User:Lapin rossignol
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[edit] About me
- Locale: Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
- Hometown: Hong Kong
- Language Note: Just because I'm a native speaker of Chinese does not mean that I am adept in writing the language. I can speak Chinese more fluently than French, mais je peux contribuer au Wikipédia français, which is more than I can say for the Chinese version.
[edit] What I do on Wikipedia
My true interests are biochemistry and foreign languages (and history, music, literature, etc. but to a lesser extent). However, I'm not qualified enough to contribute to more specialised, discipline-specific articles, so I usually limit myself to general knowledge articles. I've contributed information related to Hong Kong, certain educational systems, and motley other topics- such as air conditioning and anime, for rather random examples.
Note that whereas I'm rather vocal in my disagreement with certain Wikipedia policies, I do not and will not disobey them as long as they are still around. Mostly, I limit myself to factual edits or wording improvements, for example: adding a statistic obtained from a Hong Kong government website; adding a mention of a significant Hong Kong area; translating "Chinglish" into proper English.
[edit] Opposition to Wikipedia's Notability Criteria
[edit] Comprehensive Inclusion on Wikipedia- Include, don't exclude!
Why does something have to be considered "notable" to be included on Wikipedia?
I understand all of the existing requirements (those set into stone), and even though I'm simultaneously having a little debate over the "No original research" policy, I understand the need for and the reasons behind such a policy.
However, I truly believe that no facts, no matter how trivial, should be considered unsuitable for inclusion. Facts are still facts. No fact is more important than another simply because it is of greater interest to more people. Everything little fact that is verifiable and might be of interest even to a single person who visits this website should be allowed recognition on Wikipedia.
I don't understand why something should be weeded out of Wikipedia simply because few people would like to know about it. I, for one, am a "collector of trivialities", and I love knowing everything from the number of gates in each airport to the road names of all A routes in London. I trust that I'm not the only one such person, and I'm sure that all of us would love to have a one-stop destination on the web where we can satisfy our hunger for trivial facts.
Shouldn't factualness, verifiability, and neutrality be sufficient parameters for inclusion on Wikipedia? Why should we throw in an extremely subjective and easily offendable test of what is notable and what is not? I'm sure there are people who'd like to know about every television documentary ever aired, every penguin living in a zoo, every Indian recipe, etc.
[edit] Generalised Examples
Here are some generalised examples of arguments for deletion, and my reactions:
Generalised Comment: "DELETE. 'Any Street' is the most minor of roads on the planet! If such a street is allowed to have an article to itself, then every single road on the planet could be in Wikipedia!
- My response: Why not? Why can't every single road, street, and lane on this planet be mentioned here? As long as you can prove the existence of your street by citing a map or screenshotting an accepted online one, go ahead and mention it on Wikipedia! This is not to say that every road should have an individual article: it would be nice to merge minor articles into larger articles, but no entry should be completely removed from Wikipedia because it is "not notable." Wikipedia is a vast, unlimited resource, constrained by neither space nor time nor number of contributors. And if you call it a bottomless abyss, I call it a wonderful treasury of information.
Generalised Comment: "DELETE. Not remotely encyclopedic."
- My response: Oh, those encyclopaedia-thumpers again! First, I do not agree that something with an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica should be considered more essential to Wikipedia than an entry on something that's not included in the Britannica. There might not be an article on Penguin Bloggs in the Britannica but that's because the Britannica is limited to 32 volumes! Don't forget: there is no limit to the quantity of information Wikipedia can take. Of course, everything posted on Wikipedia still has to be factual, verifiable, NPOV, etc., but Wikipedia can certainly expand beyond the scope, range, and comfort zone of typical encyclopaedias.
[edit] Debate extracts
Johntex wrote: "If Wikipedia was truly the reposoitory of all human knowledge then we would be accepting recipes and wikinews items and foreign language articles... We would never delete an article like Brian Peppers or Stolensidekick.com, which have both been deleted on the premise that the subjects were not notable. We would be accepting entire phonebooks and out-of-copyright novels."
- My response: WHY NOT? Why can't we include recipes and news items and out-of-print novels? Why can't we give Brian Peppers an article, whoever he is? It would really be wonderful to have a true online repository of human knowledge. My vision for Wikipedia is a one-stop destination where someone could find all the information he would ever want to find online! Well, true, verified information, for that matter... but anything that is true, verified, and NPOV should be included regardless of how trivial it is! If someone bothered to put it up, then there must be at least one person in the world who's interested in that stuff. For me, that's justification enough for notability! --Lapin rossignol 03:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] My vision for Wikipedia
The ultimate encyclopaedia, the ultimate website, the ultimate data bank, a one-stop destination for almost all serious, verifiable information that anyone might ever possibly want to know at any point of his or her life. --Lapin rossignol 10:07, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
