[WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
abd at lomaxdesign.com
Sun Mar 7 00:00:31 UTC 2010
At 05:25 AM 3/6/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
>Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> > Wikipedia painted itself into this corner.
> >
>Indeed, said corner being #5 website in the world according to recent
>Comscore figures. The onus is still on those who think the system is
>broken.
Onus? No, I'm seeing masses of highly experienced editors leaving the
project, with those replacing them being relatively clueless, as to
the original vision, which was itself brilliant but incomplete. The
biggest problem with the system is massive inefficiency, with huge
amounts of editor labor necessary to make decisions and maintain
them, long-term. A secondary problem is that the process does not
reliably seek consensus, which is an essential element in the
estimation of the degree of neutrality obtained. And the massive
inefficiency compounds this problem. You can sail on, believing that
it's working just fine. And, I suppose, you can believe that all the
admins who have left, or who maintain comments that it's broken, are
just, what? Sour grapes?
There is a lot of criticism out there that is obviously ignorant. But
that's not all there is.
> ("Notability" has always been a broken concept, but the real
>question is whether the system as a whole is broken, rather than whether
>individual subjective judgements always agree with the result of
>deletion processes.)
The system is broken. It's obvious. But almost all of those who
recognize this also believe that it's impossible to fix, and so they
either leave in despair or they struggle on for a while. I'm unusual.
I know it's broken, and I know why, and I know how to fix it. And
what I'd suggest would take almost no effort. And it's been opposed
at every turn, attempts were made to delete and salt a small piece of
the proposal, years ago, a very modest experiment that would have
changed no policy or guideline.
What I'd propose is very simple, but it happens that it's also very
difficult to understand without background; I happen to have the
background. Few Wikipedia editors do. I could be wrong, but what I've
seen is that the *very idea* arouses very strong reactions. Based on
... what? I could say, but it's really not up to me. I can do nothing
by myself except set up structures that people can use or not.
> >I proposed a change to the guideline, a
> > special provision, that *generally* a recognized national member
> > society of a notable international society would be notable. If you
> > know the notability debates, you can anticipate the objections.
> > "Notability is not inherited."
>Indeed, it isn't.
Not normally. DGG has already addressed the substance. What's
happening is that guidelines are being interpreted as fixed rules,
instead of as ways of documenting how the community operates. If
documentation of actual decision-making is pursued, then
inconsistencies can be directly addressed, and can produce more
refined -- and more accurate -- guidelines. This build-up of
experience, documented, is what's normal with structures like that of
Wikipedia, if they are to remain sustainable. That this is actively
blocked, that attempts to document actual practice are strongly
resisted, is part of the problem. "Instruction creep." But that
assumes that the guidelines are fixed rules, not simply documentation
that can be read to understand how the community is likely to decide
on an issue.
> Some of the more high-profile associated topics of
>notable topic X can be mentioned in the article on X, but that doesn't
>mean they are all worth a separate article.
Where does the decision get made? There is notable topic, amateur
radio. There is an international organization which reocognizes
national societies, one per nation. It's the IARU, in the situation
being discussed. It intrinsically creates 200 possible subtopics,
organized by nation, by the nature of the situation. Each one of
these *probably* has reliable sources that would justify a separate
article, given a deep enough search, but suppose there were a couple
of exceptions. If we start valuing editor time, a major oversight in
the development of project structure, we might say that if, in almost
all cases, with adequate work, we could find reliable sources for 190
articles, we mighg as well treat all these subtopics identically. Is
there any harm to the project from this?
But where does the decision get made? Is it possible to make a global
decision as I'm suggesting? I.e., in *this* situation, we will give
each national member society an article, as a stub, based on
"national scope" and "IARU recognition," with the IARU web site as
the source. Is it reliable for the purpose of determining that the
national member society is notable? What I see here is that those who
argue guidelines as an abstraction are saying "No," and they give
reasons that are abstract. But those who know the field, uniformly,
are saying, "Yes," and they seem to be bringing neutral editors along
with them, and closing admins who have nothing to do with the topic.
Does, in fact, actual community practice trump the guidelines? What
I'm seeing from Mr. Matthews is an argument, that, no, the guidelines
should prevail, and we should not change the guidelines to reflect
actual practice.
It is not being claimed that the guidelines should be changed to show
some new synthisized high-level abstraction. Rather, it could be as
simple as a finding that, in a particular situation, named, the
individual articles were found to be appropriate. Does this meant
that they are notable? That's part of how we got stuck. The decision
being made is whether or not Wikipedia should have an article, and
the standard was set as depending on notability, a quite vague
standard, actually, though quite reasonable. Then to make the
decision on notability, abstract criteria have been set up that will
*usually* reflect what the community will decide. But there are
exceptions. And I've pointed out one. So, to prevent futher useless
debate, can the exception be documented, so we don't as a minimum,
see more useless AfDs, which waste a lot of time that could otherwise
go into improving articles?
>Such decisions should go
>case-by-case, but in general terms they are about structuring of
>content, rather than permissible content. [[Mary Ball Washington]],
>mother of George Washington, gets an article (not very substantial); her
>mother doesn't.
That's correct. However, the example you give is truly an individual
case, involving a very small number of articles. With regard to small
numbers of basically unique articles. the actual decision isn't of
notability, per se, but of the existence of adequate sources to be
able to make the article verifiable. WP:V is the actual, fundamental
policy. (I'd argue that, itself, it was a step away from the ultimate
criterion, but it's very sound.) The general rules about the adequacy
of sources may not apply to a class of articles, which may be
reliably verified, say, from primary sources, without the kind of
synthesis that is prohibited. This is revealed clearly by the fact
that there is no disagreement that we may not state that the Hong
Kong Amateur Radio Transmitting Society is a member society of the
International Amateur Radio Union, and what that implies, with the
IARU web site as a source. The source is obviously accepted as
reliable for that information. Thus a stub may be created with
verifiable information. And that the stub is notable can be inferred,
as DGG has pointed out, from the national status, on a notable topic,
recognized by a notable international organization. It's a very small step.
Where is the decision made, when it's a decision that would affect,
generically, 200 different articles? Some of the societies will,
indeed, have sufficient independent source that's been found. All
will, almost certainly, have such source if the search is deep enough
(i.e., local national press that might be seventy to ninety years
ago!, plus archives of QST ). Separate articles allow the placment of
self-published material that is not controversial, the kind of
self-published material that is normally allowed for organizations as
information about them. There is no controversy over the inclusion of
the material, which means that it's considered reliable. The only
issue is, as Mr. Matthews notes, how the information is organized.
> I don't see that "recognized national" is a very
>different attribute from "notable", but certain office-holders might be
>considered worth an article "ex officio" (general notability doesn't
>recognise anything ex officio, I think, but arguably more special
>guidelines could.)
It seems we agree here: "recognized national" is more or less
"intrinsically notable," but I would not want to make a completely
general *rule* on this. I'd think of myself as a newspaper editor in
one of these nations, perhaps a newspaper in the capitol. Suppose I
got a press release from the local amateur radio society, which is
itself an organization of individual local clubs across my nation.
(Some of the member societies apparently have a single "meeting,"
that's true for Hong Kong, but obviously because Hong Kong is
geographically small enough for that to be effective. Most national
societies reflect a composition of local amateur radio clubs in major
cities or regions.) It says that the society has just been honored by
recognition by the International Amateur Radio Union, an
international body founded in the 1920s. And the release gives some
information about the local society and the IARU? Would I check the
facts and print this? I'd say that a newspaper that wouldn't was
strange indeed.... But almost all these national societies were
recognized many years ago, and I've done a lot of looking. Either
they didn't have a skilled press relations officer (likely! they are
amateur radio societies, and they don't care much about promoting
themselves, they have no advertising budget, etc.) or the articles
were published and are simply hard to find. And that's what is most
likely. Eventually, we'll find reports on the recognition from QST,
the publication of the American Radio Relay League, I think it goes
back to before the IARU was founded, and archives exist. As image
PDF, apparently.
But meanwhile, there is all this information that can, in fact, be
used, but where and how? Article consensus was "stubs." AfD
consensus, apparently, was likewise. But try to say this at the
notability guideline page for organizations!
There are other possible applications, such as national Red Cross or
Red Crescent organizations. In the discussion at the notability
guideline, it was claimed that, of course, Afghan National Red
Crescent Society wasn't notable unless supported by "independent
source," beyond recognition by the relevant international federation,
which is, of course, highly notable. Why not? It was a circular
argument. *Usually* with these national organizations, there will
exist independent source that can be found, but ... why not allow a
stub? AfD is not a terribly effective way of gaining sourcing, it's
erratic and has, actually a somewhat negative effect on neutral
editors. Am I highly motivated to search for and source an article
under an AfD? I've found satisfactory sources late in an AfD and put
them in the article, and !voted Keep based on them, which I cited.
Then the AfD closed as Delete. After all, there had been a landslide
of !votes the other way.... Sure, I could go to DRV. And now many
minutes are there in a day. The topic of the article was highly
controversial, with a whole faction of editors who believed that the
entire topic should be excluded as "fringe quackery." Unfortunately,
it was notable fringe quackery in the sense that there were sources on it....
It was not possible, initially, on the guideline page to get other
editors to try to word the revision of the proposed addition in a way
that would not cause collateral, unintended damage. Instead, the
position there was that all such articles should be deleted. That's a
structural problem, and Wikipedia process makes it quite difficult to
address. Instead, we get one individual decision after another, with
inconsistent results, thus leading to more decisions having to be
made, and perhaps even more as some bright editor a year from now
notices that the articles and the guidelines are inconsistent, and
again nominates them. Perhaps one at a time as in the recent batch.
And what I saw was that the first AfD, which was isolated and
individual, was Delete. Nobody who knew the subject noticed it, and
the editors !voted based on a very literal and strict interpretation
of the guideline, and ignored the "national scope" part. I asked the
admin to reopen, and he did. Some parts of the structure are still
working. It was then a No Consensus, the only one. But it was not
different than a slew of the Keeps.
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