3 ms·

Why does wikipedia even care if someone is notable or not? If someone went to the trouble to create a page about someone else, aren't they "notable" enough to

Why does wikipedia even care if someone is notable or not? If someone went to the trouble to create a page about someone else, aren't they "notable" enough to have a page? This reeks of editorial bias.

sgt 16y ago
I think it makes perfect sense. If one allows articles that have little interest, you'll pretty soon end up with a massive amount of articles that very few people are interested in reading, and even worse: articles that nobody is interested in maintaining. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and should as such have relatively high standards as opposed to the rest of the web.
- _delirium 16y ago
  Yeah, I think like many Wikipedia policies it's a useful pragmatic policy. How it's applied to specific cases is always worth looking at, but in principle, a ton of articles with no real interest or citeable sources lead to low-quality stuff. If a Coca-Cola PR person were to insert a bunch of advertising fluff in their article, people would notice almost immediately and fix it. But if your corner barber shop writes an article about themselves with a bunch of advertising fluff, without a notability policy it might stay there for a long time, because nobody cares enough or has any information they can use to improve the article. I mean what would it even mean to have a good article about your corner barber shop? Would you base it on personal observation, or do independent interviews with the owner or something? Unless it's gotten some degree of attention for something, and gotten written up somewhere, it seems like a good idea to just decide there's not enough there to write a Wikipedia article on it. (There really are a bunch of really small businesses trying to insert ad blurbs into Wikipedia, so it's not a purely hypothetical problem. Minor academics pasting their CVs and bio blurbs into Wikipedia is another issue.)
- nadam 16y ago
  They could automate this: if an article would not be read for a given amount of time by a given number of users, it could be automatically deleted. This would be much more objective than what they are doing now.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  But that is exactly the error - Wikipedia is no more an encyclopedia than nytimes.com is a newspaper. You cannot ship a 200 page newspaper or a 2000 volume encyclopedia, for entirely practical reasons having to do with physics. It is therefore sensible to assume limit what you put into the encyclopedia, but since the same limit does not apply to the online edition of wikipedia, it does not make sense to apply it there.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Space is not the limitation. The limitation is the number of people willing to put in their spare time to maintain the encyclopaedia.
- sabat 16y ago
  It's more complex than you're making it. One man's notable figure is another man's regular Joe. If one allows articles that have little interest To whom? The "general public"? I'm not sure anything has interest to the general public anymore. The world has become massively fragmented.
  - dasil003 16y ago
    Well it's not completely subjective either. It's related to a critical mass of people believing someone or their works to be notable. Also re: fragmented world, I'm not sure that the world has ever been as connected as it is right at this moment.
    - sabat 16y ago
      It's related to a critical mass of people believing someone or their works to be notable. Agreed. Maybe we differ on what size makes a critical mass. I'm not sure that the world has ever been as connected as it is right at this moment. That's precisely what's making it so fragmented. People no longer need to join one giant popular culture, and are bonded with others all over the world in tiny interest groups. Anecdotally, I've never seen American Idol or America's Next Top <whatever>, and yet there is a notable population that worships those shows. For their part, they've never heard of _why or World of Warcraft or most anything else I'm interested in. I'm talking about cultural fragmentation, specifically.
mortenjorck 16y ago
I think the theory is that without notability, there won't be enough interested editors to maintain a consensus on the article's "NPOV." For varying definitions of consensus and neutral point of view, of course.

sgt 16y ago

I think it makes perfect sense. If one allows articles that have little interest, you'll pretty soon end up with a massive amount of articles that very few people are interested in reading, and even worse: articles that nobody is interested in maintaining. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and should as such have relatively high standards as opposed to the rest of the web.

_delirium 16y ago
Yeah, I think like many Wikipedia policies it's a useful pragmatic policy. How it's applied to specific cases is always worth looking at, but in principle, a ton of articles with no real interest or citeable sources lead to low-quality stuff. If a Coca-Cola PR person were to insert a bunch of advertising fluff in their article, people would notice almost immediately and fix it. But if your corner barber shop writes an article about themselves with a bunch of advertising fluff, without a notability policy it might stay there for a long time, because nobody cares enough or has any information they can use to improve the article. I mean what would it even mean to have a good article about your corner barber shop? Would you base it on personal observation, or do independent interviews with the owner or something? Unless it's gotten some degree of attention for something, and gotten written up somewhere, it seems like a good idea to just decide there's not enough there to write a Wikipedia article on it. (There really are a bunch of really small businesses trying to insert ad blurbs into Wikipedia, so it's not a purely hypothetical problem. Minor academics pasting their CVs and bio blurbs into Wikipedia is another issue.)
nadam 16y ago
They could automate this: if an article would not be read for a given amount of time by a given number of users, it could be automatically deleted. This would be much more objective than what they are doing now.
tomjen3 16y ago
But that is exactly the error - Wikipedia is no more an encyclopedia than nytimes.com is a newspaper. You cannot ship a 200 page newspaper or a 2000 volume encyclopedia, for entirely practical reasons having to do with physics. It is therefore sensible to assume limit what you put into the encyclopedia, but since the same limit does not apply to the online edition of wikipedia, it does not make sense to apply it there.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Space is not the limitation. The limitation is the number of people willing to put in their spare time to maintain the encyclopaedia.
sabat 16y ago
It's more complex than you're making it. One man's notable figure is another man's regular Joe. If one allows articles that have little interest To whom? The "general public"? I'm not sure anything has interest to the general public anymore. The world has become massively fragmented.
- dasil003 16y ago
  Well it's not completely subjective either. It's related to a critical mass of people believing someone or their works to be notable. Also re: fragmented world, I'm not sure that the world has ever been as connected as it is right at this moment.
  - sabat 16y ago
    It's related to a critical mass of people believing someone or their works to be notable. Agreed. Maybe we differ on what size makes a critical mass. I'm not sure that the world has ever been as connected as it is right at this moment. That's precisely what's making it so fragmented. People no longer need to join one giant popular culture, and are bonded with others all over the world in tiny interest groups. Anecdotally, I've never seen American Idol or America's Next Top <whatever>, and yet there is a notable population that worships those shows. For their part, they've never heard of _why or World of Warcraft or most anything else I'm interested in. I'm talking about cultural fragmentation, specifically.

mortenjorck 16y ago

I think the theory is that without notability, there won't be enough interested editors to maintain a consensus on the article's "NPOV." For varying definitions of consensus and neutral point of view, of course.