On 5/4/06, Redvers @ the Wikipedia wikiredvers@yahoo.ie wrote:
From: "Anthony DiPierro"
I still have no idea what it means to "assert notability" or what "an article with no claim to notability" is.
Neither do our vandals. I'd go as far as saying that the majority of CSD-A7 deletions that are immediately recreated go from "Joe Bloggs is a bicyclist from Melbourne" to "Joe Bloggs is a notable bicyclist in Melbourne".
Well, that certainly does seem like it would assert notability.
This is a Good Thing, as claiming notability is not the same as asserting it, and Mr Bloggs and his bike can be deleted again. I'm always surprised that the vandals haven't worked out that they should *assert* notability. But they don't and I think the reason is: they can't.
OK. So "claiming notability" = not sufficient. "establishing notability" = more than enough. "asserting notability" = just right, but impossible.
How much kool-aid do I have to drink before that starts making sense?
A good encyclopedia article, especially one about a person or group, sums up the entire article in the first sentence. You learn everying that is notable and important about the subject in a couple of dozen words (less in the better written articles). Anything, anything at all, that is notable can be summed up in the opening sentence.
Surely the speedy deletion criterion doesn't require that notability be summed up in the first sentence. Or is that what "asserting notability" means?
Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia anyone can edit.
So if I make a free encyclopedia anyone can edit, that's notable? Considering that I once did make a free encyclopedia that anyone could edit, and the article about it was deleted (and later replaced with an article about some boy-band that stole my name), I don't think so.
Jimbo Wales is an internet entrepreneur who founded Wikipedia. ABC is a national television and radio network in the United States. If it's not notable, you can't sum it up.
"Brian Peppers is a registered sex offender whose unusual appearance caused his mug shot to be passed around the Internet." "Crab Smasher is an unsigned indie band from Rock City, Australia." "Hawkin's School of Performing Arts is a dance school located in Folsom, California." "Brian Chase is an operations manager at Rush Delivery who started a controversy over Wikipedia when he posted a hoax for its article on [[John Seigenthaler Sr.]]"
These are all easily summed up, so they are all notable?
[snip]
But it's very difficult to *define* what is and isn't an assertion of notability. Notability is largely a /quality/, a property something has or doesn't have. Producing an exact definition of what an assertion of it looks like is probably beyond the English language. Like modern art, you can't produce a definition of it, but know it when you see it!
I certainly don't know modern art when I see it. In fact, I think there is a lot of disagreement over what modern art is.
I'm starting to think that "notability" is even more this way. It means something radically different to different people, to the point where the ability to delete due to non-assertion of notability is equivalent to the ability to delete for any reason whatsoever.
I think we can trust our admins to rule on it, if nothing else because admin actions are undoable. And if something or someone *is* notable after all, an article will spring up in its place later and hopefully better.
Possibly even over and over again until admins put up a blank page and protect it.
For AfD decisions its harder to know if we can trust the consensus, but that's because the cut-and-dried non-notables have been deleted by admins already. Its the grey-area ones that go to AfD and are subject to people's prejudices, deletion/inclusion leanings and the author's potential for disrupting of the process.
If AfD worked, it would be the ideal place to discuss all of these things. Ho hum.
=REDVERS=