On Mon, Apr 09, 2007 at 04:23:36PM -0700, Seraphim Blade wrote:
Well, it was pretty overwhelmingly rejected.
(Yes, yes, voting bad,
etc., etc., but it still -can- be a useful metric.) Hell, I love
changing the -name- (I think notability is a pretty poor and confusing
thing to call our inclusion criteria), and I still couldn't bring
myself to support it. Basically, the question we must ask ourselves is
this:
"From the independent sources available, could a comprehensive,
high-quality (GA/FA) article be written on this subject someday?"
If yes, we keep. If no, we merge or delete, depending whether there's
any verifiable information at all and whether an appropriate place to
merge exists. Far easier than 4000 convoluted "notability" guidelines
(there's a separate one for porn stars for godsakes!), and much more
in line with writing an encyclopedia. (As an aside, this also -would-
eliminate those borderline bios-"15 minutes of fame (or shame)"
sourcing wouldn't allow a comprehensive article, so it'd fail that
anyway.
This view is just one view among Wikipedians. There are other views. My
own view is that we need to ask first - Do we want an article on topic
X? If we answer "Yes", then we then use your criteria to determine
whether we can write it. If your criteria fails, we do not write it. But
we still do not write it if your criteria would pass after we answered
"No" to my question. My question is what notability is all about. I
would also argue that not all articles that would fail GA/FA
(particularly under the present guidelines and practices) should be
deleted or merged. For example, there are lots of things that should
remain a stub, but then we have debated this on WP and we do not agree.
You appear to me to keep asserting things as self-evidently true, when
they are just your opinion.
Bduke
I've written an article about the youngest kid to cross the Atlantic. It's
by no means comprehensive or near GA/FA status, but the fact he did cross
the Atlantic and was able to find enough sources to assert this together
with some personal information and some info about awards means I was able
to write a reasonable stub. George Merryweather is another good example.
He's a notable scientist, but I couldn't find sources about him, thus making
me unable to write an article.
I believe an article should be written if someone could write about a
paragraph of encyclopedic information and it wouldn't hurt to apply WP:FICT
to non-fictional things too. It's okay to write stubs, it's better to merge
them into context if we can - unless the subject of the article is falls
under the guideline that says it's notable enough for it's own entry. It
keeps information just reorganizes it. I still wonder why so many people
believe game show contestant articles should be deleted when they don't even
address the option to merge them.
Mgm