Michelle Obama's Arms seems to me to have been a perfectly reasonable deletion based on the discussion. The sources were a list of tabloid-style articles. If I had to guess, I'd say the BeebTweet AFD will be closed as "no consensus" despite all the ILikeIt, IDon'tLikeIt and OtherStuffExists crap going on. It's frightfully trivial, but for me the main question is whether we have editors who will maintain it, and I think the answer is clearly "yes", so I really don't care whether it stays or goes. -- David Richfield [[:en:User:Slashme]] +27718539985

On 3 July 2012 12:02, Tom Morris <tom(a)tommorris.org> wrote: Hammersoft makes a compelling argument. I've been keeping track of the discussion (no particular personal opinion on it) and currently some of the deletion arguments seems to be holding strong sway; particularly comments about NOTDIR & content forking etc. The keep arguments largely centre around ILIKEIT; some assert notability under GNG but so far no one has presented a source that adequately covers this. I've been through a big portion of the sources looking for one that covers this intersection/topic in sufficient depth to assert notability and so far there isn't one. It's essentially a collection of trivial mentions & news/gossip reports. Whether that adds up to GNG I don't know. The keep votes aren't doing a good job of convincing me. Tom

I guess anything that people are interested in is our guideline; however those who are interested it are going to have to write, and monitor, most of this stuff themselves. It can be interesting. I remember a TV show about Queen Elizabeth's kitchen; fascinating, in a way... Actually, White House cuisine is an issue; prime rib, real prime rib, is readily available to the White House; eating a lot of that, a favorite of Nixon, will clog up blood circulation to the brain. Fred

On 3 July 2012 14:49, Svip <svippy(a)gmail.com> wrote: I prefer the latter; because it sets the distinction of being a work of reference. Really, Wikipedia hasn't redefined "encyclopaedia"; what it has done is demonstrated that encyclopaedia's of an unprecedented scale can be written. Our coverage is significantly wider than other encyclopaedias - but still very narrow (biased heavily toward current events in the Western world). What does 'encyclopaedic worthiness' even mean? If Wikipedia is an It's about levels of detail; if the WH Thanksgiving dinner was a matter of ongoing interest then it should certainly be mentioned (probably in the WH article, or something). But specific details of food served each year, etc, are happily left to the source material. Which is the point of a summary resource. This is the crux of the problem. Our notability guidelines don't help define a line between what should be included and what shouldn't. Many many many things can be written about that would pass GNG. As Hammersoft points out, if we take this article as notable then there are several other JB on XYZ articles that could be written, Question is; do we need that level of detail. Decisions over levels of detail are haphazard and varying across all of Wikipedia, to the extent that no one can answer this question. Tom

On 7/3/12 3:56 PM, Thomas Morton wrote: I think that's true, but I think that's because it's a *relatively* small problem overall, as a proportion of deletion discussions and controversy, so there just hasn't been a lot of need to undertake the nearly-impossible task of specifying what level of detail we should cover, and in which areas. The biggest angst producer in my view is actually the opposite case: something that seems like it "should" be covered, since it's notable, but for which the extant sources are really lacking, making it hard/impossible to write a well-sourced article. People get very angry when something they view as clearly notable (a programming language, say) is deleted due to lack of 3rd-party sources. I think the root problem here is a feeling that sources "should" or even "must" track notability, so given that something is clearly important (at least in a community), the lack of sources we consider acceptable is unexpected. Imo the problem is just that the literature sometimes lags and sometimes has blind spots; journalists, sociologists, historians, etc. don't cover everything important in full detail, instantly. I wrote a bit about that last year: http://www.kmjn.org/notes/wikipedia_notability_verifiability.html In the other direction, the vast majority of things we really shouldn't cover I think are axed by the same verifiability guideline, without need to declare them un-notable, since they don't have good sources on them. This strange case of well-sourced, but perhaps too detailed for Wikipedia, is I think a much smaller issue. In addition, it seems to only produce any sort of controversy in certain areas of pop culture: details about celebrities, too-in-depth plot summarization by tv/film/novel fans, too blow-by-blow summary of a musician's every doing (also by fans), etc. In many areas there really is no controversy about going every bit as deep as we can find sources for, within some level of common sense that does not seem to often be exceeded. Are there multiple good sources for one particular piece of pottery found in a Minoan site? Well, let's have an article on that pottery piece, then, even if we end up with 500 such articles. Perhaps that seems less problematic to people because: 1) the sources really are *very* good in that case, not merely "ok" sources like newspaper articles; and 2) Wikipedia here isn't doing anything too groundbreaking, but just annexing the kind of content that subject-specialist encyclopedias would traditionally cover. -Mark

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 9:14 PM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote: I agree with Marc. The other day, someone said here on the list, "It's almost as if what the press say and what the facts are in reality are two different things that have only a very tenuous relationship." This was in reference to reporting on a Wikimedia-related matter. In this field, many Wikimedians recognise readily that media reporting is often inept, and the level of accuracy of the information given to the public is very poor. What people fail to do is to apply this insight to the wider situation. Two of my favourite quotes: ---o0o--- What people outside do not appreciate is that a newspaper is like a soufflé, prepared in a hurry for immediate consumption. This of course is why whenever you read a newspaper account of some event of which you have personal knowledge it is nearly always inadequate or inaccurate. Journalists are as aware as anyone of this defect; it is simply that if the information is to reach as many readers as possible, something less than perfection has often to be accepted. —David E. H. Jones, in New Scientist, Vol. 26 Actually, I'd say newspapers are more like commercial fast-food than soufflé. It isn't just that they are prepared in haste, it is that unwholesome additives and artificial sweeteners are added to true content, in order to make the whole thing more tasty. No one really asks whether the result is edifying or healthy, because it is generally consumed with a pinch of (even more superfluous) salt. —User:Scott MacDonald ---o0o--- What would a Wikipedia look like that did not make use of press sources? It would look a hell of a lot more like an encyclopedia. Thousands of silly arguments would never arise. Thousands of apposite criticisms of Wikipedia would never arise. These are good things. Unfortunately, such a Wikipedia would also have vastly impoverished coverage of popular culture and current affairs. The articles on Lady Gaga and Barack Obama would be years behind events; the articles on the Japan earthquakes, which I believe Wikipedia was widely praised for, would only now begin to be written, articles on many towns and villages would lack colour and detail. If Wikipedia stopped using press sources, you'd have to have a news-based 'pedia somewhere else (and I don't mean Wikinews).

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 12:15 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: It's not really what we are talking about here, but – no, actually, I haven't changed my mind, because the press's tendency towards simplification was quite consciously exploited in this case (to link the "Wikipedia" name to opposition to the extradition of O'Dwyer). The press can be manipulated to all sorts of ends, sacrificing accuracy and nuance in the process. That's precisely the problem.

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 12:38 AM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote: How would you deal with biographies of people like heads of state, who are subjects of serious academic study as well as daily news articles?

On 4 July 2012 00:48, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote: We could call it "Wikinews". - d.

On 4 July 2012 00:49, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: God-dammit, that's my line. ;) Tom

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 12:48 AM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote: This is a good idea, and you can take it further, as suggested in the past: we need a space in which one can draft verifiable articles about any topic, without arguments about notability. Just as Wikipedia was a 'simple, unreliable scratch space' to let everyone draft articles for nupedia, we need the same sort of space to let everyone draft articles for [what we currently think of as] wikipedia. SJ

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 6:21 AM, The Cunctator &lt;cunctator(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Oh yes. It will be called Wikiwikiwiki, with "Jam On It" playing every time you load the main page. <moving to wikipedia-l as suggested>

On 4 July 2012 01:38, Marc A. Pelletier &lt;marc(a)uberbox.org&gt; wrote: You could avoid the whole namespace issue by simply highlighting articles or parts of article that are based on popular media. Like non-canon stuff on fiction wikis. Highlight its background in blue or something.

On 7/4/12 1:04 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: It's an intriguing idea, and I agree with the general principle of reducing reliance on sources with less gestation time, of which newspapers are the biggest offender. I do tend to apply it in an as-alternatives-are-available fashion, and to many kinds of sources. For example, citing a recent academic conference paper may be justified if no synthesizing source is available, but there are dangers to cobbling together a new synthesis out of a dozen conference papers that may or may not be representative of majority views in a field, that may now be obsolete in ways unbeknownst to the reader, etc. Better to cite a proper book or survey article, if one is available. A problem with avoiding newspapers entirely, added to those you mention, is that we'd even lose many things that aren't that recent. Especially in their more "summary" pieces such as obituaries and biopics, newspapers (and newsmagazines) fill in a lot of fairly uncontroversial information on more minor, but potentially still important, people and events. For the ancient world, that information is compiled fairly exhaustively in academic sources; you can find at least a three-sentence biography of every attested figure in some kind of specialist encyclopedia, e.g. the impressively comprehensive _Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire_. But for 20th-century figures that's often not the case. For example, I've written a number of articles on minor political figures (a mayor of Houston, say) primarily sourced from obituaries in major newspapers, e.g. the NYT's obituary section. For what they are, they are usually reliable enough: they provide some dates, a summary of offices held, and a brief mention of why the person is known. For famous figures, there are usually better sources, but for minor figures the alternatives are often more like primary sources, e.g. the state or municipal archives, or not including an article at all. -Mark

On 03/07/12 17:09, Delirium wrote: I always imagined that Wikiversity would be the place where this could be done. If you can't find a source on something, write it yourself, then it could be peer-reviewed, by professional scientists and university professors if possible, formally published and used in Wikipedia.

I love it when individuals decide that they know what is important and worthy of inclusion, as opposed to the mindless masses. Because that's such a healthy way to ensure an open, neutral, and comprehensive encyclopedia. On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Tarc Meridian &lt;tarc(a)hotmail.com&gt; wrote: