--- Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Rick wrote:
But that's not what this proposal is asking for.
It's
asking to be allowed to delete the listing if the person who deleted it doesn't agree with the reason for listing.
No, it's not. Take a look at the original proposal itself, posted 3/4/2005 10:12 AM:
"Any VFD nomination not listing a reason in Wikipedia:Deletion policy may be summarily removed from the page."
Exactly. And "not notable" is not one of those criteria. And yet it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article.
RickK
__________________________________ Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 21:23:34 -0800 (PST), Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Exactly. And "not notable" is not one of those criteria. And yet it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article.
RickK
Is this because the deletion policy is inadiquate, or because VfD is being abused? I know what your answer will be of course, so explain the notability "criterion" objectively in the policy page so we can all understand it. I personally think it's disgusting tyrrany of the majority. But I don't express opinions on wiki ;-) -nsh
Lauri Love (nsh) wrote:
On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 21:23:34 -0800 (PST), Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Exactly. And "not notable" is not one of those criteria. And yet it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article.
RickK
Is this because the deletion policy is inadiquate, or because VfD is being abused? I know what your answer will be of course, so explain the notability "criterion" objectively in the policy page so we can all understand it. I personally think it's disgusting tyrrany of the majority. But I don't express opinions on wiki ;-) -nsh
Wikipedia is not meant to protect people from the tyranny of the majority. It's meant to build a free, NPOV encyclopedia. Fortunately most of our editors have enough common sense to understand when to be a benevolent tyranny and when to be ruthless.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Rick wrote:
--- Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Take a look at the original proposal itself, posted 3/4/2005 10:12 AM:
"Any VFD nomination not listing a reason in Wikipedia:Deletion policy may be summarily removed from the page."
Exactly. And "not notable" is not one of those criteria. And yet it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article.
RickK
I absolutely agree with Dpbsmith. Policy is meant to change with the community, not vice-versa. As much as some of us would like to avoid voting using highly subjective grounds like notability (which has different meanings from person to person; my idea of notability seems highly inclusionistic compared to some of the notability grounds used in voting today), the fact remains that a good deal of the community *does* use notability as a reason for deletion. If the community wants an article to go, we shouldn't disregard their opinion just because it's based on something subjective, since the resolution of the issue of contention -- should the article be deleted? -- has been agreed upon. (taken with a slight modification from [[Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy]])
I don't think removing nominations from VfD that are without a reason found in the deletion policy is a good idea. If the nomination has no specific rationale in itself, that might be acceptable, but non-notable is often used as shorthand for not encyclopedic. It's basically an editorial judgement - it's like a shorter version of "I don't think this topic is sufficiently encyclopedic enough to merit its own article in this encyclopedia". A nomination to delete should not be discarded wantonly. If it's unreasonable, the community will speak for itself, and that's much better than letting someone unilaterally make the decision that the nomination is bullshit.
I agree something has to be done about VfD's size, though. I just don't feel this is the right solution; rather, it more feels like a disguised attempt to lead us down the slippery slope of discarding votes simply because they just said "Delete. Non-notable." Regardless of the reason given, as I stated in the first paragraph, it's still an editorial decision that does not need extensive justification: An editor feels the topic does not merit an article. That opinion is factored into the decision by the community as a whole.
I think what should be done is to get the community more involved in VfD by reducing its size and providing more avenues for categorisation of articles being nominated for deletion. A professional aviator, for example, would be interested in VfD nominations relating to aviation but not scuba-diving. And so on. Likewise, a lot of articles are often deleted unanimously or nearly unanimously, and end up cluttering VfD, making it difficult for editors get to the heavily debated nominations. [[Wikipedia:Categorized deletion]] and [[Wikipedia:Preliminary deletion]] are both proposals that should be considered and discussed more; if people aren't satisfied with them, nothing's stopping them from making suggestions.
VfD's problem is not people making unreasonable nominations (those are already easily removed because we still have a smattering of editors being bold enough to use common sense). VfD's problem is it's too large for the community to easily vote. Solve that, and the problem of trigger-happy nominations will be easier to handle.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 13:47:37 +0800, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I absolutely agree with Dpbsmith. Policy is meant to change with the community, not vice-versa. As much as some of us would like to avoid voting using highly subjective grounds like notability (which has different meanings from person to person; my idea of notability seems highly inclusionistic compared to some of the notability grounds used in voting today), the fact remains that a good deal of the community *does* use notability as a reason for deletion. If the community wants an article to go, we shouldn't disregard their opinion just because it's based on something subjective, since the resolution of the issue of contention -- should the article be deleted? -- has been agreed upon. (taken with a slight modification from [[Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy]])
The difference, my friend, between policy and convention, is that the former is transparent, is rational, and is decided by consensus, whereas the latter is transient, opaque, often irrational, and decided by majority/plurality. A good policy is applied equally to all articles that fall under its remit, whereas convention follows the whims of its constituents. I'm sure there are enough people that don't like any particular article to vote for its deletion. It's only the choice of sample that decides the outcome. And personally, I do not hold much faith and the self-selecting sample that is VfD.
I don't think removing nominations from VfD that are without a reason found in the deletion policy is a good idea. If the nomination has no specific rationale in itself, that might be acceptable, but non-notable is often used as shorthand for not encyclopedic. It's basically an editorial judgement - it's like a shorter version of "I don't think this topic is sufficiently encyclopedic enough to merit its own article in this encyclopedia". A nomination to delete should not be discarded wantonly. If it's unreasonable, the community will speak for itself, and that's much better than letting someone unilaterally make the decision that the nomination is bullshit.
It's hard to know where to begin here. How could a nomination be valid, without a rationale? This doesn't grok at all for me, and moreover, troubles me slightly. An editorial judgement it is indeed, and a consensus of 5-7 (arbitrary guess there) is not qualified, in this writer's humble opinion, to make editorial decisions for something that has nearly half a million articles and hundreds of thousands of users. Those who frequent VfD, as I mentioned earlier, as not representative of the whole Community, and it's rather audacious for any size proportially sized group to claim to be. And lastly, isn't this thread an example of the community saying it is unreasonable, and speaking for itself.
I agree something has to be done about VfD's size, though. I just don't feel this is the right solution; rather, it more feels like a disguised attempt to lead us down the slippery slope of discarding votes simply because they just said "Delete. Non-notable." Regardless of the reason given, as I stated in the first paragraph, it's still an editorial decision that does not need extensive justification: An editor feels the topic does not merit an article. That opinion is factored into the decision by the community as a whole.
I think we're agreed here. It is about geting rid of nominations where the nominator, in addition to being too lazy to improve the article to something which can be built upon, is also too lazy to show why it should be deleted. Shall we just have a voting system for all articles, as you say, it's just an editorial decision. Let's let the community decide by voting,... Also, I think we need to vote in a new lead developer </glib>
I think what should be done is to get the community more involved in VfD by reducing its size and providing more avenues for categorisation of articles being nominated for deletion. A professional aviator, for example, would be interested in VfD nominations relating to aviation but not scuba-diving. And so on. Likewise, a lot of articles are often deleted unanimously or nearly unanimously, and end up cluttering VfD, making it difficult for editors get to the heavily debated nominations. [[Wikipedia:Categorized deletion]] and [[Wikipedia:Preliminary deletion]] are both proposals that should be considered and discussed more; if people aren't satisfied with them, nothing's stopping them from making suggestions.
VfD's problem is not people making unreasonable nominations (those are already easily removed because we still have a smattering of editors being bold enough to use common sense). VfD's problem is it's too large for the community to easily vote. Solve that, and the problem of trigger-happy nominations will be easier to handle.
I don't think your idea of unreasonable nominations, as shown by this post, is quite as extensive as some people's. On the ridiculous size of VfD however, we are fully agreed. The implimentation of this proposal would in part solve that problem.
Lauri Love (nsh) wrote:
On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 13:47:37 +0800, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I absolutely agree with Dpbsmith. Policy is meant to change with the community, not vice-versa. As much as some of us would like to avoid voting using highly subjective grounds like notability (which has different meanings from person to person; my idea of notability seems highly inclusionistic compared to some of the notability grounds used in voting today), the fact remains that a good deal of the community *does* use notability as a reason for deletion. If the community wants an article to go, we shouldn't disregard their opinion just because it's based on something subjective, since the resolution of the issue of contention -- should the article be deleted? -- has been agreed upon. (taken with a slight modification from [[Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy]])
The difference, my friend, between policy and convention, is that the former is transparent, is rational, and is decided by consensus, whereas the latter is transient, opaque, often irrational, and decided by majority/plurality. A good policy is applied equally to all articles that fall under its remit, whereas convention follows the whims of its constituents. I'm sure there are enough people that don't like any particular article to vote for its deletion. It's only the choice of sample that decides the outcome. And personally, I do not hold much faith and the self-selecting sample that is VfD.
Exactly. However, the solution is not to assume bad faith by discounting votes/nominations that don't provide a rationale directly from the deletion policy. The solution is to make VfD more accessible to the community as a whole instead of some backwater where only those with enough time and a fast connection can vote. Also note that word *does* spread if there is strong contention over an article's status. I do not vote or intently follow VfD (I do survey it occasionally though), but I can easily point you to the Ashlee Simpson scandal not too long ago where there was a lot of debating and a lot of votes, coming from every side. Word *does* get around.
Also, convention should be policy should be loose. Tight policy is a very bad thing, for two reasons:
1. [[m:Instruction creep]]. Tightly controlling what people do is a bad thing and goes against the wiki spirit that relies on editors to [[be bold]]. 2. Gaming of policy. Again, the Ashlee Simpson scandal. Also, the case over constant reversion of [[Charles Darwin]] (which happened to centre on the bit of trivia regarding that Darwin and Abraham Lincoln share the same birthday). In both of these cases, due to the rigid policy of the 3RR (which most of us accept as a stop-gap measure; a better one would simply say "Reverting non-vandalism is generally a bad idea"), two editors got into very deep trouble.
Rigid policy is a bad, bad thing. As Dpbsmith pointed out on [[Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion]], what's stopping someone from removing votes not conforming to the policy in detail (i.e. "Delete. Advertosing", which clearly means that the article is "advertising", making it deletable). As it is now, convention on VfD is that we vote using our heads and not policy.
I don't think removing nominations from VfD that are without a reason found in the deletion policy is a good idea. If the nomination has no specific rationale in itself, that might be acceptable, but non-notable is often used as shorthand for not encyclopedic. It's basically an editorial judgement - it's like a shorter version of "I don't think this topic is sufficiently encyclopedic enough to merit its own article in this encyclopedia". A nomination to delete should not be discarded wantonly. If it's unreasonable, the community will speak for itself, and that's much better than letting someone unilaterally make the decision that the nomination is bullshit.
It's hard to know where to begin here. How could a nomination be valid, without a rationale? This doesn't grok at all for me, and moreover, troubles me slightly.
A nomination isn't valid without a rationale. "Non-notable" is accepted by editors as a rationale. This rigid interpretation of policy makes it fair for more gaming of the system by rabid inclusionists.
An editorial judgement it is indeed, and a consensus of 5-7 (arbitrary guess there) is not qualified, in this writer's humble opinion, to make editorial decisions for something that has nearly half a million articles and hundreds of thousands of users.
5-7 is not consensus. Nor is 14-7. Something like 30-7 is considered consensus here. If the community is so divided that no clear decision can be made (generally consensus is regarded as >80%), then the article is kept, as no consensus for deleting it has been reached. The reason the 80% rule isn't in policy is because it's a rule of thumb. Making it exact would lead to, again, gaming of the system: "Hey! I want this article undeleted because my tallying indicates only 79.7% of the votes were for delete!"
Those who frequent VfD, as I mentioned earlier, as not representative of the whole Community, and it's rather audacious for any size proportially sized group to claim to be.
Exactly, but it works because as soon as someone spots something wrong, the whole community is alerted.
And lastly, isn't this thread an example of the community saying it is unreasonable, and speaking for itself.
I think there are as many people opposing the proposal as there are supporting it.
I agree something has to be done about VfD's size, though. I just don't feel this is the right solution; rather, it more feels like a disguised attempt to lead us down the slippery slope of discarding votes simply because they just said "Delete. Non-notable." Regardless of the reason given, as I stated in the first paragraph, it's still an editorial decision that does not need extensive justification: An editor feels the topic does not merit an article. That opinion is factored into the decision by the community as a whole.
I think we're agreed here. It is about geting rid of nominations where the nominator, in addition to being too lazy to improve the article to something which can be built upon,
You try Googling for an obscure topic with an article in poor English (I once stumbled across an article about an Eastern European actor who had few hits on Google. Upon listing it on VfD, people soon found out more about the actor and were able to make it more clearer and give it better context, so I withdrew the nomination).
Accusing active nominators of being lazy to expand an article seems like a strawman, especially when you consider the status of article content is not a valid reason for deletion. Editors don't go and flame the nominator or remove the nomination from VfD, though. Instead, they expand/rewrite the article and/or vote to keep it. Or, if it's beyond all hope, they will vote to delete it. Generally, most voters of VfD do provide reasons for voting; they may just not be in the policy.
That there is no specific order like "You must vote delete for and only for one or more of the following reasons" is a good thing, because it gives editors a free hand in making editorial decisions.
I recall the issue of article size last time when old browsers were a bit more common; although policy dictated "YOU MUST TRIM THIS ARTICLE BELOW 32KB!" not many people did. They might embark on trimming the article and/or pushing it out to subarticles using [[wikipedia:summary style]], but as long as the article was readable, nobody bothered. Nobody freaked out when [[Singapore]] began pushing past 40kb (it's been brought down now to 33kb) or when [[Mozilla Firefox]] was a whopping 65kb (it's also been brought down to a more reasonable size, but it's still past 32kb).
As a result of this, the policy has recently been changed to reflect editorial convention. Policy should always follow convention (it's even documented somewhere on the site in a guide to writing policy).
is also too lazy to show why it should be deleted.
People can tell whether the editor made an effort. Most nominations aren't very long these days, just briefly pointing out the article's a neologism, advertising, etc. I see no reason why non-notable, a widely accepted shorthand for "not encyclopedic" should be different.
Shall we just have a voting system for all articles, as you say, it's just an editorial decision. Let's let the community decide by voting,... Also, I think we need to vote in a new lead developer </glib>
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.
I think what should be done is to get the community more involved in VfD by reducing its size and providing more avenues for categorisation of articles being nominated for deletion. A professional aviator, for example, would be interested in VfD nominations relating to aviation but not scuba-diving. And so on. Likewise, a lot of articles are often deleted unanimously or nearly unanimously, and end up cluttering VfD, making it difficult for editors get to the heavily debated nominations. [[Wikipedia:Categorized deletion]] and [[Wikipedia:Preliminary deletion]] are both proposals that should be considered and discussed more; if people aren't satisfied with them, nothing's stopping them from making suggestions.
VfD's problem is not people making unreasonable nominations (those are already easily removed because we still have a smattering of editors being bold enough to use common sense). VfD's problem is it's too large for the community to easily vote. Solve that, and the problem of trigger-happy nominations will be easier to handle.
I don't think your idea of unreasonable nominations, as shown by this post, is quite as extensive as some people's.
Can you show me examples of unreasonable nominations? I have already given three specific examples backing up my argument.
On the ridiculous size of VfD however, we are fully agreed. The implimentation of this proposal would in part solve that problem.
Not really. It'd just give rabid inclusionists more tools to legally troll with.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Rick wrote:
--- Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
"Any VFD nomination not listing a reason in Wikipedia:Deletion policy may be summarily removed from the page."
Exactly. And "not notable" is not one of those criteria. And yet it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article.
So why not add non-notability to the deletion policy? If it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article and yet it isn't actually listed as a valid reason for deletion in the deletion policy, it seems there's already a pretty big problem either with the VfD process or with the deletion policy.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
So why not add non-notability to the deletion policy? If it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article and yet it isn't actually listed as a valid reason for deletion in the deletion policy, it seems there's already a pretty big problem either with the VfD process or with the deletion policy.
Mostly because it'll be too damn subjective to fly.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
So why not add non-notability to the deletion policy? If it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article and yet it isn't actually listed as a valid reason for deletion in the deletion policy, it seems there's already a pretty big problem either with the VfD process or with the deletion policy.
Mostly because it'll be too damn subjective to fly.
So the solution is simple. We simply avoid using it as an excuse for deleting things until there is a strong consensus about what it means. :-) Wikipedia is a long term encyclopedia project so if it takes a mere two years to reach a consensus only the most impatient among us will be upset.
Ec
On Sun, 6 Mar 2005, David Gerard wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
So why not add non-notability to the deletion policy? If it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article and yet it isn't actually listed as a valid reason for deletion in the deletion policy, it seems there's already a pretty big problem either with the VfD process or with the deletion policy.
Mostly because it'll be too damn subjective to fly.
The times I've cited "non-notable" as a reason for VfD have all been in regards to entries about people. It's my shorthand for saying "this person hasn't done anything important enough to merit an entry." And it's a judgement based on the contents of the first sentence or two of the article -- which should give the reader a quick answer of why this person is important. If you can't tell me why this person matters in the first paragraph, then it's clearly a non-notable entry.
For example, if the entry begins "Joe Blow is a husband of 14 years to Jane Blow, has 3 kids & 2 dogs", then it's clearly non-noteable; if the man did something that argues he should be included in Wikipedia (say, he invented the cursor or patented the Smiley), it should say that in the first sentence -- or the second, if the first is devoted to saying he's an engineer, computer enthusiast or convicted sex offender. If the article begins "Joe Blow is the maintainer of the Open Source project [[Road kill]]" then it's not an automatic non-noteable call; even if it turns out that you can't find any mention of Road Kill at the usual Open Source/Free Software download sites (like Freshmeat), it's still not non-noteable -- I'd label it either "vanity" or "hoax" -- especially if that sentence is the entire article.
Sadly, even limited to this catagory, this word has a lot of candidates: for some reason countless people think Wikipedia needs to have an article about themselves, their girlfriends, or their best friend. Even if said person's most important achievement in life was survivng birth.
I'd probably use this term for other catagories, but I've lost the battle whether public high schools are non-noteable or not. (My own high school is non-noteable, yet other editors insisted on creating an article about it.) And it's easier to argue that an article about a public high school should be deleted because it's unverifiable than non-noteable, whereas with people it's the other way around. ("But you can't say [[Joe Blow]] is unverifiable! Take a look in the phone book -- his name is there! Call him & you'll see that he really exists!")
Geoff
Geoff Burling wrote:
On Sun, 6 Mar 2005, David Gerard wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
So why not add non-notability to the deletion policy?
Mostly because it'll be too damn subjective to fly.
The times I've cited "non-notable" as a reason for VfD have all been in regards to entries about people. It's my shorthand for saying "this person hasn't done anything important enough to merit an entry." And it's a judgement based on the contents of the first sentence or two of the article -- which should give the reader a quick answer of why this person is important. If you can't tell me why this person matters in the first paragraph, then it's clearly a non-notable entry.
For example, if the entry begins "Joe Blow is a husband of 14 years to Jane Blow, has 3 kids & 2 dogs", then it's clearly non-noteable; if the man did something that argues he should be included in Wikipedia (say, he invented the cursor or patented the Smiley), it should say that in the first sentence -- or the second, if the first is devoted to saying he's an engineer, computer enthusiast or convicted sex offender. If the article begins "Joe Blow is the maintainer of the Open Source project [[Road kill]]" then it's not an automatic non-noteable call; even if it turns out that you can't find any mention of Road Kill at the usual Open Source/Free Software download sites (like Freshmeat), it's still not non-noteable -- I'd label it either "vanity" or "hoax" -- especially if that sentence is the entire article.
Sadly, even limited to this catagory, this word has a lot of candidates: for some reason countless people think Wikipedia needs to have an article about themselves, their girlfriends, or their best friend. Even if said person's most important achievement in life was survivng birth.
I'd probably use this term for other catagories, but I've lost the battle whether public high schools are non-noteable or not. (My own high school is non-noteable, yet other editors insisted on creating an article about it.) And it's easier to argue that an article about a public high school should be deleted because it's unverifiable than non-noteable, whereas with people it's the other way around. ("But you can't say [[Joe Blow]] is unverifiable! Take a look in the phone book -- his name is there! Call him & you'll see that he really exists!")
Congratulations! For once someone has said something sensible in favour of this deletion criterion. "Article does not say why this person is notable," is an objective and easily verifiable criterion. If the basis for the person's notability is to be found later in the article, then it's an easy fix. All too often the term "not notable" seems to be a shortcut for, "He's not important because I never heard of him." That kind of sloppy remark ends up saying more about the person proposing the deletion than about the article in question. A little sensitivity and understanding on the part of some deletionists would go a long way toward defusing this issue.
Having established the verifiability of [[Joe Blow]], we need to consider the fate of the late [[Joe Blow, Sr.]] whom the telephone company has so rudely omitted since his death. Obviously his supporters are unfamiliar with the SSDI (Social Security Death Index). This on-line resource is well known by genealogists. It lists the reported death of anybody who had a social security number. Failure to have a SSN may be an indicator of non-notability. Access to that list could be the basis for [[List of notably deceased Americans by Social Security Number]]. :-)
Ec
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Rick wrote:
--- Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
"Any VFD nomination not listing a reason in Wikipedia:Deletion policy may be summarily removed from the page."
Exactly. And "not notable" is not one of those criteria. And yet it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article.
So why not add non-notability to the deletion policy? If it's one of the most commonly used reasons for listing an article and yet it isn't actually listed as a valid reason for deletion in the deletion policy, it seems there's already a pretty big problem either with the VfD process or with the deletion policy.
A formal proposal to add non-notability as a reason for deletion has been voted on (with a large number of voters) in the past. It didn't even get majority support.
The main problem is that notability depends very much on voters' POVs' [*] whereas verfiability (which enjoys universal support) can be ascertained in an NPOV way, thus the community has not proved willing to enshrine non-notability into policy.
Pete
[*] E.g. esoteric topics about individual characters in sub-plots of Lord of the Rings are kept, whereas as articles about million dollar turnover manufacturing busineses are deleted, reflecting the (painting with a broad brush) slant towards the "nerdy student/lefty" make-up of the Wikipedia population.
Pete/Pcb21 wrote
[*] E.g. esoteric topics about individual characters in sub-plots of Lord of the Rings are kept, whereas as articles about million dollar turnover manufacturing busineses are deleted, reflecting the (painting with a broad brush) slant towards the "nerdy student/lefty" make-up of the Wikipedia population.
Wikipedia will reflect its editors' interests, no question. I don't really accept that analysis, though. A million-dollar turnover manufacturing business is still family-sized, actually. What is more, a million dollars in one bank account looks much like a million dollars in another. It is the price of a very ordinary house in London, for example.
Charles
On Sun, 6 Mar 2005 12:20:04 -0000, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote
[*] E.g. esoteric topics about individual characters in sub-plots of Lord of the Rings are kept, whereas as articles about million dollar turnover manufacturing busineses are deleted, reflecting the (painting with a broad brush) slant towards the "nerdy student/lefty" make-up of the Wikipedia population.
Wikipedia will reflect its editors' interests, no question. I don't really accept that analysis, though. A million-dollar turnover manufacturing business is still family-sized, actually. What is more, a million dollars in one bank account looks much like a million dollars in another. It is the price of a very ordinary house in London, for example.
I don't think Pete was complaining about our slant towards editors' interests, in fact, I'm sure we can all agree that Wikipedia only exists because it allows people to write about what _they_ want, not what others want them to. However, if every time you try and write about something you are told that it is not notable or encyclopedic, you would soon turn away, and another potentially great contributor would be lost. I don't think that a million-dollar family business deserves to be in Wikipedia more than a LOTR plot detail. However, I don't think the converse either. In fact, I don't presume to the qualified to judge the importance of any information, saving whether it is neutrally written about, and verifiably true. Let me note, also, that number ten downing street, is by many standards, a very ordinary house in London. But that billions people know of it, while only a thousands know of the [[Russian_Constitution_of_1906]] does not make one any more suitable for inclusion than the other.
"Lauri Love (nsh)" wrote
. Let me note, also, that number ten downing street, is by many standards, a very ordinary house in London.
Think you'll find that's not true, behind the facade.
But that billions people know of it, while only a thousands know of the [[Russian_Constitution_of_1906]] does not make one any more suitable for inclusion than the other.
What gets included in WP seems mostly fine to me. Details of invented mythologies can always be ridiculed, individually. I don't think anyone actually knows what bits of popular culture will be seen as significant, or will be alluded to, in the year 2050.
Charles
Charles Matthews wrote:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote
[*] E.g. esoteric topics about individual characters in sub-plots of Lord of the Rings are kept, whereas as articles about million dollar turnover manufacturing busineses are deleted, reflecting the (painting with a broad brush) slant towards the "nerdy student/lefty" make-up of the Wikipedia population.
Wikipedia will reflect its editors' interests, no question. I don't really accept that analysis, though. A million-dollar turnover manufacturing business is still family-sized, actually. What is more, a million dollars in one bank account looks much like a million dollars in another. It is the price of a very ordinary house in London, for example.
Charles
Sorry yes I guess $1m was sufficiently low to muddy the waters unnecessarily. But I think I am making a valid point.
Trying another example: Pop stars and CEOs of large companies are both fine topics for an encyclopedia with a wide scope such as ours.
Yes, fine, pop stars will always have greater coverage on WP because it is a reflection of its editors' interests. I can certainly live with that. However our policies and procedures must work so that when someone odd does come along and write about a CEO their article isn't strangled to death at VfD by people writing "not important , not notable" when they mean "not important, not notable _to me_".
If notability were to be defined somehow without reference to POVs, then it would be more acceptable.
FWIW, a lot of the stuff that is ultimately deleted as "non-notable" actually fails "no original research" or "no nonsense", anyway.
Pete
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
Charles Matthews wrote:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote
[*] E.g. esoteric topics about individual characters in sub-plots of Lord of the Rings are kept, whereas as articles about million dollar turnover manufacturing busineses are deleted, reflecting the (painting with a broad brush) slant towards the "nerdy student/lefty" make-up of the Wikipedia population.
Wikipedia will reflect its editors' interests, no question. I don't really accept that analysis, though. A million-dollar turnover manufacturing business is still family-sized, actually. What is more, a million dollars in one bank account looks much like a million dollars in another. It is the price of a very ordinary house in London, for example.
Sorry yes I guess $1m was sufficiently low to muddy the waters unnecessarily. But I think I am making a valid point.
How big $1m really is is a question of perspective. For some of us it is still a hyge amount. Would anybody characterize a $1m donation to the Wikimedia Foundation as small?
Trying another example: Pop stars and CEOs of large companies are both fine topics for an encyclopedia with a wide scope such as ours.
Yes, fine, pop stars will always have greater coverage on WP because it is a reflection of its editors' interests. I can certainly live with that. However our policies and procedures must work so that when someone odd does come along and write about a CEO their article isn't strangled to death at VfD by people writing "not important , not notable" when they mean "not important, not notable _to me_".
The nerdy student/righty make up of the WP population is bound to influence what is added but it is not a sufficient excuse for subtracting what reflects a different POV.
FWIW, a lot of the stuff that is ultimately deleted as "non-notable" actually fails "no original research" or "no nonsense", anyway.
If that's the case deletionists should have no need to rely upon notability. They would accomplish a lot by simply doing their homework.
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