[WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

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.