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(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

and how to we get out of this trap? On Jan 21, 2008 5:51 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)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 1/21/08, gwern0(a)gmail.com <gwern0(a)gmail.com> wrote: Such as "sources?", perhaps. Thank you, Jesus.

On 21/01/2008, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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 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?

On Jan 22, 2008 5:14 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: by search call, contains web them, and applied to case, people's corresponds expect aren't, what the google do keep much 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. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On Jan 22, 2008 5:14 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: 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. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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.

On 1/22/08, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote: That's not quite right. Something is "notable" if it has been noted by sources which are *reliable* (rather than "notable").

Trial balloon: I propose we redefine N as Importance. At least the term has possible non-circular meaning.

Trial balloon: I propose we redefine N as Importance. At least the term has possible non-circular meaning.