[WikiEN-l] Notability meta-guidelines

Wed Jan 18 15:39:45 UTC 2006

Hi,
  There are a great deal of arguments over what is and isn't notable
in various fields, but not much agreement on what the goals of having
notability guidelines at all - or why we want to delete well written
articles about arguably "unimportant" topics. In particular, as
someone recently pointed out, why we want to (hypothetically) keep a
stub written about a species of extinct beetle little is known about,
while we would delete a page about an internet chat site with
thousands of active users.

I suggest that there are some underlying, unspoken principles at play here:

1) A subject should not become *more notable* by appearing in
Wikipedia.  {The vanity principle}

2) A subject should not appear in Wikipedia when many more subjects in
its category or field do not. {The insignificance principle}

3) Imaginary or fictitious subjects have less right to appear in
Wikipedia than other subjects. {The fancruft principle}

I believe that 1) is the crux of vanity concerns. No one really cares
about the dataspace wasted on Jimmy Bob's Groovy Garage Band. But we
object to the idea that Wikipedia is being harnessed as an advertising
medium.

The second principle I think is one that should be spoken. We then
have a logical argument for rejecting an article about an
uninteresting street in an outer suburb of Wagga Wagga:
a) There are hardly any interesting streets in this suburb in WP
b) There are hardly any interesting streets in Wagga Wagga at all in WP
c) There are hardly any streets in any major cities in Australia listed.

Thus we can say, "come back when c, b and a have been fulfilled to some extent".

The third principle explains the repugnance with which some editors
treat "fancruft". Notability and popularity are disregarded, and this
principle comes through: "We" simply don't want a lot of articles
about any fictitious subject. This obviously causes tension with the
large numbers of editors who want to create thirty articles about
their favourite Pokémon character.

So my first question is: Do these principles adequately explain most
of the other notability guidelines?

If so, then the community is faced with two questions:
a) Do we accept these meta guidelines? Do we want to add others?
b) How do we publish these meta guidelines, and how do we make sure
they are taken into account into all other notability guidelines?

Comments please!

Steve