[WikiEN-l] Notability meta-guidelines

Thu Jan 19 02:24:24 UTC 2006

Steve Bennett wrote:
> 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}
> 

# Support ~~~~

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

# Support ~~~~

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

# Support ~~~~

> 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 problem is when people make arguments to the effect of "Major cities
are not encyclopedic material", ie. they decide that /nothing/ is
allowed to be written about a particular topic. Now, I know that this is
a ridiculous example, but not much more rediculous than some arguments
that have been succesfully argued by *hundreds* of editors at AfD. Yes,
the vast majority of the world are morons, and WP is (to an extent)
representative of that in the everyday goings-on at AfD.

> 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.
> 

I actually don't see /how/ you could create 30 articles on a single
Pokémon character without violating a) WP:NOR, b) WP:V, c) copyright, d)
the laws of physics.

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

Yes, with WP:NOR and WP:V doing a good job at covering just about
everything else - most of what /could/ be called "nn, d." can more
succinctly be summed up as "The subject of this article is non-notable
because what has been written amounts to original research and is not
verifiable". I've been arguing this for about a year now.

> If so, then the community is faced with two questions:
> a) Do we accept these meta guidelines? Do we want to add others?

Well, a while ago someone said "there are /no/ notability guidlines",
and I almost believed it. Of course, this was before I realised what a
trollpit AfD was; we quite clearly *do* have notability guidelines, cf.
WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, etc.

> b) How do we publish these meta guidelines, and how do we make sure
> they are taken into account into all other notability guidelines?
> 

Put them up at [[Wikipedia:Notability guidelines]]?

-- 
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 556 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060119/c2727ddb/attachment.pgp 