Re: Usability (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Compendium)

could write an observed by one obscure journal, and one would dream of have a number the largest high VfD debate. Is a few dozen school and its This is very interesting. I think it proves that the notability criterium is out of whack. It seems like when "the deletionists" say "notability" of information, they instead mean "usability" of information. Because noone can claim that one specimen of one species documented in one academic journal is more notable than any high school in Cleveland. However, the information about the specimen might well be more useful than that about the school.... .... to biologists! But not to anyone else. Is it so that the deletions is a symptom of the fact that many wikipedians see the target audience as something else than many other wikipedians see it? If we assume that Wikipedia HAS a limited number of target audiences, then I can understand that people want to delete factual, verifiable information. It doesn't make sense to have an article about a school in Cleveland if Wikipedia's target audience is not Clevelanders (or foreign exchange students..) It also makes sense to delete [[Melissa Doll]] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Doll if Wikipedia's target audience is not fans of Melissa Doll/people interested in porn actors. And so on. So maybe Wikipedia's *only* target audience is the target audience that Encyclopaedia Brittanica has. But I don't think so. I'm a member of the community and I has a say in what goes into Wikipedia too. So does everyone else that has ever written something in Wikipedia. We are all authors and contributors. For every article ever witten someone has thought "I know this and I think this is useful for someone else." Which means that everything ever written has passed someones test of usability. That doesn't mean that it has to be included in Wikipedia, but I think more thought should be spent on that fact than currently is. To summarize. Don't delete articles because they aren't "notable", delete articles because they aren't usable. Delete information about someones bank account number because, while it might be verifiable at an ATM machine, it isn't usable to a large enough audience. Keep information about Cleveland's high schools because that information is usable to thousands of students. Delete information about some random street because nothing interesting has ever happened there. Keep information about US President's dogs because thousands of people do find that information useful. -- Eric B. and Rakim

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