[WikiEN-l] What Readers Say on Inclusion

Tue Oct 4 08:32:29 UTC 2005

Philip Sandifer wrote:

> I just did a very informal poll among friends I have who do not edit  
> Wikipedia, but who read it, on the matter of when an article should  
> be deleted.
>
> I did not express my own opinion to any of them and solicit  
> agreement. So the fact that they are my friends so, naturally, they  
> agree with me doesn't play into this. On the other hand, the  
> possibility that I am naturally prone to talking to people who  
> basically agree with me, even on issues we haven't discussed, might.
>
> In any case - no one I talked to mentioned notability as a reason to  
> delete. All of them, upon being specifically asked about notability,  
> generally took a "whatever" approach to it, with several specifically  
> saying, "No, if the article isn't lies, it should definitely be  
> included no matter how trivial the topic." Other views included "If  
> the topic is mentioned in another article, and that mention wasn't  
> created specifically to make an excuse to have an article, it should  
> be included" (The closest thing to a deletionist position I got) and  
> "If someone cares enough to create it, it should probably not be  
> deleted, even though that someone might be being an idiot."
>
> Which doesn't prove anything, I'll be the first to admit. But I think  
> this is an important thing we haven't been asking - what do readers  
> think. Most of the people expressing their opinions on this inclusion/ 
> exclusion debate are editors. Most of us, in fact, are very jaded  
> editors. And we are an incredible minority among the people who load  
> en.wikipedia.org every day. And we should bear that in mind - because  
> after a bit of talking to readers, I think people really do want us  
> to try to be a place where you can find any piece of knowledge or  
> fact. To a degree, actually, that's even beyond what I think is  
> important to achieve (Although I still would rather leave in garage  
> bands than exclude notable but obscure topics, and I still don't care  
> enough to delete garage bands myself).

These are excellent observations.  My son's Social Studies teacher is an 
info geek who is familiar with Wikipedia.  I should ask him if he would 
be willing to run a survey of his class asking:  "What belongs in an 
encyclopedia?" and "What should not be in an encyclopedia?" Perhaps even 
adding a series of yes-or-no questions about subjects that have been 
particularly contentious.

Ec