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

[Charles Matthews]

David Goodman wrote:
> So put them in another space: call it directory space.
>
> The problem is that having a distinct article is treated as a question
> of merit--we word  things this way ourselves: "deserves an article".
> Thus there is a continual pressure from spammers and hobbyists to
> include a separate article for every company, lawyer,  band, author,
> athlete, railway station, street,  toy, song, football match, and
> fictional character. (note that 1/ for some of these we do include
> articles on all, some not 2/that it's easier to decide on people, than
> objects 3/that the list does not reflect my own views about what is
> more or less suitable)
>
> But the question should be content. We could very well say we should
> have content on every one of the above, although not articles. We
> might even find it easier to write such content if we didn't have the
> overhead  & metadata necessarily associated with separate articles.
>
>   
Well, it's a theory. Books are traditionally organised in chapters, 
supposed to address one topic. Lecture courses, too, are typically 
divided into lectures each of which addresses one issue (though not 
perhaps with such a clear focus). Our idea of an article is that it 
starts with a topic sentence, within a lead that describes the rough 
scope of the article. At present we are still holding to some version of 
the old idea that "less is more": we don't allow articles that scroll on 
for ever, and we try to have people adopt a concise style with good 
focus. There will always be the argument that this is faintly 
ridiculous, and "more is more". But there are huge advantages to the way 
we now operate: we can for example think in terms of off-topic pieces of 
information as "weeds", i.e. plants in the wrong place. It is certainly 
true that there is maintenance to be done when topics are not allowed to 
ramble. But I think a Wikipedia in which info was just "appended" 
somewhere, rather than quite carefully placed by definite topic, would 
be harder to use. (Rather than the usual suspects like manga, try 
thinking about a topic such as social history. It benefits hugely when 
efforts are made to bring it into focus by choosing a particular topic 
for discussion, rather than just adding what amounts to historical local 
colour to a scene.)

Charles