[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third World

[Lars Aronsson]

Frederick Noronha wrote:

> Maybe we should use some discernment, instead of the mechanical rule
> of 'number of links' on Google or where-ever.

The question if a topic is notable enough to deserve an entry, can 
only be answered with "yes" or "no", and this is pretty much 
"mechanical", so you cannot really escape the mechanics.

However, the number of Google hits is not the only mechanical 
input. There are many categories of topics where you can derive a 
good "mechanical reason" to write an article.  For cities, you can 
claim that each city with more than, say, 50,000 inhabitants 
deserves an article.  The first step would then be to create a 
list of the largest/biggest/heaviest objects of the category.

As for cities in India, there are 35 listed that have more than 
one million inhabitants on 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_plus_cities_in_India
but there are only some 400 cities listed on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_India

I don't know if any population limit was set for that list, but I 
think you could easily expand that list to 2000 cities or so, and 
start to write articles for each one of them.  Then for each city, 
you could list the two or three most famous people that come from 
that city, and write articles about them.  And so on.  All along 
that chain you would then have a number that proves why this topic 
is notable, so you won't have to rely on the Google hit count.  
With time, your articles will define the Google hit count.

This kind of reasoning is not limited to the English Wikipedia or 
the cities of India, but can be used in the Ukrainian Wikipedia 
for Hungarian composers with more than 3 symphonies or whatever.  
I don't know if 50,000 inhabitants or 3 symphonies are good limits 
for notability, but if you can make such a claim and back it up, 
then people should be less likely to attack you.  At least they 
will understand that you are not totally clueless or naked.

There are two Swedish proverbs.  One says "you shouldn't judge 
people by the clothes they wear" (man ska inte döma hunden efter 
håren).  The other one says "you will get judged by the clothes 
you wear" (som man är klädd så blir man hädd).  Go figure.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se