I can't seem to find any policy or guideline relating to lists of minor characters, which has come up through an AfD discussion. We have a category full of these lists (Category:Lists of minor fictional characters, 122 articles at present) but they can present problems. As minor characters, they are by definition, not notable (although notability would apply to the list as a whole, rather than individual characters). The lists actually exist because no single character would qualify for an individual article. I have no problem with this and support the existence of these lists. However, the lack of any guidelines one way or the other makes AfD difficult and could cause problems in the future. The closest thing I could find to an actual policy is this obsolete and apparently rejected attempt: Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Minor characters. So, I would like some advice on when a list of minor characters is appropriate and what the content should be. Thanks, AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Their lack of notability for their own article is not a valid enough reason to have a list. In actually, they are so minor they are rejected from the real character lists as well. This is when such information should simply be culled, not shoved off a handful of minor lists, almost all from the soap opera realm. While almost all of the other projects - TV, Film, novels, anime/manga, etc - that work with these topics have agree that minor character lists are inappropriate, a violation of WP:TRIVIA, and have no place in a group of articles, nor are such characters important for inclusion in the main character lists. They are minor for a reason. Any relevance they may have is limited to just a few episodes, at most, which is already documented in the episode lists. Such characters have no coverage in reliable, third-party sources, beyond plot regurgitation (which is already best sourced to the primary sources). Little to no real world context can be added for the topic of "minor character", making the lists as a whole completely inappropriate. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 19:00, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SALAT would be the relevant guidelines on this. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• A quick random sampling from the search results in the Wikipedia scope[1], and going through the first 20 results, including the rejected attempt already noted:

1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Minor characters in Morrowind - closed in 2006 as keep, later renamed Characters of Morrowind which was deleted through AfD in 2007
2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Sealab 2021 minor characters - closed as no consensus in 2008, merged to Sealab 2021 in 2009 with the minor characters removed
3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters in Xenosaga (2nd nomination) - closed as delete in 2008, recreated purely as a redirect to main list
4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Minor characters in the Ranma ½ manga - closed as keep in 2008, moved, and deleted after second AfD in 2009
5. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/V for Vendetta (minor characters) closed as keep in 2006, moved to List of minor characters in V for Vendetta, but list seems mostly to have major characters rather than minor and should be renamed
6. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Minor characters of Crash Bandicoot - closed as merge in 2008
7. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters in Camp Lazlo (2nd nomination) - closed as merge in January 2008 to main list
8. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters in My Gym Partner's A Monkley closed as delete in 2007
9. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Ranma ½ minor characters closed as delete in 2009
10. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Minor Characters of 6teen closed as keep in 2006
11. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters in Tokyo Mew Mew - closed as speedy keep in 2008 due to ArbCom injunction; renamed to List of Tokyo Mew Mew characters and all minor characters later removed per consensus - list is now FL
12. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters in the Firefly universe - closed as keep in 2007, later merged with main list
13. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters in Xenosaga non-admin closure to keep in 2007, later merged with main list
14. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Minor characters in Scary Movie closed as delete in 2007
15. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters in Xena: Warrior Princess closed as no consensus in 2008
16. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters on Ugly Betty closed as delete in 2007, name kept as redirect
17. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters from Recess closed as delete in 2007
18. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Minor Characters in Dexter's Laboratory closed as merge/redirect in 2008

So out of 18, we have 6 deletes, 3 merges/redirects, 2 non-consensus (1 of which was later merged), and 7 keeps - of which all but 1 of which have since been deleted, redirected, or merged. Further, using some rough searching of "The result was merge" and "List of minor characters" in the Wikpedia space, we have 267 results[2], 844 for "The result was delete"[3], and 469 for keep.[4] -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 19:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So like all articles the results is ... it depends. AdamBMorgan, I suggest a note to DGG may help as they have written some well-reasoned explanations that may serve as a starting point to add a note about lists of minor characters to WP:SALAT. All our lists IMHo are easy targets for improvement and disruption so starting to refine how the fit into our current practices would likely benefit everyone. -- Banjeboi 20:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

With the great majority being deletions. And note that many of the keeps were later redirected, merged, or deleted. Minor lists do not belong, and they certainly should not be added to SALAT. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 20:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Redirections and editing do not reflect community consensus, just local consensus (or apathy). List of minor characters seems to be more appropriate for longer-running television shows that make use of recurring characters. Ultimately, if series credited cast are the only ones who actually get articles, there are plenty of current articles which should be merged into such lists. That is, redefining "minor" may be the best way forward, rather than blanket statements that such should be deleted. Jclemens (talk) 20:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see how such a general list could work. By lacking a specific subject matter under which minor characters could be listed, it seems like a free-for-all for anything and everything. What kind of usefulness could possibly come out of such a broad list? Minor characters make the most sense to read about under the related franchise or other subject matter. Erik (talk) 20:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

...Except for the length restrictions would cause otherwise useful content to be lost. Jclemens (talk) 21:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ding, ding; Echo Jclemens point. Just because bullying tactics are used against less experience editors - often contradicting consensus - doesn't mean this is a new policy or standard. It simply means those who wish to delete have managed to outmaneuver those editors who created or tried to maintain the material. This is not a best editing or people skills practice but should serve as a lesson that having some consensus guidelines would help keep non-consensuss merges/redirects a bit more in check. -- Banjeboi 22:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've often found minor character lists to be largely indiscriminate (What is a minor character? What is the criteria for inclusion? How extensive should such a list be?) and pretty clear violations of WP:WEIGHT, as you're giving a veritable ton of coverage to something that usually has little-to-no real world coverage of any sort whatsoever. 99% of the time, the "minor" characters are adequately covered in the scope of the episode list/medium's plot summary/etc. and if necessary, can be merged to the larger character list. There's also the quality control issue in which practically none of these lists can reach any reasonable standard for including real world information, thus making movement up the assessment chart a practical impossibility. About the only real exceptions is something like List of recurring characters in The Simpsons, which only works because 1) the show has been around forever, so there's a wealth of sourcing 2) you have a panoply of real-world topics to talk about, namely the various cultural references. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 22:00, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These lists lack any kind of relevance. They violate WP:NOT#PLOT because all the non-in-universe information for almost any character would be deemed trivial content as it is like "Dan was the best guardsman" or the like. It furthermore violated WP:UNDUE as a fork to give minor characters the same weight as other more relevant characters put on a non-minor character list.陣内_Jinnai 22:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You have a point that similar to all lists there are pitfalls to avoid but their very existence hardly constitutes a blatant violation. Some are , others are not, and many are somewhere in the middle. -- Banjeboi 22:24, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you had a minor character that has some significant commentary on him from a source he could very well be placed in a general character list; however maybe they are better fit under another character, such as if they are some minor underling of the main antagonist then so that it doesn't violate undue because someone out there decided they really has a personal connection to this minor character to write a whole piece on them or if they were some one-line character that had some scholarly review done because everything else in the work had already been gone over with a fine-tooth comb. That is what WP:UNDUE is for. It means if something is minor, it should be treated as such, without some compelling reason to do otherwise, which could happen in a few rare cases.
Most minor characters won't even make it that far as there is no significant commentary on them and thus having a seperate list for them is a violation of WP:UNDUE and WP:CFORK by trying to get around undue by creating a spin-off article on such minor characters.陣内_Jinnai 04:40, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It really really depends on exactly what the definition is being used for minor. Lists of recurring - but not present in every episode - characters for a long running TV (eg Simpsons) would seem appropriate because a full list of all characters would be too large. But a minor list of one-shot characters for a single work or the like is unnecessary. Before these should be considered for deletion, attempts to be made to merge them into a single overall character list for the work or the main article itself, ensuring a good metric for what inclusion is on the list. If such an effort makes the list still necessary, then it makes sense to keep it. But really, most of these are not necessarily bad in terms of tracking characters, but are just too damn wordy and can likely be trimmed and groupped with the major characters. --MASEM (t) 00:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not supporters of Minor characters list as the motive behind their creations is too often based on "Quantitative" thinking.

You run out of spin-out article ideas then let's create a Minor characters list compiling some of the last craps of informations available. You feel good because you created one more article for a work of fiction you like with tons of "additional informations". You think you improved the coverage done to this work of fiction by creating one more article with lot of Kilo Bytes of data.

Needless to say that this is the wrong way to think it. --KrebMarkt 08:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A little AGF, please. In fact, I think it's the other way around more often than not -- these list articles are created in order to remove articles on non-notable characters while preserving the information relevant to the larger fictional work. Powers ^T 13:59, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They just act like consumers more & bigger and better it is. I won't blame their thinking but i can't express nothing save consternation after reading some of those lists. --KrebMarkt 14:41, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They tend to be useful. I'm not a big fan of the "minor characters" lists for all but the largest works--I think merging into a single list is generally the way to go. But I agree with LtPowers pretty strongly on this. Hobit (talk) 15:06, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to point out that individual entries in a list do not need to meet the same standard for inclusion as a standalone article would. It is the list as a whole whose importance should be gauged by coverage in reliable sources. Powers ^T 13:59, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This complaint is based on a simple fallacy. If a work is notable and its article grows to great size, then a separate article about all the characters (even minor ones) can be split off and is noticeable. If that article would be too large, the individual major characters can be split off. What is left after all that does not suddenly lose notability - in fact, it is necessary to complete a thorough coverage of the parent topic. Wnt (talk) 22:30, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The character lists still need to follow WP:NOT#PLOT and WP:WAF so there still needs to be some non-plot information. This can be creation info, merchandising or other non-trivial real-world information.陣内_Jinnai 22:35, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:WAF yes, but not WP:NOT#PLOT. The latter is tied to non-plot coverage of a topic; a character list that is split out from the topic is still under the main work's topic. WAF is still very important to avoid fandom approaches to these lists, however, and there is still need to validate the information for it. --MASEM (t) 22:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, yea I agree. My point was those lists do not need to show notability; the very fact that their a list rather than an article in an indication that they cannot show notability. However, they WP:UNDUE still applies so its not open season to adding every minor character.陣内_Jinnai 05:57, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. I feel like UNDUE has grown, and it's disturbing to have a policy about articles that I don't even understand. ("Juxtaposition of statements" gives undue weight?) I think any Wikipedia policy that involves deleting information out of the Wikipedia is probably a bad policy... in any case, I don't think even this policy can really be interpreted to mean that you can't list everyone in the dramatis personae of a work - can it? I mean, the very choice of which is "too minor" a character seems impossibly subjective. Wnt (talk) 18:49, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There has to be a reasonable line drawn at a certain point as to which characters are and aren't included. Doing it solely on secondary sourcing is impractical, and having all of the characters is as well. I'd like to think WP:UNDUE asks us to define a reasonable middle ground between the two. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 03:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Secondary sourcing provides a verifable rationale for inclusion. Listing all the character mentioned in the primary source provides no context to the reader about a ficitonal work, anymore than list of ingredients of a packet of cornflakes provides context to the reader about their nutritional value. Primary data on its own is of no encyclopedic value. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gavin Collins goes too far. For example a film may notable may be the basis of high-quality reviews, before more extended commentary (if any) appears. Reviews are usually written to tight timescales and wordcounts, and will usually omit some very important characters - I'm look at an example right none. In such cases primary sources are needed, especially if they provide hints of a character's importance, e.g. by typography or "X starring as Y". In this character lists are like plots, where primary sources are needed and allowed, and the level of detail is a matter of editors' consensus in each case. --Philcha (talk) 14:42, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If there are no secondary sources that go to that level of detail and all such sources omit the discussion of such characters, then why should we include them? This is not a matter of local consensus, which you seem to support, but of global policies and basic inclusion criteria. Fram (talk) 14:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Secondary sources are only necessary to introduce an article on a new topic; notability does not limit the coverage once a topic is notable. The argument by many in support of character lists is that these are a necessary part of the coverage of a work of fiction, which to me is completely reasonable. Mind you, without secondary sources, these will only be covered by primary sources, and are honeypots for poor writing, original research and theories, and non-neutral statements. Those are not reasons to not allow for them, but are reasons for encouraging them to be kept to simple, short descriptions that, if possible, should be included in the main article on the work of fiction instead of automatically being tossed into a separate list article. --MASEM (t) 14:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A list of minor characters is not a reasonable part of the coverage, but fails WP:UNDUE, except in the case of major fictional works. For such works, some secondary info on these characters will be available, or some other indication of notability. Notability of spin-out articles is debatable, because one can always claim that article X is a spinout of subject Y (minor buildings in village X? Why not, if we can have minor characters in fiction Y!) Again, as so often has been said, if your main article gets too long, don't just spin out sections without notability / independent sources for these sections, but remove all non-essential stuff from them, per W:UNDUE. Fram (talk) 15:18, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is a question begged that is not answered yet, and that is when is it undue to cover characters (or minor characters, etc.) for a given work. It is not a straight up answer, because it is a conflict between what some consider non-essential and what some consider as essential for fiction coverage; personally, as we're not bounded by space, I'd rather include more and have issues with too much trivialities that we need to work through, than to exclude too much. Regardless, there is always the solution that should be tried first for these, and that is appropriate trimming of extraneous material, changing lists into prose, and anything else to squeeze it down in size and back into the main article on the work. Unfortunately, a lot of newer editors jump at the chance to create a list article without considering size instead of developing the list in the context of the main article, and that leads us to this problem. If it were the case that we had these lists because every one of them grew out naturally from the main article due to size, I doubt we'd be seeing them having the same problems that the ones above are cited to have in terms of their content. --MASEM (t) 15:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course WP:UNDUE applies to fictional characters, as they are elements of the plot, and plot can be summarised. There is no rationale for splitting them out into lists unless they are notable in their own right. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:59, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree with Gavin's first point, I disagree with his second. There are reasons such as size issues, undue weight of the amount (even trimmed to a reasonable level) an main topic article devotes its characters, and other more complex issues that are unique to invidious works/franchises that need to be decided work-by-work (though they should still need to apply to things like WP:V and WP:WAF.陣内_Jinnai 23:06, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The objective of a plot summary is to condense a large amount of information into a short, accessible format, not to recap every scene, episode or event that takes place in a work of fiction. Surely it obvious to you that the elements of the plot (fictional characters, objects and places) will be condensed in this process? Applying WP:UNDUE to works of fiction means giving weight to the key elements of fiction, not every element in turn? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:56, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As Benjiboi points out above, "it depends" is a very good guideline. Sources used to create Wikipedia include one encyclopedia which boasted it had an article on every character in Charles Dicken's novels. There is also my copy of A Reader's Encyclopedia to Shakespeare, which contains an article on every character in Shakespeare's plays (even if said character appears in one scene with one line). On the other hand, if I ever happen to encounter an article about minor characters in a given soap opera (or trashy romance novel), it has my automatic vote to delete. There are some works of fiction where attention to every character -- even incidental ones -- is justified; then there are works of fiction which just qualify as notable, & articles on its characters may not be worth keeping. -- llywrch (talk) 23:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, except, how do we tell which category a work belongs in. This will too easy fall into a argument of I like it vs. I don't like it. We need objective criteria, so just "it depends" isn't good enough. Taemyr (talk) 09:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the whole point of "it depends" is pretty much that there isn't any good objective criteria here. I think that Llywrch pretty much hit the nail on the head with this, and ultimately these questions come down to the popularity/notability of the show/play/work itself. Like he said, Shakespeare = every character possible, some trashy romance novel = probably none of the characters. It's a judgment call, pure and simple. I suppose that we could use some sort of page views metric or something, if it really came down to it, but that would require some larger changes in order to implement it.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 16:21, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"It depends" is a rubbish inclusion criteria. A Reader's Encyclopedia to Shakespeare will have a less stringent set of inclusion criteria, because its editorial rationale is to provide details of every character regardless of notability. However, it is not Wikipedia's objective to be directory of everything simply because it exists (or in the case of fictional characters, because they have been created). The main problem with listing every single character in the Bard's plays is that it give undue weight to the elements of fiction rather than the work of fiction itself. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand: WP:NOTPAPER.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 20:58, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. Just because Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, this is not a free pass for inclusion: articles must abide by the appropriate content policies. However, since many of the Bard's plays have been notable for many centuries, it is quite possible that there exist many specific and defined lists of characters that are notble in their own right. For instance, I would think it possible that sources could be found that would justify spinning out the sectionn Characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream into its own stanalone list article. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:51, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Man, everything really does come down to "what can I get deleted or excluded from here" for you, doesn't it? The point is, "It depends" is a perfectly reasonable stance to take due to the fact that it's impossible to have any real objective criteria in this area. The reason that I specifically mentioned NOTPAPER is because you were drawing a false parallel between Wikipedia and paper volumes such as A Reader's Encyclopedia to Shakespeare. Nobody said that there's a "free pass for inclusion" here, which is really just bald-faced hyperbole anyway.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:50, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In fairness, that is not the case. WP:NOT defines its content in terms of what is excluded, while WP:N is a set of inclusion criteria that demonstrates that it is possible to real objective criteria in this area. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:25, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'm beginning to see the problem. You think that the NYTimes is not an SPS, right? Paradoctor (talk) 16:37, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I think if the source is clearly an SPS, then an example like say WS's example would not hold weight at all ("Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer"; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources). If Joe is a living person, then whether or not Mary is a reliable SPS, we simply cannot use the source. But in case the source is an NY Times article written by a journalist, then we could use the source. Now, we come to the point that's been argued for a long time. If a reliable SPS makes a statement (about an organisation) that is exceptional/controversial in its claim, then one should clearly attribute that statement to the reliable SPS rather than just treating it like a normal reliable source. :) ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 11:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So how do I distinguish an SPS from a non-SPS? In case you wonder: I'm serious. Paradoctor (talk) 11:51, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to provide a better example so there's no BLP confusion in the mix, let's assume Joe says "Bach was the greatest composer ever." WeisheitSuchen (talk) 12:46, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't help me distinguishing between SPS and non-SPS, I'm afraid. Paradoctor (talk) 13:04, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies; I was just trying to provide a better example for Wifione so the BLP issue isn't part of the question. I wasn't really attempting to answer your question. However, I will: My answer to how you tell whether it's an SPS or not is through consensus. Does the publisher or owner of a newspaper writing an editorial count as a SPS? What about a staff-owned newspaper? These are questions for consensus, either on an article talk page or WP:RSN. I'm not trying to cop out of answering; I'm trying to acknowledge that we can't make a hard and fast "bright line" rule that will work for every circumstance. We have to leave the opportunity for process and consensus to do what they do. Wifione, what do you think? How do you tell the difference? WeisheitSuchen (talk) 17:52, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In general, the way the policy currently defines it. (Might I suggest that the change that I am suggesting in this whole discussion is not particularly related to how sps is defined, but how controversial statements made by sps are attributed). ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 05:06, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, the NYTimes is an SPS. The only criterion mentioned is (after a trivial abstraction): The author of the content is the one paying for publication. The NYT fits the bill. Paradoctor (talk) 10:59, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps not. When a journalist of NYT writes an article and prints it after an editorial review, the publication (which is not owned by the journalist) prints the news item. Therefore, NYTimes might not at all be an sps. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 07:34, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Then again, who is paying the journalist to create the content? Paradoctor (talk) 10:30, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually you're looking at it from top down. Look at it in reverse. As long as an employee (journalist) is writing the article, it becomes clear that her/his article would be published in a source that is not owned by her/him and would be subject to more editorial scrutiny than would be an article of a journalist who herself/himself owns the newspaper. The one step of difference between ownership-operational management, in this case, is what defines the critical difference between sps and non-sps. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 15:05, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Let's invoke Godwin for a good cause. Assume a Nazi newspaper publishes something. They will of course exert editorial control. Would you say such a publication is reliable non-SPS? If not, then "editorial scrutiny" is not a sufficient criterion to establish reliability. So what is it that makes the difference? Paradoctor (talk) 16:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I keep watching disputes come up at Iraq War and War in Afghanistan (2001-present) about what commanders to include in the infoboxes. Would it be possible to establish some more specific guidelines for editors to cite when trying to make decisions about this? I don't know what should be included, but I'm tired of watching people fight about something so trivial. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 21:43, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a related discussion at War on Terrorism. --JokerXtreme (talk) 22:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I think I have less objection to listing the commanders involved in those specific operations. My concern was about mislabelling them as commanders of a larger umbrella conflict that was not recognised officially by their respective countries. Marlarkey (talk) 22:17, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The critical thing is that commanders should refer to military commanders rather than political leaders. Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands is a classic example. The Prime Minister of UK exercises political control over the military, agreeing strategy and aims for military engagements but is not in military command of the forces (who actually have a loath of loyalty to their commander-in-chief, The Queen). MT was scrupulous in maintaining this division. OTOH in some cases a political leader is also a military commander, for instance in a military dictatorship eg Saddam Hussein. In the US the position is grey, where the US President is commander-in-chief but the key question is whether that is a figurehead position or a genuine military commander - in practice it is probably a figurehead non-commander in times of peace, and potentially a military commander during times of war. The essence though is whether the person/role concerned exercises de facto military command of the forces concerned. Marlarkey (talk) 10:59, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On a further thought, the terminology itself is misleading. Look at World War II. The infobox is labelled commanders but immediately underneath it uses the label leaders and lists a mix of political and military leaders. It would be better if there was consistency either it is military commanders or it is political leaders. Marlarkey (talk) 11:12, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is it worth having a separate Political leaders section in the infobox, to make the distinction more obvious? In cases which are truly in the grey area, a single Leaders section could be used. Yaris678 (talk) 13:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a reasonable suggestion to me Marlarkey (talk) 16:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion is that only military leaders should be listed. The biggest problem with this is that people assume that since US presidents are listed under this, UK prime ministers can also be listed. The two are not the same and to my knowledge PMs don't constitute military commanders, nor does the reigning monarch (de facto). I say we stick to military commanders only and leave political leaders out. Swarm^(Talk) 02:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This will be difficult to decide in many cases. What about political leaders that have theoretical military ranks but do not in fact directly decide things (for instance Stalin named himself supreme commander of the Red Army during WW2 but he largely let his marshals and generals decide) ? A better distinction would probably by scales : "commander-in-chief", "theatre commander", "field commander", etc. After all, war is politics. --Alþykkr (talk) 04:34, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think that the subject if political leaders is one that should be brought up after the conflict, if at all. I think we should list the commanders of large operations, such as Operation Panther's Claw and possibly regional commands. Flosssock1 (talk) 17:29, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Flosssock's opinion. I understand the point about political leaders; there was a discussion on both Iraq War and War in Afghanistan (2001-present) on whether or not Queen Elizabeth II should be listed as a commander since she technically is a commander of the military. She, along with Blair and Brown, ended up being removed from the Afghanistan box since they're simply not active commanders (although the Afghanistan infobox has been extremely simplified since then and now lists no US/UK commanders). Swarm^(Talk) 20:29, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think a clear, structured specification is idealy what we need. If I could propose these ideas;

- For conflicts which are ongoing with two or three belligerents should state important/influencial battlefield commanders as well as, limited political commanders.

- For conflicts which are no longer ongoing with two or three belligerents, the list of commanders should be refined further if necissary or possible. For example: the Falklands War.

- For large coalition conflicts which are ongoing, such as the War in Afghanistan (2001–present), I suggest that the list of commanders follows the style of that of the one on the War in Afghanistan article presently, in which links are provided to individual command structures.

- For large coatlition conflicts which are no longer ongoing the list should remain the same or, if not too large, should be expanded to state the names of important/influencial battlefield commanders and possibly important/influencial political commanders.

If you can improve these guidelines then please do so, if not then your comments would be appreciated. Flosssock1 (talk) 14:14, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps specify the rules used at War in Afghanistan (2001-present)? AzureFury (talk | contribs) 00:03, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What about that? Flosssock1 (talk) 14:15, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are we always going to have wiki articles specifically for the lists of commanders in "large coalition conflicts that are ongoing?" For any conflict involving the West that's probably a reasonable assumption, but what about conflicts in Africa or Asia which don't get nearly as many hits or edits? AzureFury (talk | contribs) 22:26, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well at the moment the link on the War in Afghanistan article, for the UK command, leads to the chief of defence staff article. I would have to check where the US command leads to, but this is something that could be worked on. As for conflicts in Africa or Asia - would any be large coalition conflicts? and if so, would there also be a lot of commanders? Maybe there could simply be one seperate comanders article which includes commanders of all belligerents involved, in one place? Flosssock1 (talk) 13:22, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, I think the War in Afghanistan version is too blunt and overly simplified. I think it would be better to list the top commander of the coalition, and then, if possible, top commanders for individual countries. Swarm^(Talk) 20:21, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what you're saying, but we did try that and it resulted in somewhat of an edit conflict itself, with multiple editors and multiple views. Flosssock1 (talk) 01:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I sent a message to every editor I could find involved in those conflicts with the hope that we could agree on some rules to apply to all articles, once and for all. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 04:51, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(Flosssock1) It wasn't so much as "we tried that and it didn't work". There wasn't some discussion where the community decided to put it in its current form. It looks like that because one editor decided to eliminate the commanders with no discussion. Swarm^(Talk) 06:14, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have an idea which could solve part of the problem (perhaps). Since all infoboxes on conflicts include a list of protagonists, we could include a link immediatly after indicating the theoretical commander-in-chief of this or that force. For instance : United States (leader) ; Nazi Germany (leader), etc. (and please don't interpret this juxtaposition wrongly, they're only examples ! :p). This would allow for mentioning the theoretical head of the command chain, whether he/she is "active" or not, which could be pretty hard to decide in some cases (again, was Stalin an "active commander" in World War Two ? What about Roosevelt ? Did Tony Blair have an active involvement in the conduct of the war in Iraq ? etc.) What do you think ? --Alþykkr (talk) 13:12, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We would have to limit it to one leader per country, to prevent the actual countries being obscured. That would make it difficult to expand as necessary. For example, if the country was the UK, the de jure leader is the queen, the de facto political leader is the prime minister, the highest commander is the Chief of the Defence Staff. I suppose we could come up with a rule that says it is the de facto political leader we are interested in, and then list the commanders separately. We would ignore leader who are purely de jure. Any commander who has already been listed as a political leader would not be listed in the commanders section. That prevents arguments over whether, for example, the president of the US being commander-in-chief makes any practical difference in comparison the status of the UK prime minister. Yaris678 (talk) 14:14, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone answer a small question for me?

I met a new user at the January Wiki-Conference in New York. He had created a BLP article a week before (something about a cousin of the Kennedys running for some office in California?) and it was deleted with only a cryptic message on his talk page. It had taken him several hours to enter the article and he had tried to be neutral. (I got the impression that he had just combined several local new articles and press releases.) But, being a newbie, he had no backup. He was understandably pissed and said he would never edit Wikipedia again.

When a sysop speedily deletes a BLP article for valid reasons, shouldn't he paste the content somewhere accessible but non-searchable, unless there's a problem with liable (G10)? --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 21:03, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The creator can ask the deleting admin for it to be undeleted into user space, but there is no policy requiring admins to do so when they delete. Also note that WP:BLP applies to all pages on Wikpedia, including user subpages. – ukexpat (talk) 21:10, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Probably another victim of the BLP civil war that's going on. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 21:16, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My point is the original editor didn't know how to contact the admin. He was a newbie. Doesn't WP:BITE overrule WP:BLP. At least in cases that don't involve liable (G10) or possibly copyright infringement (G12).

When another sysop who was there at the conference tried to look into it, he discovered that the actual deleting admin didn't make the original mistake. He was requested to delete the article by another user. I think that, as a minimum, the messages that are left by sysops when deleting an article should be more verbose, stating exactly how an editor can appeal the decision, in outline, step-by-step format. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 21:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, I think WP:BLP - the biographies of living persons policy (not WP:BIO, the notability guideline) - trumps everything. I agree that sometimes reasons for deletion could be made more clear, or maybe when an article is tagged for any method of deletion (speedy, PROD or Afd) it should be a requirement to notify the creator.  – ukexpat (talk) 21:53, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. Enigma^msg 22:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How would I propose the requirement that all deletions notify the creator and, if possible, preserve the contents? Just mention it in Village Pump, Proposals? I've never proposed a change before. Should I expect a long, drawn-out process? And, if you know, what are the steps for appeal? --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 12:33, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion always preserves the content. Any deleted page can be undeleted by an admin. If you're suggesting that the content of deleted pages should be accessible to anyone, that's not going to happen, especially with BLPs. Mr.Z-man 18:16, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that "deletion always preserves the content" is only true for a limited, indeterminate, period of time.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 20:14, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In theory yes, in practice no, I don't think the content of deleted pages has ever actually been cleared. Except for some really old things and rare losses from software errors, I believe all deleted revisions are still retained. I'm guessing you're referring to [5]. Mr.Z-man 22:28, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting (and yes, that is what I was referring to). I didn't realize that the deletion queue has never been cleared, that's good to know. The only thing that I'd like to point out is that situation could change in an instant, at the discretion of pretty much anyone with access. I'm fairly certain that at this point they would provide notice, but Brion's warning shouldn't simply be dismissed because the current practice is what we're grown accustomed to. It's also a largely irrelevant point to any non-administrator, since going crawling to some editor who happens to have privileges granted to them is not exactly part of the ethos around here (nor should it be in my opinion, at least not with the current administrator corps/structure).
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 22:47, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Only if you equate "asking for help" with "going crawling to" for some reason. As far as I know, there haven't been any cases of admins demanding users pay tribute or grovel before they'll userfy pages. There's also Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion (which could possibly use better advertisement) if you don't want to deal directly with another person. Given that Brion's warning was more than 3 years ago (and given that purging 25+ million deleted revisions would probably cause more problems than retaining them) I would be rather surprised if the sysadmins chose to delete them. Mr.Z-man 23:42, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just wanted to mention that, as it is currently set up, Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion actively turns editors away if they don't first go begging the admin who deleted the page to userfy the page. I understand that you don't like that sort of characterization, and you're not alone, but if you don't think that myself and other users like me feel that way then you're only fooling yourself. (It probably wouldn't bother myself and others if it were encouraged rather then required to talk to the admin, by the way.)
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 23:52, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the problem. When I requested a copy of a deleted page, it was promptly mailed to me. Paradoctor (talk) 00:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Its not just that I don't like it, I really don't understand it. Why is asking an admin that big a deal? You talked about the ethos of the project. Wikipedia is a collaborative project; if you're uncomfortable asking people for something, that doesn't bode well for collaborating. And AFIACT, Requests for Undeletion only requires people to ask the admin if they want the article undeleted in mainspace, not if they want it userfied or emailed to them. Mr.Z-man 00:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Being required to ask for someone else's permission is not my idea of collaborating. Requiring users to be confrontational with someone else with whom they obviously disagree is asking for trouble, regardless.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 01:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Being required to ask": So you're against page protection? And what do you mean by "confrontational"? If one feels really uncomfortable working a particular admin, they can ask any other admin, or am I missing something here? Paradoctor (talk) 01:24, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since you ask, generally yes (although there are obvious instances where it's a necessary evil, at least for short periods of time). I actually spoke out against page protection recently as well (and was largely ignored, if not outright dismissed), and I definitely feel that page protection is overused (especially in the template space). Anyway, you're still missing the obvious issue. Any user "working with" an administrator who has deleted content is not doing so on equal footing. The way that you're characterizing this, you're implying that there's nothing to be confrontational about, and that we're talking about people being equals calmly and disinterestedly discussing some insignificant issue, and that's just naive. I resent the implication as well, by the way...
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 01:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I feel kind of compelled to explain this better, so forgive me if I get a bit TL;DR here. I'm a bit upset here because I'm starting to feel as though I'm being boxed into being portrayed as a "loon", but that's probably because I'm over-sensitive about it. I'm not... um, just railing against admins in general, and you'll note that I haven't used "power hungry" at all, which is purposeful. The thing is; keep in mind that I don't want to give the impression that I'm bragging or some such thing here, but there's no better way to say this: I've been there myself, in the same position that administrators here hold. While my experience wasn't here on Wikipedia it was comparable (and in a couple of larger communities, as well). The only reason that I bring that up is because I feel that my experience provides some useful insight here. It's not that I'm super-knowledgeable or anything, I'm simply trying to describe what seems to me to be a group dynamic which we all collectively are allowing to be perpetuated here. Anyway, I've been trying to avoid describing this as a cliche worthy "us vs. them" problem, and the administrator corp is hardly a monolithic block, but there are (for lack of a better term) "cabals" of admins who do create that sort of us vs. them dynamic, and unfortunately the processes and policy often support their ability to do that, especially within the realm of content deletion. Our Content issue handling is fairly atrocious in general however, and the community is certainly not helping ourselves (and especially our administrators) in handling the interminable problems with content issues.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 02:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Let me assure you that I'm a fan of AGF. ;) Ok, now let me try to sort things out a bit.

There is undeletion, and there is access to deleted material. The former is a request to revoke a prior decision, which is a question of policy. The latter could only be refused on liability grounds, IMHO. So, where's the need for "groveling"? If admins overstep the boundaries of their mandate, there is all kind of process that can used to deal with that. I treat my janitors with respect, sometimes even with affectation, but I still expect them to swing that broom where I tell them to. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 11:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

←See though, you're talking about the ideal (which may even be the way that it happens, more often then not), but it only takes one bad interaction between someone who has power and someone who doesn't to destroy good will/good faith. Keep in mind that we're not talking about normal interactions here, because the fact is that certain people in this equation have the ability to do Bad Things™ to others. Obviously, the reality is that any administrator who really oversteps his/her bounds will be overturned and at least trouted as a result, but the psychological effect is there regardless. The main issue though, is that the undeletion process tends to turn the normal editorial process here on it's head. Instead of "be bold, just do it, you don't need permission or any special knowledge to edit here", suddenly it's "except for this, you need my approval for this to appear on the site" (hence, my admittedly hyperbolic use of the term "groveling"). I agree that theoretically there is plenty of process to deal with editor ←→ admin conflict, but the reality that I've seen is that the administrator corps tends to reflexively defend all but the most egregious missteps. You know, it's kind of frustrating, because there are fairly well established real world solutions to these problems, since their not at all unique to our little community here. Aside from that, our content dispute policy and procedures just suck in general anyway, which isn't any administrators fault...
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"it only takes one bad interaction" ... "to destroy good will/good faith": Wouldn't that mean that someone does not understand AGF? Most of our editors are human, after all. (That's something you could never have heard before Wikipedia.)

As far as page protection is concerned, I can't offer you much in the way of consolation, it seems to be what we want. At the very least, one can always fork off. Try that with Britannica. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 18:52, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Come on, there's no need for put-downs, I understand AGF perfectly well thank you. What you're (willfully?) ignoring is the point that I'm trying to make that we're not talking about normal user interactions here. If you believe that user to admin interactions occur on an equal footing, just like any other, then ...well, I'd say that you're simply naive. Obviously the current situation is our collective fault, and I've said so myself repeatedly. Suggesting forks is hardly a constructive suggestion, however. Thanks for the insults and dismissive attitude, though.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:02, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was talking about "someone". What makes you think I meant you?

"Suggesting forks is hardly a constructive suggestion": I was talking about cases in which constructive collaboration turns out impossible. Consider it an peaceful divorce. There is nothing to fight about, both parties can keep the fruits of their common labor. Paradoctor (talk) 19:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• What trumps everything if we want to continue the encyclopedia is the need to recruit editors --not the abstract need to have or not have particular content. As few active editors stay active more than 3 years, this requires the continuing recruitment of thousands of new active editors a year. Anything that hinders this is destructive to the entire project. Given a choice between writing an article oneself and helping a new editor, let alone discuss procedure, the choice should be personally helping the editor -- who will potentially go on to write many articles DGG ( talk ) 03:18, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"As few active editors stay active more than 3 years"^{[citation needed]} Paradoctor (talk) 10:29, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The main point I was trying to make was that we should have something that doesn't scare away newcomers when some sysop off-hand speedily deletes "their" article. Newcomers are the prime source of new, active editors. It's great to say "When I requested a copy of a deleted page, it was promptly mailed to me" but newbies have never heard of sysops/administrators and don't have the foggiest notion that they need to contact one or how.

In my opinion, sysops should always insert a new section on the creator's (or creators') talk page(s) that says:

1. the article has been temporarily deleted, by whom and by what authority,
2. why the article has been deleted (in detail, without wikilinks),
3. that his input has been saved and
4. a step-by-step, detailed procedure for restoring "his" article, phrased in the friendliest and simplest possible manner with no assumptions other than that the reader probably understands the basics of wiki-editing.

This should be part and parcel of the standard procedure for all speedy deletions. What would be even better is if we could replace the disallowed content with these messages, just in case the newbie doesn't know that his talk page exists. (In my opinion as well, the deleting sysop should take the primary responsiblity for leading the creator(s) through the appeal process and, if he thinks it justified, restoring the article. But I know that many sysops would object to the additional work.) --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 23:22, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, what Roy said...
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:59, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me, newbies have a hard enough time as it is. Requiring deleting admins to mentor their "victims" is nonsense, though. There are enough places where we can direct them. The idea of replacing the deleted page with an information page is excellent. Paradoctor (talk) 01:37, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a lot of instruction creep, and something that would slow down deletions tremendously. A simple template might suffice. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:51, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A template was all that I was talking about. However, there is something that I don't understand. Most (if not all) "delete because" templates (db-nonsense, db-copyvio, etc.) assume that the article page still exists after the sysop has seen and tagged it. But CSD states that that "administrators have broad consensus support to, at their discretion, bypass deletion discussion and immediately delete Wikipedia pages". So I guess this db-xxx tagging is only for cases in which the sysop's discretion is to let the article hang around for a little while but the article doesn't rise up to the level of a PROD. (Which happens maybe once in a blue moon, right? Do people really use the db-xxx templates?)

Nevertheless, there are about 100 templates in Category:CSD warning templates that could be expanded to include what I was talking about above. How would I turn this into a proposal? Just include a new section under VPR? --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 21:22, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, yeah, those templates are used all the time. Typically by non admins to alert the admins to a problem article, rather than admins themselves. I'd say you want to propose this on the talk page for WP:CSD. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 14:58, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FRINGE is relatively easy to define in scientific subjects, where there's a mainstream scientific view, and a literal fringe of pseudoscience around it. But what is FRINGE in issues of political dispute? It would seem to me that the analogy in U.S. politics to "FRINGE" would be extremist political parties or conspiracy theorists/theories with little or no base of support: David Duke, Leonard Peltier, Walt Brown, John Buchanan, birther claims, Clinton-murdered-Vince-Foster, Bush-blew-up-the-World-Trade-Center, etc. There might be an argument to extend fringe as far inward as Ralph Nader (who has never gotten 4% of the presidential vote despite multiple runs), though I personally wouldn't.

But there is a repeated problem on Wikipedia is the abuse of WP:FRINGE in political subjects as an excuse to exclude notable points of view in violation of WP:NPOV: I have seen editors insist that L. Brent Bozell III, who has published op-eds in mainstream sources such as the New York Times, is "fringe," or that The Weekly Standard (the second-most notable conservative magazine in the US) is "fringe," or even that the Wall Street Journal editorial page is "fringe." This is clearly an unacceptable attempt to evade the WP:NPOV policy by excluding notable points of view. In my eyes, the problem seems to be one-sided: no one claims that Bill Moyers is fringe, though he said that Bush was planning a coup in 2004, but respectable writers on the center-right get tarred with this brush repeatedly. (I've seen talk-page claims that William Kristol, a New York Times columnist, was on the far right, which is self-evidently tendentious.)

How can we craft language in WP:NPOV or WP:FRINGE to help nip these disputes in the bud?

Further discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories#Clarification_needed_for_political_views. THF (talk) 19:09, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not to judge one way or another, but these questions are apparently arising in the midst of a heated dispute; see related WQA posts here and here. postdlf (talk) 19:20, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now that's a pretty low blow. I didn't know a thing about that prior to you mentioning it, since THF properly avoided canvassing about the dispute.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

* Looking at the arguments that User:Postdlf linked to, it would seem that the reason that nobody claimed Bill Moyers was "fringe" is because it was in the article Bill Moyers. If you had tried to include his opinions in Politics of the United States, then he would be fringe there. 146.187.151.207 (talk) 23:21, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

* It's meaningless to say that "Leonard Peltier is fringe". If you tried to include WP:Fringe can only say that a particular thing that Peltier said is fringe in relation to the particular article you're trying to include it in. There is no need to change anything in WP:NPOV or WP:FRINGE to "fix" anything, since nothing is broken. 146.187.151.207 (talk) 23:17, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Interesting. It may be worth thinking about specifically excluding politics from Fringe, considering that politics is a social art and the very definition of "fringe politics" is a political statement in and of itself (read: non-neutral). I hadn't personally considered this before now.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:23, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fringe politics happens. Things like the Alaska secession movement are pretty damn fringe. Things that are really far on the outside of political norms would apply. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:05, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't see any reason to exclude politics from WP:Fringe. If a political theory is notable, such as the Alaska Independence Party, then they can have their own article, no matter how "loony" or "fringe" people think they are. WP:Fringe doesn't cover this sort of thing. All WP:Fringe would stop us from doing is including the Alaskan Independence Party in Politics of the United States, where it doesn't have enough notability to qualify as a major theme in U.S. political thought. WP:Fringe just prevents us from mentioning obscure political theories in places where they shouldn't be mentioned. 146.187.151.207 (talk) 23:17, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The main point to consider is that Fringe does not equal minority. Fringe is a special case of minority, a minority that is so small that it does not deserve being taken into account. When legitimate political discussions have clearly moved into accepting one of the competing viewpoints and rejecting the other, that doesn't turn the "defeated" viewpoint into a fringe one. For example, we can't write an article on George Bush with a condeming tone just because by now almost everybody considers him to have been a bad president.

Another point, when we describe mediatic disputes between interlocutors who are notable on their own terms, fringe does not apply. For example: the president said that ("polemic statement"), the leader of the opposing party answered that ("response"), the president of X institution pointed that (etc), etc; all of which being described at whole pages or sections in newspapers as they do on an everyday basis. MBelgrano (talk) 12:57, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Something I've been wondering, and don't see really addressed.

WP:CSD R3 states:

R3. Implausible typos

Recently created redirects from implausible typos or misnomers. However, redirects from common misspellings or misnomers are generally useful, as are redirects in other languages. This does not apply to articles and stubs that have been converted into redirects. {{db-r3}}, {{db-redirtypo}}, {{db-redirmisnomer}}

How does that cover redirects like "Craig hoffman" > "Craig Hoffman"? The target isn't a hugely trafficked page, so I'm unclear as to whether that's necessary or not. If not R3, should it be PRODed, or just left alone? -Zeus-^u|c 21:15, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seems a completely plausible typo to me. Not strictly necessary due to the search engine, but then again I see no harm in it. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:05, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, agreed with Cybercobra...
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:01, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. It's helpful to those of us who type in articles in all lower case and expect to be redirected. It's probably one of the more plausible types of redirects. I can't believe it was deleted under R3! Swarm^(Talk) 22:37, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what will happen to Wikipedia badly if people comes in and engage in forum to discuss personal opinions and biases. This certainly won't harm Wikipedia in anyways so what is the side effect as a WP:FORUM?--209.129.85.4 (talk) 17:30, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They get warned, their forum/social/promotional content gets deleted and if they persist they get blocked. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:46, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the IP means "what will happen to Wikipedia if it was allowed?" not "what will happen to individuals treating Wikipedia as a forum, given that it is not allowed?" The answer to the first question is that editors who could spend their time discussing how to improve an article instead spend it declaiming a point of view. Other editors, who aren’t interested in declaiming a point of view, feel marginalised by the constant arguing and stop contributing. Yaris678 (talk) 13:37, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One solution might be for someone to set up a mirror of Wikipedia with a forum for each article for discussion of personal opinions pertaining to the subject matter of the article. That would keep the irrelevant stuff out of our way while giving people a place to discuss their views. Tisane (talk) 08:58, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

If an article is currently under review at AfD, is it speediable? Doesn't that subvert the community process? I can see (and have seen) admins taking action *at* an AfD to delete an article that is obviously speediable, but can someone involved in the AfD debate simply slap a CSD tag on the article? Thoughts? -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 23:46, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

NM. Moved to Admin Notice Board. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 00:26, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was typing a little bit of German for Wikisource recently, and so far as I could tell, neither the list of special characters nor the standard Windows keyboard options were really usable for the task. It would take far too long to cut-and-paste every umlaut character, but the only alternative provided by Windows is a German keyboard layout with four separate keys dedicated to ä, ö, ü, and ß -- a keyboard which is altogether maddening to use even before one discovers that the Y and Z have swapped positions...

Now there is a fix for this, which is to download a free program Windows Keyboard Layout Creator[6] and generate a custom keyboard. It offers a single-level system of "dead keys" that change the next character typed. This allowed me to define the character "`" so that `a becomes ä, `E = Ë, `s = ß, `n = ñ, `t = þ `+ = ±, `- = — and so on. (Unfortunately it does not seem to allow for double redirects like ``a = à, `'a = á, etc. (nor conditional dead keys like a3 = ǎ but an = an) or you could use one convenient keyboard for German, French, Norwegian and pinyin)

Still, the keyboard setup file it generated could be installed on any Windows machine and would allow people to use an "umlaut key" immediately, without the bother of setting up the file or the privacy issues involved with the Windows validation demanded by the download. So far as I know the keyboard files are freely distributable data files, though the point may not be settled.

Because of the limitation of the program, several different keyboard setup files would be needed for different languages, and of course other operating systems would need their own files. It would be nice to arrange this as a limited-purpose download page linked from the vicinity of the special characters at the bottom of the edit page.

Would Wikipedia allow for this? Mike Serfas (talk) 02:04, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Um, Windows already provides a layout that does that. By default I have United Kingdom Extended which is pretty good for most European languages (for example, ü is created by typing AltGr+2 then u). I also know the alt-codes for most of the other special characters, such as ß (Alt+0223) and ø (Alt+0248). If I didn't then I could look them up in the character map or any unicode table. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:28, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Scrambling to press control, alt, shift, and 2 at the same time to add an umlaut embodies an almost comical degree of user hostility. Nor is holding down alt while trying to remember four numbers really an optimal method either, even if you have a numeric keypad. It is much easier to type two keys: the unshifted ` followed by the key to be modified. Mike Serfas (talk) 06:40, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Make a set of hotstrings in AutoHotKey, and all your typing woes are gone. Paradoctor (talk) 16:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For German the solution is simple: Use the variant US International of the US keyboard mapping. It makes '"~` dead keys which you can use for creating most French, German or Spanish characters, and you can reach more using the right Alt key together with another character, e.g. Right-Alt + s = ß, Right-Alt + , = ç.

I'm a German and I use this mapping exclusively, even for typing German text with a German keyboard. The only inconvenience when writing English text is that you have dead keys, so e.g. you have to create " by typing " followed by space. Hans Adler 13:16, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Following from the recent RfC, there is an ongoing discussion about the possible implementation of giving bureaucrats the technical ability to remove admin/crat flags, where this is currently done by the stewards. All comments welcome at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Bureaucrat Unchecking. Happy‑melon 15:31, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to be missing the point. What, if anything, is the practical difference between Wikipedia:Content noticeboard, Wikipedia:Editor assistance, and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Unsorted? Regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 20:48, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The first is for discussion on matters relating to some sort of content in question (about the substance of the encyclopedia). The second is for one-to-one advice on policies, guidelines, editing practices, etc. The third is for attaining larger-scale community-wide consensus on a particular discussion (as opposed to WikiProject-wide or the set of editors watching a particular talk page). —Akrabbim^talk 21:02, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Style guide (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've recently run across a problem on talk-pages with about four or five editors who insist that BLP/NPOV prohibits the use of the sources in the left-hand column. Now, I realize that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not an excuse, but it's hard for me to look at the sources used in BLPs in the right-hand column and understand why WP:BLP prohibits the use of the sources in the left-hand column--especially since some of the articles in the right-hand column are even starred as "featured articles" as the epitome of Wikipedia standards.

In my mind, NPOV requires the inclusion of notable points of view about the subject: that would include all of the sources in the left-hand column, and most of the sources in the right-hand column. BLP just requires fastidious observation of NPOV to avoid COATRACK, and the requirement of strong sources for potentially libelous claims; it doesn't require censorship of anything negative said about a living person--certainly that's the way it's observed in the articles in the right-hand column, but BLP was used as a rationale for eliminating notable points of view that were critical of the subjects in the left-hand column.

I can understand (though I would disagree with) prohibiting the sources in both columns; I can see permitting the sources in both columns; if pressed to make a decision, I would permit the sources in the left column, and prohibit a handful of the sources in the right-hand column; but what I cannot for the life of me understand is the status quo.

Were the editors on Bill Moyers and Nina Totenberg wrong, or is there a failure to enforce WP:BLP on pages of the more politically unpopular? I could just remove the sources in the right-hand column, but I'd surely get accused of violating WP:POINT. So I'd like to get consensus. Can someone help me understand what the rules are here, so I don't cross the line mistakenly again? Many thanks.

COI Disclosure: I worked for the McCain-Palin campaign for two months, and volunteered for McCain before that; Chris DeMuth was once my boss; I was a lawyer for Palin in 2008 and for the Weekly Standard in 1997; Scalia and Thomas turned me down for a clerkship, but I have friends who clerked for each of them; a former co-worker was a research assistant for Franken; I've met Kristol and Krauthammer; Applebaum and I once worked for the same employer, though I never met her; Sommers and I once worked for the same employer, and we've dined together; I sat next to Stossel at a lunch, and was on a panel with him another time; Coulter used to work for a friend; a friend works for Palin's PAC; Totenberg interviewed a partner I worked for in 2003, and I declined his suggestion that I also talk to her about the brief I wrote; Sullivan sometimes blogs from a coffeehouse I frequent; Greenwald has blogged negatively about me; Sullivan has blogged neutrally about me; I subscribed to the Weekly Standard, the Nation, the Washington Post, and FAIR's newsletter at one time or another. It's a small world here in DC.

THF (talk) 05:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Well, the thing that jumps out at me here is the idea of using opinion writers to diagnose psychiatric conditions (even if they are made-up ones). Seems like a pretty serious BLP problem. Guettarda (talk) 05:50, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But it is a notable fact that Person A's comments led to notable Person B creating a notable term. Nobody claims (yet, anyway) that the Bush Derangement Syndrome article violates BLP; if the term violates BLP in one article, then it's verboten in all. BLPs are any articles that refer to living people, not just articles that have living people in the title. THF (talk) 06:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I also fail to see how the humorless epithet "hack" is any less violative of BLP than the humorous "Bush Derangement Syndrome." THF (talk) 06:40, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's problematic to accuse someone of having a mental condition, even a poorly-defined one. I can't wrap my mind around how that could possibly be acceptable. We don't repeat unfounded accusations of mental illness. Guettarda (talk) 07:15, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For one thing, no one reasonable thinks that "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is actually a mental condition (even if Krauthammer has psychological training). You still haven't responded to my argument: if the very term Bush Derangement Syndrome violates BLP, why does the article exist? THF (talk) 07:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You're missing my point. We have articles about all sorts of things. We have articles about things like schizophrenia and depression, but we can't say someone suffers from one of these conditions on the say-so of a newspaper columnist. Quite frankly, it would be problematic even to quote a qualified psychiatrist if they were simply speculating. Guettarda (talk) 07:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First, even accepting the questionable premise that "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is a medical condition rather than a joke, notwithstanding the fact that the BDS article clearly states otherwise, the proposed text does not say "X suffers from BDS" or even "Y says X suffers from BDS" but the indisputable fact that "CK created the term BDS in response to statements made by Moyers." (Statements, which I might add, already make up five paragraphs in the Moyers article, including a POV quote from an entirely insignificant book that the speech was "inspiring.") If BDS is sufficiently notable to have its own article, and the Moyers speech to which CK is responding is sufficiently notable enough to be in the Moyers article, how is it the case that notable commentary from a notable columnist about a notable speech that resulted in a notable neologism violates BLP?

Second, if you are going to say that a joke about a medical condition still violates BLP, it doesn't change that Al Franken's non-medical diagnosis of Rush Limbaugh as an "idiot" is in that BLP, without any evidence that Franken is qualified to judge a mental state with legal implications. We are presumably okay with the existence of this article, notwithstanding the BLP implications, because it's understood to be a joke. I fail to see how BLP permits at least a dozen articles to repeat Franken's joke about Limbaugh, but does not permit Krauthammer's joke about Moyers to be repeated. Again: where is the consistency? THF (talk) 08:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your argument fails when you try to equate calling someone an "idiot" (not used in its old-fashioned medical meaning anywhere in the world today) with the term "Bush derangement syndrome", which most definitely does contain medical terms and implies real mental disease. ► RATEL ◄ 11:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First, you've ignored that I didn't make one argument, I made two, and you ignored the first one. As for the second one, please find me one example of someone using "Bush Derangement Syndrome" to "imply real mental disease." The wiki article on the subject certainly never comes close to asserting that it is anything of the sort. The sort of lexicographical hoops you're jumping through to distinguish what is very self-evidently a joke from equivalent jokes in other BLPs is not unlike claiming someone can't be called an anti-Semite because they only hate Jews, and not all Semites. Everywhere else, we trust readers to understand what words mean. THF (talk) 12:42, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course there are people who take it to mean a real mental disease! Take this for example (one of many): Question: And we all know where Chris Matthews works, right? Answer from Bernard Goldberg: (Laughs) That’s right. By the way, I was asked by Bill O’Reilly a week ago, “Do you think it’s a mental disease or do you think it’s business?” He was actually talking about the general Bush-hating. I immediately said, “It’s a mental disorder, because don’t underestimate the power of insanity. ‘Bush-derangement syndrome’ is for real.” [7] So please, your argument is totally baseless. ► RATEL ◄ 15:51, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I think it is very difficult to judge the validity of your complaint based solely on this table. What we all want are sources that are authoritative for the purposes of the reference. We don't want secondary sources when we have a primary source, either. There may be invalid uses in the right-hand column; but I don't see how that can be used to justify the sources in the left-hand column. Are your sources witnesses, or commentators? Are they commenting themselves, or repeating other's coments? Also, you are interacting with different editors on the various articles, too, so there will not be identical responses to your edits. I would seek a discussion in the appropriate Wiki project for the articles. Your comments seem directed at the American liberal/right divide; I'm not American, but from what I've seen, using the terms liberal and conservative can be used as insults. The use of the word liberal especially in the phrase 'liberal bias'; so there could be objections on that basis too. Someone can be liberal; but stating that that person has a liberal bias may be beyond what a particular source can show. This whole argument of course can apply from the other point of view; sources have to be able to show the point; the source should illustrate and not be biased itself. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 06:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The phrase "Bozell says that X has a bias as demonstrated by her reporting on Y" is indistinguishable from the article that says "Franken says Z distorts the facts to serve his own political biases"--with the exception that Bozell holds himself out (and is treated by reliable sources) as an expert on media bias, while Franken was a comedy writer. THF (talk) 06:40, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No comment about which opinion writers are allowed to comment on each other, or which of these comments are Wikipedia-worthy, but I agree that using FAIR or Media Matters for America in the manner of a neutral source on conservative pundits' BLPs is a big problem (likewise for, say, Focus on the Family on left-leaning or irreligious pundits' BLPs). The real problem, though, is that on many political topics our current format emphasizes "responses" in the name of neutrality (e.g., "...which Group That Doesn't Like Things has criticized as being exactly the sort of thing that they don't like", etc. ,etc.), and the responses tend to get the last word because they are responses. I've more or less come around to the position that neutrality requires stating political positions baldly, without responses or criticism, and just linking to some article that treats all sides of the issue in full. — Gavia immer (talk) 13:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Media Matters is not a reliable source. I can't believe that wasn't established long ago. Maybe we should do an RfC and propose deleting it across the encyclopedia whenever it is used to establish a fact in an article. Even their quotes are unreliable. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's said this before, but the constant notability requirements as well as condensation of highly detailed pages about certain things into a few lines of a compound page (see the Pokemon pages incident) is driving many previous people away, and this issue needs to be dealt with sooner, rather than later. My specific gripe is with an AfD delete about a Castlevania soundtrack producer's page, but there are plenty of articles that have been deleted over the years because of notability along with issues with sources also not being "notable enough" While removing notability requirements would not be good, making them so tight that they cause many users to abandon the site from frustration does no good, and needs to be dealt with yesterday. --Pichu0102 (talk) 10:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I had to Wikisearch to find out what Castlevania was. And you haven't linked the AfD you're referencing either. So we're talking about a producer of a piece of music that appears on the soundtrack to a video game? If that's his only claim to fame, there is a policy against creating biographies whose subject is notable for only one thing, as you've no doubt read in those AfDs. Had that one thing been a major hit or a critically acclaimed work on its own merits, I would argue in your favor, but if that's the most notable thing he's done so far, I'd have to say the most appropriate place at Wikipedia for a mention is at the article for the soundtrack.

I'm peripherally aware, however, that there are fan-oriented Wikis that focus on a particular "world". Wikipedia's article on Muppet, for example, includes a link to Muppetpedia, a fan-generated wiki which has the leeway to give a great deal more detail such as is interesting primarily to ardent fans. I just ducked in there (for only the second time in my life, swear!) and noted that for each episode there are several photographs, a description of each segment, links to articles about the songs that are sung, and lists of every Muppet that appears, even esoteric Muppets that are only in the background. In turn, each of these esoteric Muppets has his own article. By now you're probably saying what the hell is he going on about Muppets for, but that's partly the point.

I don't really know how you go about doing this, but perhaps for somewhat esoteric but wildly popular (I'm presuming) video game details such as you're talking about, getting together a group of devoted fans to start a genre-specific wiki might be your best route? Best wishes, Abrazame (talk) 11:38, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia isn't the be-all and end-all of the internet. Information is allowed elsewhere you know. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:28, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a useful essay: WP:OUTLET —Akrabbim^talk 12:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Castlevania wiki on Wikia. Paradoctor (talk) 13:23, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What do you suggest should we do for this user? See his contributions. It looks like the ID is being used only to add links to his website under external references section. --GPPande 14:13, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Revert if spam, warn (as you've done), block if they persist despite warnings. But this isn't a policy discussion, so it shouldn't be on this board. Fences&Windows 04:24, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now that Wikipedia has switched to the Creative Commons license, may we copy all material from EOL into Wikipedia (and Wikispecies) verbatim? Would a reference to the EOL article satisfy the attribution requirement? How about images from EOL into the Commons? See previous village pump discussion. Also see Template:Eol. Here is information on EOL's terms of use, licensing policy, and if you're interested in contributing (eg Wikipedia material) to EOL, here is some information. The EOL already uses extensive material from Wikipedia, for example Theobroma Cacao. -kslays (talk • contribs) 20:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Only the bits which are CC-BY or CC-BY-SA - none of the non-commercial bits. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 20:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Typically including a template acknowledging the inclusion of a source's content with a URL to the original is sufficient, like {{citizendium}} for example. One could easily be created from the existing {{eol}}. --Cybercobra (talk) 20:19, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is a collaboration proposal at OpenNASA that suggests that NASA collaborate with Wikimedia project including Wikipedia. Please vote/comment on it.

There is also a NASA collaboration task force at the strategy wiki.

What are your thoughts on a collaboration between NASA and Wikipedia?Smallman12q (talk) 13:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Category names (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that the article was moved and changed to Wikipedia:Category names. This is still a guildeline, the tag was only removed when the orginal target became a redirect and stayed with the article under its new title.--76.66.190.219 (talk) 02:58, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is momentum for a proposal to close the request for comment on unsourced biographies on living people.

The RFC will be open through Monday night, 23:59 Wikipedia (UTC) time.

In a nutshell, this proposal would declare consensus for:

1. Stronger policy against new unsourced BLP's, and
2. A deletion process for new unsourced BLP's.

There is a Q&A on the talk page. Maurreen (talk) 04:22, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some people are commenting on the earlier proposals.

To be effective, your input needs to be at one of the closing proposals.

For a summary, please see the Q&A. Maurreen (talk) 14:22, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are High Schools inherently notable? If you look at it purely from a WP: Notability standpoint, it would seem that they are not, but popular convention seems to point towards them being notable. From my perspective, the coverage of High Schools is not uniform and the articles tend to be of a low quality or even stubs. Also, the articles tend to attract vandals and trolls. Obviously some High Schools are notable enough, like the ones scoring in the top ten on the U.S News Best Schools report, but I think the question is mostly applied to the majority of schools that are not, for example, featured in that list. I think the question is: In general, are Articles about High Schools inherently notable and are valuable additions to Wikipedia? 226Trident (talk) 05:57, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No high school is notable unless a molestation occurred there, which makes most of them notable. joke to deal with boredom Equazcion ^(talk) 06:01, 21 Feb 2010 (UTC)

They are real places and thus reasonable to include. RxS (talk) 06:07, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My house is a real place. So is the gated community I live in. The furniture store down the street is too. Same with the small park. Hell, so's the swimming pool in the middle of the houses. I guess I better start writing some articles... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 07:13, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Find some reliable sources and have at it. RxS (talk) 07:25, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I believe they are inherently notable. But this debate has been going on for more than half a decade on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Schools/Defunct; Wikipedia:Schools/Old_proposal; Wikipedia:Schools/March_2007; Wikipedia:Notability_(schools); User:GRider/Schoolwatch/Archive. --BaronLarf 06:10, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As Wikipedia gets older, I'm sure we'll have to have (a) page(s) similar to WP:PEREN in which we link old discussions of re-occurring topics much like this. Killiondude (talk) 06:15, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, consensus is currently that they are all notable. I strongly disagree with this consensus and hope that it changes sometime in the future to help foster a discriminate encyclopedia of only noteworthy topics. But even if this would happen our articles wouldn't change very much since most high schools pass the GNG. We don't need an unwritten rule about schools that prevents the few that aren't notable or significant from being removed. I see most "all X is inherintly notable" style of argument as disruptive to the notability criteria in general, an exception being when they are used in a descriptive rather than prescriptive manner (ex. all U.S. presidents are notable- they are, but not because we define them to be). ThemFromSpace 06:26, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's notability guidelines are unfortunately opaque. They say that a thing is notable if notable people or institutions have taken notice of it. Duh. Well, how do you find out if people and institutions are notable? Same problem. Notable writers are identified by the fact that they are published by notable publishers, and the same with notable works. And notable publishers are identified by the fact that they publish notable works and writers. And yes, we identify notable works because notable writers produced them, and notable publishers published them. Are you beginning to see the problem? There's no solid ground to stand on here.

It helps if you replace the fancy word "notable" by the more common word "interesting." Then, whether something is notable (defined as whether notable people took note of it) reduces merely to the less fancy question of whether interesting people took interest in it. And how do we know whether the interested people are themselves interesting? Because other people take interest in THEM. Well, what other people? You? No. Me? No. We're talking about INTERESTING. PEOPLE. You know? Do I have to draw you a picture? Turn on the TV. But not whole sections of the internet. Because the internet is full of great dark areas of uninteresting stuff, written by uninteresting people. Like blogs and wikipedia. Wups. But it is true that the plebian interests of proles like our editors do not count. It is the interests of other media, publishers, and writers that count. Wikipedia is the ultimate parasite, and it rides the "buzz" from those who produce buzz. That's a technical word, there: BUZZ. It means "notability." SBHarris 06:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Watch who you're calling a prole there, buddy!
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 07:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. SBHarris 07:46, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Themfromspace has summarized the current unfortunate circumstances well. Despite many high schools not being able to even meet WP:N, many editors have decided that they are all inherently notable by nature of being a high school alone, because (I kid you note) "all high schools have sports coverage in their local papers". Of course, local papers are not really third-party, particularly in smaller towns, and if they are the only one to notice a high school, that really shouldn't be enough. Further, just printing sports scores and high light is not really significant coverage either. And some high schools lack even evidence of that, but it "must be there just not online" so that is still deemed enough. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 07:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That same logic - that HS are notable due to sports coverage - implies that this is routine coverage like most individual sporting matches, which are not notable unless something of interest happens (eg Ten Cent Beer Night). Thus, this type of coverage immediately invalids the school notability aspect. (and personally, I find it highly moronic that we're using athletic aspects to qualify the existance of an educational institution; this is not to say that some high schools produce a disproportionate number of eventual professional athletes and sources to attribute this fact, but just that in general, because a HS has a football team that travels a few miles down the road to play 6-8 games out of year doesn't shed any light on what the school has to offer). I can understand the logic of every town and village being considered notable, but not schools. --MASEM (t) 08:07, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A high school doesnt have to be notable, because in addition to being an encyclopedia Wikipedia is also a 'gazetteer, so yes being a real place does automatically make a high school, school district, Census-designated place, hamlet, village, (I can keep going...) a notable article for Wikipedia GRANTED that reliable third party sources can be found to make a viable non-stub article. There are plenty of hamlets that I would love to have an article on, but there isnt enough info out there, so they cant realistically be made. Same goes for schools. A good example of a great school article is Brunswick (Brittonkill) Central School District. If we went the extreme opposite and started saying they werent inherently notable where do we draw the line? Is Herkimer County, New York notable as a county goes? Probably not. Is Wyoming now notable enough as a state? (no) Is Djibouti a notable country? (yes, but my booty isnt).Camelbinky (talk) 10:04, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can agree from the point of being a gazetteer why every town/village, road, county, etc., should be included because those are functions of gazetteers, but even to that point, that would not include schools. That is, as called by definition a gazetteer is a "geographic dictionary", which implies any geographic element - natural or man-made - should be included, and I can't deny that towns/villages or roads are such. But a school is not a geographic element. Going by how WP defines a gazetteer, a town's school system may be described as part of a gazetteer's entry in the school, but the school itself is not a top-level entry. One could argue the same langauge that if every school should be included, so should every city hall, post office, shopping area, church, etc. be included. There is a fairly clear line that can be drawn to prevent non-geographic elements from being considered "necessary" as part of a gazetteer system.

(Also, but I don't want to belabor the point, notability is generally from secondary sources that are beyond routine coverage, not just third-party stuff as you suggest. But when we're talking about WP being a gazetteer, it seems we want to include those appropriate topics anyway simply due to that function, as long as there's verification via third-party sources and not through notability in general.) --MASEM (t) 13:20, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For me, a better focus would be to the verifiability and reliability of the information on high schools, not notability. Especially because students are inclined to edit their own school's pages, potentially putting false information in. Perhaps we should have a stricter standard of verifiability and RS for high schools to get rid of the chaff? Also, as Camelbinky says, there isn't enough reliable info out there to realistically write an article on every school. Although making a special rule for a category seems excessive to me. Also, what of the schools in other countries?-kslays (talk • contribs) 15:30, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Making guidance based on the potential for vandalism or poorly-cited information is a bad idea; this is overly preventative even though no one likes the results of vandalism. Otherwise, we'd have to consider the same idea towards sports teams, cities and towns, modern fictional works, and current political figures, for some. --MASEM (t) 16:46, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I regret that high schools, roads, bridges and similar assets are notable, because they're in government inventories that are WP:RS. I won't contribute or reviewing them, because they're boring - and the government keeps all these inventories mainly to impose taxes. --Philcha (talk) 11:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• In general local media will cover a high school (founding, scandals, sports, and even changes in leadership) in enough depth that one can safely assume such coverage exists for any given school. So as long as the school is verifiable it's almost certain to be notable even if sources haven't turned up yet. Hobit (talk) 17:22, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Even though the idea of "inherent notability" is controversial, we can presume that a high school would have been covered many times over the years from sources at at least the regional level of news coverage, and a high school has a role in the community that other physical buildings such as the post office do not. Given that Wikipedia has a role as a gazeteer, it would be ridiculous not to include articles about local government and infrastructure. Squidfryerchef (talk) 20:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone have any examples of a high school, or elementary etc, that does have an article but it should completely be deleted because it wouldnt fit notability guidelines as applied to, say living people? (which I would say is probably THE category we are most strict with) And is it possible to deal with it (and those like it) simply by saying it doesnt have reliable THIRD PARTY sources or other problems with it instead of having a new "rule" to specifically deal with them? If we can deal with this issue using what policies, guidelines, etc we have already established I think that would be much better than adding a new one. We also must realize no matter what consensus we come up with here we could face a huge backlash by those who actually work on the articles to the point where it may just be futile to do anything.Camelbinky (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While I don't have an example at hand, there have been high schools in places like Pakistan where no reliable sources could be found beyond verifying the basics of the school. Under the assumption that local media probably isn't on the web (or in English) we've kept those in the past... Hobit (talk) 01:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(this discussion began in The Notability of High Schools)

(sorry for the drift) I never understood why something calling itself an encyclopedia needs notability criteria. Though I'm sure there have been raised many good, rational arguments against this point of view. Paradoctor (talk) 11:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If there are no criteria for inclusion, then ANYTHING goes. Do you think any encyclopedia should have an entry on yourself, for example, or me, or that neighbor four doors down, across the street whose name you can't recall? How about your car? Someone's pets? Etc. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 16:49, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Provided there are supporting WP:RS, why should that be a problem?

• "whose name you can't recall": That only means neither you nor me would have any interest in creating or maintaining such an article. I'm pretty sure that is true for the vast majority of articles in any encyclopedia, let alone a behemoth like Wikipedia. In fact, you couldn't even read all articles in your lifetime.
• "your car": See above.
• "pets": That means you want to AfD Socks, All Ball, Hodge, Humphrey, Smudge, Scarlett, Tama, Trim and Wilberforce, don't you?

To reiterate: Where's the problem? Paradoctor (talk) 17:40, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I agree. I've never understood what Collectonian and most others are so concerned about. That being said, that some "notability" (loosely defined, mostly related to fame, despite that being specifically disclaimed) is required has become a well worn standard among many. It's become such a part of the background here that I doubt that many who are sympathetic to this point of view, such as myself, would seriously consider trying to deprecate it.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware that it's popular. What I'm trying to figure out is why? I willing to consider the possibility that I'm inclusionist because I'm ignorant. But so far, my impression of the arguments for notability is "only the important stuff", by whatever yardstick is handy. For an encyclopedia, notability can at best be a compromise forced by limited resources. I'd like to know about the horrible things that would happen if WP:N was AfD'ed. Paradoctor (talk) 19:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In many cases, notability is used to restrict or delete content. I'm not sure why people are more interested in deleting content than adding it. WP:RS and WP:V are all that's really needed to judge inclusion. RxS (talk) 20:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• OK, a defence of notability as a standard. Inclusionists want everything verifiable in reliable sources to be included (some extreme inclusionists don't even want to be restricted to what reliable sources say). Imagine the result: rather than being a summary of noteworthy topics, Wikipedia becomes a mirror of the internet and the press, with no discrimination. Every local news report gets its own article, every sports match, every self-published book with a press release, etc. The problem is that Wikipedia becomes a compendium of trivia and self-publicity, even more than it already is. An encyclopedia does not serve to record all information ever, and Wikipedia is not the only outlet for information in existence. Fences&Windows 22:14, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  eh, you're just setting up a false dichotomy though, and seemingly basing your entire argument on that. Aside from an emotional assumption, what evidence do you have that Wikipedia would become "a mirror of the internet"? What does that mean exactly, anyway? To take it to a real extreme, if we actually took away the ability to delete articles, is it your position that Wikipedia would become useless? I think that Paradoctor is hitting the heart of the matter here in asking "where's the actual problem?"
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, I think that without notability large parts of Wikipedia would become completely unmanageable, full of trivia and self-publicity. It would be like Google Knol (not something we want to emulate). Don't cherry pick my worst argument to refute ("mirror of the internet" was hyperbole): if we only have WP:V and WP:RS, every topic covered in at least one news article, book or scholarly article could have its own article. That wouldn't be an encyclopedia, it would be a mess. You want this? Fences&Windows 00:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  See, this gets to the heart of where this ideology looses me. Do you see yourself as some sort of "guardian of Wikipedia", or something? Perhaps yourself and others are running around exposing yourselves to more problematic articles then I am or something, I don't know for sure, but I don't see anything even remotely approaching a real problem (even when I do random article copy editing). I'm just not sure where this idea, which seems to be something like "I must approve your editing", is coming from (and it probably doesn't help that I have no clue why Knol is being mentioned, especially since AFAIK that's the way that Knol operates). It seems to me that many of you who espouse this "notability is the most important content guideline" idea are over-involved in testoterone filled "enforcement" tasks here, rather then actually building article content. It is interesting to note that most those people who hold that sort of view end up nominating and approving each other to be "admins" as well. Y'all have pushed the pendulum to far towards policy enforcement recently.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  That's very well said. I see people running around defending the old idea of what an encyclopedia is, calling the alternatives ill defined terms like "mess" etc...but never explicitly identify what the actual problem is. Like I said above, reliable sources and verifiability is all that's needed to control content, but many editors are more interested in writing rules than writing content and want to enforce that on the rest of the group. RxS (talk) 04:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  "Many of you who espouse this "notability is the most important content guideline" idea are over-involved in testoterone filled "enforcement" tasks here, rather then actually building article content." Nonsense. I've started ten of articles and significantly expanded hundreds. I've deprodded over two hundred articles and I've probably argued for keeping hundreds of articles at AfD. You have set up a false dichotomy of "content builders" and "gatekeepers". Believing in notability does not make one a deletionist. Of course we have to approve each others' editing, it's a collaborative project aiming to achieve a quality product, not a playpen or a walled garden. Anyone care to address my specific issue, which is that all things ever covered once in a reliable source could have their own article without notability being used as a guide? I think that notability is a good thing as it forces editors not to be lazy, we have to actually find multiple reliable sources that discuss the topic rather than relying on the first Google News hit or primary sources. Many who don't like notability are either promoting something (including fandom) or are just bad at finding sources. I don't think that writing a neutral, quality article is possible in the absence of significant coverage in multiple reliable sources, as without this you're relying on single sources (bad for reasons of bias and incompleteness) and primary sources (probably presenting a biased view of the subject). As for policy enforcers being admins, it's one of the things admins are meant to do so you may be putting the cart before the horse. If you want a diversity of editors as admins, nominate some. Fences&Windows 14:37, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikipedia would become completely unmanageable" ... "a mess": That looks like a serious concern. But what do you mean by that? Wikipedia has no management to begin with. Sounds a bit like arguments against democracy. (Relax, /me is AGFer ;)

"notability is a good thing as it forces" ... "multiple reliable sources": Umm, You seem to be conflating two policies here. I'm every bit as interested in WP:V as you are, but if you feel that WP:N is necessary to uphold WP:V, that is an argument for upgrading WP:V, rather than a justification for WP:N.

"Many who don't like notability": Neither do they like WP:V or WP:RS. That's basically the same argument as above, you wish to use WP:N as a tool to enforce other policies.

"without this you're relying on single sources": Again, this has nothing to do with notability. If you say that a single reliable source is not sufficient to satisfy WP:V, then let's add that to WP:V. Paradoctor (talk) 21:53, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My 2 cents is that WP:N is fundamentally too limiting in many cases. I think there are things many people care about where the coverage is in depth but primary (say TV show episodes or Pokemon) where there is plenty of material and interest in the topic by our readers. That said, I generally favor and support WP:N because it's a fairly objective standard and that's darn useful. Otherwise we get too far into debates with people who think covering TV shows (for example) at all is "trivia" and not worthy of coverage here and we end up spending all our time arguing rather than just most :-). I'd love to see something better, but I've no idea what that would be. Hobit (talk) 06:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:N is absolutely necessary. While it's true that Wikipedia is not paper, and so we are not limited by physical space concerns, it is fallacious to proceed to saying that we have unlimited resources. We do not. We, the editors of Wikipedia, are not a limitless resource. A metric of notability serves to help us keep the encyclopedia to a size manageable by the population editing it. The exponential increase in size precipitated by a revocation of the notability guidelines would produce an unmanageable mess, and would only serve to harm the reputation, and ultimately the usefulness, of the encyclopedia. Powers ^T 13:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"exponential increase in size precipitated by a revocation of the notability guidelines": Please forgive me for finding that amusing. Where were you a few years ago? ;)

Actually, removing WP:N could improve our editor base. How many potential editors waste their time at Wikia? And who knows, maybe some of those SPAs grow into fine, upstanding model Wikipedians? If the stats are to be trusted, only one in 10000 accounts becomes an active editor right now, so our strength lies in numbers.

"fallacious" ... "saying that we have unlimited resources": Dunno about that. There is WP:PERFORMANCE, and considering the way IT is developing, technology will not be the limiting factor for the foreseeable future. And as argued above, WP:N may be be a liability to our growth and well-being.

"unmanageable mess": Some facts or reasonable speculations would be nice here. Both F&W and you talk about a "mess", but I don't see how it would be different from the current state. Paradoctor (talk) 22:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But WP:RS is not WP:N. In fact, WP:RS is not even WP:V

I'm seeing a conflation of "notability" (which actually is a synonym for the interest taken by "interesting" or "official" people), with "source reliability" which actually has to do with something entirely different, which is truth. There is a huge amount of reliable-source information out there which is likely to be true, but which isn't interesting and thus not notable. Like mundane weather reports from mundane places, decades ago. Who cares that someplace that often gets cloudy skies, had cloudy skies on March 9, 1952? Unless there's some interesting historical event at that time and place it bears on, the answer is: nobody. The same for high school goings on from the same day, even if they made it into some Fische record of some (now disappeared) newspaper. They're like the weather. The routine weather reports from local places are examples of stuff that is WP:RS but not WP:N. Thus, WP:RS does NOT and should not define WP:N, but that bad idea is something I'm seeing proposed above. These two things, N and RS, are two different things, and it takes both to be really worthy of inclusion. Of course, that said, the problem is in defining N in some other way that has nothing to do with RS, and I've had my say about that. It ends up being a game where celebrities identify celebrity, and they themselves are identified the same way. Soon you can be famous for being famous, ala Warhol.

Perhaps the nastiest example of such conflict comes in the area of BLP, where RS is defined in terms of "likely to be true," but then "likely to be true" is defined as "having come from a source identified as reliable." This gets to the epistemological problem of when we admit that our list of standard V sources (you can look them up) are not RS sources (likely to be TRUE), because some things aren't as likely to be reliable as our memories, which aren't available to anybody. So WP:V is not WP:RS, either. For example, I myself am the leading expert on my own life, and if I disagree with something that gets into print about me, from somebody who met me for a few hours, I'm more likely to be right than the "source" is, if we disagree. Especially when a statement I myself made is the source for the information in the "RS" source, which got it from ME, second-hand! And yet, in a deletion fight, the WP:V claim would be taken over mine, even though it came from me originally, and was garbled. Go figure. This is a prime example of what may be called the "celebritization of truth." The idea being that something is more likely to be true, if some "notable" or celebrated person or source claims it, than if an "ordinary person" (like you or me) claims it. Say what? That's an incredibly stupid idea, indeed ridiculous idea on the very face of it, but it's written right into WP's policies. They make no exception for BLP, in part because of a foolish consistancy which is the hobgoblin of little minds. SBHarris 19:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are a couple of logical fallacies which are apparent to me, here. The first is Who cares that someplace that often gets cloudy skies, had cloudy skies on March 9, 1952?, which makes the galling and presumptuous judgment that you somehow know the information that all of our readers might want or need to see. This seems to be the core idea under which the "notability warriors" operate, that they are somehow more knowledgeable then the rest of us. Is it then any wonder that the various XFD areas are often turned into a battleground?

And then there's For example, I myself am the leading expert on my own life, and if I disagree with something that gets into print about me, from somebody who met me for a few hours, I'm more likely to be right than the "source" is, if we disagree. This is certainly true in day to day life, but there's a fundamental problem with it's use here on Wikipedia. How do I know who you are? Even if you do something to connect your Wikipedia identity with your real life identity, how can we verify that anything said through your account actually comes from you? Unless and until some legal means of generally establishing identity is created and adopted for the Internet (yea, right, that'll happen...) then this is just a generally untenable line of thinking to pursue. If there really is untruthful information out there, then some publication will be willing to print it, at which point we can and should cite that.

All of that being said, I do agree that our self-referential verifiability, reliable sources, and notability policies and guidelines are a problem. I think that comes from the fact that there are (obviously) different ideological ways to look at this whole subject. I have no idea how to really address the issue though, or if it's even possible to address it.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"isn't interesting and thus not notable": But where is the problem in having uninteresting articles? The vast majority of the current articles are not interesting to you in any meaningful way, so that doesn't seem to be a good exclusion criterion. Wikipedia does not need to sell itself. You're under no obligation to work on stuff you're not interested in. So where's the problem?

"WP:RS does NOT and should not define WP:N, but that bad idea is something I'm seeing proposed above." Umm, I did not make any proposal. Right here and now, my interest is in learning why people think that notability is important. Paradoctor (talk) 21:47, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We know that Verifiability=/=truth, but you're going to have to live with it while editing Wikipedia. If you can't verify an objection to published material, how are the rest of us supposed to trust in the objection?

As for us basing our articles on what is "notable", i.e. what is given significant coverage in multiple, independent, secondary reliable sources, on what other basis should we make our decisions on inclusion? Your assertion that reliable sources=celebrity sources isn't true, scholarly sources are in plentiful use on Wikipedia.

Your point about trivia is covered in WP:UNDUE, and seems to be a straw man as I don't think that many editors would want to detail the weather on a random day five decades ago in an article. Wouldn't WP:NOTNEWS be a reason to exclude listing all the weather reports ever for a town in Weather of X? Whether to include information about the weather or high school events in a particular article (if they can be verified) is an editorial judgement. If the information is pretty trivial, we'll likely not include it. It is already well established that Wikipedia is not for listing every verifiable fact, see WP:NOT. But the weather on the day of a major event (like a space shuttle disaster) might be worth including. Fences&Windows 21:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is confusing to me. What exactly is the difference between WP:Verifiability, WP:Reliable Sources, and WP:Indiscriminate? They seem redundant or at least largely overlapping. I think I understand the difference between them and notability, though - this can be demonstrated through examples. There are plenty of newspaper articles, books, photos, video, and other reliable media concerning construction projects, weather, business openings or closings, car crashes, murders, and weddings of random people dating back hundreds of years, but they may not be notable (or no longer notable, even if they were 50 years ago). To me, it seems that things may be notable for one group of people (like everyone in a small town within a certain time period, but nobody else), but it would not satisfy our criteria unless it was notable for a larger community (how big? notable to a small town of 300 is too small, but if 2 newspapers and a mayoral announcement of a city of 5000 covered it, that would probably be notable?) and there was coverage beyond a few months (WP:NTEMP). But I still am not convinced of the need for the notability requirement, though the notability essays make for good reading. Also, in practice, in my experience with AfD discussions, notability is satisfied by having a certain number of verifiable, reliable sources in the article, usually about 5. I understand that there may be more theory behind it, but pragmatically this is how the system appears to work. It's like a simple equation: 2 or 3 big newspapers coverage (or 10 prominent online sources) equals notable - admins probably don't have time to ponder things like the impact of an article's topic. -kslays (talk • contribs) 23:42, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"No longer notable, even if they were 50 years ago". No, "notability is not temporary" means that notable topics are always notable. Read WP:NTEMP again. WP:V is about the fact that we need to verify facts using sources, WP:RS is about how to find reliable sources, and WP:INDISCRIMINATE means that we don't include everything we can verify: all very separate. Fences&Windows 00:41, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I see, thanks for the pithy distinction. So, per WP:NTEMP, if something was notable in 1952, it is still notable, regardless of whether it would be interesting to anyone today. That leaves the matter of how big the population of people who care(d) has to be, and the functional distinction of notability from having a minimum number of sources during AfD discussions. -kslays (talk • contribs) 01:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This conversation is fabulous. It would help if we could see some statistics, i.e. a list of articles that have been deleted on the grounds that they lack notability -- does such a thing exist?

I'm going to venture that it's mostly rock bands, books, restaurants, bios of struggling professionals, startup companies ... in other words, self-promoters. I have always felt that Notability embodied Wikipedia's (admirable) hostility to greed; it means, "We have to be convinced that this article will help OTHER PEOPLE more than it helps YOU", but we can't really say that. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 11:35, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That would be all AfD and PROD deletions, and the CSDs that deal with notability. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not to answer your question, but there are some old deletion stats here: User:Emijrp/Statistics#Most deleted ever, User:Emijrp/Deleting, Wikipedia:AFD 100 days. Deletion archives here: Wikipedia:Archived deletion discussions. Common outcomes gives a qualitative description rather than quantitative: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes. For light relief, see Wikipedia:Deleted articles with freaky titles. Fences&Windows 15:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(Andrew Gradman) "self-promoters": If the information is verifiable, where is the problem? We don't judge edits by the motives of the editor, we judge them by their value to the article. Wikipedia does not participate in advertising, and I'm probably one of the greatest fans of that. But on the other hand, we don't censor facts just because someone might stand to profit from them. Paradoctor (talk) 23:16, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that the points above all easily explain why some concept and baseline for notability is necessary - while not paper, we're not an indiscriminate collection of verifiable information.

That said, understanding that notability as it is treated today as one swing of the pendulum of self-correction on WP is probably a bit too heavy-handed but also a bit too unfocused. I think most editors know how to use notability, but it is clear that most of this inclusist vs deletionist war that's been going on is due to a vicious circle of events that typically start with a heated argument at AFD and lead to ranges of articles being contested. This is often fueled by disagreement for what is appropriate coverage of certain fields relative to other fields (a fact often joked at by the press, which fuels the battles further) - I know one of the biggest is concepts from fictional works (characters, etc.) which some believe are important to be covered but rarely can be covered by secondary sources, thus making the present WP:GNG statement difficult to work with. But this is also true for schools, sports figures, etc.

It is not that notability isn't a bad idea, nor one to be abandoned, but we need to remind people that we a combination of an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac - to that end, we should be asking ourselves, first and foremost, what is it that we want to cover, and not the negative of what we don't want to cover. Given any field, we should be able to say "Ok, topics that satisfy these conditions from this field that demonstrate notability within that field should be included", and list out specific criteria that avoid subjection assessments. This may not be possible for some fields, but I think most fields can provide a good swath at appropriate topics that, with reasonable assurance, would be part of the encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac. To that end, we already have the various sub-notability guidelines (SNGs) that provide that. Failing the SNG then drops you to our next goalline, the general notability guideline, which says that a topic that shows notability via secondary sources should be included. Mind you, many topics that would meet the field-specific guidelines likely would meet the GNG, but this should not be taken as a sign that the GNG is more important. The GNG is the fallback position of a topic doesn't meet its field's guidelines or if the field lacks any guidelines or falls outside of any known field. When viewed like this, this can significant help discussions at AFDs where notability is in play, because we're not talking about the presence of sources but the appropriateness of the topic for WP: if it is notable in the specific field but lacks sources, we should be more open to keeping it than deletion.

The problem we stuck with is this impression - when you read through policies and guidelines and AFDs - that the only good encyclopedic article is one that has third-party, secondary sources. Granted - verification and avoidance of original research and bias are all important, and third-party, secondary sources are a strong way to get there. But that's satisfying the "encyclopedia" part of WP's mission - gazetteers and almanac are works that tend to just cite facts and not attempt analysis or the like. Not every article on WP needs third-party secondary sources to meet WP's mission. That's not to say that we open the door to thousands of articles by allowing primary, first-person accounts as the only sourcing metric, and that's why, again, the field-specific guidelines of what is actually notable should come into play - there may be some topics within a field that should be included even if the sourcing is otherwise not as strong as one that is provided through secondary sources. Failing the field, then the lack of secondary sources will mean the topic fails the GNG, and we likely would not have a separate article on it.

We still need to make sure that field specific guidelines for inclusion are not overly inclusive compared to others. For example, if a guideline says that a one-time cameo fictional character always gets an article, while we exclude an amateur that plays one time at the Olympics through an athlete-field guideline or a single mom-and-pop business through a business-field guideline, we've got a problem. These field guidelines cannot be developed in a vacuum and should be challenged if they are overly inclusive - or overly exclusive too. We also need to realize that not every topic easily shuffles into established fields, or that new fields may become more obvious over time as we work towards this. We still have the GNG for those.

Basically, the "tl;dr" version of the above is simply that we should be asking ourselves, "what do we want to include in WP" instead of always playing the negative "This doesn't belong in WP". We want to assure ourselves we are covering all topics within individual fields well enough to meet the mission of WP, and being overly reliant on the GNG is harmful. (An argument I've had to point out several times is that while the property of having significant coverage is usually the result of something being wikt:notable, it is not true that having significant coverage is what makes something wikt:notable. There is a small but significant gap between GNG-based notable topics and dictionary-definition-based notable topics. We need to find out how to fill that gap, and field-specific guidelines are one way to do so.) --MASEM (t) 16:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This has some merit. But it might be hard to do in practice. That is, a list of included fields could be too long. Maurreen (talk) 17:19, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A complete switch to this approach is not something to be done overnight. But the framework is there, in how the existing SNGs (like WP:BIO, WP:BK, and WP:MUSIC already are written towards this idea. It would be a gradual change. The only immediate switch is applying to all editors the general understanding that the GNG needs to be treated as the fallback for notability, not the first barrier. --MASEM (t) 17:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense.

In one of the sub-guidelines, I don't remember which one, is something like "has made a major, lasting, contribution to his field." I think that is a good guideline in general.

The question then would become, "When is a field to small?" But that could be addressed gradually and organically, as you suggest, such as by adding sets of sub-guidelines. Each set of sub-guidelines could be addressed specifically. Maurreen (talk) 18:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like WP:CREEP to me. I dunno; I always felt our ultimate goal was well-researched articles regardless of the field. Fundamentally, I see Wikipedia as the biggest literature review in existence. Nifboy (talk) 00:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Finally someone with brains. (Ok, I'm gushing ;) Paradoctor (talk) 00:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]