lcrocker(a)nupedia.com wrote:
> I'm already on record that I support
allowing
biographies of anyone
> at all in Wikipedia, with no regard to
whether
their accomplishments
> or fame would merit their inclusion in a
more
traditional reference.
I agree, except that I can see some problems with
disambiguation and
namespace.
I disagree, for several reasons.
First, I see an encyclopedia as a compendium of all
human knowledge that
is interesting or useful to a significant number of
people. My dream last
night, and the fact that I keep my notebook in the
right drawer of my
desk, are both stored in my brain, so they are part
of human knowledge.
They are interesting/useful to me, but not to anyone
else, therefore they
don't belong in an encyclopedia. A biography of an
unimportant person is
interesting/useful to almost no one, therefore it
doesn't belong either.
Second, facts about unimportant people are not
checkable. I could write
that my father once fell from a horse, and no one
could ever disprove this
false claim. If an important person falls from a
horse, it leaves a trail.
Third, and related, it is impossible to write a
biography of an
unimportant person from a NPOV, since essentially
only the very partial
point of view of the immediate family and friends
exists.
I'm with Axel. I think a project with the goal of
world-wide biographies could be interesting, but
Wikipedia is not such a project.
Stephen
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