Usability (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Compendium)

Mon Nov 1 16:24:28 UTC 2004

Aha, perhaps something new in this debate - I like
this - is 'usability' something that we can agree on,
a perhaps move forward with?
Mark

--- "Eric B. and Rakim" <eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> >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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