David Gerard wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWhat_Wikipedia_is_not&...
- d.
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Hallelujah - encyclopedia here we come! Doc
On 5/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWhat_Wikipedia_is_not&...
What happend to [[Avoid weasel words]]?
"Wikipedia properly considers the long term historical notability"
Define long term (also in violation of "wikipedia is not a crystal ball").
"of persons and events with a eye towards care for the harm our work might cause"
Groovy now possible to get wikipedia articles removed through threats. Information is dangerous. This section could be used to justify high levels of censorship. Plenty of bits of history can cause harm in being remembered.
Or there is infomation of a more technical type:
[[Gun-type_fission_weapon]]
geni wrote:
On 5/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http: //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=3DWikipedia%3AWhat_Wikipedia=
_is_not&diff=3D134171531&oldid=3D134093216
=20 What happend to [[Avoid weasel words]]? =20 "Wikipedia properly considers the long term historical notability" =20 Define long term (also in violation of "wikipedia is not a crystal ball=
").
I wonder also how this meshes with notability being "permanent". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#Notability_requires_ob= jective_evidence_and_does_not_expire says that "If a topic once satisfied these guidelines, it continues to satisfy them over time. The reverse is not true; subjects may acquire notability as time passes." So if someone is notable for a relatively short time, then by Wikipedia's current notability guideline they're also notable in the long term by definition.
Personally, I don't see why Wikipedia's contents should be time-variant; if we've got a good article about subject A in 2007 why should we delete the exact same article about subject A in 2017 simply because ten years have passed? It's still just as good.
"of persons and events with a eye towards care for the harm our work might cause" =20 Groovy now possible to get wikipedia articles removed through threats. Information is dangerous. This section could be used to justify high levels of censorship. Plenty of bits of history can cause harm in being remembered. =20 Or there is infomation of a more technical type: =20 [[Gun-type_fission_weapon]]
Potential harm is a rather subjective thing, too. There's all manner of other concepts that could fall under this.
On 5/29/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I wonder also how this meshes with notability being "permanent".
The statement that notability is permanent gets it wrong because it assumes that we all agree what notability is, that we don't change our evaluation over time, and that relative importance doesn't change over time. They all change over time. Pepys used to be just this guy from the seventeenth century, until some scholars worked out how to read the forgotten shorthand code of his diaries. Now he's a great source of information about the restoration period.
The notability guidelines can be useful, but the overarching concept of notability is too tenuous to be more than a rule of thumb, a tool used by AfD to help to plod through the 100-or-so deletion nominations every day.
On 5/29/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Pepys used to be just this guy from the seventeenth century,
False his involvement in sorting out the English navy would have been enough to make him firmly notable and there would be the position of MP as a fall back.
On 5/29/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/29/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Pepys used to be just this guy from the seventeenth century,
False his involvement in sorting out the English navy would have been enough to make him firmly notable and there would be the position of MP as a fall back.
Absolutely. I'm not seeing he wasn't as "notable" as any other prominent restoration politician. Funnily enough, I can't name any others.
No what I was saying (and I thought it was pretty obvious) is that this whole "notability fixed" thing is trivially false. Pepys is the counter-example: a fellow more known now for something that most eigheenth century scholars were unaware of, or which they thought (believing the diaries to be in a private code) would be forever inaccessible.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
No what I was saying (and I thought it was pretty obvious) is that this whole "notability fixed" thing is trivially false. Pepys is the counter-example: a fellow more known now for something that most eigheenth century scholars were unaware of, or which they thought (believing the diaries to be in a private code) would be forever inaccessible.
I always understood the guideline to mean that notability was "permanent" in the sense that once someone or something has become notable they can't become non-notable again. So Pepys was non-notable during his lifetime, later _became_ notable once his diaries became a significant source of historical information, and now he will never become non-notable again. It's a one-way street to notability.
I find this quite reasonable since the fact that someone or something was notable at one time is itself a notable thing.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
No what I was saying (and I thought it was pretty obvious) is that this whole "notability fixed" thing is trivially false. Pepys is the counter-example: a fellow more known now for something that most eigheenth century scholars were unaware of, or which they thought (believing the diaries to be in a private code) would be forever inaccessible.
I always understood the guideline to mean that notability was "permanent" in the sense that once someone or something has become notable they can't become non-notable again. So Pepys was non-notable during his lifetime, later _became_ notable once his diaries became a significant source of historical information, and now he will never become non-notable again. It's a one-way street to notability.
I find this quite reasonable since the fact that someone or something was notable at one time is itself a notable thing.
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Tonight's weather forecast and yesterday's lotter numbers are notable today. Indeed I could give you "multiple non-trivial sources" for both.
Doc
Tonight's weather forecast and yesterday's lotter numbers are notable today. Indeed I could give you "multiple non-trivial sources" for both.
Doc
But try and find them from multiple sources two months down the line - not so easy. However, news stories remain.
I'm not commenting on notability, just your false analogy.
~~~~ Violet/Riga
Violet/Riga wrote:
Tonight's weather forecast and yesterday's lotter numbers are notable today. Indeed I could give you "multiple non-trivial sources" for both.
Doc
But try and find them from multiple sources two months down the line - not so easy. However, news stories remain.
I'm not commenting on notability, just your false analogy.
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Try:
http://www.lottery.co.uk/res/Default.asp#searchform http://www.nationallottery.co.za/lotto/Results.aspx?GameType=lotto&Year=...
On 5/30/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
Violet/Riga wrote:
Tonight's weather forecast and yesterday's lotter numbers are notable today. Indeed I could give you "multiple non-trivial sources" for both.
Doc
But try and find them from multiple sources two months down the line -
not
so easy. However, news stories remain.
I'm not commenting on notability, just your false analogy.
Try:
http://www.lottery.co.uk/res/Default.asp#searchform
http://www.nationallottery.co.za/lotto/Results.aspx?GameType=lotto&Year=...
I'm fully aware of those, but you said "multiple non-trivial sources" and that's just one for each lottery.
~~~~ Violet/Riga
On Wed, 30 May 2007 12:26:21 +0100, "Violet/Riga" violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
But try and find them from multiple sources two months down the line - not so easy. However, news stories remain.
Not a terribly good argument - the source is identical. On Wednesday 30 May, 2007, the weather in London was overcast with light rain. Source: The Times, BBC, Capital Radio, Radio London, Evening Standard... all of which will are citeable as sources, some of which will be available online and perhaps indexed.
If we could drop the hyperbole for a minute, Doc has a serious and valid point. News stories about an incident do not make the victims of that incident notable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash - very notable. Survivors? Mostly not.
Let's draw a distinction between information and knowledge; information about the dates of birth of victims does not increase our knowledge of the world we live in, does it? In many cases merging the significant cases to the relevant incident is a good start. In others... well, maybe we should leave some of this to WikiNews.
Guy (JzG)
On 5/30/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 30 May 2007 12:26:21 +0100, "Violet/Riga" violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
But try and find them from multiple sources two months down the line -
not
so easy. However, news stories remain.
Not a terribly good argument - the source is identical. On Wednesday 30 May, 2007, the weather in London was overcast with light rain. Source: The Times, BBC, Capital Radio, Radio London, Evening Standard... all of which will are citeable as sources, some of which will be available online and perhaps indexed.
If we could drop the hyperbole for a minute, Doc has a serious and valid point. News stories about an incident do not make the victims of that incident notable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash - very notable. Survivors? Mostly not.
Let's draw a distinction between information and knowledge; information about the dates of birth of victims does not increase our knowledge of the world we live in, does it? In many cases merging the significant cases to the relevant incident is a good start. In others... well, maybe we should leave some of this to WikiNews.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
Yes, nothing false about Doc's analogy. California lottery numbes and the weather in the Bay Area are reported in the Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, the San Diego papers, the Reno papers, and the Bay Area weather is reported in hundreds of papers all over the world and on weather sites on the web--plenty of nontrivial sites.
We should probably leave a lot of it to Wiki and other news.
KP
On 30/05/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, nothing false about Doc's analogy. California lottery numbes and the weather in the Bay Area are reported in [..] the Chronicle
Sorry? I thought we were discussing *reliable* sources? :-)
On 5/30/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/05/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, nothing false about Doc's analogy. California lottery numbes and
the
weather in the Bay Area are reported in [..] the Chronicle
Sorry? I thought we were discussing *reliable* sources? :-)
Oh, my bad. The East Bay Express and the Guardian. KP
K P wrote:
Yes, nothing false about Doc's analogy. California lottery numbes and the weather in the Bay Area are reported in the Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, the San Diego papers, the Reno papers, and the Bay Area weather is reported in hundreds of papers all over the world and on weather sites on the web--plenty of nontrivial sites.
But it's also irrelevant. Even given for purposes of argument the rather dubious notion that ordinary weather and lotto numbers are "notable" by Wikipedia standards on the day that they happen, and granting that all notability is permanent and therefore they remain notable on days subsequent to the first one, we still wouldn't write Wikipedia articles about such things.
The reason is because notability is not the sole determinant of whether something gets a Wikipedia article or not. If we were to come up with a policy declaring that it is valid to have articles about red things, it does not logically follow that we must therefore have articles about every red thing that exists. These policies don't exist in isolation, there are lots of different criteria that can apply.
And also note, BTW, that I don't actually agree that ordinary weather and lotto numbers are "notable" even on the day that they happen. IMO that would be silly.
On 5/30/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
K P wrote:
Yes, nothing false about Doc's analogy. California lottery numbes and
the
weather in the Bay Area are reported in the Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, the San Diego papers, the Reno papers,
and
the Bay Area weather is reported in hundreds of papers all over the
world
and on weather sites on the web--plenty of nontrivial sites.
But it's also irrelevant. Even given for purposes of argument the rather dubious notion that ordinary weather and lotto numbers are "notable" by Wikipedia standards on the day that they happen, and granting that all notability is permanent and therefore they remain notable on days subsequent to the first one, we still wouldn't write Wikipedia articles about such things.
The reason is because notability is not the sole determinant of whether something gets a Wikipedia article or not. If we were to come up with a policy declaring that it is valid to have articles about red things, it does not logically follow that we must therefore have articles about every red thing that exists. These policies don't exist in isolation, there are lots of different criteria that can apply.
And also note, BTW, that I don't actually agree that ordinary weather and lotto numbers are "notable" even on the day that they happen. IMO that would be silly.
Yeah, probably only some lottery numbers are notable, like Hugo's.
The problem is there is no policy that fist all BLPs, there aren't many one-size-fits all situations, in fact. Ultimatley these biographies will be kept or not based on the opinion of the few folks who are willing or not willing to fight the deletionists.
But notability isn't a function of whether or not there is research available today on the web, either.
KP
On 5/30/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 30 May 2007 12:26:21 +0100, "Violet/Riga" violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
But try and find them from multiple sources two months down the line -
not
so easy. However, news stories remain.
Not a terribly good argument - the source is identical. On Wednesday 30 May, 2007, the weather in London was overcast with light rain. Source: The Times, BBC, Capital Radio, Radio London, Evening Standard... all of which will are citeable as sources, some of which will be available online and perhaps indexed.
So in reply to me asking for sources for the weather from two months ago you cite a few sources for the weather today. That is very different to what I said.
~~~~ Violet/Riga
On 5/30/07, Violet/Riga violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/30/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 30 May 2007 12:26:21 +0100, "Violet/Riga" violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
But try and find them from multiple sources two months down the line -
not
so easy. However, news stories remain.
Not a terribly good argument - the source is identical. On Wednesday 30 May, 2007, the weather in London was overcast with light rain. Source: The Times, BBC, Capital Radio, Radio London, Evening Standard... all of which will are citeable as sources, some of which will be available online and perhaps indexed.
So in reply to me asking for sources for the weather from two months ago you cite a few sources for the weather today. That is very different to what I said.
Newspapers are archived--they don't disappear off the face of the earth the day after they've been published. Wikipedia does not rely solely upon sources available to everyone this instant on the web. These are sources.
KP
On 5/30/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
If we could drop the hyperbole for a minute, Doc has a serious and valid point. News stories about an incident do not make the victims of that incident notable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash - very notable. Survivors? Mostly not.
Let's draw a distinction between information and knowledge; information about the dates of birth of victims does not increase our knowledge of the world we live in, does it? In many cases merging the significant cases to the relevant incident is a good start. In others... well, maybe we should leave some of this to WikiNews.
Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know the subject personally, and who are generally knowledgeable in a relevant field, would tend to recognize the subject by name or only by description. Would people who read about train crashes be likely to know the name Mary Smith, or would they only recognize the description "one of the 20 women who survived in the front carriage of train crash X"? If the former, have a bio; if only the latter, then confine material about that person to the article on train crash X. Otherwise *we* become responsible for making them more notable than they were, and we should be reporting notability established elsewhere, not establishing it ourselves.
The suggested criterion is INEVERHEARDOFIT -- if a nonspecialist reader knew every name, we wouldn't need an encyclopedia at all. ~~~~
On 5/30/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/30/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
If we could drop the hyperbole for a minute, Doc has a serious and valid point. News stories about an incident do not make the victims of that incident notable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash - very notable. Survivors? Mostly not.
Let's draw a distinction between information and knowledge; information about the dates of birth of victims does not increase our knowledge of the world we live in, does it? In many cases merging the significant cases to the relevant incident is a good start. In others... well, maybe we should leave some of this to WikiNews.
Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know the subject personally, and who are generally knowledgeable in a relevant field, would tend to recognize the subject by name or only by description. Would people who read about train crashes be likely to know the name Mary Smith, or would they only recognize the description "one of the 20 women who survived in the front carriage of train crash X"? If the former, have a bio; if only the latter, then confine material about that person to the article on train crash X. Otherwise *we* become responsible for making them more notable than they were, and we should be reporting notability established elsewhere, not establishing it ourselves.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 5/30/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know the subject personally, and who are generally knowledgeable in a relevant field, would tend to recognize the subject by name or only by description.
Doesn't work. The canal engineer James Green is notable by any reasonable standard but it is possible to know a fair bit about UK canals without knowing his name.
I've seen some very knowledgeable canal people admit that they had to look up the [[Rolle Canal]] and didn't know the name.
Now you can get round both by redefining the relevant field (in this case to canals of South West England rather than UK canals) but by doing that you can make anything notable.
On 5/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Now you can get round both by redefining the relevant field (in this case to canals of South West England rather than UK canals) but by doing that you can make anything notable.
Geni has a good point, in that its a tricky situation there, as well. Let's say I find an article on a notable Canadian politician. Or an Indian. Or a Sudanese minister. Or a well known, notable local Brussels plumber. I may have never, ever heard of this person, let alone the sources in another language that tout their fame. By the same token, I'm very (I hope!) knowledgeable about many IT and IT security matters, but if you named me a famous person that talked at Defcon, I probably never heard of them. I couldn't even name you the people that maintain and oversee the kernel development, aside from Linus, and they're all notable.
Notability is highly localized by either geography or field of study at times, but no less notable.
Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com
On 5/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/30/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know the subject personally, and who are generally knowledgeable in a relevant field, would tend to recognize the subject by name or only by description.
Doesn't work. The canal engineer James Green is notable by any reasonable standard but it is possible to know a fair bit about UK canals without knowing his name.
I've seen some very knowledgeable canal people admit that they had to look up the [[Rolle Canal]] and didn't know the name.
Now you can get round both by redefining the relevant field (in this case to canals of South West England rather than UK canals) but by doing that you can make anything notable.
That's a good point, but we'd expect people to be reasonable. Defining the subject area as "canals of south-west England" is reasonable; defining it as "canals on Smith Street, Torquay," where there is only one (in an attempt to make that canal notable to anyone knowledgeable about canals on Smith Street) would not be. Where the line needs to be drawn is impossible to say. Best to use common sense, but in the case of a dispute (is this a properly defined subject area or not), we could look to see whether reliable sources have ever written about that subject. In other words, are there books or articles about "canals in south-west England"? Probably yes. Are there books and articles on "canals on Smith Street, Torquay." Probably not.
On 5/31/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
That's a good point, but we'd expect people to be reasonable. Defining the subject area as "canals of south-west England" is reasonable;
No you see you've just accepted Parnall's canal as notable (0.5 miles long lost in a rock slide in about 1732). Problem is that while anyone who knows their way around the canals of south-west England should know the name and description there are maybe two original sources on the thing in total (all the online refs draw from Charles Hadfield's work and even he appears to have only found 2 sources).
defining it as "canals on Smith Street, Torquay," where there is only one (in an attempt to make that canal notable to anyone knowledgeable about canals on Smith Street) would not be. Where the line needs to be drawn is impossible to say. Best to use common sense, but in the case of a dispute (is this a properly defined subject area or not), we could look to see whether reliable sources have ever written about that subject. In other words, are there books or articles about "canals in south-west England"? Probably yes. Are there books and articles on "canals on Smith Street, Torquay." Probably not.
50:50. It is not uncommon for local history people tend to write books on their local canals at least one article will tend exist on almost any given canal.
But books and articles existing doesn't work either. There is at least one book and a number of articles on the [[Chichester Canal]]. If we define that as a subject area what about "Netlam & Francis Giles" who's names apear rather prominently on the original plan for the canal that gets reproduced rather a lot.
Slim Virgin wrote:
On 5/30/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
If we could drop the hyperbole for a minute, Doc has a serious and valid point. News stories about an incident do not make the victims of that incident notable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash - very notable. Survivors? Mostly not.
Let's draw a distinction between information and knowledge; information about the dates of birth of victims does not increase our knowledge of the world we live in, does it? In many cases merging the significant cases to the relevant incident is a good start. In others... well, maybe we should leave some of this to WikiNews.
Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know the subject personally, and who are generally knowledgeable in a relevant field, would tend to recognize the subject by name or only by description. Would people who read about train crashes be likely to know the name Mary Smith, or would they only recognize the description "one of the 20 women who survived in the front carriage of train crash X"? If the former, have a bio; if only the latter, then confine material about that person to the article on train crash X. Otherwise *we* become responsible for making them more notable than they were, and we should be reporting notability established elsewhere, not establishing it ourselves.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I think you have a very good point here. I think we do overuse biographical style articles, when often information about a person would be better covered in an article about the event. Now, of course, some people do successfully use their "15 minutes of fame" to become genuinely notable (for example, William Hung, Paris Hilton, or even Monica Lewinsky). In that case, that's fine, we can have a bio on that person. But generally speaking, we probably don't need bios on most American Idol contestants or amateur porn stars (unwitting or otherwise) or people involved in Presidential scandals. Even if the event is notable, "notability is not inherited" applies to the people involved. We can always mention the people in the article about the event, and utilize redirects.
On 5/30/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know the subject personally...
...and who have no ulterior motive at all, are willing to spend hours researching the subject and writing a decent article about the subject, and whether the content of the article can be verified by anyone who reads it, by comparing it to the sources provided.
If these things are true, we win.
—C.W.
On 5/30/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/30/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know the subject personally...
...and who have no ulterior motive at all, are willing to spend hours researching the subject and writing a decent article about the subject, and whether the content of the article can be verified by anyone who reads it, by comparing it to the sources provided.
If these things are true, we win.
—C.W.
Second brilliant statement by you in under a week. KP
On 5/30/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/30/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know the subject personally...
...and who have no ulterior motive at all, are willing to spend hours researching the subject and writing a decent article about the subject, and whether the content of the article can be verified by anyone who reads it, by comparing it to the sources provided.
If these things are true, we win.
I don't follow your argument, Charlotte. Would you mind rephrasing it?
On Wed, 30 May 2007, Slim Virgin wrote:
Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know the subject personally, and who are generally knowledgeable in a relevant field, would tend to recognize the subject by name or only by description. Would people who read about train crashes be likely to know the name Mary Smith, or would they only recognize the description "one of the 20 women who survived in the front carriage of train crash X"? If the former, have a bio; if only the latter, then confine material about that person to the article on train crash X. Otherwise *we* become responsible for making them more notable than they were, and we should be reporting notability established elsewhere, not establishing it ourselves.
I think people knowledgeable about either false rape accusations or political correctness would know the name Crystal Gail Mangum. Do you support adding that back as an article?
On 5/31/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
I think people knowledgeable about either false rape accusations or political correctness would know the name Crystal Gail Mangum. Do you support adding that back as an article?
[[Katelyn Faber]] is also best known for making false rape accusations. Should we remove her name and move the article back to [[Kobe Bryant's accuser]], after three years?
—C.W.
doc wrote:
Tonight's weather forecast and yesterday's lotter numbers are notable today. Indeed I could give you "multiple non-trivial sources" for both.
Perhaps, but one still can't write an encyclopedia article about them. Were you suggesting that this is what I was arguing in favor of? That would be silly.
On 30/05/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
doc wrote:
Tonight's weather forecast and yesterday's lotter numbers are notable today. Indeed I could give you "multiple non-trivial sources" for both.
Perhaps, but one still can't write an encyclopedia article about them. Were you suggesting that this is what I was arguing in favor of? That would be silly.
Indeed. Reductio ad strawman is less than convincing to the person not using it.
- d.
On 5/30/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I find this quite reasonable since the fact that someone or something was notable at one time is itself a notable thing.
That is a very zen-like thought. :)
—C.W.
On 5/28/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Or there is infomation of a more technical type: [[Gun-type fission weapon]]
Potential harm is a rather subjective thing, too. There's all manner of other concepts that could fall under this.
I said this on-wiki, but I'll say it here now as well:
That particular article is harmless. The Nuclear Weapons FAQ (see http://www.nuclearweaponsarchive.org and scroll 2/3 of the way down) has design engineering how-to information. Essentially none of that is here on Wikipedia. What's here is harmless, for all the nuclear weapons articles. None of the mathematics, engineering analysis techniques, etc which are necessary to actually design or build anything nuclear or thermonuclear are present on Wikipedia.
I've worked on this topic for over 15 years; it's subject to bouts of widespread paranoia among those who don't understand what info really is sensitive (the *really* sensitive stuff isn't even in the FAQ, though we don't have any illusions as to whether leaving it out is really keeping anything from North Korea or Iran...). I would be happy to talk to anyone who has concerns about this off-list.
On 5/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWhat_Wikipedia_is_not&...
- d.
I have half a mind to revert him for his unjustified, unilateral change of policy. ~~~~
On 29/05/07, Gabe Johnson gjzilla@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWhat_Wikipedia_is_not&...
I have half a mind to revert him for his unjustified, unilateral change of policy. ~~~~
You should definitely start a God-King Recall Petition.
- d.
"Unilateral" is rather meaningless here, as often when it is used on Wikipedia. If by "unilateral" you mean that no one agrees with it, that is clearly not the case here. If by "unilateral" you mean that the action was taken by one person, that is necessarily always the case; one agent, one edit. If by "unilateral" you mean that there was not a formal proposal on the talk page followed by 3 weeks of long-winded discussion, that is not necessary for making a change to a policy page; this section follows directly from Wikipedia's policies on neutral point of view and biographies of living persons, and is also implied by the rest of what Wikipedia is not, and notability. This is not some random pseudo-troll trying to remake Wikipedia in his own image through drive-by edits.
On 5/28/07, Gabe Johnson gjzilla@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWhat_Wikipedia_is_not&...
- d.
I have half a mind to revert him for his unjustified, unilateral change of policy. ~~~~
-- Absolute Power C^7rr8p£5 ab£$^u7£%y
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On 5/29/07, Christopher Hagar cmhagar@gmail.com wrote:
this section follows directly from Wikipedia's policies on neutral point of view and biographies of living persons, and is also implied by the rest of what Wikipedia is not, and notability.
The problem is that while to an extent it is posible to get from one to another it requires you to use a line of argument that has been repeatedly rejected by the community and the members of the mailing list
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Attempt_at...
On Tue, 29 May 2007 04:16:52 +0100, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is that while to an extent it is posible to get from one to another it requires you to use a line of argument that has been repeatedly rejected by the community and the members of the mailing list
FSVO "rejected".
Guy (JzG)
David Gerard wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWhat_Wikipedia_is_not&...
Yay more knee-jerk policy-making!
-Jeff
On 29/05/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWhat_Wikipedia_is_not&...
Yay more knee-jerk policy-making!
That "knee"'s been beaten to hell in the past few weeks, and you've been no small part of it. Well done, you can take credit.
- d.