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Essays Low‑impact  | |||||||||
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Just because Clinton's high school band "Three Blind Mice" doesn't get a Wikipedia article, it doesn't mean the band is excluded from Wikipedia. The band could still appear in Clinton's article in his high school education section. OnBeyondZebrax • TALK 02:11, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
- Actually the band does have an article: 3 Kings (jazz trio). Unsurprisingly, there is actually other coverage of the band. That said "it could be merged" is not a particularly satisfactory approach because deletionists would trollishly argue that it must not be merged because it is not notable. One does actually encounter that sort of devious wikilawyering. James500 ( talk) 09:26, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
RogDel et al - I’ve been thinking about this topic a bit lately - what are other forms of notability that would not compromise the integrity of an encyclopedia? They’re slightly different than yours but would be curious as to your thoughts. These are rough ideas minus implementation details. I’m hoping for responses that are more constructive than captious.
(1) Something that can be proven true in something like Coq or an equivalent that has a non-trivial implication. This meshes well with WP:V. (2) Notability established by a proof-of-work threshold with known data lineage tied to a verifiable identity.
Expanding on point (2) - I believe what many people object to is the perception of a gate keeping function of peer-reviewed journals and green WP:RSPSOURCES. This is a fair criticism because we know who is running these periodicals and they’re mammals like the rest of us. They are sometimes wrong, sometimes biased, not always meritocratic and most importantly they have incentives to downplay, obfuscate and ignore these failings for reasons of finance and prestige in competitive markets.
There’s something like a craving for recognition of a thing when those two kinds of institutions won’t cover that thing.
With a hypothetical system implementing (2) you would be able to verify a number of people who lend their real world identity to a thing with something like KYC where we could say we have a nearly perfect way of verifying that a real person is behind an attestation of notability. Then that person would have to complete some kind of proof-of-work scenario to demonstrate that they put a lot of work and thought in to this attestation of a thing’s notability (this could be something like a unique essay with proven data provenance (lineage). Then we pick a magic number, maybe say Dunbar’s number (150) as a threshold and if something meets that we consider it notable. The proof-of-work/KYC/provenance system will make it verifiable.
What do you think? - Scarpy ( talk) 03:54, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, le sigh. I know, you want an article on CTMU. But there are no reality-based sources. SIGCOV won't fix it because the issue is
WP:FRINGE, more than SIGCOV. For a fringe topic we require non-trivial reality-based sources, because otherwise we get crappy articles on nonsensical topics whioch are written about only by a handfuil of True Believers.
Guy (
help!) 09:18, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG
I know, you want an article on CTMU.
I wouldn't have pegged you for someone who believes in telepathy. - I've worked on enough of Wikipedia to know that FRINGE articles have no monopoly on crappy nonsensical content. You mention the phrase True Believers, I read Eric Hoffer's book when I was 18. I would also recommend The Open and Closed Mind by Milton Rokeach. Dogmatism can take many different forms. I have a suspicion that I'm encountering it when I put out an idea--in a forum who's purpose is to discuss ideas for changing policy--and someone recites a response in a chapter and verse way... like they're a thumper of some kind.
- Wikipedia is pretty good, but it's not perfect. It's policies make sense, though they have downsides. They were created by humans like you and me. If you're not open discussing ideas for improving them, then don't. -
Scarpy (
talk) 10:20, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, the good form of dogmatism is: multiple reality-based RS or GTFO.
Guy (
help!) 11:38, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG if you think there's a good form of dogmatism, you don't understand dogmatism. -
Scarpy (
talk) 18:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, yes, I do. Wikipedia is dogmatic about neutrality. That is a good thing.
Guy (
help!) 22:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG Belief in infallibility of a dogma is never a good thing. We’ll take your example, there’s neutrality as a concept that we all agree on, then there’s implementation of neutrality as a policy. Once you say any policy is infallible or beyond improvement or questioning, that’s dogma and it’s also you shooting yourself in the foot. -
Scarpy (
talk) 22:46, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, I'm not claiming that it's infallible. merely that it is a founding principle and one of the principles that makes me a Wikipedian. There are many examples of wikis that have a low bar to bullshit covered from the perspective of True Believers. None of them is successful.
Guy (
help!) 22:48, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG Since we agree that they’re not infallible, can we also agree that they’re open for discussion? -
Scarpy (
talk) 22:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, what part of "founding principle" is unclear?
Guy (
help!) 23:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
- JzG I’m not sure how bright of a line I need to draw between principle and policy. But I think you know as well as anyone that, to use your example (which is not primarily related to the topic of this page) the NPOV policy changes often. So, whatever you think or would like to have me believe, Wikipedia policies do change. If you want to argue about the distinction between policy and principle more, please find another Wikipedian to engage, I’m not sure if I’m able to make that clearer for you. I would also ask that you keep discussions about other topics on the relevant pages for those topics. This feels like WP:SEALIONING to me. Thanks. - Scarpy ( talk) 02:13, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, what part of "founding principle" is unclear?
Guy (
help!) 23:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG Since we agree that they’re not infallible, can we also agree that they’re open for discussion? -
Scarpy (
talk) 22:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, I'm not claiming that it's infallible. merely that it is a founding principle and one of the principles that makes me a Wikipedian. There are many examples of wikis that have a low bar to bullshit covered from the perspective of True Believers. None of them is successful.
Guy (
help!) 22:48, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG Belief in infallibility of a dogma is never a good thing. We’ll take your example, there’s neutrality as a concept that we all agree on, then there’s implementation of neutrality as a policy. Once you say any policy is infallible or beyond improvement or questioning, that’s dogma and it’s also you shooting yourself in the foot. -
Scarpy (
talk) 22:46, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, yes, I do. Wikipedia is dogmatic about neutrality. That is a good thing.
Guy (
help!) 22:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG if you think there's a good form of dogmatism, you don't understand dogmatism. -
Scarpy (
talk) 18:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, the good form of dogmatism is: multiple reality-based RS or GTFO.
Guy (
help!) 11:38, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG
Hi, I read through the essay in its current form and I must say I disagree with it. This perhaps represents a difference of opinion about Wikipedia's ultimate purpose. Nonetheless, I think that merely being noticed by reliable sources should not be enough. Not all human knowledge necessarily belongs here and while notability is deeply flawed, and the standard for what counts as significant coverage is far from sufficiently clear in my view, we should not ditch the baby with the bath water. My main issue with the standard of having been noticed is that we would end up with a large amount of articles that leave readers none the wiser about topics. For example, with a company that has had a hand in notable events or is associated with notable people, but has no significant coverage of its own, all that could be written about it is a rehashing of what exists (or should exist) in those other articles. Mention of the company should then exist in those articles, not as a standalone article.
Re the issue of "significant coverage" being a relative matter, I agree that that is an issue, particularly as the standard for what is significant and what is trivial is not as clear as it should be for something so central as this. Nonetheless, just because it is relative it doesn't mean it is useless. If all we can say about a topic, like a biography, is a single paragraph relating to some other thing that topic should be covered in its respective article. A line has to be drawn somewhere, else all snippets of human knowledge would inside Wikipedia's remit and that is ultimately counter-productive because part of Wikipedia's purpose is not merely to be a repository of knowledge but to organise it in a useful and accessible way and being flooded by trivial articles would undermine this necessary process of organising and compiling knowledge in a useful manner. Jtrrs0 ( talk) 13:55, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
The user who made this hasn't been active since 2015, and the contributions since then have been minor. This essay is plainly at odds with a core policy, WP:Notability. While contrary opinions are certainly welcome, this really seems more appropriate as a user-space idea than a full Wikipedia-space essay. Normally, I'd consider the fact that this essay is dead letter as entirely obvious, but a user was unironically bringing this essay up as a good idea in the WP:DISCORD, so maybe it should be more clear that this isn't a real policy. Any objections to a bold user-fication of this page to User:RogDel/Significant coverage not required ? SnowFire ( talk) 00:59, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
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Essays Low‑impact | |||||||||
| ||||||||||
Just because Clinton's high school band "Three Blind Mice" doesn't get a Wikipedia article, it doesn't mean the band is excluded from Wikipedia. The band could still appear in Clinton's article in his high school education section. OnBeyondZebrax • TALK 02:11, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
- Actually the band does have an article: 3 Kings (jazz trio). Unsurprisingly, there is actually other coverage of the band. That said "it could be merged" is not a particularly satisfactory approach because deletionists would trollishly argue that it must not be merged because it is not notable. One does actually encounter that sort of devious wikilawyering. James500 ( talk) 09:26, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
RogDel et al - I’ve been thinking about this topic a bit lately - what are other forms of notability that would not compromise the integrity of an encyclopedia? They’re slightly different than yours but would be curious as to your thoughts. These are rough ideas minus implementation details. I’m hoping for responses that are more constructive than captious.
(1) Something that can be proven true in something like Coq or an equivalent that has a non-trivial implication. This meshes well with WP:V. (2) Notability established by a proof-of-work threshold with known data lineage tied to a verifiable identity.
Expanding on point (2) - I believe what many people object to is the perception of a gate keeping function of peer-reviewed journals and green WP:RSPSOURCES. This is a fair criticism because we know who is running these periodicals and they’re mammals like the rest of us. They are sometimes wrong, sometimes biased, not always meritocratic and most importantly they have incentives to downplay, obfuscate and ignore these failings for reasons of finance and prestige in competitive markets.
There’s something like a craving for recognition of a thing when those two kinds of institutions won’t cover that thing.
With a hypothetical system implementing (2) you would be able to verify a number of people who lend their real world identity to a thing with something like KYC where we could say we have a nearly perfect way of verifying that a real person is behind an attestation of notability. Then that person would have to complete some kind of proof-of-work scenario to demonstrate that they put a lot of work and thought in to this attestation of a thing’s notability (this could be something like a unique essay with proven data provenance (lineage). Then we pick a magic number, maybe say Dunbar’s number (150) as a threshold and if something meets that we consider it notable. The proof-of-work/KYC/provenance system will make it verifiable.
What do you think? - Scarpy ( talk) 03:54, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, le sigh. I know, you want an article on CTMU. But there are no reality-based sources. SIGCOV won't fix it because the issue is
WP:FRINGE, more than SIGCOV. For a fringe topic we require non-trivial reality-based sources, because otherwise we get crappy articles on nonsensical topics whioch are written about only by a handfuil of True Believers.
Guy (
help!) 09:18, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG
I know, you want an article on CTMU.
I wouldn't have pegged you for someone who believes in telepathy. - I've worked on enough of Wikipedia to know that FRINGE articles have no monopoly on crappy nonsensical content. You mention the phrase True Believers, I read Eric Hoffer's book when I was 18. I would also recommend The Open and Closed Mind by Milton Rokeach. Dogmatism can take many different forms. I have a suspicion that I'm encountering it when I put out an idea--in a forum who's purpose is to discuss ideas for changing policy--and someone recites a response in a chapter and verse way... like they're a thumper of some kind.
- Wikipedia is pretty good, but it's not perfect. It's policies make sense, though they have downsides. They were created by humans like you and me. If you're not open discussing ideas for improving them, then don't. -
Scarpy (
talk) 10:20, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, the good form of dogmatism is: multiple reality-based RS or GTFO.
Guy (
help!) 11:38, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG if you think there's a good form of dogmatism, you don't understand dogmatism. -
Scarpy (
talk) 18:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, yes, I do. Wikipedia is dogmatic about neutrality. That is a good thing.
Guy (
help!) 22:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG Belief in infallibility of a dogma is never a good thing. We’ll take your example, there’s neutrality as a concept that we all agree on, then there’s implementation of neutrality as a policy. Once you say any policy is infallible or beyond improvement or questioning, that’s dogma and it’s also you shooting yourself in the foot. -
Scarpy (
talk) 22:46, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, I'm not claiming that it's infallible. merely that it is a founding principle and one of the principles that makes me a Wikipedian. There are many examples of wikis that have a low bar to bullshit covered from the perspective of True Believers. None of them is successful.
Guy (
help!) 22:48, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG Since we agree that they’re not infallible, can we also agree that they’re open for discussion? -
Scarpy (
talk) 22:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, what part of "founding principle" is unclear?
Guy (
help!) 23:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
- JzG I’m not sure how bright of a line I need to draw between principle and policy. But I think you know as well as anyone that, to use your example (which is not primarily related to the topic of this page) the NPOV policy changes often. So, whatever you think or would like to have me believe, Wikipedia policies do change. If you want to argue about the distinction between policy and principle more, please find another Wikipedian to engage, I’m not sure if I’m able to make that clearer for you. I would also ask that you keep discussions about other topics on the relevant pages for those topics. This feels like WP:SEALIONING to me. Thanks. - Scarpy ( talk) 02:13, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, what part of "founding principle" is unclear?
Guy (
help!) 23:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG Since we agree that they’re not infallible, can we also agree that they’re open for discussion? -
Scarpy (
talk) 22:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, I'm not claiming that it's infallible. merely that it is a founding principle and one of the principles that makes me a Wikipedian. There are many examples of wikis that have a low bar to bullshit covered from the perspective of True Believers. None of them is successful.
Guy (
help!) 22:48, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG Belief in infallibility of a dogma is never a good thing. We’ll take your example, there’s neutrality as a concept that we all agree on, then there’s implementation of neutrality as a policy. Once you say any policy is infallible or beyond improvement or questioning, that’s dogma and it’s also you shooting yourself in the foot. -
Scarpy (
talk) 22:46, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, yes, I do. Wikipedia is dogmatic about neutrality. That is a good thing.
Guy (
help!) 22:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG if you think there's a good form of dogmatism, you don't understand dogmatism. -
Scarpy (
talk) 18:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
Scarpy, the good form of dogmatism is: multiple reality-based RS or GTFO.
Guy (
help!) 11:38, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
-
JzG
Hi, I read through the essay in its current form and I must say I disagree with it. This perhaps represents a difference of opinion about Wikipedia's ultimate purpose. Nonetheless, I think that merely being noticed by reliable sources should not be enough. Not all human knowledge necessarily belongs here and while notability is deeply flawed, and the standard for what counts as significant coverage is far from sufficiently clear in my view, we should not ditch the baby with the bath water. My main issue with the standard of having been noticed is that we would end up with a large amount of articles that leave readers none the wiser about topics. For example, with a company that has had a hand in notable events or is associated with notable people, but has no significant coverage of its own, all that could be written about it is a rehashing of what exists (or should exist) in those other articles. Mention of the company should then exist in those articles, not as a standalone article.
Re the issue of "significant coverage" being a relative matter, I agree that that is an issue, particularly as the standard for what is significant and what is trivial is not as clear as it should be for something so central as this. Nonetheless, just because it is relative it doesn't mean it is useless. If all we can say about a topic, like a biography, is a single paragraph relating to some other thing that topic should be covered in its respective article. A line has to be drawn somewhere, else all snippets of human knowledge would inside Wikipedia's remit and that is ultimately counter-productive because part of Wikipedia's purpose is not merely to be a repository of knowledge but to organise it in a useful and accessible way and being flooded by trivial articles would undermine this necessary process of organising and compiling knowledge in a useful manner. Jtrrs0 ( talk) 13:55, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
The user who made this hasn't been active since 2015, and the contributions since then have been minor. This essay is plainly at odds with a core policy, WP:Notability. While contrary opinions are certainly welcome, this really seems more appropriate as a user-space idea than a full Wikipedia-space essay. Normally, I'd consider the fact that this essay is dead letter as entirely obvious, but a user was unironically bringing this essay up as a good idea in the WP:DISCORD, so maybe it should be more clear that this isn't a real policy. Any objections to a bold user-fication of this page to User:RogDel/Significant coverage not required ? SnowFire ( talk) 00:59, 4 June 2023 (UTC)