[Wikipedia-l] Non-notability "abuse"

[Ray Saintonge]

Maury Markowitz wrote:
>> 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 would agree, but in every case your examples failed on (c). The 
> article on Pensée failed to make any sort of effort to describe the 
> magazine _before_ it was radically re-imaged to become a mouthpiece 
> for Velikovsky, and I consider it deletable for that reason alone. Nor 
> did it make any reasonable attempt to describe the fact that the topic 
> is utter rubish, except by including a quote that suggested it was a 
> hissy fit by "mainstream" scientists. Pensée existed before the events 
> described in the article, yet zero effort was made to describe them. 
> This was nothing more than a roundabout promotion for Velikovsky-ism. 
> DELETE!
What you forget is that a person who knows that the magazine had a 
previous incarnation should be working toward NPOV by expanding the 
article to let us know about that previous life instead of deleting the 
article as a means of promoting his biases.  Writing neutrally does not 
mean that we accept only neutral topics.

It is sufficient to express that Velikovsky's ideas are significantly at 
odds with the mainstream.  There is no need to fill these articles with 
tediously redundant polemics.  A few discretely placed references will 
be enough to convince the thoughtful reader.  At one time Velikovsky's 
books were very popular, and that is a fact that cannot be ignored.
> The article on the Electric Universe so obviously fails (c) that I'm 
> astonished you would even bring it up as an example!
We don't have an Electric Universe article; how is anyone supposed to 
know what you are talking about?
>> Likewise, I see no problem Wikipedia summarising
>> every book that was ever published. It already
>> summarised every episode of many obscure TV programmes.
> Yes, but lots of people actually watch The Simpsons. Very few read 
> about the Electric Universe.
This suggests that you would make contemporary popularity a major 
criterion for deciding what to review.  Few people have read Einstein's 
original papers - even in English translation - so by your criterion we 
should delete references to Einstein, and allow our views about nuclear 
power to be guided by Homer Simpson's relation to his employment.
>> [M]y point is not to specifically argue for the
>> inclusion of these articles
> Oh geez, yes it is. I can conclude this as easy as looking at your sig...
Is that any worse than someone's blind argument for deleting these articles.
>> Ian Tresman
>> www.plasma-universe.com
> I find it interesting that you don't even seem to argue that these 
> topics are "real', only that they are "verifyable". This is why we 
> don't just accept V. I can, for instance, verify that the homeless guy 
> on the corner talks to himself, but that doesn't deserve an article on 
> the wiki either. We have rules like V, OR and NPOV to act as an 
> interlinked set of guidelines in order to filter out articles like these. 
Verifiability in no way implies that the subject is "real"; it merely 
establishes that someone, rightly or wrongly, believed this and wrote 
about it.

Who has written an article about your "homeless guy"?  Please provide 
links so that I can read that article.  That, or admit that the idea was 
only raised as a straw man: a ridiculous example of something that 
no-one would do presented for the sole purpose of discrediting a more 
arguable issue. Your interpretation of the rules is a complerte distortion.

Ec