On 7/2/07, Rob <gamaliel8(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/1/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)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.