Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 06:20, 21 June 2006

This essay is a proposition for being a guideline or eventually policy. It attempts to demonstrate both the proposed guideline, and justify the need for such guidelines.

Many wikipedians have debated the issue of notability, more precicely where to draw the line - what articles to keep, and which to throw out. In many cases this ends up being a dispute between dedicated administrators and dedicated writers of a page. Often google hits and voting is used to draw consensus as to whether to delete a "non-notable" article. More specifically, this policy disputes the need for debating "notability" and advises that wikipedians not use notability as grounds for anything - keeping an article or otherwise.

Problems with keeping non-notable pages:

1. In many cases, they contain unverified or unverifiable information.
2. They might contain Original research.
3. Like any small article, they might contain a biased point of view.
4. They might violate some other widely accepted policy or guideline.
5. They might not be useful, or even read by a "significant" number of people.
6. They may not have enough editors to keep the article up to quality.
7. They clutter categories.
8. They take up system resources.

The reasons for deleting non-notable pages are testiment to the uselessness of the need to debate "notability". The first three reasons are already official policy. Number four refers to already accpected policies or guideiles which is the same non-issue as the first three. Number five is directly contradicted by the relatively famous and widely accepted Misplaced Pages is not paper argument. The sixth reason has almost no basis in any wikipedia policies or guidelines, yet has been used.

Reasons for keeping non-notable pages:

1. They may simply not violate any policies or guidelines.
2. They may be interesting to more people than some think.
3. They may be reoccuring pages that, once deleted, reappear because editors repeatedly think an article should be written about the certain subject.
4. They may be stubs that require many edits over a long period of time to become larger and better quality.

These are valid reasons to keep an article, but in many case, wikipedian's overlook or override these reasons with a practicality and efficiency-oriented mindset that may not be applicable to wikipedia (via the not paper argument). Since these reasons are often overlooked, many people find an overabundance of precedence for deleting articles based on non-notability, when such argument is very controvercial.

Solutions to problems with keeping non-notable pages:

1. No solution can be had for articles on non-veriable subjects, or topics that directly violate official policy.
2. Articles that lack quality can be tagged as such - or readers can simply judge for themselves that a page is simply not written with the same standards as other articles - a suggested fix is to specially mark articles of quality, and also articles without quality.
3. Categories can be reorganized or further split off to form smaller more specific categories in which to place topics of any amount of fame.
4. System resources should almost never be considered when contemplating keeping information vs not keeping information.

These solutions are proposed to fix any potential problems associated with having articles of varying quality and size on wikipedia - as is the case notwithstanding non-notable articles.

The last reason (not in any list above) not to delete "non-notable" information, is that it frustrates, and generally punishes (usually new) users for editing. There has been a good number of good-faith contributors who have been facelessly and mercilessly had their work deleted - for no other reason than non-notability. Misplaced Pages was built on people's ability to create any articles they thought this site needed, or they would want. Misplaced Pages has instead turned into a bureaucratic system that has unseen and nonstandard ways of working, in many cases administrators and long-time users ignore new users and disregard their ignorance of the strange ways a wiki can work. This policy aims to advise users to use clear and official policies to conduct business, rather than nebulous claims like non-notability - which this page directly addresses.

Non-notability is not

Because they often overlap, non-notability is often assumed to be equivalent to one or more of the following defenciencies which are not allowed on Misplaced Pages for their own, individual reasons. When deciding an article's worthiness for Misplaced Pages, be sure the article is judged against these specific problems.

Non-verifiable

All information on Misplaced Pages must be written from an accessible and reliable source. While non-verfiable information is often not notable either, (such as what I have in my pocket) this is often not true. Qubit Field Theory is a little known quantum theory but is certainly verifiable.

Non-encyclopedic

In a paper encyclopedia, non-notable topics were not included for practical purposes. Misplaced Pages, however, is a very different model not confined by this limitation. Therefore, what is non-encyclopedic in Encyclopædia Britannica is not neccessarily non-encyclopedic here. As defined by a dictionary, an encyclopedia is marked by covering the span of human knowledge. An encyclopedic article on Misplaced Pages is one that is both verfiable and WP:NPOV NPOV. Therefore, a non-encyclopedic article is not neccessarily a non-notable article.

Biased

An article may not include information that However, most non-notable articles (like most notable articles) a non-notable article is most often written by an editor who has knowledge and interest in the subject, but writes with a NPOV. Nn biased articles can just as easily be corrected as notable biased articles.

Upkeep cost

The financial burden of storage space should not be considered when writing. Storage cost is approximately two millions words per penny! In the event that Misplaced Pages cannot support itself, a decision will be initiated by server technicians, not editors.

Related pages

• Misplaced Pages:Notability/Proposal A rejected proposal to not include non-notable articles
• Misplaced Pages Is Not Paper A popular essay on Misplaced Pages's abilities unbound from paper.