User:Jayron32/Musings on notability

Some random musings: Not an essay yet, but maybe the seeds of one:

Verifiability and Original Research are insufficient policies to handle all possible articles and their worthiness to be included in Wikipedia.
1. Lots of information is verifiable and not original research, but that doesn't mean that it merits an encyclopedia article. Though wikipedia is not paper, it is also not an indescriminate collection of information. There is a tension there. Stating "not paper" implies an infinite capacity for articles, however stating "not an ICofI" implies there must be a standard, a means of descriminating which information should be included. An objective standard of descrimination must be established in order to decide which information should be included (worthy subjects) and which information should be ignored (unworthy subjects)
2. The need to descriminate in some way is important because some information is actually harmful. For example, photographs of my house are freely availible on government property assessment websites, with my name as the owner of the house. My house is not an significant landmark, and thus has no business belonging in a website. If someone were to post information on my house on this website, my basic rights to privacy could be violated. BLP policies cover much of this already.
3. Wikipedia's reputation depends on its ability to provide acurate, worthwhile information. There are already 2 wikipedias:
  1. Articles that conform to its policies well, and of high enough quality to be considered encyclopedic
  2. Articles that, for a lack of a better word, are cruft. That is, they stand no chance of being anything of interest to anyone but their own creator.
  3. this will ALWAYS be a problem. While improving of "worthwhile" subjects is always ongoing, and thus expanding the size of the "good" wikipedia, the constant creation of "crufty" articles means that the "bad" wikipedia grows as well. We need a means of eliminating these kinds of articles.
Notability can be an objective criteria of judgement
1. That does NOT mean that the application of these criteria are not open for debate.
2. The primary notability criteria: NONTRIVIAL COVERAGE IN MULTIPLE, RELIABLE SOURCES is easily appliable:
  1. Nontrivial is the main source of debate, and that is where most AFD discussions center on. If evidence is provided, a consensus can be reached if such evidence is TRIVIAL or NONTRIVIAL. Such discussions can be civil and well organized if all parties are aware of and agree to the parameters of the debate (see below)
  2. Multiple can be somewhat contentious, as a single nonnotable event could be covered in many sources (My wedding announcement appeared in several papers, for example), while a single event may be notable enough to create an article on, even if fleeting. Still, consensus can be reached (and often on a case-by-case basis) as to what MULTIPLE means, if the parameters of the debate are narrowly defined (see below)
  3. Reliable sources are fairly non-contentious. WP:RS is already the main policy driving WP:V.
The individual notability guidelines are insufficient
1. All that matters is the PRIMARY CRITERIA listed above
2. The individual guidelines (such as WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, etc.) are misleading in some way
  1. The guidelines are only useful to flag a POTENTIAL problem, but are often too narrow or too broad to sufficiently catch all bad articles, or keep all good articles. The primary criteria always does both well.
    1. example 1) The WP:BIO section contains information that roughly says that all major league pro sports athletes are always notable. This seems reasonable at face value, since major league athletes are subject to widespread critical review in reliable sources, and thus are inherantly notable. However, blind application of this policy as a defense leads to some problems. Some athletes have had exceedingly brief major league careers. Some have played in only a handful of games and never enough to open their play up to critical review (Moonlight Graham syndrome). If we fall back on the Primary Notability Criteria above, then such borderline cases can be weeded out.
    2. example 2) Sometimes, people are notable for hard-to-catagorize reasons. For example, a recent AfD (I will find this later) discusses a professor who is a well cited holocaust denier. He is an unspectacular accademic, so he fails WP:PROF, and we do not have any specific policy relating to "Holocaust Deniers". Yet his notability is well established in the press relating to his holocaust denial. Someone still nominated him for deletion in good faith by attempting to apply WP:PROF, however, this is an overextension of a guideline that is insufficient to do that. If we only applied WP:PROF to Isaac Asimov as a Biochemist, for example (his primary profession) he becomes unnotable by the standards of that guideline. It is patently rediculous to offer him for deletion for that reason. Falling back on the PRIMARY NOTABILITY CRITERIA (see above) avoids this problem as well.
  2. If applied correctly (as a means to investigate further, not as the only criteria for deletion/keeping) the guidelines are somewhat useful. People too often overextend these guidelines past their usefulness.
Debates on AfD lack guidance and become very hard to establish consensus
1. People make defenses on inadequate rhetorical grounds
  1. ad hominem defenses: all articles should be judged on their own merits, not on the personalities of the people involved in the discussion, INCLUDING the original nominator.
    1. Bad faith nominations of a deletable article should not be dismissed off hand.
    2. Bad faith nominations of keepable articles can easily establish notability, and are easy to spot and correct
    3. Autobiographical articles can STILL be about notable people. This requires a massive rewrite, not deletion. If the subject is worthy of keeping, in all cases, it should never be deleted.
  2. Notability is related to the SUBJECT, not on the WRITING
    1. Many articles are created as stubs, with the intent to have them expanded later.
    2. A poorly written article can be written about an inherantly notable subject
    3. An excellently written article can be written about an inherantly non-notable subject
    4. Articles often lack references, which come to light during AfD discussions.
  3. Every article is to be judged on its own merit, not in comparison to other articles
    1. One obvious exception is to largely similar articles covered by established AfD precdedents.
    2. The existance of other deletable articles does not make the article under discussion keepable. People OFTEN cite this as a keep reason: "This other shitty article exists, so mine should be kept too"
    3. The existance of other superficially similar articles that ARE notable is no reason to keep as well. People often say "if you delete this article, you should also delete all XXX articles".
2. Clear notability guidelines can make AFD processes more easy to work through, and can simultaneously improve the article in question. The AFD process should center around the presentation and discussion of EVIDENCE:
  1. People argueing for delete can cite the lack of credible, nontrivial references.
  2. people argueing for keep can provide those references.
  3. With such evidence, or lack thereof, can reduce AfD discussions moot: Most of AfDs are fraught with the above logical fallacies. These falacies become moot when presented with the evidence. Most editors (if we assume good faith) are capable of making good decisions based on this evidence.
Notability IS becoming a part of the consensus. No use being Cnut facing the tides here.
1. Argueing against having notability "count" is not working on swaying the consensus. Debates already center around this key issue. The consensus HAS been and APPEARS TO FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE that notability is an important criteria for deletion or keeping. Reading the AFDs should establish this.
2. Since the overwhelming majority of editors consider notability important, we need a CLEAR, CONCISE, and UNAMBIGUOUS means of applying a notability test to articles to decide their worthiness. The best NPOV way to do this is the PRIMARY NOTABLITY CRITERIA (see above). There will always be (and should be) semantic debate of application of the specific parts of this criteria; but by having a narrowly defined set of criteria to debate from, we have parameters to debate within, and thus can have more productive, consensus reaching debates.