[WikiEN-l] Notability on the skfields

[Steve Bennett]

On 5/13/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Regardless of what you call it, it is perfectly obvious that the
> threshold for including something in an article should be lower than
> the threshold for giving something its own article. The alternative
> would result in Wikipedia being a website containing billions is
> interlinked stubs with nothing else since as soon as anything was
> deemed worthy of getting added to an article it would be split of into
> its own article.

This is not obvious to me. Nor is it logical. Your argument is essentially:
a) We would allow articles to be started on any topic with verifiable
information
b) Therefore that would happen immediately, to the greatest possible
extent, with no regard for common sense, and our existing processes of
merging and splitting for reasons other than "notability" would cease
to exist.

Some extremely concrete topics would be good candidates for
permastubs. Little known monks of the 13th century about whom we have
sketchy information would be much better as a short article, than as
some paragraph in [[Little-known 13th century monks]]. OTOH, some
concept which is very obviously part of a greater whole would remain
as part of that greater article. Why don't we have an article on [[4
of clubs]]? Because it makes more *sense* as part of [[Playing
cards]].

Steve