I'm having a discussion over an AfD I created for Riverside Gardens over at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Riverside_Garde...
Now, for me there is no notability, as it is just one of many gated communities in China. However, the other editor seems to be of a different opinion. Can I get some feedback on the opinion of notability of such a subject?
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
That is sort of the point of AfD...
On 1/20/08, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
I'm having a discussion over an AfD I created for Riverside Gardens over at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Riverside_Garde...
Now, for me there is no notability, as it is just one of many gated communities in China. However, the other editor seems to be of a different opinion. Can I get some feedback on the opinion of notability of such a subject?
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
I realize that, but the activity there is just between me and him. So I thought I might want to check with some other users, i.e here.
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 19:18 +0000, Gary Kirk wrote:
That is sort of the point of AfD...
On 1/20/08, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
I'm having a discussion over an AfD I created for Riverside Gardens over at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Riverside_Garde...
Now, for me there is no notability, as it is just one of many gated communities in China. However, the other editor seems to be of a different opinion. Can I get some feedback on the opinion of notability of such a subject?
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
It's only notable if it has been noted by people or organisations in a subject area for which they are in turn notable.
this seems a little circular. how do we tell who is notable in the first place?
On Jan 21, 2008 9:29 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
It's only notable if it has been noted by people or organisations in a subject area for which they are in turn notable.
-- -Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
If the noters aren't notable, then the noted isn't notable. For a noter to be notable, it must have been noted by a notable noter. Nothing and no one is therefore notable.
On Jan 21, 2008 5:45 PM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
this seems a little circular. how do we tell who is notable in the first place?
On Jan 21, 2008 9:29 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
It's only notable if it has been noted by people or organisations in a subject area for which they are in turn notable.
-- -Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
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and how to we get out of this trap?
On Jan 21, 2008 5:51 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If the noters aren't notable, then the noted isn't notable. For a noter to be notable, it must have been noted by a notable noter. Nothing and no one is therefore notable.
On Jan 21, 2008 5:45 PM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
this seems a little circular. how do we tell who is notable in the first place?
On Jan 21, 2008 9:29 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
It's only notable if it has been noted by people or organisations in a subject area for which they are in turn notable.
-- -Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
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On 2008.01.21 17:56:33 -0500, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com scribbled 1.1K characters:
and how to we get out of this trap?
On Jan 21, 2008 5:51 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If the noters aren't notable, then the noted isn't notable. For a noter to be notable, it must have been noted by a notable noter. Nothing and no one is therefore notable.
We stop noting it and go find a more sensible metric.
-- gwern O/S bet pipe-bomb SARA Adriatic BSS M5 LBSD NOCS CBNRC
On 1/21/08, gwern0@gmail.com gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
We stop noting it and go find a more sensible metric.
Such as "sources?", perhaps. Thank you, Jesus.
—C.W.
Charlotte Webb wrote:
On 1/21/08, gwern0@gmail.com gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
We stop noting it and go find a more sensible metric.
Such as "sources?", perhaps. Thank you, Jesus.
You really can't expect the supporters of POV by deletion to go for that! Notability has been such a convenient tool for them that they won't abandon it easily. I even find the word "reliable" to fit right in there with the taxonomy of weasels.
If a particular source is goofy, it will do an excellent job of establishing that credential itself without the intervention of thunderbolts from Wikipedia heaven. When an incredible source is incapable of climbing onto the altar by its own efforts we can only invoke sympathy when we pick it up to put on the altar for the sole purpose of a blood sacrifice.
If the Journal of Ufology reports beige aliens near El Paso we can be sure that they mean something quite different from an immigration report about camouflage techniques.
Ec
On 21/01/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
this seems a little circular.
It does *seem* so, but it's not circular, since nobody is made notable by noting themselves.
how do we tell who is notable in the first
place?
Because other people note them in turn. ;-)
and how to we get out of this trap?
If you think about it, this is the same kind of problem faced by search engines. When you do a search for web pages they give you what we can call, for the sake of this argument, the 'most notable' web pages that contains the words you're looking for, where notability is related by how many web pages link to a page, and how many link to the pages that link to them, and so on.
Which is the same thing, And it's a solved problem.
So in principle the same formal algorithms (e.g. PageRank) can be applied to the wikipedia concept of notability (but of course notability in this case, not over webpages, instead over all the books, films, magazines, people's comments etc. etc.) And we would get an unambiguous number that corresponds to notability.
Of course in the real world, we aren't running the algorithm, and we expect that editors to more or less know who and what are notable and who aren't, and it may look very different at first. But I think if you look at what the people are doing, it amounts to essentially the same idea as what google do with webpages; but run in peoples heads in a distributed way, they keep track of the most notables for the subjects they are interested in in much the same way.
Right?
--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Jan 21, 2008 10:33 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/01/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
this seems a little circular.
It does *seem* so, but it's not circular, since nobody is made notable by noting themselves.
how do we tell who is notable in the first
place?
Because other people note them in turn. ;-)
and how to we get out of this trap?
If you think about it, this is the same kind of problem faced by search engines. When you do a search for web pages they give you what we can call, for the sake of this argument, the 'most notable' web pages that contains the words you're looking for, where notability is related by how many web pages link to a page, and how many link to the pages that link to them, and so on.
Which is the same thing, And it's a solved problem.
So in principle the same formal algorithms (e.g. PageRank) can be applied to the wikipedia concept of notability (but of course notability in this case, not over webpages, instead over all the books, films, magazines, people's comments etc. etc.) And we would get an unambiguous number that corresponds to notability.
Seems to me that would correspond more to popularity than to "notability". These two concepts are different, right?
And what's the cutoff which qualifies as "notable enough"? Google's PageRank works because there's no cutoff. If I type in "Wikipedia", I get the page with the highest PageRank for "Wikipedia". But if I type in "Capriccio" I get the page with the highest PageRank for "Capriccio". I don't get a message saying "Sorry, no links for 'capriccio' are notable enough".
Of course in the real world, we aren't running the algorithm, and we expect that editors to more or less know who and what are notable and who aren't, and it may look very different at first. But I think if you look at what the people are doing, it amounts to essentially the same idea as what google do with webpages; but run in peoples heads in a distributed way, they keep track of the most notables for the subjects they are interested in in much the same way.
Right?
I think some people are treating notability that way, and I think this comparison to Google is a good example of why it's such a bad idea.
On Jan 22, 2008 5:14 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Jan 21, 2008 10:33 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/01/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
this seems a little circular.
It does *seem* so, but it's not circular, since nobody is made notable by noting themselves.
how do we tell who is notable in the first
place?
Because other people note them in turn. ;-)
and how to we get out of this trap?
If you think about it, this is the same kind of problem faced by search engines. When you do a search for web pages they give you what we can call, for the sake of this argument, the 'most notable' web pages that contains the words you're looking for, where notability is related by how many web pages link to a page, and how many link to the pages that link to them, and so on.
Which is the same thing, And it's a solved problem.
So in principle the same formal algorithms (e.g. PageRank) can be applied to the wikipedia concept of notability (but of course notability in this case, not over webpages, instead over all the books, films, magazines, people's comments etc. etc.) And we would get an unambiguous number that corresponds to notability.
Seems to me that would correspond more to popularity than to "notability". These two concepts are different, right?
And what's the cutoff which qualifies as "notable enough"? Google's PageRank works because there's no cutoff. If I type in "Wikipedia", I get the page with the highest PageRank for "Wikipedia". But if I type in "Capriccio" I get the page with the highest PageRank for "Capriccio". I don't get a message saying "Sorry, no links for 'capriccio' are notable enough".
Of course in the real world, we aren't running the algorithm, and we expect that editors to more or less know who and what are notable and who aren't, and it may look very different at first. But I think if you look at what the people are doing, it amounts to essentially the same idea as what google do with webpages; but run in peoples heads in a distributed way, they keep track of the most notables for the subjects they are interested in in much the same way.
Right?
I think some people are treating notability that way, and I think this comparison to Google is a good example of why it's such a bad idea.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Google is meant to be indiscriminate and to index everything (or at least everything which a robots.txt or the like doesn't explicitly ask it not to). Wikipedia is explicitly not intended to be so.
So, what do we ask? "How much independent reliable source material is available on this subject?" If the answer is "a large amount", we write a full article. If the answer is "a little bit", we might have a suitable list or parent article to make a mention. If the answer is "none", we write nothing. All of these are in keeping with our core policies. "No original research" indicates that we don't second guess reliable sources, just follow their lead. If their lead is "this isn't important enough to write about", we don't say "Well they're wrong", we follow their lead-and don't write. Undue weight indicates much the same thing-sources indicate how much weight we give something. If they decide "very little", we write very little. If they decide "none", we write nothing. We don't decide, reliable and independent sources do. Period. That's our metric. We don't need any other. Nice, simple, and no need for editors to decide at all.
As to determining reliability, this is a solved question. Nature and Science are reliable sources. The Weekly World News is not. The New York Times is a reliable source. A tabloid sensationalist rag is not. In some cases there might be an edge case, but in most cases we can use simple metrics. Is the source widely regarded as reliable? Is it written, peer-reviewed, editorially controlled, and/or fact-checked by professionals? Is it cited by other sources known to be reliable? Again, we let others decide, we don't need to do so ourselves, and we -shouldn't- be doing so ourselves.
Articles are intellectual units as well as physical one. They are not fixed length pages that we have to fill. There are only two limitations: one is technical--for the next few years at least very long articles are not usable by a considerable fraction of our readers. The other is organizational--we do not really know how to write and organize long articles for readability, besides or extremely crude tables of contents. There is no limitation in the other direction, no inherent reason why a short item cannot be an article just the same as long one can. There is no reason why subjects about which only a little can be written can not have separate articles if they are distinct; we can list groups of articles as easily as we can sections of a single article. There is no reason at all why we can not have one line articles. Nor is there a reason we should have articles about everything that is possible to write about from reliable sources. In fact, that's been rejected by NOT NEWS. We deliberately decided that there were certain kinds of articles we did not want to write about in WP, even though we could. anyone who really thinks that all that is needed for notability should want to reject that policy.
There is only one practical consideration about what ought to be an article: Google does not presently index redirects. Therefore, only those items which are actual articles will come of the top of Google searches. We ought not to be dependent on Google this way, but in practice we are--it's how people find our articles. it's how people know about us. I'm not sure we would have been much of a success without them.
On Jan 22, 2008 7:52 PM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 22, 2008 5:14 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Jan 21, 2008 10:33 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/01/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
this seems a little circular.
It does *seem* so, but it's not circular, since nobody is made notable
by
noting themselves.
how do we tell who is notable in the first
place?
Because other people note them in turn. ;-)
and how to we get out of this trap?
If you think about it, this is the same kind of problem faced by
search
engines. When you do a search for web pages they give you what we can
call,
for the sake of this argument, the 'most notable' web pages that
contains
the words you're looking for, where notability is related by how many
web
pages link to a page, and how many link to the pages that link to
them, and
so on.
Which is the same thing, And it's a solved problem.
So in principle the same formal algorithms (e.g. PageRank) can be
applied to
the wikipedia concept of notability (but of course notability in this
case,
not over webpages, instead over all the books, films, magazines,
people's
comments etc. etc.) And we would get an unambiguous number that
corresponds
to notability.
Seems to me that would correspond more to popularity than to "notability". These two concepts are different, right?
And what's the cutoff which qualifies as "notable enough"? Google's PageRank works because there's no cutoff. If I type in "Wikipedia", I get the page with the highest PageRank for "Wikipedia". But if I type in "Capriccio" I get the page with the highest PageRank for "Capriccio". I don't get a message saying "Sorry, no links for 'capriccio' are notable enough".
Of course in the real world, we aren't running the algorithm, and we
expect
that editors to more or less know who and what are notable and who
aren't,
and it may look very different at first. But I think if you look at
what the
people are doing, it amounts to essentially the same idea as what
google do
with webpages; but run in peoples heads in a distributed way, they
keep
track of the most notables for the subjects they are interested in in
much
the same way.
Right?
I think some people are treating notability that way, and I think this comparison to Google is a good example of why it's such a bad idea.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Google is meant to be indiscriminate and to index everything (or at least everything which a robots.txt or the like doesn't explicitly ask it not to). Wikipedia is explicitly not intended to be so.
So, what do we ask? "How much independent reliable source material is available on this subject?" If the answer is "a large amount", we write a full article. If the answer is "a little bit", we might have a suitable list or parent article to make a mention. If the answer is "none", we write nothing. All of these are in keeping with our core policies. "No original research" indicates that we don't second guess reliable sources, just follow their lead. If their lead is "this isn't important enough to write about", we don't say "Well they're wrong", we follow their lead-and don't write. Undue weight indicates much the same thing-sources indicate how much weight we give something. If they decide "very little", we write very little. If they decide "none", we write nothing. We don't decide, reliable and independent sources do. Period. That's our metric. We don't need any other. Nice, simple, and no need for editors to decide at all.
As to determining reliability, this is a solved question. Nature and Science are reliable sources. The Weekly World News is not. The New York Times is a reliable source. A tabloid sensationalist rag is not. In some cases there might be an edge case, but in most cases we can use simple metrics. Is the source widely regarded as reliable? Is it written, peer-reviewed, editorially controlled, and/or fact-checked by professionals? Is it cited by other sources known to be reliable? Again, we let others decide, we don't need to do so ourselves, and we -shouldn't- be doing so ourselves.
-- Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.
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On Jan 22, 2008 4:52 PM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
As to determining reliability, this is a solved question.
I'd strongly disagree. If it were a solved problem, we wouldn't still be arguing about it.
There are certain sources that there's a lot of agreement that they're reliable - the cream of scientific journals, for instance (although even then, of course, reliable doesn't always mean RIGHT; there have been things published in all of those journals that have been later proven incorrect)/
There are certain sources that there's a lot of agreement they're not reliable - e.g. tabloid journalism, although if the tabloid coverage is in itself newsworthy, they're an accurate primary source for that tabloid coverage.
I don't think we can write all of Wikipedia from scientific journals, however.
-Matt
On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 05:52:52PM -0700, Todd Allen wrote:
On Jan 22, 2008 5:14 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Jan 21, 2008 10:33 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/01/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
this seems a little circular.
It does *seem* so, but it's not circular, since nobody is made notable by noting themselves.
how do we tell who is notable in the first
place?
Because other people note them in turn. ;-)
and how to we get out of this trap?
If you think about it, this is the same kind of problem faced by search engines. When you do a search for web pages they give you what we can call, for the sake of this argument, the 'most notable' web pages that contains the words you're looking for, where notability is related by how many web pages link to a page, and how many link to the pages that link to them, and so on.
Which is the same thing, And it's a solved problem.
So in principle the same formal algorithms (e.g. PageRank) can be applied to the wikipedia concept of notability (but of course notability in this case, not over webpages, instead over all the books, films, magazines, people's comments etc. etc.) And we would get an unambiguous number that corresponds to notability.
Seems to me that would correspond more to popularity than to "notability". These two concepts are different, right?
And what's the cutoff which qualifies as "notable enough"? Google's PageRank works because there's no cutoff. If I type in "Wikipedia", I get the page with the highest PageRank for "Wikipedia". But if I type in "Capriccio" I get the page with the highest PageRank for "Capriccio". I don't get a message saying "Sorry, no links for 'capriccio' are notable enough".
Of course in the real world, we aren't running the algorithm, and we expect that editors to more or less know who and what are notable and who aren't, and it may look very different at first. But I think if you look at what the people are doing, it amounts to essentially the same idea as what google do with webpages; but run in peoples heads in a distributed way, they keep track of the most notables for the subjects they are interested in in much the same way.
Right?
I think some people are treating notability that way, and I think this comparison to Google is a good example of why it's such a bad idea.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Google is meant to be indiscriminate and to index everything (or at least everything which a robots.txt or the like doesn't explicitly ask it not to). Wikipedia is explicitly not intended to be so.
So, what do we ask? "How much independent reliable source material is available on this subject?" If the answer is "a large amount", we write a full article. If the answer is "a little bit", we might have a suitable list or parent article to make a mention. If the answer is "none", we write nothing. All of these are in keeping with our core policies. "No original research" indicates that we don't second guess reliable sources, just follow their lead. If their lead is "this isn't important enough to write about", we don't say "Well they're wrong", we follow their lead-and don't write. Undue weight indicates much the same thing-sources indicate how much weight we give something. If they decide "very little", we write very little. If they decide "none", we write nothing. We don't decide, reliable and independent sources do. Period. That's our metric. We don't need any other. Nice, simple, and no need for editors to decide at all.
As to determining reliability, this is a solved question. Nature and Science are reliable sources. The Weekly World News is not. The New York Times is a reliable source. A tabloid sensationalist rag is not. In some cases there might be an edge case, but in most cases we can use simple metrics. Is the source widely regarded as reliable? Is it written, peer-reviewed, editorially controlled, and/or fact-checked by professionals? Is it cited by other sources known to be reliable? Again, we let others decide, we don't need to do so ourselves, and we -shouldn't- be doing so ourselves.
The above is, in my opinion very over-simplified. It is also subjective. Yes, we can recognise really good reliable sources and really bad reliable sources, but most of the time we are in the middle.
The problem really is thinking that sources determine whether we write about something, rather than needing sources to write. A current Afd is interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Deletionist_ver...
The keeps are saying there are sources. The deletes are saying, yes, but it is not encyclopedic. I !voted keep as the notability guideline agrees with you. If there are good sources we have an article. However, I still do not think this article is appropriate. We need to improve the inclusion criteria so we include what is worthy of being in an encyclopia and reject stuff that is not worthy. Just going for sources leads to lots of crap on wikipedia and perhaps to rejecting stuff that does not have conventional sources.
We need to think hard about this and not just accept over-simplified solutions.
Brian.
-- Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.
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On Jan 25, 2008 5:34 PM, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 05:52:52PM -0700, Todd Allen wrote:
As to determining reliability, this is a solved question. Nature and Science are reliable sources. The Weekly World News is not. The New York Times is a reliable source. A tabloid sensationalist rag is not. In some cases there might be an edge case, but in most cases we can use simple metrics. Is the source widely regarded as reliable? Is it written, peer-reviewed, editorially controlled, and/or fact-checked by professionals? Is it cited by other sources known to be reliable? Again, we let others decide, we don't need to do so ourselves, and we -shouldn't- be doing so ourselves.
The above is, in my opinion very over-simplified. It is also subjective. Yes, we can recognise really good reliable sources and really bad reliable sources, but most of the time we are in the middle.
Further, isn't the source supposed to be reliable in the context of the fact that's being cited? I can't find that specifically said anywhere in the guidelines, but I always assumed that was the case. Plenty of sources are reliable on some subjects, but not reliable at all on others.
Even then, I think I'd have to question the reliability of at least one source listed above - the New York Times. I'm not sure a daily newspaper can ever be a particularly reliable source, at least not for every single topic it writes about. I'd put the New York Times in that middle you were talking about, though probably in the "good" part of the middle section (at least if you include all the retractions).
In the end, I don't think you can apply a mechanical method to determining what's true and what's false (at least not practically, let's ignore the philosophical implications of the Church-Turing thesis for a moment). I think this is why it's essential to always sanity-check rules with practicality. In terms of deletion debates, I'd define the practical question as "what result should be provided to someone who types 'whatever' into the search box and hits 'go'".
On Jan 21, 2008 10:33 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
If you think about it, this is the same kind of problem faced by search engines. When you do a search for web pages they give you what we can call, for the sake of this argument, the 'most notable' web pages that contains the words you're looking for, where notability is related by how many web pages link to a page, and how many link to the pages that link to them, and so on.
By the way, this description, as stated, is completely incorrect. http://www.wikipedia.org/ surely has a higher PageRank than http://www.search.com/, and both "contain the word" "search", yet if I put "search" into Google I get the latter.
If you're going to use the term "most notable", then search engines provide the "most notable" result *for that particular search*, not the "most notable" result containing those search terms.
On 1/22/08, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
It's only notable if it has been noted by people or organisations in a subject area for which they are in turn notable.
That's not quite right. Something is "notable" if it has been noted by sources which are *reliable* (rather than "notable").
Apparently.
Steve
On 22/01/2008, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/22/08, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
It's only notable if it has been noted by people or organisations in a subject area for which they are in turn notable.
That's not quite right. Something is "notable" if it has been noted by sources which are *reliable* (rather than "notable").
It just means that they've got to be notable for being reliable! ;-)
Steve
Trial balloon: I propose we redefine N as Importance. At least the term has possible non-circular meaning.
On Jan 22, 2008 12:23 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 22/01/2008, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/22/08, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
It's only notable if it has been noted by people or organisations in a subject area for which they are in turn notable.
That's not quite right. Something is "notable" if it has been noted by sources which are *reliable* (rather than "notable").
It just means that they've got to be notable for being reliable! ;-)
Steve
-- -Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better. _______________________________________________ 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 1/22/08, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Trial balloon: I propose we redefine N as Importance. At least the term has possible non-circular meaning.
You can't possibly defend the hypothesis that Wikipedia only contains articles on things that are important.
Steve
On 22/01/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Trial balloon: I propose we redefine N as Importance. At least the term has possible non-circular meaning.
Notability is never circular; only the definition *seems* to be, but that's an illusion, because we all know in practice it isn't, you can't become notable by defining yourself to be so, other people have to assert it of you and your opinions, and the same applies to them.
If you want to be technical about it, it's a directed graph.
--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On 22/01/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Trial balloon: I propose we redefine N as Importance. At least the term has possible non-circular meaning.
The trouble with "notability" is a non-subjective definition. The same goes for "reliable sources", where what counts as a usable source varies widely with subject area.
- d.
On 1/20/08, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
I'm having a discussion over an AfD I created for Riverside Gardens...
Hahaha...
Kurt, you've just used one of the things listed over at WP:ATA, namely Wikipedia should be about everything. Also pointing out that policy can be ignored, is also not a valid argument in an AfD discussion. Poeloq (talk) 20:17, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
AFD junkies will habitually invoke "ATA" in rebuttal to any and every argument. I like to gently point them to "ATU".
—C.W.