51–60 of 96 posts
The reason is they are more notable! As in, More worthy of attention or notice; remarkable. As a group, we certainly pass more remarks about pornography starlets than theoretical physicists.
I once had a heated discussion with a classical violinist about who the most known Dane was outside of Denmark. She insisted that it had to be Carl Nielsen, a composer, whom she was sure everyone would know. All her friends knew Carl Nielsen, and many of them could play his most known symphonies from memory. I'd only vaguely heard of him, and contended that maybe Hans Christian Andersen would be more known, since Dis…
Depends on generation too. Some might have said Victor Borge. And also, does "outside of Denmark" mean "in the US"?
Because Wikipedia notability isn't a ranking function.
For how much Wikipedia is assumed to be a tech-geek lair, I'm surprised that being big in computer science/programming/etc doesn't guarantee you a spot. CoffeeScript has its own page but not its creator, for instance.
I once had a heated discussion with a classical violinist about who the most known Dane was outside of Denmark. She insisted that it had to be Carl Nielsen, a composer, whom she was sure everyone would know. All her friends knew Carl Nielsen, and many of them could play his most known symphonies from memory. I'd only vaguely heard of him, and contended that maybe Hans Christian Andersen would be more known, since Dis…
I think this is rather ridiculous. We don't decide what goes into scholarly journals based on a public poll, I don't see why we should do that for an encyclopedia.
EDIT: If one accepts the premise that even wikipedia requires curation and cannot simply include all submitted articles, then it follows that one of the tasks of the editors is making value-judgments about what knowledge is interesting and important to wikipedia's readers. I assume the guidelines about notability, conflict-of-interest and whatnot are attempting to set forth policies that assist in making these value-judgments.
You appear to be arguing that the only basis for making this value-judgement is recognizability to a layperson. I'm having a hard time understanding why this is a suitable metric.
I doubt that having lots of information about porn stars will benefit wikipedia's readers. It might entertain them, but I don't think it has any scholarly benefits. At the same time, I don't see how removing information about scientists benefits wikipedia's readers. I can see that in some extreme cases having lots of articles about little-known scientists might clutter wikipedia. However, I don't see how holding articles about published scientists to a higher standard than articles about pornstars benefits either wikipedia or its readers.
Name a scientist from the 1800s. A bit easier, isn't it?
People who can't name scientists from earlier times can't name porn stars from then either.
Science isn't about popularity or notability. It's about satisfying your curiosity about nature, honestly reporting your results, and experiment. At least it is for me, which is why I got a PhD in physics. Porn stars thrive on publicity.
A scientist without notability is like a fish without a bicycle.
Because pornstars are more notable among the masses than scientists. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but it is true. Ask most people to name a scientist, the only one they can name is Einstein. Ask most men to name pornstars, they can rattle of Jenna Jameson, Asia Careera, Ron Jeremy etc. For women, it will be the authors of romance novels.
In other words, "popular". And thus the inevitable problem with using notability as a guideline. Once that becomes the principle inclusion/exclusion criteria (as it tends to be in most of the discussion in AfD), exclude lots of junk, but you also only include things that are so common that everybody already knows about them anyway -- thus making an encyclopedia as the "place you go to look up stuff you don't know" mo…
I once had a heated discussion with a classical violinist about who the most known Dane was outside of Denmark. She insisted that it had to be Carl Nielsen, a composer, whom she was sure everyone would know. All her friends knew Carl Nielsen, and many of them could play his most known symphonies from memory. I'd only vaguely heard of him, and contended that maybe Hans Christian Andersen would be more known, since Dis…
Prince Frederik for Australians.