There Is No Such Thing As Notability Discussion

Most Tropers Are Fans launched as There Is No Such Thing As Notability: From YKTTW

Lale: You know what's ironic about this? Every teacher who's assigned me a paper in the past 3 years requiring research (with cited sources) always makes sure to say, "Do not use Wikipedia." They already have a reputation for not being reliable or factual. Wikis in general seem to be more to the benefit of writers than readers. Wikipedia's fighting a losing battle from my perspective.

Tanto: Same here. I can understand where Wikipedia's coming from on this, but a user-edited database is never going to achieve the quote-unquote legitimacy of more professional sources, rightfully or not. It seems to me that in the wiki format it's more important to create something accessible and readable than to shoot for encyclopedic precision. Play to your strengths instead of your weaknesses.

HeartBurn Kid: I dunno if that's more a fact of Wikipdia being a wiki, or it being an encyclopedia. I mean, before Wikipedia was popular, we were always taught not to use encyclopedias, except as a starting point to lead us into more specialized works. Incidentally, Wikipedia's also quite good for that — a starting point that can lead you to other, more specialized works and articles that are often freely available online (of course, that depends on just how well the Wikipedia article's sourced...)

Janitor: <kisses Seth all up one side of his peaches-and-cream face, then down the other side> For the other comments: Yes. Wikis are for people who write. The articles are written by people who write. These writer-people are the source of the vast bulk of human knowledge.

If you come across a "reliable fact", attack it at once. It is hiding something.

Ununnilium: What HeartBurn Kid said. BTW, if you use Wikipedia for a paper, don't cite the article, cite its sources. That's part of why they're there.

Also, this article is awesome and God.

Susan Davis: ...and Made Of Win.

Seven Seals: Gee, are there a lot of Wikipedia refugees here or something? I don't see what's so awesome about the article other than the sentiment it expresses, so my guess would be Wikipedia refugees. (Though I am, technically, a former Wikipedia editor, I don't count myself.)

That said, I'm eagerly awaiting the tropes on that Bulgarian sea scallop documentary. I hope there's an Evil Overlord scallop in there.

Duckluck: The problem with Wikipedia has never been that it is user edited, it's problem is that it never stops being user edited. If the Wikipedia Powers That Be were more willing to lock finished entries, they'd have an ever-expanding core of reliable information rather than an endless battleground for Wiki Vandals and self-serving editors.

Their other problem is these stupid notability arguments. You'll see admins deleting the pages for award winning and widely-read articles like Starslip Crisis, but the fact that they have pages for individual pokemon doesn't bother them at all. It's infuriating (and no, I'm not a Wikipedia refugee, just someone who's annoyed by the hypocrasy).

Morgan Wick: Is there such a thing as a "finished" entry? New facts can be learned, and there may be certain things that are still ongoing.

Ununnilium: Yeah, I agree; I think that goes against the very idea of a wiki.

Susan Davis: I'm not a "refugee" from Wikipedia; I'm a regular editor there, too. It's just nice to be able to shoot from the hip once in a while.

Lale: Anyone else notice the rise in new Series entries since this page was launched?

Ununnilium: Excellent, excellent. All goes according to plan...

Adam850: I think the rise of the series entries is a way to remove redlinks in the trope examples area. Plus you get those reverse examples, a list of common troped the series exhibits.

Morgan Wick: Love the "nominated for deletion" parody.

Alexandra Erin: I wondered how long it would take somebody to say something about that... :P

arromdee Believe me, on Wikipedia they *don't* like having lots of Pokemon articles. However, they can't delete them, because it's hard to make a rule that would let you delete Pokemon articles and not get a lot of things everyone wants to keep. People have tried to get rid of the Pokemon articles by demanding references and sources; all that that produced was Pokemon articles with references and sources.

Sci Vo: Ha! That's almost as funny as a Mega Neko. And by "that" I mean people being so determined to make their Pokemon articles that they'll treat it like academic research if that's what it takes. References and sources, indeed!

Fabu Vinny: Have you even looked at the Pokémon articles lately? The same people that built them up are actively destroying them. It's gone from informative articles to useless lists that don't even have illustrations due to the blanket ban on such. Pokémon is becoming an example of why Wikipedian notability just doesn't work for the stuff covered on this site.

Doug S. Machina: This even seems to happen on entirely entertainment-based wikis. Look a the Transformers wiki

and the dicussion on this page

for instance. (The entry itself is a hoot.)

Does it remind anyone other Discworld fans of the this passage from The Truth?

Sacharissa:"This is a report of the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society...[they are] basically leading little lives that are controlled by other people, do you see? They've got no say in who runs the city but they can damn well see to it that cockatoos aren't lumped in with parrots. It's not their fault. It's just how things are."

Of course, sit in glass houses much?

Adam850: replaced:

"floatboxright:The following page has been nominated for deletion in accordance with The Omniscient Council Of Vagueness' policies, the treaty of Ghent and the Shadow Proclamation."

With an image. Hope that's okay.

Bob: The image by Fast Eddie for because "image doesn't work with new imposed width restrictions". I'm sure we can use it if you make it smaller. [1]

◊

Adam850: Hey, deserteagle, why'd you revert the page? Come on, at least explain your edit. If I'm feeling petty tomorrow, I'm going back to the way it was.

Fast Eddie: Re: Not linking to Complaining About Shows You Dont Like. The statement is made well enough here.

Dragon Quest Z: Okay, not putting it back, but remember that link was there before Darth Wiki even showed up, so it had nothing to do with that dead page.

High Five: As pointed out on its discussion page, uh, The Magic Bullet article. As created by me. Good Lord, was that fun to make.

Dragon Quest Z: Could you at least tell us why we shouldn't mention YKTTW on the page, Janitor (if it's mentioned, it's not in any phrase or sentence I recognize as such)? Wouldn't the policy also mean we don't need to run work pages through ykttw? If so, it should be mentioned, and explicitly for those unfamiliar with this wiki, and if not, should that be a separate message page?

EDIT: Okay, it seems some of us on the forums agreed it should be a separate page. So please ignore the above.

Dok Enkephalin: Should add the corollary: "There's no such thing as too notable not to be included." Everyone who adds a 'how come X hasn't been mentioned yet?' as the only mention, even if the item fits the trope and has widespread (over)exposure, if you're the first one to note it, then include why it should be noted. And to anyone who adds a guilt trip with that type of addition: fuck you, moron; just accept that your pet film/book/game/anime/writer/actor/producer/game/etc isn't as special as you think it is.

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys