[WikiEN-l] Sourcing "popular culture" items

Fri Nov 10 22:23:05 UTC 2006

On Nov 10, 2006, at 5:15 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:13:18 -0500, Jeff Raymond
> <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>>> You don't know how relieved I am to hear that.  Some of the scariest
>>> words I've heard lately from an established editor were "reality
>>> contestants are inherently notable".
>
>> It's not like i'm exactly ''wrong''.
>
> In my view you are.  The contestant is not notable, their performance
> in the reality show may have been.

May I suggest that this debate highlights the problems with  
ontological categories of "notable" and "non-notable?"

To my mind there are three categories of articles in terms of this.

1) Useful articles that provide context and verifiable, neutral  
information of general interest on a topic.
2) Bad articles that provide unverifiable or biased information, or  
no context of use to anyone but fans/partisans/etc, but that somebody  
is willing and capable of fixing.
3) Bad articles that provide unverifiable or biased information, or  
no context of use to anyone but fans/partisans/etc, and that  
furthmore have nobody who is willing and capable of fixing them.

We keep 1, fix 2, and delete 3. If an article on a topic that got  
deleted by #3 comes along that is #2 or #1, we keep/fix it. If a  
topic goes so far as to be impossible to fix, we repeatedly delete  
it, and, sometimes, as a convenience to prevent admins from having to  
get into a fight on these things, protect blank.

No muss, no fuss, no ontological concepts of notability.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a  
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >