Stephen Streater wrote
Some of us are working on a new notability guideline:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOTABILITY
The key to me is that the content is reliable,
which is covered by the first two points under
Rationale:
In order to have a verifiable article, a topic must be notable enough
that it will be described by multiple independent sources.
In order to have a neutral article with minimal errors, a topic must
be notable enough that there will be non-partisan editors interested
in editing it.
It all sounds much like what Jimbo took to saying on the subject. It helps to exclude some
promotional and journalistic froth. Does it do much else?
Example (has happened on the site), some science competition winner, a no doubt bright
teenager, gets plenty of media coverage for a ho-hum bit of work. The press release adds
the usual kinds of hype (e.g. anything at all to do with a prime number gets related to
public key crypto, gasp). We can cut this out as not notable, because unless it warrants
the learned journal route to publication it's below threshold.
That's OK; but the learned journals contain an immense amount of the truly tedious and
the me-too. Saying 'verifiable' just ducks the issue, really.
Years of debate have only proved that, while we may know what we are doing, that's not
because we have a theoretical criterion for inclusion. We have numerous operational
criteria.
Charles
-----------------------------------------
Email sent from
www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit
www.ntlworld.com/security for more information