[WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

Tue Sep 6 09:21:33 UTC 2005

J.F. de Wolff wrote:
> 
> 
> I agree with Phil's observation, but it's not just the
> [[profanity|****]] deletionists that are to blame. There are honestly
> too many people so hungry for attention that they continuously seek to
> make Wikipedia aware of their unnotability. These characters are an
> undesired effect of being completely open, and cause pollution of good
> material with their own vanity. It is them we should blame to a large
> degree for our failure to distinguish between bona fide and shockingly
> unnotable.
> 
> When it comes to webcomics, it is extremely hard (for a non-insider) to
> make a judgment between notable and non-notable, which is exactly the
> point in having guidelines. I know this is elitist, but in these matters
> an uninformed opinion is a potentially destructive one.
> 

Don't forget, we only deleted the articles *about* the comics, not the
comics themselves...

People (especially those who frequent a particularly evil site which I
won't name, but whose community has created their own particularly
unfunny wiki - people on #wikipedia, you might know who I mean) often
fail to see this fact, saying "don't delete my pride and joy! this thing
really exists! save my baby" - and yet they fail to realise the key
issue at stake:

Wikipedia is a general purpose encyclopedia.

Wikipedia is *not* the internet. You can't put whatever you want to on
it. We have guidlines. We have standards. We don't include every single
piece of fancruft minutae about everything (although sometimes I wonder
about that). We are not the place to advertise your newest book/TV
show/movie/religion/invention, or yourself.

Wikipedia stores articles about things. It does not store the things
themselves. If something has become notable outside of whatever
community associated with it (unless that community is sufficiently
large), it is possibly deserving of an article about it.

If, however, you decide "I want people to love me! I will go make a
website about $(randomtopic) and write about it on Wikipedia!", you are
sore out of luck.

Wikipedia does not exist to inflate your precious little ego.

I am a member of the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad
Judgements About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and
Who Are In Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but
That Doesn't Mean They are Deletionist.

When someone says on VFD/AFD/Whatever it's called now "non-notable",
they mean:

"The subject of this particular article is not notable outside of it's
own community to warrant an article of its own."

Now if the webcomics community feels wronged by the Wikipedia community,
I am sorry. But we cannot help it if we find an article on our
encyclopedia which fails our notability guidlines. It is not the job of
Wikipedia, *and never will be*, to make things notable.

We are here to document the state of things, nothing more. That is the
essence of NPOV, the policy which (along with Freedom of content)
Wikipedia is founded upon.

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