User:Simetrical



I'm an Orthodox Jewish Wikipedian whose interests lie in computers, technology, mathematics, linguistics, science, religion, and so on. Below are my thoughts and ideas on Wikipedia, which I hope you'll find interesting at the least. If you think I've left out a valid criticism, or could have worded something better, or anything of the sort, go ahead and edit&mdash;I don't mind constructive edits to my user page (although I may, of course, revert them). Treat this like any other page, and improve it as best you can. Only if we get into an edit dispute, I win. ;)

Notability = none
Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. It has enough space to contain any amount of notable and non-notable information. Therefore, there is no reason it should not be the encyclopedia to end all encyclopedias&mdash;no information that is encyclopedic should be removed.

So what's encyclopedic? Encyclopedias, of course, must inherently follow certain rules as to the content they include; otherwise they wouldn't be encyclopedias, they'd be something else. I think that a proper encyclopedia must 1) contain only verifiable information, dealing exclusively with facts and not opinions (although facts about opinions are of course fine); 2) predominantly consist of some kind of narrative following the normal conventions of prose (simple lists and raw data are only encyclopedic as article indices or potential article indices, or as accompaniment to an article, not as sources of information in their own right); and 3) consist of a set of articles arranged topically for purposes of reference (a history book is not an encyclopedia because it's arranged by time or place and generally includes something of an overarching narrative, rather than being set up as a set of basically separate articles). Wikipedia must also adhere to neutrality, of course, and it shouldn't duplicate material found in its principal sister projects (dictionary definitions can sometimes be encyclopedic under the above definition), but otherwise I see no reason to restrict its purview beyond the restrictions inherent to the concept of an encyclopedia.

So in other words, I think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia to end all encyclopedias. Anything that would fit into any encyclopedia, of any sort, should be eligible for inclusion in Wikipedia, provided it's neutral. And wouldn't an Encyclopedia of Murfreesboro be conceivable? Wouldn't such an encyclopedia perhaps mention this Bumpshack? Or what about an Encyclopedia of Blogs? I believe that there is no reason for Wikipedia to be anything less than The Free Encyclopedia. And that is why I oppose the deletion of anything verifiable from Wikipedia.

Arguments in favor

 * 1) This will encourage users to join in and improve Wikipedia. See Eric Burns' remarks about Wikipedia as of November 1, 2004; compare to his remarks as of November 20, 2005.  This is surely typical of deletions (or attempted deletions) of eager contributors' minor additions to our project.  Who wouldn't be discouraged if his work was deleted? Sure, you might say, the article may not have been worth much anyway.  But the author's future contributions might be broader.  Dedication to specific articles might eventually become dedication to the project as a whole.  People like that are going to be turned away if their articles are deleted.
 * 2) Anything else is contrary to the Wikimedia Foundation's goals. The slogan of Wikimedia fundraisers is "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."  How is this goal being accomplished if encyclopedic articles deemed non-notable are deleted?  Where will this verifiable human knowledge go?  What those advocating a notability requirement are saying, essentially, is that Wikimedia's fundraising slogan should not, in a small way, be true.  This is not a decision that we, Wikipedians, should make&mdash;the scope of the project should be in the hands of the Wikimedia Foundation itself. At present, of course, the Foundation has decided to let us decide.  But our decision should conform to the goals of the project we work on, not least because of the importance and laudability of those goals themselves.
 * 3) This will reduce systemic bias in selection of articles. What's "notable"?  Even among those who agree notability should be a criterion, there's disagreement on some of the finer points.  Look at the webcomic articles that have been deleted for non-notability&mdash;why are they less notable than a list of all Fletcher-class destroyers?  Why hasn't anyone put the latter up for deletion?  Because, I suspect, many of us have a deeply-rooted feeling that certain types of information are "valuable" and certain types are not.  Because the one is "serious stuff", military-related, whereas the other is "mere" popular culture.  Isn't this non-neutral?

Arguments against

 * 1) This will allow all sorts of nonsense on Wikipedia. Why couldn't Bob Smith put up Fluffy (cat belonging to Bob Smith)?  He could post thousands of hours of video showcasing every major event in his life, proving that his account of his life is accurate.
 * Counter-argument: If he actually uploaded thousands of hours of video proving the veracity of every single point of his account, yes, technically he could make an article on that. That this would occur is vanishingly unlikely, however; eventually, over the years, someone would probably be willing to do it, but even then, where's the harm?  No, nobody is ever going to read the article, but so what?  There will be no links to it, so it will just be stuck in a few categories and never looked at.  Nobody's hurt, and doubtless the guy who added it will be delighted to be given a place to showcase his beloved pet, and will direct his friends and relatives to the article.  We only stand to gain.
 * Counter-counter-argument: Fine, so let's say Bob Smith puts up Bob Smith's stated opinions on the independence of Taiwan, and cites his own blog? The fact that the blog exists is clearly sufficient evidence that someone writing under the alias "Bob Smith" has stated the opinions in question.
 * Counter-counter-counter-argument: Not sure how to answer this yet. Should there be a notability requirement for opinions?  Possibly.  As always, feel free to edit this space if you have any ideas.
 * 1) Categories will be horribly confusing. If I had to wade through 12,985 articles in Category:American writers, I'd never be able to find what I'm looking for.
 * Counter-argument: The existing category system needs to be redone in any case. There are already categories that contain so many articles that they have to be cut up into tiny pieces (Category:American writers is an example, in fact).  As now, any overly large categories can be cut up into subcategories with no major loss until a better solution comes around.  One part of a solution would probably be dividing some categories into "Non-notable", "Notable", and "Famous" subcategories.
 * 1) It will make Wikipedia look bad. Who's going to trust an encyclopedia that has articles on every single Star Trek episode in history?
 * Counter-argument: A lot of people. As in, roughly 84% of the Internet.  We already have lengthy articles on every single Star Trek episode, and nobody seems to hold it against us.  It just makes us more useful as a reference source, not less.
 * 1) Non-notable articles are a waste of the Mediawiki Foundation's server space.
 * Counter-argument: That's for the Mediawiki Foundation to decide, not us. They have not imposed any limitations on how much content we can add, and the founder of the Foundation supports the inclusion of non-notable articles.