Hi Millermh. I wouldn't say that I have contributed to the WSPA articles in any meaningful sense - my role has been more janitorial. I stumbled across the project by chance quite soon after its inception in my role as a Wikipedia administrator and my main contribution has been to offer advice and guidance regarding compliance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. It is these policies and guidelines which provide the answers to the questions which you posed. Throughout the answers you will see links to pages which will explain the concepts in more depth and provide context, please do click through and read them. I will also leave you one of our standard welcome messages which will provide you with even more links to background material about how this wonderful place works. There is an awful lot of it but a project the size of Wikipedia could not function in any meaningful way without a fairly robust framework behind it.
- How do you decide what stays and what goes?
- As with everything on Wikipedia (OK, with the exception of a few cut and dried matters of legality, e.g. copyrights) inclusion policy is decided by community consensus. At the route of everything are five fundamental principles, known as the five pillars, the first of which is primary concerned with Wikipedia's scope. The notability guidelines are probably the most important in terms of deciding what is kept and what is deleted - an article may be beautifully written, contain no original research and be perfectly cited but if it fails on grounds of notability it will likely be deleted. Any deletion which may be controversial is decided through a community procedure called articles for deletion which is essentially a discussion about how the particular article sits within policy/guidelines and attempts to reach a consensus on whether to keep or delete.
- How prominent does an artist have to be to warrant a Wikipedia entry?
- We have a set of criteria for assessing the notability of people and within that a specific set of criteria for the notability of creative professionals.
- Does the piece just have to significance to the local community?
- It is unlikely that something which has only received coverage in local sources would be considered notable enough for inclusion - I have certainly seen things (a child-murder, an exhibition & a newspaper are ones I can specifically remember) deleted because they only had very local relevance/coverage. We do have an essay (essays are opinions and not to be confused with an actual policy or guideline) on the notability of places of local interest which may be useful for you.
- Do temporary installations stay on Wikipedia forever?
- Notability is not temporary. If the installation was once notable then it remains notable regardless.
Hope this has been helpful, kind regards, Nancy talk 10:02, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
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