[WikiEN-l] Re: Proposal on VFD: enforcement of nomination policy

Mon Mar 7 02:17:18 UTC 2005

On Sun, 6 Mar 2005, David Gerard wrote:

> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
> > So why not add non-notability to the deletion policy? If it's one of the
> > most commonly used reasons for listing an article and yet it isn't
> > actually listed as a valid reason for deletion in the deletion policy,
> > it seems there's already a pretty big problem either with the VfD
> > process or with the deletion policy.
>
>
> Mostly because it'll be too damn subjective to fly.
>
The times I've cited "non-notable" as a reason for VfD have all been in
regards to entries about people. It's my shorthand for saying "this person
hasn't done anything important enough to merit an entry." And it's a judgement
based on the contents of the first sentence or two of the article -- which
should give the reader a quick answer of why this person is important. If
you can't tell me why this person matters in the first paragraph, then
it's clearly a non-notable entry.

For example, if the entry begins "Joe Blow is a husband of 14 years to Jane
Blow, has 3 kids & 2 dogs", then it's clearly non-noteable; if the man
did something that argues he should be included in Wikipedia (say, he
invented the cursor or patented the Smiley), it should say that in the first
sentence -- or the second, if the first is devoted to saying he's an
engineer, computer enthusiast or convicted sex offender. If the article
begins "Joe Blow is the maintainer of the Open Source project [[Road kill]]"
then it's not an automatic non-noteable call; even if it turns out that
you can't find any mention of Road Kill at the usual Open Source/Free Software
download sites (like Freshmeat), it's still not non-noteable -- I'd label
it either "vanity" or "hoax" -- especially if that sentence is the entire
article.

Sadly, even limited to this catagory, this word has a lot of candidates:
for some reason countless people think Wikipedia needs to have an article
about themselves, their girlfriends, or their best friend. Even if said
person's most important achievement in life was survivng birth.

I'd probably use this term for other catagories, but I've lost the battle
whether public high schools are non-noteable or not. (My own high school is
non-noteable, yet other editors insisted on creating an article about it.)
And it's easier to argue that an article about a public high school should
be deleted because it's unverifiable than non-noteable, whereas with people
it's the other way around. ("But you can't say [[Joe Blow]] is unverifiable!
Take a look in the phone book -- his name is there! Call him & you'll see
that he really exists!")

Geoff