On 5/18/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Notoriety and notability are different conmcepts.
That they are, and they are both factors we should include in our decision on what to include in wikipedia.
I didn't realize that one of the aims of Wikipedia was to have a database small enough to be dumped entirely on anybody's drive. I suspect that most passive users have no need or desire for such a dump.
It's not, but the claim that adding mountains of material that few will ever look at and fewer will ever update causes no harm is clearly bogus.
Omitting the articles that you would like to see left out will slow the growth of database a little, but that will only delay the time before it won't fit on your pocket computer. When it comes to third world equipment, I'm sure that we have long since exceeded the capacity of that equipment. As to Wikimedia's own capacity for storing information, I would find the request "Slow down, we have too much stuff," more credible if it came from our senior developers.
Perhaps slowing down isn't enough (a year ago I couldn't store today's wikipedia on my portable computer, but I can now), but then that leave us with the question "Is there a useful way to subset wikipedia?". I believe that there are many useful ways, but I believe that all of the best ways require us to have some idea of the level of notability of each article.
As far as third-world computer.. They often get the trash computers from the first world. The computer I had in 1994, more than a decade ago, could contain wikipedia just fine.
We're more limited by distribution media, DVD gives us 4.5 gigs. Of course we could span multiple disks, but then the user will likely have to copy it all onto the computer. The more disks we span the greater the cost at reproducing the material.
Ultimately we need to figure out how to subset out the more useful parts of wikipedia, but if we have no notion of notability, I'm not sure how we achieve that.
I'm glad to here that, but others may see it differently. Perhaps you could dispel those misunderstandings by providing data on the number of articles about such intersections that have been contributed to Wikipedia.
There are a few intersection articles, some intersections are notable and some of the articles might even be about notable intersections.
I also choose it because I'm aware of the level of information available, and could actually create a lot of these articles myself.
Fantastic!
[snip]
I don't think that dumping material that you don't like into any other project is a friendly act unles you have an agreement with the people involved in that project.
It's not about material I dislike. It's about material that I think is inappropriate for wikipedia, perhaps it is more appropriate someplace else that already exists? It's a question that I don't have an answer to...
Thank you for your thoughts on this subject, I value hearing from some other people... even if you don't agree with me :)
Gregory Maxwell said:
"Is there a useful way to subset wikipedia?". I believe that there are many useful ways, but I believe that all of the best ways require us to have some idea of the level of notability of each article.
If you can define it algorithmically, have at it! If not, hauling perfectly verifiable, NPOV articles before VfD and saying "does not establish notability" may be one way of doing it, but you may not get a particularly accurate answer because the threat of execution tends to force opinions. Perhaps a notifiability project might be more popular, as long as notifiability is divorced from deletability (if not, the notifiability project would acquire a rather bad reputation).
We're more limited by distribution media, DVD gives us 4.5 gigs. Of course we could span multiple disks, but then the user will likely have to copy it all onto the computer. The more disks we span the greater the cost at reproducing the material.
I believe the DVD versions that have been mooted tend to stick to the opening section, and omit the detail. With categories, it's possible to select interesting categories, and there are various other projects in progress to subset the data. They adopt a "build up" approach rather than "start with the entire database and delete stuff item by item".
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport@bluebottle.com) [050519 06:15]:
Perhaps a notifiability project might be more popular, as long as notifiability is divorced from deletability (if not, the notifiability project would acquire a rather bad reputation).
Precisely. That's what I mean when I say that VFD is entirely too blunt an instrument to use as Wikipedia quality control.
- d.