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: 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: 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.) -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts | Weapons of Mass Deception | Banana Republicans | The Best War Ever -------------------------------- | Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting: | http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html | | Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting: | https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118 --------------------------------