I can speak a bit about what we have tried to do on it.wikipedia. I guess a few things are being done on en.wikipedia as well, but since this is not the en.wikipedia ml, other projects may be interested as well. We managed to set some criteria for notability, although not for everything (e.g. a sportsman must have played for a first league team or something like that); however we do allow some flexibility so at the end of the day we still have to discuss, sometimes quite fiercely. We have some kind of bias towards Italy, because our community is much less international than other communities. At the same time, we have also less pressure with "foreign" topics of not so clear notability, mainly because not many people learn Italian as a second language. If we can, we try to contact the communities where it is likely to find someone who knows, I understand this is more difficult for en.wikipedia if the doubt is about a topic related to a Third World English-speaking country. About googlehits, they are useful, but we generally say "Google is not the Bible" (you can substitute with any book that contains rvealed truth). This is particularly true for Third World topics (or possibly even topics that come from a different language with a different script).
Marco (Cruccone)
J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
If I wanted to write an article on, say, a chess site, but was not sure whether it was notable, is there a place to post a request for others to check whether its notable? If not, perhaps I could propose such a place be created?
I agree that two problems with AFD need to be dealt with:
- Systemic bias. Articles on American topics are less likely to be
nominated than, say, articles on Singaporean topics. In addition, certain topics are more likely to be nominated than others. 2) Anti-elitism. If Wikipedia's article on Xiaxue were to be nominated for deletion, the views of Singaporeans, and those familiar with the blogosphere, should carry more weight. However, this isn't the case.