[WikiEN-l] Defeat: Notability is Policy

[Wily D]

On Feb 3, 2008 11:20 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/02/2008, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On Feb 3, 2008 10:08 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > What if the hypothetical existence of one is verifiable?
> > >
> > > If it's verifiable, it isn't hypothetical, is it?
> > >
> > The hypothesis can be verifiable.
>
> In which case, we're talking about the notability of a hypothesis, not
> of a galaxy or an ETI. The hypothesis could have an article, but would
> a galaxy that's only claim to notability is being mentioned in this
> hypothesis warrant anything more than a redirect to the ariticle on
> the hypothesis?
>
> > > > Aren't all galaxies inherently notable?
> > >
> > > Do you know how many galaxies there are?
> >
> > Not exactly, no.  I'm pretty sure it's a lot, though.  Of course I'd
> > only be referring to the ones we know about!
>
> Well, we need to stick to the observable universe, certainly -
> anything outside the observable universe is causally disconnected from
> us, so is certainly not notable.
>
> > > It's not practical to have
> > > articles on all of them, so I would say they are not inherently
> > > notable. Large ones, unusual ones, nearby ones, sure, but all of them?
> > > No chance.
> > >
> > Well, see above.  In the case of galaxies that no one has ever written
> > about, the question of "notability" is moot.
> >
> > http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html
> >
> > We estimate there are hundreds of billions.  But only 3000 are
> > "visible".  I wonder what "visible" means, and I wonder how many are
> > "observable".
>
> I think that 3000 is how many there were in the tiny bit of sky they
> looked at. I think it's a reference to the Hubble deep field
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_deep_field). The total number of
> galaxies in the observable universe is in the billions, certainly.
>
>
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Err, the number of galaxies in the observable universe is probably
10^10 - 10^13 or something ... the number of known galaxies?  The
number of known galaxies is probably a couple million, which is, I
believe, the number in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.  If someone
really wanted to write the articles ....

But I do advocate [[WP:V|A third party source]] as a minimum inclusion
criterion (Perhaps this is why I've been called "an inclusionist
troll"), and only galaxies which've been catalogued in some
publication should have articles - maybe 2 million tops.  Which some
such articles might not be of interested again for a while, they're
certainly verifiable and encyclopaedic, and not doing any harm.

Cheers,
WilyD