[WikiEN-l] Dispute resolution attempt in the Ashida Kim case

Tue Oct 4 19:43:55 UTC 2005

On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, Brian Haws wrote:

> > Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Alphax wrote:
> > > Hmm, looks like Wikipedia is going to become the New Usenet, where
> > > people will scream blue murder if you don't write about them exactly how
> > > they want you to (if at all)...
> >
> > Well, let's try to avoid being the New Usenet, whatever we do. :-)
> >
> > I have (clumsily, I'm not a very experienced editor) renominated the
> > page for deletion. My essential argument is that Ashida Kim is not
> > prominent, there is no verifiable information about him (no newspaper
> > articles, no nothing other than a bunch of message board flamewars and
> > his own website).
> >
> > I have noticed a trend in my personal correspondence recently. It seems
> > that what Wikipedia is attracting these days is spillover flamewars from
> > other parts of the net. Non-notable people who have rolling pissing
> > matches all over the web end up trolling (perhaps by accident) us, in
> > our goodnatured goodwill intention of getting it right in all cases, etc.
> >
> > In many such cases, it is not clear to me why we even have an article
> > about the person in the first place. Non-notable in the extreme,
> > troublemaking in the extreme, these kinds of cases absorb rather a great
> > deal of time for a lot of good people for no good purpose.
>
> I have to ask, you used the word notable a couple times in your reply
> but in the actual AFD entry description here you used verifiable
> information as a standard to judge inclusion.
>
> Do you see notablility as a inclusion standard? Or is notability just
> a another way to express that something can be verified. And as such
> doesn't have
> a separate meaning (in AFD debates) to judge Wilipedia inclusion standards?
>
The problem is not with using the word "non-notable": I'd dare say
that most of us would agree that non-notable topics exist, & that they
should be kept out of Wikipedia. The problem with the word is that too
many AfD nominations consist of "non-notable; Delete" -- & little if
anything else.

Jimbo has done something that I believe we can all work with: he explained
*why* this person is non-notable in suitable detail that not only can
another person debate the reasoning, but if the nomination carries this
case could be used as a precedent & perhaps become a new guideline. (His
argument is quite similar to what SlimVirgin had written about using Usenet
as a source a few months back.)

Maybe the solution for nominations that consist of "non-notable; Delete"
is to respond "Keep; Why?"

Geoff