[WikiEN-l] Pakistani politicians and systemic bias

[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 03:56:39 -0800, "Matthew Brown"
<morven at gmail.com> wrote:

>> We obviously see it differently; I looked at the size of the
>> country, saw it was a smaller population than my home town,
>> contextualised it with the papers in my home town, and went from
>> there.  The entire circulation of that paper would not even half
>> fill the football ground in my home town.

>True, but - I'm not sure that this is always a valid approach.
>Notability doesn't always scale with population like that.
>(Especially in a historical sense, when the entire population of
>nations might not have fit in a decent-sized modern football ground,
>way back when)

Well, yes, with hindsight and looking directly at it (rather than
tangentially from something else).  On the other hand, what we have
even now is just a directory entry. But I am going to try *really
hard* not to care...

>Webcomics at least have the useful property of being largely harmless
>if excessively covered within Wikipedia.  Really, I suspect, it's way
>too recent a phenomenon to be truly able to give them proper context.
>However, if it's an area that becomes crufty, only webcomics nuts
>probably will notice or care. Over-representation is one of the lesser
>issues in our project, I feel.

I envy your sanguine attitude.  I find it hard not to get wound up
when a band that /just/ scrapes by notability by having all of two
press mentions immediately gets a category, its own Wikiproject and
an article on each member and every single thing it ever recorded.
OK, a slight exaggeration, but only slight.  We have many articles
on sub-sub-subgenre bands (anything with "core" at the end and any
variant of death metal, as a first approximation); being
Uzbekistan's no. 1 melodic symphonic deathgrindcore band is only
significant if there exist nos. 2 down to at least a couple of
hundred.

I wish I could be persuaded that these zealous fanboys will one day
contribute to something I consider worthwhile - but I can't really
complain too much as I'm too cheap to shell out for a copy of Grove
to help me with the things I think are worth covering.

Right now I am trying very very hard to learn to just walk away from
the obsessives, but being an obsessive myself I find it very
difficult.

Guy (JzG)
-- 
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG