Wikipedia talk:Exclusion (essay)

Imaginary universes
Fictional people, places and things have always been and will always be important parts of human life. Why should Wikipedia turn its back on this aspect of life? --JWSchmidt 12:14, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The idea (IMO) is encyclopedic context. Nobody's suggesting not covering fiction- I think the idea is don't make seperate pages about every little thing.  Yes, we have a large number of Harry Potter-related articles - and this is proper, those stories are a huge phenomenon.  We already try to deal with this issue by merging tiny articles into the main topic.  There are many subject-specific wikis for videogames and whatnot- the tiny cr*fty details belong there, not in an encyclopedia.  Friday (talk) 16:16, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * There is a tension be between exhaustive treatment of a subject (in this case, a fictional universe) & the size of the audience who will find the subject worth reading. This tension doesn't exist with practical subjects -- for example, rare species or villages in a third-world country -- because the potential audience will always be quite large. But just how much detail do we want to devote to any book or movie? Is Wikipedia better served by having (to offer an example from outside of contemporary popular culture) an article about the character named "Gentleman" who appears in Act III scene 1 of King Lear, exchanges a few lines with Kent, then is gone from the rest of the play? At some point we Wikipedians must say "enough", & decide either to exclude something or discuss it as part of an existing article. -- llywrch 21:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

General discussion
Perhaps another way of looking at notability and related issues is that there are certain subjects for which the most effective coverage is not through an encyclopedia-like work. Certain kinds of tabular data are the most obvious. While the price of, say, AT&T stock on August 6, 1973 is verifiable, and perhaps more notable than many things we include, our presentation and method of editing don't lend themselves to inclusion of such information. Likewise, we don't include historical census data, even though a list of the names of the first inhabitants of various places is probably notable and is certainly verifiable.

But the reality of the deletion/exclusion discussions is that we permit all kinds of content that doesn't further our mission as long as it doesn't become a problem or a distraction. In hindsight, perhaps that was one of our strenghts early on, and perhaps it remains so today. The point Jimbo once made remains true: that while the Pokemon articles (e.g.) aren't necessarily central to our mission, it is fallacious to think that the effort their contributors expend could be redirected to more fruitiful ends.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Barely notable living people
I would like to see the section on "Barely notable living people" expanded a little on the the idea that people who are notable for only a single minor fact or incident do not make for good articles. That is in these cases it is not the person themselves who are notable but the incident, crime, event, news story. For these people it is very unlikely that the article could ever be of very high quality because even though they may meet some notability standard that we have set (mention in news media and google hits) they are not actually notable, and in many cases the most notable thing about them in ten years will be the wikipedia article. Dalf | Talk 08:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

dealing with verifiability is fundamental to the issue of notability
The essay suggests that we need to define policy for notability. However, for Wikipedians the ultimate criterion for judging notability is if a topic can be documented using verifiable sources. A key part of the policy for verifiability is that Wikipedians must cite reliable sources. I suggest that if we are really concerned about excluding from Wikipedia material that should not be here, then you could fruitfully aim your efforts at the debate over reliable sources.

Another place to center attention is on enforcement of the existing verifiability policy. Many Wikipedians are here to push a particular point of view and they love to cite partisan websites as sources.

Here is one example. Wikipedia articles about animal rights frequently cite the websites of animal rights activists. Wikipedia articles such as Draize test use obviously fake and/or un-verifiable photographs from the websites of animal rights activists. The verifiability policy says:

"Partisan political and religious (or anti-religious) sources should be treated with caution, although political bias is not in itself a reason not to use a source. Widely acknowledged extremist political, religious, anti-religious and other websites — for example, those belonging to Stormfront, Hamas, the Aryan Nations website or the Socialist Workers Party — should never be used as sources for Wikipedia, except as primary sources, that is, in articles discussing the opinions of that organization or the opinions of a larger like-minded group, but even then should be used with great caution, and should not be relied upon as a sole source."

This existing policy on partisan political and religious sources is not well-enforced. In subject areas that go beyond political and religious topics there are a large number of partisan websites, partisan books, partisan journals, and other partisan sources of information that are not to be trusted and should not be used as sources for Wikipedia articles that are making general statements that try to go beyond what is clearly just a artisan opinion or position. Wikipedia needs a detailed policy that is very clear about how editors must deal with this problem. We need lists of partisan sources that cannot be used as sources to support Wikipedia content that reads like statements of fact. Wikipedia should only cite such sources as sources of statements that are clearly identified in Wikipedia as partisan opinion. Wikipedia needs a project to define lists of identified partisan sources.

The existing reliability guideline for "Popular culture and fiction" is very weak and could be expanded into a clear policy. There is much hard work to be done in evaluating the reliability of sources and enforcing policy about how to cite sources of high and low reliability. In my view, doing that hard work is the best path to take in trying to deal with the highly subjective question of notability. As it says at Notability, "there's no reason why Wikipedia shouldn't include "everything" that fits in with our other criteria, such as verifiability and no original research". If we fix existing problems with verifiability then notability will automatically be taken care of as well.

Warning: some of the most active Wikipedia editors are here because they are pushing a partisan point of view. Some of these folks are administrators and they have in the past failed to enforce existing verifiability policy. There are institutional forces actively work against the development of a rational policy for dealing with reliability of sources. In my view, dealing with these tough problems will get at the root of the Wikipedia notability problem. --JWSchmidt 13:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)