This reminds me of the old joke about induction in mathematics. Maybe it could be adapted as follows:
Claim: Every Wikipedia page ever made is notable.
Proof: Suppose at least one Wikipedia page that is not notable exists. Choose the one whose length in characters is smallest. Then surely this page is notable for being the short non-notable Wikipedia page ever created, making it quite notable, indeed. We have reached a contradiction and hence the proof is complete.
I like the one about all positive integers being interesting better. There, at least you have to break out the fuzzy logic to debate the "proof"'s value.
There is probably a tie for shortest Wikipedia non-notable page at 0 characters. Filtering out 0s, we get a bunch of 1-character pages not worth ordering. Also, the distinction is always changing, since non-notable Wikipedia pages are always changing (page blanks, vandalism) and being deleted. The fact that the "shortest page" distinction is being passed around promiscuously to a bunch of different crappy pages means that it's a pretty meaningless one.
Wikipedia tries to keep its integrity, but I think sometimes they need to be more reasonable. Someone ought to create a complement to wikipedia which allows people to add things like this and other non-spam articles which wikipedia editors won't tolerate.
I guess not surprisingly, I attempted to write a book of reviews of itself once. The idea still lingers in my mind, and I'd suspect that after a handful of years I'll pull it out and finish it. (I think the idea will be to mark the book as a "50th anniversary edition" of itself, and have the entire thing just be a history of forwards to the book from various known literary critics, documenting the critical reception of the book throughout history. It's a very conceited idea.)
Looks like a few people are vandalizing stuff - which is pretty awesome and should definitely be added to the page's "history" at some point - but for a reference point, the page looked like this when I submitted it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Diikiw/Wikiid...
You miss the point. The concept is that Wikipedia itself is a notable web site. The question became: was it possible to make a page that cited no source outside of Wikipedia, yet managed to create relevant content by citing Wikipedia?
The answer was no, but I still hold that Wikipedia's belief that it can manage to stay NPOV when it's selective about what it deems relevant or not is a deluded one, and one of the most damning parts of the web site.
[+] [-] henning|17 years ago|reply
Claim: Every Wikipedia page ever made is notable.
Proof: Suppose at least one Wikipedia page that is not notable exists. Choose the one whose length in characters is smallest. Then surely this page is notable for being the short non-notable Wikipedia page ever created, making it quite notable, indeed. We have reached a contradiction and hence the proof is complete.
Or something like that.
[+] [-] tpyo|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] statictype|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] time_management|17 years ago|reply
There is probably a tie for shortest Wikipedia non-notable page at 0 characters. Filtering out 0s, we get a bunch of 1-character pages not worth ordering. Also, the distinction is always changing, since non-notable Wikipedia pages are always changing (page blanks, vandalism) and being deleted. The fact that the "shortest page" distinction is being passed around promiscuously to a bunch of different crappy pages means that it's a pretty meaningless one.
[+] [-] dbul|17 years ago|reply
Wikipedia tries to keep its integrity, but I think sometimes they need to be more reasonable. Someone ought to create a complement to wikipedia which allows people to add things like this and other non-spam articles which wikipedia editors won't tolerate.
[+] [-] unalone|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaysonL|17 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Idries-Shah/dp/090086012X
[+] [-] dkokelley|17 years ago|reply
Hint: Check the alt text
[+] [-] critic|17 years ago|reply
I think this is more of a recursive humor than metahumor.
[+] [-] unalone|17 years ago|reply
Well, it's a wiki page, so anybody can edit it and fix stuff like that.
[+] [-] nicara|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsrivast|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Angostura|17 years ago|reply
http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page
[+] [-] unalone|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeryan|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|17 years ago|reply
Topics are notable; articles are not. If a topic is non-notable in the real world, nothing written on Wikipedia should change that.
[+] [-] unalone|17 years ago|reply
The answer was no, but I still hold that Wikipedia's belief that it can manage to stay NPOV when it's selective about what it deems relevant or not is a deluded one, and one of the most damning parts of the web site.