If I wanted to write an article on, say, a chess site, but was not sure whether it was notable, is there a place to post a request for others to check whether its notable? If not, perhaps I could propose such a place be created?
I agree that two problems with AFD need to be dealt with: 1) Systemic bias. Articles on American topics are less likely to be nominated than, say, articles on Singaporean topics. In addition, certain topics are more likely to be nominated than others. 2) Anti-elitism. If Wikipedia's article on Xiaxue were to be nominated for deletion, the views of Singaporeans, and those familiar with the blogosphere, should carry more weight. However, this isn't the case.
On 1/9/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/8/07, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
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.
I think the idea that one could come up with a formula, a machine into which one could put an subject and turn the handle and get a 'yes' or 'no' answer, to rule on inclusion in Wikipedia is fundamentally wrong-headed. It reflects a certain 'computer-science' way of thinking that I feel is flawed - as someone said, expecting to be able to fix social problems in software is a loser's game.
To some, I feel, such a definitive process would be desirable since they think it would solve the rancor over inclusion - even if it made some less-than-perfect decisions, they like the speed and finality and definitiveness of such. I think it would only increase the rancor. There is disagreement about inclusion not because we've not yet perfected the formula, but because there is deep-seated division on what we're trying to do and what should be included. Furthermore, inclusion doesn't seem suited to binary logic - it's a problem in which the answers do include definitive 'yes' and 'no' regions but a substantial fuzzy zone of 'maybe'.
Answering that 'maybe' is the hard part. Myself, I feel that the deciding factor, once verifiability is out of the way (and answered positively) is simply whether anyone is interested/able to make a worthwhile article out of it. In practice, well-written, substantial articles rarely get deleted no matter what the subject.
-Matt
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l