Notability and ski resorts (was: Newbie and not-so-newbie biting)

[Steve Bennett-8]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 6:18 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews@...> wrote:
> I don't ski. You are partly arguing that there should not be a
> notability guideline for skiing sites. And partly that a specialist
> skiing encyclopedia should be a directory of just about all skiing
> sites. I'm not really in a position to argue, since I'm not familiar
> with that sector of reference literature. The usual test is that there
> is such a book and it does include Kettlebowl.

I seem to recall that in the notability policy there is also scope for
comprehensiveness. That is, if a certain number of a given category of
entities is denoted "notable", then we include articles about *all* of
them, for comprehensiveness.

I really wish I'd fought harder years ago against framing the scope of
Wikipedia in terms of "notability". Notability is only part of the
picture: there are other reasons for including articles. There are
questions about how much should be written about a topic. There are
questions about whether all notable subjects should have entries. Etc.

> I would certainly argue that
>
> - Kettlebowl the hill as geographic feature is probably a topic to
> include, just that it should be treated as such without the promotional
> overlay this guy wants about it;
> - If the material on Kettlebowl had been placed in [[Bryant,
> Wisconsin]], we would have had one better article, not two scrappy ones.

IMHO, short is not synonymous with "scrappy". Look at a traditional
encyclopaedia. Is every article three pages long? No. Most are very
short, a paragraph or two. IMHO it's better to have two articles with
clearly defined defined scopes (in this case, a ski area, and a town),
than one article with a fudged scope (a town and, uh, any notable
nearby tourist attractions, of which in this case there is one major
one). I don't think information about the town would enhance the ski
area article. Information about the ski area would slightly enhance
the town article.

> I think skiing fans should not be allowed to chip away at minimum
> standards for inclusion just because they are, well, fans of skiing.

Of course. But all rules are subject to change, and we certainly
shouldn't be in a "you can't have that article about that ski area
because I didn't get this article baout my pokemon character"
position.

> WP:NOT says WP is not a directory, after all.

I think Wikipedia has progressed far enough and become unique enough
that WP:NOT is really not relevant anymore. Wikipedia is not
*anything* else. It's not an encyclopaedia, it's not a directory, it's
not a website, it's not a project...it's just totally sui generis. It
combines aspects of many of the above. There are directory-like
aspects, there are how-to-like aspects, there are cookbook-like
aspects etc etc etc.

The question is how to get all of these aspects in a balance that
maximises their utility to the greatest number of people at the lowest
cost. Describing a few thousand ski areas around the world is probably
ok. Describing hundreds of thousands of primary schools around the
area is not going to work.

The interesting thing is that we don't really need hard rules. If
there's one area where it works and makes sense to go into more detail
and have a lower bar for inclusion than another, that doesn't hinder
the mission. If it works.

Steve

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[Charles Matthews]

Steve Bennett wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 6:18 PM, Charles Matthews
> <charles.r.matthews@...> wrote:
>  
>> I don't ski. You are partly arguing that there should not be a
>> notability guideline for skiing sites. And partly that a specialist
>> skiing encyclopedia should be a directory of just about all skiing
>> sites. I'm not really in a position to argue, since I'm not familiar
>> with that sector of reference literature. The usual test is that there
>> is such a book and it does include Kettlebowl.
>>    
>
> I seem to recall that in the notability policy there is also scope for
> comprehensiveness. That is, if a certain number of a given category of
> entities is denoted "notable", then we include articles about *all* of
> them, for comprehensiveness.
>
> I really wish I'd fought harder years ago against framing the scope of
> Wikipedia in terms of "notability". Notability is only part of the
> picture: there are other reasons for including articles. There are
> questions about how much should be written about a topic. There are
> questions about whether all notable subjects should have entries. Etc.
>  

"Notability" is undoubtedly broken. No one has come up with a
replacement, though.
>> I think skiing fans should not be allowed to chip away at minimum
>> standards for inclusion just because they are, well, fans of skiing.
>>    
>
> Of course. But all rules are subject to change, and we certainly
> shouldn't be in a "you can't have that article about that ski area
> because I didn't get this article baout my pokemon character"
> position.
>  
OK, but take the argument that there aren't so many ski runs in
Australia, and transfer it to some micro-sub-genre of heavy metal:
"There just aren't so many perishthrashglam bands here, so we think it's
just fine to have articles on all of them". Doesn't look so good.

The connection of ski runs with the naming of geographical features
probably saves them (the cavalry coming) in numerous cases. It would be
perverse to say an article about the feature couldn't mention the ski
area appropriately, and include a relevant category. But it is our habit
either to get at these things from a general principle, or have a
notability guideline split off in an attempt to get consensus.
>  
>> WP:NOT says WP is not a directory, after all.
>>    
>
> I think Wikipedia has progressed far enough and become unique enough
> that WP:NOT is really not relevant anymore.
Strongly disagree.
>  Wikipedia is not
> *anything* else. It's not an encyclopaedia, it's not a directory, it's
> not a website, it's not a project...it's just totally sui generis.
Yes it is sui generis, but WP:NOT is part of that, not an add-on. I'm
somewhat concerned that a reliance on "reader survey" will indeed tend
to blur all tried-and-tested criteria for inclusion, for the sake of
other stuff that is not too useful (e.g. "I wish you'd include more
movie rumors because I really like to read about them"). Downmarket beckons.

Charles


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[Surreptitiousness]

Steve Bennett wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 6:18 PM, Charles Matthews
> <charles.r.matthews@...> wrote:
>  
>
>  
>> WP:NOT says WP is not a directory, after all.
>>    
>
> I think Wikipedia has progressed far enough and become unique enough
> that WP:NOT is really not relevant anymore.

I agree.  I think a lot of WP:NOT has also been realised in other
policies and guidance, but there's resistance to deprecating those parts
of NOT because they are worded such that they can be interpreted however
you like.

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[Surreptitiousness]

Charles Matthews wrote:
> Yes it is sui generis, but WP:NOT is part of that, not an add-on. I'm
> somewhat concerned that a reliance on "reader survey" will indeed tend
> to blur all tried-and-tested criteria for inclusion, for the sake of
> other stuff that is not too useful (e.g. "I wish you'd include more
> movie rumors because I really like to read about them"). Downmarket beckons.
>  
Not sure why down-market has to beckon. We're committed to sourcing to
the point I can't see a reader survey overturning that, in fact I would
expect a reader survey to call for even better sourcing.  Therefore, I
can't really see how we could include unsourced movie rumors.  Of
course, I should imagine we'd all also agree that facts about upcoming
movies are an area open to debate, but I'm not sure we should prejudge
that debate by casting anything as a down-market move. To the point that
I'd like a cite on why that would be a down-market move. I'm not
suggesting Wikipedia be all things to all people, although I'd like us
to make a better stab than we currently are, but I've always thought
Wikipedia was a broad church, and I've always thought it was widely
assumed on Wikipedia that we look to the middle-ground.  Now I suppose
if you see us on a high-ground, then yes, we would be shifting
down-market, but realistically any encyclopedia is going to be aimed
lower than the high ground, because an encyclopedia is a tertiary
source, rather than a secondary source.  The high ground is held by
academia, something we aren't looking to replicate because of the policy
on original research. I think utility is also in the eye of the
beholder.  Depending on which industry you work in, the utility of
articles on entertainment and those on higher maths are subjective
qualities.  And surely blurring our still in beta stage inclusion
guidance is a good idea, because life does not tend to happen in an
absolute manner.  The lack of adaptability in the minds of some of our
contributors can sometimes harm us.  I've never worked out a way of
promoting the idea of an open mind and a case by case approach.  I can't
help but feel an encyclopedia built by the masses through consensus
editing might help rather than hinder that goal.  If that means moving
to meet the audience, so be it.  I believe it worked for Mohammed.

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[Andrew Gray-3]

2009/9/22 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@...>:

>> I seem to recall that in the notability policy there is also scope for
>> comprehensiveness. That is, if a certain number of a given category of
>> entities is denoted "notable", then we include articles about *all* of
>> them, for comprehensiveness.

(...)

> OK, but take the argument that there aren't so many ski runs in
> Australia, and transfer it to some micro-sub-genre of heavy metal:
> "There just aren't so many perishthrashglam bands here, so we think it's
> just fine to have articles on all of them". Doesn't look so good.

I think we can easily distinguish, though; the
notability-by-association thing really needs most of the set to be
desirable topics for articles (*most* ski runs are interesting, or at
least let us assume they are for this discussion!) and for that set to
be well-defined (you can always tell if a ski run is in Australia or
not).

The perishthrashglam bands are both a) generally uninteresting, and b)
ill-defined; we won't have articles on most bands defined as part of
that genre, and we won't ever be able to say "the genre consists
solely of these seventy-nine bands and no-one else".

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray@...

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[Surreptitiousness]

Andrew Gray wrote:
> I think we can easily distinguish, though; the
> notability-by-association thing really needs most of the set to be
> desirable topics for articles (*most* ski runs are interesting, or at
> least let us assume they are for this discussion!) and for that set to
> be well-defined (you can always tell if a ski run is in Australia or
> not).
Yes, this is exactly the sort of gradation we should have and should be
able to implement, but is also the sort of gradation that the
NOTINHERITED group of editors seek to stamp out. The notability guidance
has also become a spanner in the works of Summary Style.  You can't now
split an article up if it is too long unless you split it in a way such
that each separate article is notable by itself. And even if you manage
to do that, there are editors who will accuse you of forking.

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[Surreptitiousness]

What I'd like to see, really, is a better focus of what sources confer
notability.  For example, rather than the fact that we are not a
dictionary, we just don't use dictionaries as a source to confer
notability.  Similarly directories, so on and so forth. I think this way
notability may be driven by content creators as much as or rather than
policy gate keepers.

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[Charles Matthews]

Surreptitiousness wrote:

> Andrew Gray wrote:
>  
>> I think we can easily distinguish, though; the
>> notability-by-association thing really needs most of the set to be
>> desirable topics for articles (*most* ski runs are interesting, or at
>> least let us assume they are for this discussion!) and for that set to
>> be well-defined (you can always tell if a ski run is in Australia or
>> not).
>>    
> Yes, this is exactly the sort of gradation we should have and should be
> able to implement, but is also the sort of gradation that the
> NOTINHERITED group of editors seek to stamp out. The notability guidance
> has also become a spanner in the works of Summary Style.  You can't now
> split an article up if it is too long unless you split it in a way such
> that each separate article is notable by itself. And even if you manage
> to do that, there are editors who will accuse you of forking.
>  

Rightly, in my view. I come down on the (conservative) side of this
discussion, and agree with the now-ancient decision that article space
should not admit subpages (which is what subarticles without credible
free-standing topics amount to).

Charles


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[David Goodman]

So put them in another space: call it directory space.

The problem is that having a distinct article is treated as a question
of merit--we word  things this way ourselves: "deserves an article".
Thus there is a continual pressure from spammers and hobbyists to
include a separate article for every company, lawyer,  band, author,
athlete, railway station, street,  toy, song, football match, and
fictional character. (note that 1/ for some of these we do include
articles on all, some not 2/that it's easier to decide on people, than
objects 3/that the list does not reflect my own views about what is
more or less suitable)

But the question should be content. We could very well say we should
have content on every one of the above, although not articles. We
might even find it easier to write such content if we didn't have the
overhead  & metadata necessarily associated with separate articles.


David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:34 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews@...> wrote:

> Surreptitiousness wrote:
>> Andrew Gray wrote:
>>
>>> I think we can easily distinguish, though; the
>>> notability-by-association thing really needs most of the set to be
>>> desirable topics for articles (*most* ski runs are interesting, or at
>>> least let us assume they are for this discussion!) and for that set to
>>> be well-defined (you can always tell if a ski run is in Australia or
>>> not).
>>>
>> Yes, this is exactly the sort of gradation we should have and should be
>> able to implement, but is also the sort of gradation that the
>> NOTINHERITED group of editors seek to stamp out. The notability guidance
>> has also become a spanner in the works of Summary Style.  You can't now
>> split an article up if it is too long unless you split it in a way such
>> that each separate article is notable by itself. And even if you manage
>> to do that, there are editors who will accuse you of forking.
>>
> Rightly, in my view. I come down on the (conservative) side of this
> discussion, and agree with the now-ancient decision that article space
> should not admit subpages (which is what subarticles without credible
> free-standing topics amount to).
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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[Surreptitiousness]

Charles Matthews wrote:
>
> Rightly, in my view. I come down on the (conservative) side of this
> discussion, and agree with the now-ancient decision that article space
> should not admit subpages (which is what subarticles without credible
> free-standing topics amount to).
Interesting.  I've never seen them as sub-articles but rather as turning
the page in a paper based article.  After all, when a paper based
encyclopedia runs out of room on a page, they just turn over.  It seems
both inane and insane that we can't also do that. And there doesn't seem
to be a good reason, because all the good reasons are dressed up in
jargon such that they duck the actual issue.  How do we replicate
turning the page? Kind of defeats the now-ancient decision that space
alone will not constrain us.

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[Charles Matthews]

Surreptitiousness wrote:

> Charles Matthews wrote:
>> Yes it is sui generis, but WP:NOT is part of that, not an add-on. I'm
>> somewhat concerned that a reliance on "reader survey" will indeed
>> tend to blur all tried-and-tested criteria for inclusion, for the
>> sake of other stuff that is not too useful (e.g. "I wish you'd
>> include more movie rumors because I really like to read about them").
>> Downmarket beckons.
>>  
> Not sure why down-market has to beckon. We're committed to sourcing to
> the point I can't see a reader survey overturning that, in fact I
> would expect a reader survey to call for even better sourcing.  
> Therefore, I can't really see how we could include unsourced movie
> rumors.  Of course, I should imagine we'd all also agree that facts
> about upcoming movies are an area open to debate, but I'm not sure we
> should prejudge that debate by casting anything as a down-market move.
> To the point that I'd like a cite on why that would be a down-market
> move. I'm not suggesting Wikipedia be all things to all people,
> although I'd like us to make a better stab than we currently are, but
> I've always thought Wikipedia was a broad church, and I've always
> thought it was widely assumed on Wikipedia that we look to the
> middle-ground.  Now I suppose if you see us on a high-ground, then
> yes, we would be shifting down-market, but realistically any
> encyclopedia is going to be aimed lower than the high ground, because
> an encyclopedia is a tertiary source, rather than a secondary source.

I typically think of this in terms of a pedia-media axis. We are not
going to be at either extreme (Britannica-style pedia, or
reader-maximising media). We are definitely now judged as media, and if
you look at what the most popular pages are that is a reasonable fit, I
suppose - we just have a bit more of a medium-term memory than print and
broadcast media. But most pages are _not_ popular. They are reference
material, in other words. Downmarket, in my terms, is slanting content
policy to favour in any way pages because they would be read often,
rather than serve the purpose of being a reference site.

> The high ground is held by academia, something we aren't looking to
> replicate because of the policy on original research. I think utility
> is also in the eye of the beholder.  Depending on which industry you
> work in, the utility of articles on entertainment and those on higher
> maths are subjective qualities.  
We are committed to the idea that the same sort of survey writing should
be applied to say, "Star Wars" and astronomy, though. In the sense of
"being a good place to look up" either. That is the "utility" of
reference material. This is the same axis in another guise, I feel. The
goal of a generalist encyclopedia is surely to become a reputed source
largely independent of topic. (And we can perfectly well aim to
assimilate the results of academic research; in fact over a wide range
of topics this is exactly what we should do.)
> And surely blurring our still in beta stage inclusion guidance is a
> good idea, because life does not tend to happen in an absolute
> manner.  The lack of adaptability in the minds of some of our
> contributors can sometimes harm us.  I've never worked out a way of
> promoting the idea of an open mind and a case by case approach.  I
> can't help but feel an encyclopedia built by the masses through
> consensus editing might help rather than hinder that goal.  If that
> means moving to meet the audience, so be it.  I believe it worked for
> Mohammed.
The site is dynamic, and should remain so. Plenty of codification has
gone on, and I agree that it shouldn't be regarded as an "absolute" just
because it has happened that way. I find the generally tendency to have
"rules" predominate a bit depressing, if said rules don't arise from a
simple point which ought to command general assent.

A recent grief of mine at CfD, though, might be good for a role play
session. I found an advocate for "pre-emptive disambiguation for
category titles"; I argued against this. For article titles, as we know,
you don't pre-empt: [[Arthur Atkinson (architect)]] gets moved to
[[Arthur Atkinson]] if there are no other articles of that personal
name, even though there might be in the future. But the discussion was
whether a category name that _might_ be construed as ambiguous should be
made into a more verbose form that is less likely to be ambiguous. Is
this some rule that someone has come up with and wants to impose,
against common sense? Or was I just defending the status quo against an
idea that should be adopted to improve the 'pedia? Not so clear on the
ground.

Charles



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[Surreptitiousness]

Charles Matthews wrote:
> Downmarket, in my terms, is slanting content
> policy to favour in any way pages because they would be read often,
> rather than serve the purpose of being a reference site.
>  
Not sure I can understand the difference between being read often and
being referred too. But I think what's happened here is that assumptions
are being made. You go on to say:
> We are committed to the idea that the same sort of survey writing should
> be applied to say, "Star Wars" and astronomy, though. In the sense of
> "being a good place to look up" either. That is the "utility" of
> reference material. This is the same axis in another guise, I feel. The
> goal of a generalist encyclopedia is surely to become a reputed source
> largely independent of topic. (And we can perfectly well aim to
> assimilate the results of academic research; in fact over a wide range
> of topics this is exactly what we should do.)
>  
And I don't find anything in this to disagree with, and yet we disagree,
so obviously one of us or both of us are making assumptions.  I don't
see reader input into what we do as a bad thing, for starters.  In fact,
I thought the very ethos of Wikipedia was that reader input was
welcome.  I'm only here because the article I wanted to look up didn't
exist, so I created it. I sourced it, I followed all the style guidance
I could find, still made mistakes, but I added information to Wikipedia,
moving from a reader to an editor. So there's reader input.  If I wanted
to do that now, I couldn't. So we've lost that reader input, and so
we've lost a vital check on ensuring we are "a reputed source largely
independent of topic". I don't see a reader survey suddenly causing us
to stop writing in an encyclopedic manner, by which I mean citing
sources and the like, because I don't think there will ever be a strong
enough consensus to overturn the notion that Wikipedia is an
encyclopedia.  If there is, it will be an interesting moment that might
encourage a fork or two. I also agree that we can assimilate the results
of academic research. Fortunately, that wasn't the point I was arguing
against.  The point I was making was that we were not the high-ground;
we don't exist to publish academic research.  Kind of like the
distinction between Science and New Scientist, we're closer to the
latter than the former, and the latter is a mid-market publication while
the former is aimed at the high-end.

> A recent grief of mine at CfD, though, might be good for a role play
> session. I found an advocate for "pre-emptive disambiguation for
> category titles"; I argued against this. For article titles, as we know,
> you don't pre-empt: [[Arthur Atkinson (architect)]] gets moved to
> [[Arthur Atkinson]] if there are no other articles of that personal
> name, even though there might be in the future. But the discussion was
> whether a category name that _might_ be construed as ambiguous should be
> made into a more verbose form that is less likely to be ambiguous. Is
> this some rule that someone has come up with and wants to impose,
> against common sense? Or was I just defending the status quo against an
> idea that should be adopted to improve the 'pedia? Not so clear on the
> ground.
>  

I think you just had a difference of opinion based on your respective
viewpoints. Did the debate generate a consensus?

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[Charles Matthews]

David Goodman wrote:

> So put them in another space: call it directory space.
>
> The problem is that having a distinct article is treated as a question
> of merit--we word  things this way ourselves: "deserves an article".
> Thus there is a continual pressure from spammers and hobbyists to
> include a separate article for every company, lawyer,  band, author,
> athlete, railway station, street,  toy, song, football match, and
> fictional character. (note that 1/ for some of these we do include
> articles on all, some not 2/that it's easier to decide on people, than
> objects 3/that the list does not reflect my own views about what is
> more or less suitable)
>
> But the question should be content. We could very well say we should
> have content on every one of the above, although not articles. We
> might even find it easier to write such content if we didn't have the
> overhead  & metadata necessarily associated with separate articles.
>
>  

Well, it's a theory. Books are traditionally organised in chapters,
supposed to address one topic. Lecture courses, too, are typically
divided into lectures each of which addresses one issue (though not
perhaps with such a clear focus). Our idea of an article is that it
starts with a topic sentence, within a lead that describes the rough
scope of the article. At present we are still holding to some version of
the old idea that "less is more": we don't allow articles that scroll on
for ever, and we try to have people adopt a concise style with good
focus. There will always be the argument that this is faintly
ridiculous, and "more is more". But there are huge advantages to the way
we now operate: we can for example think in terms of off-topic pieces of
information as "weeds", i.e. plants in the wrong place. It is certainly
true that there is maintenance to be done when topics are not allowed to
ramble. But I think a Wikipedia in which info was just "appended"
somewhere, rather than quite carefully placed by definite topic, would
be harder to use. (Rather than the usual suspects like manga, try
thinking about a topic such as social history. It benefits hugely when
efforts are made to bring it into focus by choosing a particular topic
for discussion, rather than just adding what amounts to historical local
colour to a scene.)

Charles


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[Charles Matthews]

Surreptitiousness wrote:
> And I don't find anything in this to disagree with, and yet we
> disagree, so obviously one of us or both of us are making
> assumptions.  I don't see reader input into what we do as a bad thing,
> for starters.  In fact, I thought the very ethos of Wikipedia was that
> reader input was welcome.  
It is welcome in the form of participation, certainly. The question is
more whether lurkers should be stakeholders. Traditionally what is
respected is showing the better way, rather than compiling a wishlist.
> I'm only here because the article I wanted to look up didn't exist, so
> I created it. I sourced it, I followed all the style guidance I could
> find, still made mistakes, but I added information to Wikipedia,
> moving from a reader to an editor. So there's reader input.  If I
> wanted to do that now, I couldn't.
Why? You would be better advised to draft in userspace rather than just
type straight into the box, but I don't understand why you think it
doesn't still work in principle.

> So we've lost that reader input, and so we've lost a vital check on
> ensuring we are "a reputed source largely independent of topic". I
> don't see a reader survey suddenly causing us to stop writing in an
> encyclopedic manner, by which I mean citing sources and the like,
> because I don't think there will ever be a strong enough consensus to
> overturn the notion that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.  If there is,
> it will be an interesting moment that might encourage a fork or two. I
> also agree that we can assimilate the results of academic research.
> Fortunately, that wasn't the point I was arguing against.  The point I
> was making was that we were not the high-ground; we don't exist to
> publish academic research.  

No, we exist to regurgitate it.
> Kind of like the distinction between Science and New Scientist, we're
> closer to the latter than the former, and the latter is a mid-market
> publication while the former is aimed at the high-end.
>
I'm glad we haven't gone the way of New Scientist, then (yet).

>> A recent grief of mine at CfD, though, might be good for a role play
>> session. I found an advocate for "pre-emptive disambiguation for
>> category titles"; I argued against this. For article titles, as we
>> know, you don't pre-empt: [[Arthur Atkinson (architect)]] gets moved
>> to [[Arthur Atkinson]] if there are no other articles of that
>> personal name, even though there might be in the future. But the
>> discussion was whether a category name that _might_ be construed as
>> ambiguous should be made into a more verbose form that is less likely
>> to be ambiguous. Is this some rule that someone has come up with and
>> wants to impose, against common sense? Or was I just defending the
>> status quo against an idea that should be adopted to improve the
>> 'pedia? Not so clear on the ground.
>>  
> I think you just had a difference of opinion based on your respective
> viewpoints. Did the debate generate a consensus?
>
>

The closure was a compromise, rather than a consensus emerging.
([[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 September 11#Deans of
Lincoln]], for mavens.) While "Dean" and "Lincoln" were both deemed
individually ambiguous, one side only was disambiguated. But not for a
specific clash. So in a sense I lost the argument, it seems. But it
could have been worse.

Charles






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[Surreptitiousness]

Charles Matthews wrote:
> The question is
> more whether lurkers should be stakeholders. Traditionally what is
> respected is showing the better way, rather than compiling a wishlist.
>  
The best way to solve whether lurkers should be stakeholders is to ask
them. Showing the better way would be fine.  Have we agreed on a better
way yet?
> Why? You would be better advised to draft in userspace rather than just
> type straight into the box, but I don't understand why you think it
> doesn't still work in principle.
>  
I can't do now what I did then.  IP's cannot create new articles, and
you have to wait four days after creating an account to create a new
article.  You just lost me. It doesn't still work either in principle or
in practise.
>> The point I
>> was making was that we were not the high-ground; we don't exist to
>> publish academic research.  
>>    
> No, we exist to regurgitate it.
>  
Hmm. Not sure I agree, but I think we'd head into a primary versus
secondary sourcing argument. I'd certainly argue our mission would be to
contextualise and explain the research through recourse to secondary
sources, rather than to simply regurgitate it. I think there's a viable
argument that regurgitating it would fall foul of NOT NEWS.
>
> The closure was a compromise, rather than a consensus emerging.
> ([[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 September 11#Deans of
> Lincoln]], for mavens.) While "Dean" and "Lincoln" were both deemed
> individually ambiguous, one side only was disambiguated. But not for a
> specific clash. So in a sense I lost the argument, it seems. But it
> could have been worse.
>
>  
Hmm.  Yes, interesting debate.  That's one of the reasons I avoid CFD
these days. I think a major point that got missed is that no-one asked
the question of at what point would context not do the disambiguating.  
Only then would there be a need for disambiguating. There's been a lot
of thought about CFD over the years, and how to address the
shortcomings, but nothing has ever gotten nailed down.  There's a
conflict between consensus can change and speedy deletion criteria as
currently installed at the moment, and there's also a lot of confusion
as to what categories actually are and how they work.  I think a lot of
the issues with categories are down to the fact that we never nailed
down what they were for when they were implemented, and now everyone has
a different view on how to categorise. I still can't work out how, if
you are looking at an article in Category:Deans of Lincoln, it won't be
clear what Lincoln it is.  But I've had this argument a number of times:
people seem to like standards just to have standards.  If a parent
category says Lincoln, Lincolnshire, so must all sub-cats. Otherwise, it
looks untidy.

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[Surreptitiousness]

Charles Matthews wrote:

>
> At present we are still holding to some version of
> the old idea that "less is more": we don't allow articles that scroll on
> for ever, and we try to have people adopt a concise style with good
> focus. There will always be the argument that this is faintly
> ridiculous, and "more is more". But there are huge advantages to the way
> we now operate: we can for example think in terms of off-topic pieces of
> information as "weeds", i.e. plants in the wrong place. It is certainly
> true that there is maintenance to be done when topics are not allowed to
> ramble. But I think a Wikipedia in which info was just "appended"
> somewhere, rather than quite carefully placed by definite topic, would
> be harder to use.

To carry on the plant analogy, there are instances when sometimes plants
get too big, either for their pots or for the garden.  The approach
takjen depends on the plant.  Some plants you split, some plants you
prune and some plants you re-pot. I'm not sure I'd ever see a garden
manual direct you to never split a plant, so I'm not sure why we should
have guidance which can be used to claim you should never split an
article.  I fail to see why it cannot be left to editorial judgement as
to when to split, and to consensus as to whether the split is a good
idea or not. It's all well and good framing an argument for the worst
possible instances, but that misses the point that we're really looking
for best practises, and best practise would be to do what's best for the
encyclopedia. To go back to the idea that books have chapters, we can
use that approach on Wikipedia, and view each article as a distinct
chapter.  Obviously this requires effort and thought, care and
attention, but I think it is better than the approach which only allows
notable subjects to be spun out. After all, once you have spun out all
the notable sunbjects from your main article, what have you got left
there?  And let's not forget that if we're looking at books, we have to
take into account appendixes, something you have to fight to justify on
Wikipedia.  That list you want to split from your large FA?  Hmm, is it
a notable list? That list you want to include in your paper based
subject specific encyclopedia?  Certainly, Appendix A. I don't pretend
to have any answers, all I'm asking for is thought and an attempt to
address the actuality in front of editors rather than underhand attempts
to protect an entire empire of rules.  But I think on that at least we
agree. We both appear to want fewer rules.

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[Charles Matthews]

Surreptitiousness wrote:
>> Why? You would be better advised to draft in userspace rather than
>> just type straight into the box, but I don't understand why you think
>> it doesn't still work in principle.
>>  
> I can't do now what I did then.  IP's cannot create new articles, and
> you have to wait four days after creating an account to create a new
> article.
In fact "A user who edits through an account they have registered, may
immediately create pages in any namespace (except the MediaWiki
namespace, and limited to 8 per minute)" while "Autoconfirmed status is
required to move pages, edit semi-protected pages, and upload files or
upload a new version of an existing file". Seems there are
misconceptions. (From [[Wikipedia:User access levels]]).

> You just lost me. It doesn't still work either in principle or in
> practise.
>>> The point I was making was that we were not the high-ground; we
>>> don't exist to publish academic research.      
>> No, we exist to regurgitate it.
>>  
> Hmm. Not sure I agree, but I think we'd head into a primary versus
> secondary sourcing argument. I'd certainly argue our mission would be
> to contextualise and explain the research through recourse to
> secondary sources, rather than to simply regurgitate it. I think
> there's a viable argument that regurgitating it would fall foul of NOT
> NEWS.
>>
>> The closure was a compromise, rather than a consensus emerging.
>> ([[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 September 11#Deans of
>> Lincoln]], for mavens.) While "Dean" and "Lincoln" were both deemed
>> individually ambiguous, one side only was disambiguated. But not for
>> a specific clash. So in a sense I lost the argument, it seems. But it
>> could have been worse.
>>
>>  
> Hmm.  Yes, interesting debate.  That's one of the reasons I avoid CFD
> these days. I think a major point that got missed is that no-one asked
> the question of at what point would context not do the
> disambiguating.  Only then would there be a need for disambiguating.

And only if the category page wasn't there to help out with an
explanation. I really don't see that you can make as full an explanation
of the category in the title as you could with a couple of paragraphs on
the category page. It seems to me that the editable part of the page is
provided for that.

Charles


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[Charles Matthews]

Surreptitiousness wrote:

> And let's not forget that if we're looking at books, we have to take
> into account appendixes, something you have to fight to justify on
> Wikipedia.  That list you want to split from your large FA?  Hmm, is
> it a notable list? That list you want to include in your paper based
> subject specific encyclopedia?  Certainly, Appendix A. I don't pretend
> to have any answers, all I'm asking for is thought and an attempt to
> address the actuality in front of editors rather than underhand
> attempts to protect an entire empire of rules.  But I think on that at
> least we agree. We both appear to want fewer rules.
>

Sadly, there are also rules about what is and isn't an appropriate use
of an appendix, in the Chicago Manual of Style and elsewhere ...

Charles



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[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews@...> wrote:

> Surreptitiousness wrote:
>> Andrew Gray wrote:
>>
>>> I think we can easily distinguish, though; the
>>> notability-by-association thing really needs most of the set to be
>>> desirable topics for articles (*most* ski runs are interesting, or at
>>> least let us assume they are for this discussion!) and for that set to
>>> be well-defined (you can always tell if a ski run is in Australia or
>>> not).
>>>
>> Yes, this is exactly the sort of gradation we should have and should be
>> able to implement, but is also the sort of gradation that the
>> NOTINHERITED group of editors seek to stamp out. The notability guidance
>> has also become a spanner in the works of Summary Style.  You can't now
>> split an article up if it is too long unless you split it in a way such
>> that each separate article is notable by itself. And even if you manage
>> to do that, there are editors who will accuse you of forking.
>>
> Rightly, in my view. I come down on the (conservative) side of this
> discussion, and agree with the now-ancient decision that article space
> should not admit subpages (which is what subarticles without credible
> free-standing topics amount to).

An example I saw recently that made me think of the discussions over
NOTINHERITED, and notability of daughter articles, and how far summary
style should go, was a recent featured article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson%27s_early_life

It helps that the main article is also featured:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson

And there is plenty of precedent for expanding on long articles
through subarticles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Early_lives_by_individual

25 there and counting:

*Augustus
*Pope Benedict XVI
*George W. Bush
*George Gordon Byron
*Charles Darwin
*Hugo Chávez
*Marcus Aurelius
*Jesus
*John Milton
*Pope John Paul II
*Samuel Johnson
*Abraham Lincoln
*John McCain
*Keith Miller
*Marilyn Monroe
*Isaac Newton
*Barack Obama
*Pope Pius XII
*Plato
*Samuel Coleridge
*Joseph Smith, Jr.
*Jan Smuts
*Stalin
*Rabindranath Tagore
*George Washington

Some you would expect there to be enough material for this sort of
treatment. Others less so. I like the idea of doing this sort of thing
for very long biographcal articles, but seeing how it has developed in
some cases, I'm not so sure. There are some articles I think should
not be treated this way. The material out there is enough for one
article, and that should be enough.

I did look for a category of "middle years" (or "middle life") and
"later years" (or "later life") articles, but those seem less common.
In fact, we seem to only have two "later life" articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later_life_of_Winston_Churchill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_later_life

We seem to have no actual articles on "middle years". Most such
articles are probably specific ones about events and periods in a
person's career and life. e.g. Darwin's Beagle Voyage.

There are templates grouping such life "segments" (or chapters) together:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:IsaacNewtonSegments

That's 6 subarticles (actually, one is a link to a section in the main article).

Barack Obama seems to have 14 subarticles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Barack_Obama_sidebar

More examples of biographical navboxes here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_and_person_navbox_templates

It seems a given that for some topics where there is a lot of material
and a lot of writers and a lot of interest, there will be a sprawl
across lots of articles clustering around a central topic. Whether
that is good in the long run, I'm not sure. The focus should be on the
main article, but sometimes building up the surrounding articles
(while the main article remains in a relatively poor state) can help
build towards the main article being re-written as a summary of the
subarticles. The other approach is to write the main article, and then
spin sections off into new article as more material is added. I've
seen both approaches used and both argued against (for different
reasons).

Carcharoth

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[Steve Bennett-8]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:02 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews@...> wrote:
> OK, but take the argument that there aren't so many ski runs in
> Australia, and transfer it to some micro-sub-genre of heavy metal:
> "There just aren't so many perishthrashglam bands here, so we think it's
> just fine to have articles on all of them". Doesn't look so good.

Point taken, but I would distinguish between categories that are
arbitrarily finite, and those that are necessarily finite. It would
theoretically be possible to have maybe one or two more ski resorts in
Australia - but no new mountains are being created, so it's limited.
And even the smallest resorts are pretty big operations (well, in
Australia anyway - the smallest NZ fields are run by ski clubs), have
been around for decades, have their own postcodes..etc etc.

Or to put it differently: the bar to entry to being a ski resort is
much higher than the bar to entry to being a perishthrashglam band, so
merely by existing you've done something worth writing about.

> The connection of ski runs with the naming of geographical features
> probably saves them (the cavalry coming) in numerous cases. It would be
> perverse to say an article about the feature couldn't mention the ski
> area appropriately, and include a relevant category.

Yeah, although the mapping isn't one-to-one. In Australia, ski resorts
correspond roughly with mountains, but in other countries, many
resorts can share one mountain.

> Yes it is sui generis, but WP:NOT is part of that, not an add-on. I'm
> somewhat concerned that a reliance on "reader survey" will indeed tend
> to blur all tried-and-tested criteria for inclusion, for the sake of
> other stuff that is not too useful (e.g. "I wish you'd include more
> movie rumors because I really like to read about them"). Downmarket beckons.

Yes, the question about what to include and why is a difficult one
that there really isn't much agreement on. I would much rather see a
definitive reason like "We don't include articles about potential
movies because they are too subject to abuse" rather than "We don't
include articles about potential movies because traditional
encyclopaedias never did, and we're pretending we're a traditional
encyclopaedia".

Steve

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