-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Bennett [mailto:stevagewp@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 05:37 AM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies
[sorry for the blank send, misclicked]
On 4/10/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you consider a British child actor with a lead role in a BBC
children's
television series notable?
If only Wikipedia didn't have such a stupid notion as "notable" which
basically translates as either writing as much as we can possible find
to substantiate about someone, or writing nothing at all. A more
sensible publication would probably write a paragraph or so about the
actor with very basic details like what shows they'd appeared on and
any future projects they were known to be interested in.
Steve
Perhaps more acceptance of stubs is in order in this area. It may be the
stretching to somehow create a full biography is part of the problem. A good
test would be googling to see if the published information is already rising
to the top of the google hits. If it does, there is little additional harm
done by having a Wikipedia article about it. The harm comes from adding
additional details not contained in the standard google hit. So, to take the
example posed, it does little harm to list acting projects, while ferreting
out birthday, birthplace, elementary school, photos of her on holiday,
opinions on religion, etc. become an invasion of privacy, at least in the
case of a child. Trivial reports regarding taste in music or other popular
cultural interests might be Ok, but that frames the nature of the public's
legitimate interest in a child actor.
Fred
Yes, I would like to see a lot more stub acceptance. People tend to prefer
deletion over fixing far too much. I see a lot of CSD A7 deletion. "article
doesn't assert notability". I'd like to see additional explanations about
what people did to see if it was truly not notable. Newbies tend to mess up
doing it, so it wouldn't hurt to help them and check before deleting
someone's work.
About child actors. I tend to include birthdates as I do with any biography,
but I keep personal photographs and religion out of it. I only include
schools if it is already mentioned in almost every newspaper article written
about them, or if it's on their official website. I have written an article
about a kid for whom I found a streetname where he lived. I didn't include
that on purpose for privacy concerns.
Mgm