There are a couple of things that I think can be be done to address in a positive way the concerns raised in Tim Noah's articles:
(1) Develop better, more comprehensive notability standards for more topics.
(2) Improve the section of WP:N titled "Rationale for requiring a level of notability."
==1. Develop better, more comprehensive notability standards for different topics.==
With regard to journalists in particular, I think Wikipedia should have a fairly inclusive standard. Tim Noah uses Wikipedia's notability standard for porn stars to mock the concept of notability standards at all. (He seems not to realize that the reason for a porn star standard is precisely to *limit* the number of porn stars who will be included.) Even so, however, Wikipedia's porn star standard in practice has permitted quite a few entries. For example, it allows an article about [[Dolores Del Monte]], whose sole criterion for notabilty is that she was Playboy's 1954 Playmate of the Month (a distinction so minor that she herself was unaware of until 1979, because the photographer sold her pictures to Hefner without her knowledge).
If simply having your picture appear in Playboy is sufficient notability to merit an article, I think the standard for journalists should allow inclusion of anyone who writes or reports regularly for a notable publication. At present, however, the draft notability policy for journalists says that they must be either a "SENIOR staff writer" or the writer of a "nationally syndicated column." If a publication itself is notable enough to include, its employment of a writer (senior or not) on a regular basis constitutes sufficient "note" having been made of the writer for him/her to be considered noteworthy.
==2. Improve the section of WP:N titled "Rationale for requiring a level of notability." ==
In Tim Noah's second article, he characterized the thrust of his criticism as follows:
[G]iven the seeming infinity of cyberspace and volunteer expertise available to Wikipedia—the only plausible reason Wikipedia's gatekeepers would exclude anyone or anything as insufficiently notable for an encyclopedia entry would have to be the secret thrill of exclusion itself
This argument is patently false, and Noah himself might have realized this if the notability policy clearly explained the reasons why it exists. Some of those reasons have been discussed just now on this listserv. The most important, I think, are that (a) Wikipedia strives to be accurate, and is difficult if not impossible to fact-check articles on topics that are not sufficiently notable to have been written about elsewhere, and (b) Wikipedia's popularity creates a temptation for people to use it for self-promotional purposes by creating articles about their small businesses, personal blogs, garage bands, crank scientific theories, etc. The notability policy provides a criterion for separating this self-promotional material from information that has been deemed sufficiently interesting to have been noted by someone other than the topic's own creator.
If these explanations for WHY the policy exists were stated more explicitly in the notability policy itself, it might make it harder for someone like Noah to imagine that the "secret thrill or exclusion" (or some other fantasized motive) is "the only plausible reason" for the policy to exist. However, the "Rationale for requiring a level of notability" section currently doesn't do a very good job of explaining why the policy exists. It contains the following three points:
- In order to have a verifiable article, a topic should be
notable enough that the information about it will have been researched, checked, and evaluated through publication in independent reliable sources.
- In order to have a neutral article, a topic should be notable
enough that the information about it will be from unbiased and unaffiliated sources; and that those interested in the article will not be exclusively partisan or fanatic editors.
- Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate directory of businesses,
websites, persons, etc. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
The language of points 1 and 2 ("a topic should be notable enough ...") sounds more like a simple re-statement of the policy than an explanation of its purpose. The explanation of "why" is embedded in these points if you read carefully, but it is easy to misread them as mere normative assertions rather than explanations.
Likewise, point #3 states that Wikipedia is not an indiscrimate directory, but it doesn't explain WHY it would be bad for Wikipedia to be an indiscriminate directory. Again, this point sounds more like a mere description of Wikipedia policy than a rationale for why it should be so.
I've taken a stab at rewriting this section, including changing its subhead from "Rationale for requiring a level of notability" to "Why Wikipedia has a notability policy." If you want to see my changes, you can find them at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Wikipedia:Notability&oldid=111589127
(I wasn't sure my change would meet the consensus test, so I made the change and then rolled it back, pending comments and approval from others.)
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Sheldon Rampton wrote:
There are a couple of things that I think can be be done to address in a positive way the concerns raised in Tim Noah's articles:
(1) Develop better, more comprehensive notability standards for more topics.
I'll refrain from responding to the entirety of your otherwise good ideas, but this, in particular, comes with some rather large opposition. There is a strong group who would prefer a one-size-fits-all "notability" guideline with lots of exceptions, instead of clear, subject-specific ones. We need more subject-specific "notability" guidelines if we're going to rely on "notability" for inclusion, but it's not going to be easy.
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
(1) Develop better, more comprehensive notability standards for more topics.
I'll refrain from responding to the entirety of your otherwise good ideas, but this, in particular, comes with some rather large opposition. There is a strong group who would prefer a one-size-fits-all "notability" guideline with lots of exceptions, instead of clear, subject-specific ones. We need more subject-specific "notability" guidelines if we're going to rely on "notability" for inclusion, but it's not going to be easy.
Aside from the opposing camps, isn't there also some inherent mismatch between universal notability and context-specific notability?
I think of notability as a container of a certain size, roughly the size of one ideal human's head. Anything that's universally notable is something that is worthy of being noted by one optimally bright and broadly interested person.
But as soon as you go for context-specific guidelines, you change focus. If one ideal human were to focus on discipline X, how much would be worthy of their attention then? With a container of the same size and a smaller topic, more will inevitably fit. The number of notable academics is larger than the number of notable people who happen to be academics. The number of notable buildings in the world is much smaller than the sum of notable buildings in each notable locale.
So wouldn't every new subject-specific guideline be inevitably seen by one-size-fits-all types as another lowering of the standard, a breach through which ten thousand non-notable items will flow?
Curiously,
William
On 28/02/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Aside from the opposing camps, isn't there also some inherent mismatch between universal notability and context-specific notability?
[...]
So wouldn't every new subject-specific guideline be inevitably seen by one-size-fits-all types as another lowering of the standard, a breach through which ten thousand non-notable items will flow?
You've got it in one. The history of Wikipedia's notability guidelines is that some people were appalled that articles were allowed to exist that they couldn't see a need for, so they claimed the subjects were "not notable." When this was questioned by others, they started coming up with arbitrary numerical cutoff points. Since these didn't follow in any obvious way from NPOV, NOR or verifiability, they remain a source of endless controversy.
I suggest: throw out notability and stick to verifiability. (And not a universal WP:RS, which clearly suffers the same problem in practice.)
(If anyone here does think notability follows from NPOV, NOR and verifiability, please do explain precisely how it does, step by step. Else there's no reason not to throw it out.)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
I suggest: throw out notability and stick to verifiability. (And not a universal WP:RS, which clearly suffers the same problem in practice.)
We've had this discussion before, actually. Things like traffic violations, locations of stop signs, and owners of real estate are verifiable, because they're (usually) part of the public record. But very few people would argue that those should be part of WP; I would say that it goes against our intuition of what is a summary of human knowledge, vs the entirety, which we might be more inclined to call a "library".
Stan
On 28/02/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I suggest: throw out notability and stick to verifiability. (And not a universal WP:RS, which clearly suffers the same problem in practice.)
We've had this discussion before, actually. Things like traffic violatim, ons, locations of stop signs, and owners of real estate are verifiable, because they're (usually) part of the public record. But very few people would argue that those should be part of WP; I would say that it goes against our intuition of what is a summary of human knowledge, vs the entirety, which we might be more inclined to call a "library".
Hm, true. But our present notability guidelines suffer from (a) their original purpose (as an excuse) (b) arbitrary numerical cutoffs. There's something important being missed: what precisely are we talking about?
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Hm, true. But our present notability guidelines suffer from (a) their original purpose (as an excuse) (b) arbitrary numerical cutoffs. There's something important being missed: what precisely are we talking about?
I think everybody does have a intuitive notion of notability, but the intuition isn't very precise, and it's different for different people.
The print encyclopedias make it easier for themselves in two ways: physical size, so if you only have so many pages, you just pick the N most important topics, and the editor-in-chief, whose personal preju^Wintuition will be the tie-breaker for any hard choices. We've taken away both of those convenient but capricious criteria, and are now faced with deriving "notability" from first principles.
I don't have any answers, but I think people are slowly and painfully converging on something like meaningful criteria. Verifiability is a factor, amount of verifiable information is a factor, size and open-endedness of subject space is a factor. Per-project seems less troublesome than WP-wide, not least because the notability discussion is built on shared knowledge.
Stan
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:34:50 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Hm, true. But our present notability guidelines suffer from (a) their original purpose (as an excuse) (b) arbitrary numerical cutoffs. There's something important being missed: what precisely are we talking about?
Not, as far as I can tell, the primary notability criterion, which is what some of us believe should supplant all the tortuous subject-specific guidelines.
"A topic is notable if it has been the subject of at least one substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject and of each other.
All we need to do now is define what constitutes a reliable source for different content areas. That genuinely will be context-specific, whereas the existence of sources from which to write a verifiable - and verifiably neutral - article which is not simply a directory entry is pretty much a universal requirement if we aim to stick to the policies of neutrality, verifiability, not publishing original thought, and being an encyclopaedia rather than a directory.
The subject-specific guidelines often boil down to "this is an area where impassioned fans of the subject think Wikipedia should be a directory, and where it is therefore acceptable to draw the entire content of the article from primary sources".
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
"A topic is notable if it has been the subject of at least one substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject and of each other.
All we need to do now is define what constitutes a reliable source for different content areas.
And what constitutes "multiple." And "substantial." And "non-trivial." And "independent."
Like I said before - a film "notable" enough to be added to the United States Film Registry fails to meet this guideline. Massive failure.
The subject-specific guidelines often boil down to "this is an area where impassioned fans of the subject think Wikipedia should be a directory, and where it is therefore acceptable to draw the entire content of the article from primary sources".
Oh, come on Guy. That's a huge straw man, and one I've never seriously seen presented. The subject-specific guidelines say "This is what actually makes something 'notable'." Nothing more, nothing less.
-Jeff
On 2/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
(If anyone here does think notability follows from NPOV, NOR and verifiability, please do explain precisely how it does, step by step. Else there's no reason not to throw it out.)
Notability means there is likely to be enough verifiable material about a subject from enough different sources to write about it in a NPOV manner without resorting to original research.
Yes to an extent it is a short cut. But it is less effort to declare every town in the US inherently notable rather than dig through every case.
We decide if a poplar music band has two albums published by a mainstream label there is no need to investigate further. If not we have to consider the particular case.
An effect of this is that standards are only going to turn up when needed. We don't have any for chemicals at the moment because we don't have issues with people writing unverifiable articles about chemicals on any real scale and NPOV should not be too much of an issue (OK not quite true but not been an issue yet).
geni wrote:
Notability means there is likely to be enough verifiable material about a subject from enough different sources to write about it in a NPOV manner without resorting to original research.
No it doesn't. At least that's not what's being pushed, and it's CERTAINLY not what's occurring in practice.
-Jeff
On 2/28/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
geni wrote:
Notability means there is likely to be enough verifiable material about a subject from enough different sources to write about it in a NPOV manner without resorting to original research.
No it doesn't. At least that's not what's being pushed, and it's CERTAINLY not what's occurring in practice.
It is the only way that notability guidelines SHOULD work, however.
Notability guidelines, IMO, should be guidelines for inclusion, not exclusion; in other words, if it passes this test, then of course we keep it, no need to re-debate it. They should be speedy-keep guidelines.
They cannot be authoritative, and thus an article's failure to meet their standards should simply mean that more discussion is required.
-Matt
On 28/02/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/28/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
geni wrote:
Notability means there is likely to be enough verifiable material about a subject from enough different sources to write about it in a NPOV manner without resorting to original research.
No it doesn't. At least that's not what's being pushed, and it's CERTAINLY not what's occurring in practice.
It is the only way that notability guidelines SHOULD work, however. Notability guidelines, IMO, should be guidelines for inclusion, not exclusion; in other words, if it passes this test, then of course we keep it, no need to re-debate it. They should be speedy-keep guidelines. They cannot be authoritative, and thus an article's failure to meet their standards should simply mean that more discussion is required.
I suggest you read AFD for a bit, then. This is all a nice idea, but is the precise opposite of how they are used in practice and the use they were in fact created on Wikipedia for.
- d.
On 2/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It is the only way that notability guidelines SHOULD work, however. Notability guidelines, IMO, should be guidelines for inclusion, not exclusion; in other words, if it passes this test, then of course we keep it, no need to re-debate it. They should be speedy-keep guidelines. They cannot be authoritative, and thus an article's failure to meet their standards should simply mean that more discussion is required.
I suggest you read AFD for a bit, then. This is all a nice idea, but is the precise opposite of how they are used in practice and the use they were in fact created on Wikipedia for.
Oh, indeed. This was in the if-I-were-god-king-for-a-day mode.
-Matt
On 2/28/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
Notability guidelines, IMO, should be guidelines for inclusion, not exclusion; in other words, if it passes this test, then of course we keep it, no need to re-debate it. They should be speedy-keep guidelines.
Well said... it might be good to add a {{propose}}d [[WP:Criteria for speedy retention]] that is to [[WP:Speedy keep]] as [[WP:CSD]] is to [[WP:Speedy deletions]].
Something like: " Articles to be "speedy kept" include: #[[Wikipedia:Featured articles]] #Articles which have had an [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion]] discussion closed as "keep" within the last three months #Articles which are considered "notable", under standards for notability
Note that absence of any or all of these criteria do not constitute grounds for deletion. "
Plus the stuff already in the "applicability" section of [[WP:SK]].
William Pietri wrote:
So wouldn't every new subject-specific guideline be inevitably seen by one-size-fits-all types as another lowering of the standard, a breach through which ten thousand non-notable items will flow?
Yes. The problem, of course, is that those pushing for the one-size-fits-all are generally the deletionist types, and furthermore see no value in saying that something is "notable" without fitting that criteria.
I mean, I don't want to use strong offensive language to describe the mentality, but it's all that comes across. The list I gave earlier this week is an excellent example of where a one-size-fits-all mentality fails in terms of filmmaking:
1) The "one-size-fits-all" mentality says that a film is only "notable" if numerous items have "noted" it specifically as the subject of its pieces.
2) The "subject specific" mentality says that not ALL films are inherently notable, but certain aspects of a film, based on various possibilities including attention, who's making it, if it wins awards, distribution, etc, make a film "notable."
My two personal examples involve b-movie style exploitation films, "Mom and Dad" and "She Shoulda Said No." Most people in group #1 agree that both of these films are "notable," based on their importance to the genre and the attention they recieved, none of it reaching specific "is the subject" standard. Generally speaking, every person in group #2 will agree that both films are "notable" due to awards, distribution, associations, etc.
Now, what's the problem here? Group one is totally willing to make an exception for something it "knows" is "notable" there, but will not make that exception for something of similar "notability" in other areas, such as a business or a person or a musician, often meaning that otherwise useful "notable" information fails to get included. Group two knows that a line in the sand is pretty much the best way to keep the crap out while including necessary (and perhaps important) information. They also know that some marginal information ''may'' get in, but it's a small price to pay for the breadth of information it provides.
Does group two's approach always work? Well, no - see our AfDs/DRVs on [[Emmalina]] or [[Gregory Kohs]] for more recent examples (both of which, BTW, meet BOTH standards). But, generally speaking, it HAS worked, and has worked fine until group one decided that their way was best and started pushing it more. Not that anything was necessarily broken, but hey.
So now, a "notability" situation that was workable, but tenuous and recieved a minority of complaints, is being overburdened by an underthought, unrepresentative entity that's causing more problems than it's worth - we're the laughingstock of internet communities, we get criticised in the mainstream for our inconsistencies, and few who aren't involved truly understand it anyway (and, judging by many AfD/DRV comments, there's a significant chunk of people who ARE involved who truly understand it).
With the exception of people, in which there's a historical pool of tens of billions, at worst we end up with a working finite pool of possible articles, of which a very small percentage ever meet the standard to become an article, and that's even if anyone bothers to make them to begin with (for instance, unless I decide to heavily contribute again, I can provide a list of 100 articles that are unlikely to be made before the end of 2007. No one - literally - has shown any interest in the specific areas in the year plus I've been working on them, and Wikipedia's star can't get much higher). The worries that you state - "ten thousand non-notable items will flow" - is completely unfounded, unlikely, and possibly impossible. Unless, of course, someone believes that an unreviewed film mentioned in a couple books and two newspaper articles, never as "the subject", is "non-notable." In that case, perhaps one has to wonder if they have the best interests of the project at heart.
-Jeff
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:44:00 -0500, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
There is a strong group who would prefer a one-size-fits-all "notability" guideline with lots of exceptions, instead of clear, subject-specific ones.
No, there is a group who favour a single objective notability guidelines with subject-specific definitions of what constitutes a reliable source. Having subject specific notability guidelines which aim to act as exceptions to canonical policy was never a terribly good idea.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
No, there is a group who favour a single objective notability guidelines with subject-specific definitions of what constitutes a reliable source. Having subject specific notability guidelines which aim to act as exceptions to canonical policy was never a terribly good idea.
Not that they ever did that. Ever.
-Jeff
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:06:48 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Having subject specific notability guidelines which aim to act as exceptions to canonical policy was never a terribly good idea.
Not that they ever did that. Ever.
A school is notable if it is a school. Oh, right.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:06:48 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Having subject specific notability guidelines which aim to act as exceptions to canonical policy was never a terribly good idea.
Not that they ever did that. Ever.
A school is notable if it is a school. Oh, right.
Okay, with one or two exceptions.
-Jeff
On 2/28/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:06:48 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Having subject specific notability guidelines which aim to act as exceptions to canonical policy was never a terribly good idea.
Not that they ever did that. Ever.
A school is notable if it is a school. Oh, right.
Okay, with one or two exceptions.
This is the problem with the existing policy. There will be multiple non-trivial independent publications describing any school in existence in the United States. There are school directories, school guides, every local newspaper has extensive school coverage, and for most schools, one of the many thousands of people they've graduated over the years has reached the level of national importance required to have a mainstream news article list "and they went to so-and-so grade school". For every student, there are 1 or 2 parents who care significantly about the school, and parents of prospective students, and many alumni.
"A school is notable if it's a school" is shorthand for "We're not going to make you dig for the specific example detailed citations for it", in the same sense that "If the band's released two major record label albums then we aren't going to make you dig for additional notability information".
There are alternate interpretations. The problem is, that the actual policy guidelines are weak enough that there's no definitive argument to be made from precedent or policy as to whether Guy's interpretation or my interpretation is more correct, if either.
If the guidelines don't establish enough framework for there to be a right answer to the "what are reliable independent sources" in a domain-specific sense, then they're not useful enough. We clearly don't have that agreement here - I have my opinion, Guy has his, and I have no justifyable reason to presume that mine is a more correct right answer in the greater scheme of things.