On 5/5/06, Sigvat Stensholt sigvats@mi.uib.no wrote:
In some cases we do have a consensus. We automatically include all articles on any thorp, hamlet or village, even if there only live 5 people there. A few AFD debates have pretty much determined that all railway stations and subway stations are not subject to notability requirements. When the Hippopotamus Defence article was kept, it pretty much determined that all chess openings are worthy of articles, no matter how obscure they are (although I and some others have boldly gone ahead with some merging the subvariations of various openings).
Great, so all we have to do is to formalise this a little bit. Rather than saying that "in some cases notability requirements are overlooked", why not just put a list of specific exceptions on the notability page? eg:
Articles on the following subjects are exempt from notability requirements. For particularly obscure examples, combining several subjects in one article may be appropriate: - Currently functioning railway or subway stations - Chess openings - Monarchs or heads of state of any kingdom or country, past or present - ....
On many other things, we will probably never form a consensus but all is not lost since we can learn by trial and experience. We don't have a consensus to keep all verifiable schools, but most have acknowledged the futility of trying to delete them.
It just doesn't seem fair to delete an article on one school of a given type while keeping others. And I suspect "notability" there is very much dependent on the social milieu of the voters...
Not really a major problem. Well written articles on borderline notable subjects don't really do much harm to the project. At best such articles illustrate the depth and vastness of information which lies in Wikipedia, and as long as they are verifiable, neutral and tertiary, they don't really do much harm.
They do harm in that they set a bad example. "Oh, I saw this great article on fighting game terms, why can't I have a list of strategy game terms?" and the accompanying cries of favouritism that emerge.
For all the standard reasons like Wikipedia is not paper, inclusion of any single article does almost infinitesimal direct harm.
"Moving out of Wikipedia" is a term I would reserve for transwikis.
Got another?
Steve