I foolishly nominated the article on Frank Gross for AfD, thinking that a speedy delete might seem callous, as the creator was clearly his son. Afd passed as no consensus. I guess I really don't understand the Wikipedia notability guidelines.

Hmmm, apparently I did nominate it for speedy and it was declined as "scrapes through but only just".

This is one of the problems with using local papers as sources - you can make anything notable. I could quite easily build an article on myself with three times the number of sources, but I'd look like a self-important fool. The same probably goes for most people.

I came here expecting this to be about Chatham, Kent. What a bizarre regional name.

So did I, originally. It seems that the canadian one was named after the more sensibly-named one.

Yes, Chatham-Kent, near London, which is on the Thames. Sorry, wasn't that clear?

A nicely written article with pictures and references seems to be sufficient to ignore the notability guidelines.

Is that really a problem - a nice article about a nice person? Is the real problem that there isn't enough salacious gossip for the subject to be notable?

There are plenty of articles on Wikipedia about nice people with no salacious gossip. It all depends what Wikipedia is or purports to be. Anything with the slightest pretensions to be a serious work of reference must have some standards. (Not that I'm claiming that Wikipedia is a serious work of reference.)

Ah, the inclusionist dilemma. If we can perceive that a small community is entitled to its corner of Wikipedia, then within that community, notability can be achieved, while being entirely un-notable on the global scale.

If we knew what Wikipedia was supposed to be then we could come to a reasoned position. At the moment it is somewhat schizophrenic between all things to all men and we are writing the greatest academic work ever (allowing for the fact that some universities will try and invent academic worthiness even in trivia). I have no problem with all things to all men if there is then another process for targeting content at appropriate audiences - but then I think the whole thing becomes to unwieldy to manage as you need different versions of some articles.

It will be interesting to see if Knol manages to resolve the context issue - penis: the academic view; dick, the phnar! phnar! view; and the nicely educational view targeted at teenagers with responsible parents who do not live in Smallville, USA.

I'm not sure that I agree with the first para. A small town like say Helions Bumpstead may be notable enough without any resident, however prominent within the town, being notable on any sensible measure.

The second para is an excellent statement.