Abstracting the leading principles of the following 3-ply for general discussion.

Good point JC. Very good point. I recall that there were was some banter about this previously. That a figure could only be deemed notable if a bio had already been established in a reliable source. This reasonable and measured solution went nowhere though.

Trouble is, we need some careful definitions. I'd say that someone is notable if he/she is in the original Who's Who, but there are dozens of imitations, many of which have very lax standards for inclusion and some will even insert anyone who pays. Some would say that everyone in Grove's Dictionary of Music is notable; others might disagree (especially if they're female opera composers).

One of the things implied by the qualification "Widely Accepted" is that no reasonable person would dispute it.

Yes, I know, now we have to define "Reasonable Person", and that of course is yet another thing an acquaintance with which Wikipediots have nada.

Jonny

No decision of the "community" is safe from manipulation and distortion. Just take it out of their hands.

This is a reasonable suggestion. If you have a biography printed elsewhere, then it is reasonable.

So then comes the issue - what kinds of people warrant articles? Only politically active people, and people who want to be in the public eye? Or do you include people who work in areas that it would seriously hurt their professional reputation to have an article?

I know this may be a novel idea to some folks, but people do achieve notability in this world of ours for something other than their political activities.

So any personage in a widely accepted general encyclopedia or professional biographical reference work is okay, but only if the Wikipedia Bio is limited to what's there — not some kind of seed stub that is allowed to collect any manner of extra lint.

It may be okay to add biographies beyond this sphere — but solely on the conditions of (1) subject notification and (2) subject permission.

Jonny

If we require subject permission, then by definition all biographies will be positive, which then means that they are all horribly biased in favour of the subject.

I am actually not opposed to that, as I am a great believer that bias exists everywhere, and it is stupid to try to make things neutral.

But then it would make a mockery of Wikipedia's NPOV policy. And would biographies of living persons be an exception?

No, subject permission would only be required of Wikipedia Bios that are not already in widely accepted biographical reference works. That does not mean that subjects would have veto power over content.

Jonny

My Dad, for example, has vetoed me when I've written things about him over the internet, especially when I said his real name and photograph, and he has said that he has a standard thing to stop anyone, including me, from making a visible page about him.

My Dad is probably as notable as Ted Frank, a borderline candidate.

Would he be able to stop a Wikipedia article written about him?

Does his biography appear in a widely accepted encyclopedia, a standard biographical reference work, or something like that?

Jonny

How about those who have had significant biographies written about them, but fail to appear in a standard biographical reference work? Do they fail to make the Cache cut? I'm not much bothered if they do. Just asking.

As I understand it, pretty much anybody can write a book about another person, call it a "biography", and get somebody or another to print it. Is that what you are talking about?

Really, this is not that hard.

Just ask yourself : "What would responsible publishers of a real-world encyclopedia or biographical reference work do — if in addition they had a very strict policy against original research?"

Jonny

The qualifier was significant biography. Though I'm not sure how "significant" would play out, or whether that is really a qualifier. I'm just wondering about "notable" people who may slip through the net.

One of the aspects that would need to be ironed out in any policy like this - which I like the sound of - is the global nature of the internet. So an important politician or writer in - say Kenya - may not have been covered in any real world encyclopedias. However, Kenyans are going to find WP at the top of their google searches just like people sitting in Iowa. Where do Kenyans stand in all of this?

Look, the NOR in question is not my policy. We are talking about WP:NOR — we are not talking about [Name Redacted]:NOR.

The question is : What bearing does the letter and spirit of WP:NOR have on Wikipedia Biographies?

I sincerely doubt if the WikiPlexus of Wikipediot Polices is logically or pragmatically consistent as it stands, but that's not really an unherd of state of affairs in human affairs. The Crux of the Plexus is : Will the bearers of the Crux in question do anything to make it more bearable, or Not?

From where I stand, then, you are starting to get off track. And you seem to be doing that by dragging in all sorts of new premisses that have the character of unexamined and unexpressed assumptions.

For instance, if I have to guess, there's an enthymemic premiss in the air — or in the air between some pairs of ears — that Wikipedia is supposed to be Some Kind Of Universal News Source (SKOUNS).

At any rate, that seems to be one of the hidden agendas of many Wikipediots.

But that is not what an Encyclopedia is.

Ay, there's the rub.

Or one of the rubs.

Jonny

Just testing the idea, Jonny.

It's what people do when someone comes up with some kind of theory, idea or plan. Such as your "No Original Biography (NOB?)" premise.

Well, my Dad is not notable enough for a real encyclopaedia, and never will be (unless he does something incredible sometime in the future). However, to some publications, such as New Internationalist and Psychology Today, he has been published many times, and they both have written biographies about him. He also has a small biography within Amnesty International (but then again so does my sister, but she is nowhere near as well known as my Dad). And of course he is a published author, with over 50 books and publications written. They aren't best sellers by any stretch of the imagination - they are academic texts. But to people within the fields they are well known. Organisations that handle his seminars and lectures and the various projects that he runs know him very well.

But - they don't have his photograph, they don't know his address or his phone number, or even which town he lives in. And he has one hell of a lot of enemies, which goes alongside the profession. If there was an article about him on Wikipedia, first off it'd stuff up his professional integrity, and secondly it'd be almost certain that it'd turn negative, because of the people that know about him that would be able to say negative things. That in turn would cause even more serious damage to his professional integrity.

He has sued people for such things, and he would sue Wikipedia, unless they immediately oversighted it and made it a protected deletion. Which is most likely what would happen.

So again, why can't people do things like that? He is roughly equally as notable as Ted Frank, a borderline figure. Why can't he prevent an article being written about him? Or have input to make sure that it is written in a positive way, and only about issues that he is happy for them to write about (e.g. his Amnesty International work)?

That's all I'm doing. Like I've said many times, I'm not even sure that Wikipedia Policies can be salvaged. And that's all aside from the fact that hardly anyone there even tries to fit their practices to what they preach.

And please don't blame-credit me with the idea — there's No Original Bone in this body. All I did was tweak the name of a perfectly standard No First Bio proposal to give it a slightly cuter acronym — such is the extent of my creativity.

Again, the line of probation that I'm trying to follow in this testing regime is simply to explore the logical and practical consequences of WP:NOR, as it bears on notability judgments.

The thing that the Wikipedia Diet says it denies to itself is becoming a primary source, an originator of opinion.

Jonny

As I say above, I remember the discussions about this previously, but can't for the life of me remember where or when they were.

I think this WP:NOB concept has wings, and should be discussed on a regular basis. It certainly addresses a few of the worst excess of WP. And, as you rightly mention, will make people consider the logical and practical consequences of WP:NOR. In fact it calls into question WPs whole approach to what it calls "original research". And it could theoretically be applied to other subjects beyond bios.

I remember a discussion in the past about WP:SYN. The synthesis of sources to create a novel thesis - a novel article in some cases. Which was or wasn't allowed depending on who blew the conch on the talk pages. In many cases, these weak bios could be described as simply failing WP:SYN, WP:NOR's lesser known offspring. They're just a bunch of sources cobbled together to create a novel representation of someone's life.

"To The Best Of My Recollection", as one says, being myself a much-wounded veteran of the First NOR War, WP:SYN, though it hadn't been christened (?) as such in my day, is one of the most insistent innovations and most peculiar inventions of SlimVirgin's Theory Of Research (SV:TOR). Many a good scholar and a gentleperson has met his or her wiki-death on that Hill Of Ωds.

But the hour's far too late to regale you with old war stories — in my present wikipheeble condition I need rest more than reminiscence.

Jonny

Deletionists always seem unable to comprehend that the definition of encyclopedia as they understand it, or as anybody understands it, has no particular bearing on what Wikipedia ought to be. They are always blathering about whether something is "encyclopedic" or not. Wikipedia should be a vastly larger version of what people traditionally call encyclopedias. Whether that means it is still an encyclopedia is open to personal interpretation (I say it's still an encyclopedia), but even if the answer is no, that doesn't mean Wikipedia should slip away from what it should be and become a shitty Britannica clone because of somebody's definition of the word "encyclopedia". We can call it not an "encyclopedia" but a "wikipedia" as a common noun if we want. Why on earth should anything be reshaped to fit the old usage of some word? Let it be what it ought to be; "encyclopedia" is a convenient and seemingly appropriate word for it, but we don't have to use that word, nor do we have to let the word "encyclopedia" be limited by its past meaning. Words are our tools, not bricks walling us into a prison.

Well, I really, really do have to save this very interesting line of inquiry for morning, but since I'm very likely to forget what I was thinking the night before, let me copy the full context of the remark that ∀king x-cised from its proper e-bedding, 'cause you know how much I take issue with that ilk of deletionism that rips remarks from the living tissue of their x-planatory e-cycloments.

Speaking of e-bedding …

Jonny

Wikipedia's best quality articles:
- Musicians
- Actors
- Comedians
- Films
- Mathematical theories
- Non-controversial scientific theory
- Porn

Wikipedia's worst quality articles:
- Anything to do with any war or conflict
- Any political figures
- Any kind of theory that isn't 100% what the government says
- Anything even vaguely controversial
- Anything of historical significance
- Anything with multiple viewpoints
- Anything so complicated that fact-checking is difficult

Keep the cruft, get rid of the attempts at being a real reference source. It'd solve so many problems.

Forks Have Tines That Have Tinier Forks …

Morning AAAALLLL Ready ???

Well, this thread is threadening to ravel off, as they are wanton to do, in ≥ 3 directions already, so let's review:

• Tine 1. This branch left off at this point. I was trying to abstract the leading principles of that earnest pleading on b½ of Ted Frank's WP:FifteenMinutia and to view those provisional rules of inference in the light of Wikipedia's Big Three Policy Brutalities — or has SlimVirgin redacted them to a more finely honed duo castrato by now ??? — especially Wikipedia's Unnatural Law Of Abhorrence d'OR.
• Tine 2. Everyking flagged down a remark that I made at this point and I marked it for further inquiry at this point. The point of contention appears to be this:
  • QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Wed 29th August 2007, 6:16pm)
    
    From where I stand, then, you are starting to get off track. And you seem to be doing that by dragging in all sorts of new premisses that have the character of unexamined and unexpressed assumptions.
    
    For instance, if I have to guess, there's an enthymemic premiss in the air — or in the air between some pairs of ears — that Wikipedia is supposed to be Some Kind Of Universal News Source (SKOUNS).
    
    At any rate, that seems to be one of the hidden agendas of many Wikipediots.
    
    But that is not what an Encyclopedia is.
    
    
• Tine 3. This spins off at this point. There is that type of fork that devotes all its resonance to none but the overtones of its attunèd note. Accordingly, Blissyu2 reverberates the incidental musings on a theme of Deletionism introduced by Everyking and launches a full-scale divertimento on that score. I will be forced to defer this theme to another tine.

Okay, that at least gives me a sense of where we got off to — sorry, Teach, of off to where we got — but I really do have a lot of other stuff to do today, so it may be later this afternoon or tonight before I can think about this any more.

Jonny