[WikiEN-l] One Where We Blew It

Tue Sep 13 21:01:20 UTC 2005

On Wed, 7 Sep 2005, Geoff Burling wrote:

> On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, David wrote:
>
> > Fastfission wrote:
> >
> > >Well, recognizing that Wikipedia itself is becoming a cultural object,
> > >wouldn't it make sense at the very least to say "When it is more notable
> > >than its inclusion in Wikipedia would be"? ;-)
> > >
> > >Put more simply, if I were in EB, it would be pretty amazing and the most
> > >notable thing about me ("Otherwise unnotable man included in Encyclopedia
> > >Brittanica," the headlines would proclaim). However if I was more notable
> > >than my inclusion into EB would be, then it wouldn't be any big deal if they
> > >had an article on me -- it might even be expected, if they specialized in
> > >breadth.
> > >
> > >Of course, the problem with this is that it is self-reinforcing policy! That
> > >is, if the standard for inclusion to Wikipedia went down, then the
> > >likelihood of having a Wikipedia article about something would go up, which
> > >would in turn affect a standard for inclusion based on the likelihood of an
> > >article being in Wikipedia... and so on.
> > >
> > So that's the ultimate standard?  As soon as nobody is surprised that we
> > have an article on a subject, we need the article?
> >
> > I love it! :)
> >
> I guess this is an application of a rule that Jimbo mentions in his
> emails from time to time: the Principle of Least Astonishment. That is,
> if you consider Wikipedia's coverage of a given topic definitive,
> authorative, &/or exhaustive, it would reasonably astonish the reader
> if there was not an article about a specific subject.
>
> After all, I haven't seen anyone argue on VfD that a village of 100
> people in Africa or Asia is not notable: that's difficult to claim
> when there are so many existing articles about communities of that
> size -- or smaller -- in the U.S.
>
Well, I have been shown to be wrong. Check out the debate at
[[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Drigluidjunblégruidjundlei]], where
instead of first making an effort to see if the village actually exists
(or focussing on things like who created the article or does any other
article link to it), the debate is another version of "if I haven't
heard of it, & can't find it with Google, then let's delete it" argument.

Geoff