"'fame' and 'importance' are not the right words to use, they are
merely
rough approximations to what we're really interested in, which is
verifiability and NPOV. I understand and appreciate where people are
coming
from on the 'Yes' vote, but feel that they will only get the unanimity
necessary in a wiki environment if they rephrase the issue in those
terms.
Consider an obscure scientific concept, 'Qubit Field Theory' -- 24
hits on
google. I'd say that not more than a few thousand people in the world
have
heard of it, and not more than a few dozen understand it. (I certainly
don't.) It is not famous and it is arguably not important, but I think
that
no one would serious question that it is valid material for an
encyclopedia. What is it that makes this encyclopedic? It is that it is
information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an
NPOV fashion. (Though perhaps only as a stub, of course, since it's
very
complicated and not many people would know how to express it clearly in
layperson's terms.)"
Not as obscure as all of that, it's a theory by Dr. David Deutsch that
attempts to find a version of quantum chromodynamics which looks as if
all quantum operations are commutable, but which does not assume an
infinite amount of information capacity at each point. It is the basis
for several interesting ideas about the nature of the universe which
far more people have heard of. I strongly doubt it only pops 24 hits on
google, as more papers have referenced it than that.
The size problem will be solved by a distribution system, probably one
that includes rating of articles. The local geography articles will get
low ratings and thus not be in the "short" version of wikipedia.