[WikiEN-l] Notability and Fiction

[Charles Matthews]

Surreptitiousness wrote:
> As a result of the recent RFC on Notability and Fiction, I've drafted an 
> essay at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_and_fiction.  
> Feel free to edit and engage to reach a consensus on the issue, so that 
> the current fractured state of play might be encouraged to heal itself. 
> But please don't protect "positions".  We don;t need to restate [[WP:V]] 
> for the umpteenth time, we already have it.  We just need to say that 
> there are bad articles and there are good articles, and mainly bad 
> articles are bad due to style rather than substance. When there's no 
> substance, it is usually easy to see and such articles with regards 
> fiction are not a "problem" for notability to "cure", they are a 
> "problem" which is already "cured" by a number of other policies. 
> Notability on Wikipedia has become too restricting and from my view it 
> is time to roll it back and let each subject area define its own 
> guidance, because we don't have a one size fits all approach, as evinced 
> by [[WP:BLP]].  Every subject area is afflicted by different issues, and 
> the solutions to those issues also differ. If Wikipedia is to continue, 
> it needs to recognise that fact, and would that we had the leadership to 
> recognise, reflect and build accordingly. Otherwise, I fear Wikipedia 
> will stagnate. The greatest asset Wikipedia has is adaptability.  That 
> adaptability is in danger of becoming stifled.
>
>   
I don't really see what is going on there: but the essay seems to be 
saying that an article is acceptable if it meets fundamental content 
policy OR various other things, while I would think it acceptable if it 
meets fundamental content policy AND various things. Further, it doesn't 
do to mix up the status of an article and a topic. I wrote about this 
once (from a different angle): 
http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/149/charles-matthews-on-notability

Charles