Dan Bolser wrote: This kind of presaging is not an unusual phenomenon. Some people had great insights, but the means of testing their hypotheses did not exist yet for them. That made it too easy for the ideas to be misapplied. But that's true enough. Ec

Deletionism worsens systemic bias. As a young Singaporean who contributes to articles pertaining to the Little Red Dot, I was dismayed to find out that many articles on notable Singaporean topics have been nominated for deletion (or even speedy deleted) by Wikipedians who know nothing about Singapore. I could provide many examples, but I believe the four below would suffice: Last year, Nehwyn nominated many articles on Singaporean shopping malls for deletion. These included [[Suntec City Mall]] (which holds the world's largest fountain). After a bitter dispute with an SGpedian on [[Singapore Airlines]], Russavia nominated many articles on Singaporean hotels for deletion. These included [[Shangri-La Hotel Singapore]] (the flagship hotel of the Shangri-La group). Xiaxue - Singapore's top blogger. Claims to notability: 1. At the 2005 Bloggies, she won the Best Asian Weblog Award. 2. She has worked as a columnist for The New Paper, STOMP, Maxim magazine and Snag magazine. 3. She hosted her own TV show named Girls Out Loud, which was aired on MediaCorp Channel 5. 4. Several of her blog posts have sparked national controversies. Wikipedia's article on her was speedy deleted. I managed to persuade an admin to undelete it, but someone nominated it for deletion. With my convincing arguments to keep the article, and a fellow SGpedian searching LexisNexis for newspaper articles about her, the deletion debate closed with Keep as the result. Chen Liping - one of Singapore's top actresses. Claims to notability: 1. Her record at MediaCorp's Star Awards - the Lion City's only major annual award ceremony for excellence in television. Since 2001, she has been nominated for the Best Actress award thrice. In 2003, she won the Best Actress and Most Unforgettable Character (a special award, only awarded on that year) awards. She is one of only three Singaporean actresses to be honoured with the All-Time Favourite award. 2. She starred in the 2004 Jack Neo movie The Best Bet (very few Singaporean actresses have made it to silver screen). 3. She was involved in the Slim 10 controversy. Wikipedia's article on her was speedy deleted, and has not been recreated since. Before nominating an article for deletion, or speedy deleting an article, on the grounds of non-notability, please do a quick Internet search (which may reveal sources that establish its notability) and ask a relevant WikiProject (which may know more than you do). -- Written with passion, J.LW.S. The Special One 2007/9/18, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

On 9/18/07, Ronald Chmara <ron(a)opus1.com> wrote: I think the original poster's point was that similar in, say, New York would not be deleted in en.wikipedia. We are not necessarily bound by the limits of previous print encyclopedias. -Matt

Indeed. There are already encyclopedias on: Pseudoscience http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_Pseudoscience Star Trek http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_Encyclopedia Ideas http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Ideas-Inventions-Concepts-Discoveries/dp… African Americans At War http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://www.powells.com/partner/… Homicidal Poisonings http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe… Magical spells http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://newbibliophile.ammonet-s… World Shopping http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe… Asteroid Names http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe… Singapore Business http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe… Regards, Ian Tresman www.plasma-universe.com

Ronald Chmara wrote: If you had said "mean many things" (as I first misread it) I would say, "Absolutely!" in a simple one word answer. If your second "mean" was intentional I would have no hesitation in saying, "No!" It would be unjust to suggest that any of us are intent on having an an encyclopedia of low quality. Ec

Different people have their own ideas as to what is "encyclopedic", and what is "notable". So if they want to exclude something, they claim it is "unencyclopedic" or not notable. Since neither of these are objective, there's no rational argument for or against. So some of us spend more time in "discussions" over notability of policy, than on time adding or improving articles. Regards, Ian Tresman www.plasma-universe.com

2007/9/20, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight(a)gmail.com>om>: 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. -- Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

2007/9/20, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight(a)gmail.com>om>: Yes, but the big problem, as I wrote, is that it's hard or impossible to find objective criteria so that you don't have A and B, such that A would be 'notable enough', B not 'notable enough', and at the same time subjectively one would consider B to be 'higher' in notability than A. -- Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote: Notability lists should always be whitelists. At least that's what we tried to do on it.wp. We still get a lot of criticism because scientists are whitelisted if they win a Nobel prizes and footballers if they have played in the top league (Serie A, Premiership...). This doesn't mean that a scientist that hasn't won a Nobel prize is non-notable, but that we couldn't find consensus on wider criteria that wouldn't have been too wide. Explaining that whatever does not fit a whitelist doesn't necessarily fit a blacklist is hard, very hard. Cruccone

A film that wins a major award is notable for one thing: it's won a notable award. But a film might be notable for a ton of other reasons, notable directory, scene, newsworthiness, etc etc. But notability is not a criteria for inclusion. We include films because the information about then is verifiable, and SECONDLY, we mention whether the is anything notable about them. Notability is a characteristic, not an inclusion criteria. Regards, Ian Tresman www.plasma-universe.com

I presume you mean "very few of them are known outside India". What are the most prestigious awards for Indian films? Shouldn't they count as major awards as well? 2007/9/21, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>et>:

That would be nice. I think this is the correct attitude.