[WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

Thu May 4 17:10:49 UTC 2006

On 04/05/06, Gallagher Mark George
<m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Steve,
>
> > On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > As for "an article with no claim to notability", I actually have no
> > > idea what that phrase means.
> >
> > An article has to establish the notability of its subject. If it
> > doesn't do that, it's subject to speedy deletion.
> >
> > ...I recite.
>
> No, it has to *assert* the notability of its subject.  When clearing up
> CAT:CSD I see a lot of speedy taggings where the tagger simply
> figured "sure, there's an assertion of notability there, but I don't
> think it's good enough".  Wrong.

There is, of course, the fact that most people (myself included)
interpret it as "no assertion of plausible notability". "John Smith
was the first man to climb Everest in a week" is an assertion of
notability, and it's plausible. "John Smith was the first man to climb
Olympus Mons" is an assertion of implausible notability.

And "is the world's sexiest man" would seem a pretty good definition
of notability, but - strangely enough - we tend to ignore that the ten
thousand speedied articles saying this are asserting notability. :-)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk