Gregory Maxwell wrote:

[...] does the moniker 'encyclopedia' indicate that we are generally using a criteria of notability to decide to include things.

The crux of the problem is that "notability" is a stubbornly subjective concept. For instance, we have articles on extremely obscure US Navy destroyers and submarines, with crews of under 100 and with only a couple of years in service, during peacetime, and then scrapped - yet these are never challenged, while a century-old high school with 3,000 students is likely to end up on VfD. So what exactly is it that makes one topic "notable", and another not?

In a way, the old print encyclopedias had it easier - the publisher could only afford to spend M months producing N volumes, so one started at "most important" and went down until the available space and time was used up.

Stan