From: Michael Turley <michael.turley(a)gmail.com>
Before yesterday, I didn't know what a SPUI was. Now I have a good
general understanding of a SPUI. Now, some may say, no one but a
traffic engineer would be interested in that! NN, DELETE! Why
shouldn't we serve the traffic engineer as well as we serve the Dr.
Who fan, or the environmental scientist, or the pop culture buff?
It's all POV when you start throwing terms like "notability" rather
than relying on third party verifiability.
Wikipedia IS an encyclopedia, but because it's the most comprehensive
encyclopedia ever, it's actually many encyclopedias. It's an
encyclopedia of Dr. Who, an encyclopedia of U.S. history, an
encyclopedia of British colonies, an encyclopedia of schools, an
encyclopedia of Egyptian regents, an encyclopedia of construction
equipment, an encyclopedia of Mariah Carey recordings, etc... and we
don't have to limit it arbitrarily for some group of editors's POVs
regarding "notability".
And yet, there are definitely notability clauses within various policies.
"What Wikipedia is not" implies notability, as do the requirements about
biographies, reliability of sources, etc. And, of course, Jimbo's statement
about "extreme minority opinions" as regards NPOV is also all about
notability - if notability (and editorial discretion regarding it) were not
present, then all we'd really need would be the NPOV policy, and all it
would have to say was "all opinions are represented, and must be attributed
to their source".
I view the claims that Wikipedia has no notability requirements as an
extreme position, and one incompatible with creating an encyclopedia (as
opposed to a giant repository of all known facts). While Wikipedia has no
*explicit* notability policies, I think notability requirements are implicit
in both its existing policies and its fundamental mandate.
Jay.