Wikipedia talk:Notability/Historical/Importance

message: * Although on prior occasions I defended wikipedia:trivia to redirect to this guideline (see /Archive 01), presently, I support them being separate guidelines, as explained on wikipedia talk:trivia. --Francis Schonken 09:27, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge [[wikipedia:trivia]] into this guideline proposal?

message: Jimbo claims that: " 'fame' and 'importance' are not the right words to use, they are merely rough approximations to what we're really interested in, which is verifiability and NPOV. . . Consider an obscure scientific concept, 'Qubit Field Theory' -- 24 hits on google.  I'd say that not more than a few thousand people in the world have heard of it, and not more than a few dozen understand it.  (I certainly don't.)  It is not famous and it is arguably not important, but I think that no one would serious question that it is valid material for an encyclopedia.  What is it that makes this encyclopedic?  It is that it is information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an NPOV fashion.  (Though perhaps only as a stub, of course, since it's very complicated and not many people would know how to express it clearly in layperson's terms.)"
:Yeah, I read that comment by Jimbo, justifying his vote in Wikipedia talk:Fame and importance, more than a year ago. On the other hand I also read the wikipedia:NPOV tutorial several times, and in the "Space and balance" section of that guideline explaining how NPOV needs to be applied, undeniably one needs an understanding of "importance" and "interesting" to make sense out of the description how NPOV is meant to work in practice.
:(Happily enough one doesn't need an understanding of the "fame" concept to interpret that NPOV guideline, but I'm getting off topic)
:For both "importance" and "interesting" I think something clarifying these all-in-all intuitive concepts would be more than welcome, since these concepts are used to explain the practical implementation of NPOV.
:But maybe I'm rather looking for sort of a philosophical clarification of these concepts, how they're understood in the context of the implementation of NPOV - rather than a fixed rule.
:I tried wikipedia:coherence as a sort umbrella for such type of non-rule, philosophical guidelines (or whatever it should be called), but that idea was pushed away after a few weeks (see wikipedia talk:coherence).
:Anyhow, here we are: wikipedia:importance is linked from the "space and balance" section of the "NPOV tutorial", and it bothers me that it leads to something that has an eternal "proposed" status.
:Yeah, maybe we should ask Jimbo again how he thinks about this, or what direction he thinks might be best to proceed...
:I'm all ears!
:--Francis Schonken 00:42, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've filled the Qubit Field Theory article in a bit, so Jimbo's comment isn't valid now. Clinkophonist 20:06, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jimbo's comment

message: The concept of importance only has meaning from a particular point of view. What is important to me is not what is important to you. What is important to middle class americans is not what is important to poor africans. What is important to a student of pop-culture in japan is not what is important to a nuclear physicist. The three content policies: Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view provide all the tools we need to exclude material that doesn't belong, especially when combined with the guidelines on Wikipedia:Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Cite sources. No more rulecruft, especially not rulecruft that attempts to impose a particular point of view! Trollderella 23:09, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And defining which type of source is more reliable than another one would not be POV? To use some of your examples: in the present wikipedia system the "poor african" (who hasn't got the financial sources to get anything printed or otherwise published in English) would definitely be described as a "less reliable" source than a "middle class American" who writes a POV letter to his newspaper, printed in a few tenthousand copies the next day. And that reliability is topped in an incomparable degree by the reliability of the nuclear scientist who's interviewed on TV regarding nuclear fallout of Chernobyl. I can agree that that's how wikipedia works. But I'm getting sick of those living in the illusion than by such proceedings all "POV" has been avoided... Implicitly a distinction has been made between what is "important" and what isn't: only the word "importance" has been avoided, which is just cowardice compared to trying to find an honest answer to how "importance" is understood in wikipedia context. --Francis Schonken 00:42, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: NPOV is an aspiration. We attempt to be neutral on the value we ascribe to verifiable information. For this reason we do not judge whether an article on a Buffy episode is more important than a scientific theory. We look for reliable sources within each field of study, and write the best article we can on each. The issue here is that a group of people want to use concepts of 'importance' to exclude material that does not fit with their pov. Trollderella 01:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

text: *Please provide some evidence for this allegation of abuse of the term "importance"? Radiant_>|< 18:25, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't say the 'term' importance. Look on AFD for anyone voting 'nn'. When pressed, they often say that notability is the same as importance. You yourself have piped 'notability' to 'importance'. Trollderella 21:56, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

text: *You didn't answer my question. You said "The issue here is that a group of people want to use concepts of 'importance' to exclude material that does not fit with their pov." Please provide evidence of this group of people. Radiant_>|< 23:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, everyone who wants to delete 'non-notable' schools, for a start. Their point of view is that schools are not suitable, they want to use concepts of notability or importance to try to justify their pov. Trollderella 23:07, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

text: *That's not evidence, that's your assumption of what those people are thinking. You may well be wrong about that, try asking them first. Do not jump to conclusions. Radiant_>|< 23:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Oh come on. He enterered the bank with a ski mask on, a gun, and a bag with 'swag' written on it. That's not evidence that he was going to rob it, that's your assumption of what that person is thinking. We may well be wrong about that, we should ask him first. Do not jump to conclusions! Trollderella 23:15, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important to me! 

message: I can't really see why this article is lacking in importance: it could be a stub, but I'm really not sure.  Any opinions on this? Greatgavini 12:25, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia:Notability (people) - if Victoria Francés meets one (or more) of the mentioned criteria, it wouldn't be too difficult to demonstrate that, I suppose? --Francis Schonken 08:17, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  Right, OK, here we go...
*Google Test- Gives over 3 million results, even with an accent on the e, although admittedly most are in Spanish.  But that shouldn't make any difference (should it?)
*The subject's work is on sale on the American, British, German, French and Japanese versions of Amazon.  Additionally, most newsagents here (in Northern Ireland) stock her work so I assume this is the case in many other places.  Sounds like at least a 5000 person audience to me.
*Has own site Nothing special, I know, but adds a bit to her notability.
Is this sufficient evidence?  If so, how can I get rid of the tag without getting my user page wiped by an administrator? (*LOL* Long story - well, at least it didn't happen on the English Wikipedia...:-) )  Greatgavini 19:58, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Victoria Francés]] 

message: "There is evidence that a reasonable number of people are, were or might be concurrently interested in the subject (eg. it is at least well-known in a community)."
:What is a "reasonable number of people" and what is a "community"? Schizombie 05:23, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Does this mean the mere presence of discussion on a talk page establishes importance (I'm not sure that's a good idea), or that something within the discussion establishes the importance according to one of the other criteria (which would make this rule redundant)?Schizombie 05:23, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not at all sure what this means.  A new article relating to (and thus an expansion upon) the topic of an existing article (established subject)? Schizombie 22:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Importance criteria

message: I disagree with importance (or notability) being a Wikipedia policy. To a certain extent, we should include as much as possible. There's a point that people shouldnt get obsessive (e.g. giving everybody a Wikipedia rticle about them), but that should not be a required wikipedia policy. It seeems like Importance and Notabily were made to prevent niche topics. But Wikipedia is a great place fo find "the combined sum of all human knowledge", and I have personally learned so much from Wikipedia that I couldn't have learned anywehre else without intense research. ccool2ax 13:10, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgive my newcomer-ness in that previous post. I believe that saying that something needs to be important to be included in a limitless, non-paper encyclopædia is ridiculous. Original research protects Wikipedia from including an article about everything. -- Chris Ccool2ax  contrib. 19:40, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does importance have to be policy? 

message: This is so vague that whether any article meets it can be debated endlessly, with those who would support the article saying it does and those who don't saying it doesn't. It's nothing but another point to raise in a dispute. I particularly deprecate the reference to stubs as worthless. Stubbing is completely out of control. Tens of thousands of perfectly good articles are labelled as stubs, whereas so far as I can see the concept was originally intended to apply to articles so inadequate as to be almost useless in their present form. Most of the articles in Encyclopedia Britannica would probably be labelled as stubs in Wikipedia. Does that mean they are permanently worthless and "unimportant" and should be removed from the next edition? Golfcam 12:45, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This is no use at all