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About me
edit- Current Location: University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
- Hometown: Hong Kong
What I do on Wikipedia
editMy area of study is Medical Sciences and my interests are foreign languages, classical music, and Chinese history and culture. However, I do not feel qualified enough to contribute to more specialised articles so I usually limit myself to general knowledge topics. I have contributed information relating to Hong Kong, educational systems, and motley other topics including air conditioning and anime.
Inclusionism
editComprehensive Inclusion on Wikipedia- Include, don't exclude!
editNo 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 am a "collector of trivialities", and I love knowing everything from the number of gates in each airport to the names and rankings of all schools in Tokyo. I trust that I am not the only 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 factuality, verifiability and neutrality be sufficient parameters for inclusion on Wikipedia? Why should we throw in an extremely subjective and unnecessary 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.
Generalised Examples
editHere 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 (e.g. by screenshotting an online map), 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: 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 the Britannica is limited to 32 volumes. Do not forget: there is no limit to the quantity of information Wikipedia can hold. 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 traditional encyclopaedias.
Debate extracts
editJohntex 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 it. For me, that's justification enough for notability! --Lapin rossignol 03:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
My vision for Wikipedia
editThe 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)