2007/1/8, Frederick Noronha fred@bytesforall.org:
Hmmm... some interesting issues being raised below. Just for argument sake: what happens if an "un-notable" entry makes it to Wikipedia? Would it be a grave error? Notability, after all, is mostly related to context. Would Shakespeare have been as "noted" a writer, if he had to be born in, say, Upper Egypt?
That's a big hypothetical - if he had been born there, how much and what would he have written? Having somehting un-notable may not be a grave error, but having thousands of un-notable things clogs Wikipedia, makes fact-checking harder and opens the doors wide to usage of Wikipedia for advertisement.
I think the problem lies elsewhere. The trouble is: people or
institutions being packaged to be what they are not. Or bloated claims about institutions or organisations or individuals.
Rather than just delete entries for being un-notable, perhaps we need to find ways to ensure that what's written is both accurate and tallies with the reality. --FN
But what if what is written is that so-and-so once wrote an internet page (that a few hundred people have looked at). Do you really want to just keep that in if you found that he really has done so?