[WikiEN-l] The Economist on "notability"

[Delirium]

Angus McLellan wrote:
> If you write about some dead C19th official, you'll likely be using a
> book as a source for the article so verifiability is no problem,
> you'll be unlikely to run into blp as everyone concerned is dead, you
> probably won't manage to add too much original research unless you try
> really hard, you're unlikely to have an axe to grind, which only
> really leaves not to worry about. As for nobody objecting, they might
> if the subject is a baronet, or if the book you used wasn't in
> English, or worse yet not in the Latin alphabet, and there are no
> ghits.
>
> Write about some rapper you're a fan of, or a TV programme you watch,
> and there's likely no book, you may or may not be neutral, like as not
> we'll get novel - and probably wrong, unless you're a real-life expert
> - conclusions drawn from listening and/or watching, living people are
> in there, and the chances are good that some sort of stuff which
> wikipedia is not gets involved.
>   
I've actually written both (though I wasn't a fan of the rapper), and 
both were about equally well-referenced and notable, and only the rapper 
was deleted. For the 19th-century government officials, often my sources 
are a New York Times from their archive of 1800s news articles; for the 
contemporary pop culture, often the sources are... a more recent New 
York Times article. But it turns out there are no implacable foes of 
minor government officials, so I've never run into objectors there. I 
suspect this has something to do with a highculture/lowculture 
distinction that endures on Wikipedia even if it's been mostly discarded 
by academics who write on culture.

-Mark