On 2/27/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
That depends on what we want Wikipedia to be. If we want it to be the elaborated union of all existing encyclopedias, no matter how specialized, fine. But what we want Wikipedia to be is not to be decided strictly based on the opinions of experts. Citizendium is --> that way.
I think people are jumping to conclusions about my point. My point is not that webcomics should not be included. My point is that Scout McCloud's evaluation of notability should not carry more weight than the consensus of the people writing Wikipedia. If he wants to change Wikipedia he's welcome to join us in writing it.
Adam
I think something's been missed in the rush here. First of all, many of us (including myself, a longtime member of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians - not that it means anything) have always thought that Wikipedia exists as an encyclopaedia. Not a general encyclopaedia, not a specific encyclopaedia, an encyclopaedia. If you can find published sources about something, then it's in. There's not really a much better way to solve the problem of deciding what's in and what's out, except through the question of notability.
Now, regarding notability, I think it's become a bit outmoded. Notability as a concept stems from the VfD days when we could not find valid reasons to delete an article, but the community agreed that it was not suitable for WP. Nowadays, almost any article that deserves to be deleted can be deleted without resort to notability. Typically, the article is unverifiable, innately biased, or whatever.
I think one of the worst things that has happened WRT deletion is the codification of notability - ironically as an attempt to make something subjective objective because inclusionists kept demanding that we have objective criteria for deletion. Notability is a placeholder concept for common sense. The trouble is, as WP scaled up, we got a lot more contributors without enough common sense to think about what they're doing, and so we decided to codify notability instead of either getting rid of it as outmoded, or finding some other way to keep common sense around for those who can use their noggins.
I really can't see the argument against including something that a specialist encyclopaedia (which is often a tertiary source) has an article about, unless the encyclopaedia itself is a primary source on the subject. Sure, a lot of the crap is trivial - I couldn't care less about some vintage postage stamp of which only half a dozen were ever made, or about some ridiculous Pokemon character. But if they're verifiable, they're in. The only question is whether we can keep enough common sense about ourselves, and get our editors to write these articles as they should be written, instead of dribbling over them like crazed fans (as happens so often with fiction-related articles).
As for the question of experts, I think this notion that WP is completely egalitarian is totally fictitious. From day one, some Wikipedians have been considered more qualified and worthy of having their opinions heard than others. WP is not a vote, and not all WPians have equal standing. This is just how it has always been, because if everyone is equal, if everyone has the same voice, then we are effectively an anarchy - which, contrary to what some might think, is not what WP is. We have some hierarchical structure - it's just very loose because often we don't need to rely on it.
When it comes to borderline issues, though, I think there has to be some external force acting on people to ensure we don't go overboard. This goes for whether we are having a content dispute, edit war, or yes, a borderline AfD. Until now, the only people whose voices have counted more have generally been Wikipedians. But I see no reason to exclude experts completely either from having a voice in how things go.
The demand that experts participate in WP is, I think, a little excessive. Many of these people don't have the time to participate, or don't think of it as a fruitful use of their time. That's not a reason to ignore them, however. The voices of experts should be given a little gravity, instead of completely ignored. In the past, we have deferred to the interests of people with a vested interest in the outcome of things, even when they have not said a word - Brian Peppers comes to mind. Here, someone without a vested interest - an objective observer - is commenting on an article, and yet we choose to ignore him. I don't see the logic in that.
If an article truly does not belong on Wikipedia, there are usually much better arguments to be made than "delete, nn". One problem I can think of with webcomics is verifiability - how many of them have been written about in a secondary source? There shouldn't be a need to apply notability except in the real borderline cases which a policy/guideline has never encountered before (i.e. the real outliers). Notability should always be a last, not a first resort, and experts ought to be given weight. We shouldn't blindly accept anything they say, but neither should we reject them out of hand simply because of this false notion that WP is egalitarian and that you need to be a Wikipedian to have a say in what goes on here.
Johnleemk