[WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

[Redvers @ the Wikipedia]

From: "Anthony DiPierro" 
> I still have no idea what it means to "assert
> notability" or what "an
> article with no claim to notability" is.

Neither do our vandals. I'd go as far as saying that
the majority of CSD-A7 deletions that are immediately
recreated go from "Joe Bloggs is a bicyclist from
Melbourne" to "Joe Bloggs is a notable bicyclist in
Melbourne".

This is a Good Thing, as claiming notability is not
the same as asserting it, and Mr Bloggs and his bike
can be deleted again. I'm always surprised that the
vandals haven't worked out that they should *assert*
notability. But they don't and I think the reason is:
they can't.

A good encyclopedia article, especially one about a
person or group, sums up the entire article in the
first sentence. You learn everying that is notable and
important about the subject in a couple of dozen words
(less in the better written articles). Anything,
anything at all, that is notable can be summed up in
the opening sentence. Wikipedia is the free
encyclopedia anyone can edit. Jimbo Wales is an
internet entrepreneur who founded Wikipedia. ABC is a
national television and radio network in the United
States. If it's not notable, you can't sum it up. So
you get CSD-A7 articles that wander all over the shop
- sometimes for thousands of carefully crafted words -
but don't assert the notability of the subject because
they can't.

Of course, there is a large grey area on either side.
It is, after all, perfectly possible to write an
article about Albert Einstein without once summing him
up and asserting notability for him. Difficult, but
not impossible. Albert Einstein was a Swiss patent
clerk who later became a professor. Articles like that
by right shouldn't be deleted since the person in
question was and is notable. But it's not up to
another editor to discover why someone or something is
notable and insert it. It's *certainly* not up to our
customers - millions and millions of readers - to try
to guess why the person is included if they don't know
already. If that article stayed up, it becomes the
equivilant of the old empty articles that I seem to
remember as a feature of Wikipedia 5 or 6 years ago.
And it's less likely to grow into a full article than
a redlink would, as it acts as a barrier to growth.

On the other side, it is possible to assert notability
where no exists, but when people do that they tend to
assert improbable or just downright bollocks
notability. Joe Bloggs is a bicyclist from Melbourne
who owns all the money in the world and your sister.
Joe Bloggs is a bicyclist from Melbourne who has
ridden around the world 18 times since he first
learned to ride a bike when he was 3 months old. If
true, these things would be a sign of notability. But
they then fall foul of CSD-G1 - patent nonsense - and
bite the dust on that score.

I think it's a small thing to ask of an article and
its creator - assert some reason why this subject
should be in our encyclopedia. If they don't, CSD-A7.
If they do but don't do it very well, AfD. If they do
but it's a lie, CSD-G1.

But it's very difficult to *define* what is and isn't
an assertion of notability. Notability is largely a
/quality/, a property something has or doesn't have.
Producing an exact definition of what an assertion of
it looks like is probably beyond the English language.
Like modern art, you can't produce a definition of it,
but know it when you see it!

I think we can trust our admins to rule on it, if
nothing else because admin actions are undoable. And
if something or someone *is* notable after all, an
article will spring up in its place later and
hopefully better. 

For AfD decisions its harder to know if we can trust
the consensus, but that's because the cut-and-dried
non-notables have been deleted by admins already. Its
the grey-area ones that go to AfD and are subject to
people's prejudices, deletion/inclusion leanings and
the author's potential for disrupting of the process. 

If AfD worked, it would be the ideal place to discuss
all of these things. Ho hum.

=REDVERS=




		
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