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Please join the discussion here and at the individual talk pages where consideration is being given to reduce redundant and potentially conficting guidelines.

The chart above shows the hierarchy of notability guidelines, both approved and proposed, plus a third category (in red) of what might be logical combinations. Of course all of this is based on my perception; I welcome your thoughts toward a more accurate representation.

Discussion points

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  • Should we combine some of these together to reduce the creep?


Logistics of the graphic and discussion

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  • It seems to me that the "physical objects" category is a bit misnamed: schools and shopping malls are more geographical, no? And I think I'd rename the "fiction", "music", etc., group as "creative enterprises" or something like that. semper fictilis 22:36, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have a better idea for a picture that simplifies it all.

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File:Nonot.JPG

Dont use notability on wikipedia as inclusion criteria. wp:a and wp:npov along with the other policies are enough to build and maintain an encyclopedia with well sourced, well written, and well presented articles. DanielZimmerman 22:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Farix: You point out one of the main problems with notability. The notability standards for an elected official differ from the standards from an author which differ from the standards for a rock band. If we set rigid guidelines like "anyone who gets over 1,000,000 votes is "notable", what if someone gets 999,997? Why is 1,000,000 votes good enough? Why not 500,000? Why not 2,000,000?
  • Yarick: we can set proper bounds for the verifiability standards in Attribution without resorting to the subjectivity of a notability standard. DanielZimmerman 16:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From BIO

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I think some of the proposed criteria from WP:BIO are fairly decent. The following are proposed criteria for notability, which have not necessarily received consensus support:

  • Verifiability -- Can all information in the article be independently verified now? (some say) 10 years from now?
  • Expandability -- Will the article ever be more than a stub? Could the perfect article be written on this subject?
  • 100 year test (future speculation) -- In 100 years time will anyone without a direct connection to the individual find the article useful?
  • 100 year test (past speculation) -- If we had comparable verifiable information on a person from 100 years ago, would anyone without a direct connection to the individual find the article useful today?
  • Biography -- Has this been written by the subject or someone closely involved with the subject?
  • Search Engine Test -- Does a search for the subject produce a large number of distinguishable hits on Google ([2]), Alexa ([3]), Yahoo! ([4]) or other well-known Internet search engine?
  • Check your fiction -- advice for creating biographies of fictional characters.

Some may need to be clarified/specified/added/deleted, bu this could be a starter. I saw somewhere also, something like: Will anyone have a logical reason to want/need to research this? There isn't much of a way to prove that, but it does make some sense. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 04:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Yes, that's sort of the paradox in determining notablity. The guidelines that will include the most notable articles without a huge bureaucracy are so subjective that there is no real way to prove them. But, with the most objective guidelines, like we have now, we keep finding holes and we build up a huge set of rules to make sure we don't miss anything. I guess what we have to do is find the right balance between objective, provable rules and subjective, but simpler guidelines. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 20:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since wikipedia is not paper, i would say that the objective, provable rules are all you need. If an article is well written, well sourced, and well formatted then it should remain on wikipedia even if some users feel that the topic of the article may not be "notable enough" for their standards. What articles do you think would slip through the cracks of the already provided policies that exist on wikipedia. DanielZimmerman 20:22, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Allow me to present my views on the ideas listed above: -- Black Falcon 04:02, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Verifiability. The only objective criterion is current verifiability. Let's not speculate on what the future may hold.
    • Expandability. Even paper encyclopedias have plenty of stubs. WP:NOT#PAPER. Moreover, what's wrong with stubs? The qualification of something as a "stub" is itself a semi-subjective exercise. "Stub" designations are good for the purpose of organizing articles in need of expansion; they are simply horrible for determining whether articles should exist.
    • 100 year test (future speculation). Again, let's not speculate on the future. This is a pointless subjective exercise which, were it to be used at an AfD debate, would stand no chance of being resolved. Also, any statement about the usefulness of an article for other people is also highly subjective.
    • 100 year test (past speculation). Again, this leads to subjective speculation. Let's stick to more or less objective standards, if only so that Wikipedia can continue to operate (and does not turn into a subjective shouting match).
    • Biography. I don't quite understand how this establishes notability (or the lack thereof). Autobiographical articles may be fully verified, NPOV, etc. Equally, non-autobiographical articles may be blatant attack pages. It should not matter who authored an article, as long as they did it appropriately, following WP:A, WP:NPOV, and so on.
    • Search Engine Test. A search engine test is highly biased toward certain countries and topics. There may be very little about notable historical figures (e.g., statesmen) online, while there are millions of links to American Idol or Pokemon.
  • and mine The 100 year test is simply wrong in principle. We are preparing an encyclopedia for immediate use, with the hope of continual supplementation. To the extent people will be interested in it 100 yrs from now, it will be as social history or history of ideas, and they will be interested to know what it is we found notable at the present time. Humans are not good at predicting the development of arts, society, science--anything. Many of the things in the 1913 EB are still relevant today, but the articles are not relevant as a source of accurate information. It is unreasonable to hope for more. Perhaps every one of our articles about the history of the last 7 years will become a matter of curiosity. Perhaps anime will no longer be of interest--perhaps even jazz--or perhaps they will be the recognized progenitors of the major arts of the time. Perhaps every last thing we write about medicine will be wrong or irrelevant--or perhaps the same problems will be prevalent. One hundred years ago, an encyclopedia would probably not have included much on moving pictures.DGG 03:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Expandability--we need not provide for all future articles. I see no harm in setting aside stubs for future Olympics, or even for movies not yet in production, but how can we do this for people? When the articles are needed, then they will be written. WP is already among the most current of moderately reliable sources. What does it matter if a school becomes Notable that we did not have an account of who taught the third grade in 2007?
Search engine tests including the related Alexa and Amazon measures are relevant only s a matter of the relative popular importance of those things that can be expected to be of popular importance. It is useful to know that a supposedly N rock band has no ghits; it is not useful to know that a proposed Indian religious scholar does not have them. At the same time our restriction on RS prevents meaningful articles on much internet material that is of interest, because nobody write about such things in formal 3rd party media. MS Word or grep aree important not just because there are books about them, but because they are widely used. We do not need a book about a television show to describe it.
Autobio most of the good articles about currently important people are written by the subjects of close associates, and, provided they can provide verification, what is wrong with that? Yes, they are susceptible to puffery and span--and this can be edited out. There's just enough spam in supposedly neutral articles, because who writes an article but someone who cares about the subject--and is likely to care about every cousin and aunt and school and vacation trip attended?
Verifiability -- I am not sure how objective that is in all cases, but its the best we have. We need to watch for things that are true but formally undocumented, for opinions people hold and say but do not publish; but we equally need to watch for the account of a church or town given by a member/inhabitant providing only the most general of references. The details of almost all our older articles are unverified, and any expert with a mind to destruction can find enough to destroy.

"WP is not paper but the significance of the important things gets destroyed by the presence of the unimportant. If we have an article on everyone who proposes himself to be an actor, it is harder to sort out the real ones; if we have an article about every published work of fiction, how do we find the ones that are being read? The point of having a WP for topics of immediate importance is as filter of the internet, not a mirror of it. I may consider no professional wrestler notable, but still those who do should have criteria for figuring which of them are likely to be looked for.

What is left is responsibility and common sense. DGG 03:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Overspecialization

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The problem mainly lies in overspecialization. Whether we call it "notability" or something else, it is quite useful to have an inclusion standard that says celebrities get an article, and your neighbor's five-year-old doesn't. Despite many attempts to the contrary, that does not mean we need separate pages for determining this for (1) politicians, (2) porn stars, (3) police officers, and (4) people named Fred. I think we need to reject ALL of the currently-open proposals (most of which are already de facto rejected by the standard in WP:POL), and critically look at the others to see if they can be merged with the "classics" like BIO and FICT. Note also that these standards are not intented to be binary "keep / delete"; for instance, WP:FICT speaks extensively about merging stubs on minor characters. >Radiant< 12:28, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My neighbor's 5 year old doesn't have enough verifiable information about her written that would allow her to have a wikipedia entry. That is why you dont need to worry about notability to reject such articles. If a quality, well written, and well documented article can be written about a subject then it should be included in wikipedia. Otherwise it should be merged with another article or deleted. Most of the times that I see articles in AFD, notability is the main reason that people suggest as a reason to delete them. DanielZimmerman 20:27, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This could be on to something. Why do we even need all the notability criteria? Really, any new article will be reviewed by a Recent Changes or a New Pages patroller. If it looks notable, it will be left alone, if not it will be tagged for deletion. That takes care of future articles. Now we just have the remaining 1.6 million articles left. Anything that meets WP:A and WP:V will be notable (based on existing criteria). The rest will have to be either reviewed or left alone. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 22:01, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And that is what I have been saying the entire time! Welcome onboard! :) DanielZimmerman 22:11, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Dan, you haven't looked hard enough for verifiable information about your neighbour's 5 year old. The local newspaper printed a birth notice. She also has a birth certificate, medical records, day care records, and the proud parents have put them all up on a personal web page full of baby photos, cute sayings, growth charts, a photo of the bronzed baby shoes, and an audio file of her saying "Mama, I love you soooo much". Without WP:N, all that would be prime for a Wikipedia article, all that would be needed would be for a curious neighbour - you - to make it. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 22:21, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Anon, you didnt read what I said. I said that she would have "enough verifiable information about her that would allow her to have a wikipedia entry". The personal website, being a self published source, would not qualify as a valid source under WP:A, WP:N is not needed to prevent its use as a source. If I, the curious neighbor, used such a site as documentation for an article about her it would not qualify because that information would not be "well sourced". And in the Presumption in favor of privacy section of WP:LIVING it is clear that posting such information as your neighbors and daycare records would be a violation of that policy as well, so again you dont need notability as a guideline to protect against this because there already is a policy in place. The only thing that is left out is the birth certificate. I think would be hard pressed to say that a birth certificate as a single source would qualify as being "enough verifiable information to qualify for a wikipedia article". I have never been shown an example where WP:N was needed because all of the other policies failed and until I have seen examples to show that WP:N is needed I will continue to be against its use. DanielZimmerman 23:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As a self-published source, a personal website is a fine source about the owner of the site per WP:A. (Of course it's debatable whether a 5 year's old web site is really hers or her parents' - let's say she's 15.) And as for who read what, you clearly missed what I wrote about the birth notice in the local newspaper, that's not her personal web site. If we let her get to be 15, we will also have 1-liners in verifiable sources (the same local newspaper) about how she won a prize for perfect attendance at her grade school, was on the roster of her local softball team (mentioned in half a dozen articles), and took the red ribbon place in the county 4H club for growing the third largest rutabaga. WP:N says those are all trivial mentions - but they're certainly verifiable per WP:ATT. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 16:36, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ATT clearly states "the article is primarily based on sources independent of the subject of the article". The primary sources cannot include information from a personal website. And I would argue that as a neighbor, I would probably fall under WP:COI. And if after all the policies are enforced, an exceptional article can be written about someone whose "notability" is questionable... then why does it hurt Wikipedia to have that information included? DanielZimmerman 17:28, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wait a minute, you brought up the neighbor business, now you're disclaiming it? And "primarily based" requires serious interpretation, or we would have a very short article about Samuel Pepys, and anyone else mostly known through their own works. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll go bring it up there. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 17:42, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, I didnt bring up the neighbor business. Also, WP:ATT does mention some limited places where personal pages can be used as a primary source (in the case where the person is an expert or professional researcher in some field).DanielZimmerman 18:31, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A good solution to the problem of overspecialisation (and thus instruction creep of sorts) is to create criteria for permutations only when (a) the criteria would be substantially different from that of its broader category, or (b) when developing one would clarify a guideline which is only loosely relevant to the permutation and begs for specific examples. Falcon 03:34, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • What would be good is if we could perhaps guide that some people use notability as a reason to delete articles, but that the notability of any topic is generally only decided at a deletion debate. We should also point out that our attribution policy takes care of most problems, not tell people to create articles on 5 year olds per WP:BEANS, that people shouldn't list articles for which they feel notability is not established without first asking for sources and discussing the issue on the talk page, and that a rule of thumb used on wikipedia for determining notability is coverage in several sources. But we really have to make it clear it is not a policy, because at the minute it is treated as if it is. It's all well and good saying we need a description of what happens, but we all have a different opinion on what happens. Some of us don't use notability. Some of us do. Making notability a guideline biases the argument. AFD is ultimately where we decide what's included. We aren't a court, precedence doesn't matter, we don't have double jeopardy and consensus can change. Let's go back to Wikipedia:Notability/Historical/Arguments, that describes things a lot better. Hiding Talk 19:32, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The only problem with establishing notability at AfD is that it only gives 5 days to establish notability for articles on the brink. If the primary author (or other people who would want to rescue the article) doesn't edit every day, they may have even less time. And, by the time they do fix it (find sources, assert notability more, etc.) the consensus may have already been determined based on the state of the article immediately after the nomination. Many articles on AfD have 1-3 comments within 1 hour of the nom. And then there's the name Articles for Deletion. Other XfD's have changed it to discussion. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 21:15, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Of course, if you remove notability as a guideline you would just have to use those pesky policies when discussing an AFD, requiring things like "verifiable" and "NOR" as required in WP:ATT. Not citing sources is definitely something you can get someone one that is objective. DanielZimmerman 21:23, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Daniel gets my point. My point is that notability isn't determined by referring to a page like this one, it's determined by debating a topic. The only way to demonstrate notability is by providing sources, so just provide sources. Unsourced articles are going to have to get cleaned up at some point. If an article gets tagged at afd and the regular editors aren't about, the point is redundant, isn't it. Because it doesn't matter which five days it gets nominated in. Always build an article in accordance with policy, and then if you go missing for five days there's no problem, you've made your case already. In the article. And if the article is nominated because of lack of sources and wasn't tagged before hand, then ask for a delay, suggest the nomination may be bad faith since no tagging has been added per our deletion policies. The policies are out there and tell us what to do. They tell us to add sources, they tell us to tag unsourced material and then remove it if it doesn't get sourced, and then if there's still an issue take it to afd. Do your best work on an article, follow the policies, discuss civilly and in good faith, make your best arguments citing policies, and be prepared to lose. Most people will keep a good article which is written in an encyclopedic manner and cites sources nine times out of ten. The other time the article will either be merged or deleted. If your article is badly written, cites no sources and is unencyclopedic, then it doesn't matter when the nomination comes, you're on notice it needs to be improved because that's what policy requires. Hiding Talk 13:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree, but often many articles that turn out to be very good start out as crap. Just look at the earliest versions of some pages. this is the tenth version of Demand Note, now a FA. Perhaps we should have some other kind of comment on AfD besides "Keep", "Delete", "Merge", "Redirect", and other permutations of those. I'm not exactly sure what to call it, maybe "Delete on hold". This would be used for borderline deletion cases (apparantly notable but not sourced, notable but needs a complete rewrite, etc.). If consensus was "delete on hold", the page would be taggged with a template, similar to those put on images with no copyright tags. The article would go into a "delete on hold" category and then, if the article is not fixed after a period of time (maybe 7-10 days, it may depend on how backlogged the category gets) it would be deleted. (I am aware that there are much better places to discuss this, but I figured since we were on the topic already I would get some comment here first.) Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 16:03, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think we already have something to handle a situation like that. It is called a stub. Placing the stub template on an article says that it is a work in progress. Nobody expects an article that is placed on wikipedia to be a finished project from the get go. Articles are in a constant state of flux and can increase and decrease in size depending on the authors at the time. As time goes on, articles will get better. Now, if an article doesn't have enough citations, well, there is a template for that as well. And if a certain length of time passes where the authors of that article do not update the sources then perhaps it could then be deleted for not being verifiable. As I have said for a while, the policies that exist give wikipedia enough muscle to remove the articles that dont belong here and keep the ones that do. DanielZimmerman 19:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, but the existing templates have little force. They are more like reccomendations (If this article is not cleaned up it may go to AfD). What I suggested is more like a ultimatum to come after AfD(If this article is not cleaned, it will be deleted in X days). Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 19:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have no problem with being a little more stern with the AFD. However, I think we should be giving in the amount of time we give people to fix their articles. Some people who write quality articles are not going to check wikipedia once a week. But we are kinda getting off topic here. We should get back to notability... not afd. DanielZimmerman 19:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Culture

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I think that culture should be included as a permutation of organizations, on the basis that we really could use a guideline regarding what does and does not constitute a (notable) culture in its own right. Such a guideline would be especially useful in determining the notability of subcultures and tribes. Falcon 03:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why do we have these pages?

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Alot of the debate here misses what I think is (or rather should be) the primary point of the notability pages--to function as a guide to pre-existing AfD standards. While the guidelines help create those standards, they are also shaped by them. Since our guidelines are ment to be The codification of current convention and common practice. These are proposals that document the way Wikipedia works.1 they should reflect current wikisulture rather than try to change it. Thus I see the main purpose of these pages to be to answer the question what will the fate of my article be if it is/now that it has been nominated for deletion. To do this they must be fairly specific and detailed but they needn't be actionable. I would suggest demoting and moving the whole mit-and-kaboodle perhaps into sister/sub pages of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes. I honestly don't see this as particularly a WP:CREEP issue. As long as the pages document existing process rather than create new process they aren't creep, IMO. I know that this is orthagnal to the present discussion but I hope it is useful at least as springboard. I really don't think that merging is the solution here. WP:N is enough as an actionable policy and the rest should be treated as useful examples/guidelines to how it is likely to be applied and are more useful if they can include specifics. Eluchil404 14:19, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    • I think that your comments are quite to the point of this page. Thank you! I don't think that WP:N can do it alone, but one level of specialization should be enough. The main problem that I see is inconsistency among the permutations at the third level and the huge volume of text which clouds the purposes. Each new "code" restates the primary notablility criterion in some fashion, and several have long discussions or notes trying to redefine "notability". I suggest some centralized, precise, and actionable intructions with details and explanations at essays. If we need to have actionable instructions beyond the second level, they should be meant as subsections without attempts at stand-alone status. --Kevin Murray 14:27, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thanks! It depends a little on how one approaches the issue. I am a big fan of the PNC (Two independent, non-trivial sources) and so don't actually use the subject specific guidelines myself besides for the obvious (pro athletes, high schools, and villages never get deleted) though not all of the de facto guidelines are so written and tagged. A while ago a number of the tertiary ones were categorized as essays (WP:NOTFILM started out that way) and were upgraded to proposals in September. I never saw any discussion but I assumed that the intent was to put all similar pages on the same footing. Still, I am not sure that it was for the best since the specific pages are best, IMO, as non-actionable description as I said above. WP:CREEP is a double edged sword here. On the one hand, if the pages are (and are kept) purely descriptive they do not substantially increase the complexity of the process and contributer to creep; on the other, if they are relegated to minor status and treated as optional they will tend to expand chaotically and be too disorganized to be useful. I think the best bet is to be clear about their limited role but keep a centralized listing easily availible so that those who find them useful can have easy access and but those who find them superfluous can ignore them. From one point of view, it might have been better if they had never been, but I think that they are a useful guide to wikiculture and deletion outcomes for those who are willing to make the effort. Eluchil404 14:50, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Eluchil is correct. The problem is that these pages tend to attract editors who believe (or wish) they can change a practice they dislike by changing a page that describes it. >Radiant< 14:32, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree. The further the instructions get from the main page, the more these special purpose editors can manipulate and cabal out of the mainstream and substantially unobserved. --Kevin Murray 14:35, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, they should note the way things work. The notability page used to, noting that Notability is a contentious issue, which, as anyone can see, it is. However, the page lost the arguments made against using notability, and defined only what one side saw as being notable, not the side that rejected such a definition. So we don't currently define how things work, because we make no allowance for the many people who don't use notability in the way it is currently defined. Hiding Talk 14:50, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Organizations

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I am not sure this overall exercise is usefull, but if it is, we need a better split under organizations. The existing criteria in WP:CORP seem to fit business corporations fairly well, but I am not sure they fit volunteer organizations such as youth movements and charities very well. Of course the problem may be that "WP:CORP" was a merge of two separate articles. --Bduke 07:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What is the specific deficiancy? --Kevin Murray 11:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For a start, I tend to distrust the stuff on corporation web sites, but I am more prepared to trust stuff on web sites of volunteer organisations. That is a general point. More specifically, I work on articles on Scouting. It is generally accepted that the Scout Movement is notable, but there is a limit how far down the chain we go. Articles on individual troops are not on for example. However the broad acceptance of Scouts in the community means that there are few comments about them in the media unless it is about child abuse. The result is I would trust an internal Scout article more than an external article for general matters, such as membership numbers, history, etc. (not child abuse!). Some editors keep telling us not to trust internal Scout sources and find external ones. I think the general point is that the validity of primary sources varies and needs to be taken into account in specifying notability for specific areas of WP. I suggest that is a really important point. --Bduke 11:43, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I tend to agree that in some cases the profit motivation will be an insentive for exageration at a company website. However, there are many types of non-commercial groups who will use the web to push their point of view as well. I don't specifically include the scouts there. I think that this is among the points which can't be anticipated by general instructions no matter how many special cases we include. How would you rewrite the guideline to acheive this purpose? Do you have an example text? --Kevin Murray 17:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the guidelines on notability are flawed as they confuse being notable with having sources. We need to define notability without mentioning sources and then of course we need sources to write the article. Defining notability will not be easy, but as the debate here and up one on the talk page shows it is not easy with the use of sources. I think we have to use the WikiProjects more to define notability in their own area and determine the kind of sources that are appropriate. The Scouting WikiProject has already done this and it regularly deletes or merges articles that are not notable according to its own criteria. I believe the knowledge and collective common sense of a WikiProject can easily determine what topics are appropriate for an encyclopedia from their topic of interest. We should also drop the term "notable" and use something like "appropriate for an encyclopedia". Probably not much help to you. Sorry. --Bduke 21:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that availablility of sources is not a good way to determne notability. However, letting individual projects make up guidelines is a recipe for disaster. Imagine instead of 1 main guideline and 11 or so specific ones, we instead had hundreds of specific ones that may be made by only a few people. Unfortunately, we really don't have many better ideas. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 22:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Confusing

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Why not just have it all boil down to citing sources and not committing undue weight? — Armed Blowfish (talk|mail) 14:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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