[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's destiny

[Stan Shebs]

Delirium wrote:

>Peter Mackay wrote:
>
>
>>>As for why you don't have an article, I would've thought that 
>>>is fairly obvious.  Unless you're famous in some area I don't 
>>>know about, it would seem not very many people have commented 
>>>publicly about you. 
>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>115 000 hits, Mark. That's more than the chap with the face.
>>
>>
>Did you look at any of them?  Note in my quote I said "not very many 
>people have commented about you", which empirically appears to be true: 
>Almost all of those hits are either for other people named Stan Shebs, 
>or to posts written by our Stan Shebs himself (e.g. on Wikipedia or on 
>mailing lists).
>
As it happens, there's only the one me. In fact, since my last name
is the result of creativity on the part of the authorities when my
grandfather immigrated, all the "Shebs" one finds on the net are my
relatives (save for a handful of uses as a casual form of "Sheba").

As you say, nearly all the hits are not so much about me personally
than about the projects I've been involved in, but you were the one
holding up raw Google hits as a measure of notability. We have lots
of uncontroversial bios for which there is one or two pages with
life story, and every other Google hit is a citation of works or
reference to the person's activities.

In Brian Peppers' case, being ridiculed by a handful of lusers on
the net, who are in turn mirrored by more lusers, just confirms
to me non-notability of that part of the net community, not Brian's
notability. An analogy might be a McDonald's franchise - even a
small one will have thousands of customers annually, but that's
still not enough to make that particular store notable.

(For the record, I'm indifferent as to whether I have an article.
But there's at least a million other articles that would be more
interesting and useful to write first.)

Stan