On 5/10/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It's just as easy to say that "being a city isn't notable" or "being a high school district isn't notable" or "being a Pokemon card isn't notable" or "being a Korean children's science-fiction film directed by Kim Cheong-gi and starring Shim Hyung-rae isn't notable" or "being a seiyū isn't notable".
Being a Pokemon card produced by the official makers of Pokemon is pretty notable. In any case, there is widespread support for the idea that certain types of entities escape notability criteria and are included for completeness. Less support for actually formalising what those entities might be :)
Click on random page a few times. I don't see an indisputable claim to notability for any of the articles I managed to hit.
Heh. "Random page" has never been used as a sign of what a good page *should* be.
I don't know of a poll to determine if your speculation as to the Wikipedia editors opinion is correct. In fact, I think a significant portion of Wikipedia editors *does* feel that we should have a Wikipedia article on all chemists. Not that I think inclusion in Wikipedia should be decided by a poll in the first place.
I'd bet there are less than a million chemists in the world. Not that it matters, I don't see any reason why being in a group which consists of "millions" does not amount to notability.
I'm confused by what is meant by "chemist" here. To me it normally means a pharmacist - someone who has a pharmacology degree and sells headache pills to customers. If you're talking about published academics, that's different...
There is no such high school as Whateverville high school, so that's patently absurd.
Let's work together, eh?
As for my definition of notability, unless someone else comes up with a better one (which was one of the goals of this thread), I'd say notability = worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. Since I think every high school student who plays football and listens to RHCP should be included in Wikipedia, I think they're all notable.
That's sort of ok, but leads to a circular reference ("we only include people who are notable. what's notable? people worthy of inclusion"). It would just cause us to seek another word to explain *why* someone is worthy of inclusion. "Interesting" etc.
Better to say: We include things in Wikipedia because either: a) They're inherently notable amongst their class b) Because they are part of a class small enough that it's feasible and worthwhile including all members c) Because it would offend too many people to remove them
Of course I don't think all high school students who play football are notable, and they don't meet the other two criteria either.
From my understanding of Wikipedia policies, the default presumption is *always* inclusion. It used to be a sentence directly in the policy: "When in doubt, don't delete." I haven't bothered to check whether that sentence has been deleted or not.
There have been edit wars over it.
Steve