Forum:Establishing notability

We've already determined that not everything in Call of Duty needs to be covered, which resulted in the retirement of our granularity policy. So now the next step is to establish what is/isn't notable and what does/doesn't deserves an article.

Things get difficult here, because no matter how you slice it, articles will have to go as a result of a new notability policy. We simply cannot "save" every article. However, such a policy will keep the scope of our wiki unambiguous.

Let's start with what we have already. The character policy has a brief section on notability. The first point allows obvious storyline characters to have an article (such as Gaz or James Ramirez). The second is a little more debatable, as it states that mentioned characters may have an article. Right off the bat, there's inconsistency here. Valentina recently had a successful AfD nomination on the point of being "not notable," yet was created on the same basis that an article such as Jack was. Previously, we even had articles on characters with inconsistent names that preformed scripted events (i.e. British door opener in The End of the Beginning in Call of Duty 2). So where is the line drawn here? If we cover all mentioned characters, we would have to extend Valentina to the Russian sniper's mother, his father, his sister and his dog, yet not even have an article on the man himself.

To say a little more on character's notability, I was told in a suggestion for notability that characters deserve an article if they do something "important." But what does important mean? If MacTavish sat down with other characters for a cup of tea in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, would everyone at that table be "important"? What if in the campaign for Call of Duty: Black Ops, the second most "important" character to the storyline had an inconsistent name? Is he no longer "important"?

I feel that weapons, perks, maps, missions are a given and can be covered regardless, but you are welcome to debate that.

Objects, places, and other miscellanea in the world are another component that was stated as an issue of COD:G. I'm curious as to what makes North Africa notable, other than the fact that it "appears in Call of Duty 2" which is really bad logic. If you see an U.S. Army Ranger looking at his phone, does that automatically make cellular phones notable? If Shepherd displays a picture of The Pentagon, is it suddenly now notable? It is true that Quick Scoping is a popular tactic, but does that mean it gets its own article?

Points for discussion:
 * Which characters are notable, and why? (Example: Mentioned characters, scripted event characters with inconsistent names)
 * What places are notable, and why? (Example: Virginia, Italy)'''
 * What other misc. are notable, and why? (Example: Nuclear Emergency Search Team No Scoping)'''
 * Is there a blanket rule to notability? Why or why not?

With this discussion, we will hopefully be able to develop a new policy to keep the scope of the wiki focused. 13:45, August 25, 2010 (UTC)