On 07/27/11 2:42 AM, Charles Matthews wrote: > On 27/07/2011 08:49, Ray Saintonge wrote: >> On 07/26/11 3:13 AM, Charles Matthews wrote: >>> On 20/07/2011 10:17, Ray Saintonge wrote: >>>> I missed reading this thread when it was active, but my own estimate of >>>> what still needs to be done in historical biographies alone is quite >>>> high. >>> Yes, that is one area where the material seems available to do much >>> more. >>> >>>> An estimate of 20,000,000 English >>>> Wikipedia articles seems increasingly conservative. The amount of work >>>> to be done is enormous even without having to fight with the notability >>>> police. >>> On the other hand, the number of active Wikipedians who know where their >>> next 1000 articles are coming from is quite small, IMX. The emphasis on >>> enWP is hardly on being prolific: quality is more highly rated than >>> quantity. That may not be wrong, of course, but to some extent these >>> things are a matter of personal taste, and should remain so. We could do >>> with better support of the "good stub" concept, I think: probably an >>> example of "tacit knowledge" about the site, in that editors who have >>> been around for a while know what that means, while the manual pages >>> have a different slant. >>> >>> All discussions of the "notability" concept we use seem to end up with >>> the generally broken nature of the thing. It is just that there is no >>> snappy replacement. WP:GNG is a bit objectionable in the insistence on >>> "secondary sources"; it is not completely silly but is not that helpful >>> either when you start pushing the limits. >> Perhaps this requires a clearer description of what is essential to a >> good stub. > I think a discussion of the nature of "good stubs", in relation though > to what we know (or rather guess) about the "long tail" of reference > material that is "out there" in some form, sounds like an interesting > one to have, and not one I recall having before. Basically there are > things that (a) people could want to look up, (b) for which > "footnote"-style answers exist and are verifiable, and (c) could appear > at that sort of length in WP, where they would be an asset rather than > an embarrassment. And we still don't know that much about the whole > population of such things.
In the shorter obituary notices of Gentleman's Magazine the information often follows a predictable pattern. To the extent that it is within predefined parameters it could fit well in a "List of ..." article. If a particular entry goes beyond that there is a strong argument that it warrants a stub article of its own. The notion that a second source be provided is often unsound. While there is always the possibility of hoax entries in these old magazines, such entries would still be a tiny segment of the overall content. The majority of contributors, then as now, do so in good faith. A stub from one of these broadly based national publications, will often only be mirrored in a local history that had a very small circulation. Those who complain about these stubs, are often unwilling to track down even relatively common references. >> The WP:GNG is opaque and bureaucratic. It is not suitable to much of >> the 19th century material that I have. "Notes and Queries is a >> fascinating publication where the readership answered questions posed >> by others. Providing other sources for this could be extremely >> difficult, and none of it comes close to being subject to BLP >> requirements > Ec _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
