User:Ollie/Thoughts

Here are some of my thoughts about Wikipedia, and some of my Wikilosophies. I don't intend to make this a set of rules that I always stick to, or to place myself in one group of Wikipedians or another. Rather, I aim to give a summary of some of my thoughts about Wikipedia, and perhaps explain why I do and say certain things.

Notability

Notability is not subjective. A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself. Hence, Wikipedians do not decide on the notability of a topic, the outside world does. Enforcing notability criteria ensures that articles meet core criteria such as verifiability and no original research.

Deletionism and Inclusionism

Here, I fall into the middle ground of Mergism, or perhaps Delusionism. There are clear guidelines as to what can be included in Wikipedia: verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view, to name the core ones. If a topic contains information that meets these criteria, I see no problem with including it in the encyclopedia somewhere. Often I feel that rather than deserving an article of their own, these topics should be included in a longer article. For example, in my humble opinion, a two line stub about a school belongs in the article about the city it is in, or even an article detailing all the schools in that area.

Immediatism and Eventualism

I take values from both Immediatism and Eventualism. People use Wikipedia as a reference point right now, and those people should see a quality article. Therefore, if I see an edit that I believe detracts from the article's current quality, I will do my best to improve it. Sometimes this may mean a straight revert, but I would rather tweak the edit to bring them up to standard. On the other hand, I do not hold with some of the more extreme Immediatist views, such as limiting anonymous editing, and I appreciate that sometimes a little chaos is part of the overall improvement of the encyclopedia. I also think that Wikipedia's worth increases with time and movement towards a never-reached completeness.

Metapedianism and Exopedianism

I count myself somewhere between these two camps, probably towards Exopedianism. I am primarily here to build an encyclopedia, but general collaboration and the community processes here are an important part of that goal.

Exclusionism and Inclusionism

I fall towards the Exclusionism end of this spectrum as I believe that, to an extent, irrelevant and superfluous information should be removed from articles. A well written article should be consise and on topic. To be included in the encyclopedia, information should be verifiabile, not original research, and of a neutral point of view.