User:Superluser/List of times Joe Bloggs has been hauled off to the drunk tank

Disclaimer: This essay does not refer to any person or country, living or deceased, except for the one in the article that I refer to at the beginning. Any similarities to real people or countries listed herein are purely coincidental. It does not contain any forward-looking statements..

This will be brief at the moment. I may expand it later.

List of times Joe Bloggs has been hauled off to the drunk tank
I'm currently involved in editing an article where there are a few reliable sources that are tangentially related to a major issue being discussed in the article. They are court filings concerning actions similar to others that he is alleged to have committed.

These sources were added by me, and I think that they should be in the article. The article then went under review, and I suggested that editors should come to a consensus about whether these sources were appropriate.

There is no doubt that these sources are reliable. Other, secondary sources comment on (at least one of) these sources, so they are certainly notable. They relate to issues that are important to know if you want to understand the totality of this man.

Let's extrapolate on this. Let's say that there's a man named Joe Bloggs. He's recently been elected president of a large country with a temporary seat on the UN. He also really likes alcohol.

Every week, he winds up getting so drunk that the police arrest him--knowing full well that he is the president, and the papers gleefully write up large front-page stories whenever it happens. As such, Joe Bloggs is notable. The fact that he has been arrested 57 times for public drunkenness is notable. Each incident is, in fact, notable. It's certainly not trivial that he has been arrested for it. Should each arrest be mentioned in the Wikipedia article?

I argue in this case, no. There is no need to list every time that a minor (or indeed major) event happens in the life of a subject.

There is, however, a difference between the two cases of the hypothetical Joe Bloggs and the real-life article that I am editing. A line should be drawn somewhere between those two cases.

I want you to tell me where you think it should be.--Superluser 02:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)