User talk:Masem/Inclusion Guideline

Support

This isn't bad at all. I'd support this as guidance of some sort. Hiding T 11:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

You should seriously take a look at User:Uncle G/On notability. Much of the material on Uncle G's essay could be incorporated here. Then again, keeping this essay short is a good idea. Something I can point non-users at is a lot more likely to be read if it's concise. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 06:00, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this is fairly solid. Gavin raises a good point about the walled garden problem. I know you've addressed it, but perhaps a bit more detail there? Also, some of the SNG's intentionally limit inclusion past the GNG. That probably needs to be addressed also. Hobit (talk) 18:02, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Criticism

This proposal is not new, and basically boils down to Masem's proposal to make the article inclusion criteria of the General notability guideline (GNG) less restrictive for certain subject areas such as fiction [1].

In part, this proposal has already been achieved by altering WP:N to say that topics should only have to meet the GNG or any subject-specific guideline, instead of that they should meet the GNG and any subject-specific guidelines[2]. Although this is a very subtle change, it is contraversial, since the change did not take into account the consequences of conflict with other Wikipedia policies and guidelines:

1. The over arching requirement WP:V which states that "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it". Since WP:N is based on this principal, it is difficult to see how this proposal to make subject specific guidelines less restrictive than WP:N can work if it brings the guidelines into conflict with WP:V;
2. That the General notability guideline supports Wikipedia content policies, and that articles that do not comply with the guideline are also likey to fail the content policies, such as WP:NOT;
3. WP:N is very useful with regard to disputes and deletion detbates, in that the General notability guideline facilitates dispute resolution regarding the merger or deltion of duplicate articles, content forks, and topics of unproven notability or negligible content.

The inclusion criteria which Masem is proposing follows on the heals of the proposal at WP:FICT#Fictional elements as part of a larger topic to provide exemption from WP:N for topics of unproven notability. In this proposal, topics of unproven notability such as fictional characters or television episodes would be allowed to be the subject of articles or lists, provided that it could be demonstrated that the topic inherited from a topic of proven notability. However, this proposal was flawed because notability cannot be inherited/presumed/acknowledged in the absence of reliable secondary sources. Even if notability could be inherited, the proposal did not provide any workable rules as to how inhertited notability could prevent content forks other than having to rely on "expert opinion", which would mean relying on editors opinions about a topic's notability, rather than on relying on evidence.

Overall, I oppose Masem's proposal on the grounds that it would effectively create "editorial wall gardens" based on subject specific guidelines which would enable special interest topics to be exempted from Wikipedia wide policies and guidelines that currently cover all subject areas. --Gavin Collins (talk) 11:44, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

If you read the guideline, you understand this is still in line with it. Topics that should be included by subguidelines but lack sourcing per WP:V or otherwise generally fail other policies should instead by discussed in the context of a topic which does have appropriate sourcing or in lists or tables to support such. We can thus judge the need to have an article on a single topic by examining its sources and making the same assessment that we do now for AFD, that doesn't change. Notability itself should not be taken as a content guideline (that's why there's WP:NNC) and thus it is necessary to leave the content issues to the key policies (which this does consider). This doesn't mean the GNG itself is going anywhere: it is an inclusion guideline that immediately satisify most policies, and thus its our catchall for any topic not covered by subguidelines.

Now, I also wrote how to avoid the walled garden issue, because this is a concern. We would need to re-review each existing subguideline for notability, rewrite it as inclusion points, but then seek global consensus for each aspect given to make sure that no inclusion criteria is too broad as to allow too much for one particular field or for things that seem inappropriate for Wikipedia. Once reviewed, those guidelines that pass through would remain the only subguidelines for inclusion; any new subguideline or inclusion criteria would need global consensus to add. This prevents individual groups or wikiprojects creating a series of criteria that serve them but makes the work overbroad. It also helps to keep in check articles that are lists/tables/ of topics lacking sourcing to only those types of lists/topics that global consensus agree are appropriate for having. --MASEM 13:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)