[WikiEN-l] Human dignity

Wed Jul 19 03:01:15 UTC 2006

Oldak Quill wrote:
> Could you give me a definition of "notability" that is not entirely
> centred around the culture and experience of the person who uses it?
> I'm yet to hear one. IMO, we should completely abandon, or redefine,
> "notability" for something more tangible, measurable and worthy of our
> efforts.

   I don't know the "I know it when I see it and I'll vote that way" 
approach does not seem to me to be the biggest problem we have.  I think 
a bigger problem is focusing on notability too much to the exclusion of 
such questions as: "Is there enough verifiable information on this topic 
for an encyclopedic article?",  "Is this topic fit or appropriate for an 
encyclopedia?", "If this topic were covered completely and throughly 
would it be worth reading?".  In the case of people article I would also 
say "Is a single transitory cultural event that the person was involved 
in the only reason for the article to exist?"  There are other questions 
things to consider other than if the topic or person meets some 
arbitrary bar of notability and I suspect that putting much effort into 
rigidly defining notability would exacerbate the tendency to ignore 
other considerations (like human dignity).

Dalf