"David Gerard" wrote
On 06/03/2008, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Mar 6, 2008, at 4:16 PM, David Gerard wrote:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789354 Yes, (the Wikipedia jargon meaning of) notability is suitable material for a business- and economics-oriented news magazine.[*]
I will repeat my conviction that our notability guidelines are the biggest PR blunder we engage in.
No, it's second to BLPs. Not third, however.
Ha-ha, {{sofixit}}. No, really, granted that notability is broken and always has been, come up with something else for a change.
What scope do we have?
(A) Orphanage and adoption. We could increase the weight given to potential incoming links as a metric. Surely we could partition "New Pages" into those articles that are not orphans (redlinks from article space), and others.
(B) [[Category:Red list]]. We could get into gear with more reputable lists of desired topics created in agreed ways. I personally have heard about those "low-hanging fruit" once too often.
(C) Projectify Notability issues more. De facto an energetic WikiProject has a block vote, at AfD. We could make that more de jure.
I doubt there a single, simple solution. We should be prepared to look at overlapping approached.
Charles
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On 3/7/08, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
(A) Orphanage and adoption. We could increase the weight given to potential incoming links as a metric. Surely we could partition "New Pages" into those articles that are not orphans (redlinks from article space), and others.
(B) [[Category:Red list]]. We could get into gear with more reputable lists of desired topics created in agreed ways. I personally have heard about those "low-hanging fruit" once too often.
(C) Projectify Notability issues more. De facto an energetic WikiProject has a block vote, at AfD. We could make that more de jure.
(D) Quit using the N-word altogether, focusing instead on less subjective issues such as the availability of sources, the quality of the prose, the navigational utility of at least a minimal stub about a given topic (either as part of a finite set or as an obvious link between two or more other articles of equal or greater magnitude).
I try to think of myself as a pragmatic inclusionist. To everybody else I'm some crazy bitch who won't shut up.
—C.W.
Charles Matthews wrote:
"David Gerard" wrote
On 06/03/2008, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I will repeat my conviction that our notability guidelines are the biggest PR blunder we engage in.
No, it's second to BLPs. Not third, however.
Ha-ha, {{sofixit}}.
I would, but I suspect my edit putting {{historical}} on [[Wikipedia:Notability]] would be reverted and I would be berated for it. Not as bad as the response to deleting AfD was, but probably just as effective in the long run.
We don't _need_ notability, or anything like it. Our other existing policies would suffice to keep the actual "crap" out.
On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
We don't _need_ notability, or anything like it. Our other existing policies would suffice to keep the actual "crap" out.
Exactly.
And then those of us who like contributing quality content won't have to spend time defending articles from deletion arguments based on, at root, "I don't think this stuff is important enough" arguments.
E.g. the people currently trying to delete all articles about camera models from Wikipedia, which is one I'm dealing with right now.
-Matt
On 3/7/08, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
And then those of us who like contributing quality content won't have to spend time defending articles from deletion arguments based on, at root, "I don't think this stuff is important enough" arguments.
E.g. the people currently trying to delete all articles about camera models from Wikipedia, which is one I'm dealing with right now.
Let's cut to the chase: would it be easier to ban the individuals or to delete the pseudo-policy which they believe themselves to be citing?
—C.W.
On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
Let's cut to the chase: would it be easier to ban the individuals or to delete the pseudo-policy which they believe themselves to be citing?
Unfortunately either would be a drama-storm.
In this and other cases they're citing "Wikipedia is not ..." ("Wikipedia is not a sales catalog", in this case). The fact that that's not even what that page says - it's not an argument to delete articles on commercial products, simply that Wikipedia should not document things in a sales catalog fashion.
Those who go forth with the intent of getting rid of entire categories of article generally start by nominating some of the worst of them for deletion, generally the stubby ones. With luck, almost nobody has edited them and thus nobody editing in that topic field notices the deletion debate till it closes with either a delete or merge result. It's quite likely in at least some of these, the nominator or another deletionist utters the words "We should have a notability guideline for <x>".
Once they get perhaps half a dozen of them deleted, they start counting that as precedent in future deletion debates or force-merges. They also start writing out a notability guideline that generally requires that something not only be verifiable - that would be no problem - nor that it has multiple independent sources - again, not too controversial - but that notability requires more than that: it requires demonstrable importance; the article must claim and source that its subject matter is Really Important and not just Yet Another <x>.
Sooner or later, we have an alleged consensus and documented pseudo-policy that only truly historically important <x> get an article. Then there's generally a move to redirect them all into a single article or a few omnibus articles on the subject.
-Matt
On Friday 07 March 2008 14:03, Matthew Brown wrote:
Sooner or later, we have an alleged consensus and documented pseudo-policy that only truly historically important <x> get an article. Then there's generally a move to redirect them all into a
Instead of just talking about it on a mailing list read by, in the grand scheme of things, only a few people (and yes, I'm guilty of this myself), why not organize ourselves and actually do something on-wiki about it?
On 07/03/2008, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
E.g. the people currently trying to delete all articles about camera models from Wikipedia, which is one I'm dealing with right now.
Where? I dislike people damaging our various anti copyvio tools.
Is this why we don't have an article on the Hasselblad H3DII?
[offlist]
On 07/03/2008, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
E.g. the people currently trying to delete all articles about camera models from Wikipedia, which is one I'm dealing with right now.
Got a pointer to these? I just went through all of AFD ...
- d.