[WikiEN-l] Scary...

[Ray Saintonge]

Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
> "The responsibility for justifying inclusion of any content rests firmly with 
> the editor seeking to include it.--Hu12 (talk) 01:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)"
>
> Thoughts?
>   
It would make more sense if it read "ultimate responsibility for 
substantiating inclusion".  Ultimate responsibility is not an excuse of 
first resort, but that's the way so many deletion proposals appear to be 
framed.  So many of these proposals are approached in a way that 
verification becomes a goal in its own right without regard to need.   
There may be no evident suggestion of libel or willfully erroneous 
material; all that is lacking is immediate sourcing.

Those who seek deletion should not ignore other steps that would lead to 
an improved article.  If the information is at all plausible, seeking 
verification oneself is a preferable first step.  Any editor can add 
it.  A person can still put doubtful information on the talk page and 
begin discussion there.  If that fails one can also initiate discussion 
with the contributor of the information.

One of the articles in that first list of Kurt's had to do with a 
Russian-SriLankan joint educational undertaking.  Though I do concede 
that there was much to the article that suggested bias, there was at the 
same time comment from the inexperienced contributor expressing a desire 
to work with Wikipedia towards an agreed text.  Nowhere was there any 
attempt to establish a dialogue with that person.  This is the kind of 
inexcusable behaviour that is recently making Wikipedia a butt of jokes, 
not articles on obscure subjects which limited world views have tagged 
"not-notable".

Notability criteria have become a cesspool of bone-headed ignorance.  
Some seem to rejoice in claiming fictitiously high and subjective 
standards, standards which at the same time they fail to apply 
recursively.  Verifiability was originally proposed to confront the 
vague notion of notability,  No Original Research was designed to deal 
with concepts that could best be described as "off the deep end."  Both 
have since become tools to impose personal POVs.  If notability is the 
_only_ issue, and the proposed solution is to delete the whole article 
(rather than just individual statements within it) the responsibility 
for justifying deletion should shift to the person seeking that 
deletion.  At the very least he should show that he has some idea of 
what he's talking about.  How can a person outside of New Zealand who 
has never watched New Zealand television in all his life be in a 
position to say what is notable about a long-running New Zealand soap opera.

AfDs show a bias for the proximal.  Subjects of relative equal value in 
a far-away country or town are less notable than an equivalent subject 
near home.

There is a bias against the small.  It is ironic that people who decry 
the anti-sharing attitudes of the big recording companies appear to view 
the bands  outside of that organization's grasp as not-notable  A few 
easy to meet criteria should be enough to overthrow accusations of 
non-notability.

There is an anti-corporate bias.  (And I say this as an old leftist who 
is more than ready to criticize corporate misdeeds.)  A software 
producer in India was proposed as non-notable because its 40 branch 
operations were fewer than the branches of a New Hampshire restaurant 
chain.  I'm sure that there are significant software producers in North 
America with fewer branch operations.  It would help if we were dealing 
with comparable industries.  Basic information about corporations is not 
about the good or bad deeds of the corporation. It is about general 
information: ownership patterns, location of headquarters and branches, 
its industry and products, its share price and dividend history.  Such 
neutral information is often most easily available from the company's 
own publications, as well as such publications as the Wall Street 
Journal.  It is not the spin and advertisement that a company produces, 
and a good NPOV editor should be able to sort out those two.  Corporate 
information may be alien to the academic denizens, but it can be very 
interesting for many people.  To begin with, every company listed on a 
stock exchange is sufficiently notable for inclusion.

Those are the first biases that I noted, and I'm sure that I will find 
others.

Ec