Wikipedia Notability - Controversy

Controversy

Attempts to apply notability consistently across Wikipedia have led to frequent controversy, especially on topics of relatively minor interest which a paper encyclopedia would not cover. Two differing perspectives on notability are commonly known as "inclusionism" and "deletionism". In one instance, a group of editors agreed that many articles on web comics should be deleted on the grounds that the various topics lacked notability. Some of the comic artists concerned reacted negatively, accusing editors of being "wannabe tin-pot dictators masquerading as humble editors." In 2007, notability disputes spread into other topics, including companies, places, websites, and people. As Nicholson Baker put it, "There are quires, reams, bales of controversy over what constitutes notability in Wikipedia: nobody will ever sort it out."

Timothy Noah wrote several articles in 2007 in Slate about the threatened deletion of his entry on grounds of his insufficient notability. He concluded that "Wikipedia's notability policy resembles U.S. immigration policy before 9/11: stringent rules, spotty enforcement." David Segal commented in the Washington Post that "Wiki-worthiness has quietly become a new digital divide, separating those who think they are notable from those granted the imprimatur of notability by a horde of anonymous geeks."

A criticism by Professor Hans Gese is that "Wikipedia sees itself as a publication that relies on reputation that has already been produced ex ante: especially when it is based on consensual mass media judgment or—in the case of lesser known individuals—on different smaller, but mutually independent sources. Of course, this policy does not acknowledge that a Wikipedia entry may itself become a factor in reputation building: especially when the information that this entry exists is propagated by journalists and other potent 'multiplicators'".