User:Tbmorgan74/Predeclared notability

This is an essay and proposal to the community about a new way to organize articles.

Background
Wikipedia has become the defacto standard for user-created web content. I suggest that it has become a Generic Word for the act of reading, writing, or using any such content. It has reached the tipping point, the critical mass at which it dwarfs other user-contributed portals. That momentum is self sustaining, it will continue to be the dominant player in that space.

People want to find their content on wikipedia. People want to put their content on wikipedia. Therein lies the conflict. The standard criteria for wikipedia articles is encyclopedic articles of international significance. Much of the time, what many people want is a repository of good data in a given subject matter at that moment. That subject matter may be very narrow indeed. But for that person, at that time, it is the most important content possible.

Differentiated content
Imagine a world where internationally significant encyclopedic content lives in perfect harmony alongside very narrowly significant content. The reader of the former need not be inconvenienced by the existence of the later, because the do not link to each other. The 2004 tsunami does not link to individual pokeman articles. They serve different needs, for different people, at different times.

Contributors of worldly content should not get into debates and arguments with contributors of niche content. The niche content articles should declare themselves to be niche, warning the reader and the contributor about the expectations of the article.

Incremental Cost
It has been suggested that small insignificant articles be deleted. As long as there is no controversy, that should remain the best practice. However I suggest that maintaining the legacy over the controversial deletion debate is more costly in terms of server resources and voluntary administrator's time than just leaving the article alone. It will do less harm merely existing in the database as a niche article than would a protracted debate about its existence.

But not every single idea or though ever made deserves a wikipedia article. Random rants and diatribes serve no useful function. However, there is a broad middle ground that can be richly cultivated with varying degrees of niche content. It will work if there is a system of pre-declaring the scope of the content.