[WikiEN-l] Eternal Ephemeral

[Geoff Burling]

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, tarquin wrote:
>
> Matthew J. Brown wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, tarquin wrote:
> >
> >>So what happens when readers from other countries write up articles on
> >>every single kidnap victim?
> >>Do any UK writers wish to create articles on [[Milly Downling]], or the
> >>[[Soham girls]]? Both those cases got plenty of media coverage here.
> >>
> >If someone wants to write about them, go right ahead.  Wiki is not paper,
> >and all that.  I can't see as such articles detract from Wikipedia.
> >
> So can I write about the cat that was stuck up a tree in the next street
> from me? The local press gave in plenty of coverage!
>
I've been trying to determine for myself a good rule of thumb to answer
this very question: when is something too trivial for inclusion in
Wikipedia?

An obvious example for exclusion that I believe all of us can agree on
are the occasional articles that pop up about average people & promptly
get deleted. Likewise, there are thousands of individuals mentioned in
historical records only once, & of whom nothing more can be known or
guessed.

On the other hand, sensational crimes have always been with us, & will
always attract interest. One example that deserves at least a mention in
Wikipedia (although I can't lay my hands on the proper citation) is of
actual legal cases where thieves have brought a dispute over the fair
division of their theft. (This has actually been recorded as happening
at least twice - once in Roman law, & another time in Medieval Common
law!) And the reason that a given sensational crime will be of perennial
interest is that they enter the realm of popular culture or literature,
& further allusions to them tickle the curiousity of new readers. For
example, the other night on the tv show "Law & Order" one of the characters
made a reference to "Burking", which I had to explain further to my
wife; how many people could we expect would be curious about this
murderous practice & perhaps look for an article about William Burke
(1792 - 1829) or his partner William Hare, even though their career in
crime happened almsot 200 years ago?

The point I am trying to make is this: we should keep in mind that Wikipedia,
because it is an encyclopedia, is a reference work. People will want to
consult it to answer questions about people, events or facts. This leads
to the critereon that before adding an article, one should consider whether
it would be of interest beyond a clearly limited audience.

By "clearly limited audience", I mean just that: no one outside of my
family cares to know the dates of birth, marriage & death of any of my
great-grandparents. It may be of interest beyond this limited audience
to know that I have a relative who came to the northwest (Vancouver,
Washington, to be precise) on one of the last wagon trains, but it is
clearly of interest to a wider audience if I were to state that settlers
arrived here as late as the 1880s by wagon train.

Does this offer a useful test by which we can avoid sliding down this
slippery slope of inclusion?

Geoff