On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:19:39 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Ya got a point there. I must note of course that not having an article on [[Barbara Bauer]] just yet is not a great loss to Wikipedia - being as it's an encyclopedia, not a newswire. (Perhaps someone could write it up for Wikinews ...) The example of [[Brian Peppers]] is instructive - after a year not existing, people realised "oh yeah ... this is a pretty crappy article on a really not very notable subject."
Just so. For values of "people" that may exclude a fair number of editors, some of whom are simply trolling but some of whom do have a real commitment to the project (Jeff Raymond for example). Now, I disagree with Jeff on pretty every deletion debate, but I can't deny that he is an asset to the project and not in any way evil or a troll.
Hence the problem. In both cases there is a small but significant group in whose judgment these subjects *are* notable, in the sense that they are the subject of significant external discussion among the "chattering classes". In some cases they view the removal of these articles as an indicator that either the notability guideline is wrong, or the sourcing guideline is wrong: in their view the subjects are self-evidently notable, so we should have guidelines which allow their inclusion.
Of course, this would be less of a problem if we could gain consensus for a more clueful living biographies policy, which specifically excludes those whose notability is founded solely on "noise and fury signifying nothing". However, this would open the doors to another war, on subjects such as [[Emmalina]] (which I would cheerfully delete and think the encyclopaedia better as a result, but that's another discussion).
So: how to resolve the tension between wanting to exclude biographies which serve no real purpose other than to propagate internet nonsense, and those which exist to *document* people for whom the internet nonsense has resulted in actual fame. I would turn that back to reliable secondary sources. If there are thoughtful profiles in journals (not just bits of flim-flam in the editorial or showbiz pages) then I would say we have a notable subject. If there are not, then we probably don't. And those journals can be published in paper or on the web, I have no opinion on that, as long as the commentary comes from people who are respected in their field, and has passed through a filter of basic fact-checking, however flawed, and editorial control or peer review.
Guy (JzG)