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Questions that are rarely asked: the Wikipedia paradox
Michael Nielsen has two of them:
Question 1: What’s the most notable subject that’s not notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia?
Let’s assume for now that this question has an answer (“The Answer”), and call the corresponding subject X. Now, we have a second question whose answer is not at all obvious.
Question 2: Is subject X notable merely by being The Answer?
Do you see where this is headed? Must Wikipedia include everything? There is more analysis at the link and note that the more these questions are asked, the more likely we encounter a paradoxical answer:
...suppose I went to great trouble to convene a conference series on The Answer, was able to convince leading logicians and philosophers to take part, writing papers about The Answer, convinced a prestigious journal to publish the proceedings, arranged media coverage, and so on. The Answer would then certainly have exceeded Wikipedia’s notability guidelines!
I wonder, as do you, whether this notoriety extends in transitive fashion to the seventeenth round of deciding who or what is the marginally deserving entry: "Well, you're not really notable, or even close, but all the others who were marginal became famous through the process of having had their lack of fame debated. Mick Jagger now invites you to his party." Not!
At some point these people under debate, once there are enough of them, all turn into a big group of Wikipedia nobodies.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 15, 2009 at 03:56 PM in Philosophy | Permalink
Comments
That's not a rarely asked question. That's a common and well-known paradox in mathematical circles. One typical expression is the proof that all natural numbers are interesting. Suppose there are some uninteresting natural numbers. Then there must be a smallest such uninteresting natural number, call it X. But being the smallest uninteresting natural number is an interesting property. This leads to a contradiction.
Posted by: John Thacker at Nov 15, 2009 4:03:15 PM
John Thacker: it's motivated by the least interesting number paradox, as mentioned in my post. There's an extra wrinkle beyond the interesting number paradox, though, which I think is amusing: whether this is a paradox depends on where it's published.
Posted by: Michael Nielsen at Nov 15, 2009 4:29:11 PM
It would be ironic if the subject were Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Or the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Posted by: Millian at Nov 15, 2009 4:29:41 PM
Wikipedia has some more examples of this kind of paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox#Applied_versions
Posted by: Jed Liu at Nov 15, 2009 4:41:19 PM
Another version is:
Proposition: All naturals can be described in 11 words or less.
Proof: Suppose not. Then there is a "smallest natural that can't be described in eleven words or less." But then we have just described it, in 11 words...
Posted by: xan at Nov 15, 2009 4:44:42 PM
What we need, then, is a Pedia which contains articles about every not-notable subject. This Pedia, of course, would have to include every subject. There would be no paradox because no subject could claim notability due to the inclusion of every other subject in this work, this great work which itself would be the only notable thing in the universe.
Posted by: rob at Nov 15, 2009 5:13:35 PM
The standard answer is that the descriptors of the form "the most ... that isn't ..." are too vague to be really meaningful, although they appear to be meaningful. At some point, the marginal topic for inclusion in Wikipedia is not interesting even given it being "the most interesting topic not included in wikipedia" This is why we have Twitter.
Posted by: An Onyx Mousse at Nov 15, 2009 5:16:25 PM
The sine qua non for notability in Wikipedia is reputable third-party sources. If other people write about something, it's notable; if they don't, it's not. There's no paradox.
Posted by: Duncan at Nov 15, 2009 5:16:49 PM
The answer to the second question is no. Merely being on the border between notable and non-notable, is not a notable characteristic of a subject (more accurately, it doesnt then make the subject notable)/ Thus if a subject was not notable to begin with, it stays not notable and thus, there is no need for wikipedia to include every subject under (and over) the sun.
Posted by: C at Nov 15, 2009 5:54:07 PM
Yeah, this paradox fails when you understand "notability" on wikipedia.
Question 1: What’s the most [[written about in reliable sources]] subject that’s not [[written about in reliable sources]] enough for inclusion in Wikipedia?
Let’s assume for now that this question has an answer (“The Answer”), and call the corresponding subject X. Now, we have a second question whose answer is not at all obvious.
Question 2: Is subject X notable merely by being The Answer?
If as a condition of being "The Answer" subject X is written about in reliable sources, then it would pass over the threshold of being written about in reliable sources and be notable.
Posted by: Peter at Nov 15, 2009 5:54:29 PM
This has already happened at least once. There was a one-hit wonder band that was included in a famous video game's soundtrack (I think Grand Theft Auto). Wikipedia deleted their article on the grounds that they were not noteworthy enough, but it hit the news and after a few local newspapers wrote articles about the band, they were added. I wouldn't be surprised it such a story is common.
Posted by: azmyth at Nov 15, 2009 5:55:47 PM
Why must we assume the notability ordering is a well-ordering on topics?
Posted by: Neal at Nov 15, 2009 5:59:33 PM
Diagonalization is notable, but just barely, as both of the following posts are very short and don't really explain the technique :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagonalization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagonal_argument
Posted by: Tomas at Nov 15, 2009 6:22:28 PM
The whole relevance debate is currently being discussed (or rather "fought out") on the German Wikipedia, which has taken a rather restrictive position on relevance.
One way it has reduced (though of course not eliminated) the relevance paradox is by heavily favoring print-sources as relevance criteria (the irony of that isn't lost, of course).
There's a bit of the discussion here
http://www.simoncolumbus.com/2009/11/06/wikipedia-how-do-you-reform-a-horizontal-organization/
Posted by: Sebastian at Nov 15, 2009 7:23:06 PM
The there are the finitely describable numbers and all the rest. I assume all the rest will wind up in the Wikipedia some day.
Posted by: Kaleberg at Nov 15, 2009 7:37:04 PM
If the question "What is the most notable subject that’s not notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia?" isn't notable enough to be on wikipedia, why would it's answer be worth noting on wikipedia?
Posted by: whoever at Nov 15, 2009 8:10:23 PM
This is notable (haha) because there is significant debate about the currently extremely high notability requirements of the German Wikipedia.
Posted by: IWantCookieNow at Nov 15, 2009 8:18:15 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Patri_Friedman&offset=20060703023809&action=history and following for some applied theory.
Posted by: Andromeda at Nov 15, 2009 9:27:20 PM
it also is possible to create an article which cannot be neutral, remember: http://xkcd.com/545/
Posted by: Ryan M at Nov 15, 2009 11:07:55 PM
@Duncan
"The sine qua non for notability in Wikipedia is reputable third-party sources. If other people write about something, it's notable; if they don't, it's not. There's no paradox."
I call nonsense.
cf. Everywhere Girl.
You also have the problem of ephemeral media. I cite Terry Shannon as an example.
Posted by: Dave Barnes at Nov 15, 2009 11:23:42 PM
The answer is the marginal revelation.
It reminds of the 10 worst of the web from back in the day.
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 16, 2009 3:07:46 AM
This works for natural numbers because they have a unique (and easily observed) ordering. On Wikipedia, there might well be 100,000 topics that are all borderline worthy of inclusion, but no single one of them is The Topic Closest to Inclusion.
Posted by: Zamfir at Nov 16, 2009 4:02:16 AM
I have a thought on a possible "most notable subject..." inclusion for Wikipedia: a casual search turns up no results for my two candidates for best restaurant in my hometown (pop 3+ million in the metro area).
I would bet there are several large cities with good dining-out cultures whose most important restaurants are not mentioned. These would be businesses whose names would be known to hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people, but which would not be in Wikipedia.
Posted by: Ryan Cousineau at Nov 16, 2009 4:33:49 AM
This paradox is not very intriguing. The way it's worded assumes there can be only one topic that is not notable. Taking a moment to realize that doesn't have to be the case provides the answer to the riddle.
Posted by: Glork at Nov 16, 2009 4:38:32 AM
whats the most marginal topic on marginal revolution?
Posted by: Al Brown at Nov 16, 2009 5:00:31 AM
