Here's an AfD that really blows my mind: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2008 Australian zoo killings. A child broke into an Australian zoo and killed a bunch of reptiles early this month. Well, that was reported around the world: the article's got sources from BBC News, Reuters, CNN, The Guardian, etc. And yet right now the discussion is heavily leaning towards deletion. "WP:NOTNEWS", or so the mantra goes.

As is often the case, people fail to evaluate notability in terms of attention received and importance attributed to the subject, instead looking at it in terms of whether they, as individuals, believe a subject ought to be notable, or whether a subject has some essential, defining characteristic that makes it notable. A boy kills some animals, well, don't little boys do things like that all time? The Arbitrator Formerly Known as Blnguyen says it matters no more than "the next kid who runs over a cat". Will that cat's death be reported by major news agencies around the world? It's not the event itself, it's whether other people care about it.

What is the encyclopedic topic - how does humanity learn from this. Encyclopedia Britannica would not have such an article now or in 10 years time. It might mention the event within the context of parental supervision or zoos or something, but it does not fit with my view of what an encyclopidia is about.

If, however, you think that Wikipedia really is "a collection of every piece of information possible to gather on planet Earth and beyond" then fine.

This is easy. If there isn't even an article about the zoo it took place at, why on earth would some stuff that happened there be suitable for an article?

1) Make an article about the Alice Springs Reptile Centre. As nobody has, yet, I am going to do so.
2) Move the newsy fluff about the incident to a section there.

Easy.

Wikipedia is not Britannica, nor is it a collection of everything. The accepted standard is somewhere in between.




I don't follow that logic. Why should the existence or absence of an article on the zoo reflect on the notability of this kid's reptile killings? That would mean defining notability according to what already exists on Wikipedia.

Almost; it would mean defining notability on Wikipedia by what already exists on Wikipedia. This is normal.

I've made an article about the centre, and the news story about a naughty child who killed a few lizards has been merged there.

The notion is strange to me. Isn't Wikipedia a work in progress? Shouldn't we make the decisions based on an objective standard instead of looking at what has already been done? Doesn't the latter approach mean defining our future activity based on past neglect or ignorance? It seems absurd.

Of course it's a work in progress, although probably a lot less so than 2 or 3 years ago. The inclusion criteria have been in place for years, with little change; WP:NOTNEWS isn't a new thing.

Google up "man bites dog". Basically, every last tidbit of trash does not need to be carefully and lovingly indexed and categorized. The more journalism-cruft added to the database, the more Wikipedia begins to resemble an extremely un-funny version of The Onion.

What people need to realise about this article is that it was created as a WP:POINT 'violation'. It was a speciality of my now blocked adoptee to do things like this. User:903M thought wikipedia was full of non-notable news articles and was upset that a previous one of 'hers' was deleted, so she created this one to say why not have one about this if they are going to allow any of the really shallow articles on there. The example she gave which inspired her to do this was TimMclean, but really she was annoyed that her article written as 'User:Presumptive' on the "Murder of Joseph Didier" was deleted.

As always with this user, part of what she says has a point, she just expresses it in a pointless way (she has been blocked as a sock of Dereks1x).



That's a really good solution, thanks. The user was trying to get me to suggest redirecting it to Alice Springs, but this is a really good way of covering the incident, in context.

Firstly, this should presumably be on Wikinews (if it isn't already). If not, what the hell is that site for?

Secondly, I see no logic in saying that there needs to be an article on the reptile centre (though kudos to Neil for writing it). Surely it's the same logic as saying that someone i snot notable just because they were involved in one notable incident, so we write an article abou tth eincident, not a BLP. Is there an article on th eboy?

The centre has more references in the news etc than just for this one incident. There would not be an article about the boy because of a policy on people notable only for one event, and out of respect because he's a minor.

The boy's name hasn't been disclosed anyway.

Meringue's comment is a perfect example of how Wikinews can be harmful. Wikinews should not be seen as a substitute for encyclopedic coverage! News reports and encyclopedia articles are very different things.

I've had an email from User:903M asking me to edit my posts to say that she is not Dereks1x, and people are being falsely accused of being him, particularly those who edit articles on political figures. Not sure if I can edit them now due to constraints of the forum time limits on posts, so thought I'd add this here.