[Wikipedia-l] Non-notability "abuse"

[Ian Tresman]

At 11:46 17/09/2007, you wrote:
>On 17/09/2007, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The magazine Pensée is notable, and nobody is questioning that. The
> > article brought up for deletion was "Pensée (Immanuel Velikovsky
> > Reconsidered)",  a "special series of ten issues of the magazine
> > Pensée" devoted to a particular topic.
>
>I think the interesting and idiosyncratic assumption that "all
>published books are suitable for an article" kicks in here. Do
>non-English projects make this same assumption? Does it vary between
>fiction and nonfiction? Enquiring minds want to know...

If Wikipedia were a paper-based encyclopedia, 
then I think there is no doubt that there would 
be certain selection criteria. Wikipedia is not 
paper, and consequently has decided that if it is 
(a) Verifiable (b) (non-trivial) Reliable 
sources, (c) written neutrally, then it is acceptable.

I noted that Wikipedia has 1000 article on all 
1000 of the "top" asteroids (and many more), few 
of which are any more notable pieces of rock than 
another. In this instance, Wikipedia is acting as 
a catalogue, and many of the articles are merely 
"stubs". But that's fine by me, I'm sure asteroid #547 is notable to someone.

Likewise, I see no problem Wikipedia summarising 
every book that was ever published. It already 
summarised every episode of many obscure TV programmes.

Is this encyclopedic? Wikipedia is not your typical encyclopedia.

Regards,

Ian Tresman
www.plasma-universe.com