[WikiEN-l] The Economist on "notability"

[Delirium]

David Goodman wrote:
> The practical questions are in the middle: to use one of your
> examples: will they use one about the fire department in Pancake Tx,
> (assumed population, 20,000) ?  Will they use one about the main
> street in that town?  In either case, should we have it as a separate
> article?
>   
The reality, though, tends to be rather more political and content-based 
than that. Articles don't get deleted on their own, and relatively few 
are nominated for deletion by people applying some sort of theoretical 
objective standard (of notability or utility or anything else).

The cases that are controversial are mainly in areas where there are 
significant groups of people actively campaigning for a reduction in 
coverage---mainly anything to do with pop culture or recent news. If you 
write about an underground rapper with a large YouTube following, you're 
going to run into objectors. If you write about the most obscure 
19th-century government official you can dig up, on the other hand, 
nobody is going to object.

-Mark