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

[Ray Saintonge]

Andre Engels wrote:

>2007/1/8, Frederick Noronha <fred at bytesforall.org>:
>  
>
>>Hmmm... some interesting issues being raised below. Just for argument
>>sake: what happens if an "un-notable" entry makes it to Wikipedia?
>>Would it be a grave error? Notability, after all, is mostly related to
>>context. Would Shakespeare have been as "noted" a writer, if he had to
>>be born in, say, Upper Egypt?
>>    
>>
>That's a big hypothetical - if he had been born there, how much and what
>would he have written? Having somehting un-notable may not be a grave error,
>but having thousands of un-notable things clogs Wikipedia, makes
>fact-checking harder and opens the doors wide to usage of Wikipedia for
>advertisement.
>
If Frederick's comments are hypothetical, this response is speculative.  
We have yet to deal with fact checking to any apprecable degree, and 
advertising is a completely differnt issue from notability.

>I think the problem lies elsewhere. The trouble is: people or
>  
>
>>institutions being packaged to be what they are not. Or bloated claims
>>about institutions or organisations or individuals.
>>
>>Rather than just delete entries for being un-notable, perhaps we need
>>to find ways to ensure that what's written is both accurate and
>>tallies with the reality. --FN
>>    
>>
>But what if what is written is that so-and-so once wrote an internet page
>(that a few hundred people have looked at). Do you really want to just keep
>that in if you found that he really has done so?
>
Again, this is a straw man argument.  It makes a statement about 
something that many will find unacceptable and tries to apply the same 
argument to more uncertain situations.

The vandal fighters are doing an important job, but sometimes they seem 
to get so overrun by the backlog and the size of the task that they just 
forget to reflect on articles that require it.

Ec