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Wikipedia talk:Historical archive/Policy/What's in, what's out/Archive 1

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Latest comment: 19 years ago by Andrewa in topic People/Authors
Archive 1

Why do we need this?

Possibly we don't. But it just might help. There are many debates over what should and should not be included, and many policies and precedents to consider. One obvious example is the 9/11 controversy. Another is a recent listing of a high school in VfD.

If it grows, it might be useful to newcomers, but I'd wait a while before listing it in any newcomers' greeting. Andrewa 01:57, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This page, though it may have been well-intentioned originally, has two conflicting purposes that only serve to confuse less-experienced Wikireaders. It asserts in several places that it can be used as a quick guide for article suitability; its very title implies some authority in this. Yet it insists that it only expresses individual opinions, and there is no mechanism to take the true "temperature" of Wikipedia on any of these subjects, other than forcing individuals to duplicate votes or polls already in place elsewhere. This makes this article an excellent tool for subverting existing consensus-building practices.
As an example, I cite the ongoing debate about Rambot's auto-generated pages on U.S. cities. Many people have weighed in on this topic at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/User:Rambot, which was established by Eequor in order to rid Wikipedia of demographic data she finds pointless and trivial. The community's opinion, as of this posting, was:
  • Delete everything that Rambot made last significant edit to (i.e., demographic articles that have not been updated by humans): 1 for, 25 against (with 1 move suggestion).
  • Delete every place article with population < 1111: 2 for, 25 against.
Yet both these topics are declared "Out" by — no surprise — Eequor.
I was going to add my own contradicting "In" claims, including a link to the VfD poll, but I then I asked myself, why does this page even exist? It's amusing, certainly, having the same cachet of those weekly magazine articles that gloss over complex issues with whimsical "in/out" declarations, but I don't see how it adds any accurate information to the process of determining what belongs in Wikipedia. Consider the statement in the introduction:
One function of this page is to bring as much as possible of [information in many places] together, for quick reference.
That would seem to be blatantly untrue for most of the entries here. They're nothing more than single opinions, usually without any justification or links to that "information in many places". In what way does "In" or "Out", without comment, bring together information? Either the entries here aren't living up to the promise, or the statement is just misleading or even deceptive.
Yes, I see the disclaimers under Summary, but they make as much sense in actual practice as the "we're not responsible for anything" software licenses that are de rigeur today. (Oops! Excuse me. I see that Latin phrases are "Out", per Isomorphic. Or are they "In", per ugen64? Thank goodness this one's French. I'm so glad this page is here to help me.)
Whatever the original intent of creating this page, I would argue that, by claiming to have any utility as a guide, it is more harmful than useful. The suggestion that it might be "list[ed]... in any newcomers' greeting" in the future simply sounds like a strategy for a very few people to amplify their beliefs, regardless of community opinion.
The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. - attributed to Andrew S. Tanenbaum or Grace Hopper
— Jeff Q 23:20, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Examples

I've added some dummy entries (and will add more) to try to make the concepts a little clearer. Not all of them are serious... Andrewa 01:57, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Discussion

What's out is covered by Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. I always have trouble figuring out what is encyclopedic information and my policy is anything not found in "What Wikipedia is not" is encyclopedic. Perhaps we need a counterpart like Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is. Hope the current page grows to something like that. However I'm not in favour of listing out each and every thing, rather be generic Jay 11:27, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

True, but What Wikipedia is not is a policy page so changing it is an interesting and poorly defined process. This is intended to work alongside and complement the policy pages. We used to have a what Wikipedia is page but it became a redirect as you can see. Have a look at its history and talk page and you'll see why. Although personally I still think the decision to redirect it was wrong, I don't think it will help to reopen the debate now. Andrewa 20:07, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I like this page. Its a quick reference. Most people learn by example and short, simple statements. A list like this will give a flavour of what we want here, and that's good. Of course be prepared for arguments.... DJ Clayworth 13:33, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. As for the arguments, yes, this is the place! I'm hopeful this will at least structure them, and report them in a way that will be useful and efficient, so the rest of us can spend more time actually writing and editing. Andrewa 20:30, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Nice idea, but all species? Including 20,000 species of nematode? Is that really policy? We probably need many more levels of inclusion and exclusion

  • All phyla in
    • All classes in
      • Orders out
      • Significant orders in
        • Families in significant orders out
        • Significant families in
          • Subfamilies in significant families out
          • Significant subfamilies in

This could easily become unworkable, but less detail could be seen as endorsing the wrong boundary line between necessary and excessive detail.

Good point about the nematode! Well... Wikipedia is not paper. But I strongly suggest you discuss this with the Wikiproject concerned, which you might like to join if you haven't already. The link is there in the project page. Report the results here. I may even have them wrong, this is very much a seed designed to grow.
I'm a mathematician, not a biologist. I'll leave the nematodes to the experts, apart -perhaps- from the occasional dabble.
I guess, since you posted the above comments anonymously, that you'd need to create an account first. I hope you will.
I've been at wikibooks a couple of weeks now.
Hmmm... assuming that there what you propose above is what we want to say, is there a more concise way of saying it I wonder? Can we, for example, describe all the levels by a single term, and collapse it all to just two entries, saying all and only significant ones are in at all levels? If not, it just might be the way to go. Agree it would be good to avoid it. Andrewa 21:34, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
In this case each of the categories are refered to as clades, so we can say -
  • significant clades are in
  • insignificant clades are out
  • all phyla are significant clades
  • any clade which contains a significant subclade is itself significant
and recurse up the tree to determine significance. The fourth criteria is necessary for the tree to be connected, which seems desirable. A significant clade's page would list all subclades, including insiginficant ones.
This is still four lines, not explicit, and leaves the meaning of significance open to debate, but it is at least relatively compact.Carandol 22:28, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to be rather pedantic, and move this page to Wikipedia:What's in, what's out - if it becomes a useful resource (which I think it may well), it might as well become a well-named one as well. While I'm at it, I think I'll make a shortcut at WP:WIWO, for quick reference. - IMSoP 16:29, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the interest, and I mean that, if this had remained my baby it was pointless. And I wondered whether someone would do that. I did put a lot of thought into the title over the past few weeks, so I hope you have put in as much. But IMO your title is almost as good as mine, so I won't revert it and I don't ask you to either. It's good to be bold but perhaps next time some discussion first would be good for this sort of thing?
What is really needed is not pedantry but content. Please consider adding some entries, as you think of them. I'm very glad you think it might become useful.
New redirects from the article space make it more difficult for reusers of our content, but AFAIK there's no policy banning them, and of course there are lots of historical ones from before the project namespace existed. Had you not renamed the project page, it could have been WP:wIwO (similar to VfD), which wouldn't have been as much of a problem. Andrewa 20:07, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  1. Sorry to move first, ask questions later - I wasn't sure about the comma, but the lack of apostrophes annoyed me. Also, the lowercase ws looked odd, because the first letter after the colon is auto-capitalised, making "Whats In whats Out" - better all caps or none, IMHO.
  2. As I understand it, there is a convention that pages beginning WP: are treated as though they were a namespace (see WP:WP for a list). In fact, I was wondering if this could be recognised in the software as some kind of namespace alias - when I've finished my degree, I may see if I can write it.
  3. And finally, even more sorry to be a pedant first and a contributor later. My problem at the moment is that I'm technically too busy to "be here", and it's far quicker to do a spot of tidying here and there than heavy, research-laden contributions. I'll try and think of some things to add.
IMSoP 21:45, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC) (rather bashfully)
You may be right about the WP namespace, it's something I don't understand, it just concerns me that it gets a white background. On reflection you're right about the initial capital, I'd probably go for WiWo now (and might set up that redir eventually). The apostrophes don't worry me overly, but the comma does a bit, because it breaks up the flow of sentences such as have a look at what's in, what's out to see what.... Andrewa 03:44, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
WP is only a pseudo namespace. You could use something like if( 0 == strcasecmp( "WP", $text ) ) return 4; in language.php to make WP: automatically redirect to Wikipedia: without actually having to create a page at [[WP:whatever]], but the idea did not go down too well in #MediaWiki and JeLuF suggested this was too Wikipedia-specific to go in the general codebase. Angela. 21:13, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)

Other rules

Have a look at what we might call Stan's rule, recently quoted by Tim in the discussion of a secondary school article.

One problem is that I pass this test myself just on account of my church where I have several prominent roles (>600 people) and the primary school at which I'm crossing supervisor (>400 people). All of these people would know my name and face and why I matter to them... and I haven't even started on my family, Internet groups (including this one), professional life or musical and sporting outlets.

Not only would schools qualify, every one of the teachers at my two high schools would be a significant person to more than 1000 people. This needs a bit more thought.

As I said in the VfD debate quoted above, I think the problem is that no single test will work for all articles. Andrewa 03:44, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

from pump

I've created a new page at What's in, what's out that might be of interest, and possibly even of help, in dealing with the inevitable questions of where the boundary lies as to what is included in Wikipedia. Comments and contributions welcome. Andrewa 02:09, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it is a good idea to have many alternate pages telling you what should be included or shouldnt be included in Wikipedia. Unless you want to make it possible to prove that every item simultaneously can be and cant be included based on a certain page. What is wrong with Wikipedia: What Wikipedia is not? Bensaccount 20:51, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Nothing is wrong with Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, this is to complement it. As the page itself says, it's not a policy page, rather it's an expression of opinions, a bit like VfD itself in some ways but without any "teeth" at all. And as such it doesn't prove anything, or seek to.
So if you don't like it, just ignore it, and it shouldn't get in your way. And if nobody likes it, it will just die, like some other suggestions I've made! But I'm hopeful that some people will find it helpful.
On the other hand, if it grows as I hope it will gather a lot of helpful information in one place, particularly links to the relevant policy pages... including Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Andrewa 06:01, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Procedures

There's no provision in the format of the entries for saying what to do with an entry that is to be deleted, for example transwiki to Wiktionary, Wikibooks or 9/11 Memorial.

I've removed one such comment from an entry, and linked here instead. In time a better mechanism will be needed, but I don't want to clutter the page with details that are only of relevance to VfD.

Obviously, the procedure could be expanded a lot, and should be moved to a better place in time. Andrewa 20:47, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Entry before removing comment:

VfD Procedure (recipes)

Send to Wikibooks

People/Authors

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

User:Andrewa's suggestion is to "In" authors that have sold a million copies combined. I think that making the decision based on copies sold is heavily biased towards authors writing in the English language. Not only do more people read English than say Norwegian or Greek, more books are translated from English to smaller languages than the other way around.

Obvious follow-up question #1: How many authors are there that have sold over 1,000,000 copies? Obvious follow-up question #2: What, exactly, counts here? For example, if a newspaper reporter has written 100 articles for a newspaper with a circulation of 10,000, does that count? How about someone who has written ten poems, each of which has appeared in an anthology with a circulation of 100,000? How about an "author" who used a ghostwriter and hasn't put a word on paper him/herself? In a nutshell, I'm saying that "copies sold" isn't a reasonable measure for inclusion. Gary D Robson 04:43, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
My suggestion would be to just put all million-selling authors in, not necessarily to have all others out. That's why both possibilities were covered in the page. It was just supposed to save some time in coming to decisions, rather than influence them, and for this reason it needed to be accepted that it would be little or no any help at all in some cases. Anyone could also add a more specific line for non-English authors with a lower threshold if that was going to be helpful. But, I see this page has fallen from favour anyway. Andrewa 00:46, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

What's worth covering?

Originally at the village pump

Added note: the following question is asked with the presumption that information exists to write a long stub or full length article on the topic. When is a topic not worth covering at Wikipedia? For example: -When does a location become too small to write an article on it? -What policy exists on which websites can have an article? -When is an event too minor to deserve an article or a mention on a timeline? -When is a business to small to not be the topic of an article? -When is a person not important enough to deserve an article? -When is something so boring or so uninteresting that it really doesn't deserve any coverage at Wikipedia? I can't quite work out what is acceptable to publish, and when something becomes so uninteresting that it stops becoming a contribution and starts becoming spam. User:Icurite

If it hasn't made the local newspapers or TV and isn't representative or well known in its field for some reason, the chance that it doesn't merit an article rises. If ten people know about it, it's unlikely to merit an article. If you're not personally involved with it in some way but still find it interesting enough to write about, the chance that it is of enough interest to merit an aricle rises. If a million people know about it, it's more likely to merit an article. The exact limits vary with the individual contributor and are the source of near-constant debate. Write about what interests you, so long as it isn't you, your family or your employer. If there's something on the news, do we have good covearage of the related topics yet? If not, maybe you'd like to imoprove them? If it interests you enough to spend the time, it's passed the first hurdle: someone is interested. Jamesday 11:43, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
My own view is that subjects that are currently known to only a small number of people but that have potential significance in wider fields are worth articles. An example of what I mean can be found at Mary Devenport O'Neill who only got one Google hit (clearly failing the Google test) before I created the article, but who is of great interest to students of W.B. Yeats, the occult in literature, writing by women, the development of Irish poetic modernism, etc. Bmills 15:01, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
You might have a look at whats In whats Out for one attempt to address this. The idea was to distill what actually happens in WP:VFD. It hasn't really taken off, and needs some cleaning up to put it back into alphabetical order and correct a few indenting and bolding problems (or change the instructions to conform to what is actually happening). Andrewa 16:00, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Huge edit

I just made a huge, multi-part edit to the page to put everything underneath a heading and make the TOC useful. I fear that I may have changed the position of some complicated "threading bullets," so I apologize in advance if what you wrote on the page looks out of order. At least it has the right heading now... --Ardonik 07:14, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)

Famous?

Just a note: there's an automatic exception to "out" for any notable examples. If something's well-known, or famous, or the first of its kind, or something like that, it gets consideration for that. There's no reason to put separate votes for "famous whatevers" unless you include a rough criterion you would use for what is notable for that type of article. Isomorphic 19:19, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Towns having fewer than 1111 inhabitants: Out - Why?

I do not understand the reasoning for this. Why has the arbitary number of 1111 been chosen? Why not just allow articles on every town or village. Deus Ex 21:11, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Deus Ex. I don't see any problem having an article for every town or village.--AAAAA 11:47, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I agree that smaller towns, unless otherwise notable, should be out. --Improv 16:08, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • I agree with Deus Ex and AAAAA, but disagree with Improv and Eequor. But so what? This discussion merely repeats an ongoing discussion more thoroughly addressed in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/User:Rambot and who knows where else. This merely bolsters my opinion that this entire page is of questionable value. See Why do we need this? above for details. — Jeff Q 16:55, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • 1111 is not arbitrary. It is more symmetrical than, say, 1000. Fredrik | talk 17:10, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What's the point of this page?

It's not consensus, discussion, guidlines nor policy. Just seems to a be a soapbox. Dan100 13:17, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

Could be nice to have a soapbox? PaulHammond 14:14, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Personal bias

  • Things I like: In. --A D Monroe III 17:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Things I don't like: Out, unless they are "significant", "well-known", "important", or "have some other quality that I'll identify as soon as you give me an example of an article that doesn't fit my earlier simplistic statement". --A D Monroe III 17:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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