[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies

[Kirill Lokshin]

On 4/8/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> > Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who
> > are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly
> > appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the
> > media are not public figures, although something interesting may have
> > happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
>
> This is all very vague ("the media") and would IMHO lead to a loss of
> useful biographies of scientists, authors, inventors, and other
> individuals who are not celebrities, but whose work is continuous and
> relevant.
>
> I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be
> whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record
> of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.
>
> Incidentally, a person like Daniel Brandt (who has been covered
> throughout the years for his activism) meets that criterion, whereas
> someone like Brian Peppers (who is notable only because of an Internet
> phenomenon) does not.
>
> We do not lose much if we give up articles about the occasional media
> sensation and Internet meme. We do lose an awful lot if we allow
> everyone who is not a media figure to delete themselves.

How much do we really lose, though?  We have, at the moment, upward of
150,000 biographies of living individuals; as a class, they
substantially outnumber any other area of Wikipedia.  Now, how many of
those are going to be (a) of borderline notability and (b) insistent
on having their article removed?  A thousand?  Ten thousand?  We could
delete articles by the hundreds without making a substantial dent in
our overall coverage.

Sure, we won't have as many biographies of obscure bloggers and
whatnot; but is the benefit of not having to deal with legal threats,
the harassment of editors, the scathing stories in the New York Times,
and whatever else the subjects can throw at us not worth this?  Do we
really need those articles *that* badly?

Kirill