QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Wed 30th March 2011, 1:31pm)
Once again, for those who haven't gotten it:
"Notable" means "Something I want to be written about"
"Not notable" means "Something I don't want to be written about"
There is truth in this. The only half-way objective definition of "notability" is that it a subject which is cited "verifiably" (which means you can look it up, and the source won't change day-to-day, like somebody's website), in a source that is "reliable." Reliable in turn being a tricky word on WP, since their reliability (i.e., is it likely to be factual or TRUE) standards vary from field to field (as they should) but don't attempt to have even an approximate comparison between fields of knowledge (which they should, but do not). The other criterion for "notability" is that the info can't be one of those things listed in the very arbitrary and WP:NOT list of things that should not go in Wikipedia.
Personally, I can only think of a very few things that really ought to be WP:NOT items: BLP and personal information on living people, state secrets, recipes for bombs and poisons ala the Anarchist Cookbook, recent news, porn, photos of graphic violence newer than 20 years or so. Basically, since WP:NOTCENSORED is a lie anyway, I can't think of any reason why WP, a general public encyclopedia, should have any content that would be rejected for taste by your local newspaper or paper encyclopedia. Though at the same time, I have no objection to it including many trivial things that would be rejected by both of those
for lack of interest, or lack of space, since Wikipedia truely is not paper, so has no space-constraints. Some of this latter stuff should perhaps be tagged, so that it is automatically excluded from versions of WP that will eventually be used as off-line references, such as CD, micro-SD smartphone or bookreader/tablet compatable versions.
The problem is that WP does not follow its own "notablity" criteria above, and what it DOES do, often boils down to ILIKEIT vs IDONTLIKEIT. Possibly the worst essay on WP, which gets quoted as though it was a policy (even though it's not even a guideline) is one called "OTHERSTUFFEXISTS." This little gem is a "guidance essay" --whatever the hell kind of commentary
that is, in this talmudic mess. It is so self-contradictory that even its own nutshell contradicts itself. Its first principle denies that you can compare threshholds of notability by looking to see what other people have done ("don't add more sewage to a polluted pond"). No
stare decisis or attempt to use precident in inclusionist arguments! While the rest of it says the opposite-- that looking to see what other people have done, is actually a valuable source of "consensus" (ILIKEIT) for deciding things like "notability" criteria.
For example, this is historically how WP decided that high schools are all intrinsically notable, but junior high schools are intrinsically non-notable.
That decission had nothing to do with finding RS, V sources. Rather, it was made on the basis of historical precident-- the very thing which the OTHERSTUFF exists essay starts out by deprecating.