[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... Notability

[David Goodman]

I see the following problems.
1. At the beginning of WP decisions were made to have some categories
of things notable: subway and train stations, villages in the US and
Canada, individual numbered highways etc., and to have very low bars
for characters in computer games, high schools, porn stars, and so on.
These are so much the part of WP that they cannot be removed, and it
sounds & is absurd to have very different and enormously higher
standards for college professors, classical musicians, etc.  Similarly
there are very low bar to entries for individual books, etc, except
there are less people working to fill in these categories.

2. What is personally notable to different people is very different. I
would be well served by an encyclopedia eliminating quite a number of
things. And similarly for each of you, except they'd be different.
2a. Thus, WP like any general encyclopedia will have areas that will
not seem significant to an individual. An example mentioned is
chemical compounds. When WP was started, there was no free source
giving the information. Now there is PubChem, but the chemists intend
the WP coverage to be both wider and deeper and more understandable,
and I think they are succeeding. The same is true of individual plant
and animal species. (I was initially skeptical of both, but looking at
good recent examples convinced me otherwise. Details for a separate
discussion, because I'm on the projects in these areas.)

3. there are attempts to set objective standards, but they tend to be
inflexible, and sometimes the very opposite of common sense.  For
these, see the detailed subpages of WP:N.  But the general guidelines
of WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, are actually subject to very wide differences
of interpretation, especially NPOV.
3a.  But let's start a separate discussion of each.

4. It is now the case, btw, that many people are no longer anonymous.
 I used an acronym at first, and I have enough edits that would need
changing that I'm stuck with it, but I'm about to put my true name on
the user page. (it's DGG)

5. For Ian: the initial decision was made to accept to accept all
broadcasting towers as notable. Do you agree?
5a. This decision was one of the few reversed, and all but the true
landmarks are being removed through AfD.
5b. Several people have said that all high school teachers should be
notable, and all individual elementary schools, and all bus stops.
5c. I've seen it said that every individual person on earth should
have  an article about them.
5d. Noted in a reliable source is not sufficient: everyone living in
the US in 1930 and before is listed in the published parts of the US
Census, a very reliable source. Similarly for every book and pamphlet
and magazine article ever published (& the number is similar as well).
The price of every stock on the market for every weekday is listed in
reliable sources. The time each train stops at each station is listed
in reliable sources. Every individual automobile ever registered is
listed in reliable sources. Every individual piece of property every
sold is listed in reliable sources.

6. Things worth including in an article but not worth a separate
article. The current  practice seems to make a redirect from their
names  if they have names, or to include them in a list. There are
also things redirected to Wiktionary or Wikisource

7. Many things which one would think included sufficiently in the web
are much better handled in Wiki, because the web results are mainly
totally unreliable blogs.

8. So, in short, there is a dilemma between having flexible standards
set in general words that can be interpreted strictly or narrowly
depending upon individual prejudice, and and having fixed standards
that include or exclude arbitrarily, which may well not accord with
common sense.
8a.There was a long discussion of whether to include Bush's
forthcoming speech. The discussion was still going on when he gave the
speech, which clearly was notable, & put an end to the discussion.

--David Goodman

PS: consider the shades of meaning between: notable, noteworthy,
important, significant, useful