Also there is the problem of lack of timelessness.
In 500 years, will people care about [[w:en:Daigo Fukuryu Maru]]? Perhaps. What about [[w:en:Manchester United]]? If football doesn't last that long, chances are the 500-years-from-now-Wikipedians would want to merge all football teams into an article "List of famous football teams" or something like that.
What about [[w:en:Britney Spears]], [[w:en:David Beckham]], or [[w:en:Stefanie Sun]]?
Mark
On 18/05/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, why is that? I think we should put all of those up for deletion immediately. Notable? Hah.
Mark
On 18/05/05, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
[...] does the moniker 'encyclopedia' indicate that we are generally using a criteria of notability to decide to include things.
The crux of the problem is that "notability" is a stubbornly subjective concept. For instance, we have articles on extremely obscure US Navy destroyers and submarines, with crews of under 100 and with only a couple of years in service, during peacetime, and then scrapped - yet these are never challenged, while a century-old high school with 3,000 students is likely to end up on VfD. So what exactly is it that makes one topic "notable", and another not?
In a way, the old print encyclopedias had it easier - the publisher could only afford to spend M months producing N volumes, so one started at "most important" and went down until the available space and time was used up.
Stan
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