Wikipedia talk:Notability: Difference between revisions

Archives
2005–Sep 2006 (related to page now moved to Wikipedia:Notability/Arguments) Sep–Oct 2006 Oct–Nov 2006 18–25 Nov 2006 Nov 2006–Dec 2006 Dec 2006 Dec 2006–not yet full

Proposed change to notability guideline

That the first two sentences of the notability guideline be changed to:

"A topic is notable if it has been the subject of at least one non-trivial published work whose sources are independent of the subject itself. All topics must meet a minimum threshold of notability in order for an article on that topic to be included in Wikipedia."

This proposeal contains two changes:

1) The word "multiple" in the first sentence is replaced by "At least one", since "multiple" does not mean the same thing to all people, and is therefore not measurable.

2) The word "Some" in the second sentence is changed to "All", since there are no topics on which Wikipedia allow non-notable subjects.

Discuss. Librarylefty 07:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

"Multiple" means more than one (not at least one) - I don't think there's much ambiguity about the word, so is it worth changing it? I agree that "some" should be changed to "all"; since this is only a guideline, it's already apparent that it might not always need to be followed. Trebor 12:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Huh??? "some" should be "all" since it might not always need to be followed??? 70.101.147.224 22:25, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Depending on the reliability of the sources in question, two sources is probably not enough for accuracy. Depending on how comprehensive the sources are, two sources may not be enough to make a sufficiently complete article anyway. —Centrx→talk • 23:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I always understood multiple to merely mean more than one, and be used as a safecheck in case one newspaper (for instance) published something unusually trivial - the second source confirms it has some interest. Obviously, it depends on the depth of coverage, and whether there is enough information to write an article from, but as a minimum I thought it mean two. If it doesn't, then the wording really needs to be changed. Trebor 23:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The second source needs to have done some research on it. If a single news story is published by the Associated Press and then propagated to several newspapers, that is not multiple independent sources. The problem with "at least one" is that it tries to pinpoint some exact number that may not necessarily be appropriate considering the other criteria. You cannot have a computationally "measurable" guideline that could handle all the cases found in the millions of possible topics and the millions of possible sources. —Centrx→talk • 01:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

In that case, the use of "multiple" in the PNC needs to be explained better, as it's pretty unclear. Or perhaps independent could mean sources independent from each other, as well as from the subject matter. Trebor 11:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I went and changed the word "Some" in the second sentence to "All", since there doesn't seem to be any opposition to this change. I havn't changed "multiple" to "at least one", since people are rejecting this proposed change.Librarylefty 04:06, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

How about, "more than one", or "at least two"? But that's what "multiple" means, anyway... 70.101.147.224 22:25, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Multiple has this meaning, and the problem with "more than one" or "at least two" is it puts inappropriate stress on the exact number, when the reliability of the sources is more important and relevant to the number necessary. This is somewhat like the distinction between "there is an element in the set" and "there exists an element in the set". —Centrx→talk • 01:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

There's an extended explanation on the page now, which has made it a bit clearer. Trebor 08:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

What are the notability requirements for films?

There don't seem to be any. If the general guidelines are used, then even the most obscure low-budget film has probably been the subject of some trade paper story: is this "non-trivial"? Should Wikipedia be working towards an imdb-like database of all film? Or should there be a requirement of mention in non-trade publications? Dybryd 22:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• Are there multiple such sources that are getting and checking their information independently? "Non-trivial" generally means whether there was only a passing mention in a story about something else, or a minor story, but it is also related to the reliability of the source. In a reliable source, the primary story of the article will be fact-checked and examined more thoroughly than a passing mention. The question to ask is: Can we make a substantial encyclopedia article (from the creation of the film to the critical response to it), and can we make an accurate article (Did the trade paper really check any of its information or is it just repeating the story given by the producers? Is the trade paper a reliable source anyway? Are there other papers that independently verified it and reported the same thing?) —Centrx→talk • 23:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• (after obligory edit conflict) You'd be surprised... I've seen plenty of AfDs on films random people made, and they never can produce the sources needed to meet WP:N. It's important to make sure the "trade paper story" is actually independent, i.e. it's not just regurgitating a press-release or something like that, and that it's actually non-trivial, i.e. it lists more than the name of the movie, the director, the actors... i.e. directory information. That excludes a lot of "non notable movies", and we're left with ones where we'll actually have reliable information to put in the article. So no problem there... the point of WP:N isn't to exclude a bunch of articles just for the sake of excluding them, it's to exclude ones where any article would be problematic or pointless due to lack of useful information. --W.marsh 23:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• Here's a question that will also lead you in the direction of the answer: When you pick up an encyclopaedia of films such as ISBN 0851704557, what do you expect to find in it? Wikipedia is as much an encyclopaedia of cinema as it is an encyclopaedia of birds.

  Similarly, think about this: If the only things written about a film are magazines simply repeating the publicity blurb from the film's creators/producers, then the film doesn't satisfy the PNC. Consider how an article based wholly on publicity blurbs would read. To satisfy the PNC, the works must have been written by sources independent of the film's creators/producers.

  Fortunately, for many films there will be independently sourced published works about the films. There are plenty of film review columnists in the world, for a start. There are also many film historians writing many books. If the film reviewers and film historians talk at length about a film, then there's material for an encyclopaedia article. Whether the film is low-budget is not a consideration. Wikipedia editors don't make the decision of whether a low-budget film is notable or not. The film reviewers and film historians do. The PNC is how Wikipedia editors determine what that judgement is.

  It is a common error to want to exclude "local coverage" or "specialist journal/magazine coverage". But that's the error of trying to make notability into a judgement of fame or importance. We don't do that for towns, mathematics subjects, or species of beetles, and we shouldn't do it for anything else. It's not the size of the readership that matters. It's the depth and provenance of the work that matters. A 3-page, in-depth, film review by an independent critic counts as a non-trivial published work even if it is in a specialist film magazine. Conversely, a one-sentence mention doesn't count as a non-trivial published work and a simple repeat of publicity blurb doesn't count as an independently sourced published work even if they are in an international mass-market newspaper. Uncle G 15:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I encountered similar issue while editing a page on Fidelio Magazine. ...published works with sources independent of the subject itself and each other is a very good and clear criteria, and if satisfied, article should definitely be kept in Wiki. However, by looking at a sample from almost 1000 Category:American magazines, almost none has references to 3rd party sources. In addition, by trying to find 3rd party reviews on Fidelio with the help of Google, I realized that there was none, (although I didn't read all links in search results, nor did I do all possible searches). I started thinking about it, and realized that although Fidelio may or may not have reviews on internet (which are relatively easy to find - just type the search and read links), it is far more difficult to find reviews from the published sources that are not published on the internet - which are many. Now, why I am writing about this. Because it is hard for me to believe that all (or most of) these magazines have not reviews somewhere as they have been published for years, and that they should be deleted. This in a way presents a limitation of this criteria, as while there are editors who want to contribute to wikipedia with the new entry on for example a magazine page, they may not be able to find 3rd party sources (and the burden of proof lies on editor). Since wiki is not a directory, logical thing would be to just delete all these. On the other hand, having a categorized list of magazines by topic is in my opinion useful thing. It at least provides reader with the name of magazines on topic he/she is interested in and can look further on google, but I think it is better to use the main advantage of wiki, and actually wikify those names to their pages, so that user can easily read more, and navigate back to other pages within wiki, without a need to search thru google. After all, this feature of Wikipedia IS THE FEATURE that makes it a primary source of reference information that I use, and without it, I don't think I would be spending nearly as much time reading and editing it. Lakinekaki 18:19, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem you run into here is that "it's useful" is not a good way to build an encyclopedia. How-to guides and manuals are also useful, but they're not allowed on Wikipedia because there's another, better place for them (even though some people are lazy and don't want to navigate there) - Wikibooks. Dictionary definitions are also useful on their own, but having them in an encyclopedia will clutter it. ColourBurst 00:20, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

And how that relates to two points I made?Lakinekaki 00:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

People consider Wikipedia a credible source. If it were just sourced from promotional text, each such article would need to be preceded by a warning "This is based entirely on the promotional advertising of the producer. It is likely to be inaccurate or misleading." to which people will respond, "Why even read this in the first place?". For the many articles without sources, they will need sources. Some of them can never have them and need to be deleted, others just need references and citations added to the article. It may be appropriate to have a different deletion system, where there is a longer probationary period to allow sources to be found and added, and then a stricter, objective deletion decision based entirely on there being such sources and their reliability, etc. —Centrx→talk • 01:22, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

What about leaving a page there, but either cleaning up any non-objective text? When it comes to media - film, tv, print, and even web content, the notability criteria seems to be a little too strict, and things are delete as non-notable when they really ARE useful and informative articles. Shouldn't notability be just ONE criteria for keeping an article, and not the sole reason for deleting one? TomXP411 06:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that attitude is that it does not distinguish between promotional hype and actual information. "The greatest film of all time!" is a statement of opinion whether it comes from the film's producers or an acclaimed film critic. "The film is a coming of age tale set in feudal Japan." does not become any LESS verifiable (using any meaningful definition) if it comes straight from the film's makers. The studio which produced the movie has no more reason to dissemble about its subject matter than anybody else. Wikipedia doesn't lose credibility for taking the studio's word that a movie is a battlefield epic or a romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon. This institution seriously shoots itself in the foot with its "No Original Research Because This Is An Encyclopedia And Encyclopedias Don't Do Original Research" stance here... why does something as innovative and new as Wikipedia once was have to be forever mired in me-too syndrome? Last I checked, encyclopedias also don't exist online and don't allow anybody to edit them... encyclopedias have highly limited page counts, limited number of staff working on them, etc. Wikipedia has none of those limitations and shouldn't be bound by the limitations of what an encyclopedia is that only arose out of them, if it's going to maintain any sort of relevance. That's the perspective all these conversations on notability guidelines seems to be missing... because any conversation about the notability requirements comes back to the severe misuse of the term "verifiability" and the seriously flawed discussion of what Wikipedia is and isn't. Here's one for the list: Wikipedia is NOT like anything that came before and ends up looking foolish when it tries to act like it is. In the long run, that's going to be what loses this thing its credibility. 68.13.21.225 05:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Permanence

I apologize for the tardiness, but well done to all for including the explanation that notability does not fade with time. That's another frequent error that needed addressing. Uncle G 13:53, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

So, "Wikipedia is not a crystal ball." just gets dropped out the window if it allows something to be quashed as "non-notable." Was the Epic of Gilgamesh actually any more notable than any other stories from its time period that didn't happen to have their tablets survive and be found by successive ages? Could anybody at the time have predicted that Shakespeare's rather vulgar and silly little entertainments would be taught to schoolchildren on every inhabited continent? How exactly does one judge notability to be "permanent", in the absence of a time machine? It's probably not a good idea to add every little fad as soon as it's a blip on the radar, but look at it this way: the print edition of a traditional encyclopedia will cover some topics that future generations will no longer consider worthy of space. When that time comes, the next edition to be issued will no longer cover that topic. Wikipedia's web-based model doesn't have "editions" but "edits." If somthing is notable for the time being, why shouldn't it be covered for the time being, and removed from future editions? That's how the "real encyclopedias" that Wikipedia seems so hell-bent on emulating handle it. 68.13.21.225 05:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Is a very long article about a minor controversy a violation of of the notability guideline?

I'm curious what people think about Quran Oath Controversy of the 110th United States Congress. As I describe in an entry I just made on the article's talk page, I'm concerned that the article as it currently stands has a POV or notability problem, not so much because of individual statements in the article, but because of the length and detail of the article's coverage. I think the underlying event should probably be treated as a minor attempt by a single conservative radio personality to stir up a controversy when there actually isn't much of a controversy there. Actually, I think the current coverage of the controversy in Keith Ellison (politician) is probably about as much coverage as the story deserves. I'm curious what other people think. Thanks. -- John Callender 23:08, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

According to the notability rule the primary criterion for notability is whether or not enough reliable, verifiable information exists to proudce a sufficient, neutral article. The length of the article is not a problem unless much of the "lengthiness" comes from unsourced or low-quality (ie. non-reliable) sources, in which case it could become original research and/or biased material, which should not be here on Wikipedia. So in judging the notability, you should figure out how much non-trivial reliable published coverage there is, ie. how well it satisfies that Primary Notability Criterion(TM). 70.101.147.224 05:33, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, if there is sufficient information from which to write an article, then there's no reason for an article not to be written. If it was only a section in a different article then undue weight might be an issue, but since it's an article in its own right, that's not relevant. It comes back to subjectivity, I feel: while you (and others) might think it doesn't merit such a lengthy entry, that is based on a personal opinion of its importance. If enough people have noted information about it to construct an article, then it becomes notable, and (providing the sources are reliable) in this case it seems to be true. Trebor 08:57, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I didn't say it did merit a long entry, nor did I say it merited only a short one. I said it depends on the amount of verifiable information that is available, and how much we can proportion the views to avoid giving them that undue weight in accordance with our NPOV policy. But that is an issue of NPOV, not of WP:N. 70.101.147.224 19:35, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. For what it's worth, one of the reasons I have these concerns about the article is that it's overwhelmingly the product of a single user. So the "if enough people have noted information about it" formulation given by Trebor above may not apply, or may not apply completely. Anyway, no one else who has commented seems concerned about it, so I'm happy to let it go. If it bugs me enough I'll see about trying to improve it with some editing. -- John Callender 03:53, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the length of the article seems way out of proportion to the topic it is covering, and that the tone and style of the writing doesn't seem very encyclopedic. But I don't see any blatent violation of policies such as WP:V, WP:OR, or WP:NPOV. --

RoySmith (talk) 04:34, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

But if it doesn't violate policy, what's the problem with it being long? 74.38.35.171 03:26, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• The relevant part is probably the "undue weight" clause of NPOV, and several parts of the WP:MOS argue against overly long sections, as does WP:TRIV. >Radiant< 13:53, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

  Yeah, that seems more like it. Good response. I can't see a connection with WP:N, which deals with baseline criteria for inclusion. Ideal length would be proportional to amount of reliable verifiable material (which is also part of the notability criterion, so you might be able to say there is a connection, but not a direct one), and to the weight of different viewpoints. 74.38.35.171 03:26, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Speaking as one who likes to read, the more facts the better. As long as the person is reporting verifialbe facts, why not let it be as long as necessary? The longer the better. "WIki is not paper", and a longer article may help people's understanding of an issue. To me, that's the most important factor when it comes to coverage of controversial issues. -TomXP411 07:00, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

A question about notability of articles VS notability of statements.

Hi, I have a question regarding notability of articles that talk about little known theories.

A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works with sources independent of the subject itself and each other. Does this mean that it is enough that the topic was discussed in independent sources, or does it mean that each statement within the article has to be covered by independent sources? Lakinekaki 22:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

This sentence is only referring to the topic of an article, not each individual statement. There is a concept frequently found on Wikipedia (e.g. in WP:RS#Self-published sources in articles about themselves and WP:BLP#Using the subject as a source about something being "relevant to the topic's notability". For example, is not necessarily important in an article about a politician to include his stamp-collecting hobby, but if there is something important about his political history that an editor has (currently) only found on his Senate website, then it can be appropriate to include that in the Wikipedia article, at least until a better source is found. For "little known theories", it is safe to say that a theory that has not been evaluated by independent sources should not be included in Wikipedia, but depending on the situation it might be best to refer to Wikipedia:No original research, which was originally conceived to address crank physics theories, and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. —Centrx→talk • 07:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed change to notability guideline - Google Hits

I am not finding a specific guideline that establishes google hits or any other search engine criteria as valid demonstration of non-notability, although it is being quoted constantly at Articles for Deletion (AfD) as though it was a hard-and-fast rule. I see high google hits as a way to suggest notability, but absence is not proof of non-notability. If I am right, then I think this should be explained at Notability so that it can be referenced from AfD discussions. --Kevin Murray 18:07, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

We're probably no where close to a consensus on Google hits. Many, like me, think it is vastly over-rated, and one should use it to find sources, not use it as a source. Note, many use it very different to how you do, in they use lack of hits to justify deletion, but consider lots of hits insignficant. Most users of Google hits are unaware of how easily its manipulated. They're also unaware of certain basic limits in the numbers it returns (some restrictions exists, partly for technical reasons, and partly for proprietary reasons, to stop automated "stealing" of results). Any way, we have a means of measuring notability with "multiple non-trivial sources", and don't need Google hits. --Rob 19:31, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Google hits in themselves doesn't show notability or not - obviously it depends on what the links are. That said, a low number of Google hits show that the chances of finding a reliable online source are low, and vice versa. So an argument saying, "I couldn't find any sources for subject x and the low number of Google hits for x suggests there won't be any", is alright, but an argument based purely on numbers could easily be flawed. They're an indication of sources (and therefore notability), but shouldn't be used on their own. Trebor 19:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

What I'm looking to add is a statement saying something similar to: "Low Google-hits are not a justification to assume lack of notability." --Kevin Murray 23:59, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

For modern popular culture and some specific subjects, lack of hits does mean lack of notability. If computer software has a low number of Google hits, or if a pop band established in 2005 in the U.S. has a low number of Google hits, you can be pretty sure that the topic is not notable and that reliable sources are not going to be found for it. If there are a high number of hits on these, however, that does not necessarily mean that the topic is notable, or if the topic is a Medieval author the low number of Google hits is probably meaningless. —Centrx→talk • 00:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, I think lack of hits can only ever suggest lack of notability. While it's unlikely, there could be a very small number of hits but within them are ones that satisfy the PNC. In relation to the page, perhaps a link to WP:GOOGLE should be included (that page is purportedly a guideline, although I'm slightly dubious as to whether there was consensus, or it was an accident). Trebor 00:47, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem there is how people define a "low number". There are so many web spammers, racking up huge numbers of Google hits; that people look at these numbers, and see them as the "norm". Then people falsely think anything in the hundreds is "low". Also, some people, to avoid "spam", focus on unique hits, which is sort-of ok, except they don't realize that it's always <=1000 in Google (even Microsoft). Once, when trying to find what threshold somebody was using, I found they were using a standard that even Microsoft doesn't meet (they thought at-least 2000 *unique hits was needed). --Rob 13:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

We have a whole page on the Wikipedia:Search engine test. That's really the place to explain its flaws. And, indeed, some of the aforementioned points are already mentioned there. Trebor Rowntree and Thivierr make a very important point above. Counting Google hits is not research. Research involves actually reading the things that Google turns up. Google is a search tool for finding sources. It isn't some sort of metric in its own right. Uncle G 13:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Proposal for Action Should we add the following? "Low Google-hits are not always proof of lack of notability. Please consider the discussion at WP:GOOGLE." --Kevin Murray 15:36, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

• Qualified support: I think it should be even stronger, per Trebor's and Trivierr/Rob's comments above. That is, I Support at least this phrase if not a more strongly-worded one being added, and xref'd to WP:GOOGLE. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I support this only if we remind people of the converse-"A high number of Google hits are not proof of notability." I've seen several subjects which return tons of Google hits (even discounting similarly-named things), but all of those are to blogs, forums, and the like. Something is notable when multiple reliable sources cover it, not when a bunch of forum users decide it makes a cool flavor of the week. Seraphimblade 05:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Please discuss, not vote with bold text. That aside, I don't think this is the appropiate place for any drill-down on Google hits... Let it go on the relevent page, leaving this one free from both "too few means..." and "lots may not mean." - brenneman 05:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Reliable sources?

I'm glad this is a guideline now (again ?), but should the main criterion not really explicitly require reliable independent sources, as required by WP:V? Otherwise, my current reading is that extensive independent coverage solely by internet ephemera like nonnotable blogs, forum posts etc. constitutes notability, and I'm quite sure we don't want that. Also, why does a guideline link to (and practically incorporate) an essay, WP:INDY? Sandstein 22:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• "published works" may not be sufficiently well-defined here, but the examples used of books, magazines, academic journals, etc. are pretty clear that it must be published in a certain traditional sense: that there was a fact-checking and editorial process, with separate researchers, book editors, or journalists reviewing it. Forum posts and most "blogs" do not have this and are not like the examples given here.
• Regarding WP:INDY, this is merely an explanation of what is meant by "independent" here. That essay should probably be merged into Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources, but it is right now mostly a definition rather than any sort of prescriptive policy. You can see this on some parts of Wikipedia:Edit war, which used to be an essay and then was not tagged with anything for a while. While some parts say "edit warring is bad", etc., others simply describe what an edit war is, which is not necessarily clear to some newcomers. Similarly, all the pages in the Help namespace, such as Help:Reverting, mainly describe fundamental aspects of editing but still have prescriptive statements like "Do not simply revert changes that are made as part of a dispute." —Centrx→talk • 00:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Okay, thanks for the explanation re: INDY. Is anyone opposed, then, to clarify the first sentence of the guideline as follows, and to adjust the main criterion accordingly? Sandstein 09:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

    A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works with reliable sources independent of the subject itself and each other. [Underlining denotes change]

    • I don't have a strong objection to a slightly different version, which I think to be slightly better grammatically:

      A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject itself and each other.

    • Uncle G 13:23, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • That sounds good. I'm giving it a try in the guideline now. Sandstein 08:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't the sources also be independent of each other? It seems like it hasn't been added yet. Objections? ~ trialsanderrors 09:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It says "...independent of the subject itself and each other" here, but it is not linked to the essay and the essay does not currently describe that independence. —Centrx→talk • 09:19, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, WP:INDY does not mention mutual independence because it is concerned with independence for NPOV and V purposes, whereas we look at independence from a notability standpoint. It makes some sense to state (as I think the "independent from each other" criterion now does) that, say, five consecutive newspaper columns from eminent editorialist N.N. don't amount to much in the way of notability if no-one else has mentioned the subject in print, even though the newspaper columns may be reliable sources. But we should possibly clarify the scope of the mutual independence: If, say, two NYT articles by different writers cover the subject, are they too "dependent" on one another because they are published by the same newspaper? Sandstein 09:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I should move this essay into WP space? ~ trialsanderrors 10:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

If you want to, but that essay's notability criterion (10 "articles" from 5 "different sources") strikes me as rather too strict to gain consensus as a guideline. It also doesn't address in any detail what's meant by "different sources", i.e., what exactly mutual independence means. Sandstein 11:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It strikes me as rather arbitrary and focused on exactly the sort of thing that an encyclopedia is not: a digest of news. If there are four (or nine) books written by established professional historians on a topic, the topic is certainly notable despite the rule of thumb, while a passing news story can have 10 different articles but may only warrant a single sentence in the article on the main subject. —Centrx→talk • 11:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree: it's too strict and rather arbitrarily set. Aside from the multiple criterion, notability should be judged by depth of coverage. Trebor 11:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I was being half-facetious. I'm fairly sure it won't get approval, that's why I called it a non-essay. It's also older than Uncle G's On Notability essay, so some of the thinking that happened here isn't reflected in it. Maybe I should mark it s "kept for historical interest"... ~ trialsanderrors 19:04, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

This is actually quite an important change in the PNC - should it be copied across to the relevant individual guidelines (WP:WEB, WP:BAND, etc.)? The absence of reliability as a criterion in WP:WEB is being used here as part of a defence against deletion. Trebor 16:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Language page: Svenska

I see about 2 billion links for the "Swedish version" of this page in the "other languages" bar on the left side. However, click on any one of those links, it takes you to this nonsense page. It also appears on several notability pages. I've been trying to get rid of those incorrect links, but I can't find the link to the page within the source. Furthermore, it seems these links first appeared in this version that was edited by an admin Uncle G. This is wierd, how can I elemnate those links to that incorrect foreign page? RiseRobotRise 08:04, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem solved, I found out that | Template:fn seem to be the culprit behind that bad language links, so I removed them all. Its deprecated, so removing it shouldn't have any negative effects on the article. This problem should also be fixed on any other pages that may include this template. RiseRobotRise 08:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Scope of notability

I've seen (and been involved in) a number of AfD's lately where the following argument has played out:

• This subject is non-notable
  • Here's a list of references to the subject from independent sources to prove it meets WP:N
    • No, they don't count, those sources are all topic-specific

The question in my mind is, What makes an independent source?. Clearly, it has to be a source not under the control of the subject, but does it also have to be a general-interest source, or does a topic-specific source count? For example, look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Sailboat Hall of Fame (currently in progress). There have been several sailing magazines cited which have made reference to the subject. That proves that the subject is notable within the sailing community. Is that enough? A higher standard would be that it had received attention outside of the sailing community; that there were sources from the general press which had written about the subject. Is that higher standard reasonable, or that going too far? -- RoySmith (talk) 20:44, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's notable enough. The notability guideline is deliberately broad in the sources it allows - they just need to reliable and published. There shouldn't be any need to appeal to a wider audience (as an imperfect analog, consider a scientific theory - it is not well-known outside of the scientific community, but surely must be considered encyclopaedic). I don't think there is a need to make sure each article is notable to a general audience, so long as the sources provided meet the other criteria. Trebor 21:19, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. If we were to declare that substantial coverage by reliable special interest publications isn't enough for notability, then we're no longer editing an encyclopedia, but a lexicon of popular culture. A great many subjects in the sciences and the humanities are be best (and maybe only) covered by articles in specialised scientific publications, whose "community" of readers and editors is maybe a few thousand people. Sandstein 21:40, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

In the case of this particular example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Sailboat Hall of Fame, a quick cursory search at my library turned up half a dozen articles in the outdoors sections of newspapers. I've added the best two to the article. For a popular pastime like sailboating, it's not unreasonable to expect there to be sources from the general press on something like a Hall of Fame. We're not talking about obscure, complex scientific concepts only understood by the readers of specialised journals. -- Dragonfiend 02:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Across Languages

If an article is questioned for lack of notability, should such notice also appear on pages in other languages (for the same article)? Is there any valid reason to delete a page for lack of notability, but have a page in another language remain? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Subanark (talk • contribs) 22:03, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

We do not have control over the wikis in other languages. Certainly it can be useful to see if another language wiki has a well-sourced article on the subject, but decisions on the English Wikipedia do not dictate other projects. Other wikis may have more stringent requirements for notability, others less, though in general they all must be "encyclopedias". It might be profitable to consider whether a topic for which there are no English-language sources whatsoever could possibly be notable enough for the English Wikipedia, but even there we are probably looking at more of a Wikipedia:Reliable sources issue. —Centrx→talk • 22:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Ditto what Centrx said - communities will have implemented notability guidelines in different ways. Trebor 23:12, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Questions regarding the "primary notability criterion"

I am right now participating in two rather controversial AfDs. The first one is the most controversial, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cortana. It was initiated by me. The second is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/RuneScape gods (fifth), not initiated by me.

The discussions rely primarily on the interpretation of WP:N (and WP:FICT) guidelines. In the Cortana AfD, it is argued by one side that as a major character in a notable franchise she is notable in herself per WP:FICT and so the article should be kept. On the other side, my side, it is argued that the "primary notability criterion" (a topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself) outranks subject-specific notability guidelines, especially considering it's position in the first line of WP:N, and so the article should be deleted/merged somewhere else as Cortana is not the subject of published works, but rather Halo is and Cortana is mentioned.

In the [[RuneScape gods AfD, it is argued that while the "primary notability criterion" may outrank subject-specific notability guidelines, that is irrelevant as it does not explicitly mention "articles", but rather "topics". As RuneScape gods is a part of the indeed notable topic of RuneScape, although an independent article, the article should then be kept. The other side, again my side, argues that as RuneScape gods is the topic of the article on them, an establishment of the notability of the RuneScape gods is required in order for the article to be kept.

So:

1. Does the "primary notability criterion" outrank the subject-specific notability guidelines, or, is the article being the subject of multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself, required by all articles or merely those who do not fall within the subject-specific notability guidelines?
2. Does the "primary notability criterion" in using the word "topic" refer to a set of articles under a common umbrella, or does it refer to the subject of the article itself - in other words, the topic being the article's subject?

Discussion regarding this would be appreciated, as it apparently quite unclear. An emerging consensus should then be proposed be included in the notability guidelines.

All the best, -- Jobjörn (Talk ° contribs) 01:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Even the subject-specific WP:FICT states that major characters (I don't know how major) should be covered within the article on that work of fiction" except if "an encyclopedic treatment of such a character causes the article on the work itself to become long, then that character can be given a separate article." An article that consists entirely of sources affiliated with the subject or alternatively unreliable sources is not given "an encyclopedic treatement" and if you were to remove everything from that article that has "an encyclopedic treatment" you would be left with very little. (See also Wikipedia:Verifiability: material without a reliable source"may be challenged or removed by any editor"). So, the subject-specific criteria here is not in conflict with the primary notability criterion, though reasonably we can say that the primary notability criterion, being a strongly solidified Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, does inform what an "encyclopedic treatment" is. So, assuming that Cortana is an important character in the games, then this topic should be merged with Halo (video game series) and similar master articles where appropriate. If having a description of this character is important to having a complete article there, then having material sourced to the games themselves and related non-independent sources is okay, but that supports only what is necessary for having a complete encyclopedia article on the master topic, and does not support a separate article. Runescape gods could be considered under WP:FICT a "List of minor characters" that is folded out from the main topic, but it is currently in a pitifully poorly sourced state. —Centrx→talk • 13:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Can..

this policy be applied to Croats of Slovakia? --PaxEquilibrium 23:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a guideline, not a policy, and it can be applied to any article. If you believe that topic is non-notable (although it looks likely to be notable to me), you can tag it with {{notability}} and/or ask for sources on the talk page, for a start. Sandstein 05:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Please see Template:Serbs, Template:Croats and Template:Montenegrins and you'll understand what I mean. This practical madness was unleashed by the creation of the Serbs of Croatia article which ticked off this chain... How can an ethnic group numbering several hundred people (none of which are notable), and forming less than 1% of the country in which it lives (and having no greater historical presence in the state's territory) notable enough to have an article. If it goes like this, it makes me wonder why there isn't a Mongols in South Africa article. --PaxEquilibrium 23:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I've no opinion on this, but the principal place to discuss it would be the article talk page. It's probably worthwhile to evaluate every such article on its own merits, based on e.g. WP:V and WP:N. If no sources are forthcoming, you are of course free to nominate the article for deletion. Sandstein 05:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, that people does have its own website. (www.hr.sk). --PaxEquilibrium 16:41, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a first-party source. Notability is determined by how much attention has been garnered by third parties. 74.38.35.171 22:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Fame isn't a measure of notability?

How is it possible for something to be famous and non-notable? Realistically, anything/one famous would have been published about from many independent sources.

I made this same argument before this was passed and think that rather than saying that, it should just be set to one simple critera: "is it or was it _well known_ to people within the relevant population (e.g. general knowledge, physics, psychology, etc.)?" It's simple, straightforward and as objective as you can get (it limits the subjectiveness to gauging how well known it is). Can anyone think of counter-examples? Note I said 'well known' and not 'popular.'

Also, why is this limited to published works when published works aren't the only widespread medium? I should add that anyone can title a random internet page an "e-book," but I wouldn't consider that published...especially with ultra cheap e-vanity presses available now. Nathan J. Yoder 07:26, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It's simple, straightforward and as objective as you can get (it limits the subjectiveness to gauging how well known it is) - I'm sorry, but that's inherently utterly subjective. How do you judge "well-known"? There are different levels of being "well known" - what if it's known to half the people in the relevant population, does that count? On top of that, how do you decide what the "relevant population" is? What's the relevant population for Big Brother contestants, or Pokemon? (in fact, looking at one of your examples, what's the relevant population for general knowledge?) It's people making these "I have/haven't heard of it" judgements that undermines AfD and makes a stricter, objective definition of notability necessary.

You said, "how is it possible for something to be famous and non-notable?" Fairly easily, in fact. A lot of on-line content (web comics, podcasts, blogs) can be known about and viewed by thousands of people, so they're famous. They normally won't, however, have been published about in many independent sources. Using your method, they would be kept - they are well-known within their relevant population - yet there are no independent sources from which to write an article.

What other types of works (besides published) would you want it extended to? Trebor 07:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It's no more "inherently utterly subjective" than the current criteria. There is no such thing as a completely objective policy nor guidelines on Wikipedia. Even NPOV has some subjectivity. If you are unwilling to acknowledge that virtually all conceivable criteria involve some degree of subjectivity, then you probably unwilling to acknowledge that there is any subjectivity any of the criteria you think are "right."

Here's a list of current criteria (note that when I say "it's subject," I mean that it involves significant subjectivity -- also note that I'm going based on the limited descriptions provided):

1. Publishing - if this is overly broad so as to include non-print works, then it's subjective. If it encompasses all printed works, then it's objective, but then any random thing my printer churns out becomes 'published.' If it encompasses some printed works, then it's subjective.

2. Independence -- do you realize how many companies today have their hands in multiple markets? Rupert Murdoc (of FOX fame) has major newspapers, TV stations and whatever else. Is FOX news "independent" from the FOX tv station? "Vested interest or bias" is also subjective and includes this issue.

3. Non-triviality - how much "depth" is enough depth? How do you measure depth? You just criticized the "well known" idea for not specifying specific amounts, so why aren't you specifying amounts for depth?

4. Multiple - not a specific number, same problem as with #3.

5. Reliable - Involves various types of subjectivity, especially considering that the definitions on the reliability article are rather circular and sometimes vague.

I challenge you to show me one criterion that is more objective and you must define it in a non-circular manner (as the subjective reliability definition has been). If half of the people know about it, it's definitely well known. The relevant audience for TV shows is TV viewers. General knowledge for the general population. Of course, if something is well known in the general population (which encompasses EVERYONE by definition), then it is automatically notable regardless of field. Try to come up with harder examples.

I'm not advocating "I haven't heard of it" responses, please read what I have said more carefully.

Thousand of people aren't that many for a website. That's on the very low end, actually. Using my method, these vague, hypothetical websites would NOT be notable.

Television and radio come to mind as obvious non-publishing mediums, although they made an exception just for TV documentaries despite them not being published. Publishing refers to printed works, so either they are using an uncommon and overly broad definition, or it's wrong--if it's overly broad, then they should use a more standard term.

And as I specified, "e-books," which anyone can put on a random website, hardly count as publishing. Nathan J. Yoder 09:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, what if a quarter of people know about it? A tenth? A twentieth? At what level does it stop becoming "well-known"? How do you check that the people expressing an opinion are part of the "correct" population? And yes, you are advocating "I haven't heard of it" responses. An article is up for deletion, people from the relevant population arrive and say "I have/haven't heard of it, therefore it is/isn't well-known", then, if x% have heard of it, it becomes well-known and is kept.

This isn't a hypothetical situation, see here. The podcast seems fairly well-known within the WoW population, so by your standards it should be kept? I would say an almost complete lack of sources means it shouldn't be.

In relation to published works, it's also said that they must be reliable, so an e-book put on a random website would not qualify. But I'll defer on this one; I'm not entirely sure why the published criterion exists, I think reliable would be a sufficient qualifier.

You are correct that the criteria aren't entirely objective, but in the vast majority of cases it doesn't matter. It is usually easy to tell if a source is independent from the subject or not and if there are multiple sources (which means more than two, provided they aren't using the same source themselves). Non-triviality is slightly more difficult/subjective, but it's present to stop directory information or passing mentions making something notable; if the subject has been addressed fairly directly, it won't be trivial (which could also be measured by if there is sufficient information to write more than a stub). Reliability is an issue throughout Wikipedia, not just in deletion, so there are guidelines set and editors are expected to use their best judgement. No, notability isn't perfect but the current definition is fairly good (and setting ridiculously precise measures for what is a guideline would be counter-productive). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Trebor Rowntree (talk • contribs) 13:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC).

It isn't just "publishing" that defines a reliable source. It also has to have a peer review mechanism (in the case of news media, this would be editors, in the case of scholarly journals, these would be other scientists) - so most blogs and other self-published material would be right out with that criterion. ColourBurst 05:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not going to give specific numbers until you do. Why should the criteria you support not need specific numbers when mine does? All you've stated is that multiple means 2 or more, but sometimes you need more than just 2 depending on the information, which is why the notability page currently stated, correctly, that multiple isn't a specific amount. The point is that if you ask around in random people (and I mean in the statistical sense and people from the right historical period/generation) from that population, especially "experts," it's not hard to find people who know about it.

It's usually easy to tell if someone's part of the correct population (using your own words here). WoW belongs to the game playing population. When you have a specific product, you go for the general type of product that it is.

You're also moving the goal posts too. First it was just "I haven't heard of it," now it's people from the relevant population saying "I haven't heard of it." That still doesn't work, because a few people showing up for an AfD hardly constitute a representative portion of any population--thus that is a horrible measure of determining how well known it is, unless you're seriously suggesting that some statisticians did a representative, large random selection of the population to come and show up for the AfD.

We have tools like search engines for this purpose. Want to verify knowledge in a scientific community? Search their journals. Want to verify knowledge in the gaming community? Search gaming websites and gaming magazines/publications. You can also search newspapers for things known to the general population as a whole. Easy.

You're right about published works, there really is no point for it to exist when a reliability criterion exists. Adding it only creates confusion. In my model, I'm combining all existing criteria under one--because all the methods used to verify notability under current criteria would still be used to gauge how well known it is.

Problems with the current model

Consider this: what is the purpose of having multiple independent sources? Isn't it to verify that a large enough crowd has become knowledgeable of it? Also consider what happens if something gets published by multiple sources, but gets published in the "back pages" of newspapers and thus few people ever know about it. Sometimes when this happens they also cover it in depth, largely because it's a slow news day. You could essentially justify making everything published in multiple newspaper articles notable, even if very few people knew about it.

One other problem I'm trying to eliminate here is "self-reinforced popularity in niche subjects" which is related to the "vocal minority phenomenon." This happens a lot in smaller ideological movements and niche/cult following entertainment groups. Due to their simple aggressiveness and persistence in promotion, they can get several independent sources (possibly ones some of them have special connections to--note some of the highly specialized academic journals) to say something or another about their movement/thingy. The issue is that non-independence isn't that obvious--because you probably haven't been tracking their movements/how they managed to get the stuff published.

Nathan J. Yoder 07:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. To try to get where you're coming from, would you agree that there must be at least one source for an article? Does that source need to be independent? Or do you think you can write an article from primary sources (directly connected to the subject)? Or to put it a different way, can the fact that something is popular be a reason for including a topic, even in the absence of detailed sources? I'd be interested to hear your replies, and see where they differ from my own.

I think some of the differences in opinion stem from what people think notability is, or should be (my impression from endless previous discussions). Is it a guideline in its own right or is it just a consequence of the main policies (WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:NOT)? I think, at the moment, it's much closer to the latter; in order to be able to write a verifiable, neutral-point of view encyclopaedic article with no original research, there must be multiple independent reliable sources. Do you think it should just be a reflection of policies or should it say something new? It seems like you're tending towards the latter, but I'd like to know for certain. Trebor 15:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

It does reflect existing policies to a great extent. My goal is to avoid "instruction creep" (or whatever you prefer to call it in this case). By creating a simpler policy (or guideline) like this, it covers a much broader range and in addition covers up potential holes in existing policies/guidelines that would need to be continually plugged by adding/revising criteria. Additionally, this clarifies the philosophy in a much simpler, easier to understand way (take a look at how the list of "what wikipedia is not" is growing). So at the very least, it's a conceptual improvement--because it outright states that popularity isn't the issue, nor is how great someone deems it to be no matter how smart they are.

The philosophy is simple: is it known well enough in the given the relevant population (or a larger population than that)? Then we simply reflect on what the population is--this is something generally determined without need for external research (a general official-ish hiearchy of sciences, for example, could be consulted) and how well known it is, which relies heavily on external research. The external research would mean consulting publications like newspapers, television, academic journals and other mediums which imply how well known it is. It also means considering how likely it is many people would have consulted it, for example, is this just some tiny mention in the back of a few newspapers (possibly due to a very aggressive, but small niche/cultish group promoting it)?

I have started writing about various areas of Wikipedia's policies and organization and will start by writing a more formal description of the procedures followed for this which will, in some great ways, reflect existing policies, but have changes to greatly simplify it.

Nathan J. Yoder 05:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to clarify something. The purpose of the "within the relevant population" rule is to allow subjects not well known to the general population, but well known to, for example, quantum physicists, to become notable. This is because a quantum physicists opinion on quantum physicists carries more weight than a lay person's. However, if a larger population than the "directly relevant" one (perhaps even a completely different one), is aware of it, that also gives it notability. The reason for this distinction is because some subjects, especially scholarly ones, aren't well known to the people outside the field in question, but definitely are notable because scholars in that field all over the world know of it. Nathan J. Yoder 05:30, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

My problem is that judging whether something is "well-known" or not is not connected with being able to write an encyclopaedic article about it. At the moment, the guidelines are set to be as lax as possible; without the multiple, independent non-trivial mentions in sources, there is nothing verifiable from which to construct an article, so an article shouldn't exist. Consequently, if a topic has had those mentions, it is possible to write a NPOV, verifiable article. Whereas while you may be able to determine that something is "well-known", that does not mean that there is any information to include (a hypothetical would be an Internet fad that hasn't been covered in reliable sources).

Are we saying that subjects have an inherent "notability", some sort of value of importance (or well-known-ness) attached to them, to determine whether they should have an article. Or are we saying that notability is a minimum, a requirement, beyond which it is simply impossible to write an article? Trebor 16:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm referring to cases where you can find sources to verify how well known it is, which is a prerequisite for all other guidelines/policies (verifiability) as well. If it's a well known fad, obviously it has some inherent significance large enough to make many people want to learn about it and chances are there are going to be a wide variety of websites (especially some of the more popular ones of that kind) that show the thing in question. I am saying that notability is a minimum requirement, like NPOV and Verifiability. After all, if it's some really obscure subject that practically no one knows of, it's onyl up to wikipedian's personal, subjective, judgement as to its importance, which we want to avoid.

Nathan J. Yoder 22:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Why the direct subject of published sources?

Isn't a definition of "notable" as "what is cited in published papers about a completely different topic" better than "what is the subject of published papers"?

E.g. Napoleon Bonaparte is notable because you can find this in a writing about someone: "he has a great ego: he thinks he is Napoleon". My brother could not be notable, even if a researcher would write a paper about the ego using my brother as example, because noone will cite my brother (even if the paper could be cited).

Just a note. I'm not proposing a new guideline, because it would be revolutionary: probably the greatest part of Wikipedia articles should be deleted. I'm only asking why a definition of notability based on direct subjects is better than a definition about indirect citations.

[If this problem is treated elsewhere, please tell me. I'll delete these lines and go in the right place.]

Milivella 14:40, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Dreaming about this hypothesis: could it make unnecessary many Wikipedia rules? It could be possibile just to use the rule: "Writing about this topic, explain what is implicitly assumed about the topic in the paper(s) (that are about completely different topics, remember) that cite it."

Milivella 19:21, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that notability should be measured by whether the subject has been mentioned in a source which is unrelated to the subject in any other way. As you say, this would mean the (vast) majority of Wikipedia articles would be deleted, which I can't see as being a good thing. I don't think being mentioned in an unrelated source is a very good way of measuring notability - some obviously notable things wouldn't have been mentioned in this way, and so wouldn't be included. Trebor 19:27, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. Mine is only an hypothesis, so we can freely talk about it. About the deletion of many articles: probably this should be done even if the general notability rule is strictly applied. Can you cite an example of "obviously notable things" that are not mentioned in any unrelated source? Milivella 20:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm still not entirely sure about what you mean by your proposal, so how about I name a few things, and you say whether they would qualify as notable by your standards or not. So, to name a few completely arbitrary things: Frank Lampard, David Helvarg, Hurricane Irene (2005) and Regular polytope. Would they be considered notable under your standards and why? Trebor 21:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

We should agree - just as for the actual notability definition! - about (1) which papers are reliable, and (2) which is the subject of a paper. But, for the sake of the example, using (1) papers searched from Google Scholar and (2) common sense, we have Frank Lampard and Regular polytope notable, because they're cited in papers about translation and system theory and, apparently, David Helvarg and Hurricane Irene not-notable. Milivella 02:52, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

That seems like that the method has a flaw then - while the latter two you mentioned may not have been mentioned peripherally, they are still encyclopaedic topics (indeed, they are featured articles at the moment). While your idea is a way to gauge the pervasiveness of a topic, it is too disparate from the actual writing to be especially useful. As, ColourBurst says below, there needs to be information from which to construct an article, and that information predominantly come from sources about the subject. That's part of the reason for having a notability guideline at all - it ensures there must exist a minimum level of information on the topic, so there's enough to write a decent article. Trebor 07:30, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I could say: David Helvarg and Hurricane Irene should be cited in encyclopedias, but only in specifical encyclopedias, not in a generic one, because, if I'm not interested in ecologism or weather, I'll never need to know who is Helvarg or which is the Hurricane Irene. Milivella 15:03, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

But Wikipedia aims to be all-encompassing - the sum of all knowledge (that is suitable for an encyclopaedia). If you're not interested in football, you won't need to know who Frank Lampard is, but he is included because there is information to write about him, from reliable sources. Trebor 15:35, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

1. Even if I'm not interested in football, I need to know who Frank Lampard is, e.g. to understand that article about automatic translations. 2. The problem is: what differentiate an encyclopedia from a library, in your view? They both collect all the informations avaliable from reliable sources... Milivella 15:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not seeing your point. What if you are interested in some of these topics, then you'd want information on them. An encyclopaedia organises and summarises all the information available from reliable sources (or at least it aims to). For instance, thousands of books will tell you the date of the Battle of Hastings but an encyclopaedia need only mention it once. Trebor 16:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm seeing your point, but this definition of encyclopedia makes every encyclopedia incomplete for the most part (because it doesn't mention every single assertion made about the Battle of Hastings), or based on an arbitrary (i.e. not based on a clear criterium) selection (because it mentions only some facts about the Battle). Milivella 16:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, and I expect every encyclopaedia ever will be imperfect. That doesn't mean you can't strive to make it as good as possible though. Trebor 16:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Too easy. How do you "strive to make it as good as possibile"? Adding all the information you find, in any order you find it? I don't think so: you add the most notable information first (don't you?). But which is the most notable information? We have two options: 1. That which is repeated more times in the sources. 2. That which is (more often) implicitly assumed in the sources. And maybe the second option is better than the first. Milivella 08:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

It's nothing to do with being repeated more times, it's to do with being mentioned in multiple independent sources in sufficient depth so that an article can be written. Being mentioned in unrelated papers may qualify as measure of significance or importance, but it's detached from the process of writing an encyclopaedia. If I read an article on Frank Lampard, I don't care that he's been cited in a paper about translation, I want to know what he does, whom he plays for, what he's won. And for people to include that information, they need sources on the topic, not just mentioning the topic. Trebor 16:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear: I like the criterium "topic of multiple sources", but I see it as a criterium about how to write: in fact, even you have written "for people to include that information". Isn't notability about what to write/include/delete? Let's face it: the "orthodox" sense of notability doesn't work as a criterium for inclusion (while it works like a criterium for source-choosing): it's not surprise for me that, like Sjakkalle noted (read the section after this), many Wikipedia articles are not notable in the "orthodox" general sense of notability, and that the real notability criteria are topical - one for music, one for soccer, etc. -. (About Lampard: if the team for whom he plays is not implicitly assumed in no not-related source, for me it's not a notable information.) Milivella 16:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

<---------------------------------------------------------------------------(resetting indent)---------

I think that as long as there's enough information so it's clear how to write something, then there's no harm in it being included. Yes, there are exceptions as mentioned below, so there is still some measure of significance being attached to people's judgement, but it's predominantly accurate. If all the information has to be implicitly assumed in the unrelated source as well (that is to say, information only mentioned in primary sources can't be included) then we'll end up with very brief articles. Perhaps some minimum level of "significance" is needed to exclude the very minor cases, but I don't think your idea is the best one - it will end up excluding far too many pages on otherwise famous people. Trebor 08:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

So far, the result of this discussion is not (and I said it from the beginning) a new concept of notability, but two interesting (IMHO) considerations:

1. Wikipedia is not a generic encyclopedia, but the sum of many (all the possible?) specific encyclopedias (this alone puts my definition of notability out, because I'm thinking about a generic encyclopedia). Naturally, "the sum of many specific encyclopedias" has, as a sub-set, a generic encyclopedia, so the existence of Wikipedia makes a user-written generic encyclopedia (and my criterium for it) unneeded.

2. As you said, "some minimum level of significance is needed", so the actual definition of notability just doesn't work (as a criterium of inclusion) in theory. The fact that it isn't used in practice is, I think, evident (e.g. from the presence of specifical criteria of notability for music etc.).

Milivella 09:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I still think the concept of notability needs some more work, but it's a lot better than it was half a year ago. As it stands, topics either have to meet the multiple independent sources criterion, or one of the criteria in the more specific guidelines. Possibly some exceptions need to be made to allow for the fact that we're living in a source-heavy Internet age, and perhaps not everything covered by news services needs an article. But I still think that the current definition works for the majority of the cases. Trebor 12:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

To me, it seems like a roundabout way of doing it. Notability doesn't exist in a vacuum - to populate the article, we still need reliable information on the subject, and to get that information we need to use WP:V and WP:RS. I mean, if a person is "notable" in the dictionary sense, wouldn't people write about that person as a subject (or whatever the subject is) anyway? Or phrased another way, I don't see how a subject can only have peripheral mentions and still be notable, because evidently nobody wants to write an article about that subject. ColourBurst 05:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Good answer: notability by direct subjects is one with verifiability and reliable sources. But, as I have written, notability by indirect citations gives you a criterium to choose what to say, i.e. what is implicitly assumed. So both the criteria of notability are "economically" good. And, talking about the two criteria, they are not incompatible, i.e. you can have a definition of notable as "subject of a reliable source and cited in a reliable source about a totally different topic". Milivella 15:03, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Which could be the application of such an idea? Maybe an encyclopedia based not on what users want to write, but in what they want to know. E.g. I find a citation to the time of the Battle of Hastings, I don't remember when it was fought, I ask in the "Question page"; someone who cares write the year of the Battle in the "Battle fo Hastings page". Probably not so practical, and similar to (more practical) Wikipedia in its results... Milivella 08:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The process could be this: 1. A (person) finds in a text a citation about B (topic) that he doesn't understand, and asks about it in the page about B; 2. C and D answer; 3. A choose the answer that let him understand best the original citation. (Like Yahoo Answers, but only about encyclopedic topics.) Milivella 16:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The authors writing about some other subject that implicitly assume things about the notable topic may very well be wrong. "Common knowledge" does not mean it is right. In order for the information in an article to be accurate, the topic must be the focus of a work, where the author has some expertise in it and where it is going to be reviewed by others for accuracy on that subject. An author is not necessarily an expert on the tangential topic, and the author and reviewers are not reviewing the text for accuracy in that tangential topic, which need not even be accurate for the author to make a "point". —Centrx→talk • 00:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Again, you too use notability as a criterium for the sources a Wikipedian should use. But it's not such, if I've understood it right. Notability is a criterium for topic inclusion: "All topics must meet a minimum threshold of notability in order for an article on that topic to be included in Wikipedia." So, I dont' say: "You could use the information implicilty assumed by an indirect source." (How could you take an information that is not cited, but only assumed?) I do say: "You could look (in a direct and explicit and reliable source) for an information (and include in Wikipedia) if it's implictly assumed in an indirect source." It's not important wheter the indirect source assume a false information: e.g. I write in an essay about basketball "basketball was invented in the late nineteenth century, just before the Battle of Hastings". I'm assuming that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1900 or so, that is false. But it's not a problem: who write the encyclopedia just need to know that I consider the date of the Battle of Hastings as common knowledge. To write about this topic, he naturally has to check other, direct, sources. Milivella 07:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability is subjective

I see that an attempt has been made to make an objective definition for notability... "a topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself."

I think this is too simplistic, does not reflect what happens at AFD and would lead to an enormous systematic bias if this indeed was the criterion for notability.

All fatal car crashes in Bergen, Norway would be notable. There are at least two independent newspapers in Bergen, Bergens Tidende and Bergensavisen who would write an article about it, and it would also wind up in the evening news broadcasts of NRK and TV 2. Hence, multiple, reliable references would be found about them. On the other hand car crashes in countries where the media is less developed would not be notable. This would be a huge systematic bias. Thankfully, this does not reflect reality since consensus is generally clear that fatal car crashes are sadly too common to warrant an article, whether that crash be in Norway, the UK, Mongolia, South Africa or China. This is of course quite subjective, what is "too common"? We could have a reasonable debate on whether fatal bus crashes "too common" to have articles. I am quite sure that "only include the bus crashes which have been mentioned by at least 4 newspapers" would not be the outcome of such a debate. We would demand at least one reference for verifiability but an x number of fatalities is a far more likely notability threshhold.

Look, I am not arguing against notability as a criterion for inclusion. Notability is very important to prevent the encyclopedia from turning into a newspaper archive of all incidents or a collection of personal webpages about random people which hardly anyone would care to read about. I am just saying that trying to make a catch-all definition of notability which covers all topics and bases is doomed to failure and that we would be better off not trying to do so. Notability is something which almost needs to be discussed on a case-by-case basis and we are much better off trying to define notability on smaller scales by means of discussions such as WP:WEB, WP:FICT and WP:MUSIC. On such smaller-scale discussion we can produce reasonably objective criteria for predictability and consistency while at the same time preserving the subjectiveness of common sense for flexibility when something is notable even if it doesn't quite fit into the mold of objective criteria.

Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Strangely, I came here to post a very similar open question. I'm unsure of the answer to this myself, and would welcome other views.

This stemmed from a post in the village pump about articles on recent news topics. The case cited was about a cat who was so fat he got stuck in a dog door [1] There were numerous sources, some of which were from the same AP wire, but apparently at least two were independent (I haven't bothered checking, it doesn't affect the merits of this discussion). Now, according to the current criteria, I could start an article on this and defend it based on this guideline and the core policies. It would be NPOV, verifiable, wouldn't contain original research and would be notable. If it went to AfD, the only way I can see it being deleted is consensus to ignore all rules.

Now from the discussion at the Pump, it's fairly obvious many people think that this event shouldn't get its own article. People won't care a month from now, let alone a year (or a hundred years), so delete it. The obvious counter to that argument is that Wikipedia is not paper; so long as it's sourced and meets core policies, then there's no need to exclude it. However, articles like this (or the above example on car crashes) are deleted on AfD, so obviously many people hold a view that certain subjects have such a lack of significance and importance, that they should be deleted.

So I guess the question is: is there any limit on the triviality of things that can still have their own article? Would anyone support the cat owner having a short entry? If so, then why are articles like this deleted and so few created. If not, then shouldn't there be some sort of guideline saying why, and at what limit does something becomes trivial? If there is a limit, how can that be set objectively? I would be very interested in any replies. Thanks. Trebor 16:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Both of your comments address an important point, and I am in agreement with you about the encyclopaedicity of articles about road crashes or fat cats. A productive approach may be that notability is only one of the requirements for encyclopaedicity. Other requirements include, notably, verifiability, nonoriginality and - this is what saves us from the cats and carwrecks - not being an indiscriminate piece of information, because we are not an indiscriminate collection of badly written synopses of badly written newspaper clippings.

So the solution may be to expand or spin off WP:NOT#IINFO, to hone our sense of discrimination and maybe to emphasise here that notability is not enough. I'm not convinced, at any rate, that removing our present definition of notability would lead to us having to AfD fewer articles about cats and carwrecks. Sandstein 16:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• I suspect this page simply needs some tweaking. It's quite clear from AFD precedent that the proverbial car crash article would end up deleted for lack of notability and/or the fact that this is not a news site. >Radiant< 16:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem I find whenever I imagine how this page will be tweaked, is that it involves adding some wishy-washy sentence about how some topics are too trivial (or small or insignificant or unimportant or easily forgotten or something) to be included, and it would set some sort of arbitrary limit. I can't see any objective way of wording it, nor a way that won't contradict the "notability is not importance" principle. AfD precedent suggests there's something there that people are judging from, but I can't see a way to put it into words.

Aside from here, WP:NOT#IINFO would seem the other good place to put it, but again the problem of wording comes up. Wikipedia's not a collection of badly-written synopses, but certain recent events can and should be summarised in articles. It depends partly, I suppose, on the pervasiveness of the "event" into world news. But that's also hard to judge objectively. I'm going round in circles here, I'd like to hear any suggestions for the wording. Trebor 17:31, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Exactly... Passing the notability criteria means that some wiki somewhere could write a solid verifiable neutral page on the subject, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it fits in within Wikipedia's scope (as specified in WP:NOT). The procedure for changing a car's oil has been covered in depth many times by reliable sources, but that doesn't go here, it goes in Wikibooks. --Interiot 20:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

So do people think it'd be better to expand WP:NOT#IINFO or spin-off into a new notability guideline? Trebor 16:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

"Independence" needs to be viewed more strictly. If the two newspapers and the television stations are basing their information only on the statements of the police department spokesman—or on each other's reports—that's not independent. Beyond sourcing, the immediate news report is not enough to make an encyclopedia article; there would need to be sources independent in time that go back and independently investigate the case afterwards. —Centrx→talk • 00:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

As others have noted, this conversation is very similar to one that is going on at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). I proposed some preliminary ideas for a current events criteria there and I've copied them below. GabrielF 01:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

In order for an event to be notable, the length, breadth, depth and prominence of the media's coverage of that event must be greater than average.

• Prominence refers to the degree to which the news media itself feels that an event is notable. Events that were covered on the front page or the lead of a news broadcast are far more likely to be notable than events that were covered on page E22 or as the last story on the evening news.
• Breadth refers to the number of media outlets covering a story. An event that has generated only local coverage is probably only of local interest and therefore not notable, but an event that received significant coverage in every news outlet on the planet probably is.
• Depth of coverage refers to the type of coverage the media has given an event. Did news outlets try to answer questions about the event beyond "what happenened" and "where and when and how did it happen"? Did the media analyze the importance of an event and come to the conclusion that it would result in some kind of important change? Did they spend any time discussing what had caused the event to occur? Was there an op-ed piece or a political cartoon? If the media has reported the facts without analyzing the event and what it signifies, than the event was probably not notable enough to be worth analyzing.
• Length of coverage is, among other things, a measure of the degree to which the media believes that an event will be interesting to its audience. If nobody is talking about an event after five days, it most likely wasn't significant enough to warrant a wikipedia article.

Thoughts? GabrielF 19:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I think they're a start in the right direction, although may need some tweaking. If there's any consensus that a specific guideline is needed, then they'd be a good base to work from. Trebor 16:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

As another example of this kind of issue, there is David Beckham move to Los Angeles Galaxy. For a couple of days this was a huge story and the initial AfD was a speedy keep because it was on the main page. However, now the main furore is over, it's nominated for deletion again and looks like it will be deleted. This seems to be a case where some firmer guidelines over what should happen would be useful; at the moment, it's a very subjective debate. Trebor 13:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Make "trivial" and "independent" explicitly more strict. All of these articles are launched from a single news event, and are one article out of many rather insignificant articles in a magazine or newspaper, with a "human interest story" twist thrown in. They are not even the featured articles of general magazines like Time. There should be something explicit that individual newspaper articles do not constitute being "the subject" or the "in-depth subject of the works" (see under the Merging section) and/or that any sort of news event must be followed over a long period of time in order to be notable. The Washington Post is not going to have an article focusing on this in six months, and I don't think any non-tabloid non-sports magazine or newspaper had this on its front page even now. —Centrx→talk • 19:41, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that the guideline at the moment doesn't make sense when applied to newspapers. No single topic is the subject of the whole newspaper; it obviously covers a large number of topics in varying degrees of detail. But a decent-length article on one subject doesn't qualify as a trivial mention either. Are we saying that newspaper articles aren't enough to establish notability (although they're used quite a lot at AfD)? I think the idea of sustained coverage would be better, but then you get into conflicts with notability not being permanent. There are quite a few factors involved here (as GabrielF said) - length, depth and prominence of coverage all play a part. Trebor 20:37, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to say that I find the "Notability is not subjective" section to be poorly written, and imprecise in an attempt to be overly precise. The fact that an editor has indeed heard of a topic is at least prima facie evidence of its notability in the wider world. Likewise, if people interested in a general area have not heard of some new concept that lies within their sphere of interests, this is prima facie a case of neologism or original research. The question does not end with these inquiries, but it reasonably starts with them. - Smerdis of Tlön 20:05, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

PARDON THE SHOUTING but may I direct your attention to the newly proposed notability guideline for news. All your input will be invaluable. Zunaid©® 15:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Notability of elements within articles

I have yet to find good guidelines for this. Are there notability guidelins for statements, sections, paragraphs, etc. that are within articles. The problem arises frequently with WP:BLP. "Controversies du jour" get added even if they generate very little impact and stop being discussed completely after a couple weeks. However, once added and persisting for a while they become very hard to remove even if trivial. The end result is that a lot of BLP (especially of controverstial figures) end up with litanies of minor non-controversies, trivial events, etc. that become very hard to remove. I would love to get some help from more experienced Wikipedians. Thanks. --Rtrev 05:11, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

To my understanding, notability is about what subjects can be included. The weighting of subjects within an article is more a matter of "undue weight" explained at WP:NPOV. Trebor 07:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

There are also references to this sort of thing at Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Self-published sources in articles about themselves and at several places in Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. —Centrx→talk • 22:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Newsworthiness

I disagree that notability and newsworthiness are different concepts. I'd like to see the argument that they are discussed here. Wjhonson 19:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I think, by that, it means that notability isn't about whether the subject is in the news at the moment, whether much is currently heard about it. Older or more obscure topics may never have been in the news, or may have been in the news but are no longer "current"; this doesn't mean they aren't notable. Trebor 19:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

In a truth table, there are four positions. You are arguing one of them, that is, that, "not newsworthy does not imply not notable." But the effect on the main page is that all four positions are equally false. I'd like to hear the argument that says "Newsworthy does not imply notable." Wjhonson 18:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability of online petitions?

Are online petitions ever notable enough to be included in an article? I don't think they are unless they are proven to be successful. If they're not successful, are they notable? Maybe if there's media coverage of them, but I think this would be a case of something the media would cover but an encyclopedia would not. Шизомби 23:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• Well, if they got non-trivial coverage they're notable... in this case the media coverage makes them notable because a lot of people heard/cared about the petitions, even if the petition didn't go anywhere. The one about renaming The Two Towers (film) got media coverage and was pretty notable for such a thing, but obviously it didn't succeed. It was still pretty well known and our coverage of that movie would be incomplete without mentioning the petition. However, as is the case here, these usually are best just mentioned in the article on the topic they're petitioning against. I guess it could have it's own article based on WP:N, but sometimes merging just makes sense. --W.marsh 02:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's discuss the relationship between primary notability criterion and other criteria

I'd like to get some discussion on how the primary notability criterion interacts with the various subject-specific notability guidelines. Over a month ago, WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC were updated to reflect that there is a "central criterion for inclusion" (that the topic "has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person") and that there is "some criteria that make it very likely that sufficient reliable information is available " (such as star on Hollywood Walk of Fame, won a major music award, etc.) This made perfect sense to me at the time and seemed to reflect actual practice in AfD discussions. You can see those versions of the guidelines for People here and Music here. Earlier today I updated the WP:WEB guideline to make it consistent with those versions of WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO; this edit to WP:WEB was reverted and then WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC were reverted back to the month-old versions as well. So, I'd like to get some discussion on the relationship between the primary notability criterion and the various subject-specific guidelines and whether, as I believe, that it is an improvement to structure these guidelines so that there is a "Central criterion [with] additional criteria that make it very likely that sufficient reliable information is available." I believe, as it was described a month ago, this improvement, "bring[s the] guideline into modern times a bit [and] stress[es] the importance of existance of reliable information over more subjective criteria." [2] -- Dragonfiend 03:50, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. This is, in essence, how I've tried explaining it to others, and I've seen too many AfDs focus on a questionable award/sponsorship (such as the ongoing Keenspot argument discussion) when the point is that we want sources. Nifboy 04:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the new version meets the exact idea of notability-the central question is "Is there enough source material out there for a decent article?" Meeting other criteria in WP:BIO, WP:BAND, and so on, is certainly a good indication that there's a good chance of that material existing, but not that it does by definition. I've seen far too much lawyering over "This band has two albums on Insignificant Records, which is a major indie label, so they must be kept!" or "This person won the Obscurity Award, that counts as major!" This would get the focus back in the right direction-finding the sources, not just insisting that since rule X paragraph Z is technically met we're required to assume they're out there in the big blue somewhere. Seraphimblade 06:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I also agree with the above. But in addition to helping us respect WP:V, the sources requirement has a purpose of its own, or it would not be necessary to reiterate it in WP:N. That purpose of its own, together with WP:NOT#IINFO, is to delimit the scope of Wikipedia as a general interest encyclopedia, which is necessarily narrower than anything-goes Internet content collections like Everything2 or blogs. We benefit from a delimitable scope by, simply, not having to deal with (wikify, libel-proof, delete, undelete, argue about...) overly trivial crap. I'd appreciate it if the guideline would make a hint in that direction as well. Sandstein 06:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Are these additional criteria meant as a guideline for whether the PNC is likely to be satisfied, or as asserting notability in their own right? In WP:CORP, it says that we should include companies used in ranking indices because "this criterion ensures that our coverage of such rankings will be complete regardless." That is very different to saying "this suggests there are multiple sources so keep". At present, all the criteria suggest the first meaning; if an article meets any of these criteria, even if it doesn't meet the PNC, it can be kept. Which meaning is the consensual view? Trebor 15:45, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The big question for me is whether notability standards should be higher than verifiability ones. Not saying that anything that can be verified should be included, but while verifiability doesn't call for the multiple, notability does. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• My feeling is that in cases where the subcriteria can be verifiably met, but no one has presented "multiple independent nontrivial published sources," that's enough to prevent deletion on notability grounds. In many cases, you can write at least a stub or start class article based on "trivial" or non-"independent" published sources that meets the core criteria. The question then becomes whether to delete the stub as non-notable. My feeling is that if you meet the secondary criteria, the article shouldn't be deleted on notability grounds -- it may be necessary to find those independent sources to get the article past "start" class, but if the article is sufficiently sourced to meet WP:V, I say keep it because the sources are extremely likely to exist.
• To use my favorite example, Man Plus, the article is a verifiable book stub. Back in 2005, an editor asserted on the talk page that it "seems to be a much-written-about novel", but no one has added any sources since then, and independent reliable non-trivial published sources are not easy to find using free on-line resources. The book was a multiple award winner and nominee in 1976 and 7, and I am confident that an editor could find independent sources if he or she used a comprehensive library or had access to the right subscription-based databases. However, if someone nominated the book for deletion on notability grounds, I would recommend keeping it - the stub is verifiable as is, and the book's award status and notability of its author are sufficient guarantees that when someone wants to bring it past a stub, they will be able to find the resources necessary to do so. Thanks, TheronJ 16:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • If the specific criteria can always be used to establish notability, because they suggest sources exist, that is no different from making them assert notability. Can articles that meet these criteria still be considered notable if extremely dedicated searches for sources come up blank, or is that not enough? Trebor 17:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
    • That's a good question, and I think we may have achieved consensus by deliberately failing to address it. To start, I would expect an "extremely dedicated search" to mean a sufficiently comprehensive search of library and subscription databases to indicate that no sources exist -- what we normally see is "minimal ghits" or a partial search. Personally, I would tend to say that if the article's content is otherwise verifiable and not original research, there are conditions under which the article should stay even in the absense of independent published non-trivial accounts. Man Plus is a decent example - why shouldn't we have stubs on all Nebula award winning novels, if the contents meet core policies? TheronJ 17:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Yeah, my question was more a hypothetical; practically, we don't have time to give each article such a thorough searching, so we have to work on rules-of-thumb. On a slightly different point, I'm not convinced that labelling articles as stubs because they're short, even when all the information dug up has been included, is a good idea. Not really relevant, but I don't think the current definitions at WP:STUB really apply to some articles; they are short but lengthening them (if possible at all) will require a lot of research. Trebor 18:30, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• These are all very interesting points, but let's not forget that WP:N is a Guideline and WP:V is Official Policy. Just because something satisfies WP:N does not mean that it should automatically be kept. Look at it this way: Because of X paragraph in WP:N the article is notable for Wikipedia's purposes. Which is just fine because if it can't satisfy WP:V, it gets deleted anyway. It must be understood that the guideline alone is already nothing more than a way to ensure that it is likely to find sufficient verification. The real test is if the article satisfies WP:V, if it doesn't, then no amount of notability should ever be able to save it from the brink of deletion. WP:WEB, WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC are fine just the way they are without cluttering the page with different levels of criteria. They also already match the existing format of WP:CORP and WP:PORNBIO. Instead of reduntantly trying to sub-divide the criteria into different levels of importance, all we have to do is stress that these are guidelines, and that just because an article is notable does not necessarily mean that it satisfies policy. With that distinction made clear, what is the point of subdivided criteria levels? I suggest we leave the criteria formatted exactly the way it is, and add a paragraph in the beginning that warns that just because it is notable doesn't mean it doesn't have to pass verifiability. --Daedalus 00:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

As the person who made these changes, I think I argee with Dragonfiend's explanation of them. These guideliens always seemed to me to be aiming to be "checklists" of things that mean someone probably has enough verifiable information to write a non-directory style article about them, but (pardon the analogy) they also seemed like Plato's shadows on the cave wall, and sure enough people quickly come to think that the items on the checklist were reality, and more important than the existance of verifiable information which they represent. So you see AfDs full of subjective arguments about who's important "enough" to be included, and people never bother mentioning the lengthy article in the New Yorker on the guy, and so on... I thought rewriting the guidelines like that was simply the sensible thing to do, so they clearly indicate what inclusion is actually about. It's really a lot simpler than having to memorize some ever-changing checklist, and leads to a lot less subjectivity. --W.marsh 02:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The primary notability criterion fails to address WP:NPOV, in particular the requirement that the views expressed in the multiple sources arise to a level where they are shared by at least a significant minority including prominent adherents (plural). A New York Times frontpage article probably passes the prominent adherent threshold, since it usually triggers a response from other media outlets (including the blogosphere). An article on page C4 of the Little Rock Star doesn't. So the pnc really only establishes the necessary criterion based on WP:NOT, WP:V & WP:NOR, and the individual notability guidelines have to establish what is sufficient for inclusion as a subject of a stand-alone article. That's why it is nonsense to insert the pnc into the individual guidelines as it's currently done in WP:BIO. The guidelines are there to establish what "multiple" and "independent" mean in the various subject areas. That's something that cannot be done in the general notability guideline since an overarching definition of "significant minority" would have to be so general as to be meaningless. ~ trialsanderrors 02:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Except WP:BIO without the "pnc" really isn't about establishing who we can write a factual, NPOV article on... it would just exclude a lot of people, many of them have plenty of coverage, so leaving out the pnc just exludes a lot of people for no particularly good reason, other than to have fewer articles so the average article is on a "more important" person. I'm just not seeing why adding subjectivity is a good thing... at any rate, doing nothing other than removing the pnc stresses making subjective arguments about importance over actually providing evidence, which is another big step backwards. --W.marsh 03:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

If you mean "WP:BIO without the pnc" as in "ignore the pnc" then certainly not. After all it's a necessary criterion. It's just not sufficient, and WP:BIO currently presents it as necessary and sufficient. ~ trialsanderrors 03:41, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to disagree... unless you mean somehow taking the pnc out of WP:BIO, yet still including biographical articles that meet it and not the subjective planks of WP:BIO, which would seen quite odd. If you just look at the items on WP:BIO other than the "pnc", I think we'd be excluding a lot of topics on which we could write accurate, NPOV articles... and there's really no good reason to do that. I suppose we could war and feud for years writing hundreds of specific situations where it's almost certain that a type of person will have sufficient coverage, but that seems quite pointless to me when the PNC and some common sense already does that quite well. --W.marsh 03:54, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The pnc with its qualifiers "primary", "non-trivial" and "multiple" allows for much more subjectivity than most of the original criteria (state-wide office, professional athlete) which are mostly based on tangible characteristics and establish a modicum of consistency between articles of the same type. The pnc either requires much more individual interpretation or, as it's already happening, converges towards a "mention", "local", "1 1/2" interpretation. Neither of those two scenarios are particularly desirable, for different reasons. ~ trialsanderrors 04:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

But the very idea that someone must hold state-wide office and so on to be included is pointlessly subjective and excludes a lot of people on whom we could write good, useful articles. Anyway, a mere mention is clearly trivial, it can't be helped that some people misapply it. Like I said, it takes a bit of common sense, there's no getting around that. --W.marsh 04:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

They should not be if the guidelines are well crafted with a view on precedent (which they probably weren't in this case), and even subjective bright line criteria are better mechanisms than ones that require wishful thinking (as in everything that starts with "we could write") and that tip the fickle balance between quality and comprehensinveness in one direction. ~ trialsanderrors 05:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

You call it wishful thinking, I call it a basic part of what a wiki is. If sufficient sources can be shown to exist, an article can be improved... we've never deleted articles just because they aren't very good right now. We also don't do precedents... see WP:NBD. WP:BIO was always a non-conclusive list of reasons someone would make a good subject of a Wikipedia article, I thought people understood it wasn't an attempt to define the only people we could write biographical articles on but rather to provide common reasons people are good subjects, but you learn something new every day. --W.marsh 14:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The notability guidelines are not rules for inclusion, they are a list of common sense reasons that something may be worth writing about. The rules for inclusion are the official policies. Anyone who uses these guidelines as rules for inclusion should be pointed directly to WP:V, and if they can't satisfy it, then their argument has no merit. By pproviding "Primary Notability Criteria" and "Criteria that makes it likely" we are now presenting the guideline in a format that suggests it is rules for inclusion. I see the resulting arguments in AfD's going this way:

Scenario 1:

User:A - Delete per WP:V.

User:B - But this article satisfies a Primary Criterion.

User:C - Keep per User:B.

User:D - Keep per User:B.

User:E - Keep per User:B.

This is wrong, because the policy should trump the guideline.

Scenario 2:

User:A - Delete, fails notability.

User:B - Keep, satisfies WP:V with 7 non-trivial sources.

User:A - Only satisfies one Likely Notability Criterion, Non-notable.

User:C - Delete per User:A.

User:D - Delete per User:A.

User:E - Delete per User:A.

While the opposite side of the coin, this is equally wrong, because now notability has different tiers according to the rules, and it's verifiability should be the final judge on inclusion. This is why I see the proposed change as a step backward. --Daedalus 15:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone ever successfully argued that an article that can't meet WP:V should be kept because it's notable? I have trouble imagining that circumstance. IMHO, the much more likely occurrence is articles that can satisfy WP:V that are nevertheless deleted as "non-notable." TheronJ 18:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm quite certain that it happened before, maybe less so in the recent past since the message that WP:V is consensus-overriding has trickled down the system. But when AfD was still mostly VfD "looks good to me" and "Keep and source" were pretty frequent reasons not to delete. ~ trialsanderrors 19:44, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

My general observation, for what it's worth, is that an article will only be deleted on WP:V grounds if there's reasonable evidence that it's actually unverifiable rather than currently unverified. If you can verify at least a few statements about the article subject (e.g., that WidgetCo exists, that it sells a product called the Wonder Widget, and that it is publicly traded under the symbol WGCO), then the remedy is usually stubbify, not delete. Since WidgetCo's own website is a reliable source to verify "non-controversial claims," the stub for a medium-large company will almost always meet WP:V. As a result, it's difficult to delete many articles under WP:V. (Garage bands, obscure theories, etc., may qualify, but they typically fail WP:N also). WP:N, on the other hand, has more impact in deletion debates -- we don't ask whether you can reliable prove that WidgetCo exists, but whether you can reliably prove that it's notable. TheronJ 19:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes they have in the past successfully argued that notability trumps verifiability, but the tide has now turned and several of these articles (e.g. The Game (game)) have been deleted. Guy (Help!) 21:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

(reset indent) W.Marsh: If sufficient sources can be shown to exist, an article can be improved... But the pnc requires multiple sources, not sufficient soources. A subtle but important distinction. If we replace all NG's with the pnc the "sufficient" goes out the window. There is much more need to clarify what sufficent is than we can fits into WP:N. Also, we have Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Precedents, linked directly from the {{notabilityguide}} box. WP:NBD (WP:CCC) doesn't negate that empirically, similar types of articles get similar responses at AfD. ~ trialsanderrors 19:44, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) Generally, I think we should think of WP:V as a necessary but not sufficient condition. If we followed just the core policies (WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR) I could write an article on myself including my name, address, date of birth, cars owned, family information, and so on. All of that is quite verifiable, requires no original research, and would be entirely neutral, satisfying the core policies. What that would not be is encyclopedic, and that's what WP:N is intended to prevent. We shouldn't have articles that can never be more then a stub with the existing source materials. If we have stubs, that should be because they haven't been expanded yet, not because they can never be. Seraphimblade 19:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The primary notability criterion per User:Uncle G/On notability is, to my mind, entirely persuasive. Subjects that meet the primary notability criterion would seem to me to be unambiguously encyclopaedic. Can anyone give an example of a subject which has multiple non-trivial independent sources and is not notable? Excepting obvious cases like dicdefs, I mean. Guy (Help!) 22:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Keeley Dorsey is a perfect example. Technically, yes, the guy was mentioned in several sources. I'd make the argument that the mentions are pretty trivial, as they're basically large-scale obituaries, but they might technically meet the "non-trivial" guidelines. The same is true of many types of "news" items-they might make coverage in a few papers, even a decent bit of it, but most of them belong at Wikinews and not here. We should be sticking to subjects that are going to be of lasting interest, not which just got some media coverage for passing interest. Seraphimblade 23:49, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, or according to the rest of the world? If I hunt through my contributions, I'm sure I can find many books, films, and authors that have gone by the wayside. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Right, so we have one example of trivial mentions and one of "I'm sure there is something there somewhere". Anything more concrete at all? Guy (Help!) 23:54, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[what I had in mind], the redlinked ones in particular. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That does not seem to be answering the question, in that you are arguing that the subject is notable. I am looking for something which we all agree is not notable despite being the subject of multiple non-trivial coverage in reliable independent secondary sources - in other words, a case which challenges the fundamental premise of that test. Guy (Help!) 09:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Such an article could not be written anyway according to WP:NOT since your only reliable resources would only turn up data that qualifies as directory material. I think all of them should be considered together, and none of them should be considered "sufficient". And I don't think WP:N should ever be allowed to trump WP:V. The Guideline template itself says that it requires common sense and may have the occasional exceptions meaning that it's possible to have an article that does not satisfy the criteria. So failing WP:N's criteria should not be definitive grounds for deletion, which is where the "common sense" comes into play. This description gives me the impression that Notability was meant to be a flexible and interpretable term, and I feel that making the criteria more definitive and rigid goes against the spirit of the guideline. If we want to make the criteria more rigid and defined, then it should be upgraded to Official Policy (which I'm not necessarily against). But as long as it remains a Guideline, I don't think anything should be so set-in-stone as the proposed format would imply. --Daedalus 22:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Sensationalism and notability

Guy, since it just popped up on DRV, how are you reconciling your view on Uncle G with your prior opinion on the Marsden-Donnelly case? ~ trialsanderrors 03:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That was mostly about the article being used as part of an attack on a living individual. I am still of the opinion that it is not a particularly important case, editors who study law have not said it is used in legal texts, for example. It all hinges on whether one equates sensationalist with non-trivial, I suppose. Guy (Help!) 09:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually that pretty much drives my point. Your claim now is that the factual basis for the article, which passes the pnc with flying colors (about 40 newspaper articles on the subject, ongoing national coverage including multiple Toronto area and national papers like The Globe and Mail), is insufficient to establish neutrality. This is exactly my claim what the pnc is missing right now, and what the specialized notability guidelines have to do, independent of the pnc. It seems your argument draws from the fact that the case did not become a legal precedent, which is nowhere near what the pnc requires. ~ trialsanderrors 21:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• No, what I'm saying is that non-trivial coverage of a legal case means critical review of the case and the precedents it sets. Sensationalist reporting of the case does not seem to me to amount to anything above the trivial. If, say, The Times or the BBC legal correspondent discussed the case in some detail, or even if it was featured by Marcel Berlins on the pop-law programme Law In Action or some such, I would almost certainly count that as non-trivial. So: we look at the coverage and assess whether it contains substantive critical review of the case, or simply repeating the facts (which is the job of Wikinews). Maybe it does, here, I don't know. My major problem was the WP:BLP issue. Guy (Help!) 19:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

• Ignoring your unsupported weaselword "sensationalistic", your ignorance of the basic facts of the case is quite astounding. First, this was not a legal case. The case was decided in mediation, agreed upon by both parties, a priori and a posteriori. Second, the case was primary case for various op-eds on sexual harrassment by reputable media outlets. Third, the sheer amount of coverage exceeds even the most extremist reading of the PNC: Coverage was national, ongoing, headline-making, and picked up by reputable media outlets covering the Canadian political spectrum, none of which disagree on the key facts. Newsbank has 16,000 words on the case in 1997 alone, and that's only from broadsheets. Fourth, there is no "must set legal precedence" criterion anywhere in WP:N, and it clearly clashes with the PNC which has no such provision. The case is included based on its newsworthiness, and we have a Front Page box that makes it clear that newsworthiness by itself is a criterion for inclusion. You're simply constructing a new criterion for yourself in order to cope with your squeamishness about the subject matter, but it has nothing to do with either the PNC, or any other established notability criterion for that matter. ~ trialsanderrors 20:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability and verifiability

One thing that's worrying me is that this is now being used to downgrade other areas of notability, even though this page points them in that direction. This is, quite frankly, a major problem, because "notability" is now being treated as "verifiability," which are separate concepts. This is not a positive turn. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that N is now treated as the amalgamation of NOT, V, NOR and NPOV (with my disclaimers about NPOV above), which is it's only raison d'etre. I think what you mean is that there are different rationales for deleting, 1. as unsourced (fails V), and 2. as non notable (fails N). The difference is that the only requirement to have an article restored under 1 is to provide cites that source the original claim to notability. Under 2, the subject needs a new claim to notability with new sources. ~ trialsanderrors 23:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

But it shouldn't be, that's the point. Especially since I'm afraid of this turning into an end-around on speedying articles without sources. We have the individual guidelines for a reason, this should exist only to point people to them. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:49, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The reason is that the idea of having a firm, well-defined requirement of high verifiability or promise of high verifiability was not fully conceived when those guidelines were created, and they also contain additional subject-specific information for indicating notability. —Centrx→talk • 01:37, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Re bdj: I guess what you're saying is that a subject can be notable if the claim to notability is not verified. That's perfectly fine, and I agree with it. The proper wording should be that notability is established for a subject rather than just claimed. I see the point about the end-run around A7. Articles should never be speedied if notability is claimed but not sourced. ~ trialsanderrors 02:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well Uncle G has taken great pains (especially in his essay) to ensure it goes well beyond simple verifiability. Really, I think we need to look at the big picture. All of these subjective guidelines are really not needed anymore, except as checklists that it's likely that a given topic meets WP:N. Wikipedia is changing... WP:N is just so much much more simple and objective than a dozen little inclusion guidelines people have belabored over for years instead of actually writing articles. A lot of these guidelines have very incoherent connections to including topics we can write good articles on, as a result of all the bickering and compromises. WP:BIO if written in stone would exclude thousands of people we could write good articles on, WP:PORNBIO would include thousands of people whose articles could never consist of more than filmographies and descriptions of what sex acts they performed and for how long. This is subjectivity and it's bad.

I think it's time to move on. The more people who understand WP:N's concepts, the less convoluted deletion will become, as it becomes clearer that adding sources gets articles kept, and just arguing endlessly without doing anything productive will get articles deleted. We've seen this endorsed at the highest levels of Wikipedia. GNAA, the highest profile WP:N offender, was deleted purely for WP:N reasons and Jimbo said we did it exactly right... this is obviously the direction we're moving in.

Moving away from subjective argumentation is a good thing... ironically though as this talk page is argumentation central. --W.marsh 23:50, 26 January 2007

I don't even think On Notability is particularly well thought-out, starting with the odd premise that N is driven by Not a directory, and the omission of WP:CSD#A7 (which requires significance and importance) and Not indiscriminate (which itself calls on WP:N to establish the notability of classes of entries). Also the idea that we're "moving away from subjectivity" is bogus, we're just moving from one kind of subjectivity to another. As soon as we're done moving away from subjectivity we can use bots to determine the fate of articles. ~ trialsanderrors 00:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well it seems like you're fundamentally opposed to WP:N... I don't really see what I could say that would convince you otherwise. --W.marsh 00:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That's both bull and lazy. I wrote a similar essay a month before Uncle G., and even if it's not up to date on my current thinking about the topic I still believe it comes closer to the requirements of encyclopedic articles than one that allows for interpretations of 1 1/2 = multiple, page 3 local news = non-trivial, and 2 lines = subject. ~ trialsanderrors 01:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Uhh well that was my point... we could go back and forth endlessly but all that would do is waste my time, given your stance. I've said all I can say without being redundant. I'm just being honest. --W.marsh 15:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

After more thought...

I have a ton of respect for W.marsh and JzG, more than anyone else here, which is why I've slept on this as opposed to getting into it right away. With that said, I cannot endorse changing the specific discussions to mirror this for a number of reasons:

1. This guideline specifically points to those specific guidelines. It does it for a reason.
2. This guideline, in noting the "multiple, non trivial" portion, only notes that it is a trait shared by all the subject-specific guidelines. Although it's not entirely accurate (and I'll submit a quick fix to that shortly), at no time is it considered the central one for "notability."
3. I can't stress this enough, especially for speedy deletions and the like - "notability" is not verifiability. A "notable" article that is not verifiable should not be kept, even the Vile Dark Lord of Inclusionism agrees with that. An article that meets the "notability" standard, however, could be verifiable, and requires and deserves the full time period to possibly find sources and have a discussion on its merits. I worry (and unfortunately already saw it in action once) that the change in "importance" of said criteria will be used to expand speedy deletions past what they were intended, and, more importantly, past what is already being soundly rejected at Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles .
4. I agree that "subjective" "notability" is a bad thing, as we all do here. If we want to fix the "subjective" portion, we need to abandon "notability" entirely. "multiple, non trivial" is as subjective as "has two albums out in a major label" or a "widely recognized contribution" to a field.

If we want to change the individual specific guidelines to match this at all, consensus must be gotten at those pages, because I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of users are unaware of this being promoted to guideline after being an essay/untagged for so long. I look forward to further discussion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I for one absolutely do not look forward to further discussion :-) But I have a bad habit of being blunt about how I really feel towards meta discussion. I just don't get how this guideline can spell can spell out why we include articles, and then point to a guideline that says "Oh wait, sometimes we include people who don't meet WP:N but they've had a porn video named after them, or we exclude people who do meet WP:N but lost a state-wide election/didn't play at the pro level/etc.". That just will never compute. Either we follow WP:N or we don't, I've always followed it and it's worked out well for me, and I find it to be so very simple, especially compared to the endless discussion related to the subject-specific stuff. It's actually sad to me that we spend so much time discussing what should be a simple concept. I think that's points 1 and 2.

As for point 4, tired old argument here, having multiple albums doesn't guarantee that we can write a good article on a band, unless you consider a good article to consist of track listings and lyrics (or what random Wikipedians think the lyrics are). Having non-trivial information from mutliple sources does virtually guarantee a good article can be written. People like to fret over hypotheticals, but I have started hundreds of articles with WP:N as my guiding principle, and the one article I've ever had taken to AfD seems to be getting kept (and it took 1.5 years for that to happen).

As for point 3, I dunno, this seems like one of those hypothetical, semantic things that isn't really a problem in the field. If something was written about non-trivially by multiple sources, there was a reason... three journalists didn't just write articles on the tree outside my house for absolutely no reason. So figure out why people cared enough to cover the topic non-trivially, and there's your assertion of importance. I'm not going to defend A7 here, obviously some people take it way too far... but if something meets WP:N it is by definition verifiable. I really am not going to be able to argue the semantics of "notable" and so on, I don't care what you call these concepts so long as people understand and follow them. --W.marsh 16:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Then why not ditch notability entirely as an inclusion criterion, and only focus on verifiability? {{historical}} the lot of it and point it there? --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Huh? That would be a terrible idea, as verifiability doesn't imply non-trivial coverage, or multiple sources. It's all in Uncle G's essay. I'm not at all saying that simple verifiability is why we include articles... existance of enough verifiable information to write a non-directory style, factual and NPOV article is why we include articles. This has really seemed to me to be what Wikipedia has always been about, it just took a while for Uncle G to finally put it in a coherent form. --W.marsh 16:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

1. "This guideline specifically points to those specific guidelines. It does it for a reason.": What do you think that reason is, and why is it necessary?
2. Is there any subject-specific guideline that does not imply that the topic has the promise of reliable sources?
3. Notability here is topic-based, high verifiability, or promise of it. All manner of facts are verifiable but do not warrant independent articles, and an article full of unverifiable statements may very well be on a topic that is notable. This is not equivalent to verifiability.
4. As with all guidelines there are fringe areas, but there is nothing subjective about zero sources consistenting of anything beyond a one-line mention of the topic, and there is nothing subjective about ten published histories that have the topic as their main subject.

—Centrx→talk • 17:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

1. It's necessary because "notability" is different for different things. Trust me, it would make my life a lot easier if we ditched "notability" entirely, but we're not going to do that. But "notability" for a musician is inherently different than "notability" for a website.

   There's plenty of "notable" topics that do not have Wikipedia's current version of "reliable sources." That's a different discussion.

   Okay...?

   Sure there is. Part of it is problems with other guidelines, though, and part of it is because "notability" is inherently subjective.

--badlydrawnjeff talk 21:43, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

How is "notability" for a musician inherently different than "notability" for a website? To me they seem quite similar: Since we don't do original research or write from our own point of view, we base "notability" on whether non-trivial sources have noted a topic. -- Dragonfiend 22:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Becasue different things make a website "notable" than make a band "notable." We're still confusing verifiability with "notability." --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I find "because" to be unpersuasive. I don't see much confusion between verifiability and notability, though they are related. Notability could be described as verification of importance. Plenty of things are verifiable, but not verifiably important, which is why notability of topics requires things like multiple non-trivial independent sources, whereas the verifying of facts can often be done with single sources, trivial sources, self-published sources, etc. -- Dragonfiend 23:43, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

But "importance" is subjective. Essentially, what we're differing on is the ability to make the best article and the ability to maintain a valid, useful stub. In your content situation, the former helps make a complete article while the latter makes a necessary and valid stub. Both are of worth to the encyclopedia, and that's why the individual guidelines end up being useful - it shows how something can be "notable" without having enough verifiable information to complete a detailed article. As our sourcing requirements are ever-changing, stubs aren't bad. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Verifiability requirements are not "ever-changing"; the only thing that has changed about sourcing is strongly encouraging, and in some cases requiring, that sources be explicitly cited. —Centrx→talk • 02:37, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

In terms of what's acceptable sourcing, I should say. Excuse my not being clear. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I am a huge supporter of the primary notability criteria structure, and have always thought of notability as a shortcut to ensuring sufficient coverage to satisfy WP:V and WP:NPOV without WP:OR. Importance doesn't matter, obscurity doesn't matter, all that matters is that enough has been written about a topic to satisfy those. My biggest issue is that people confuse and conflate wikipedia-notability with real notability. The full line of winchester cartridges might be non-notable to the average person, but there are product reviews and testing data and other information out there for us to write articles on them. The biggest problem that we have is when people forget that notability is not subjective, and conflate it with importance, as happened right here. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The very reasons you just quoted are exactly why I disagree with the structure. By placing it into tiers you sow the notion that notability is synonymous with importance. However, I feel that notability is subjective. What is highly notable to one sub-culture, is not necessarily notable to the general public. Does anyone in the general public care about Jumpsteady? Probably not, he has absolutley no notability whatsoever outside of the Juggalo subculture, but within said subculture, he is one of the most influential people, especially with his creation of Morton's List and his involvement with the JCW. Clearly, notability is subjective. --Daedalus 17:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability, or wikipedia-notability? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Jumpsteady does not have real notability being that he is specific to a subculture and nonexistent beyond it. He has wikipedia-notability, because he is a verifiably prominent figure of a prominent subculture. Wikipedia-notability is subjective so as to include all encyclopedic information necessary to educate on a subject, which by process must also include information that is only prominent to that one subject else be rendered ineffective as an educational device. Jumpsteady is a good example as he is necessary to fully educate someone on the subject of Juggalos, yet has no educational value beyond that subject. Hopefully that clarifies my previous post. --Daedalus 18:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Related dispute

This discussion here is being used to force changes without related consensus at WP:WEB, WP:BIO, and WP:MUSIC. I would appreciate if some editors would give their two cents regarding the issue at those related talk pages so we can put that part of it to rest. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

College newspapers and notability

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations) under topic 4: Placing the 'bar of notability.' This may be of interest to those discussing standards for notability, with ongoing debate about the {{WP:ORG]] proposed guideline Assertion of notability: The following cannot be used to assert notability: 2)Student run papers since it hinges largely on whether student-run independent college newspaper can ever be considered reliable and independent sources to establish the notability of groups on campus. Edison 21:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

What about groups loosely affiliated with the campus but not actually on the campus? I'm thinking companies started by alumni, etc. ColourBurst 04:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change

As I removed the following edit, I'm placing it here for discussion:

• "One of a series", meaning not necessarily hugely notable in himself but an integral part of a set or list of people whose individual entry may be expanded by others.

For my part, I believe this is ambiguous and nearly meaningless. A series of what? I'm one of a series of people, and I actually have a notable ancestor, but that doesn't make me or any of his other descendants notable. Nor might every part of a series be notable-for example, if one issue of a relatively obscure comic creates a huge controversy, that doesn't make every comic in the series notable-just that one. Seraphimblade 07:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I am hugely in favour. For example, one in a series of Peers or Baronets, or (Lord/Deputy) Lieutenants of County Armagh, or Lord Mayors of London or Colonels in chief of a Regiment or Air Marshalls of the Royal Air Force. Having a notable ancestor or being the owner of a prescriptive title would not in itself be adequate. - Kittybrewster 07:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not even entirely sure all of those there would be notable-certainly the top royal family get a lot of coverage, but do all the lesser ones tend to get secondary source coverage? (It's entirely possible they do, just asking.) If they get that coverage, it's a nonissue anyway, they all pass on that. If not-well, then they're not all notable. Seraphimblade 08:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Endorse removal. The whole can be notable even though every individual part isn't. I acknowledge that there is sometimes some reflected notability, but it's nearly always incredibly dilute and best dealt with through a paragraph or a line in the main article. Regards, Ben Aveling 08:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Endorse removal. The examples Kittybrewster cited are either notable by themselves or not notable by themselves, but that has nothing to do with making a series. For example, I imagine every Lord Mayor of London would be notable, as mayor of one of the world's largest cities, millions of people throughout most of history. But surely we don't want to say that every chief of a regiment would be notable - a regiment is about 1000 soldiers, so there are tens of thousands of chiefs of regiments at any given time. And this would be opening a huge can of worms, since we'd have to define what makes a notable series: what about Vice Presidents of Fortune 1000 companies? Captains of Battleships? Unsuccessful Presidential Candidates? AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 13:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

• I suppose the intent might have been to not make entries on e.g. every individual MacDonalds restaurant throughout the world, but rather merge that information into a central article since there isn't much in particular to say about any individual franchise. It may be useful to point something out, but it'd need different language than there is now. >Radiant< 13:15, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse removal as well, simply because I am unable to parse the meaning of this text. It's word salad. I guess what may be meant is "Individuals are notable if they are part of a distinct set of people." Which is nonsense. Every human belongs, in some sense, to a set of people, such as a nation or a family. Sandstein 18:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse removal, unless an alternate phrasing can be proposed that isn't so vague. Then maybe keep depending on phrasing and intention. As it stands now it's a definite removal. --Daedalus 19:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment, the number of members of a class is not a rule against its notability; there have been thousands of medal of honor winners, but that doesn't rule all of them unworthy of inclusion. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment True. Doesn't rule for them, either. Having been the subject of multiple, nontrivial secondary sources rules in favor of it, having not been so rules against it. The Medal of Honor may raise the likelihood that this might happen, but if it does, the person's notable, if not, they're not. Seraphimblade 11:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Should notability be mentioned in the new page template?

Notability seems to be one of the most important guidelines for Wikipedia articles. If a topic is not notable, reliable, verifiable sources frequently don't exist. If a topic is not notable, few or no future editors will improve the article. If a topic is not notable, sufficient sources to make an NPOV article are unlikely to exist. Et cetera.

Considering the importance of notability to Wikipedia, I believe it should be mentioned in the MediaWiki:Newarticletext template. What are other's thoughts? Lyrl ^Talk _C 00:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability of buildings and structures

I am also posting this question at the help desk, but anyway, the question is, what are the notability guidelines for buildings and structures? I'm asking because I would like to create pages for numerous skyscrapers and don't know whether they'd be considered notable. The points for are:

• Each of them has been a subject of numerous newspaper articles and received non-negligible media attention outside the internet.
• Each skyscraper in question is unique, but may or may not have symbolic value for its location.

However, it still seems strange that nearly all unique/named (mostly this means non-residential) skyscrapers above 100m height should have their own pages, which will be the case if I start creating the articles (talking about skyscrapers in Israel). So, does anyone know any notability criteria for buildings and structures? -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 10:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• We were researching a local skyscraper and honestly couldn't find a darned thing about it in print other than the year built, the architect, the height and other statistics about size. To me this constituted just directory style information, and didn't really warrant an article. Which was odd because this was the tallest building in the state for years, you'd think more would have been written, but they sure built generic buildings in the 1970s... this thing's just 40 stories of black windows in a flat rectangular shape, nothing unique whatsoever. Anyway, I say this just as an example that some buildings over 100m really don't warrant pages. However if there are sources with non-trivial information, like criticism or praise of the individual building, details on its history and pre-history (planning, site history, etc.), other things that make it unique, etc. then an article would go beyond being a directory listing, and would meet WP:N, and should be fine. Skyscraper articles taken to AfD tend to want a building to reach an arbitrary level of importance (top ten largest in the area, stuff like that) but there's no actual guideline, and if you can flesh out the article to truly be more than a directory listing, it should be fine. --W.marsh 15:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Someone should point JzG to this entry right here - a "notable," verifiable structure that appears to not have the "multiple, non-trivial" works readily available. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't see how a tall generic building of which there are thousands in the world is especially notable. It is apparently not notable enough for anyone else to write about it. —Centrx→talk • 20:26, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
      • "Tallest in the state" is certainly a feature that attracted at least local notice. If is was built in the 1970s then it might be hard to retrieve local news articles online, but it is a reasonable assumption that the coverage exist, so if the basic facts are verifiable it might make sense to close an AfD as no consensus and tag with {{source}}. That's the whole point of the specialized notability guidelines, to create empirical classes where we can be reasonably certain that sufficient sources exist, even if they are not immediately accessible. The current attempt to override those empirical classes with the PNC is an attempt to institutionalize WP:BIAS. ~ trialsanderrors 02:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
        • Which building are we talking about? --Dragonfiend 02:24, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
          • No idea. A hypothetical building that has a claim to notability of "tallest building in the state 1971–75", as documented by, say, the local chamber of commerce (not independent but probably reliable). Some unsourced claims about architectural features that are interesting but by themselves would not make the building notable. Even though we have no evidence that the claim to notability was actually noticed by independent observers, the quality of the claim itself makes it very likely, so a sources tag might be a better option, at least in the first AfD. ~ trialsanderrors 03:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
            • W.marsh wrote: "We were researching a local skyscraper ... this was the tallest building in the state." That didn't sound like a hypothetical to me. I see a lot of information in my newspaper every day about major construction projects; I doubt that building the tallest building in the state escaped everyone's notice. -- Dragonfiend 04:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
              • I'm sure he's talking about a real skyscraper. I'm talking about a hypothetical case based on his example that drives home the difference between the PNC and SNG's. ~ trialsanderrors 04:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

• Jeff, I saw it. It's not notable, it's just another skyscraper, like the man said. Generic black glass box. You want notable skyscrapers, visit Düsseldorf. My company's London office is across the road from 30 St. Mary Axe - that's a notable building. Another office is close to One Canada Square - that's notable. Plenty of other big buildings are not. Guy (Help!) 21:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

• So the largest building in a state is not notable? I don't buy that for even one second. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

• It certainly is, but depending on the coverage it might be better to cover it in the city article rather than in a stand-alone article. Notability discussions tend to take this partisan "it's good enough" — "no, it's not good enough" spin. The point is really, what is most helpful to the user? If I read an article on Wichita, Kansas and click on a link to a supposedly notable building, just to get to a two-line stub I'm usually slightly annoyed. On the other hand, like in this case, merging would be silly since she was connected to multiple people, and if I click on her link in her dad's article, I want to reach her bio, and not the one of one of her husbands. These are common sense considerations that tend to get steamrolled by our AfD discussions. ~ trialsanderrors 20:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

moving this more in line with intent

This was discussed at WP:BIO to uncontroversial, and somewhat supportive, results: change "the primary subject" to "a primary subject" regarding multiple non-trivial works. My rationale is that it better falls in line with the intent of "notability" (finding enough information to base an article), and still removes the "this guy saw a fire and was mentioned and is notable" nonsense that's sometimes seen. Thoughts? --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. It avoids any chance of wikilawyering over whether something is the primary subject. Trebor 19:46, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The term I use is "central". My pet case: Marion Keisker, whose role in the history of Rock'n'Roll is amply documented, but usually in biographies on Elvis Presley. Of course I won't agree to a change from "primary" to "central" unless "multiple" gets changed to "sufficient". ~ trialsanderrors 20:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting take. I actually like that wording a lot better - both "central" and "sufficient." Anyone else object? --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the main point is the primary notability criteria is to ensure that there is enough secondary source material to write a verifiable, neutral article but I see wikilawyering on the horizon over the word "sufficient". ColourBurst 05:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

That will never go away, even with multiple. But multiple doesn't ensure NPOV. ~ trialsanderrors 05:35, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Do I actually agree with Jeff on something? I like the "central" and "sufficient" criteria too-a book, for example, could contain plenty of biographical information about several people besides its central subject. As to lawyering, there's already been way too much of that over "multiple" as it is-"Well two sources say this guy's name, so he's notable!" In this case, it at least allows sufficiency to be questioned when, for example, there are several source mentions, but all of those mentions are about the same event, and there's nothing or nearly nothing available outside of that on the subject. That might also help cut down on news-type "event of the week" articles, while ensuring that we include those who might not have been a central player in anything, but had enough of a hand in enough things for there to be tons of information available. Seraphimblade 05:32, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Non-notable web pages becoming notable?

I'm seeking clarification after erroneously creating Transgender_Day_of_Remembrance_Webcomics_Project, which I thought was notable but which, under WP:WEB is clearly not. The general notability guidlines mention that Wikipedia:Notability_criteria#Notability_is_generally_permanent Notability is generally permanent due to "multiple independent reliable published sources", and this is echoed on WP:WEB.

My questions are:

• Would a page such as the one listed above become 'notable' at a future date when multiple independent reliable published sources occur? e.g. Reference in a publication about web comics; numerous journal references et cetera.
• Is such status for the wep page "permanent" (since the offline references would continue to exist)? Under what conditions would it cease to be notable?
• Would future deletion of web page referenced (for whatever reason) also be cause for deletion of the wiki page referring to it, or would that page merely note that such a page had existed and when? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LauraSeabrook (talk • contribs) 22:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC).

In answer to your questions, in order:

• • Absolutely, if those mentions were to occur in the future, the subject would become notable. That's true of most of our articles-Joe's Garage Band is not notable today, but if they become the next Nirvana in a couple years, they certainly are at that point! The same is true of the scenario you put forth.
  • Offline sources are perfectly fine to use, and a mix of online and offline sources is generally best of all. Part of the rationale behind the requirements for multiple non-trivial published sources are so that even if a source becomes unavailable, others exist as well. The page would not be deleted just because a web source went offline. Also, there are methods in place of dealing with web pages used as sources that later go offline, and they generally remain available through the Internet Archive. The reference to the previously-existing web page would remain, it would be updated to note that the source is no longer online, and a link to the Internet Archive version of the page would be provided if available. That in itself would not be reason to delete the page-generally, notability isn't something that can be "lost" once it's achieved. Seraphimblade 02:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Unless there's say, someone from Ancient rome who was famous in his day but all records since have been lost. Then there's no more sources and he can't meet our notability anymore. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Not necessarily: Amafanius and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amafanius. Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

'Notability as central criterion' revisited

A bunch of thoughts regarding whether the "two multiple non-trivial independent published references" (let's call it "2N-TIPR""MN-TIPR") rule is the "central criterion" to notability, and whether it supercedes the subsidiary notability rules. In most cases, the distinction isn't particularly relevant. If an article satisfies one of the subsidiaries' elements, it is very likely, but not certain, that there exist multiple non-trivial independent published references for that article. However, the rubber really meets the road on notability when we ask "should this article be deleted?" Let's look at a couple semi-hypothetical examples.

1. Is MN-TIPR necessary to satisfy WP:V and WP:NOR? The answer to me seems clearly to be no. Take a look at my favorite example, Man Plus. What policy or guideline does it currently violate? If we decide, as an encyclopedia, to write an article about every Nebula Award winning novel, every platinum-selling music album, or every fortune 100 company, we can do so, if necessary, entirely on the basis of "non-independent" and/or "trivial" published accounts and still satify WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:NOR in every respect.
2. If an article nominated for AFD satisfies some of the subsidiary criteria, and editors argue that MN-TIPR "probably exist", but no editor can currently currently identify even one N-TIPR source, should the article be deleted? My guess is that there are a number of articles that would not be deleted under such circumstances, including novels that have won major awards, extremely popular music and software, etc. (For a real life example, I recently nominated Alcohol 120% for deletion. There was a landslide of opinions that the software was so notable that there must be some non-trivial independent publications. No one could offer any, but the overwhelming consensus was that because the software was so important, the sources must exist, and the article was kept).
3. Are there any circumstances under which it can be proven that MN-TIPR do not exist for an article that meets one or more subsidiary criteria? A sufficiently skilled and motivated researcher probably could find published material regarding any major league baseball player, any publicly traded corporation, any award winning book, any platinum selling music album, etc. Given that, and the answer to #2, above, is there a distinction between saying "Fortune 500 companies are notable because it is almost certain that MN-TIPR exist" and "Fortune 500 companies are notable?" Only if we will delete entries on Fortune 500 companies if the editors can't come up with MN-TIPR within the 5 day AFD discussion period, and my experience is that we won't.
4. Is it possible for the editors to form a consensus that some classes of articles are notable even in the absense of MN-TIPR? My guess is yes. As stated above, we can write articles through the synthesis of "non-independent" and "trivial" published records that fully comply with all core policies. Whether we want to is an issue of consensus, and my experience is that there is probably a consensus to keep certain classes of articles even if there are no N-TIPR available, so long as the articles can meet WP:V and WP:NOR.
5. Is there a clear consensus that MN-TIPR overrides the subsidiary notability criteria in all cases? I would tend to say no. The primary guideline, WP:N, was tagged as guideline over substantial objection because it allegedly reflected common practice on AFD. I think that was fair and appropriate, but I am a long way from convinced that common practice on AFD is to delete articles that do not contain references to MN-TIPR if the articles are otherwise viewed as notable. (See, e.g., television episodes, award-winning books, bestselling books, awardwinning persons, fortune 500 companies, etc.). It is possible that there is a silent consensus that every Star Trek episode is individually notable because there are probably MN-TIPR somewhere for that episode, but it's equally possible that there is a silent consensus that the episodes are notable in their own right.

Sorry for the philosophical digression, but I hope it's helpful. TheronJ 17:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Taking one of your points only. If an article is up for AFD and the consensus is that sources probably exist but we can't find any yet, I suggest it would be a mistake to delete because this policy would undoudbtedly result in someone's hard work being deleted on subjects that are ultimately shown to be notable. I'm not sure 5 days is long enough for someone to go and find sources. Perhaps where the consensus view is sufficient sources probably exist even though they are not cited, the AFD should be suspended to give time for editors to come up with sources. This would only apply if editors think that sources probably exist - as you point out it is practically impossible to prove that sources dont exist. AndrewRT(Talk) 19:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but five days at least leaves the possibility. If we dare make this the "central criterion," it leaves the door wide open as an end around to the proposal that we speedy delete unsourced articles, a proposal that lacks any consensus whatsoever. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't quite follow this argument. No one here is calling for the PNC to become a speedy criterion (variations on that were discussed and rejected as you say). If there is fear that it would be incorporated into A7 a note against that should be added to A7 (saying unsourced articles should not be deleted under this criterion but send to pord or AfD). If something is nominated under the PNC then it gets 5 days. And my hope and understanding is that if it meets secondary notability criteria (from a single or non-independent source) it should get more time. Eluchil404 09:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

My faith in people to interpret it properly is not nearly as high as yours, apparently. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I would disagree. The problem with this is that people will come along and vote "keep" and say sources probably exist, save the article and then never find sources. Five days is a reasonable amount of time, I feel, to ask for people to find sources. If it is deleted, then it can be recreated when sources are found. For Alcohol 120%, I expect some of the reasons people wanted to keep it were because they had heard of it; this just shows a systemic bias because editors tend to be more technically-minded than the norm (for instance, if it had been a similarly unsourced article about a poet nobody had heard of, I expect it would have been delete). The burden of evidence is not on those wishing to delete. Trebor 19:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Trebor, I'm curious whether you think the community can agree to standards of notability in addition to the "twomultiple non-trivial independent publications" central criteria. For example, would you support deleting Man Plus if editors were unable to find independent literature within the five days permitted for AFD? The Man Plus article as currently written is absolutely verifiable by reliable sources: the book exists (WorldCat and the book itself); it won the Nebula award (the Nebula award website); all of its publication data can be verified by reliable sources such as WorldCat; and the brief plot summary can be sourced to the book itself. However, each of those references is either not independent (the book itself) or is trivial (WorldCat and the Nebula award website). I agree that the article would be better if non-trivial independent published sources were introduced, but in an AFD, I would vote to keep strictly on the basis of the verifiable award. What do you think? Thanks, TheronJ 19:57, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I am...undecided, about the whole notability area. Given I've only really been active in this topic for 2-3 months, I can't tell how all the guidelines came about, and I frequently feel that I'm stepping into a long ongoing argument (which makes me slightly nervous). So I'm not sure. I mean, for books and albums and films, there's always some verifiable information (track listing, plot, artwork, author, date of release, characters, etc.) to flesh out an article with, but it's whether there's enough information to avoid being just a directory-style entry, or alternatively whether the topic had done/been awarded something "notable" and so should be included despite being a directory-style entry. Does being written by a notable author automatically confer notability? Does winning an award do that?

Personally, and although I hate the term, I would tend towards inclusionism. So I would support keeping the Man Plus article and using more specific guidelines to determine notability (although your actual question was whether I think the community can agree, which is a whole other matter). And I think this general criterion is useful for places where the specific guidelines aren't firmly in place. But although this should assure notability, I don't think it should exclude it; in other words, I don't think an article must have the 2N-TIPR. Trebor 20:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The Man Plus article appears to suffer from the sort of problems you find when the author lacked secondary sources: half of it seems to be unsupported exegesis. Who says that existentialist isolation is a common theme in skiffy? How do we know that the separation is intended allegorically as well as literally? ... For a notable work of fiction, the editor can dispense with reading the work, and simply paraphrase what critics say. Rather than picking away at the check lists, those who don't like the existing system should be looking for a way to measure the encyclopediality and potential NPOVability of articles. All the current system is designed to do is ensure that Wikipedia remains an NPOV encyclopedia. Find a better one and everyone will cheer. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:00, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that independent sources make an article better, and would support a style guide to that effect. The question I was addressing here, though, was whether there was room for notability criteria in addition to the "twomultiple independent non-trivial published references" that is emerging (appropriately, IMHO), as the most commonly applied test. Leaving aside whether it's a good article, would you support deleting Man Plus as non-notable if it came up on AFD and no one could find another source within the five days? Thanks, TheronJ 21:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Award-winning and award-nominated novel from 1976? I'm pretty sure there are secondary sources, albeit they'll predate the web: skiffy mags and yearbooks for 1976-1977 in this case, but in other fields it might be different mags, or newspapers. It may need a lot more than five days to find them, just as it would for many things pre-internet. I'm more interested in outcomes than process, so that's a 'keep'. Pending the better guidelines I mentioned, I don't think there's much choice but to have all sorts of crufty check lists. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The criteria is that the sources exist, not that they're cited and present. Citing them is the best way to prove it, but if you can argue in a debate that they probably do (as is the case for award-winning books or albums from popular artists) then we can keep it around pending sources. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so in the hypothetical where a subject met a specific guideline, but we could guarantee that there did not exist the 2N-TIPR, should it be kept? Do specific guidelines confer notability in the absence of meeting the general one, or are they just suggestions that the general one is probably satisfied? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Trebor Rowntree (talk • contribs) 21:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC).

Notability is a guideline, guidelines have occasional exceptions. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines should and do have occasional exceptions. I would agree that, in the case of Man Plus, if it were nominated for deletion the first time due to lack of sourcing, I would be responsive to a "keep pending the existence of probable sources" argument. On the other hand, if it were coming up the second and third time, and it had been months since the first AfD, I would likely change around to a delete argument-on the simple basis of "Alright, we granted the presumption that they probably exist, but where are they?" I'm also really tired of the "someone's hard work" bit-part of doing the "hard work" is doing it right, and that means source it before you even think of clicking the "create this page" link. Most of the new pages come in are so far below any type of standard it's not funny-spam, vanity bios, incoherent nonsense. See for yourself if you dare. Fortunately, most of that "hard work" is caught and speedily deleted-and sometimes, it really is clear that someone put quite a bit of work into a vanity bio, and certainly into many of the PR puff pieces. What they didn't put any hard work into was caring to learn what they should be doing. Maybe we should encourage some more work into that area. Seraphimblade 01:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I'm in basic agreement with Seraphimblade. If consensus among editors were that there were serious doubts whether sources existed to expand something like Man Plus. I'd expect someone to bother to go to a library and go look up its October 17 1976 review in the New York Times, or maybe cite that it made The Times of London's list of "The Literary Editor's selection of interesting books" back on April 25 1987, or maybe the Chicago Sun-Times' June 12, 1994 review of Mars Plus, which called Man Plus "one of the definitive explorations of the concept of the cyborg." -- Dragonfiend 02:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll add my agreement to this point. Someone's hard work is worthless if they're not sourcing their hard work. --Daedalus 17:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

2N-TIPR is not an automatic thing. The number of reliable third-party sources is largely dependent on the reliability of the sources provided. I would advise not to use such wording and leave as stated in the guideline: "The "multiple" qualification is not specific as to number, and can vary depending on the reliability of the sources and the other factors of notability". ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

You're right, Jossi - I should have said MN-TIPR. (I've been shortening "multiple" to "two" in my head, but I definitely shouldn't have.) I'll correct my earlier comments. TheronJ 18:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Definitions and claims

I just realized a bit of a miscommunication above. My proposal to use central was in the wording of WP:BIO: The person has been a primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person. This should read "a central subject of sufficient blablabla", as discussed above. The P/CNC is not a criterion at all, it's the definition of notability, or more exactly notedness. The specialized criteria (award, 2 albums, 100 porn flicks) are examples of claims to notability. Any article that isn't in the exempt group (cities, highways, etc.) has to include a claim to notability, usually in the form of "best known for". There are hundreds of possible claims to notability, and we only codify a few of them in the specialized guidelines based on established precedent that certain levels of notability almost surely lead to keep or no consensus decisions in AfD's. ~ trialsanderrors 20:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I follow you, and support this, but please bring it up there? --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Too much Wikitalk involvement already. My point here was the clarification what the functional difference is between our two types of supposed citeria. ~ trialsanderrors 20:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and it should be the phrasing both here and there. ~ trialsanderrors 20:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree, but others might there, which was where my request came from. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd say we try to figure it out here first, per WP:MULTI ~ trialsanderrors 21:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

How the hell is that a guideline? Regardless, very well, but it can't be expected that it will carry over to the respective criteria, because not as many people watch this page. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

No idea, it might win an award for the most obscure guideline ever. I think it's a guideline because it expresses a Good Idea™. ~ trialsanderrors 21:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability in deletion and merge disputes

Resurrecting the idea of a "Notability in AfD" meta-topic (see /Archive 6) for exploring abuse/misunderstanding of WP:N, but expanding the scope of the original idea to merge debates as well. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ

Santorum (sexual slang) and Savage Love merge

This is a really "interesting" case (in the sense of the Chinese curse...) See Talk:Santorum (sexual slang) (bogus article) and Talk:Savage Love (merge target). The short version is that the proponents (and boy do I mean proponents; the principal author of the article is User:Santorummm!) of Santorum (sexual slang) seem to be under the firm belief that if they can provide 20 or so citations to Dan Savage talking about his own protologism (i.e. not "independent" sources), and one or two articles that mention his activistic memetic experiment and its results that this a) establishes notability at all (which it certainly does not in the first case, and arguably does not under the "multiple" requirement in the latter case), and b) establishes notability of "santorum" as a term in notable currency in English slang (justifying the article title, as opposed to something like Santorum (meme)), which it absolutely, positively does not. So, please come on over to Talk:Savage Love#New merge proposal and back up my effort to get this garbage "article" merged back into its parent to the extent any of it is salvageable at all. Or at least wonder and be amazed at the fervor with which former "Mr. Anti-Notability" cites the revamped WP:N. >;-)
— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Stop throwing around rhetoric and focus on the evidence. IS it a recognized neologism by others? Yes. Is citing it 20 times to the guy who publicized it excessive? Yes. Is that proof it has no currency beyond him? No. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 13:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe I've seen the whole santorum bit covered in quite a bit beyond Savage's writing, so I'll have a look. If secondary sources have covered it, that'd be a nonissue anyway. (Personally, I know what it means, but of course that means absolutely nothing.) Seraphimblade 13:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

It is not a recognized neologism, at least per published independent sources. It may have independent citations but no such sources are given in either of its two AfDs or the talk pages of the two pages mentioned. I believe the AfDs established notability for the political act -- that is, not for the neologism as a word, but as an act of political activism. There were certainly enough citations to establish that. For that reason I believe the current page title is misleading, but a proposed rename to make it clearer the article was about political activism received no support. SMcCandlish, if you were to propose a rename to "Santorum (meme)" I would certainly support that. Seraphimblade, if you can find evidence of independent usage other than the cites already examined and discarded by e.g. Wiktionary (see last entry on that page, in particular), then that would be very valuable -- it's not what's needed to establish notability per WP:NEO, but it would settle the question of whether this is truly a neologism or a meme. Mike Christie (talk) 18:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Another example of something obviously "notable," but may not meet the "multiple, non-trivial" standard. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but under the WP:AMNESIA test, how do you write an article if you don't have multiple, non-trivial mentions? ~ trialsanderrors 21:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

To use your criteria, there's sufficient information to build an article off of. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

But would it meet our WP:NPOV#Undue weight policy? ~ trialsanderrors 21:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Why wouldn't it? --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the article, I possibly agree. ~ trialsanderrors 21:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

But it does have multiple non-trivial mentions; not for usage, but for notability. It gets substantial treatment from Jesse Sheidlower, the North American editor of the OED, and in the Scranton Times-Tribune. The other references in reliable sources (Philadelphia Inquirer, Montreal Mirror, The Economist) cited in santorum (sexual slang) are more in the nature of asides, and could be regarded as trivial, but these two seem unimpeachable sources that directly discuss Savage's coinage -- as political activism, however, not as a valid neologism. Mike Christie (talk) 21:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm almost inclined to move this to the article talk page. Btw and fwiw, Santorum would pass the scientific terms standard at WP:SCI as a diffused neologism. There is an agreed-upon definition and a pattern of wide-spread usage. ~ trialsanderrors 21:46, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

A topic is notable if ...

... it has been a central subject of a sufficient number of reputable and independent encyclopedic sources

See current version at User:Trialsanderrors/On notability

Discuss at User talk:Trialsanderrors/On notability

New proposed guideline: Wikipedia:Notability (news)

Please take a look at the new proposed guideline for news stories, and the discussion of whether something can be newsworthy and get widespread coverage, without being encyclopedic. Edison 00:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Blech. Basically it's saying that we can't create articles on things that have been in the news, no matter how widely covered or how deeply, *unless* we can also provide book references. It completely sucks, it will core wikipedia. That's my opinion, it's discouraging. Wjhonson 17:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Chinese version policy discussion

Due to some disputes in Chinese Wikipedia，Notability Policy had been translated into Chinese as zh:Wikipedia:知名度. But after some modification, "The primary notability criterion" in Chinese version had been changed to "如果一個主題被多份（>=2）獨立可靠文獻深入介紹，則該主題滿足知名度標準。" (rough traslation: "A topic meets notability criterion if it has been the subject of multiple, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself, and it is described in depth in the article.") I don't know this modification is appropriate or not. So I want to ask: "Is notbility related to the content depth of the article?" --Littlebtc 02:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, "described in depth" is analogous to "non-trivial". —Centrx→talk • 03:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikinfo AfD

I nominated Wikinfo for deletion here and would welcome more opinions (support or oppose). It had two previous AfDs, here and here, and arguments so far refer back to them.

My contention is mostly that it does not qualify as notable under any of the guidelines at WP:WEB, having received only trivial mentions in a small number of sources. Because of this, I also contend that it can't be verified; a lot of the information in the article is cited directly to the Wikinfo website. Their contention is mostly that, as a fork of a notable project (Wikipedia), it becomes notable itself. Comment were also made on the large web footprint it has.

Discussion in the AfD would be very welcome because, to me, this seems clearly not notable (and not verifiable), yet it has survived two AfDs because people think it is. If it is, my understanding of notability is clearly very flawed, and I probably shouldn't be involved in deletion. Trebor 19:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

If you are accurately characterizing the Wikinfo supporters' stance, that stance strikes me as totally bankrupt. Given the open nature of the WikiMedia code and content, I could right now fork my own Stantonpedia, and change articles to talk about my personal opinion of them. That silly blogopedic endeavour (which would also have a large "footprint", being the same size as WP when the copy was ripped, plus my new commentary) would not somehow be notable just because the original source of the material was. Ick! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 20:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I rescind some of my earlier comment, with regard to Wikinfo in particular due to the details of its particular situation (see the AfD for specifics), but not as applied generally. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 19:40, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, primary sourcing is entirely legitimate in the article in terms of the basics. It may lack the "non-trivial" sources required by WP:WEB for notability, however, which is the problem. More of a reason to support T&E's proposal, in my mind - it has sufficient sources for "notability," and "notability" absolutely branches out in this way. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Does it qualify under T&E's proposal? It hasn't been a central subject of anything, as far as I can see. Trebor 20:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe not, but it would at least have a better chance - I can't read the first source where I'm at in any regard. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Me neither. The second source has one sentence on it, and the third, one paragraph (out of a long list of other wikis). That's not really a lot of independent coverage. Trebor 20:43, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Notability - Why Wikipedia?

I think the thrust of this notability policy is completely wrongheaded. It has resulted in the deletion of numerous useful pages from Wikipedia in my experience. Either Wikipedia aims to be encyclic, or it aims to be synoptic. The current policy is a reduction of scope toward synopsis, making Wikipedia a mere summary of other easily obtained sources and not an encyclopedic reference. Right now, people use Wikipedia to find information that they cannot easily find elsewhere. The current notability guidelines say, in effect, that a subject is deserving of inclusion in Wikipedia only if information on the subject is already easily available. If this policy is pursued to its stated purpose final end, it will make Wikipedia unnecessary and redundant. Why Wikipedia then? Halfelven 00:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

You sound like you have a problem with Wikipedia requiring verified information, more than the concept of notability. An encyclopaedia should be a summary (or at least a logical organisation) of information from existing sources; it shouldn't be used to advance new theories or positions. Information on the subject does not need to be easily available, but it does need to exist. If you think an attempt to logically organise and précis of the sum of all knowledge is unnecessary and redundant, then yes Wikipedia is. But I, for one, find it very useful. Trebor 00:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I find myself agreeing with Halfelven. The issue of notability seems to be a club to beat down articles with which some editor either doesn't like or doesn't appreciate. Perhaps it's better to expand the criteria for inclusion so that lack of notability isn't the sole reason someone can delete an article. It's true that Wikipedia shouldn't become Google, but it's certainly the first place I stop when I'm researching something - if only because there are usually good links to source material. I can't think of a single good reason to delete unique articles about a subject, even if the subject is of minor interest. By unique, I mean "the only" article. If a subject has more than one article already, then posting another, similar, entry is pointless. However, a new entry covering some topic people may not know about, or topics that people want to know about, shouldn't be deleted for being non-notable unless it violates some other rule, such as not having verifiable sources, is a duplicate of something already posted, or is a trivial article. (Non-notable and trivial... then it should definitely be gone.) TomXP411 07:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

And I concur with Trebor and disagree with Halfelven and TomXP411. Besides the Verifiability policy, it sounds like Halfelven and TomXP411 have a problem with Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, specifically the part about Wikipedia not being an indiscriminate collection of random information, as well as Wikipedia:No original research. If someone wants to know about something not already on Wikipedia, then they can do the research into verified sources and post an article cited to such sources. I've done that myself on many occasions for obscure articles like Department of Public Safety. Any compromise on WP:NOR or WP:NOT (which is what compromising on Notability amounts to) is going to turn Wikipedia into a hotbed of unverified speculation, of which there is already enough in the blogosphere and Web sites in general. We need to have strong content policies in order to be able to flush out such garbage in a principled manner in the Articles for deletion process. --Coolcaesar 08:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

You may like to look at this AfD. Stephen B Streater 09:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Halfelven and TomXP411. Notability is meaningless and subjective, and is being used as a tool to delete anything that certain editors don't find personally subjectively interesting. Verifiability is important.Vampyrecat 15:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

An objective method to evaluate notability

All you need is a search engine: [[3]] Milivella 00:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Right. What about information not on the internet? Trebor 00:39, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Examples? Anyway, we could wait Google scanning every book ever printed... ;) Milivella 00:51, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Newspaper articles which haven't been archived. Scientific papers on obscure topics that aren't on Google Scholar. Books on historical events. Google is not the be-all and end-all. Trebor 00:58, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree. But please show me one (or more) Wikipedia voices about something no indexed by Google: it wuold be very intersting to me. Milivella 01:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, everything on Wikipedia now is on Google, along with mirrors. But also, your method doesn't take into account quality of results; a few fact-checked reliable sources are worth a million blog entries. Trebor 09:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Google only has things on the web, and then only things which can be accessed for free. Lots of things happened before the web, and lots of high quality information is subscription only. I have just seen a very interesting (commercial) DVD which has David Attenborough talking about the early days of BBC Two - much more suitable for Wikipedia than Google. Stephen B Streater 09:58, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Beware: I don't say that you should use the "common web opinion" to write an article: reliable sources are the only way. But you could check what is often cited about a given topic to decide which informations (takne from to reliable sources!) to include. To talk about concrete examples: take the examples of stories within a story cited here [[4]]. Some examples are, IMHO, clearly not relevant (or, at least, arbitrary chosen) when you speak about the concept of "story within a story". With a formula like mine, you should demonstrate that this concept is important to understand a Quantum Leap novel, but the inverse is not true. Milivella 15:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Should WP:BK be made a guideline?

Sorry for the cross-posting... There is an ongoing discussion on whether or not the long-standing proposed guideline for the notability of books should be tagged as a guideline. Everyone's input would be really appreciated as past discussions have often involved a handful of editors, making it hard to judge consensus. Pascal.Tesson 16:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Clarification suggestion to wording

The notability article states:

• A major criterion is that a topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself.

and

• One rationale for this criterion is the fact that sources independent of a subject have noted the topic in depth (by creating multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works about it) demonstrates that it is notable.

To me, theres an implied definition that I think should be made more explicit, because it's never actually stated in the wording at the moment:

Proposed addition: "Sources independent of a subject" means sources with a direct or indirect interest in promoting the subject, for example, affiliates, fans, beneficiaries, and proponent groups, whose connection means that even if they note the subject, it is not a good indication of wider notability.

Would others be okay with this (or something like it) being added to the guideline? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Add "or affiliation". —Centrx→talk • 19:54, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

• I think it goes too far. The essential element isn't that a publisher is not a proponent, but that the publisher is reliable, and that the publication indicates notability. If a proponent of a scientific theory publishes a peer reviewed paper on the issue, and an opponent of that theory publishes a peer reviewed paper, do we really need to find popular press reports to conclude that the issue is notable? Also, what do we do about purportedly biased (but reliable) mainstream news sources? Are we in for a year's worth of arguments about whether stories in Fox News, the Guardian, the BBC, the Nation, etc. qualify for notability? Thanks, TheronJ 20:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If there were only two papers on a scientific theory, an entire article on that scientific theory would not be appropriate for the encyclopedia. Any notable scientific theory here is going to have dozens if not hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on it. —Centrx→talk • 01:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I also thinks this goes too far. A lot of the most valuabel sources comes from media that is connected - e.g. the Catholic Times reporting on events in the Catholic Church, the Jewish Chronicle reporting about the Chief Rabbi or the Times of India reporting about an election in Kerala. I don't think there's anything wrong with using these sources as long as their bias is appropriately noted. AndrewRT(Talk) 22:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

This is not about simply using these sources, it is about having an entire article supported only by these sources. If the only sources about the Catholic Church were in the Catholic Times, an article about it would not be appropriate. —Centrx→talk • 01:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Or is it?

A topic is notable and suitable for an article if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject itself and each other

Or is it? Surely this is just an indication of notability rather than a proof. See example cited at WP:NOTNEWS AndrewRT(Talk) 00:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Properly, purely news items would not be "non-trivial" nor "independent". —Centrx→talk • 01:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Biographies -- notability

With dozens of links to similar pages and talk pages, I really don't know where to start, and I have certainly not read everything on this topic, but I hope someone will be able to answer my question and/or refer me to a page where I can read up on it:

What makes George E. Pugh more notable than Matt Beaumont?

I'm not trying to be funny here, and I know that those two individuals have nothing whatsoever in common except the fact that both articles are considered under the title "Biography". I was just wondering why the existence of Beaumont's biography seems contentious whereas Pugh's is not. <KF> 16:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:BIO and WP:BLP are two good places to start. AndrewRT(Talk) 22:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! <KF> 00:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Is it really primary?

I ask because it's becoming awfully misleading awfully fast. The guideline itself acts as a pointer to the individual subject-specific guidelines, and, contrary to the wording here, "nearly all" of them do not, in fact, share the criterion. The section should probably be reworded to reflect this. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Knowing nothing other than "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", can't we safely conclude that the main factor that allows encyclopedia articles to exist is sufficient coverage of the subject matter in external sources? Perhaps "notability" is a poor word for this- like "verifiability", this term has some extra meaning on Wikipedia beside its plain English reading. But, it's the word we have, and if we understand it to mean "encyclopedic notability", I think it works well enough. What is the single most important qualification for a thing to have an encyclopedia article? It's not our own opinions on it, it's sources. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that specifically does not do original research, sources must be of primary importance. Friday (talk) 15:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if we can "safely conclude" that. Again, we've apparently decided as a community that verifiability is not enough. "Notability" is something else entirely, and can exist without these so-called non-trivial sources that people want to force as "primary." No one's asking for original research, and no one's saying sources aren't important, but the question is whether they are for the sake of "notability," which is an entirely different concept. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Forget what "notability" means in real life then- pretend it's shorthand for "can this subject be covered by Wikipedia?" In practical terms, this is the important question, right? If we don't stay tightly focused on practical concerns, aren't we just spinning our philosophical wheels? Friday (talk) 15:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)