Rick wrote:
My concern was not with some place that claims to have
invented the
hamburger: it was just that the original poster was adding
off-the-cuff pizza places that, at least as far as was indicated in
the article, had no particular significance except possibly to the
poster. To me, this is POV: "These are the places you should eat at,
not any others."
Possibly it's POV, but I don't read it exactly that way. I'd say that
the problem is not really POV here, but rather style and selectivity.
We could frame it as a POV dispute, but I don't think that the person
who wrote it really intended to slight anyone or advocate for
anything.
In a short article on New Haven, Connecticut, it doesn't make
stylistic sense to write about "On Route 4, there is a McDonald's
restaurant which was founded in 1987. This restaurant, interestingly
enough, is part of a worldwide chain of very similar restaurants. The
menu includes a variety of American-style fast food, including
primarily hamburgers, french fries, and soft drinks. In recent years,
the menu has been expanded to include more healthy alternatives, as
well."
That's just a parody of an encylcopedia article, if you see what I
mean.
However, that doesn't mean that extremely detailed information about
some restaurants in a given city couldn't be included in a sidebar
article. There could be problems with verifiability, of course. But
assuming those are taken care of, then even though some particular
information may not belong in a short introductory article, it might
be perfectly suitable for a broader article.
Imagine this, for example: "Fine dining in St. Petersburg, Florida".
Such an article could properly go into a great deal more detail than
the general St. Petersburg, Florida article, and since fine dining
establishments tend to receive press attention, it would likely be
possible to include external links so that people outside my city
would be able to confirm the information contained in the article.
And suppose someone wanted to write a really stupid and pointless
article "Fast food in St. Petersburg, Florida", including the silly
paragraph I wrote above. And assume that the information could be
confirmed.
I say: so what? Let's let them do it. It's not a major problem,
since it's silly not many people will care to do it. It won't be
well-linked from anywhere on the site, so almost no one will ever see
it. I'm flexible on this point, because I think that it's hard to
make blanket judgments, and that we would need a lot of case-by-case
examples before we'd have enough experience to formulate a general
rule.
--Jimbo