--- Axel Boldt axelboldt@yahoo.com wrote:
lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
I'm already on record that I support allowing
biographies of anyone
at all in Wikipedia, with no regard to whether
their accomplishments
or fame would merit their inclusion in a more
traditional reference.
I agree, except that I can see some problems with
disambiguation and
namespace.
I disagree, for several reasons.
First, I see an encyclopedia as a compendium of all human knowledge that is interesting or useful to a significant number of people. My dream last night, and the fact that I keep my notebook in the right drawer of my desk, are both stored in my brain, so they are part of human knowledge. They are interesting/useful to me, but not to anyone else, therefore they don't belong in an encyclopedia. A biography of an unimportant person is interesting/useful to almost no one, therefore it doesn't belong either.
Second, facts about unimportant people are not checkable. I could write that my father once fell from a horse, and no one could ever disprove this false claim. If an important person falls from a horse, it leaves a trail.
Third, and related, it is impossible to write a biography of an unimportant person from a NPOV, since essentially only the very partial point of view of the immediate family and friends exists.
I'm with Axel. I think a project with the goal of world-wide biographies could be interesting, but Wikipedia is not such a project.
Stephen
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