On 10/1/08, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) newyorkbrad@gmail.com wrote:
In Wikipedia jargon, I could simply say that "you left Notability off your list [of NPOV, NOR, V]"
Brad, I can only compare this to [[You forgot Poland]] in terms of undue weight.
I happen to agree that about 90% of the user and admin time policing the fine borderlines of "Notability" to make sure that no not-quite-ready-for-prime-time local band or webcomic or semiprofessional athlete finds his way into Wikipedia, and detailing ever more finely nuanced guidelines on this issue, is generally misplaced or at least overemphasized.
On the other hand, in the realm of BLP, this guideline becomes much more important to keeping content that could damage the well-being and reputation of a living person, while serving no sufficient encyclopedic purpose to warrant doing so, does not sully our project. Wikipedia does not exist to hurt people.
I won't presume to claim that my views on this guideline are "well-known" per se, but they are at least "widely-circulated" :-).
In a nutshell, I don't care much for it. I have often ridiculed the way Wikipedia explains its in-house meaning of "notability". Less cheekily, I have openly questioned the underlying need for a guideline, or anything else beyond a glossary-style explanation of the wide variety of meanings that this particular N-word might be intended to convey, when used by Wikipedians, on Wikipedia (mostly on AFD).
However I can only assume the guideline was mostly penned by people for whom "notability" is serious business, yet with the following explicit limitation:
The notability guidelines determine whether a topic is notable enough to be a separate article in Wikipedia. They do not regulate the content of articles, except for lists of people. Instead, various content policies govern article content.
(content policies referring V, NPOV, NOR, and a nominal coalition of the willing)
Basically you have suggested that the primary function of the "notability" guideline (border patrol: establishing a rigid yet serpentine boundary[1] between articles which should or shouldn't exist, and policing it) is over-emphasized, and... advocated the use of the same guideline for an explicitly discouraged purpose (immigrant detention: policing the content of articles firmly within the boundary, based on the same or similar criteria).
This is a truly unique perspective, and completely valid too, so I can't fault you for it — the page is, after all, just a guideline.
However a "do as we do, not as we say" approach has the potential to confuse people. Perhaps you could propose a "Notability (facts and figures)" guideline (come on, one more couldn't hurt) to seal this gap.
Now, if only there were some objective way to look at each Reliable Source and decide which of its details are too salacious to mention, and which ones are a-ok, I would support it without hesitation[2].
I am very skeptical of this, but I wish you the best of luck. Regards.
—C.W.
[1] See also [[Gerrymandering]], [[Exclave]]. [2] But only if it also applied to dead people, lower animals, corporations, fictional characters, chemical elements, numbered asteroids, state highways, and tributaries of the Danube.