I think everybody who isn't highly involved in Wikipedia has always hated the whole "notability" thing. Drives me crazy. If there's something more than a dozen people care about and they're not a family give them the benefit of the doubt.
And I think the author is right on point with the barriers to contribution thing.
My brother, for example, says he created the Wikipedia page for Cheescake (~2004) because he noticed there wasn't one so he started it by creating a sentence that defined what he thought cheesecake was. And he didn't register, sign up or even make a good article. He just saw something he thought was missing and created it with a single sentence.
And now there's an actual "proper" article.
Not sure if he could do that today. I imagine most people find a missing article, discover there are hoops, and don't bother.
Right? I feel like if I am clicking on a link to read about something on wikipedia, it is 'notable' enough to me. If no one looks at the wikipedia article, then you could say it isn't notable... but then, who cares? A few extra bytes on the server that no one looks at doesn't hurt anything.
He couldn't do it today because there is a Wikipedia article already for pretty much every conceivable pastry, from Stroopwafels to Cronuts to Fudgie the Whale.
To me, this strongly suggests that if you just today realized that Wikipedia was lacking an article for, let's say, Red Velvet Cake, you would have very little trouble creating that article.
Red velvet cake is simply a variation of chocolate cake, and not notable enough to have its own article. Also this article is low-quality and contains several non-encyclopedic/non-verifiable statements. Propose merging into a passing note in [[Chocolate cake]].
And I think the author is right on point with the barriers to contribution thing.
My brother, for example, says he created the Wikipedia page for Cheescake (~2004) because he noticed there wasn't one so he started it by creating a sentence that defined what he thought cheesecake was. And he didn't register, sign up or even make a good article. He just saw something he thought was missing and created it with a single sentence.
And now there's an actual "proper" article.
Not sure if he could do that today. I imagine most people find a missing article, discover there are hoops, and don't bother.