Excuse my ignorance of the US electoral system, but are there
gubnertorial
contests happening in some or all of the other states at the same
time? If
there are, then why should California be singled out, other than for the reason that California tends to be self aggrandizing? And the reason for that might be that it is home to the third-largest film and TV
industry in
the world and the accompanying media circus?
It's not a regularly scheduled election, but a highly unusual recall of >a governor who was elected less than a year ago.
Imagine if the prime minister of New Zealand or Ireland were being >thrown out on his ear, and tell me we shouldn't cover it?
Why cant ALL elections and ALL candidates in ALL countries be covered? Its important enough for alot of people, it is googleable information and it can be easily verified. Meh, usually when people say an article is unimportant it's because they are ignorant about the subject. :-)
Which leads me to another question I've been aching(sp?) to ask for quite some time. When is an article to narrow or not important enough to be on Wikipedia? Are there any rules or policies explaining it?
BL
Bj wrote:
Why cant ALL elections and ALL candidates in ALL countries be covered? Its important enough for alot of people, it is googleable information and it can be easily verified. Meh, usually when people say an article is unimportant it's because they are ignorant about the subject. :-)
Which leads me to another question I've been aching(sp?) to ask for quite some time. When is an article to narrow or not important enough to be on Wikipedia? Are there any rules or policies explaining it?
I agree that it's appropriate to cover all election. We can end up carrying material that nobody else has. There can be no hard rule about what is relevant in human knowledge. We can only have guidelines that tend to be accepted by the community. I tend to favour a broad interpretation of what is worth including. Changing that standard could be a problem when we prepare a publishable version.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I agree that it's appropriate to cover all election. We can end up carrying material that nobody else has. There can be no hard rule about what is relevant in human knowledge. We can only have guidelines that tend to be accepted by the community. I tend to favour a broad interpretation of what is worth including. Changing that standard could be a problem when we prepare a publishable version.
One of my big goals in the push for 1.0 is that as we do so, we shouldn't change our minds about organically grown and mature customs on Wikipedia proper. We've always been pretty lax about what counts as "worth having an article on", and we should continue.
That is, just because some topic doesn't make the cut for 1.0 for whatever reason, that's no reason to not include it on the website. And future versions (2.0 Electronic) could include that stuff after a review.
So, I agree. Elections anywhere in the world, so long as they are verifiable, can surely be legitimate.
--Jimbo
Björn Lindqvist wrote:
Which leads me to another question I've been aching(sp?) to ask for quite some time. When is an article to narrow or not important enough to be on Wikipedia? Are there any rules or policies explaining it?
There are virtually no rules or policies. There are a handful of customs, not always followed.
1. *We* aren't worthy of enclopedia articles, nor are our families, but of course there could be exceptions. If nothing else, this sort of perhaps-feigned modesty keeps us from having to have embarassing discussions with people, explaining to them that they really aren't famous, or anyhow that their cats aren't. :-)
2. Verifiability rises to the level of a rule or policy, and often acts as a perfectly decent 'excuse' for eliminating topics that lack any tidbit of universal appeal. A lot of unencyclopedic stuff is also completely unverifiable in standard resources, online or off. My mother taught music lessons starting in 1963. I could prove it, if I could get to my parents house and dig up old photos and recital programs, but it isn't verifiable in the usual sense. But really, it isn't of encyclopedic interest, either.
3. If you're going to auto-bot add a lot of listings -- like the Rambot city entries, then uh, I think there's a rule about discussing it first, but anyhow, it's important to get feedback before doing so. This tends to keep obscurities out.
(Imagine, for example, stub articles for every Usenet newsgroup. There could be thousands of them. An automated system could probably 'write' a pretty decent article about them. But that would suck, and surely someone should discuss it *extensively* before doing it.)
---------------
As to adding information on elections, even local elections, I don't see why not. Wiki Is Not Paper, after all. We have "room" for a LOT more stuff than a paper encyclopedia. Not all of that stuff could possibly make the cut someday for a paper version, but it's still perfectly o.k. in Wikipedia proper.
--Jimbo
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