Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia Wants (proposal)

message: 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)
thread_title: Why the Move

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Do we include How-tos?

message: 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): 
* Johann Nikolaus Forkel - Notable german musical historial of the late 1700's. Could probably be found in a music text book. Academic 
* Munich air disaster - A historical event, explicetely encyclopedic
* The Lord Rhys - A Welsh prince, academic
* Dragon curve - A mathematical function, likely to be found in a textbook, Academic 
* Rayners Lane tube station - Not sure- Physical landmark? Name recognition for the average Brit? 
**No name recognition for the average Brit, but part of a consistent block of London Underground station articles. Onebyone
* Demographics of Albania - Does not fit in any catagory!!  
**Effectively this is part of Albania, it's just that country pages are split into topics in a fairly consistent way. Also this is an academic topic - demographics is part of geography. Onebyone
* Pratt and Whitney - Large company with name recognition
* Giessenlanden - City, explicetely encyclopedic
* Avalon, California - City, explicetely encyclopedic
* Cleveland, Tennessee - City, explicetely encyclopedic
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:
# 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) 
# 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) 
# 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 
# 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). 
# 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Test Run