Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 5/9/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 5/4/06, Pete Bartlett pcb21@yahoo.com wrote:
'''Hormonal Screamings'' is a rock band hailing from Houghton, Michigan. Next year they are going to take over the world.
So that's an example of an article which you feel *doesn't* assert notability. It still doesn't answer the question of what it means to assert notability, and it isn't an example of an article which asserts notability but doesn't establish it.
No, it does assert notability -- it's just that the assertion is pretty weak. Per [[WP:VAIN]], patently absurd assertions (such as "Joe Smith is the King of the United States") do not need to be considered. The assertion given above, being an unsubstantiated claim about the future, might perhaps be considered such.
But the claim that they are a rock band hailing from Houghton, Michigan is not about the future, and is not patently absurd.
Yes, but being a rock band does not make them notable, since there are millions of rock bands and we're not interested in covering them all. As for being from Houghton, Michigan, there doesn't seem to be any reason to suspect that bands from that town would, as a class, somehow be statistically different from bands from any other town.
For example, an article that only said "John Doe is a chemist" would technically be speediable.
Only if you assume that being a chemist is not a claim to notability.
Right. I don't consider being a chemist a claim to notability, since, again, there are millions of chemists and we (Wikipedia editors) don't generally feel they should all have Wikipedia articles merely because they are chemists.
Of course, the line can be fuzzy. We don't try to have articles on all humans, so being a human is not an assertion of notability per se. On the other hand, we do try to have articles on all presidents of major countries, so being a president does make one notable. But does being a cabinet minister make one notable? How about a member of parliament? Member of a town council? Those are judgement calls, and in such cases other issues may ultimately outweigh notability.
Similarly, it's pretty obvious that Wikipedia should have articles on all Nobel laureates, so being one automatically makes one notable. It's equally obvious that Wikipedia should not have articles on all students, -- probably not even on all grad students -- so being a student does not make one notable. But is a Ph.D. enough to make one notable? Some feel it is, some don't.
A typical article with no claim to notability might be something like:
"Joe Smith (b. 1989) is a student at the Whateverville high school. He plays football and listens to Red Hot Chili Peppers. He's a really great guy."
I'd say that has plenty of claims to notability, but is patently absurd.
You seem to be using curious definitions of notability and absurdity. To me there's nothing absurd about the description; such a description is quite likely to be true (and even mostly verifiable), except maybe for the subjective assertion in the end.
On the other hand, the description places Joe Smith in a number of categories (people born in 1989, students of Whateverville high school, football players, people who listen to RHCP, really great guys), none of which we believe Wikipedia should be a comprehensive index of. So none of them count as claims of notability. The same, also, goes for any intersections of the categories: we don't aim to have articles on all football players who listen to RHCP either.
Of course, failing to assert notability does not mean an article *must* be deleted. But let's face it, the article I gave as an example has nothing else going for it either. As Wikipedia generally operates on the presumption that biographies of random people should _not_ be included unless there is a particular reason for it, the default for such articles, in the absence of any generally accepted reason for keeping, is to delete.
(In other fields it's different: for example, articles on animal or plant species are considered worth keeping by default, even if they make no claims of notability. One might say that species are consider notable per se, but that's perhaps not _quite_ correct either, since we don't really aim to catalog all species known to man in Wikipedia, at least not in the near future. It might be more accurate to say that, in the case of species -- and most other non-biographical topics -- the default presumption is inclusion rather than exclusion. In any case, the distinction is hairline thin, and might not even exist outside my own head. But that's pretty much how I see it.)