[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.

Wed May 18 19:53:06 UTC 2005

On 5/18/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Notoriety and notability are different conmcepts.

That they are, and they are both factors we should include in our
decision on what to include in wikipedia.

> I didn't realize that one of the aims of Wikipedia was to have a
> database small enough to be dumped entirely on anybody's drive.  I
> suspect that most passive users have no need or desire for such a dump.

It's not, but the claim that adding mountains of material that few
will ever look at and fewer will ever update causes no harm is clearly
bogus.

> Omitting the articles that you would like to see left out will slow the
> growth of database a little, but that will only delay the time before it
> won't fit on your pocket computer.  When it comes to third world
> equipment, I'm sure that we have long since exceeded the capacity of
> that equipment.  As to Wikimedia's own capacity for storing information,
> I would find the request "Slow down, we have too much stuff," more
> credible if it came from our senior developers.

Perhaps slowing down isn't enough (a year ago I couldn't store today's
wikipedia on my portable computer, but I can now), but then that leave
us with the question "Is there a useful way to subset wikipedia?".   I
believe that there are many useful ways, but I believe that all of the
best ways require us to have some idea of the level of notability of
each article.

As far as third-world computer.. They often get the trash computers
from the first world. The computer I had in 1994, more than a decade
ago, could contain wikipedia just fine.

We're more limited by distribution media, DVD gives us 4.5 gigs. Of
course we could span multiple disks, but then the user will likely
have to copy it all onto the computer. The more disks we span the
greater the cost at reproducing the material.

Ultimately we need to figure out how to subset out the more useful
parts of wikipedia, but if we have no notion of notability, I'm not
sure how we achieve that.

> I'm glad to here that, but others may see it differently.  Perhaps you
> could dispel those misunderstandings by providing data on the number of
> articles about such intersections that have been contributed to Wikipedia.

There are a few intersection articles, some intersections are notable
and some of the articles might even be about notable intersections.

> >I also choose it because I'm aware of the
> >level of information available, and could actually create a lot of
> >these articles myself. 
> Fantastic!
[snip] 
> I don't think that dumping material that you don't like into any other
> project is a friendly act unles you have an agreement with the people
> involved in that project.

It's not about material I dislike. It's about material that I think is
inappropriate for wikipedia, perhaps it is more appropriate someplace
else that already exists? It's a question that I don't have an answer
to...

Thank you for your thoughts on this subject, I value hearing from some
other people... even if you don't agree with me :)