On 5/10/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)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