Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia Wants (proposal)

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Why the Move[edit]

Why the move? This is not official policy yet, and should therefore be marked as a proposal. There is bound to be much discussion: Until it settles down somewhat, we should leave this under (proposal). --snoyes 15:45, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

(As the one who had the idea in the first place) Agreed. --Raul654 15:53, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Initial Proposal[edit]

Moved from Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia Wants, which itself came from The Village Pump

Proposed Metapage - "What Wikipedia Wants" I was looking around the metapages and whatnot for a page that talks about what articles are "encyclopedic" - that is, articles that we want on wikipedia. I could not find one, but I think that one should absolutely exist. So here's my initial draft:

What is encyclopedic?

  • Anything with name recognition - That is, anything that an average person would have heard of.
    • Surely you mean "anything that a mean person would have heard of." :P
    • Umm, the average person has heard of most dictionary entries.
  • Anything academic - Someone or something that would be mentioned in a textbook or research paper. This includes technical jargon and historical events.
  • Cities, municipalities, physical landmarks or regions
  • Post-secondary schools - Colleges and Universities
  • Political entities
  • Fictional Fixtures - Notable (that is, having at least limited fame) fictional works, events, characters, and places.
  • Popular culture - People/places/things in sports or the media or that are suddenly-famous.
  • Highways
  • Famous Phrases - in conjunction with an encylopedic article on the phrase
  • Movies
  • People with some sort of achievement
  • Holidays
  • Anything Capitalized - if it's supposed to be capitalized (in English, i.e., if it's a proper noun or proper adjective), then it's encyclopedic
    • and so we have List of every person living and dead on the assumption that, if literate the would, or would have capitalised their name, and if not literate, the person adding them to the list will capitalise it for them. Bmills 16:55, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
      • No, not lists...lists aren't supposed to be capitalized. We'd have an entry for every person living and dead...that is, if someone actually knew that information and was kind enough to add it. Anthony DiPierro 16:58, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
        • As non-famous people are listed as not encyclopedic, anything capitalised should clearly not be added to the What is encyclopedic list. Bmills 09:59, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
          • I figured you wouldn't want me to take non-famous people out. Should I? Anthony DiPierro 13:17, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What is not encyclopedic

  • Nonfamous people, websites, and companies (although exceptions are made for certain meta-topics such as Bomis and WikiTravel)
  • Specific nonfamous elementary or high schools
  • Nonfamous Roads (this is currently being ignored for highways in the US and may change in the future)
  • Nonfamous buildings, locations
  • Definitions that can be found in a dictionary (except in conjuction with an encylopedic article on the topic)
  • Original thoughts or research (this needs to be better described)
  • Entries which by their very nature are non-verifiable (some argue this should be the only criterium)

What else? Wikipedia does take some non-encyclopedic articles:

  • Relevant Tutorials - How-to's on relevant topics
  • Relevant Lists - Lists on relevant topics

--Raul654

Currently Disputed

  • Numbers
Be bold, and create the page. Don't allow the discussion to unfold here, though, I anticipate this one running forever... Onebyone 12:29, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Add

  • High culture - Literature, visual arts, art music, performance arts, etc.
  • General culture - Mythology and religion, language, patterns of social organisation, human behaviour, etc

Those are too broad. For example, Jesus's quote in the Talmud (or something clos to that) was just deleted, and rightly so - but I could argue that it is religious, and by your catagories, belongs here. What about a language I make up? It's a language, all right, so why not include it? --Raul654 12:46, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you take the many years required to construct a language, it would definately be noteworthy and should be included in the encyclopedia. Green Mountain 15:05, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I could make up a famous person or a college and they would also likely be deleted. In fact, there was a made-up Political entity only yesterday, as I recall. I don't see that my categories are any more vague or broad than the ones you put up at first, just addressing other, and equally important, areas of content. Bmills 15:09, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As far as your suggestions - I like your catagories, but I think you need to be a bit more specific. For example - mythology is pretty cut and dry, but religion gets pretty hazy.
Now, like Onebyone suggests, I propose we dump my draft to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia Wants (where people can do some actual editing on an existing article), and copy and continue this discussion on that talk page. --Raul654 15:15, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

How about two categories. "Wikipedia generally only takes entries which are encyclopedic and famous." Then define encyclopedic, and then define famous. Then define the usual exceptions. Anthony DiPierro 16:53, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Do we include transient fame?[edit]

I've amended it to say that media hype and transient fame are non-encylopedic. I'm thinking of non-entities such as the ex-Mr Britney Spears and other media/PR creations. I also think that people should be famous in more than one country if they exist only in the media - or they need to have done _something_. I'm sure this will be controversial. Secretlondon 15:44, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Personally I have no objection to articles on transient "famous for a month" people. They are not traditionally encyclopedic, but as Wikipedia is Not Paper, we have room for such if people care to make articles. I often work with historical materials from decades before I was born and have occasion to figure out now obscure cultural references. Someone going though old newspaper clippings, an interview, or watching an old movie or a rerun of a tv show might have occasion to wonder who the hell Peaches Browning or Jason Allen Alexander was. If Wikipedia can help, good for Wikipedia. -- Infrogmation 16:02, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Agree with the above. I've watched the Dean Martin roats, so I know *exactly* what you you mean when you talk about cultural references that have no meaning whatsoever. --Raul654 16:05, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
The vague wording is dangerous and could be used to justify deleting more things then you probably intend (or maybe even the reverse). This needs clarifying before people start arguing about what it really means, otherwise there will be megabytes of discussion about particular cases and whether they are 'transient'. I certainly agree that people who are famous only in connection with another person in a way like Mr Spears is should exist only as a redirect. I also note that determining whether something is 'media hype' is subjective. Morwen 20:21, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

I think there is no easy way to define what is utterly trivial. I also have a sense of fatalism that people will still write nonsense articles on non-celebrities anyway. Maybe the problem is that they don't travel, or that I feel that we are doing the job of their PR companies. I don't want to admit defeat but maybe I'll have to. Secretlondon 21:29, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

How about "no articles on people who are only famous because they know someone famous, and have only been in the news as a result of one story." If Mr Spears gets another fifteen minutes, then OK. This would be strong enough to catch all celebrity partners not famous in their own rights, but not catch people who are famous for being on TV, or having their pet eaten or something. Morwen 21:34, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)
When you consider the wording, here are some important test cases to consider:
  • The Star Wars kid -
  • Jason Allen Alexander - general consesus to keep
  • Lottery Winners - ?
  • Notable 9/11 victims - By defintion, their fame is transient. Yet we have them anyway
--Raul654 21:36, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Star Wars kid - keep. He is famous for two things - firstly having his video distributed and so on, and then for sueing about it. If it wasn't for the second, I would say delete.
Redirect.
September 11 victims - delete if that is their only distinction.
This is consistent to how I've been voting on VfD, I think. Of course, we can't use as a backdoor this to defeat the VfD consensus, nor should we. Morwen 21:43, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)
Of course, we can't use as a backdoor this to defeat the VfD consensus, nor should we.
No no, of course not. I want to use VFD voting as precedence for what should go into this page. --Raul654 21:48, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Do we include How-tos?[edit]

I'm curious about the "relevant how-to's." There doesn't seem to be a consensus that Wikipedia wants those. Recipes, bicycle repair, and logarithm homework help have all been discussed on vfd with votes to move to wikibooks. In fact, I think most of those had a consensus to delete. I would think that belongs in the "what we DON'T want" list. moink 19:57, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree with moink. The articles at list of recipes are slowly being moved to wikibooks:Cookbook, and the other how-to's, starting with bicycle repair, will also be moved over soon. Gentgeen 21:17, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
On the main page, there's a link to How-to, which contains many more how-tos. I think this is tacit approval, in and of itself. The ones you speak of are isolated incidents, I believe. --Raul654 21:27, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
The issue has been discussed at talk:How-to, as well as talk:List of recipes, and the general concensus has been to favor moving how-to's over to wikibooks. Wikibooks already has wikibooks:How to write an essay, which was sent there after a discussion on the Village pump. Wikibooks also has it's own link to how to's from it's main page. Gentgeen 22:11, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Importance[edit]

I've added notes to the "anything academic" section that the subject needs to be notable, famous, or important. I don't know exactly how to define those terms, but I'm trying to exclude arguments like "this is an academic paper, and is cited in other papers, therefore it matches this category", or "this term was invented for use solely in a field on which there are only a very small number of papers (all of which I wrote), therefore it needs an article". Eventually we should have similar importance criteria in other secions.

In all cases, precedent suggests that the importance criteria should be set pretty low - if we can have an article on every settlement in the USA (and by extension the world) then I'd say we can have an article on every university professor who does research, and a whole lot of non-professor researchers. But even if the bound is low, I think it should be there. Onebyone 21:01, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

An article for every species, if someone wants to write it? WormRunner 22:37, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Mammalian species, I don't see why not. There are only, what, a few thousand? Maybe group the rodents up a bit. Insects I'd be a bit more cautious about, since if each article is only going to be a sentence I'd prefer to see them grouped together in sub-sections of some larger article. But in principle yes, if there's something substantial to be said, say it.
One principle which I have considered is that since Wikipedia is not paper, if we're going to be an encyclopedia we might as well also be an "encyclopedia of science", and for that matter an "encyclopedia of biology" and even an "encyclopedia of insects", and include anything that would be an appropriate article for any of those things. I'd suggest that the line to be drawn is whether there is any such thing as an "encyclopedia of Horace Donisthorpe" (or whatever the issue of the day is), and if not to exclude articles which would only be in the Encyclopedia Donisthorpia but to keep anything that would make it into the Encyclopedia Insectia. Onebyone 22:53, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Importance should be a separate category. Things should be encyclopedic, and important. Anthony DiPierro 13:27, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Test Run[edit]

Ok, inspired by Adam Carr's Wikipedia Quality Survey, I decided to run a little test again the list. I chose 10 pages using the randompage button, and 10 from the VFD (ones with a general consensus against them). I want to see how well they "fit" into the list as it currently exists.

Ideally, all the existing pages should be explicetely included in the "What is encyclopedic" part, and all the VFD pages should be explicetely excluded by the "What is not encyclopedic" part. Of course, if wishes were horses...

Existing pages (should be included):

VFD pages (should be excluded; I was only able to find 6 with general consensus)

  • Norman A. Beck - A rant against him, whoever he is. Explicetely excluded.
  • Stupid God - The Stupid God theory is one where God is credited with creating the universe, but apparantly not very well. Wikipedia only takes generally accepted facts or theories. Explicetely excluded.
  • Fail - Dictionary definition. Explicetely excluded.
  • The mo - Patent nonsense. Explicetely excluded.
  • Mac OS XI - Speculating on a not-yet-released operating system. Wikipedia does not take original thoughts or rumors. Explicetely excluded
  • JumpTheCroc - Not sure - Derivative of "jump the shark", attack on Steve Irwin. Rant? Transient media hype?

The list did pretty well on existing pages. I added the "Rants, rumors, and patent nonsense" after seeing some of the VFD candidates.

I have some opinions on some of the things:

Nonfamous people, websites, and companies

Exactly how famous is nonfamous? I don't know what the biggest gas company in India is - it is nonfamous to me. But I think it is essential to millions of other people. Same thing with websites which like companies are almost by definition famous, or atleast strive to become as famous as possible.

Specific elementary or high schools

Same as above. Most primary schools where I live is known to about 5-10,000 persons. Is that famous enough? And why is there any difference between primary and secondary education and tertiary education? I guess a standard Swedish university is known to less people than most schools in India.

Besides, "high school" is a U.S. specific name.

Transient popular culture and media hype

Basically, Wikipedia does not want real celebrities unless they have received media exposure for a certain amount of time. For how long? I think Wikipedia should document "transient popular culture and media hype". In a few years, people will search Wikipedia for "transient popular culture and media hype" of our time.

Tutorials - These belong in Wikibooks (by general consensus)

Pure tutorials shouldn't be in Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia articles should be about things, not how to do things. But I think Wikipedia should include tutoriallike information. For example, an article about logarithms should ofcourse include information on how to calculate logarithms.

Relevant Lists - Lists on relevant topics

Who decide which lists are relevant and which are not?

Finally, I really don't understand why "Wikipedia" doesn't want information of the type listed above. How does that kind of information hurt Wikipedia?. If someone took their time to add something about their school, or say, an 9/11 victim, isn't it very likely that someone else would like to read about that? How is information of that kind in any way hurting or damaging Wikipedia? BL 07:32, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

It's late here and I'm kind of tired, but I'll try to answer some of your points. Suffice it to say, most of them boil down to signal-to-noise ratio. Yes, we could open the floodgates and let any (or almost any) non-famous person/place/thing have an article, but that would pretty quickly generate a lot of useless information for people to wade through to find relavant information. With that said:

  1. Nonfamous buisnesses/websites: Wikipedia is not a link repository. By the same token, wikipedia is not the yellow pages, either. We do not want to list every buisness on earth. There has to be some dividing line, then. You find the term "famous" distasteful. This is a valid criticism. It could just as easily say "notable." The largest gas company in India might not be famous, but it is notable (for being the largest gas company in india). We don't want to have articles on individual restaurants in southern Perth (as came up on the VFD about a week ago)
  2. Specific elementary or high schools - there's too freaking many of them and very, very few of them are famous or noteworthy - I can think of 2 off the top of my head - columbine high school and harvey milk high school. We'll keep the notable ones and dump the rest. (It already says that if something falls into both encyclopedic and nonencyclopedic catagories - famous high schools - the former trumps the latter)
  3. Transient popular culture and media hype - this was made put in nonencyclopedic against my judgement, and I do not agree with it. I think it needs to be taken to the village pump eventually
  4. Tutorials - In this case, it's a matter of degree. An article that is completely or mostly tutorial gets moved. An article that has a relatively small how-to section is fine (or interspersed in the text).
  5. Relevant Lists - "Who decide which lists are relevant and which are not." Wikipedia's contributor's do.

→Raul654 08:24, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

Why don't we want to list every business on earth? There are too many elementary and high schools for what? Anthony DiPierro 17:27, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

For the exact reason I said above: Suffice it to say, most of them boil down to signal-to-noise ratio. Yes, we could open the floodgates and let any (or almost any) non-famous person/place/thing have an article, but that would pretty quickly generate a lot of useless information for people to wade through to find relavant information. →Raul654 17:31, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

People don't browse Wikipedia page by page. Wikipedia is not paper. There's nothing to wade through. Anthony DiPierro 17:48, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Overly broad catagories headings[edit]

I'd like to make this clear. When you suggest catagories, make them as narrow as possible! "People" is a terrible, terrible heading. It's much preferable to have a lot of narrow headings than one overly broad one. The whole idea of this page is to enumerate what we want with specificity. →Raul654 17:39, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

I don't see anything overbroad about the category "people." Anthony DiPierro 17:45, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Because we do not want every person in the universe to have a listing. Wikipedia is not a biographical dictionary. You have to qualify it, or don't put it in the list. "Famous people" would be better, except we already have a catagory for anything with name recognition. →Raul654 17:50, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)
Don't tell me what I want. I do want every person in the universe to have a listing. Wikipedia is not paper. Anthony DiPierro 18:25, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Anthony, I think you misunderstand the purpose of this page. It is not to make new "What we want" policy, but to clarify and codify existing policy, as it is enforced on the Votes for deletion page. Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is accepted policy - it went through the same approval process that this article is going through.
On the other hand, what you propose goes directly against existing policy. You want to make new policy. Now, that's admirable, but this is not the place. The proper way of doing it is to go to the village pump, and try to get a consensus. →Raul654 18:52, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is not policy, it is a guideline, and it specifically says "Wikipedia has no size limits." In any case, I'll add "with some sort of achievement." Anthony DiPierro 20:17, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'd add that anything capitalised is also far too broad a category. Bmills 13:23, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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