[WikiEN-l] Notability and ski resorts (was: Newbie and not-so-newbie biting)

[Charles Matthews]

Surreptitiousness wrote:
> Charles Matthews wrote:
>> Yes it is sui generis, but WP:NOT is part of that, not an add-on. I'm 
>> somewhat concerned that a reliance on "reader survey" will indeed 
>> tend to blur all tried-and-tested criteria for inclusion, for the 
>> sake of other stuff that is not too useful (e.g. "I wish you'd 
>> include more movie rumors because I really like to read about them"). 
>> Downmarket beckons.
>>   
> Not sure why down-market has to beckon. We're committed to sourcing to 
> the point I can't see a reader survey overturning that, in fact I 
> would expect a reader survey to call for even better sourcing.  
> Therefore, I can't really see how we could include unsourced movie 
> rumors.  Of course, I should imagine we'd all also agree that facts 
> about upcoming movies are an area open to debate, but I'm not sure we 
> should prejudge that debate by casting anything as a down-market move. 
> To the point that I'd like a cite on why that would be a down-market 
> move. I'm not suggesting Wikipedia be all things to all people, 
> although I'd like us to make a better stab than we currently are, but 
> I've always thought Wikipedia was a broad church, and I've always 
> thought it was widely assumed on Wikipedia that we look to the 
> middle-ground.  Now I suppose if you see us on a high-ground, then 
> yes, we would be shifting down-market, but realistically any 
> encyclopedia is going to be aimed lower than the high ground, because 
> an encyclopedia is a tertiary source, rather than a secondary source.
I typically think of this in terms of a pedia-media axis. We are not 
going to be at either extreme (Britannica-style pedia, or 
reader-maximising media). We are definitely now judged as media, and if 
you look at what the most popular pages are that is a reasonable fit, I 
suppose - we just have a bit more of a medium-term memory than print and 
broadcast media. But most pages are _not_ popular. They are reference 
material, in other words. Downmarket, in my terms, is slanting content 
policy to favour in any way pages because they would be read often, 
rather than serve the purpose of being a reference site.

> The high ground is held by academia, something we aren't looking to 
> replicate because of the policy on original research. I think utility 
> is also in the eye of the beholder.  Depending on which industry you 
> work in, the utility of articles on entertainment and those on higher 
> maths are subjective qualities.  
We are committed to the idea that the same sort of survey writing should 
be applied to say, "Star Wars" and astronomy, though. In the sense of 
"being a good place to look up" either. That is the "utility" of 
reference material. This is the same axis in another guise, I feel. The 
goal of a generalist encyclopedia is surely to become a reputed source 
largely independent of topic. (And we can perfectly well aim to 
assimilate the results of academic research; in fact over a wide range 
of topics this is exactly what we should do.)
> And surely blurring our still in beta stage inclusion guidance is a 
> good idea, because life does not tend to happen in an absolute 
> manner.  The lack of adaptability in the minds of some of our 
> contributors can sometimes harm us.  I've never worked out a way of 
> promoting the idea of an open mind and a case by case approach.  I 
> can't help but feel an encyclopedia built by the masses through 
> consensus editing might help rather than hinder that goal.  If that 
> means moving to meet the audience, so be it.  I believe it worked for 
> Mohammed.
The site is dynamic, and should remain so. Plenty of codification has 
gone on, and I agree that it shouldn't be regarded as an "absolute" just 
because it has happened that way. I find the generally tendency to have 
"rules" predominate a bit depressing, if said rules don't arise from a 
simple point which ought to command general assent.

A recent grief of mine at CfD, though, might be good for a role play 
session. I found an advocate for "pre-emptive disambiguation for 
category titles"; I argued against this. For article titles, as we know, 
you don't pre-empt: [[Arthur Atkinson (architect)]] gets moved to 
[[Arthur Atkinson]] if there are no other articles of that personal 
name, even though there might be in the future. But the discussion was 
whether a category name that _might_ be construed as ambiguous should be 
made into a more verbose form that is less likely to be ambiguous. Is 
this some rule that someone has come up with and wants to impose, 
against common sense? Or was I just defending the status quo against an 
idea that should be adopted to improve the 'pedia? Not so clear on the 
ground.

Charles