[WikiEN-l] The Economist on "notability"

[Ray Saintonge]

Screamer wrote:
> Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
>   
>> On Saturday 08 March 2008 02:36, Ian Woollard wrote:
>>     
>>> Um. I think we want people to read the wikipedia though.
>>>       
>> I don't see why.  Personally, I couldn't care less.
>>     
>>> Why would 
>>> people bother contributing if nobody reads it?
>>>       
>> Because it's fun.
>>     
>>> Do our audience want us 
>>> to be high in google rankings?    
>>>       
>> There's subtle problems with abandoning notabilty, like every corner
>> store in the entire damn world would want and would be able to get a
>> wikipage. 
>>     
>> And what's wrong with that?
>>     
>>> That's one of the important functions that notability deals with,
>>> without it, every single tiny company in the whole world will have an
>>> article for business reasons,
>>>       
>> So?  As long as it's factual and NPOV, what do we care WHY it's there?
>>   
>>     
>>> So ANY junky article in the wikipedia, is BIG in web terms. Do we have
>>> a responsibility to the rest of the web? Not per se. But the rest of
>>> the web decides how big we are and they can diminish us;
>>>       
>> So what?
>>     
>>> that could 
>>> well mean that our current best articles become a lot less
>>> significant.
>>>       
>> So what?
>>     
>>> Not if the wikipedia has an article on almost every word in the
>>> English language, which it soon will have, and has effectively SEO'd a
>>> bunch of non notable articles on any particular topic up above the
>>> rest of the web. I say that it's really not a good idea at all for the
>>> wikipedia to do that; they trust us, and we must not abuse that trust.
>>>       
>> We don't ask them to trust us; we have no responsibility to maintain it.
>>     
>>> No, I said that they valued covering everything HIGHER than they
>>> valued quality, and I stand by that assessment.
>>>       
>> It's a correct assessment.  Why is it wrong to hold that position?
>>     
> Kurt,
>
> You line by line short responses "So what?" are not contributing 
> anything helpful to good debate or discussion. 
How else do you expect him to respond to such inconsequential statements?

Ec