[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

[Matt Brown]

On 4/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we can't agree on even basic principles of notability, something is
> wrong. We must be able to explain why we don't want 50 articles on the
> same pokemon character. Even in broad, general, non-mechanical terms,
> there must be *some* binding common principle.



> > Thus an informal rule of notability: if not enough people are
> > interested in writing about it, it's probably not notable enough, at
> > least yet.
>
> Maybe...when talking about ancient history topics, most people would
> agree that "the more the better", even if each only gets two edits per
> year.

Indeed.  Not a hard and fast rule, perhaps - just my thinking out loud.

> > > - Articles on trivial topics damage the credibility of the
> > > encyclopaedia as a whole
> >
> > Controversial - and attempts to codify that have been roundly rejected.
>
> Ah, any examples?

I can't think, off the top of my head, of a specific example to point
you to - but I know this has been discussed multiple times on this
list with nothing that one could describe as consensus.

> > I believe one of Wikipedia's /strengths/ is its breadth of topics;
> > people come to us partly because we have obscure articles.
>
> On ancient Babylonian vase patterns, sure.  On pro-pedophilia blogs
> no. On different nomenclature systems for describing 3 or 4 toed tree
> frogs, sure. On the initiation rituals of a fraternity in an
> unremarkable university in Wisconsin, no.

I generally find that Verifiability and No original research tend to
weed these out fairly well.  I'm leery of having Notability as a
policy because it will be used as a weapon by people, and because any
policy that does not match the articles we in fact have / agree upon /
keep is empty words.

> I'm just trying to make a starting point. What's the nearest statement
> you could make to mine that you would agree with?

It should have been written about in a publication not associated with
the creators that has some level of credibility, the latter being hard
to determine of course.  Newspapers, trade journals, credible academic
journals, etc.

A 'credible source' is a topic that people have tried to define on
wp:cite and wp:v, I believe, with some degree of success.  For the
purposes of notability, we are not concerned with primary sources -
primary sources do not, by their very nature, define notability.

This is, granted, simply moving the point of hard definition to
'credible third-party source', but is at least a step.

Note that we're not talking about what sources can be used in the
article - primary sources have their uses - but those that can
establish a claim for notability.

Some online sources are credible in specific fields - I would strongly
disagree with counting all online sources as non-credible.

> Agree. I don't like the culture of "that's not worthy of an article,
> nuke from space". A better "vote" would be "how much space do we
> dedicate to this topic? two words? ok!"

Exactly - if something is just 'yet another <x>', then it is simply a
list entry.

> Oh it's not "mine". People will "nn" a pop culture article more easily
> than a science, geograhy or literature topic, no?

Definitely, but I'd disagree that it's anything approaching a
consensus - perhaps a consensus of those who frequently nominate for
deletion.

> Tell me, you want to write about a topic, but fear it may not be
> notable. Short of asking someone, how do you find out?

If I want to write about it, I write an article about it - nobody's
deleted one yet, so I must have it right ... ;)

Of course, I have it easy - very few of my interests are 'popular culture'.

I think the actual thought processes are to do with working out if
there's enough to at least write a decent stub about it that can be
sourced.  If not, I'll generally simply add it to a list or a more
general article.

-Matt