[Wikipedia-l] Re: September 11 articles

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

>"Jeroen Heijmans" <j.heijmans at stud.tue.nl> wrote:
>> Why? Every day I can read about at least a dozen of people
>> that died. I could enter an article on them. "John Doe died
>> on date X in a traffic accident." Not very useful, right? Or
>> should we also list the 6 million Jews, and millions of other
>> people that died because of some kind of artrocity? Have
>> articles about each Palestinian killed by an Israeli soldier?

> Yes, we should. The entries should be more complete, but yes,
> I do think there should be entries on everyone. As long as
> they're entered by hand, the numbers won't get out of hand. 

I actually lean toward Cunc's side of this issue.  I don't have any 
problem with the existence of articles on even the most obscure 
subjects, including individuals who might not be of interest to a
traditional encyclopedia.  However, I don't want the database filled
with stubs either.  I think the best approach in situations like this 
is that if a person has only a one- or two-line bio, that bio should 
appear next to his name on a page with a list of other names of 
related people.  For example, a list of victims of a disaster, or 
members of some group. There's no need to create a separate page for 
such individuals unless there's a full page or more of material on 
him.