Jump to content

Wikipedia:Historical archive/Policy/Notability/Importance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< Wikipedia:Historical archive | Policy | Notability
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Wetman (talk | contribs) at 22:51, 16 September 2004 (Disinformation as postmodern ironic art). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
This is a proposed policy. For the record, the originator of this proposal is gracefool (26 August 2004).

Articles need to be of sufficient importance to be included in Wikipedia. This policy attempts to define which subjects are suitable for Wikipedia. As such, it is an amendment and clarification of the policies What Wikipedia is not and Check your fiction. It is also a companion to the proposed policy Criteria for inclusion of biographies.

Discussion and proposed amendments to this policy are welcomed on the talk page.

Why this policy is necessary

There is widespread debate (mostly on various "votes for deletion" pages and Wikipedia talk:Fame and importance) on whether the lack of notability or importance be a legitimate reason to delete an article - in other words, what kinds of articles should exist at Wikipedia. Some think that verifiability is the only criterion for inclusion; others believe that some measure of "importance" is necessary:

From Wikipedia:Check your fiction:

  • "The articles on fictional characters are going out of control. Simpson, Star War, Star Trek, Harry Potter. A strict guideline is definitely a priority." Anon
  • "[We should] avoid context duplication and flooding of the article space with what many consider to be unencyclopedic fringe material." Anon
  • "We don't write about every fictional character. If we have more fictional characters than physicists listed it is because that is what people prefer writing about. Whether a character (fictional or otherwise) should be on their own page or page about whatever it is they are related to should probably depend on how much there is to write about them." Angela

Re taking advantage of the fact that Wiki is not paper:

  • Why shouldn't there be a page for every Simpsons character, and even a table listing every episode, all neatly crosslinked and introduced by a shorter central page like the above? Why shouldn't every episode name in the list link to a separate page for each of those episodes, with links to reviews and trivia? Why shouldn't each of the 100+ poker games I describe have its own page with rules, strategy, and opinions? Hard disks are cheap. Anon
I agree with this one completely. --Jimbo Wales"

The above conflicting viewpoints represent a large number of discussions over what should be included in Wikipedia. These arguments arise because official policy on this is unclear; it is not mentioned in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, and the only obvious mention of which subjects deserve articles (in Wikipedia:Check your fiction) is not well defined:

Do not unnecessarily create small articles about largely irrelevant fictional characters, locations, objects and so on that can be better integrated into larger articles.

What does "largely irrelevant" mean? This policy attempts to reach a consensus on this, so confusion and debate on article inclusion can be reduced.

Current relevant policies

  1. Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not
    1. m:Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia (not official policy?)
  2. Wikipedia:No original research
  3. Wikipedia:Check your fiction
  4. Wikipedia:Verifiability#Obscure topics (proposed policy)
  5. Wikipedia:Informative (proposed policy)
  6. Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia

(For individual examples of what people have thought should be included in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Precedents and Wikipedia:What's in, what's out.)

The policies listed above seem to support a policy similar to the following:

Policy

An article is important, and deserving of inclusion in Wikipedia, unless:

  1. it is original research, or
  2. it is unverifiable, or
  3. it is uninformative, or
  4. it is unexpandable (it will never be more than a stub, and could never be a perfect article due to its subject matter), or
  5. the subject of the article is of potential interest to only a small number (less than 100) people, or
  6. it does not otherwise belong in Wikipedia.

If an article is "important" according to the above (of course, this may be controversial, and can be discussed on the article's talk page, using this policy as a guideline), it should not be deleted on the basis of it being:

  1. insufficiently important, famous or relevant, or
  2. currently small or a stub.

Alternative policies

Some people feel that some articles about specialized subjects, especially fictional subjects, should not be included in Wikipedia, or should not have their own articles, even if they are "important" according to the above policy. Articles agreed to be "important" according to the above policy may still be considered "unimportant" if:

  1. the article is about a fictional subject, and any of the following apply:
    • the article fails the "100 year test" (In 100 years time will anyone without a direct connection to the individual find the article useful?)
      • Many, many articles fail this test.
      • Moreover, this is impossible to determine.
    • the article is small (e.g., less than 1000 words)
      • Many notable articles fail this test.
    • the subject fails a Google test for importance
      • This is very subjective.

Disinformation as postmodern ironic art

Does Wikipedia justify inclusion of ironic disinformation as an acceptable art form? As a right to self-expression? Do believable hoaxes, given weight by Talk page contentions, undercut Wikipedia's credibility? Do such entries have importance?

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Historical_archive/Policy/Notability/Importance&oldid=5932937"