Not sure technology is the best place to put this…any suggestions for a cross post?

  • Aatube@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The article is a bit wrong and I’ve submitted a correction.

    Wikipedia has bandwidth and doesn’t want to duplicate what’s already on https://www.wikidata.org/ (which has a much generous notability guideline: “It refers to an instance of a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity that can be described using serious and publicly available references”). Notability is sort of a compromise on what will be maintained as an article to not have these you need to maintain just explode.

    The part about forbidding primary sources isn’t true; they aren’t forbidden unless the claim is “exceptional”(what’s exceptional is decided by whoever looks at the article), which doesn’t include most of the facts cited. What’s true is that primary sources don’t count towards notability, so if an article mostly just uses primary sources it’s likely to get deleted.

    • Melody Fwygon@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      What’s true is that primary sources don’t count towards notability, so if an article mostly just uses primary sources it’s likely to get deleted.

      Which is absolutely absurd. Counting secondary sources and deciding if something is “Notable” from that is completely arbitrary. Furthermore, there’s legitimate reason for secondary sources not to exist on the topic; and the Notability guidelines of the local WikiProject on Roads, which probably contained the people leaving, should have been taken under advisement as notable roads don’t always have secondary sourcing due to lack of local newspapers or publications.

      Specifically a highway may be notable because it never appears in the news… often because it rarely if ever sees auto accidents. A source is a source, and I think attacking primary sources and excluding them is problematic if the source in question never was causing issues with NPOV.

      Now if someone can prove that a website from the DOT is actually doing some weird POV pushing or is legitimately not behaving like a neutral source; then sure, challenge that citation for that article and get it struck.

      But it’s otherwise a waste of time to pretend that roads and highways aren’t notable and not of encyclopedic interest for good reason.

        • tal@lemmy.today
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          1 year ago

          I feel like any realistic criteria for usefulness would place a real-life road over obscure comic book characters, which are pretty extensively documented in Wikipedia.

          googles for a random example

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magician_from_Mars

          This character appeared in five comic book issues around winter 1939-1940.

          I’m not saying that they don’t deserve a Wikipedia article. But I have a hard time believing that there is more need for information about a character that appeared in a few comic book issues eighty years back than a road that people are actually making use of today.

          • Aatube@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I mean, there are at most 500 pages on Golden Age Superheroes yet over 1000 on New York roads alone.