Wikipedia talk:Not in my encyclopedia

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Alternate viewpoint

The following text was added to the essay by MastCell:

Some people believe that Wikipedia aspires to be a serious, reputable reference work. Serious, reputable reference works generally have content standards, and some material may be excluded because it fails to meet those standards. Wikipedia's standards of inclusion are exponentially looser than those of any comparable reference work, but there's still some material that doesn't meet our bar for inclusion and, thus, doesn't belong in our encyclopedia.

I thought that viewpoint might be worth mentioning. As written, the essay paints anyone who thinks that perhaps Wikipedia ought to have some sort of content standards as irrational and provincial. In fact, there really are things that don't belong in our encyclopedia. If the point of the essay is to urge a civil and reasonable dialog about where to draw that line, that's great, but it didn't read that way. Anyhow, I'll leave it up to others whether to reincorporate some form of this alternate viewpoint. MastCell ^Talk 20:46, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(ec with the above) The problem with the statement as originally authored is that it isn't directly germane to the essay. The essay does not take issue with notability or inclusion criteria, contra the response, although I grant that this could be made more explicit. Rather, there are people who want to change our inclusion guidelines (more likely WP:NOT than WP:N) to reflect their view of what the encyclopedia should be. I think we can improve both the essay stem and the response to take this on better. Here's my initial proposal:

Historically, some have said that Wikipedia aspires to be a serious, reputable reference work. Such works generally have content standards, and some material may be excluded even though it would normally meet inclusion criteria. Wikipedia's standards of inclusion are intentionally looser than those of any comparable reference work, but there's still some material that isn't congruent with our goals, and thus doesn't belong in our encyclopedia.

Since you seem to be off for the evening, I'm going to put this bit back in the essay, which you can feel free to amend again. I've also tried to clarify the original statement in line with this as well. Jclemens (talk) 02:58, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]