Existence ≠ Notability := Bad editing experience.

Because some people cared about those actresses, they found reliable sources proving their notability and they have played fairly the Wikipedia game. Conversely, nobody cared about those leaders, not in the way of making a similar effort on their behalf. Wikipedia is run by voluntaries, therefore you cannot force them to write things they do not want to write. Instead, you are free to write about those leaders, taking due care of the Wikipedia policies.

I think you'd be surprised by what isn't found "notable". A village in Pakistan, a protest in the Kashmir where 25 people are killed - these things aren't notable, indeed, they may not be found worthy of even a sentence in Wikipedia. Something is notable because it's discussed in a "reliable source", by which we mean an English-language source appealing to Westerners or Western expatriates, such as an entertainment magazine, but not local Middle Eastern sources, which may be biased, associated with Iran's PressTV etc.

In addition, there are a vast number of special notability guidelines, more every day, which say that in some areas the general notability guideline is too strict and we should have every member of a sports team, every ship in a navy; in other areas they decide it's too lax and say a prank or terror threat has to have "enduring significance". There was even an elaborate guideline, don't know whether it passed or not, explaining how a railway employee killed by accident on a train is notable, but not if he's working on the track. Essentially, there's stuff that little groups of people have decided they like or don't like, and what's odd is that they love video games and sports, and they have little tolerance for serious-sounding stuff. It is all purely the projection of personal prejudice and censorial sentiments onto the encyclopedia; you could dig to the bottom of it and not find one honest thing about it.

Tgeorgescu, I hear you - but the entire RS edifice itself can be laborious and off-putting - especially when you find editors (and editor groups) who are viciously protective (and often incredibly biased) over their own watchlists.

But there is a problem with this too - the untrained tend to go in with a great deal of enthusiasm, even if they often have a rather narrow viewpoint, and there is a definite lack of humility in certain areas of the editorial field.

Wnt's position is also a valid one - I have been told at times that such and such an academic commentator is a PS, or out of date, or whatever - just because their peer-reviewed academic publications took place in another civilisation. There are entire cultures of academic development that still have deeper analysis within their domain than the academics of the current era; this is most especially true regarding the academics belonging to the great religions, but (IMO) highlighted most by the extensive academic literature of the Tibetan monastic universities (up until the moveable type printing press, there were more publications in Tibetan than every other language put together, and yet up until 1980's 'Western' academics of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy relied almost exclusively on Pali, Sanskrit and Chinese sources). In certain areas, most Western academics are still six centuries or more behind contemporary Tibetan academic development.

None of this really advances my view:- that NOT is unnecessary and redundant, as long as we maintain both RS and COI (20040302)

I can easily see why the English Wikipedia relies upon English language scholarship and news: it is easier to trust and understand scholars who write in English, it is easier to trust scholars educated and doing research according to the Western model, it is easier to trust mainstream English language press (instead of say the Libyan TV, since Western journalists are not forced to write patriotic or pro-Western articles, but I assume that censorship rules in Libyan press). I think that it is no secret that in many disciplines most of the cutting edge research is published in English. How about discussing Pali scholarship on the Pali Wikipedia? For translating it to English, you cannot be sure that you used the correct translation of a concept, since other Pali editors could have different translation for the same Pali word. So, in lack of English translations and English language scholarship, it is difficult to evaluate scholarship done in Pali. And there is yet another requirement, that of being verifiable. This means that secret writings cannot be trusted, since other editors cannot have access to such sources. In general, sources are verifiable if they are published, in journals, books, newspapers, websites, etc.