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We all know what Wikipedia is not, so then what is it?
Contrary to what you may see in policies, regarding some subjects, Wikipedia is an indiscriminate collection of articles. You can dig through all the notability guidelines and find them, but here's my on going list.
Wikipedia is an indiscriminate collection of articles on:
- Planetary bodies
- Species (of anything)
- Years (regardless if anything happened during it)
- Cities
- Schools
- Numbers (yep, all of them!)
- Ships
Now, this may come across as being a bit snarky, and maybe it is, but I have a theory...
Dude wants to make an article (really any article) on Wikipedia, but most everything has been covered so they think of something only they know: a band they were in during high school called the "Butt Clamps". Now, they clear out their weekend, typing away at their draft, making sure all the facts are right, even uploading their dope ass logo! They submit their perfect article, they wait anxiously for a month, they get a message. "Sorry, your band isn't notable." Now, had they known this in the beginning, perhaps they would have stopped, but now they have sweat equity into this.
"But my band IS notable!"
"Blah blah sources.. here read the 200 page notability guideline.."
Needless to say he's crushed. He didn't want to read about notability, he wanted to contribute. We see this a lot, and we keep trying to fix this spiral with more and more policy and big red boxes, but I have a much different suggestion:
Publicize what Wikipedia is an indiscriminate source of.
Dude could of seen that list and said, "Hey space is cool, I'll write about that!", and let's be honest, he may even get away with not sourcing it. But, he contributed and Wikipedia got another article about Planet X138810.
Win. win.