[WikiEN-l] Eternal Ephemeral

Fri Oct 31 17:52:22 UTC 2003

Geoff Burling wrote:
> I've been trying to determine for myself a good rule of thumb to answer
> this very question: when is something too trivial for inclusion in
> Wikipedia?

I think this question should be broken down into some subquestions
before you can get a valid answer...

1.  When is something too trivial for me to work on it?

2.  When is something so trivial that I would frown on others working
on it?

3.  When is something so trivial that I think it should actually be
deleted?

I recommend that people take a very strict view of #1, a more lenient
view of #2, and really really relax a lot about #3.  For #3 the least
controversial rule is confirmability.

> An obvious example for exclusion that I believe all of us can agree on
> are the occasional articles that pop up about average people & promptly
> get deleted.

These are generally full of non-confirmable information, right?

> Likewise, there are thousands of individuals mentioned in historical
> records only once, & of whom nothing more can be known or guessed.

But even _that_ is worthy of a mention, or could be, if someone wants
to bother.  Suppose, for example, a name is mentioned only once, in
passing, in the Bible.  (All those 'begats'!)  Nothing, let us
suppose, is known beyond that.

Even so, that name is likely to appear somewhere in literature or
what-not.  Or perhaps someone will come across that name _in the
Bible_ and wonder "hmm, I wonder what else is known about that
person".  Then, wikipedia can tell them "This name appears in the
Bible.  That's all anyone knows."  Good information!

> The point I am trying to make is this: we should keep in mind that
> Wikipedia, because it is an encyclopedia, is a reference
> work. People will want to consult it to answer questions about
> people, events or facts. This leads to the critereon that before
> adding an article, one should consider whether it would be of
> interest beyond a clearly limited audience.

Does it lead to that?  I don't think so.  *Other* considerations might
lead to that answer, but the fact that Wikipedia, because it is an
encyclopedia, is a reference work, implies for me a criterion of
"well, someone somewhere might be looking for that, so why bother
deleting it?"

Now, let me be the first to also say that I think that there *can be*
answers to that question!  One answer is namespace pollution.  I would
be very opposed to turning "Thomas Jefferson" into a disambiguation
page like this:

"Thomas Jefferson is the name of at least two people:

[[Thomas Jefferson (president)]] - 3rd President of the United States

[[Thomas Jefferson (plumber)]] - plumber in Des Moines, Iowa from
1943-1947, subsequent whereabouts or activities unknown"

But I really think that the confirmability rule helps with almost all
cases like that.

--Jimbo