What's the point of notability rules? (annexed) Options

[Gruntled]

At the risk of being labeled a hard-line inclusionist (which I emphatically am not) I'd like to debate whether English WP needs notability rules. I stress English WP; some sites seem quite happy without any such rules. They're great for creating endless arguments at RfA, especially when editors try to treat guidelines and essays as unbreakable WMF policy. They're sometimes contradictory, so a person can fail the rules for his or her own particular area but meet the general guidelines.

WP is not paper, so there's no grounds for deleting an article to save space. Anyway, a deleted article is still on the server, even if hidden from mere mortals. If WP:RS and WP:V were properly re-written and enforced, everything in an article would have support and as an important side effect no article about a topic could be written unless there were decent sources to demonstrate that someone credible had taken it seriously. There are other policies like WP:BLP1E and WP:COATRACK that ought to stop the most frivolous and POV articles.

So if the other policies worked properly (and I grant that that's an awfully big if), I suggest that notability rules would be unnecessary and their abolition would improve the RfA system.

[Cynick]

In the old days, only verifiability by reliable sources was the requirement for inclusion. In my opinion, notability was added as a means to remove contentious articles. The question that I always ask, is to whom is something notable?

For example, no-one would deny Wikipedia having an entry for every town on the planet. Every town is notable to someone. Wikipedia already lists tens of thousands of minor planets. I can see no argument for claiming that one particular piece of rock is any more notable than another. In these cases, Wikipedia is a compendium, and notability is ignored.

But add a controversial article, and suddenly the notability card is thrown in. This is clearly seen in controversial scientific theories, where fringe subjects are assumed to be not notable to mainstream scientists. If minor planet #8021 Walter gets its own entry, then the argument of notability goes out the window.

Controversial subjects are notable, just not to the people who claiming they're not.

This post has been edited by Cynick:

[lilburne]

There is no point to them, the criteria for 'notability' is so slight that almost anything qualifies. The only purpose that it serves is to act as a stick to be wielded when a cabal has nothing much else.

Whilst some policies like BLP1E may kick in they don't once a subject has established 'notability'. Hence 90% of the LaRouche stuff is of little interest to anyone. One simply doesn't need a read a rehashing of political point scoring, which accounted for nothing, from decades ago.

The main problem that lies beneath all others with WP is the NOTPAPER crap. Simply put: if it were paper, if there was cost involved in adding something, then there would be far more selection of what is or is not relevant. Perhaps a fix would be to impose a charge, such that once an article reaches X number of words there is charge, people can donate money per 100 words above the limit. The projects can decide which articles are A, B, C, D, E with a fixed number of words for an article of A status, some what less for B status, and so on down. Project member can raise money to increase the number of articles they are allowed in each category as well as money to increase the length of individual articles.

That will give a whole range of extra gaming within the community as the Star Trek dweebs argue with each other over allocating space for TOS, NG, and Voy, and all can battle it out against the Babylon 5 lot. The Christians, Jews, and Muslims can fight for space with the Buddhists, Hindus and FSMs.

Any money Raised going to help relieve world poverty or providing clean water or something like that.

[thekohser]

There's already a hyper-inclusionist wiki out there, so why turn Wikipedia into one?

[Tarc]

Why does everyone pick on poor Babylon 5 when these discussions come up? Go after the raft of Pokemon or anime articles, there's a lot more fresh meat in that direction. As for notability, if anything it needs to be tightened, not removed. One problem area is the proliferation of sub-guidelines.

As long as a guy has appeared in one baseball game between 1865 and 2011, he gets a Wikipedia article per "notability (baseball)". As long as AVN or Xhibit or whatever has nominated a girl for creatively getting cum splashed on her face in multiple years, she gets a Wikipedia article per "PornBio".

[lilburne]

Why does everyone pick on poor Babylon 5 when these discussions come up? Go after the raft of Pokemon or anime articles, there's a lot more fresh meat in that direction. As for notability, if anything it needs to be tightened, not removed. One problem area is the proliferation of sub-guidelines.

As long as a guy has appeared in one baseball game between 1865 and 2011, he gets a Wikipedia article per "notability (baseball)". As long as AVN or Xhibit or whatever has nominated a girl for creatively getting cum splashed on her face in multiple years, she gets a Wikipedia article per "PornBio".

Nothing wrong with Babylon 5 and some of us don't have a clue about pokemon characters, so that is one big fail there on wikipedia's part. All that effort and we still can't be arsed. Point is if they by adding a extra 1000 words to the character X article they had to take away a 1000 words from the character Y article, or stump up cash, then the quality of the articles (in whatever subject area) would improve.

So if WBB and SV had to vie with others for space allowed for to American Presidential Candidates from the 1970s, or raise some extra money to buy more space then the LaRouche article would be in its rightful place. If Cirt had to shell out for adding extra articles on minor Scientology, they'd be far fewer of them. If they had to bear an economic price for listing people under some ethnic or religious banner, then the lists would only contain those that really mattered.

I'd leave in place the ability for anyone to edit too. So just because you've paid for a 1000 extra words, or 100 extra names, that doesn't preclude someone else coming along tomorrow and repurposing those 100 names for other bunch of Jews, or Mexicans, or Mormons, or whatever it was. And similarly if the LaRouche lot want to buy extra space for a LaRouche article there is nothing to say that the space has to be used for saying positive things. All they are doing is buying the extra paper as it were.

[Milton Roe]

So if the other policies worked properly (and I grant that that's an awfully big if), I suggest that notability rules would be unnecessary and their abolition would improve the RfA system.

I happen to agree. Notability rules ARE unnecessary so long as WP:V and WP:RS/IRS are working. They keep me from writing about my collection of pets on WP, each of which is notable TO ME (and a few to my neighbors). They would be kept out due to the impossiblity of the average reader checking the info in any way, which means I could be writing about imaginary pets and nobody would know on the internet that I'm my own dog. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

So long as they kill BLP in all of its forms, and keep it reasonably child-safe, I see no reason WP could not expand to cover anything that is "objectively real" (by which I mean a shared "experience" among at least a couple of people, and which skeptics can check).

Yes, yes, and I know. Some shared experiences cannot be checked by skeptics. But socially accepted madness like organized religion or belief in The Cubs is always worth an article anyway, since the effects on society are so obvious (even to skeptics). It's personal delusions that are uncommon that we want to keep out of shared database. Nuts can keep them in their own databases and the world will be no poorer.

[Kelly Martin]

Once again, for those who haven't gotten it:

"Notable" means "Something I want to be written about"
"Not notable" means "Something I don't want to be written about"

Notability (like most things in Wikiland) don't have any objective meaning; they're just meaningless weaponphrases used in the wikiwar by the various people who are using Wikipedia as a vehicle for cultural message control. The winner is the one who can play the "Can you phrase your objection in the form of a citation to some Wikipedia policy?" game better, or at least louder and more doggedly, than anyone else.

Don't get caught in the trap of thinking that Wikipedia is, or has anything to do with, an encyclopedia.

[Somey]

WP is not paper, so there's no grounds for deleting an article to save space...

But under the current scheme, there are grounds for deleting articles based on issues of maintainability, "attractive nuisance," and (the related issue of) scope creep. If they solve those things first, and as you say, deal with their problems regarding sourcing and dispute-resolution, and allow opt-out for BLP subjects, then sure - they could reduce the "notability" requirements to the point where they'd be practically meaningless. It would make a lot of self-promoters happy, that's for sure!

But of course, they'll never do or solve any of that - they're too steeped in the notion that "open editing" is fundamental to their whole way of life or whatever the hell it is.

...and their abolition would improve the RfA system.

If I understand this correctly, you're saying that notability rules are a major (if not the primary) cause of arguments during RfA's, so lowering the bar would reduce the amount of arguing...? I suspect they'd find something else to argue about, but I suppose you could be on to something. And they would need a lot more admins if they lowered those standards.

[EricBarbour]

Don't underestimate the "scope creep" business. It is the essence of Wikipedia, because they allow
crackpots and loonies to edit and create. No one ever actually discusses whether a mountain of
crap trivia is useful to an "encyclopedia", unless of course someone wants to delete or mess with
the crap trivia.

Do you know what the longest article on en-wiki was, until yesterday?
List of moths of North America. It was 517,000 bytes, until Fluffernutter split it into
manageable pieces. One single Dutch entomologist generated that massive, absurd list.
(At least, I think that's an entomologist. If not, it's a completely obsessed nut.)
About 90% of the 12,000 species listed there are red links. Meanwhile, squabbling over
whether Noleander is an anti-Semite is far, far more important.

Second longest article? Line of succession to the British throne. 439,000 bytes.
Sheer bloody madness, most of it generated by about 6-7 maniacs.
Is there any "educational value" in that?

Third longest article? List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters.
Ha, ha, ha. Nerdapedia, end of discussion.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour:

[Enric_Naval]

Second longest article? Line of succession to the British throne. 439,000 bytes.
Sheer bloody madness, most of it generated by about 6-7 maniacs.
Is there any "educational value" in that?

Oh, come, historians and genealogists spend a lot of time in that stuff. Are they nerds too? A guy who makes a living out of tracking down genealogical trees, is he a nerd? A genealogist that writes books on British throne succession can be called a history nerd? The Commonwealth Survey of 1964 is a nerd publication? Aren't the British succession disputes notable events that have affected the history of Britain and Europe as a whole?

[lilburne]

Second longest article? Line of succession to the British throne. 439,000 bytes.
Sheer bloody madness, most of it generated by about 6-7 maniacs.
Is there any "educational value" in that?

Oh, come, historians and genealogists spend a lot of time in that stuff. Are they nerds too? A guy who makes a living out of tracking down genealogical trees, is he a nerd? A genealogist that writes books on British throne succession can be called a history nerd? The Commonwealth Survey of 1964 is a nerd publication? Aren't the British succession disputes notable events that have affected the history of Britain and Europe as a whole?

Hell they are indeed moniacal.

There is as far as I can tell no references to any RS for most of them. What is the justification for "Princess Elisabeth of Hohenlohe-Oehringen (b 1926)", whoever the fuck that is, being number 2033 on the list. Also it is all woefully out of date, example "HH Prince Dimitri Romanov (b 1926)" listed as number 1264, but on the stupid BLP page for this nonentity he's listed as number 1182. Perhaps he's been watching Kind Hearts and Coronets or maybe someone further down the list has been: so watch out Dimitri.

Presumably when one of those on the list drops dead (as indeed should they all), or one of the younger ones wins at "hide the sausage" the maintenance crew scurries about updating the BLPs of everyone.

[taiwopanfob]

Oh, come, historians and genealogists spend a lot of time in that stuff. Are they nerds too? A guy who makes a living out of tracking down genealogical trees, is he a nerd? A genealogist that writes books on British throne succession can be called a history nerd? The Commonwealth Survey of 1964 is a nerd publication? Aren't the British succession disputes notable events that have affected the history of Britain and Europe as a whole?

You realize that these disputes were between people who were near the very top of the list at the time of dispute? More generally, the probability that any of these people past about position 5-10 will assume the thrown is, for all practical purposes, zero.

In a sensible project, the list would be truncated at about that point, merged into some other article, and these maniacs would be firmly told to Get A Life because the proverbial girl in Africa would be better served with an improved article on the p-n junction than some useless list of complete impossibility.

The project is not sensible though, hence the next step is to find some freak who will begin the List of possible candidates for the President of the United States. I believe there are three hundred million or so, less some living immigrants. The talk page can be all about how to order them.

[Jon Awbrey]

Seriously, doesn't this kind of pointless discussion belong in the Annex?

Answer. Yes, it does.

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/bored.gif)

[Milton Roe]

Once again, for those who haven't gotten it:

"Notable" means "Something I want to be written about"
"Not notable" means "Something I don't want to be written about"

There is truth in this. The only half-way objective definition of "notability" is that it a subject which is cited "verifiably" (which means you can look it up, and the source won't change day-to-day, like somebody's website), in a source that is "reliable." Reliable in turn being a tricky word on WP, since their reliability (i.e., is it likely to be factual or TRUE) standards vary from field to field (as they should) but don't attempt to have even an approximate comparison between fields of knowledge (which they should, but do not). The other criterion for "notability" is that the info can't be one of those things listed in the very arbitrary and WP:NOT list of things that should not go in Wikipedia.

Personally, I can only think of a very few things that really ought to be WP:NOT items: BLP and personal information on living people, state secrets, recipes for bombs and poisons ala the Anarchist Cookbook, recent news, porn, photos of graphic violence newer than 20 years or so. Basically, since WP:NOTCENSORED is a lie anyway, I can't think of any reason why WP, a general public encyclopedia, should have any content that would be rejected for taste by your local newspaper or paper encyclopedia. Though at the same time, I have no objection to it including many trivial things that would be rejected by both of those for lack of interest, or lack of space, since Wikipedia truely is not paper, so has no space-constraints. Some of this latter stuff should perhaps be tagged, so that it is automatically excluded from versions of WP that will eventually be used as off-line references, such as CD, micro-SD smartphone or bookreader/tablet compatable versions.

The problem is that WP does not follow its own "notablity" criteria above, and what it DOES do, often boils down to ILIKEIT vs IDONTLIKEIT. Possibly the worst essay on WP, which gets quoted as though it was a policy (even though it's not even a guideline) is one called "OTHERSTUFFEXISTS." This little gem is a "guidance essay" --whatever the hell kind of commentary that is, in this talmudic mess. It is so self-contradictory that even its own nutshell contradicts itself. Its first principle denies that you can compare threshholds of notability by looking to see what other people have done ("don't add more sewage to a polluted pond"). No stare decisis or attempt to use precident in inclusionist arguments! While the rest of it says the opposite-- that looking to see what other people have done, is actually a valuable source of "consensus" (ILIKEIT) for deciding things like "notability" criteria. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif) For example, this is historically how WP decided that high schools are all intrinsically notable, but junior high schools are intrinsically non-notable. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hmmm.gif) That decission had nothing to do with finding RS, V sources. Rather, it was made on the basis of historical precident-- the very thing which the OTHERSTUFF exists essay starts out by deprecating. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/frustrated.gif)

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tearinghairout.gif)

[Gruntled]

Wikipedia already lists tens of thousands of minor planets. I can see no argument for claiming that one particular piece of rock is any more notable than another. In these cases, Wikipedia is a compendium, and notability is ignored.

And in fact there is a List of notable asteroids - yes there is! So any asteroid not in that list deosn't deserve an article presumably, unless it merits one under WP:ASTEROID.

There's already a hyper-inclusionist wiki out there, so why turn Wikipedia into one?

That's exactly what I'm not proposing. My theory is that strict application of other rules such as WP:RS and WP:COATRACK would actually decrease the number of articles.

As for notability, if anything it needs to be tightened, not removed. One problem area is the proliferation of sub-guidelines.

As long as a guy has appeared in one baseball game between 1865 and 2011, he gets a Wikipedia article per "notability (baseball)". As long as AVN or Xhibit or whatever has nominated a girl for creatively getting cum splashed on her face in multiple years, she gets a Wikipedia article per "PornBio".

I'd agree about all those sub-guidelines, many of which are preposterous. A clampdown on sources under WP:RS might well do sometthing there.

If I understand this correctly, you're saying that notability rules are a major (if not the primary) cause of arguments during RfA's, so lowering the bar would reduce the amount of arguing...? I suspect they'd find something else to argue about

They're certainly a significant cause in some RfAs. I'm afraid you're probably right on your second point.

Seriously, doesn't this kind of pointless discussion belong in the Annex?

I hope my original point was worthy of the general forum. I can't help it if people wander off into side issues, though discussion of a particular article belongs in the Articles forum.

The only half-way objective definition of "notability" is that it a subject which is cited "verifiably" (which means you can look it up, and the source won't change day-to-day, like somebody's website), in a source that is "reliable."

My point precisely; if you can write a decent article, fully sourced under WP:RS and WP:V, it means that there is evidence of notability.

[thekohser]

There's already a hyper-inclusionist wiki out there, so why turn Wikipedia into one?

Why did you feel the need to alter my quote, "Gruntled"?

Let me fix that for you...

There's already a hyper-inclusionist wiki out there, so why turn Wikipedia into one?

[melloden]

My point precisely; if you can write a decent article, fully sourced under WP:RS and WP:V, it means that there is evidence of notability.

Lies.

In case you're wondering, that thing had like 50 references.

[Jon Awbrey]

Seriously, again, this is just the sort of WP:DRIVEL that drives any moderately adult or intelligent reader screaming in pain away from our door after no more than a 5 second sample. Could some moderately adult or intelligent Mod or Staff please move it to the Annex or Burrocrazy Forum where it can't give mildly interested passersby a wholly wrong idea about our sanity?

Thanks again,

Jon Awbrey

[Gruntled]

Why did you feel the need to alter my quote, "Gruntled"?

Why did you feel the need to allege that I altered your quote, "thekohser"? As anyone can see, what I put was word for word and letter for letter the same as you did.