[WikiEN-l] Most Baffling Articles Award 2007

[Ray Saintonge]

Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

>On 3/17/07, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Which is, we should note, appalling. The idea that interesting
>>articles that nobody seriously doubts the accuracy of and are in no
>>way inflammatory or going to cause anyone any problems to anybody
>>should be deleted is ridiculous.
>>    
>>
>While I do agree with you on this article, your general point I find
>very questionable. When did it become such a ridiculous idea that
>subjects of articles in an *encyclopedia* should meet some criterion
>of notability? That is the way encyclopedias always have been.
>
We have no need to be strict about notability.  Having stray articles 
that escape some subjective criterion for notability does no great 
harm.  If these stubby articles are so lacking in notability it is 
unlikely that anyone will look at them anyways.

>There are of course very pragmatic reasons for requiring notability
>(maintainability, privacy and original research, amongst others), but
>there are very convincing philosophical arguments that convinces me
>that it is a Good Thing. We are an encyclopedia first, everything else
>second. With every decision we make, that should be our number 1
>consideration. If we let non-encyclopedic topics in we will be a worse
>encyclopedia, and therefore we shouldn't do it. How is that not all
>that matters?
>
None of your so-called pragmatic reasons is strong enough alone to 
support support deletion.  If the articles are so short there is nothing 
to maintain, and the other two "reasons" can be invoked in their own 
right without having recourse to notability.

Your conclusion is not logically sound.  The fact that A implies B does 
not support the conclusion that not-A implies not-B.  Having 
"non-encyclopedic topics" (whatever that means) does not make us a worse 
encyclopaedia.

Ec