[WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 5/3/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 3 May 2006, at 12:38, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >>
> > That would be incredible, but somehow I doubt there are that many
> > dedicated Wikipedians that it's going to happen.
> >
> > Anyway, I look forward to the day when I can use Wikipedia to find out
> > about the local coffee shops and Linux User Groups and radio stations
> > and indie artists.  If that means I have to stop myself from clicking
> > on a link to [[Harrisburg Street, St. Petersburg]] and reading about
> > the width of the sidewalks, it's well worth it.
>
> The problem I have with all this stuff is the people who dont understand
> that an encyclopaedia is a historic record, and that just try to write
> this stuff about what things are now. Unless people are prepared to
> write from a historical perspective it is a guidebook not an
> encyclopaedia.
>
Well, I intentionally included a list of things which *can* be written
about historically, and not just as a guidebook.  I agree with you
that it's important that the articles we have focus on presenting
timeless depictions.  Sure, some instances of these things will be
short lived, but there are usually natural parent articles to put them
in when that's the case.

> So a history of the Linux User Groups on your street, referenced with
> the
> CVS checkin histories from the street's IP addresses, yes; "There is
> a Linux
> User group in my street" or "this street is mostly inhabited by students
> and my friends and has a coffee shop on the crossroadds" is just
> cruft in
> the most derogatory sense, and should be deleted, or transwikied to a
> guidebook.
>
> Justinc

In the extreme case of "There is a Linux User group in my street",
yes.  But that sentence doesn't even allow one to identify what the
person is talking about, so that's an extreme example.

Better than deleting less extreme examples, in my opinion, would be to
drop a note on the talk page of the person who created the article and
tell them that information added to the encyclopedia needs to be
verifiable and timeless ([[Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date
quickly]] is the best link I could come up with right now, if that's
the best there is then it should probably be improved, though).  Then
sprinkle it with {{fact}}, cut out any dubious statements, and put it
on some list along the lines of ([[Wikipedia:horrible articles which
will be removed if they don't shape up really soon]]) for a couple
weeks and delete it if it doesn't get improved to where it's
verifiable and from a perspective of history (or have a chance of
quickly getting there).

By the way, [[LUG]]s generally aren't attached to streets, they're
usually attached to entire metropolitan areas.  In fact, I suspect a
well-written article on the [[Suncoast Linux Users Group]], for
example, would survive a VFD vote today.

Anthony