I think it is indeed the case that if Wikipedia was subjected to less entropy, so that its editors could work on building up the encyclopedia in a sort of secluded peace, the project would be far less itchy about notability.
But remember that minimizing error is only half the argument for notability. The other half is, again, definitional: an article about a non-notable topic is almost by definition original research, and "no original research" is one of Wikipedia's oldest rules. The project's charter is to be a tertiary source.
> an article about a non-notable topic is almost by definition original research, and "no original research" is one of Wikipedia's oldest rules
While I understand it as a means to keep random cranks out of the science pages, all it has ever incentivized is to have people 'launder' their research via some 'reliable source'.
But which sources are 'reliable' is quite often purely a matter of editorial bias and there are other wiki projects with a very different take on the matter, for example:
Could you be more specific about this "laundering" of research through reliable sources?
I definitely saw savvy Wikipedia spammers lawyering their way into the encyclopedia, sometimes successfully, for instance by citing marginal trade press cites as evidence of notability ("my client is notable because one time a trade press writer got a quote from them on the importance of FCIP products for disaster recovery programs").
What I don't see is a lot of bogus research hiding in the secondary sources of major articles.
Whatever you might think about WP's policies on what does or doesn't constitute a "reliable" source, I think it's difficult to argue that any community outside of Wikipedia has spent more time thinking about this problem.
It's simple, you put it on your web page with some puffed-up credentials and then have a friend link to it. This works better for things that aren't commonly challenged as it often doesn't stand up to more than casual scrutiny as you do have to pass yourself off as somehow 'reliable'.
My experience editing Wikipedia suggests to me that this is a dubious tactic. Anything I cited on my own web pages, for topics I feel pretty comfortable asserting expertise on (like, for instance, the presence of a lisp interpreter embedded in the Seatbelt ACL system in OSX) was immediately sniped by other editors.
But remember that minimizing error is only half the argument for notability. The other half is, again, definitional: an article about a non-notable topic is almost by definition original research, and "no original research" is one of Wikipedia's oldest rules. The project's charter is to be a tertiary source.