Steve Bennett wrote:
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 6:18 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
I don't ski. You are partly arguing that
there should not be a
notability guideline for skiing sites. And partly that a specialist
skiing encyclopedia should be a directory of just about all skiing
sites. I'm not really in a position to argue, since I'm not familiar
with that sector of reference literature. The usual test is that there
is such a book and it does include Kettlebowl.
I seem to recall that in the notability policy there is also scope for
comprehensiveness. That is, if a certain number of a given category of
entities is denoted "notable", then we include articles about *all* of
them, for comprehensiveness.
I really wish I'd fought harder years ago against framing the scope of
Wikipedia in terms of "notability". Notability is only part of the
picture: there are other reasons for including articles. There are
questions about how much should be written about a topic. There are
questions about whether all notable subjects should have entries. Etc.
"Notability" is undoubtedly broken. No one has come up with a
replacement, though.
I think skiing
fans should not be allowed to chip away at minimum
standards for inclusion just because they are, well, fans of skiing.
Of course. But all rules are subject to change, and we certainly
shouldn't be in a "you can't have that article about that ski area
because I didn't get this article baout my pokemon character"
position.
OK, but take the argument that there aren't so many ski runs in
Australia, and transfer it to some micro-sub-genre of heavy metal:
"There just aren't so many perishthrashglam bands here, so we think it's
just fine to have articles on all of them". Doesn't look so good.
The connection of ski runs with the naming of geographical features
probably saves them (the cavalry coming) in numerous cases. It would be
perverse to say an article about the feature couldn't mention the ski
area appropriately, and include a relevant category. But it is our habit
either to get at these things from a general principle, or have a
notability guideline split off in an attempt to get consensus.
WP:NOT says WP is not a directory, after all.
I think Wikipedia has progressed far enough and become unique enough
that WP:NOT is really not relevant anymore.
Strongly disagree.
Wikipedia is not
*anything* else. It's not an encyclopaedia, it's not a directory, it's
not a website, it's not a project...it's just totally sui generis.
Yes it
is sui generis, but WP:NOT is part of that, not an add-on. I'm
somewhat concerned that a reliance on "reader survey" will indeed tend
to blur all tried-and-tested criteria for inclusion, for the sake of
other stuff that is not too useful (e.g. "I wish you'd include more
movie rumors because I really like to read about them"). Downmarket beckons.
Charles