[WikiEN-l] Notability meta-guidelines

Wed Jan 18 15:46:19 UTC 2006

Steve Bennett wrote:

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

This is a very bad idea. We lack great swathes of many areas. 2. would
only be a good idea if our systemic bias were negligible, when it's
nothing of the sort; pretending it is is counterproductive.

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

To which the obvious answer is "there is no reason not to start *here*."

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

We are not running out of disk space in any way at all, and 100000
"fancruft" articles don't make it any harder for me to find, e.g.,
[[EXA]] or [[Xenu]].

This is not a book. If someone makes a book, they can take care of it
how they wish (e.g. the Category system).

I do like the first one, though, and this email strikes me as
hopefully the start of a good working editorial definition of
"notability"!

- d.