From: Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com
Before yesterday, I didn't know what a SPUI was. Now I have a good general understanding of a SPUI. Now, some may say, no one but a traffic engineer would be interested in that! NN, DELETE! Why shouldn't we serve the traffic engineer as well as we serve the Dr. Who fan, or the environmental scientist, or the pop culture buff? It's all POV when you start throwing terms like "notability" rather than relying on third party verifiability.
Wikipedia IS an encyclopedia, but because it's the most comprehensive encyclopedia ever, it's actually many encyclopedias. It's an encyclopedia of Dr. Who, an encyclopedia of U.S. history, an encyclopedia of British colonies, an encyclopedia of schools, an encyclopedia of Egyptian regents, an encyclopedia of construction equipment, an encyclopedia of Mariah Carey recordings, etc... and we don't have to limit it arbitrarily for some group of editors's POVs regarding "notability".
And yet, there are definitely notability clauses within various policies. "What Wikipedia is not" implies notability, as do the requirements about biographies, reliability of sources, etc. And, of course, Jimbo's statement about "extreme minority opinions" as regards NPOV is also all about notability - if notability (and editorial discretion regarding it) were not present, then all we'd really need would be the NPOV policy, and all it would have to say was "all opinions are represented, and must be attributed to their source".
I view the claims that Wikipedia has no notability requirements as an extreme position, and one incompatible with creating an encyclopedia (as opposed to a giant repository of all known facts). While Wikipedia has no *explicit* notability policies, I think notability requirements are implicit in both its existing policies and its fundamental mandate.
Jay.