[WikiEN-l] Compendium

Mon Nov 1 10:32:02 UTC 2004

>An ironic thing about schools vs species is that I could write an
>article about a species that has only ever been observed by one
>scientist, has only one paper about it in an obscure journal, and
>only one specimen in a jar somewhere, and yet no one would dream of
>deleting the article for non-notability (in fact we have a number
>of such articles already), while an article about the largest high
>school in Cleveland would probably cause a furious VfD debate. Is
>the obscure species, which is of interest to maybe a few dozen
>specialists, really more notable than the high school and its
>thousands of students?

This is very interesting. I think it proves that the notability criterium is 
out of whack. It seems like when "the deletionists" say "notability" of 
information, they instead mean "usability" of information. Because noone can 
claim that one specimen of one species documented in one academic journal is 
more notable than any high school in Cleveland. However, the information 
about the specimen might well be more useful than that about the school....

.... to biologists!

But not to anyone else. Is it so that the deletions is a symptom of the fact 
that many wikipedians see the target audience as something else than many 
other wikipedians see it? If we assume that Wikipedia HAS a limited number 
of target audiences, then I can understand that people want to delete 
factual, verifiable information. It doesn't make sense to have an article 
about a school in Cleveland if Wikipedia's target audience is not 
Clevelanders (or foreign exchange students..) It also makes sense to delete 
[[Melissa Doll]]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Doll if Wikipedia's 
target audience is not fans of Melissa Doll/people interested in porn 
actors.

And so on. So maybe Wikipedia's *only* target audience is the target 
audience that Encyclopaedia Brittanica has. But I don't think so. I'm a 
member of the community and I has a say in what goes into Wikipedia too. So 
does everyone else that has ever written something in Wikipedia. We are all 
authors and contributors.

For every article ever witten someone has thought "I know this and I think 
this is useful for someone else." Which means that everything ever written 
has passed someones test of usability. That doesn't mean that it has to be 
included in Wikipedia, but I think more thought should be spent on that fact 
than currently is.

To summarize. Don't delete articles because they aren't "notable", delete 
articles because they aren't usable. Delete information about someones bank 
account number because, while it might be verifiable at an ATM machine, it 
isn't usable to a large enough audience. Keep information about Cleveland's 
high schools because that information is usable to thousands of students. 
Delete information about some random street because nothing interesting has 
ever happened there. Keep information about US President's dogs because 
thousands of people do find that information useful.

-- Eric B. and Rakim

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