Kesh
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editIdeas and theorys are the basis of both society and the fringe of society. Do not argue that a person's idea is wrong or that their opinion is wrong, because this will get you nowhere. Wars, fights, and stupid arguements have ensued because someone didn't like what another person said or thought. —Preceding unsigned comment added by WolvenheimIAR (talk • contribs) 21:45, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I see you described yourself as semi-retired, so you might not be interested in having me pick up a discussion from several years ago.
But I re-read several old {{afd}}, and have encountered arguments similar to those you advanced, since then, and have additional counter-arguments.
Issac Asimov remains one of my favorite authors. And one of the most important reference books in my personal library remains "Issac Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science". Asimov had picked his idea of the 1,000 or so most influential scientists of all time, and written little mini-biographies of them. Those biographies ranged from a couple of paragraphs to a couple of pages each.
What you argued three years ago was that we couldn't have any articles about any individuals when those articles didn't contain a full range of biographical information about those individuals. Other individual who have advanced similar positions to yours have been specific -- biographies should state when and where the individual was born, where they studied, what field they worked in before they were notable, whether they were married, had children, and so on.
I agree, this kind of information is valuable, and I add it, when I start an article, if this information is available. FWIW there is another party who condemn adding these kinds of details to biographical articles on individuals whose notability they consider marginal. They call these kinds of details mere "puffery".
Where I differ from you is that I think the mundane course of an individual's life is not an essential element of a biography.
The compelling counter-example is that of an individual Asimov included in his encyclopedia of the 1000 most important scientists -- "false Geber". He wrote in the tenth Century, when books still had to be laboriously copied longhand. Copying the works of famous ancient writers was considered important. Getting new ideas published and redistributed was very difficult, when each copy of a book was a year's work. Apparently it was not unknown for people with new ideas to falsely attribute their new ideas, their "original research", to some ancient writer. Generally they turned out to be kooks, whose new ideas weren't worth recording. But "false Geber" wasn't a kook. Asimov credited him with being the first to describe how to purify and employ a strong acid -- Sulfuric Acid, which Asimov said was the cornerstone of modern industrial chemical engineering. Geo Swan (talk) 00:39, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
- That's nice. Asimov is welcome to write whatever kind of book he wants. This is an encyclopedia, a very different beast. And that's all I have to say. This account is retired, and I'll go ahead and change the template to fully reflect that. Kesh (talk) 01:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
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