[Wikipedia-l] Non-notability "abuse"

[Andrew Gray]

On 18/09/2007, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:

> This can be dangerous. For instance, putting pet pseudo-scientific theories
> on Wikipedia gives them a certan credence that they would not get anywhere
> else. Often, those articles will be better sourced than the more  conventional,
> standard entries on accepted scientific theories. People seeking  information,
> who are not quite discerning, will turn to the net, see the  article, see the
> copious references, and come to accept that as normative  scientific fact,
> when actually the vast majority of scientists may well reject  it.

This is indeed a real problem. We generally accept that we should give
"due weight" to topics - relatively obscure theories, don't get
treated at the same length as their more widely supported brethren,
which is fair and even the fringe theorists mostly accept it (if only
for a quiet life). Much the same applies to real things; we would feel
it greatly inappropriate for [[History of London]] to be a tenth the
size of [[History of Basingstoke]].

But there are things which are *so* obscure that, whilst they exist,
covering them "as topics" at all can be argued as giving them undue
weight. So what do we do with those?
-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk