On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:

<snip>

Some of the more high-profile associated topics of notable topic X can be mentioned in the article on X, but that doesn't mean they are all worth a separate article. Such decisions should go case-by-case, but in general terms they are about structuring of content, rather than permissible content.

Structuring of content is an interesting question. Sometimes small stubs are better than a list, as it is easier to link to separate articles than to items in a list, especially if there is no real unifying structure for the list. Sometimes it takes a while to work out what list, or summary article, something should be part of, but if done well, that can work well.

But sometimes separate articles is the way to go. Even if the individual articles are unlikely to be much more than a GA-level article at best, the separate articles approach has several advantages, even if some content gets duplicated across several articles.

Carcharoth

At 05:25 AM 3/6/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

...

Wikipedia painted itself into this corner.

Indeed, said corner being #5 website in the world according to recent Comscore figures. The onus is still on those who think the system is broken.

Onus? No, I'm seeing masses of highly experienced editors leaving the project, with those replacing them being relatively clueless, as to the original vision, which was itself brilliant but incomplete. The biggest problem with the system is massive inefficiency, with huge amounts of editor labor necessary to make decisions and maintain them, long-term. A secondary problem is that the process does not reliably seek consensus, which is an essential element in the estimation of the degree of neutrality obtained. And the massive inefficiency compounds this problem. You can sail on, believing that it's working just fine. And, I suppose, you can believe that all the admins who have left, or who maintain comments that it's broken, are just, what? Sour grapes?

There is a lot of criticism out there that is obviously ignorant. But that's not all there is.

("Notability" has always been a broken concept, but the real question is whether the system as a whole is broken, rather than whether individual subjective judgements always agree with the result of deletion processes.)

The system is broken. It's obvious. But almost all of those who recognize this also believe that it's impossible to fix, and so they either leave in despair or they struggle on for a while. I'm unusual. I know it's broken, and I know why, and I know how to fix it. And what I'd suggest would take almost no effort. And it's been opposed at every turn, attempts were made to delete and salt a small piece of the proposal, years ago, a very modest experiment that would have changed no policy or guideline.

What I'd propose is very simple, but it happens that it's also very difficult to understand without background; I happen to have the background. Few Wikipedia editors do. I could be wrong, but what I've seen is that the *very idea* arouses very strong reactions. Based on ... what? I could say, but it's really not up to me. I can do nothing by myself except set up structures that people can use or not.

...

I proposed a change to the guideline, a special provision, that *generally* a recognized national member society of a notable international society would be notable. If you know the notability debates, you can anticipate the objections. "Notability is not inherited."

Indeed, it isn't.

Not normally. DGG has already addressed the substance. What's happening is that guidelines are being interpreted as fixed rules, instead of as ways of documenting how the community operates. If documentation of actual decision-making is pursued, then inconsistencies can be directly addressed, and can produce more refined -- and more accurate -- guidelines. This build-up of experience, documented, is what's normal with structures like that of Wikipedia, if they are to remain sustainable. That this is actively blocked, that attempts to document actual practice are strongly resisted, is part of the problem. "Instruction creep." But that assumes that the guidelines are fixed rules, not simply documentation that can be read to understand how the community is likely to decide on an issue.

Some of the more high-profile associated topics of notable topic X can be mentioned in the article on X, but that doesn't mean they are all worth a separate article.

Where does the decision get made? There is notable topic, amateur radio. There is an international organization which reocognizes national societies, one per nation. It's the IARU, in the situation being discussed. It intrinsically creates 200 possible subtopics, organized by nation, by the nature of the situation. Each one of these *probably* has reliable sources that would justify a separate article, given a deep enough search, but suppose there were a couple of exceptions. If we start valuing editor time, a major oversight in the development of project structure, we might say that if, in almost all cases, with adequate work, we could find reliable sources for 190 articles, we mighg as well treat all these subtopics identically. Is there any harm to the project from this?

But where does the decision get made? Is it possible to make a global decision as I'm suggesting? I.e., in *this* situation, we will give each national member society an article, as a stub, based on "national scope" and "IARU recognition," with the IARU web site as the source. Is it reliable for the purpose of determining that the national member society is notable? What I see here is that those who argue guidelines as an abstraction are saying "No," and they give reasons that are abstract. But those who know the field, uniformly, are saying, "Yes," and they seem to be bringing neutral editors along with them, and closing admins who have nothing to do with the topic. Does, in fact, actual community practice trump the guidelines? What I'm seeing from Mr. Matthews is an argument, that, no, the guidelines should prevail, and we should not change the guidelines to reflect actual practice.

It is not being claimed that the guidelines should be changed to show some new synthisized high-level abstraction. Rather, it could be as simple as a finding that, in a particular situation, named, the individual articles were found to be appropriate. Does this meant that they are notable? That's part of how we got stuck. The decision being made is whether or not Wikipedia should have an article, and the standard was set as depending on notability, a quite vague standard, actually, though quite reasonable. Then to make the decision on notability, abstract criteria have been set up that will *usually* reflect what the community will decide. But there are exceptions. And I've pointed out one. So, to prevent futher useless debate, can the exception be documented, so we don't as a minimum, see more useless AfDs, which waste a lot of time that could otherwise go into improving articles?

Such decisions should go case-by-case, but in general terms they are about structuring of content, rather than permissible content. [[Mary Ball Washington]], mother of George Washington, gets an article (not very substantial); her mother doesn't.

That's correct. However, the example you give is truly an individual case, involving a very small number of articles. With regard to small numbers of basically unique articles. the actual decision isn't of notability, per se, but of the existence of adequate sources to be able to make the article verifiable. WP:V is the actual, fundamental policy. (I'd argue that, itself, it was a step away from the ultimate criterion, but it's very sound.) The general rules about the adequacy of sources may not apply to a class of articles, which may be reliably verified, say, from primary sources, without the kind of synthesis that is prohibited. This is revealed clearly by the fact that there is no disagreement that we may not state that the Hong Kong Amateur Radio Transmitting Society is a member society of the International Amateur Radio Union, and what that implies, with the IARU web site as a source. The source is obviously accepted as reliable for that information. Thus a stub may be created with verifiable information. And that the stub is notable can be inferred, as DGG has pointed out, from the national status, on a notable topic, recognized by a notable international organization. It's a very small step.

Where is the decision made, when it's a decision that would affect, generically, 200 different articles? Some of the societies will, indeed, have sufficient independent source that's been found. All will, almost certainly, have such source if the search is deep enough (i.e., local national press that might be seventy to ninety years ago!, plus archives of QST ). Separate articles allow the placment of self-published material that is not controversial, the kind of self-published material that is normally allowed for organizations as information about them. There is no controversy over the inclusion of the material, which means that it's considered reliable. The only issue is, as Mr. Matthews notes, how the information is organized.

I don't see that "recognized national" is a very different attribute from "notable", but certain office-holders might be considered worth an article "ex officio" (general notability doesn't recognise anything ex officio, I think, but arguably more special guidelines could.)

It seems we agree here: "recognized national" is more or less "intrinsically notable," but I would not want to make a completely general *rule* on this. I'd think of myself as a newspaper editor in one of these nations, perhaps a newspaper in the capitol. Suppose I got a press release from the local amateur radio society, which is itself an organization of individual local clubs across my nation. (Some of the member societies apparently have a single "meeting," that's true for Hong Kong, but obviously because Hong Kong is geographically small enough for that to be effective. Most national societies reflect a composition of local amateur radio clubs in major cities or regions.) It says that the society has just been honored by recognition by the International Amateur Radio Union, an international body founded in the 1920s. And the release gives some information about the local society and the IARU? Would I check the facts and print this? I'd say that a newspaper that wouldn't was strange indeed.... But almost all these national societies were recognized many years ago, and I've done a lot of looking. Either they didn't have a skilled press relations officer (likely! they are amateur radio societies, and they don't care much about promoting themselves, they have no advertising budget, etc.) or the articles were published and are simply hard to find. And that's what is most likely. Eventually, we'll find reports on the recognition from QST, the publication of the American Radio Relay League, I think it goes back to before the IARU was founded, and archives exist. As image PDF, apparently.

But meanwhile, there is all this information that can, in fact, be used, but where and how? Article consensus was "stubs." AfD consensus, apparently, was likewise. But try to say this at the notability guideline page for organizations!

There are other possible applications, such as national Red Cross or Red Crescent organizations. In the discussion at the notability guideline, it was claimed that, of course, Afghan National Red Crescent Society wasn't notable unless supported by "independent source," beyond recognition by the relevant international federation, which is, of course, highly notable. Why not? It was a circular argument. *Usually* with these national organizations, there will exist independent source that can be found, but ... why not allow a stub? AfD is not a terribly effective way of gaining sourcing, it's erratic and has, actually a somewhat negative effect on neutral editors. Am I highly motivated to search for and source an article under an AfD? I've found satisfactory sources late in an AfD and put them in the article, and !voted Keep based on them, which I cited. Then the AfD closed as Delete. After all, there had been a landslide of !votes the other way.... Sure, I could go to DRV. And now many minutes are there in a day. The topic of the article was highly controversial, with a whole faction of editors who believed that the entire topic should be excluded as "fringe quackery." Unfortunately, it was notable fringe quackery in the sense that there were sources on it....

It was not possible, initially, on the guideline page to get other editors to try to word the revision of the proposed addition in a way that would not cause collateral, unintended damage. Instead, the position there was that all such articles should be deleted. That's a structural problem, and Wikipedia process makes it quite difficult to address. Instead, we get one individual decision after another, with inconsistent results, thus leading to more decisions having to be made, and perhaps even more as some bright editor a year from now notices that the articles and the guidelines are inconsistent, and again nominates them. Perhaps one at a time as in the recent batch. And what I saw was that the first AfD, which was isolated and individual, was Delete. Nobody who knew the subject noticed it, and the editors !voted based on a very literal and strict interpretation of the guideline, and ignored the "national scope" part. I asked the admin to reopen, and he did. Some parts of the structure are still working. It was then a No Consensus, the only one. But it was not different than a slew of the Keeps.