[WikiEN-l] Defeat: Notability is Policy

[Bryan Derksen]

Ian Woollard wrote:
> On 02/02/2008, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> The key problem for me is the "third party" requirement. I can write an
>> accurate article on an episode of a TV series by using the DVD and its
>> commentary track as a source, for example, and anyone else with a few
>> dollars to spare can get their own copy and verify my work, but for some
>> reason even if I'm perfectly willing to spend hours and hours crafting
>> this article to whatever standards of quality are desired it's just not
>> acceptable to have it on Wikipedia.
> 
> That's a subtle form of OR though. It's OR that the TV series is
> important enough to be in the encyclopedia in the first place. How
> could anyone ever remove anything? How could anyone ever prove or
> disprove that an untraceable editor had nothing to do with the TV
> series in the first place? At least if it's we trace the notability to
> a reliable source then self-interested articles are much less likely,
> and it's fairly unambiguous whether we can add it or not. There needs
> to be some rules, and the rules need to more or less work.

But this argument is implicitly assuming the validity of the very 
premise that I'm disputing; that "lack of notability" is, in and of 
itself, a good reason to delete an article. If we've got editors who 
spend the effort to write an accurate article with sources and such, 
conforming to all the other policies and guidelines that determine what 
Wikipedia articles are supposed to be like, why throw that away? We 
don't have space limits, and as I pointed out elsewhere in the thread 
it's not necessarily a drain on editor resources either since editors 
volunteer to work on the things that interest them.

> Aren't we mostly trying to collect the shiny stones that are lying on
> the beach that is this world, the ones that people are interested in,
> not just the dull rocks?

Our editors are people, and they write articles about what they're 
interested in.

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