Why are pornstars more notable than scientists on Wikipedia?
chemconnector.com
chemconnector.com
I'd only vaguely heard of him, and contended that maybe Hans Christian Andersen would be more known, since Disney had adopted his fairy tales and made them into stories that every child around the world would know. Or maybe Niels Bohr, since his contributions to atomic science were so great.
She would have none of it, and insisted that everyone she talked to, both in Denmark and abroad would instantly recognise Carl Nielsen, but only some would recognise Bohr, and a few didn't really know Hans Christian Andersen, and certainly didn't know all his stories by heart like they knew Carl Nielsens symphonies.
She lived in a bubble: Her friends and the people she worked with were all musicians, composers, or were otherwise deeply into classical music, so she made the obvious mistake of thinking that Carl Nielsen would be widely known, since everyone she met seemed to know him and his music well.
If you asked people on HN who the most famous Dane is David Heinemmeir Hansson might be mentioned. Or maybe Bjarne Stroustrup who invented C++, or Rasmus Lerdorrf who invented PHP, or maybe Anders Hejlsberg who invented turbo pascal, Delphi and C#, or Lars Bak who developled the Chrome V8 javascript engine and was developer lead on Googles Dart language.
You need to look beyond your own bubble to see who is notable in the general public. Ask a random stranger on the street how many pornstars he can name, and then how many scientists he can name and you'll see that the author lives in a bubble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)
Within Wikipedia, notability is an inclusion criterion based on the encyclopedic suitability of an article topic. The topic of an article should be notable, or "worthy of notice"; that is, "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded". Notable in the sense of being "famous", or "popular", although not irrelevant, is secondary.
So it's not all about being famous.
in which case it is clear that the topic asks why porn stars are more famous than scientists.
and that it is also clear that the topic asks why porn stars are considered more significant than scientists given the numerous noble achievements given to mankind by scientists.
let's take a step back for a second and see if we can re-read "noble achievements given to mankind" without snickering.
In short, whatsoever gets attention on wikipedia deserves attention by dint of it having gotten attention. that's the whole point, innit?
So we're really just complaining when we try to draw more attention to scientists. Just as we're complaining if we're irritated that pokemon trivia gets more lengthy treatment on Wikipedia than important historical battles/chemical reactions/poems.
However, I'm unable to think of anyone from Argentina that is more famous than Maradonna even if I try to be as objective as possible, the only competition I can think of is Messi.
s/random stranger/random male stranger/
One of those might be the most famous Dane known to people on HN in the sense that if they made an ordered list of all the famous people they know of and then went down the list checking nationalities, one of those would be the first Dane.
However, if you actually asked them to name the most famous Dane they can think of, I think there's a good chance none of those would be named. Until your post, I had no idea any of them were Danes. Most of those names are common in several countries, and I'd have guessed most of them were from Germany, Sweden, or Norway.
You can laugh all you want at Royals and Royal Weddings, but they still have a positive impact on international relations, which I'm pretty sure was their original use case 10 centuries ago.
I think this is rather ridiculous. We don't decide what goes into scholarly journals based on a public poll, I don't see why we should do that for an encyclopedia.
EDIT: If one accepts the premise that even wikipedia requires curation and cannot simply include all submitted articles, then it follows that one of the tasks of the editors is making value-judgments about what knowledge is interesting and important to wikipedia's readers. I assume the guidelines about notability, conflict-of-interest and whatnot are attempting to set forth policies that assist in making these value-judgments.
You appear to be arguing that the only basis for making this value-judgement is recognizability to a layperson. I'm having a hard time understanding why this is a suitable metric.
I doubt that having lots of information about porn stars will benefit wikipedia's readers. It might entertain them, but I don't think it has any scholarly benefits. At the same time, I don't see how removing information about scientists benefits wikipedia's readers. I can see that in some extreme cases having lots of articles about little-known scientists might clutter wikipedia. However, I don't see how holding articles about published scientists to a higher standard than articles about pornstars benefits either wikipedia or its readers.
Prince Frederik for Australians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klovn
This is hilarious too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolph_(character)
The notability requirements for pornstars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(pornograp...
i bet it is much harder than produce a new scientific theory ( or may be it is just my Math MS talking :)
Alas, I have yet to find a nice thorough list, akin to the AFI top 100 for the lewd.
* If you know where this is, maybe you can also direct me to some reputable cult list; you know, that would have Todd Haynes and Kenneth Anger etc...
inquiring minds want to know!
I personally am of the belief that porn isn't art, due to its use and audience. When someone views porn, the pornographic material is almost invariably acting as a means to an end, namely satisfying sexual desires of the viewer. Art on the other hand isn't a mean to any end. Art is to be appreciated for what it is.
Name a scientist from the 1800s. A bit easier, isn't it?
People who can't name scientists from earlier times can't name porn stars from then either.
Science isn't about popularity or notability. It's about satisfying your curiosity about nature, honestly reporting your results, and experiment. At least it is for me, which is why I got a PhD in physics. Porn stars thrive on publicity.
A scientist without notability is like a fish without a bicycle.
(I don't care about the actual discussion, but your reasoning is so flawed I was compelled to respond)
Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Gulliver's Travels, Dante's Inferno, anything by Shakespeare.
There are endless references in those works, with varying amounts of veiling, to popular personages of the time. Some politicians and princes, but also what passes for the pop culture of the age, usually some mix of court personalities, criminals, and occasionally a notable artist or learned person ("scientist" wasn't quite applicable for much of this period).
With the exception of arts, letters, and science, most of those names are all but lost.
Porn, or gossip, or other intrigue, has a broad currency (many people find it accessible and/or interesting), but also a very temporal one.
It's not that there weren't porn stars in the 1800s (vaudeville, "Little Egypt" at the Chicago World's Fair), but simply that you'd have no familiarity with their names (unless, say, you were an academic researching 19th century and prior pornography).
Wear taller hats. You'll catch more.
So, once again, it's ridiculous to suggest that porn actors are less important than scientists only supported by the argument that nobody remembers porn actors from that time. There weren't any!
(note that I'm not saying that one is more important than the other, I guess it depends on the definition of 'important', I don't know nor care - frankly I find the question quite trite and boring. My point is merely that the argument is ridiculous.)
My post spoke not about the existence of porn stars then, but our awareness of them today.
Their notability may be great in their lifetimes, but does not stand the test of time. Scientists, on the other hand, may not attain notability in their lifetimes, but their stature stands the test of time. At least in the case of some great ones.
Your conclusion is perfectly fine for the reasons that dredmorbius says, but that wasn't what he was disputing. He was disputing that your specific argument was so obviously faulty that it is just absurd.
Looking at the numbers for perez hilton, farmville, facebook, television, porn, etc - paints a picture that the average mass consumer does not consider scientific knowledge to be notable.. or the inventors of this knowledge.
I blame Edward Bernays. Watch the BBC documentary 'The Century of Self' which provides a historical context for why the amygdala of the typical consumer suckles all the attention, while the neo-cortex sits waiting like the runt of the litter with only a vague notion of scientific knowledge present in daily life.
He may have good information, and it's great that he's sharing that information. But being friends with the subject immediately rules out the authors objectivity. That information needs to be corroborated.
...which by Wikipedia's standards would then be ok.
I'm pro-porn, but from my experience many of these 'fans' are so in awe of their idols they're far more likely to write biased entries than peer-scientists who are able to write about a notable scientist with a professional level of rigor.
Factor in most adult performers have all sorts of controversy surrounding them that fans will happily defend/spin you have even more room for abuse and non-NPOV articles being written about adult 'talent' (for want of a better word, that is the official industry terminology).
I think if you take your aspect of the argument to it's logical conclusion no one that has any reason to be editing a wikipedia page on a given subject can be wholly objective on that same subject.
Anything I know enough to comment on, I probably have a biased view on.
For example I have no biased view on the Greek/Turkish ownership dispute of Cyprus, but that's because I know nothing about it.
Which all just demonstrates yet another flaw in Wikipedia; why he put that resource on such a pedestal all the time, I don't know.
Man, I wish Citizendium hadn't fell apart. It didn't venerate nonsense.
Tangential to the discussion, and maybe I live in a bubble, but do this sort of people exist? I mean, what does being a 'fan' in this context constitute? Collecting all movies of a certain actor/actress, or actually reading biographies, trying to meet (maybe 'meat'? I'm the funny guy in the family) them? I'm not even sure how that would work, do porn actors have like 'public appearances'?
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but it is true. Ask most people to name a scientist, the only one they can name is Einstein. Ask most men to name pornstars, they can rattle of Jenna Jameson, Asia Careera, Ron Jeremy etc. For women, it will be the authors of romance novels.
Once that becomes the principle inclusion/exclusion criteria (as it tends to be in most of the discussion in AfD), exclude lots of junk, but you also only include things that are so common that everybody already knows about them anyway -- thus making an encyclopedia as the "place you go to look up stuff you don't know" moot.
This creates an irrational fear of including non-notable "false positives" (when bits are effectively free), and excluding perfectly good information that falls beneath some particular editor's personal interest radar.
Most notable pornstars aren't any more notable than most notable scientists. If you go to porn conventions you know the people in the industry. If you go to academic conventions you know the people in the industry. If you do neither you only know by whats trending.
Personally, I believe the work of the scientists of course deserve more recognition. But if you were going to go down that road, I'd start with trimming the wiki entries of pro-athletes or generic Hollywood celebrities. Their lives and contributions affect me even less than pornstars.
I personally say let them all in, but that battle has been fought and lost long ago.
For how much Wikipedia is assumed to be a tech-geek lair, I'm surprised that being big in computer science/programming/etc doesn't guarantee you a spot. CoffeeScript has its own page but not its creator, for instance.
There's not really any way they've got for resolving the situation where the intersection of motivated people and those whose work qualifies for inclusion is empty.
And yes, Nielsen is definitely notable. But give me Sibelius any day.
Historically, pornstars were somewhat rare and an readily accessible catalog compiled to pseudo-academic standards is an undertaking which is well facilitated by Wikipedia, while listing every chemist is a much more problematic task.
Proof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon
(The links are all to the individual names -- but most of those are just redirects to sublists, not individual articles.)
When googling a pornstar though, I'm looking for info on that specific person.
Just put them all on wiki & call it a day. Add low search weighting to the un-notable ones if necessary.
The little relevance of the subject makes easy for a pornstar to create his/her own webpage on Wikipedia.