Comment by frik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frik | Hacker News Reader

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> It is unlikely to be notable enough to meet the criteria for being included in Wikipedia

Why? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia [1], there is no need to keep the amount of pages low, storage is cheap and no one prints out Wikipedia on real paper.

The "not notable enough" is a real threat to Wikipedia and the future of the project. The German Wikipedia already lost a lot of former authors (volunteers) because of admins gone crazy. They don't want anyone to edit "their" pages, and revert and ban almost every new edit/user. You can read about this serious situation on Heise.de [2]. Read also the 650+ comments of the related discussion [3]. The English version is still better in shape, but it moves in the same direction, unfortunately.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia

[2] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Blutet-Wikipedia-aus-... ; Translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...

[3] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/S-Blutet-Wikipedia-aus/...

Edit: I am not against "notability requirement", with a better balance it's fine. Wikimedia Foundation should have a closer look at the German branch... maybe resetting all "admin" privileges would help?

The idea is to prevent Wikipedia being turned into a tool for self-promotion. An example would be if I created a page for my name describing myself as a spelling consultant, then went to every article that mentioned a high-profile spelling blooper and added a line like 'without the services of a spelling consultant, such as [[hmsimha]]'.

It's not about storage or page count. It's about quality and relevant material. When I search for "band" (disambiguation) I wouldn't want to end up seeing a list of every high school band in the western hemisphere. It's just not important enough (to enough people) to include as part of an encyclopedia.

Yeah, it's a tough balance to keep. I think that notability requirements are important to avoid Wikipedia from becoming an unmaintainable, unverifiable pile of junk; but that there are some people who are way to quick to delete or revert, some people who are way too protective of "their" pages, and some admins who are a bit out of control.

It's a tough balance to keep; I don't pretend to have a good answer for how to steer it in a better direction. I have been an off and on contributor to Wikipedia for years, but never enough to get involved in the politics or become an admin.

Deletionism[0] is what's killing Wikipedia.

Gwern's page, In Defense of Inclusionism[1] has a good summary of both sides, and argues all of the points I would make.

[0]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism [1]: http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism

Various people have been claiming for years that the "notability" requirement is a threat to Wikipedia. Yet the project is still around and is still the go-to source for encyclopedic information.

I go to Google for information. Sometimes it puts a Wikipedia page high in the results, and many times it doesn't.

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