On 26/11/2007, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
But for the sake of argument, of course: How does one determine whether or not one's source is presenting information (about some topic) as "notable" or "non-notable"?
If reliable source(s) mention it, then it is noted, and notable. Even if it is disparaged it is still notable, notable for being disparaged.
Of course that pushes back on to how you tell if the reliable sources are reliable. If they're noted of course!
At this point you might start to think that there's an infinite regress... but no you don't need to infinitely regress in practice.
It's a similar issue to that faced by google when they calculate Page Rank- google have a web of page links; essentially each link states that the web page thinks that another web page is notable. So each link puts ups the reputation of the page they link to.
However, google don't use a straight count of links to determine reputation (page rank). What google do is, progressively diminish the transitive effect of reputation, and so after a certain number of hops the reputation of going n-ancestors back stops having any effect.
So bringing the analogy back to the wikipedia:
if the BBC says that X is true, then it probably is notable, because there's lots of people that in turn say that the BBC are notable, and some subset of the people that say that the BBC are notable are notable also; because others say that they are. And then for example you might stop.
Whereas if 45.65.73.4 says that X isn't true, then there's probably nobody that says that this anonymous IP is notable.
I think that the wikipedia's processes approximate to this method; in many cases people agree that certain organisations are notable without having to check further, so we don't normally have to bother with going more than one notability back unless somebody challenges it. Is the BBC really notable? Yes, because the New York Time says so.
Anyway, I claim that this is roughly how the Wikipedia's notability works. It's not that it's perfect, but it's better than most of the alternatives.
—C.W.