing list nobody produced it and I couldn't find it despite an extensive database search .
I remember seeing it before so I'm sure I could find it if I needed to. But then you'd just say that isn't enough to prop up an encyclopedia article either, so why should I bother? I don't expect to change your mind - you don't think an article on Brian Peppers belongs in Wikipedia. But please don't make it out like we don't have any sources on him, or that all we know is that he exists.