User:Night Gyr/thoughts

The universal criteria for inclusion that works anyone in Wikipedia is whether the topic has been written about. Has the chemical been the subject of a published study? Has the album been reviewed? Has the person been profiled in a newspaper? 'mere mentions' aren't writing about the subject, and the distinction ought to be fairly clear. A story about an event that mentions a person isn't focusing on the person. It's focusing on the event, so we should write about the event. A fictional work isn't writing about itself -- the writing is part of the fiction and may be summarized, but separate detached analysis is essential.

Yet when we have these kinds of sources, we should feel free to go on what they write. A person who's been profiled in newspapers is not a wholly private figure, and the right to privacy does not allow you to take things already public, fully true, and undistorted, and hide them away. If we write with proper attention to accuracy and focus on reliable sources, we'll increase the quality of information about a subject, not reduce it, and any article we write will only harm its subject as much as the truth hurts.