On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If the core of notability is non-trivial coverage in reliable secondary sources (not just peer reviewed journals) then most episodes of most TV shows will fail that guideline, as will most movies and most novels. And yet, even the most obscure TV shows and episodes have fans who will want to have articles about their favorite characters, shows and episodes. There is an argument to preserving the totality of the output of popular culture for research or other posterity-related purposes, but that conflicts directly with Wikipedia's notability guideline.
That sounds like an excellent argument for trashing the "notability" guideline, which has always been deeply problematic, particularly for its subjectivity.
Remember that the Wikipedia jargon word "notability" originated as a back-formation from "non-notable," which was Votes For Deletion jargon for "I don't like it." And that's about all it still is.
- d.