[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.)

Wed May 18 17:42:40 UTC 2005

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
Date: May 18, 2005 1:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do I misunderstand
Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.)
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org

On 5/18/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> So what you mean is, you don't want to create the articles?  Then don't
> create them.

I don't create them because it would disruptive to wikipedia.
If you are going to reply to lists that my message wasn't directed to,
you at least could have at least quoted my entire message.

> The last time it was advanced as policy, it got a simple majority but
> failed to make consensus. Jimbo also explained why verifiability is good
> enough for *articles people actually want to write*:

I'm quite well aware of what Jimbo has stated and the previous
decisions on the schools matter.

What I am asking about is a closely related but separate matter, which
is does the moniker 'encyclopedia' indicate that we are generally
using a criteria of notability to decide to include things.

There are wikipedians at the extreme end of the spectrum that think we
should include an article with stats for every darn roadway
intersection that we can prove exists, and I believe that either they
are misunderstanding our intentions or I am.

I'd be quite happy with an answer like, 'We prefer things to be
notable and discourage the creation of non-notable subjects... but if
someone wants to create and maintain a page on something not meeting
that we will permit it as long as it's verifiable and NPOV', which is
how I suspected things actually were... But this doesn't fit with the
small group of people determined to prevent any school (or quite a few
other things, as long as they are verifiable and NPOV) from being
deleted.