[WikiEN-l] The Economist on "notability"

[Ray Saintonge]

Todd Allen wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 10:22 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> in fact, there are usually review sources discussing each individual
>>  episode. True, only some  of them are the conventional published
>>  sources that we use. What we need for both the conventional and the
>>  nonconventional is editors prepared to track these down, and add them
>>  to articles.
>>
>>  We should be writing an encyclopedia such that someone who is friends
>>  with a fan of a series, can learn enough from WP to be able to
>>  understand their interests and understand their conversation about the
>>  events and motivations of the individual episodes of the series--not
>>  the way a true fan would, but at least a casually interested other.
>>  that a parent, for example, could understand what a child was talking
>>  about without having to watch all the childrens' series. That's part
>>  of the very purpose of a general encyclopedia--the applicability to
>>  real life, not just background for the academic study of things.
>>     
>
> And if such sourcing does exist, -and is reliable- (e.g., not
> fansites, blogs, forums, etc.), that's well and good. But let's make
> sure we don't lose sight of the reliability requirements here. What we
> should avoid is "I watched the series and saw that..." being used to
> support a full article. We can do some very basic, indisputable things
> from primary sources only, but the meat of an article should come from
> secondary, independent, reliable sources. If we can't do that, because
> such sources aren't in existence, we shouldn't have a full article,
> just a list entry. I applaud people who find sources, usual or
> unusual, so long as they're reliable.
>
>   
There is no algorithm for determining the reliability of a source.  
David's example of a valid episode summary was good.  We are not looking 
for a series of academic treatises about the significance of each 
episode of "Lost".  If a viewer misses an episode he will feel quite 
lost himself.  Having a good summary available will help keep him in the 
loop.

Ec