I've heavily defended a couple articles up at AFD, and usually, people think differently than I do about the "trivial" portion of the Primary notability criterion. Admittedly, the policy is intentionally little ambiguous, but I think everyone else misunderstands the policy. If a news article article is about X and Y together, Is "Y" trivial? I say no. I'd say that Y is one of the primary subjects of the article. What about an article about how X affected Y. I'd say that in that case, it is clear that X and Y are subjects of the article. sure, An article about X that mentions Y in it, even for a few paragraphs is a grey area. The canonical example of trivial, is a one sentence mentioning in an entire book. Only on that scale can someone say something is clearly trivial. A single sentence in a news article? probably trivial. A paragraph? Definite grey area, deletionists will say "trivial", inclusionists will say "non-trivial". That's where I stand on the matter. Apparently, an article has to be about only Y to be considered a non-trivial mentioning by many.
When I was WikiYoung, I created the article, I used "google hits" as criterion for inclusion. (version). Someone asked about notability, and I was able to satisfy questions then (see Talk:James Earl Salisbury for discussion).
Eventually the article was nominated for deletion. (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Earl Salisbury. I thought that the outcome of the article was obviously "keep", but the end result was that User:Cuchullain, the closing administrator, thought that the result of the debate was "merge", so he merged it. So, today, I put a note on his talk page with my reasoning of why I think he was mistaken. (my post to his talk page).
I think that he's mistaken in his decision on a couple of levels:
He executed his vote, rather than consensus
His vote wasn't something I think is in line with policy, but I kinda see where he's coming from
So am I crazy? Am I missing some crucial piece of Wikipedia policy?
collecting sources about him, not just mentioning him[edit]
History has shown that I'm not understanding what consensus means. I've read the article, and I think I understand it, but according to others, I don't understand it. I've asked for help specifically to administrators about this, but I don't ever get a response.
Some have hinted that Creation of an article means that AFD votes shouldn't count, so does that mean I shouldn't ever be allowed to delete or redirect my own article (e.g. Canyonlands Desert)? Or am I only biased when it's in favor of keep?
I've watched about a bajillion pages. Many of them have so infrequent changes, that I forget I have them in my watchlist. I have several topics that I try to keep the articles pure, mostly in the database industry. I don't watch my watchlist as much as I have in the past:
Yeah, there are other pages in my watchlist, but these are the important ones.
Update: 04:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC) My watchlist isn't helpful anymore because I have too much on it. ("539 pages watched not counting talk pages.") My wikitime is far less than what it used to be, so I'm going on a watchlist purge. I'm removing topics I don't care about as much. If you'd like me to help out with something, let me know on my talk page, and I'll be glad to help out. McKay 04:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
My wife has had insomnia. We discovered that one of the best things I can do to help her sleep is to read Wikipedia articles aloud. Why not help other people fall asleep by reading it for all on the Internet to listen to.
Randy Pausch is my hero of the day (7 Oct 2009). Did good work, as a computer science professor, and even made an appearance in Star Trek!
Liviu Librescu is my hero of the day. (11 June 2007). I guess the Virginia Tech massacre article and his sums it up nicely. Though his life of Holocaust survivor -> education -> hero is a pretty impressive resume.
Jiang Yanyong is my hero of the day. (8 Feb 2006) I found him while researching SARS for the article on my father James Earl Salisbury (another hero).
Saul Bass is my hero of the day. (23 Aug 2015). He isn't heroic per se, but he changed credits in cinema. We need more people innovating in credits.
Arland D. Williams, Jr. is my hero of the day. (31 Aug 2015). Very heroic. He was a bank examiner (and I've done work for the FDIC, so that's interesting too. I discovered this article looking up his story which was found in a religious classroom manual I was reading where they compared his heroics to the Crucifixion of Jesus.
Isaac Allerton is not quite a hero of the day, but he's my Great13 Grandfather, and a Plymouth Colony settler who came on the Mayflower. His son Isaac Allerton Jr. is also an ancestor.
Charles Joseph Minard Is someone I've been thinking about for a while, but he's my "hero" of the day (6 Oct 2020). His One image of the map of Napoleon's Russian campaign single-handedly gave me the understanding of the fall of Napoleon's empire.
I feel my block log is very clean, but yet, there are entries. I feel a bit of a need to explain myself in these cases. Yes, I've got the final edit on this page, but feel free to take a look at the page histories (the ones I provide or others)
June 6, 2007, I was blocked for making a single edit to a page. I felt very justified in the edit, as it seemed like it was in full compliance with all of the policies particularly because I was sourcing my material. I had discussed how the enforcementofBLP wasn't correct policy. I discussed the block with a friend of mine, and he suggested I email some admins, so I did. A large discussion with several admins got involved, and I eventually got unblocked before the 3 hours was up. Since, several admins have said they disagreed with the block, and one (via email) even said "PS. Being punished by a tyrant is generally considered an honour."
