User:Starblind/Is Verifiability Enough

''Note: This page is neither official policy nor official guideline, nor an attempt to create official policy or official guideline. This is a personal statement by Andrew Lenahan, known on Wikipedia as Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd 

The Big Change: Taking Verifiability Seriously
Wikipedia has turned a corner recently, and we're all the better for it. Just about everyone has started to take verifiability seriously. We've realised that it isn't enough for an article to be "interesting", it also has to be verifiable using reliable sources. What brought this on? A number of things, really. It wasn't an overnight change by any means. One factor was the growing public awareness of Wikipedia consequently making Wikipedia attractive to hoaxers, spammers, and self-promoters. Another consideration was the growing attention Wikipedia has received from the press, which often called attention to its innacuracies. However, if one thing can be said to have brought about the change, it's the John Seigenthaler scandal. For the first time, many Wikipedians woke up to the fact that these "interesting" articles can have real-world effects on real people's lives. This isn't USENET, a BBS, or a forum: these articles represent real people and real organisations with real reputations which can be damaged if we don't take our responsibility as editors seriously. Things had to change, and so they did. "Interesting" stuff that sort of sounded like it might be true was out. Verifiability and reliable sources were in.

Looking Beyond Verifiability
Once we've established that verifiability is central to an essential for Wikipedia, we then have to ask whether verifiability is enough. In other words, once a subject has been covered by reliable sources, so that it is verifiable beyond reasonable doubt, does it automatically qualify for an article?

Real life example #1
A few months ago I wrote an article about a publication called The Budget. The Budget is quite a notable newspaper, with a wide international circulation. As part of my research for the article, I read a 400-page book (entitled ''I Saw it in The Budget, ISBN 1878688006) of excerpts from the newspaper over its century of history. Let's review: notable paper, read by thousands around the world. Being in that would be pretty notable, right? Lets look at an actual example, from 1931:

"Miss Lydia C. [last name removed] fell out of a cherry tree last week one day and bruised her left elbow badly. She has her arm in a sling."

Now, the above is not just filler for a slow news day: not only did it appear in The Budget, it appeared in the centennial Budget best-of book. The book (and paper) are filled with this sort of thing: the first page alone includes not one but two examples of car-cranking accidents resulting in broken arms. It's as verifiable a fact as any out there, yet could it be made into an encyclopedia article? I'd say no.

Real life example #2
Even well-known newspapers publish human-interest stories on fairly everyday events. For example, on January 21, 2007 The Washinton Post had a story on the front of its Metro section about a high school library book being returned over 40 years overdue. It's a good story, quite interesting and well-written, but I couldn't imagine the event being made into an encyclopedia article, even though an incredibly notable newspaper reported it.