User talk:May His Shadow Fall Upon You/Archives/2019/September

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Quick question
I love your username. Anyway, I would like to pick your brain a bit if I may. My opinion is that there is a difference between what I would consider to be notable crimes/allegations and run off the mill crimes. So for example the time I forgot to buy a trainticket because I believed I bought a return when I actually bought a single is not notable, but the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. is. I think some crimes have encyclopedic value because of who the victim is, who the accused is or because whatever happened as a result. It seems unlikely that this disappearance will be talked about in the media a decade or so from now, unlike for example D. B. Cooper.

I wrote on that talkpage: "I believe the goal here is to write an encyclopedia, not a somewhat random collection of old news. If people disagree that's fine. If they agree then I would like them to explain what makes this crime worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia."

I am curious what your response would be because I am certain we share that goal.

According to Missing_person (which is quite depressing and sobering) we are talking about ~8 million kids per year that go missing. And that's excluding adults (I'd assume its probably easier for an adult to disappear).

I do not believe we should be exactly the same as an encyclopedia on paper, we aren't and will never be Brittanica, but I do think that crimes like this (which happen every x minutes) are outside of the scope of an encyclopedia. The fact that there are sources doesn't make it worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia imo; its a newspapers job to report the news and we are not writing a newspaper. I would like to understand your point of view better. Poveglia (talk) 17:42, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * - Thanks! I think it's summed up well by WP:GNG, which states: If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list. Some crimes do receive this kind of significant coverage; others don't. Sometimes the coverage is because the victim or the perpetrator are famous or notable in their own way; sometimes it's the circumstances of the crime. This crime may or may not have major historical significance. You're right in saying that the Dulos case won't have the same level of historical significance as, say, MLK's assassination. Absolutely true. Then again, the fact that it's of lesser historical importance does not mean it shouldn't be included. Policies like WP:LASTING say that events are "likely to be notable" if they have that kind of enduring effect - but it doesn't set that as a hard-and-fast requirement. It's a case by case basis, and in this case I voted to Keep the Dulos disappearance article because it's received substantial coverage in nationwide publications - not just local news. If it was just a "local news" case, then my vote would have definitely been Delete. May His Shadow Fall Upon You     Talk  18:43, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Imagine if we had a collection of articles about every single topics that have received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. So basically Wikipedia like it is now but 9832786587245687 times bigger. I'd argue that the end result would not be an encyclopedia. It would be a mess. Poveglia (talk) 20:22, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Certainly, and that concern is covered by WP:NOTEVERYTHING... but there's nothing in that policy that would interfere with the Dulos article. May His Shadow Fall Upon You     Talk  20:26, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I believe that if we follow both WP:NOT and WP:GNG to the letter we will still end up with an unworkable mess of articles no one cares about (given infinite monkeys and typewriters and a finite amount of time) if we include literally everything that meets those criteria. Crimes are obviously newsworthy so there are always gonna be plenty of sources, but to me a collection of articles based on information from outdated news articles about events no one will care about in the future is not very useful or desirable. The grandchildren of people alive today might want to learn about the assassination of Indira Gandhi and we should facilitate that, but an article about the murder (I'll donate $100 USD to my local homeless shelter if she is found alive) of some random stay-at-home mother who is most likely an innocent victim is unlikely to generate much interest in 2040. The assassination of Indira Gandhi changed the future of India; and even though this case is objectively more tragic it has less of an impact on the world. Thank you. Even if we don't agree I think it is interesting to see where our views diverge and why.Poveglia (talk) 20:44, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * - You've given some great examples of unquestionably notable events that had an impact on the flow of history, but even topics of purely local interest can still be worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. The bar is not set so high that anything short of the assassination of MLK or Indira Ghandi ought to be deleted.  May His Shadow Fall Upon You     Talk  22:01, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed, and that is a good thing. But I think we can safely conclude that I'd rather set it a bit higher than the !voters think it should be. I've withdrawn the nomination. Thanks again and have a nice day, Poveglia (talk) 22:45, 10 September 2019 (UTC)