[WikiEN-l] Sourcing "popular culture" items

Fri Nov 10 22:24:57 UTC 2006

That's a good idea, Phil -- it allows us to be a supercomprehensive
encyclowhatnot while it permits us to get rid of crap.

On 11/10/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> 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.
>
> >
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