[WikiEN-l] And now for a word on trivial BLPs

[Slim Virgin]

On 5/30/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/30/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps a good way of looking at this is whether people who don't know
> > the subject personally, and who are generally knowledgeable in a
> > relevant field, would tend to recognize the subject by name or only by
> > description.
>
> Doesn't work. The canal engineer James Green is notable by any
> reasonable standard but it is possible to know a fair bit about UK
> canals without knowing his name.
>
> I've seen some very knowledgeable canal people admit that they had to
> look up the [[Rolle Canal]] and didn't know the name.
>
> Now you can get round both by redefining the relevant field (in this
> case to canals of South West England rather than UK canals) but by
> doing that you can make anything notable.
>
That's a good point, but we'd expect people to be reasonable. Defining
the subject area as "canals of south-west England" is reasonable;
defining it as "canals on Smith Street, Torquay," where there is only
one (in an attempt to make that canal notable to anyone knowledgeable
about canals on Smith Street) would not be. Where the line needs to be
drawn is impossible to say. Best to use common sense, but in the case
of a dispute (is this a properly defined subject area or not), we
could look to see whether reliable sources have ever written about
that subject. In other words, are there books or articles about
"canals in south-west England"? Probably yes. Are there books and
articles on "canals on Smith Street, Torquay." Probably not.