Is there a name for this? I've been noticing (and being frustrated by) it a lot.
I'll give you the shortest defense of deletionism I can write:
There are two problems with non-notable articles in Wikipedia.
The first is definitional. An encyclopedia is a tertiary source: a roadmap and synopsis of existing sources. Non-notable sources are by definition those for which existing reliable sources are absent. All such articles are, in a very simple sense, "original research". One of the most basic founding principles of Wikipedia, as old as NPOV, is "no original research".
The second is pragmatic. Wikipedia is committed to minimizing error. Entropy exerts tremendous force on the project, which occupies extremely valuable Internet real estate. Every article on Wikipedia is in a sense a commitment by the Wikipedia community to mount a defense against bias, advertisement, promotion, vandalism, and basic inaccuracy. The notability requirement, which is at bottom based not on "fame" but on the quality of sources available for a topic, is an extremely reasonable boundary to put on the expectations Wikipedia can have of its unpaid editors to combat that entropy: to wit, that we will do so only when available sources make the job possible to do in the first place.
> An encyclopedia is a tertiary source: a roadmap and synopsis of existing sources.Non-notable sources are by definition those for which existing reliable sources are absent. All such articles are, in a very simple sense, "original research". One of the most basic founding principles of Wikipedia, as old as NPOV, is "no original research".... we will do so only when available sources make the job possible to do in the first place.
Why not just incorporate that into verifiability then? As I understand you, you're arguing that (1) non-notability generally implies un-verifiable, (2) Wikipedia info should be verifiable, and so (3) Wikipedia info should be notable.
Isn't it easier to demonstrate objectively that an article contains unverifiable info than it's non-notable?
Try to tell that to the guys who feel like they own the /dev/random article on Wiki-DE:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:/dev/random#.2Fdev....
An "IP" (which is basically a kind of online racism, because ostensibly "IPs" are not addresses but a certain kind of people) tried to correct the usual /dev/urandom misinformation. It was reverted, called vandalism and the user bakunin finally stated that he reverted because "the discussion was getting on his nerves" and "even if the change was factually correct", it was obviously vandalism.
I know why I don't try to contribute to Wikipedia. When the half-time of donations to the project can be measured in minutes, it's just not worth it.
But while I'm not going to say that the way Wikipedia deals with expertise is perfect (it is deeply imperfect), there's a sense in which this is the way it's supposed to be.
If I have important things to say about the LRNG, why would I write them in Wikipedia? Should I not write my own articles, or a chapter of a book, or an academic paper, and let people who want to write encyclopedia articles cite them? In my own work, I can obey whatever guidelines I want to, and write in whatever fashion is most gratifying and effective for me.
I didn't say it was, I asked if it was.
> Non-notable sources are by definition those for which existing reliable sources are absent.
This would also make them non-verifiable, no?
> Wikipedia is committed to minimizing error.
That's fair.
> The XY problem is asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem. This leads to enormous amounts of wasted time and energy, both on the part of people asking for help, and on the part of those providing help.
> - User wants to do X.
> - User doesn't know how to do X, but thinks they can fumble their way to a solution if they can just manage to do Y.
> - User doesn't know how to do Y either.
> - User asks for help with Y.
> - Others try to help user with Y, but are confused because Y seems like a strange problem to want to solve.
> - After much interaction and wasted time, it finally becomes clear that the user really wants help with X, and that Y wasn't even a suitable solution for X.
I'm sure that's not the name of the phenomenon you are asking but it is certainly a closely related one.
- We need to improve X, something that is easy to measure improvement in.
- I've noticed that Y somewhat correlates with X.
- Let's make an effort to improve Y!
What can an encyclopedia say about a band that has a website and a Spotify page, but isn't big enough to attract attention from the press or music critics? We can certainly say that they are a band, anyone can see that. We can say they have 10,000 plays on Spotify, and list their current members. Maybe we can dig up a newspaper article saying that they performed someplace. But beyond that, what is there? They've probably got a biography on their website, but it's in no way verifiable, and the only person required to believe it is the guy putting it on the Wikipedia page. Everyone after that will read it on Wikipedia and assume it's 95% likely to be true. And so on. We're left with barebones facts that are of no help to anyone looking for reliable information about the band. All of this applies equally well to little-known authors, random Indian corporations, and your cat. If all we have to go on is a couple of primary sources and maybe a passing mention in the press, what is there to say without giving undeserved credence to the primary sources?
When notability is assessed, don't think "is this topic something that will be googled by someone looking for more information?" Think about the role of Wikipedia and what we can offer by providing an overview and references to secondary sources. The notability guidelines are about ensuring that there is a baseline of quality facts that we can provide to readers.
But really, I'm just rewriting the ideas of the consensus based notability guideline, which is much better written and specific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
The fact that the band exists and has a newspaper article about it is helpful. Otherwise it's article will be very short. So what?
> All of this applies equally well to little-known authors, random Indian corporations, and your cat.
Yes to the first two. (My cat has zero verifiable information about it.) They will have very tiny stub articles. So what?
> If all we have to go on is a couple of primary sources and maybe a passing mention in the press, what is there to say without giving undeserved credence to the primary sources?
So don't say anything else.
I really, really don't understand what's motivating your position. I'm trying!
> But really, I'm just rewriting the ideas of the consensus based notability guideline, which is much better written and specific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
That page is almost exclusively about defining notability (which, because of the intrinsic vagueness, necessarily takes a long time and is mostly unsuccessful). The only part that's directly about the reasons for the requirement is this subsection:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#Why_we_ha...
And the only argument it brings up that I didn't address is this: "We require multiple sources so that we can write a reasonably balanced article that complies with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, rather than representing only one author's point of view." This, again, is something that can easily be addressed by just requiring verifiability to include coverage by multiple sources. (Even in highly notable articles, there are a large number of facts that are only verified through a single source; this isn't a reason to delete the fact.)
You're right that the article has some marginal value. I think many deletionists would even agree.
The problem is risk/reward. Every WP article is a commitment to defend a topic against entropy and malice. Every article is part of the attack surface exposed to vandals and spammers.
So in the view of most of Wikipedia, articles that are fated to forever remain "stubs" have negative net value.
Reasonable people can obviously disagree about this, but I find the deletionist argument against zombie stub articles to be very compelling.
But at this point you've basically given up any attempt of civil community processes and you're doing things not because they are right, but because not doing them might give the enemy a speculative advantage.
But that's very much not the case with other stub articles, or even other zombie articles (where sources have no doubt been permanently exhausted, but the sources we have today make room for a solid 100 word article).
All over some moderately important issue, at best.
You only need to lock stub articles that repeatedly have people add unverifiable info to them.
Finally, if the pages doesn't exist, then anyone who wants to exercise the "option...to quickly add coverage" doesn't have access to the info that would have been contained in the stub!
I can't understand why you think one can't defend against this stuff using mechanism that don't lead to effects like the one described by rsync https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13159057
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161015
(better if replies go there too)
>rsync.net has been mentioned in the press widely over the course of over 10 years - everything from articles about our warrant canary to articles about our ZFS support. In fact, other wikipedia pages mention and discuss rsync.net.
So it's had some coverage related to first commercial use of a warrant canary and is discussed in that context. It commercially implemented a feature of rsync (the application) that should be talked about on the page about rsync the application. But what can be said about rsync.net? Maybe someone read about their warrant canary and wants to know more about this company...but no independent source has written about who they are and what makes them so savvy with opsec and rsync. Anything outside those narrow topics is original research or primary sources. I think things are working as intended.
The hypertext. The names of the band members can be links that lead to the articles on individual members. There can be a section describing the music style, with quotations of review sites or just the band homepage and the part that says they are a neo-core-techno-metal or whatever can have links to articles that explain what those things are.
Laziness?