[WikiEN-l] Tim Noah addresses the notion of notability in another Slate article

[William Pietri]

Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>   
>> (1) Develop better, more comprehensive notability standards for more  
>> topics.
>>     
>
> I'll refrain from responding to the entirety of your otherwise good 
> ideas, but this, in particular, comes with some rather large opposition. 
>   There is a strong group who would prefer a one-size-fits-all 
> "notability" guideline with lots of exceptions, instead of clear, 
> subject-specific ones.  We need more subject-specific "notability" 
> guidelines if we're going to rely on "notability" for inclusion, but 
> it's not going to be easy.
>   

Aside from the opposing camps, isn't there also some inherent mismatch 
between universal notability and context-specific notability?

I think of notability as a container of a certain size, roughly the size 
of one ideal human's head. Anything that's universally notable is 
something that is worthy of being noted by one optimally bright and 
broadly interested person.

But as soon as you go for context-specific guidelines, you change focus. 
If one ideal human were to focus on discipline X, how much would be 
worthy of their attention then? With a container of the same size and a 
smaller topic, more will inevitably fit. The number of notable academics 
is larger than the number of notable people who happen to be academics. 
The number of notable buildings in the world is much smaller than the 
sum of notable buildings in each notable locale.

So wouldn't every new subject-specific guideline be inevitably seen by 
one-size-fits-all types as another lowering of the standard, a breach 
through which ten thousand non-notable items will flow?

Curiously,

William



-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri