2007/9/20, J.L.W.S. The Special One hildanknight@gmail.com:
If an article on an American actress as notable as Chen Liping was nominated for deletion, the nominator would probably be admonished - or even blocked - for disruption. That the American Wikipedian who nominated the article for deletion (or speedy deleted) has not heard of it does not mean it is notable. Notability does not depend on the country the actress/blogger/hotel is from, but on whether there is significant coverage of the actress/blogger in reliable sources.
Whether I agree with that depends on your definition of 'significant' (and 'reliable' as well). Basically, it's just shifting the discussion from relevancy to something that is almost as badly defined. Just like there is a level between "can be seen in one scene of a small movie" and "won an Oscar for best actress" where an actress becomes notable enough, there is a level between "got her name mentioned in two different articles in the Smalltown Weekly" and "had a biography about her published by a mainstream publisher" where her coverage gets 'significant'.
What I see as a major problem in this point is that people tend to have widely diverging opinions on where to draw the line, which means that there are quite a number people who for any issue that actually comes under discussion, they will have the same opinion. Thus, the outcome would often more depend on who happen to be the people involved in the debate than the actual pros and cons of the specific subject. How to resolve this I do not know, though, since any attempt at objective criteria would need so many exceptions that it would soon lead us back to the current situation.