User talk:Vassyana/RFC notes
Outline of concerns by Gavin Collins
Concerns outlined by Gavin.collins.[1] Moved to talk page.[2] 08:11, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Premise
A presumption of notability in the absence of reliable secondary sources is reasonable if it is based on observation or experience.
Examples:
An athlete who has competed at professional level is notable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gavin.collins (talk • contribs)
Intellectual concerns
A reasonable presumption of notability is an example of Inductive reasoning, for which the Problem of induction suggests is that a presumption of notability is underdetermined when compared with the Scientific method which requires evidence, rather than reasonable suspicion. A reasonable presumption based on observation or experience cannot be accepted as fact, as there is always a risk it is entirely false and misleading (e.g. "the earth is flat" was once considered a reasonable presumption). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gavin.collins (talk • contribs)
Problems with application
A reasonable presumption of notability in the absence of reliable secondary sources relieves the contributing editor of having (ever) to provide verifiable evidence, since any attempt to delete or merge a topic may be frustrated by one or more inductive arguments which can be manufactured for this purpose by so called "expert" opinion, or expert opinion dressed up as "consensus".
This could potentially be a problem with the following guidelines:
- WP:POVFORK - how do you tell if an article is a content fork if no reliable secondary sources are cited? Example: Terminator.
- WP:NOT - An article without content has no encyclopedic value, e.g. the stub Ashley Fernee is considered notable in accordance with WP:BIO#athletes, but argueabley fails WP:NOT#NEWS and WP:NOT#DIR.
If a topic is presumed to be notable, should it then be tagged as such so that editors do not plaster it with cleanup tags? --Gavin Collins (talk) 16:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)