[WikiEN-l] Re: Notability meta-guidelines

Wed Jan 18 19:46:13 UTC 2006

> The only way I can see to interpret 1) is to make "notable" 
> mean something like "well known".

Yes, it was a mistake on my part.

> And frankly, the rule doesn't make sense to me.  Providing 
> someone with information on something when they request it 
> isn't advertising. 
> Advertising is when you provide someone with information 
> other than what they requested.
> 
> IOW, if someone does a search for "Bob's Garage Band" and 
> they get information on it, how is that advertising?

I'm not 100% sure of the logic either, but articles get turfed for being
"vanity" all the time. Even, as we have seen recently, when they are
written by people unknown to the subject.

Actually now that I think about it, maybe a subject *does* get false
notability from being on Wikipedia. If I searched for Bob's garage band
and found nothing but a crufty geocities website, that would be one
thing. If I found a fully-fledged Wikipedia article, I would think
something completely different about them. I would think they were more
notable than they really were.

Steve