Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 50

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change to GNG

Current last paragraph:

A topic for which this criterion is deemed to have been met by consensus, is usually worthy of notice, and satisfies one of the criteria for a stand-alone article in the encyclopedia. Verifiable facts and content not supported by multiple independent sources may be appropriate for inclusion within another article.

proposed change to:

A topic for which this criterion is deemed to have been met by consensus, is usually worthy of notice, and satisfies one of the criteria for a stand-alone article in the encyclopedia. Verifiable facts and content not supported by multiple independent sources may be appropriate for inclusion within another article. Meeting these requirements is not meant to preclude other restrictions on article creation.

Reason: It is being argued at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Sailor Moon (English adaptation) that meeting the GNG is enough to warrant the creation of said article.∞陣内Jinnai 01:28, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. We don't change the guideline to create the outcome you seek in one editing dispute. Also, as I read the specific discussion on the NPOV noticeboard, it frankly has much more to do with competing POV's and whether the article should be split than with debating WP:GNG. If the point you want to make is that passing WP:GNG doesn't fix an article that fails WP:NPOV, you don't need to change WP:GNG to make that point. patsw (talk) 02:31, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

That is the point I'm trying to make and it doesn't seem to be being made.∞陣内Jinnai 03:36, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Yea, I don't think this is seeking a change in the GNG, just stating something that seems to be obvious but is being lots. Just because a topic is notable, perhaps clearly so notable by the GNG that a separate article could be made, it is not always necessary to do so. Combining two or more notable topics in a single article may stylistically provide better coverage for all topics than if separated; it is up to editors to decide when this is the better approach. --MASEM (t) 04:04, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Patsw: Do you honestly believe the GNG can trump any other policy/guideline for creation? I can't see this as being anything anyone here has an issue with and its similar to wording that is used in other guidelines and policies. However, if you want to wait until the discussion is over with so there is no COI, that's fine.∞陣内Jinnai 16:40, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I'd actually favor much stronger language, more to the effect that

  A topic for which this criterion is deemed to have been met by consensus meets the minimal standard for consideration as a stand-alone article in the encyclopedia. Meeting this criterion is not meant to preclude other restrictions on article creation, and the material may be better suited for inclusion in an existing article.

  —Kww(talk) 04:12, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Notability guidelines do not restrict article content. Therefore, nothing should be said here about the need to comply with the content policies. (The practical benefits of splitting and merging to balance articles might be a valuable thing to mention over at NPOV, however.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
  • We already do say that notability, even if beyond a shadow of a doubt that a topic's notable, doesn't guaranty an article (eg A topic is presumed to merit an article if it meets the general notability guideline below, and is not excluded under What Wikipedia is not. ). The additional clarification is necessary advice to give that I'm not aware is given on any other page and would specifically apply to notability. --MASEM (t) 19:01, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

    I believe the proper way to handle this is for WP:NPOV to explain its relationship to notability by saying something like, "If so few detailed sources exist on a narrow subject that it is not possible to write a reasonably complete and unbiased article, then Wikipedia should not have a separate article on that subject. Instead, WP:PRESERVE that information by WP:MERGEing it into a larger topic." I'd even be willing to add a pointed example: "(e.g., the English version of a manga originally produced in Japanese should normally be treated as a section in the article about the original work, instead of as a separate article about the English translation)". But I think it should be there, not here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• • • I'm not against NPOV also addressing this, but that doesn't mean we can't add a comment in the GNG, one of the most cited (parts of a) guideline on Wikipedia for AfDs, merge discussions and the like.∞陣内Jinnai 23:07, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• • • WhatamIdoing, if you'd be willing to add such a pointed example to WP:NPOV, would you also be willing to join the discussion at the NPOV noticeboard? The more opinions external to WP:ANIME there, the better.  :) --Malkinann (talk) 01:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Notability of Media markets, again

I just reviewed Media in Garden City, Kansas for new page patrol, which I marked as "patrolled" but have concerns about. Garden City, according to its article, is a town of just more than 26,000 souls & a country seat of a rural county in western Kansas. My gut feeling is that the topic is not notable in itself, & should be merged into Media in Kansas. (Article does not exist at this time.) However, I don't know what the notability guidelines for media units or markets is -- last thing I want to do is waste time over a notability cat fight & end up finding this article deleted -- although obviously some media markets are notable for understandable reasons (e.g., important urban center, verifiable influence, historical reasons). WP:NMEDIA doesn't cover this case, although it appears to endorse lists of media by states. Thoughts? -- llywrch (talk) 18:15, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there is any specific subnotability guideline, meaning that this should be covered by the GNG. And as its aimed more as a list, this would fall in the question "is the topic 'Media in Garden City, Kansas' notable per the GNG?" to which is a resounding no (far too small a scope). It should be merged to either Garden City, Kansas which would be a completely appropriate home for that. --MASEM (t) 13:55, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Inconsistent application of notability

For anyone interested, I've commented on this at the Village Pump. --Iantresman (talk) 12:19, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Articles need multiple sources

That's what the current guidelines say, and that's what I believe. I will explain why, with an example.

What text from what guideline mandates that? This guideline, Wikipedia:Notability, only states " Multiple sources are generally expected." patsw (talk) 23:01, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Dr. Blofeld has recently created a number of short articles on places in Benin (a country in West Africa). We've been discussing that on my own talk-page [1], and I've concentrated on one example, to demonstrate the problems - Lougba.

That article was created based upon one single entry on one single census, which lists "Lougba" as an arrondissement of the Département de Collines, with a population of 6,006 - and that is all.

Thus far, we have been unable to find any other RS information about the place. So - we don't even know if it is a town at all; an arrondissement is a small governmental sub-division, which might be named after a town, but may incorporate various zones of dwelling. So, we cannot even state that Lougba is a town, based on the information we have.

A place with that name, or similar names, does appear on some websites - for example, [2] - but get this; on that example it is not even labelled on the map.

This example illustrates why it is inappropriate for an encyclopaedia to give information based on one single entry in one single source. To be honest, I would have thought that was common sense, but clearly others disagree with me. I thought that the letter 's' in the "Notability" section of WP:V here would be enough: If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic - sources, plural.

But, apparently, that is not enough.

Of course, if consensus disagrees with me, I will concede to it - but I would like to discuss this further.

My current belief is, articles need more than one reliable source. If that is indeed our policy, then perhaps we need to make it clearer. If that isn't our policy, then that needs to be clear, too - because the current wording indicates to me that it is. I think that creating stubs based upon such ultra-limited referenced information is actually detrimental to the Encyclopaedia, because it dilutes (and thus devalues) our content with information that might be "true" (for a certain given value of "true"). See also the essay WP:ONESOURCE

I absolutely want Wikipedia to expand, especially with coverage of the "Global South"^{I hate that term, but can't think of better} but, I also think we need to focus on providing quality verifiable content, not just quantity for the sake of quantity. I have no issue at all with the size of a stub, but I absolutely do have a problem with the sourcing.

(This also relates in part to a recent AN discussion, so I'll note that here for linkage)  Chzz  ►  01:10, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Dr. Blofeld has recently created a number of short articles on places in Benin (a country in West Africa). - is it a country or a country? If its a country and its a modern country, it will likely be of encylopedic nature. If its not, then probably some RSes are needed to make certain it actually existed. The only reason to be wary would be if it was a hoax. Even tiny countries like Liechtenstein are. If its a county, then 1 is probably too few for its own article and should be redirected to the country article.∞陣内Jinnai 05:24, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I misunderstood what was going on exactly.∞陣内Jinnai 19:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I think, in situations like this (and there are many of them) it would be far better to have a single article (in this instance, for example, The arrondissements of Benin), giving some history of the arrondissement system, what arrondissements are / do / cover, and entries for each arrondissement in a table, with whatever little bit of information can be found (reliably) on them, and ideally to have that table sortable by name, population, and anything else which readers might find useful. The same strategy could well be applied to all those other linked-situation articles, giving us quality of articles rather than just quantity; we need to focus a bit more on quality. This diff applies here - whether it's to bot-generated or human-generated articles. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 07:31, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Fundamentally, I think that WP:N is not going to achieve what you want. In fact, it tends to contradict it: "The absence of citations in an article (as distinct from the non-existence of sources) does not indicate that the subject is not notable." It is very difficult to convince people that your inability to find online sources about African government entities proves that no sources exist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

General things that bear mentioning here:

• An argument for deletion should point to a problem in a policy like WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, or WP:BLP, or to a attempt to hoax the Wikipedia, where the potential for harm is manifest.
• WP:N is a way of explaining why the online encyclopedia that in theory includes everything, in practice does exclude some stuff, and it can be described in a way that creates some consistency and predictability for editors. I call WP:N and WP:PSTS contingent guidelines - they are not persuing goals contained in themselves but help avoid other problems by defining what the preferred template for an article is.
• Placename articles (i.e. Gazetteer content) as stub articles have a very long history in Wikipedia. The de-facto policy on them has been that any placename (i.e. human settlement, geographic feature, political designation, etc.) that has an official source (i.e. government, U.N,, or equivalent) to give it an indisputable existence, is potentially an article. Hundreds of thousands of such articles exist. Approved bots are creating more based on data mining geodatabases.
• A stub placename article can be indexed in Google, Bing, etc. and potentially draw contributors to improve the article.
• I appreciate the concern that some have for improving quality, but I disagree that stopping placename stub article creation would be good thing. patsw (talk) 23:55, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I am not suggesting we delete the things. What I am saying is: established Wikipedians shouldn't be creating stubs like this, based soley on (in this case) 1 source with 1 word and 1 number. As I said, we can't even tell if it's a town. The guidelines DO say we need sourceS - so, is that not correct? Is 1 word in 1 source enough? Or even no sources at all? Or, should users be told not to make these?

On a lighter note, at least we're continuing a fine tradition: The 1750's Encyclopédie contains this gem.  Chzz  ►  13:00, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Why shouldn't people be adding content to Wikipedia? --Jayron32 06:13, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

From the link posted by Chzz; "If all the same I mention this plant here, along with several others that are described just as poorly, then it is out of consideration for certain readers who prefer to find nothing in a dictionary article or even to find something stupid than to find no article at all." --Nuujinn (talk) 14:25, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Chzz, we expect that more than one source has been WP:Published—anywhere in the world, in any decade, in any language. We do not require that any sources be WP:CITEd anywhere in the article. As a result, these stubs actually exceed the minimum requirements. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:42, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand what you are saying. In the example mentioned, nobody has been able to locate more than one published source.  Chzz  ►  17:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The meaning of "we found one source online" is not "we have proven that only one source has ever been published". As I said above, it is very difficult to convince people that your inability to find multiple online sources about African government entities proves that no offline sources exist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:43, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

So as far as the guideline whose talk page we're on, is anyone considering this a systemic problem (with the guideline) or is this an isolated case where the guideline doesn't easily apply? I understand the issue here and it seems like something that can be solved in a discussion. The concern I think we share is that there are sometimes cases like this where a problem is intentionally or unintentionally exploited by one person to create a mass of work that may not be easily cleaned up. I think the question is, is there a way to change WP:N to make sure if one seemingly reliable source (like the ones Patsw mentioned), publishes a list of geographic locations, that the articles created via that list are verifiable.

Personally, I can't think of a specific instance outside of geographic locations where this would be an issue. More exactly, I can't think of a category of subjects where an article can be included in WP simply based on a claim that it exists from a seemingly reliable source. I think that's is a problem related only to geographic locations.

To me, that implies that a subsection needs to be created for geographic locations. I've always been weary of what seems like auto-inclusion. I'm sure an attempt has been made in the past. Anyone know?

The other half of the problem, that so many articles can be quickly created due to one source, is solved more by WP:NPP in my opinion but I think that's out of the scope of this conversation. OlYeller21^Talktome 21:10, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I've had similar issues with articles that likely do meet the GNG, but the sources I find in English cannot establish that because it wasn't released here and often the items that could denote notability are published in foreign trade magazines. IE, a specific subset of the articles we cover.∞陣内Jinnai 06:03, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

OlYeller, there have been similar questions about articles on species. It's sometimes the case that only one source is easily available online (or several sources that say nothing more than the name), but—exactly like geographic sources—if it's got a (verifiable) name, the odds are extremely good that more sources actually exist. You can't get a binomial species name recognized without publishing a proper description for it, just like you can't formally create a government entity without leaving a paper trail. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

OlYeller, I only chose Lougba as an example - but the user who made it has created hundreds of those articles - examples here - and has created many thousands of similarly short/weakly sourced stubs. So, yes - it's a big problem, not an isolated case.  Chzz  ►  05:46, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

@WAID: Are there many species articles that have this issue? I'm not highly knowledable about the subject but like you said, it seems like there would be some published and peer reviewed articles regarding a new species. Is it common for a book that lists a mass of species not to cite those? If so, it sounds like it's in the same boat as geographic locations.

@Chzz: Hey, sorry. I didn't mean to make it sound like I was trying to attack (can't think of a better word right now) your example. I knew it was just an example and was trying to look at geographic locations or anything like it and could think of a comparable category of subjects but WAID pointed one out. Obviously the case you bring up is a major problem; I didn't mean to diminish its importance. It definitely needs addressed. My goal was to address the root cause in that for some reason, we seem to excuse geographic locations from WP:GNG without a corresponding geographic location notability guideline or even a generally accepted essay (that I'm aware off).

So I guess the question is, why do we allow articles about geographic locations and species to avoid deletion when they don't satisfy WP:GNG. Maybe we base it on the concept that because there should evidence out there based on one source. Regardless, I don't like that we do something that seems to be generally accepted but has no corresponding guideline or policy.

What's the next step? Do we mass AfD articles with only one source (I don't like this idea) or do we work on new notability guidelines specifically for species and geographic locations. More generally, do we go against our general practice for these categories and start applying WP:N as its written or try to change WP:N to suite what we do? OlYeller21^Talktome 14:24, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, my personal solution for the geographic articles is to convince the Foundation to start a WikiAtlas project where every recognized geographic feature (and perhaps extended to astral bodies) can be placed, but specifically for purposes of just ID'ing the places on a map and other geographic/geopolitical data. When a place is notable to meet the GNG we can have a page on it here in WP, otherwise redirect to the WikiAtlas. (And such redirects mean that no admin action is needed to expand them). People have tried to make geographic notability SNGs, and failed, and the only reason they persist is the typical AFD results on the presumption that sources will ultimately appear in time about such places which typically extend past one or more generations (eg the time scale for such sources to appear is far different from a person's lifetime, a movie's release period, etc.) --MASEM (t) 14:46, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

There are apparently databases that provide very little more than where the binomial name falls into the tree, especially for newly named species. (The same is probably true for stars, by the way.)

I don't think that you're really grasping the issue: the problem is not "the articles don't satisfy GNG". A 100% unreferenced article can fully satisfy GNG. The problem here is only that you personally believe—but cannot prove—that they don't satisfy GNG, and you have been unable to convince other people that your unprovable, personal belief is correct.

Honestly, I think that your effort to convince people that you're correct is doomed. (I like Masem's solution.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:56, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Was this directed at me? I may be misunderstanding the issue but I'm attempting to determine what the goal of this conversation is. If it's to spur some sort of change in what WP's community considers notable, I think I was on the right track. If it's not to spur a change in WP:N, I don't see why this conversation is taking place here as is specifically noted in the edit notice of this talk page.

Also, I really like Masem's idea, too. OlYeller21^Talktome 20:18, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for the confusion. The last half is directed mostly at Chzz, who (IMO) has a legitimate concern, but not one that the community is going to respect.

The notability guidelines, even more than other guidelines, need to have a direct relationship to what the community actually does at AFD, not what a handful of editors think they ought to do. The fact is that AFD almost always keeps such articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

No harm, no foul.

I agree that the guideline needs to reflect what we do. I guess the question is, is what we do correct? I don't care either way but want the guideline to reflect a consensus. Either way, it would be great if it was included in WP:N but from what Masem is saying, such changes have been presented and failed.

Maybe we can put this (geo locations, stars, species, etc.) on our wishlist with a notability guideline for schools. It seems that all of these categories of subjects fall into the grey area on the edge of WP:N where interpretations seems to fall into opposing sides. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've seen a school notability discussion crop up. OlYeller21^Talktome 18:33, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I would think the proper thing to do, to be 100% consistent, is two fold. Step one is easy: Get an SNG on geographic places to set what geographic places are considered notable (barring meeting GNG), with identification of what sources are appropriate to affirm the existence of a notable geographic place, what geographic places are not covered by it (eg, I could see someone saying that a road is a geographic place though that's not the usual intent). This of course needs community consensus.

Step two is a tad more difficult to put forth but that is assuring what the relationship is between the SNG and the GNG, in that SNGs are considered temporary allowances for topics to eventually meet the GNG. Now, its important to understand that "temporary" applies to the timescale of the appropriate topic; for a person, a creative work, etc., we know that that timescale is of a few years at most - if nothing comes out after a 3-5 years of meeting the SNG criteria, the topic probably isn't notable. On the other hand, geographic places have centuries or longer-type timescales, and will outlast our current editors. Thus, based on the typical AFD result for these places, we are more tolerant of them lasting years without source expansion. Thus, it still is a "temporary" allowance, though for most of us, it will appear to be permanent. --MASEM (t) 18:43, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid this discussion seems to have wandered, without getting to the issue I raised initially: Is it acceptable for established users to create very short articles with just one source? The user I mentioned has created tens of thousands, and I imagine will carry on doing so, unless it is clarified - and others will keep making them too. I am not suggesting that if an article only has one source we should clobber it, or that we should bite the ass of new users who create such. However, in this guideline, I think it should be clear: More than one source should be required. If consensus disagrees, that's fine, and I'll shut up about it. Thanks to all for discussing it.  Chzz  ►  09:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

• If I lived in Benin, I'd be very upset and the removal of towns and villages in my country. I would think it is almost trivial to check whether a town/village exists. Of course that is no indication of notability, but we all have different levels of threshold. After all, we have 7000 individual pages on lumps of space rock, thousands of pages on various chemicals and just about every species on the planet, which often have no souces whatsoever, and I maintain that in many cases, no notability. But I can find no good reason to exclude them, and if I ever go to Benin, I'd like to know what's there. --Iantresman (talk) 11:31, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Conversely, if you lived in Benin, how would you feel about Wikipedia presenting false information?

And if it's trivial to check, then please show me how we can tell that a town called Lougba actually exists.

As Jimbo once said - and we quote in WP:V - "I really want to encourage a much stronger culture which says: it is better to have no information, than to have information like this, with no sources."  Chzz  ►  09:51, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Of course we don't want false information, but (a) we give people the benefit of the doubt (b) and we can check Lougba on Bing Maps, AccuWeather, satelliteviews.net, Places in the World, Geographical names, Mapcarta etc --Iantresman (talk) 10:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

And I suspect, on all those sites, I could add "ChzzTown", no?  Chzz  ►  12:08, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

That's something for you to try. Personally I think that Microsoft's Bing Maps is a good reliable source. But there are other sources too, such as the the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's database using the GeoNames Search. But we do have a precedence of the creation of thousand of articles in different subject areas, as I mentioned earlier. --Iantresman (talk) 12:32, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Is a dedicated article in a tetriary source not enough?

I thought that having a dedicated article in another encyclopedia is enough to prove notability. I was recently directed here, and indeed, the guideline states that "Sources for notability purposes, should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability". Does it mean that if I can only show brief mentions in secondary sources available to me, and one dedicated entry in a tertiary source (WIEM Encyklopedia), I have failed to establish notability due to a lack of a dedicated, secondary source covering the subject in any significant detail? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 18:18, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

There are a few tertiary source where this would work, like the long-established Encyclopedia Britannica, generally on the fact such sources will provide additional sources to back up the secondary-source notability. The encyclopedia you're using appears to not have enough history to make this statement true for articles in that. But you should be encouraged to follow the sources listed in that article to try to demonstrate notability otherwise. --MASEM (t) 18:23, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

This page [3] indicates the site is a Polish translation of the current Encyclopaedia Britannica or perhaps Encyclopedia of Popular Universal. Any incorporation of content from this site will be problematical from a copyright point of view apart from WP:N. patsw (talk) 20:00, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

That's strange - the phrase "Aktualizacja encyklopedii WIEM 2006 na plycie", on its official website, is being rendered by Google translate as "Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 Update on CD". [4]. Novickas (talk) 20:07, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

What is the criteria for creating a separate "Discography" page for a band?

What is the criteria for creating a "Discography" page for a band separate from the band's main page?--Jax 0677 (talk) 01:59, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I would say the most important criteria would be: "The main article would be overly long if we included the discography as a section within the article". Blueboar (talk) 02:47, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Summary style and Wikipedia:Splitting. Basically what Blueboar said: there's no need for a seperate discography page until the bands page becomes too long. Once the band's page becomes long enough to split, the discography is usually the first thing to go. However, if the discography isn't that long anyways, then it needn't be a seperate article. For example, the Sex Pistols released only a single studio album, followed by a smattering of compilations and live albums released after the band broke up. No need to split that thing off. OTOH, Frank Zappa has officially released (including posthumous releases) something close to 100 albums. Obviously, the main article would be overwhelmed by such a list. It isn't a notability issue (if Wikipedia has information about a band, a list of official records by that band would seem to be information one would want) it's an organization one. --Jayron32 04:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Stand-alone lists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Establishing Notability for Online Publications

I am encountering difficulties establishing notability for Liberation Frequency, an online magazine that is cited in Wikipedia and elsewhere, in terms of its interview and article coverage. Unlike a print publication, where independent circulation data and other indicia of notability are frequently available, unless the online publication is discussed by a separate publication, it is somehow viewed as not notable, even though, as in this case, it is cited by artists and others notable in their own right. It is much more than an opinion forum. I am wondering if Wikipedia notability criteria are too stringent. Please take a look at the page, if you have a moment. Don't know for how long it will be there, in the absence of direct, rather than indirect, support as to notability.

Dreadarthur (talk) 03:01, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

This would be the place to discuss a proposal to add, change, or delete text from the guideline. patsw (talk) 17:53, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Basically, you're right: not everything that exists, or even everything that is useful, qualifies for its own, separate, stand-alone article entirely about it. If I were you, I'd see if I could find a larger topic that I could WP:MERGE the little bit of information into. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:15, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Links to article, as a measure of notability?

Are the number of articles, and/or the number of categories an article belongs to, an indication of notability. For example, a an episode of the TV programme Up the Down Steroid is tagged that "The notability of this article's subject is in question". It also has over 30 articles pages and lists linking to it. As a point of generality (I'm not interested in the specific article), is the quantity of any of these incoming links, sufficiently relevant to count toward notability, or should it? --Iantresman (talk) 14:31, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely not, but its recommended that you can follow what articles link to it, and see if those articles have appropriate sources to demonstrate notability of the topic you're interested in. --MASEM (t) 14:48, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Masem is correct. In the example you mention, most of the links are because the episode is linked through Template:South Park episodes and Template:Sports related South Park episodes. What links here does not distinguish whether a link in an article is from manually added text in the article itself or through placement of a template in the article. And manually added links do not necessarily confer notability either, they might also be included as part of a sequence rather than as any separate indication of notability. older ≠ wiser 15:15, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

The process for determining if a topic should have a Wikipedia article is based on its significance in the world outside of Wikipedia. Using the Wikipedia as an indicator what what should added to Wikipedia introduces a closed loop of knowledge, and one which can be gamed as well. patsw (talk) 13:26, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

As a side note, I really, really, really want a Special:WhatLinksHere that allows me to not see what's linked through navboxes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:18, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Improving AFD debates

I have been concerned for some time that the quality of AFD discussions hasn't kept pace with a clearer enforcement of our inclusion standards and this leads to a lot of unnecessary relists and will result, as participation continues to decline, in the process becoming even more arbitrary and confusing. That's if AFD doesn't end up breaking from a lack of policy based contributions. My view is that we need to improve understanding of what is or is not a policy based vote to improve the quality of debate. This will result in fewer relists, more consistent outcomes and allow the process to continue to work in the future. I'm proposing that AFD regulars who close and relist discussions explain which votes they counted and why and offer direction when they relist to make what's needed clearer. I started (yeah, its awful and needs lots of work) an essay to explain the process as above and would welcome any comments or feedback that anyone has on this. Since I'm going to spam this round the houses WT:AFD or the talk of the essay seem like good locations to hold the discussion. Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:59, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I work there on and off. The most common reason for re-listing seems to be lack of comments. Of course the quantity of AFD's is a factor in every area, but here are a few specific suggestions:

• Discourage bad faith, baseless or arbitrary nominations. A nomination should include a rationale for nomination. Recently I saw a regular nominator essentially say "I didn't have a basis; when in doubt, nominate"
• If a nomination refers to a SNG as a basis, try to be more specific to help reviewers which are familiar with the SNG. Most reviewers don't know all of the SNG's and may skip the ones that rely on a SNG.
• Make the links to the previous still-open days more obvious like the "Today's AFD log" on the "Articles for deletion" page. Right now commentson days other than day 1 are less, I think that less prominent links are a part of the reason.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:20, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

All good points, and something that closing admins can highlight in their closing commentary. Spartaz ^Humbug! 05:28, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Notability is sometimes temporary

Kim Kardashian is notable now. But she won't be in 100 years unless she actually does something other than appear in the tabloids. I'm sure there are Kardashian-type figures from 100 years ago that no one remembers or cares about, and they would not survive a deletion discussion. The notability not always temporary thing can also lead to ridiculous arguments, such as at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sprague Astronautics Company, Inc, an argument to keep a company that went out of business before sending a single person into space as it planned. With companies, the early notability HAS TO be temporary because we don't have the information or the crystal ball to see if it will do the notable things it claims.

So, some cases where notability truly is temporary:

• People famous for being famous
• Start-up companies that haven't yet produced revenue

D O N D E groovily Talk to me 16:58, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Once notable, that facet can't go; the sources still exist to demonstrate that person or company once existed and once was written about by others. Their relative importance may ebb, but that's not notability. --MASEM (t) 17:05, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I think still having Kim Kardashian here 200 years from now will probably reflect poorly on this encyclopedia then (unless she actually does something). As far as companies, crystal ball applies. The failure of these companies before generating any revenue indicates that it probably wasn't notable in the first place. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 17:10, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

No, if the company received adaquate attention in reliable independent sources, it was notable under policy. Some day, people may no longer care about a number of topics on wikipedia, but that doesn't mean they were not notable when written. I don't think Wikipedia has been around long enough for that to be an issue that needs to be addressed by policy, beyond what we already have. Monty₈₄₅ 17:19, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Yea, failure to produce can be notable itself. But that failure does need to be documented by others to make it notable. --MASEM (t) 17:27, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the failure must be documented. It is easy for a vaporware company to drum up a lot of publicity and press coverage without actually accomplishing anything. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:37, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)If Wikipedia is still going strong in 100 years, we will likely need to reevaluate notability, but for the reasonably near term future the notability is not temporary policy is still valid. Particularly, in regards to Sprague Astronautics, presuming the commercial spaceflight industry ever really picks up, the early attempts will be of interest for a very long time. In the end, the most important thing is that as long as there are reliable sources, as required to establish notability, the continued presence of the article hurts no one. Monty₈₄₅ 17:16, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Even if we do, it may be that we simply merge many of articles rather than outright delete them.∞陣内Jinnai 17:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

This makes me imagine articles like List of American celebrities featured in tabloids during the early 21st century. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:20, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Andy Warhol observed that "In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." That future has not arrived yet, but now everyone who does receive some momentary notice can receive more than 15 minutes: their notability can be enshrined at Wikipedia for the ages!

I am quite confident that Wikipedia will survive, in some form, for more than a century; and I suspect that sometime within its first century the present notability guideline will evolve into a more limited notion of encyclopedic relevance. I suspect this not only because there will be perceived problems within Wikipedia, but because other venues will turn out to be more efficient at serving ephemeral interests. ~ Ningauble (talk) 21:16, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I have said this before, but it is worth saying again... I think we should distinguish between lasting notability and short term notoriety. Although similar and easily confused, the two concepts are not quite the same. Blueboar (talk) 21:24, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Notability is the Wikipedia's term of art to describe the process of determining is a topic chosen by an editor is going to have a stand-alone Wikipedia article. Dictionary definitions of this word are hopelessly vague and useless to explain how the Wikipedia's process works. The usage itself of notability outside of the Wikipedia is beginning to reflect the Wikipedia's own usage. This isn't set in concrete at all.

A common dictionary definition of notable is famous, and the example given, Kim Kardashian, is certainly famous in 2011. The examples I offer are Nellie Bly and Evelyn Nesbit with whom Kardashian shares some modest accomplishments matched to publicity out of scale to their impact on society. The key thing is that reliable sources establish verifiable facts about Bly, Nesbit, and Kardashian, including their acquisition of celebrity status, in a manner that passes WP:V tests. 200 years from now, people will want to know what did people do that obtained for them a certain degree of fame in their time, when in historical terms they had no impact. I hope the Wikipedia captures that for them. The Wikipedia is not paper. Should a future consensus of Wikipedia editors rewrite WP:N so as to make the Bly, Nesbit, and Kardashian articles subject to deletion in the new version of that policy, I would consider that a tragic loss. A year or two ago, the idea was floated and rejected that the notability needed to be reasserted each year with new coverage in secondary sources. It was soundly rejected. These articles are, and should remain permanent. patsw (talk) 23:13, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Comparing Kardashian to Nelly Bly is insulting. Bly actually did something notable other than being famous. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 17:28, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to make any predictions about what future generations will decide. They may decide that maintaining articles that nobody reads and have only century-old sources is too much hassle. They may decide that they are treasures for the ages. It's important to remember that "deleted here" doesn't mean "no longer exists anywhere in the world". I wouldn't be especially surprised, for example, if some of these articles about historically unimportant people, companies, products, etc., ended up being transwikied to a historical wiki rather than being maintained here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I am only projecting that there will be interest in Kardashian in 100 years, much in the same way that I am interested in Bly and Nesbit in the present day. How it gets organized then is up to editors not yet born. patsw (talk) 04:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I have always disagreed with the concept that Notability is forever. Notability needs to be substantiated by reference to reliable sources. In order to say that someone (or some thing) from the past is notable today, we need relatively modern substantiation to show that the person remains notable. In other words, we need some evidence to indicate that interest (outside of wikipedia) is ongoing. We need relatively modern sources to continue to discuss the historical person (or topic). We can say that Nellie Bly and Evelyn Nesbit remain notable, not because some Wikipedian is interested in them, but because there are relatively modern sources that discuss them. Those sources show ongoing interest outside of Wikipedia. Blueboar (talk) 15:51, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

We "need modern sources" not because we have to prove modern people are interested in a thing, but because we're writing in the modern day, the sources have to be extant, and we can't publish our own research here. As such, I think you're rather conflating the issues of notability and possibility. Taking a longer view of things, as time passes and data rot sets in Wikipedia will eventually itself become part of the historical record, with articles on notable subjects existing that could not have been written at a later date due to source ephemerality. This isn't a failing on the part of Wikipedia, it's why we're forming a database to begin with. --erachima talk 16:23, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it's not a smart idea to work on the assumption that data sources "rot"; once published, it should be assumed to have always been published. We should not be assuming that WP will take up that role in the far future. --MASEM (t) 16:29, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Everything rots. All encyclopedias go from collections of current information to historical documents over time, and ignoring that fact in any discussion of Wikipedia's hypothetical role in the future would be negligent. --erachima talk 16:36, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

This exposes a sharp disagreement I have with Blueboar and erachima: What's needed are not "modern sources" but "modern Wikipedia article creators" who can draw from sources from any historical period. We have articles here incorporating text, and substantially duplicating them, from works for which the copyright has expired. While some can be improved over the passage of time, some articles written here will be not need to be changed. I am appealing somewhat philosophically here that there's an objective standard for the utility of knowledge in written form, and one that isn't subject to whats gets views in a particular culture, particular place, particular time, particular medium, etc. and therefore independent of "modern sources" that announce interest in a topic by that source's author in 2011. patsw (talk) 19:24, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

How is that in disagreement with my position, exactly? --erachima talk 19:37, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

What's needed are not "modern sources" but "modern Wikipedia article creators". Sources from any historical era can be adapted, summarized, etc. to be added as a Wikipedia article. I wouldn't require, and would reject as a new requirement in policy, that "modern sources" would be required as part of the process here, at least for the purpose of validating interest in a topic in 2011. Since you mentioned "extant" sources, pre-Internet sources which are on paper or microfilm in research libraries might actually be more accessible and verifiable than some newer electronic content that's been deleted or become otherwise inaccessible. patsw (talk) 20:44, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

OK then, we don't disagree, though we were seemingly assuming different senses of the word modern. --erachima talk 23:04, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

This modern sources idea is getting on to something. While George Washington, as an example, is a topic that rarely sees changes, many people are writing about him today. While this does not ban contemporary sources about historical topics, the presence of modern sources maybe should be required to establish notability. I can't imagine hardly any of our historical articles lack such modern sources, even as they co-exist with historical ones. Also, a historical source that has been republished in modern times should count as a modern source. As far as defining modern, I think the last 50 years works reasonably well. Again, there are very few historical topics that no one writes about for 50 years. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 02:27, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely not; this will never fly, otherwise we should immediately restrict any coverage of contemporary topics until 50 years out to assure that we only are adding topics that have long-term notability (and I see that going over like a lead balloon, particularly when there is praise of WP's current event coverage). We are not a paper work, we have unlimited space, meaning that we can cover a lot more topics that gain notability through short-term notarity. --MASEM (t) 14:37, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

That's pretty much the exact opposite of what I said. I suggested that we require that topics have a source within the last 50 years. Do you think all the sources on Barack Obama are from more than 50 years ago? Of course not, none of them are. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 15:21, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

No, the situation you are describing would require this. Take Kim Kardashian. Ok, by your metrics, she'd have an article (with coverage in the last year), but lets assume that you're right and no one ever prints anything about her ever again from 2012 onward. So we have this article, and then we get to 2061, and by the logic you have stated, the article would be no longer appropriate, hence we should delete it. But then why spend the time to create and improve an article that is clearly notable in the short term (<50 yr), when we're just going to delete it later? Per this logic, it makes no sense to develop any article until we're sure that the topic continually comes up in sources over all time. Even if we did keep the articles, we'd then have to have daily pruning of all topics that have lacked coverage for 50+ yrs. And then there's the case that something that has been unreferenced by sources for longer than 50 yrs suddenly becoming important again; we'd have deleted the original article by the logic given and will be forced to recreate it from scratch.

That's why it's important to stress that we are not paper. We can allow for topics that pass notability, even if for a brief period of time, without worrying about re-evaluating their notability later; we aren't pressed for space. We still need to be vigilant between notability that comes from a short-term event, and the brief burst of news that doesn't ultimately give any sort of notability, to avoid indiscriminate information. --MASEM (t) 16:14, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

What’s the point of this discussion? An editor suggests that notability (WP’s inclusion hurdle) should be limited by time (only modern sources). And we bite without even examining the strategic goals of the project. Instead we ought to be thinking completely different. Here’s why>

• Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. (from Wikimedia.org)
• A Wikipedia article is the history of something documented in encyclopedic form. That history is a form of knowledge.
• Once something exists, its history never goes away, it’s always there. It may be reinterpreted and improved upon, but it never goes away. Troy existed, therefore it has a WP article. What we know about John Q. Public is what we know, regardless of when we learned it or when a reliable source documented it.
• Our notability hurdle is simple: the existence of reliable sources that can verify the coverage of the history of a subject.
• The current hurdle is a reasonable compromise between the historic paradigm of print encyclopedias and the emerging paradigm of essentially unlimited ability to document, store and access knowledge.

If we really want to further the strategic goals of WP and the foundation, our discussions ought to be about ways in which we can lower the hurdle and put more knowledge in the encyclopedia, not raising it. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:12, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe that notability includes subjects that either are notable, or were notable. I would also argue that Wikipedia includes many subjects that are not notable anyway (encyclopedias are also compendiums), of which 7000 lumps of space rock, zillions of plant and animal species (eg. Bulbophyllum), and as many chemicals are examples. --Iantresman (talk) 16:27, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

If we confuse the WP concept of notability (an inclusion hurdle) with the dictionary concepts of notability (famousness and importance) then you are right. But lets not get confused that way. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:42, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, back to the beginning. My original point was that a space tourism went out of business and never once even came close to sending someone to space. Maybe the real problem in this case was the presumption that having a Wikipedia article meant it was notable. Such a presumption is circular logic and clearly false. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 02:04, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Part of your answer might be in Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary and secondary sources#Secondary_sources_for_notability.

Sources do "rot": what we consider to be a secondary source on (for example) President Obama right now is going to be considered a primary source 500 years from now.

Additionally, in recent-event sorts of articles, we have a serious problem with people who don't realize that WP:Secondary does not mean independent. So they produce independent-but-primary sources (say, a newspaper story on the founder of the space tourism company) and erroneously claim that this type of source is "secondary" and therefore proves the notability of the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Er, I'm not convinced that modern sources can "rot" over time from being a secondary to a primary source. Arguably, as long as we are in the modern age where we can generally trace attributes of a source to the work it was in and know about the reliability of the work, a secondary source will always remain a secondary source; counter that to a document written hundreds of years ago by a presumed author; it may have been, at that time, a secondary source by definition, but because we lack full knowledge of its source and purpose, we'd have to treat it as primary. However, this is probably not an issue towards the present discussion. --MASEM (t) 14:23, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Donde - I think your logic is flawed My original point was that a space tourism went out of business and never once even came close to sending someone to space. is irrelevant. Take for example Perpetual Motion Machine - Perpetual Motion is a hypothetical, it doesn't exist in reality, yet we have an article on it because a sufficent number of RS discuss it. It's all about the inclusion hurdle, not about the current state of the real world. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

We have articles on notable failures; failure or lack or produce something is sometimes a critical part of a history of a larger topic, and thus as long as the failure was notable, we can have an article on it. This doesn't mean every company that has promised something revolutionary and then folded before creating any product is necessarily notable. But if secondary sources have noted the company and their resulting failure, then the company is notable. --MASEM (t) 14:23, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

In this case, no one has noted the companies failure. It was only deduced based on a website that has been "under construction" for over a year. Therefore, the company's failure has no notability, and the company had no successes. The notability temporary policy was misconstrued to say that the company is notable despite never accomplishing anything and despite that no one commented on its failure. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 01:49, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I already submitted my comment to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sprague Astronautics Company, Inc and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AERA Corporation (2nd nomination). What's relevant to the discussion here is that the announcement was covered and there was no further coverage. There probably are quite a few companies that got their announcements covered in reliable sources yet never actually developed or operated as a Space tourism company. The content from these articles doesn't need to discarded, it can be merged into List of private spaceflight companies or the space tourism article - perhaps in an Announcement only section. There's no necessity to rewrite this guideline for the sake of any Kardashian or non-operating space tourism company. patsw (talk) 02:59, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Making a declaration that this guideline is not the only thing that restricts article creation

I mentioned this earlier, but decided to wait until the affected article was resolved, but its gone into formal mediation. In the meantime, Talk:The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition#‎continued deletion of this article came up totally independant of the Sailor Moon discussion basically stating the same manta; it meets the WP:GNG so its fine. End of story. This imo shows evidence that the lack of this clarification is causing either confusion or empowering elwayering (I am assuming here until proven otherwise it is the former).

As an aside, this is also why I think we need WP:Notability (video games). These remaketitles are exactly the kind of thing the GNG allows and none of our other policies/guidelines deal with directly (trying to apply NPOV is probably not the best. I wish people would grasp that when I proposed it the last 2 times.∞陣内Jinnai 19:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

...we haven't solved that problem yet either? Eh, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, the issue of project-specific notability guidelines always tended to get eaten up by the more general intractable debate of WP:FICT.
That particular article really seems like the few bits of it that don't just belong as a blurb in the articles of the respective games bundled within it would be included in List of The Legend of Zelda media. --erachima talk 19:57, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Is there any reason not to have the article? You shouldn't try to destroy something simply because you don't like it. The Wikipedia has no limit in space. And if you don't like the article, you probably won't find it without searching for it anyway. Dream Focus 02:33, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

That the sources aren't strictly about the Collector's Edition (or translation, or re-printing, or other spin-off product), and consequently don't prove that the single edition is really a good idea for an article? I can find sources that specifically discuss exact printings of Jane Austen's books, but I hope that you wouldn't conclude from those sources that the Book of the Month Club edition of each of those novels was worthy of a separate article.

I'm not convinced that even a bold-face, blinking red notice would solve the problem, but how about adding (to the second paragraph of the lead) "Just because a topic meets the minimum sourcing standards for notability does not mean that it must or should be handled as a separate article. To be notable, a subject must have not only sufficient sources, but also comply with WP:NOT and be thought an appropriate way of handling the subject by editors."

If you want something more significant, then we could try a section like this:

Notability requires editors to use their judgment
A presumption of notability is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Deciding whether a possibly notable subject is best handled as a stand-alone article requires editors to use their judgment. Even if a subject meets the minimum sourcing standards and complies with the exclusion criteria at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, it might still be judged non-notable (not suitable for a separate article) because it is better for readers to present it as part of a larger subject. For example, there may be sufficient high-quality sources on a specific translation of a given book, and an article on that narrow subject is not prohibited by any policy. However, editors normally prefer to merge information like that into the larger subject of the original book, because in their editorial judgment, the merged article is more informative and more balanced for readers and reduces redundant information in the encyclopedia. For ideas on how to deal with material that may be best handled by placing it in another article, see WP:FAILN.

I'm still not convinced that it will have any practical effect, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The above text is a mess of pseudo-legalese and double negatives (with qualifiers) to get across four words: Articles may be merged. patsw (talk) 13:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

There's one logical flaw as well: " judged non-notable (not suitable for a separate article)" wrongly says that judging to be unsuitable for an article is per se judging to be non-notable Should read simply: "not suitable for a separate article" North8000 (talk) 13:33, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

No, that's not a logical flaw. On en.wiki, notability == suitable for a separate article. Anything not suitable for a separate article is non-(wiki)notable. The parenthetical phrase exists in that sentence for the purpose of reminding editors that the sentence is using the wikijargon definition, not the dictionary definition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

This deals with a common way of mis-reading/mis-applying many wiki policies & guidelines, which is to say that meeting ONE of the criteria for inclusion means that it should be included. North8000 (talk) 13:36, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I think only one sentence is needed, in the lead, after the second paragraph: Conversely, we do not require an article to be created on any presumed notable topic; editorial discretion through consensus may group two or more notable topics into a single artilce. --MASEM (t) 13:47, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

My tweak for simpler wording and to avoid the circularity of using notable inside its own definition is: Conversely, we do not require an article which meets the criteria described below to be created. At the discretion of editors, through consensus, articles can be merged. patsw (talk) 15:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

If you want to go that route, then it should be Conversely, we do not require an article which meets the criteria described below to be created exist. At the discretion of editors, through consensus, articles can be merged.∞陣内Jinnai 18:28, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The context for the second paragraph of the guideline is that the article has not yet been created. patsw (talk) 03:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

But a merge discussion does not occur until after an article has been created.∞陣内Jinnai 03:29, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with the notion that what we see here is a problem of overbroad Notability. The basic and broad definition of notability used across Wikipedia is fine in my view. To include a line like Masem suggests that "Notability does not mandate or guarantee a stand-alone article" is one thing but to attempt to define notability as WhatamIdoing has - as a concept whose existence rests under Wikipedia's other criteria (e.g. those in WP:NOT, WP:CONS, etc) is to truly obscure its meaning away from the common-sense understanding and to turn it into a very specific term of art that new editors are sure to find confusing and distressing. Notability is one of the core principles of guidelines covering article existence on Wikipedia and it has served us extremely well in the past. If anything, I strongly urge the creation of a disclaimer consistent with the current rules instead of a redefinition of notability.

I think a disclaimer should cover the following points:

• Notability of a subject generally means that the subject should be covered within Wikipedia. (subject to specific limits in WP:NOT, etc.)
• Coverage can consist of anything between a few lines in a related article to the full text of a stand-alone article on the subject.
• Editorial consensus is the touchstone for this editorial decision.

Again, I believe that the basic definition of Notability is very good and shouldn't be tampered with. I would be open to more specific definitions of notability applying only to smaller groups like WP:VG for instance. I commend Jinnai's work on helping to craft WP:Notability (video games) and it seems to me that if notability is to be redefined then this is the laboratory in which it should be done to create a minimum of disruption and ill will. -Thibbs (talk) 13:20, 15 December 2011 (UTC) (strikethrough in view of Colonel Warden's coment -Thibbs (talk) 15:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC))

We have to be careful on wording however. Your points above, taken as is (hopefully not intentionally), imply between the lines that we don't cover non-notable topics ever, which is wrong. Non-notable topics can be covers, but are generally restricted to within the context of a larger work (common case: fictional characters or specific episodes of a show). That's why only one simple line - "being notable does not require an article to be made" - to address the point this discussion started with. --MASEM (t) 13:39, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think any such an implication can be fairly read into the points I presented. That notability implies coverage in Wikipedia doesn't mean that lack of notability implies non-coverage any more than that criminality indicates poor morals means that lack of criminality indicates good morals. But anyway the points I brought up were not offered as a potential disclaimer. They were supposed to be points contained in a well-worded disclaimer. The disclaimer you suggest gives no indication of the fact that article existence rests on editorial consensus before notability, but otherwise it is basically fine. -Thibbs (talk) 13:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

As I said, I wasn't hoping that was the case, I just read that and could see wikilawyers going to the matter to exclude non-notable material if they were written like that. --MASEM (t) 14:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. In a nutshell I'd put it like this:

Without regard to non-notable material, the default presumption should be that notable material belongs on wikipedia in some form. This presumption should only be overcome by contrary policy/guideline or by consensus. The form that the material takes should also be based on consensus. -Thibbs (talk) 14:52, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Notability is not a core principle; it is not even a policy. This page was only created about 5 years ago while Wikipedia is 10 years old. Regarding videogames, we should note that the genre is now bigger than Hollywood and bigger than radio. It is now becoming common to see videogame reviews in mainstream newspapers when these were unknown just a few years ago. But old media such as newspapers and radio are moribund and so we should look for coverage of new media within the new media itself. Notability is a weak guide while these transitions are so revolutionary and so we must be careful not to make rigid rules which will soon become outdated. Warden (talk) 14:08, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd say it's an outgrowth of WP:V and WP:RS. WP:N serves to give guidance on what RS-based material it is appropriate to cover. Even a mere guideline that has served for 5 years shouldn't be lightly dismissed as trivial. At any rate this isn't a discussion about the utility of WP:N as it applies to video games. It's a discussion of whether or not WP:N should be tweaked to remind editors that Notability doesn't require stand-alone article coverage. -Thibbs (talk) 14:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

To reiterate the issue starting this: there's no question that video games are notable; most published ones get articles, etc. etc. The issue is that there's re-releases and ports of older games on newer systems; no change in gameplay or story, very little that can be said about the update's creation, but will often get review coverage in appropriate sources. For all practical purposes, the remakes meet the GNG. Whether these should get articles or not, however, is the point in question, and the issue raised is that we aren't forced to create a new article on the remake just because it meets the GNG. If all that is "new" is new review scores, a article combining the original game and remake makes more sense; otherwise the new article is going to repeat much of the old article's core sections. Thus the request here was to make sure there's clear language that meeting the GNG does not immediately require an article to be created. --MASEM (t) 14:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. I think it's a good idea to bear in mind that WP:N applies to even non-video-game articles, though. So as you said earlier, careful wording is essential if we are editing WP:N. One option that would require less careful wording would be to narrow the definition of notability in a WikiProject guideline akin to WP:Notability (video games). But if this is a nonstarter then we should proceed with caution before altering site-wide guidelines. -Thibbs (talk) 14:52, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I'd rather see cases where the GNG may be easily met but article creation is not usually made as part of a field's/project's own guidelines or style, instead of creating a new SNG. SNGs should only be created in cases where a field's articles are often questioned for inclusion at AFD or other places but are shown later to be kept or deemed appropriate by consensus, such that some type of criteria can be written to show that. If the GNG works for a field with minimal exceptions, there's no reason to break out a new SNG (Which needs to have global consensus , etc. etc. ) So specifically here, it would be a case to talk about the notability and article creation for remakes at the VG project guidelines (WP:VG/G) than to create Notability (video games), since we're not arguing around the GNG itself. --MASEM (t) 15:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

You mean that an SNG should only be used (or primarily is used) to expand the concept of notability in a field rather than to narrow it? If this is more readily handled by WikiProject guidelines then that sounds fine. -Thibbs (talk) 15:29, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This might be getting off track, but to be explicit: an SNG should only be created if there is a number of articles on topics of a specific class that meet a specific criteria that may not be immediately shown to be notable by the GNG, but consensus believes them to be notable in the long run; the SNG then spells out that criteria so that we're not flooding AFD with arguments on articles that would otherwise be kept for notability but presently lack GNG-type sourcing. For example: a person winning the Nobel Prize award is bound to be notable, even if finding sources prior to the award receipt may be difficult, and thus Notability (people) covers this case. SNGs are not necessarily needed when the GNG is nearly always meet for a group of topics within a field but the associated Wikiproject or a larger consensus agrees that each topic need not have its own article. NBOOKS does this to an extent (in addition to the above aspects), but I believe many WProjects have similar types of guidance.

The important distinction between these cases is that the first case - where an SNG may be needed - needs to have community approval as it is talking about the inclusion of topics as individual articles; this should not be a decision made solely by one group or wikiproject though they may certainly be the drafters and proponents of it. The second case - where project-level guidance is only needed - is because we're not talking about inclusion of topics (GNG already allows that) but when it just makes sense to keep topics grouped together because of the likeliness of a poorer-quality article at the end of the day. --MASEM (t) 16:26, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

OK then if we opt not to go for a lengthy global consensus, it seems we're left with either adding video game specific details of notability to WP:VG's content guideline and/or adding a clearer disclaimer to WP:N that notability alone doesn't mandate a full article on the topic. -Thibbs (talk) 16:53, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure we have that at WP:VG, but the issue may be that people see this guideline has having more authority than that. Hence we technically need both; a broad statement here on the idea that notability doesn't mandate an article, and guidelines at the project level on examples where we don't need new articles on notable topics. --MASEM (t) 17:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

A little history on why this guideline is the criteria for a stand-alone article

Concepts like "reliable source" and "defamation" predate the existence of Wikipedia. The guidelines WP:RS, WP:BLP, etc. mirror something in the real world. When it comes to a unique core idea of what is the Wikipedia is, it was easier for the initial group of editors to describe that in terms of what the Wikipedia is not. Later on, to create something objective, predictable, consistent, etc. to apply WP:NOT at the stand-alone article level, the WP:N tests were created (replacing having a consensus of editors evaluate each newly created article without regard to any earlier decisions or any pattern of decision-making). On the other hand, the threshold tests for content for existing articles are relevance and verifiability. Whenever people apply the word notability to the relevance, significance, accuracy, the quality of writing, etc. to proposed additions to the content of an existing article, a mess ensues. patsw (talk) 16:49, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

As a guideline it does only provide a presumption of inclusion for notable topics, though. I think the point that is being made above is that this presumption is misunderstood by some editors as a mandate. Whether any clearer disclaimer is required within the article is debatable but based on what you say I think we'd be in agreement that the definition of notability presented in WP:N and the GNG should not be tampered with to restrict it in any way. -Thibbs (talk) 16:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The presumption from what I've seen by a number of otherwise reasonable, long-standing editors is that meeting the GNG is enough except in extrodrinary cases. The "presumption" appears from my talks to be "mandate" or that something gets an article until otherwise proven it fails other policy/guideline pages. Sometimes, those people are resonable when shown NPOV, NOT, etc, but often these aren't because they point back at the GNG (specifically the GNG and not WP:N, and say something along the lines of "It meets the GNG therefore it should have an article." as though the GNG is the most important criteria in whether an article should be kept, merged/redirected or deleted.∞陣内Jinnai 18:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Well I'd say that an interpretation of WP:N suggesting that simply meeting GNG is sufficient to mandate and article despite WP:NOT or despite consensus to the contrary is an interpretation that the text of WP:N does not support. In other words it seems to me that we are speaking of interpretation problems and not problems with the actual guideline. How to correct this problem is a good question but I don't think it would help to redefine notability. A carefully worded disclaimer seems to me the best solution.

As far as where the presumption should lie, I think that the basic model for Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia about everything and as such it is helpful to have presumptions that favor inclusion. As patsw points out, the original inclusion criteria were left open and were only limited in the negative by WP:NOT. It's clear that Wikipedia's unstated content policy is that it is about everything except those things that it is not about. This is quite different from saying that it is about nothing but those things that it is about. There is no definition, after all, for what it is about. I believe that reversing the presumption is a mistake and that it represents a return to the very problem WP:N was intended to cure - the requirement for a consensus of editors to individually evaluate and approve each article prior to its inclusion. If a consensus forms to delete or to merge an article despite its having survived a WP:NOT analysis, having met WP:N, and having met all other relevant requirements (WP:V, WP:RS, WP:BLP, WP:NPOV, etc) then so be it. But to presume that such an article is unworthy of inclusion unless a consensus forms to specially allow it is counterproductive. I think it is enough to simply state that although topics meeting WP:N are presumed to be approved for inclusion, they are not guaranteed stand-alone articles if they fail other policies/guidelines or if consensus runs to the contrary. -Thibbs (talk) 19:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Another way of thinking about WP:GNG is that by passing it, the burden of argument shifts from the advocates of a topic becoming article to those opposed to the topic becoming an article. Certainly, that was the intent of the people who created the presumption phrasing. patsw (talk) 20:38, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Since the conversation seems to have died down, and people seem to generally agree that something along the "no guarantee" and "editorial discretion is good" lines ought to be in the lead (rather than a separate section), I've taken some of the text above and added it to the second paragraph (the above-suggested location). Other people should feel free to take a whack at improving it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Just for the sake of readability, A presumption of notability is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. can be better written as This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. since it clear what the antecedent of this is from the context. patsw (talk) 02:58, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

At the risk of suggesting the antecedent is ambiguous, I like this language better because I think the caveat applies not only to the presumption but also to that which is presumed. Something that is "notable" may be covered in a standalone article, but it is not the case that it must be. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:32, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

"Permit not guarantee" is an important point that needs to be more prominent. North8000 (talk) 15:38, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

some thing about the notability of wikipedica

hey every one and morning. i am here just to say the real mature thing you wont have wonder to ask but still i am confused that the whole world, media in it and all the situations arising are almost limited.is there any thing to be explored in some thing separate, desperate , i am sory to say that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mirror iffi (talk • contribs) 20:10, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Related RFC

Any input in the current discussion at Talk:Ariel A. Roth#RfC: Adventist sources in the article, which to my eyes directly relates to this policy and WP:RS as well, would be greatly appreciated. John Carter (talk) 22:46, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it doesn't. There's no question that Ariel A. Roth meets the WP:BIO criteria. patsw (talk) 15:33, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Subjectivity

We've got a discussion here at WT:ORG that might benefit from a few extra voices. At the moment, we have an editor who is absolutely convinced that "subjective" sources (like art critic reviews), no matter how reliable, independent, etc., do not demonstrate that the subject of the review has received any "attention by the world at large" (because, you know, one reviewer might disagree with another, so attention from professional art critics isn't really attention).

As the editor mostly works in food-related articles, most of the examples focus on the Michelin Guide (he's unhappy that the guideline mentions it as an example, similar to Oscar winners, of a situation in which you might want to presume notability initially, rather than presuming non-notability, which is what we normally do for individual restaurants), but the sweeping rejection of all reliable sources that aren't strictly factual concerns me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Attention does not necessarily mean positive attention. Even a negative review in a high circulation publication like the Michelin guide will be seen by a lot of people... hence the presumption of notability. That said, I would agree that appearing in only one guide (no matter how well known that guide is) is not enough to fully establish notability all on its own. I think we need several reliable secondary sources that discuss the subject before we say that notability is properly established. Blueboar (talk) 14:28, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Some artwork and people are notable strictly because of the wholly condemnatory attention they have received. I don't know if confusing "objective evidence of attention" with "evidence of objective attention" is a common enough error to bother clarifying here, but we could include something at NRVE like, "Sources are not required to be unbiased to demonstrate that the subject has received attention. Attention from sources may be positive, negative, mixed, or neutral." WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:36, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Of course that isn't really the underlying issue at WP:ORG... the question there is whether we should consider every restaurant that appears in the Michelin Guide inherently notable, merely because it has been written up in that guide. At the moment WP:ORG says we should (on the theory that Michelin guides are so influential that they "confer" notability on the restaurants they review.) I am not so sure this is right. I have a problem saying anything is inherently notable, and I definitely have a problem with assessing notability if only one source mentions the subject (even if that one sources is as prestigious as the Michelin guide). I would say the same if the only source to mention it was the New York Times. I think we need at least two sources. Blueboar (talk) 20:48, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't read it that way. I read it as saying that we haven't yet encountered at Fortune 500 company that wasn't actually notable (multiple, non-trivial independent sources, etc.)—assuming, as always, that the editor did a proper search for sources, which isn't always done. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

OK... but if there were a Fortune 500 company that did not have multiple, non-trivial independent sources, etc. would you say that being listed makes it notable? Blueboar (talk) 17:07, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Certainly not: what makes a subject notable is the existence of sufficient, suitable, independent sources and compliance with NOT and editorial judgment. Even possession of multiple, non-trivial independent sources is not sufficient to make something notable.

Such a listing, however, does make it worthy of a rebuttable presumption of notability, because we've apparently never yet encountered a similar subject that didn't turn out to be notable when properly scrutinized. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

The idea is right here, but I disagree on the specific example of the Fortune 500. It is a list based on gross revenues less reported taxes. There is no subjectivity made by Forbes to put companies on that list. As such, it's not really a good place to start to argue for notability on WP, even if it is the case that every company listed on the Forbes 500 has met the GNG notability requirements otherwise. It would be different if there was some subjective elements to indicate how Forbes chose and ranked the companies on the list, and if that was a reasonable attribute that would lead to notability. A list "The top 500 companies for future growth" is certainly a valid idea, "The top 500 companies with the best headquarters building" is probably not. Alternatively, I could argue that a much smaller list, say the top 10 or so companies in gross revenue, will likely be of more notice than just being in the top 500, but we still have to be careful here. Effectively, if the inclusion on the guide is not subjective, it does not immediately follow that notability can be presumed from inclusion in that guide. --MASEM (t) 19:42, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Masem that Fortune 500 is the wrong analog since these are public companies, and Fortune (Magazine) is applying objective criteria than can easily be verified. Each Fortune 500 company will have an abundance of reliable sources. The smallest F500 has $4.3 Bln in revenues (Seaboard Corporation). The Wikipedia is rather lop-sided when it comes to U.S. public companies for which even the smallest has public disclosure of its finances. On the other hand private companies, if they disclose information, is it not subject to verification unless it is given up as a consequence of a legal action.

When it comes to matters of restaurants which are mostly privately held, there's only compilations of reviews that we can regard as being objective and avoiding a conflict of interest. When it comes to an entry in Michelin Guide, I think that only the most unmotivated editor here would fail to obtain a second or third source establishing the prominence of the restaurant. Now if the argument could be made that Guide is no longer objective, for example, their reviewers have a bias other than evaluating the quality of food, this would be another discussion. It's a feedback loop: if the Guide were consistent in failing to recognize the best restaurants, or promoting restaurants of poor quality, their sales would collapse eventually. patsw (talk) 05:08, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I basically don't understand this response.

Okay: the sole point of this sentence is to say, "Look: if all the orgs in this famous list that we've ever looked into have actually proven to be notable in the past (and they certainly have), then you can safely assume (initially) that all the others on that list are probably notable, too."

The point is not to say, "This is an excellent reliable source showing excellent, independent editorial judgment by a reputable publisher who's providing us with significant coverage and thoughtful inclusion, and this kind of source is really the epitome of the ideal sources we'd like to see people presenting at an AFD."

So on the one hand, you're saying, "Yuck, what a mindlessly mechanical selection with trivial coverage."

On the other hand, you're saying, "Each Fortune 500 company will have an abundance of reliable sources."

And I'm supposed to conclude from this universally agreed fact that "Each Fortune 500 company will have an abundance of reliable sources" that being a Fortune 500 company is not a marker for being notable?

(NB "marker", as in "having high cholesterol is a biomarker for risk of heart disease", not "direct proof", as in "having an occlusive heart attack is direct proof that you have heart disease".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

The better way to think of this is "correlation without causation". The companies on the Fortune 500 list are there because they brought in lots of money. But as we know, wealth, like fame and importance, aren't necessarily elements of WP's definition of notability. It is by happenstance that the bulk (if not all) the companies on the F500 are notable, but its not because they are on the F500, but that they are very large companies with long histories and clear presence in the market. What about the company that would be 501 on the list? Are they not notable for being one position off? Basically, as an objective list, it shouldn't be used to assure notability in an SNG but can be used as a source to help support a GNG position for a company. The company's aren't in that list because they are notable. --MASEM (t) 17:13, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree: it is correlation, not causation. And that's the whole point of the statement in the guideline. Inclusion in a "Best of" list is usually worthless as an indication of notability, but there are some famous lists whose members happen to all be notable. Fortune 500 is one such list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

My point is that we shouldn't be using lists that are based on straight-up objective measures as singular data points in an SNG fashion for notability. Just because historically all F500 companies are notable doesn't mean that a company that starts up next year and suddenly rakes in enough revenue quietly behind the scenes to put them in the last 10% of the list, will be automatically be notable because they were on the list. I realize this is an exceptional case, covered under IAR and presumed notability, but I would like to make sure that we're being careful about lists that are made on a subjective measure (and thus likely part of their notability) and lists made on an objective measure (which may not necessarily be part of notability). The former type is certainly okay to use as a presumption of notability assuming the past history of the list; the latter type should be carefully considered before accepting inclusion as defacto notability. There's a range of such lists and guides between the F500 and the Michelin guides where notability of all entrants will vary significantly, so each list/guide needs to be considered on its own there. --MASEM (t) 17:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks like a matter of degree. There's an approximately zero chance that a Fortune 500 company will be non-notable. Looks like there is a significant chance that a business (even with star(s))in the Michelin guide will be non-notable. North8000 (talk) 18:02, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

It would be interesting to know if there actually are restaurant entries in the Michelin Guide for which there is no other WP:RS coverage. patsw (talk) 18:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

As an author of quite a few articles about Michelin starred restaurants, I must say that only once I came into trouble to proof a starred restaurant was notable. I could not find proper sources on the star-restaurant Doorwerth Castle. That turned around when I found out that the name of the restaurant was Beaulieu, and soon I had enough sources for the article Beaulieu, Doorwerth Castle. In all other cases sources were easy to find. Night of the Big Wind _talk 23:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I've asked repeatedly—and I'm certainly open to the idea that a merely listed restaurant could be non-notable—and nobody has yet been able to identify a single example of a non-notable restaurant being listed in the Guide. It is generally conceded, even by those that hate the list, that all restaurants with a star have received a tremendous amount of media coverage and will meet the GNG trivially. This is pretty much unavoidable, because "we toured all the Michelin star restaurants in this area" is a staple of certain luxury magazines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:10, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

My understanding, as I have not seen them but going from the discussion, that while the US versions of the guide are strictly limited to restaurants given Michelin stars, the ones in Europe include unstarred ones in addition to starred ones. A starred restaurant is certainly an aspect of notability, but the unstarred ones are not. --MASEM (t) 00:37, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I was trying to clarify how there's no mystery to the Fortune 500 list. It is simply the revenues reported by U.S. incorporated companies reported in government filings. The 2011 cutoff was $4.3 Bln. It's that simple. There's no editorial discretion. (By the way, the definition is here, and some web sites have misstated its definition). Now think about what's needed to have a company have revenues of $4.3 Bln... It is improbable, perhaps highly improbable that its activities does not create the significant coverage to pass a WP:GNG test. The edge case for U.S. public companies probably starts around $500 million in revenues i.e. its activities may not create the significant coverage to pass a WP:GNG test. (Some big real estate investment trusts drop off the edge of WP:N by way of example).

Since we are dealing with guidelines here, of course we are talking in terms of probable, likely, exception. In actual contested cases, we have the evidence or absence of coverage. I am not certain the labels correlation and causation are useful to apply here. The largest companies by revenue is not merely a marker of something, it is something. patsw (talk) 18:27, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Revenue is something concrete, but it is also a marker for something else. Having enormous revenues is highly correlated with having gallons of printer's ink spilled on your behalf. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:10, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

"Printer's ink" is not a necessary nor a sufficient criteria for inclusion of a topic in Wikipedia. Among criteria, it can be called the "king of criteria", but WP:GNG cannot be identical to WP:N, or at least it has never been so. patsw (talk) 01:29, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Um... WP:GNG is part of WP:N (As I see it... WP:N is the broad principle while WP:GNG expresses the "rules" we have formed based upon that principle) Blueboar (talk) 13:46, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

That's not in dispute. patsw (talk) 15:22, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Um, "printer's ink", in the metaphorical sense of a source choosing to publish something about the subject, is a necessary condition for including a topic in Wikipedia. We do not accept articles with zero independent sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Notability of railway stations

Should railway stations be considered intrinsically notable, or should they be judged against our general notability guideline?

A couple of people have, in past, told me that all railway stations are inherently notable. However, our existing documentation on the subject isn't clear:

• This essay does little to clarify this point.
• This essay on previous AfD outcomes is far from certain.

However, when past AfD outcomes are used as the basis for !votes in subsequent AfDs, we risk falling into circular reasoning.

I'd like to avoid any ambiguity (and circular reasoning) and start with a clean sheet. So:
Should railway stations be deemed automatically notable, or should they have to satisfy the GNG? bobrayner (talk) 05:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I have to agree with your analysis. Wikipedia:Notability (Railway lines and stations) is full of circularity of the form if a station is non-notable then it shouldn't have an article. My short answer is "no". A stub article should not be created with only the information identifying the station. Information on the station should be incorporated into the article for the line or the railway, assuming that an article for the line or railway exists. When there's coverage of that station in reliable sources, as opposed to a directory entry, that's the threshold for creating an article. To clear up the ambiguity of automatically notable, I take the phrase to mean that any station (named or unnamed) could have an article in Wikipedia stubbed in a trivial manner. For example, this would be the complete text of a hypothetical article: "'Springfield Station is a station on the Shelbyville-Springfild Railroad". patsw (talk) 16:24, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Just because there's a railway station doesn't meant that we would ultimately find secondary sources about that station. Primary sources (in terms of timetables, etc.) sure, but not secondary (why it was built, its importance to the rail system/community it serves, etc.) Without that assurance, there's no special SNG allowance for it, and thus no, no automatic notability. GNG coverage is sufficient for it. --MASEM (t) 16:42, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd also have to agree with you. Nothing is intrinsically notable (I'd personally like to see a number of high school articles deleted), since things that are not covered by secondary sources have not yet been deemed worthy of note, and, hence, worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. A few exceptions might be specific objects related to encyclopedic topics like archaeology, biology, or physics. Reaper Eternal (talk) 17:24, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• No subject is inherently notable (=inherently worthy of a separate article on Wikipedia, even if the world at large has never paid any attention to it). Therefore, no railway station is inherently notable. If you can't find even a single WP:Independent source that discusses any given railway station in depth, then that station is not notable and does not qualify for a separate page on Wikipedia. I suspect that decent sources are available for most railway stations, but for those few that have been ignored by the sources, then we shouldn't have an article about them. It's not possible to write an article that complies with WP:V or NPOV unless you have an independent source available.
  Having said that, "doesn't get its own page" does not mean "can't be included anywhere". Non-notable railway stations could easily merged into lists ("List of stations on the Blank Line") or towns ("Smallville#Rail transportation"), with suitable redirects to help readers find them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:40, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

There's an ambiguity with the phrase itself inherently notable which is why I avoid its use and encourage others to avoid its use. It could be taken to mean that a set is so important to human knowledge that each member of the set is potentially a stand-alone article in Wikipedia, that is, before any WP:N tests are applied to the topic. Such sets are numerous, and it is trivial to provide examples: Presidents of the United States, member states of the European Union, etc. Whether or not all such sets and their members already have articles in Wikipedia is conjectural. patsw (talk) 19:52, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Concur with patsw (well written, patsw!). Especially something in the nature of a train station ought to have a verifiable, published history with sources. Those latter components are the foundation of any article here. The entire universe is notable; the question is, does it have the necessary citations?--Djathinkimacowboy ^{come get some} 20:07, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. There are many sets that are "so important" (in the real world) that every member has had ample sources published about them. But it's not "being so important" that makes them qualify for an article on Wikipedia; it's having had ample sources published about them.

The end result is the same, but this is a matter of causality. Having ample sources (and passing NOT and meeting editorial judgment) makes a subject notable (=qualify for a separate article). "Being so important" does not make the subject notable, even if "being so important" happens to (normally) correlate with being notable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:22, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• I do not think a railway station is always notable. In most cases a listing in an article about the railway line involved will be sufficient. The exeptions are the big railway stations (like Grand Central Terminal, Amsterdam Centraal railway station and the much smaller Groningen railway station), and stations who have something special on offer (like Gare Montparnasse#1895 derailment, Rotterdam Stadion railway station, Earl Fitzwilliam's private railway station). A station like Sixmilebridge railway station does not deserve a stand alone article, in my opinion. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:52, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
  • The place to turn that thought into action would be in an AfD. I would oppose it because the Sixmilebridge railway station article contains some historically significant information that could not be obtained from a timetable. Alas, the editor entering it did not provide a reference. patsw (talk) 12:22, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
    • One step at a time, Patw. Let us finish this RfC first. Time enough. Night of the Big Wind _talk 14:49, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Again, well put pat. In spite of the stated disagreement by WhatamIdoing, I suspect I was correct in essence. Frankly, aside from formalities, I do not see what prohibits an editor from creating an article about any given train station, so long as said station has notability per se. With all that in mind, it's clear: a notable, well sourced station can and should have an article. A run-of-the-mill station will be difficult to have its own article anyway, due to lack of published verifiable sources.--Djathinkimacowboy ^{irrelevancies} 14:41, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

An important fact: the original query was, "Should railway stations be considered intrinsically notable, or should they be judged against our general notability guideline?"-- and I say the latter should hold true. Otherwise of what use is the gen. guide? Judge a railway station as all else is judged, by the general rules of notability.--Djathinkimacowboy ^{irrelevancies} 16:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

• Is the train station in Mountainair, New Mexico (pop.~1100) notable? Some folks swear they serve the best bowl of chili in the whole county! I am inclined to agree with the latter but, in the absence of reliable sources to the contrary, not the former. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:01, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I see your point except that a bowl of chili has nothing to do with the notability of a train station. By the way, please don't be offended at my very minor change to your post's format; would you do me the favour of indenting or outdenting your posts henceforth? Bulleted posts are unnecessarily confusing.--Djathinkimacowboy ^{chase me thru the cemetery} 09:02, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I have rebulleted Ningauble's comment, as I think it is clear that it was not meant as a comment to the remark immediately preceding it, but to the RFC, and as bulleted comments are custom practice in RFC's. If I'm wrong about this, Ningauble, please feel free to undo. - DVdm (talk) 10:10, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, my post was intended as a top-level response to the RfC. I posted a brief exempli gratia rather than a dissertation because I thought the counterexample of a small rural station made a self-evident point: although it is locally "famous" for something it is, like most rural stations that dot the countryside, probably not notable. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:13, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

• Not inherently notable, no. Many stations are very small, have little or no history, no architectural value, and so on. Redirects to larger articles may be better than deletions, but deletions would often at least be better than the generic stub articles we have now. As examples (but the same could probably be found for other countries), some Japanese train station articles from the start of the alphabet which have a photo of the station, which gives some idea of what kind of stations we are talking about: Agarimichi Station, Aizu-Hinohara Station (cute though), Aizu-Sanson-Dōjō Station, Akagi Station (Nagano), Akano Station, or the most obvious of them all IMO, Akatsuka Station (Shimane). I have not researched these any further, so some may be notable after all, but it would seem very unlikely that that last one has any chance of meeting WP:GNG at all. Fram (talk) 10:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

• I would prefer that they all be included per WP:NOTPAPER and the fact that they may be useful to a traveler some day. Selery (talk) 10:50, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Should we also have articles on all B&Bs, bakeries, post offices, MDs, and so on? These may all be useful for a traveler as well. We are not a travel guide but an encyclopedia though. WP:NOTPAPER only means that we shouldn't exclude articles because "we will run out of space!", not that we should include anything. Fram (talk) 10:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
    • I have no objections to including B&Bs, bakeries, post offices, or MDs if they have significant coverage in reliable secondary sources. Does that make me anti-encyclopedia? Selery (talk) 12:31, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Your first post implied that you wanted to include articles on railway stations that don't have "significant coverage in reliable secondary sources". If that was not your intention, then we have no disagreement. Otherwise your reply to me is not really relevant, as you are then comparing apples and oranges. Fram (talk) 12:41, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Notability page." No specific improvement is suggested and so this RfC is improper and should be closed per WP:NOTFORUM. If you want to discuss some essays then you're wasting your time because anyone can say pretty much anything in an essay. And, in any case, such discussions should take place on the talk pages for those essays. Warden (talk) 12:35, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
• Seconded. The point by Warden is well taken. This has become a forum and is offering no helpful addition to the question of notability.--Djathinkimacowboy ^{chase me thru the cemetery} 11:11, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
• Comment I assume "deem notable" is our practice of setting specific guidelines whereby we may assume that certain articles meet the GNG, shifting the burden of proof to show that they are not notable; this is not unreasonable, and helps to correct systematic bias that might be caused by the differential accessibility of sources. That said, it's difficult to imagine that railroad stations in general could be assumed to meet the GNG; even accounting for sources like local papers, it's clear that most railroad stations do not meet the GNG, particularly the requirement for "significant coverage". However, there seems to be a widespread belief, perhaps based on stare decisis from early AfDs and some specious arguments, that railway stations enjoy an inherent presumption of notability. While this may not be the best place, I think Bobrayner was right to seek reaffirmation of the notion that the GNG applies to railway station articles on an individual basis. (And this probably is a better approach than merging 20 stations into a new "List of stations on X line" and watching the fur fly to prove that point...) Choess (talk) 23:48, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Notability

Can someone help me explain the notability guideline here - User talk:Czarkoff#AfD? SL93 (talk) 00:21, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Czarkoff is correct; just because a topic passes the GNG doesn't mean its necessarily deserve its own article. Previous discussion. --MASEM (t) 00:30, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The software has coverage from many reliable sources. His only reasoning is that the software is no different from other instant messaging clients. SL93 (talk) 00:32, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

That's a completely fair argument to make. It's up to consensus at AFD if that's a stronger argument than if the sources are really showing the topic is notable. --MASEM (t) 00:33, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The consensus is keep with 6 keeps and only Czarkoff advocating for deletion. I'll just leave it be. Looking at the AfD, he is just beating a dead horse on local consensus. SL93 (talk) 00:37, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I will point out, glancing at the AFD (for Meebo?) that while Czarkoff's argue on being yet another IM client and thus arguing for deletion is within policy/guideline, the interpretion of what sources are given seem to be rather seem weak (There are apparently strong sources) and thus likely not going to gain consensus. But it is not that he Czarkoff is arguing a non-existent idea. It's a legit concept, but I'd argue what is the backing proof (or counter-proof) is not sufficient to evoke it. Remember, AFD is not a vote either, it's strength of arguments. --MASEM (t) 00:41, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually my point is not that it is just another IM, but that this IM is undistinguishable from other IMs of the same genre, and thus the genre should be covered instead of this exact software. Be it so or not, is a matter of consensus which is supposed to be reached in AfD. Given that nobody seems to ever evaluate this argument and SL93 being vocal about my undue behavior, this AfD seems to fail generating proper discussion already. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 00:57, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not saying that's a bad argument - it is a commonplace consideration for "barely" notable topics to cover them that way, etc. etc.

But as a word of note: if you're goal was to try to delete the various IM client articles in favor of a single article to cover them all (or an existing one), the right solution is to discuss a merge for these; the client names are likely search terms and thus if your idea was appropriate, the articles would be replaced w/o admin action as redirects to the single article. Deletion is meant as a last resort, but that's not what you were aiming for, as you've said now. --MASEM (t) 01:02, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

It was really nice to form a prejudice of me not understanding the concept of notability and ask everyone to tell me that. I thought that requesting others' opinions on Wikipedia was supposed to be done in unbiased way. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 00:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Like I said, I'm done. The discussion would be over if you stop posting responses. SL93 (talk) 02:03, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments requested at WT:WEB

Hello everyone, I started an RfC on the talk page of WP:WEB to get more opinions on whether WP:WEB criterion three is really necessary. It hasn't attracted any comments so far, so I would be grateful if editors who are interested could hop over there and take a look. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 06:02, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Third opinion needed

Are the sources discussed at Talk:Ocean County Sheriff's Department#merge/redirect significant coverage? Specifically, the ones listed in this comment. Thanks, Goodvac (talk) 07:35, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

• As per the Project Page, within WP:GNG, and within the definition of "significant coverage", "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention".  I can't see the source, but the OP lists a quote as "The Ocean County Sheriff's Department Office of Emergency Management will hold a Community Emergency Response Team course this fall for volunteers. The course will be held at the Ocean County Emergency Operations Center at Robert J. Miller Airpark on Route 530...."  This is not a trivial mention, so it is "substantial coverage".  For example, this reference could be used to source the statements, "The OCSD has an Office of Emergency Management. This office works with the Ocean County Emergency Operations Center, and as recently as 2009 prepared volunteers from the community with a course entitled, "Community Emergency Response Team"."  We see that no explanation is needed of who or what the "Ocean County Sheriff's Department" is.  The topic has "attracted attention".  Unscintillating (talk) 18:03, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Government agencies fall under WP:ORG, which provides more detailed advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Regarding the second source, again the source is behind a paywall, but I/we have the title of the article, the abstract that has one sentence, and one quoted sentence.

URL: pqasb.pqarchiver.com/app/access/1842507181.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT

Title: "County names undersheriff"

Abstract: Detective Lt. Jeff Thompson, 53, Point Pleasant, was appointed sheriff's officer chief, replacing Rupert in that post.

Quote: "A 33-year veteran of the Ocean County Sheriff's Department has been appointed Sheriff William L. Polhemus' right-hand man."

Analysis: This is not trivial, so it is a substantial coverage according to WP:GNG.  For example, this information is enough to source the statement, "The department is headed by the Sheriff, who is assisted by the sheriff's officer chief, also known as the undersheriff." Given that the term "sheriff's officer chief" is unusual, I'd want to provide another source to verify that term:

• "New Jersey Statutes - Title 40A Municipalities and Counties - 40A:9-117.15 Sheriff's officer chief; creation of position permitted". March 29, 2010. Retrieved 2012-01-21. The sheriff of any county may create the position of sheriff's officer chief...The sheriff's officer chief shall be the highest ranking uniformed officer within the county sheriff's department.

The example sentence is sourced with about 37 words, the article itself has 184.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• The third source for which a third opinion is requested as to whether or not the source is substantial coverage is:

URL: tri.gmnews.com/news/2003-12-04/Front_Page/043.html

Title: Support sought for sheriff’s toy drive

Words: 222

Analysis  This article is entirely about a function of the Ocean County Sheriff's Department.  The sheriff is mentioned in the title of the article, and the first sentence includes the words, "Ocean County Sheriff's Department".  No further analysis is needed to conclude that this is not a trivial coverage.  Therefore it has coverage with substance, or substantial coverage.  As a test of using this source to create encyclopedic content, I came up with the following four sentences:

 == Ocean County Sheriff’s Department Food and Toy Drive ==

The OCSD and the sheriff have been active in a community program called the Ocean County Sheriff’s Department Food and Toy Drive. In 2002, the program assisted 900 county children during the December holiday season. The program started before 1993 and has continued annually to at least as recently as 2003. According to John P. Kelly, one of the five elected boardmembers of the Ocean County Board of Freeholders, in a statement in 2003, "This has become a very popular program..."

Unscintillating (talk) 00:23, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Forks without Notability

Has anyone ever undertaken an effort to fork WP without a notability guideline. I've yet to see a convincing argument as to why there should be one, and I doubt I'm the only person with that outlook. However, the hurdle for having such a guideline repealed at WP is impossibly high and admittedly violates the majority view as to what WP is supposed to be. Erik Carson (talk) 18:19, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

It is a contentious idea for sure, but there are often reasons to do it, primarily because of article size issues. The most common case would in serialized fiction (television shows , comic books) where the list of episodes/volumes is quite large and weights down the article, prompting the list to be split to a new article. The list can be sourced to the primary work, but may not be notable itself, but as a fundamental part of WP's coverage of such works, where listing out episodes/volumes with their individual contributors and air/publication dates, they should be included. This is not a universal position, and I would also argue that if you have to worry about size issues to need to break out the episode list, then there's likely sources that you can use to at least provide some notability to the actual list of episodes.

A case that I know exists where it is fine is Cultural impact of the Guitar Hero series which is a fork of Guitar Hero, itself a large article due to the number of games generated; the topic "cultural impact of GH" as a topic is not a technically notable topic (there's likely no sources that discuss that topic singularly), but it is clear from the grouping of the sources that the elements provide notability for the overall topic. --MASEM (t) 21:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I have long felt that we should split into Wikipedia and Wikialmanac... Wikipedia would be comprised of articles (in sentence/paragraph structure), while Wikialmanac would focus on hosting lists and similar content. I would expect both to need notability guidelines, but the guidelines would (of necessity) be different for each project. Blueboar (talk) 21:45, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

It has been done. Google deletionpedia and WikiAlpha for examples. Deleted articles also get exported to fan wikis like Wikia. AFAIK no broad "anything goes" fork has ever been successful, but some of the smaller fan based wikis have dedicated communities. ThemFromSpace 02:14, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Place names (again)

Regarding place name articles like these:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lohr's Hill
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Biesecker Woods
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blocher's Run

It is time for this guideline to clarify what the threshold for inclusion as an article is for place names for which there is a reliable source? (i.e. WP:V and WP:RS are not at issue.)

Tens of thousands of articles like the ones above are subject to AfD because of the differences in the conception of what the Wikipedia is and editing practices at the time they were created and the present.

Nominators are demanding that the article show some notability (i.e. importance in this context) for the named place relying on their interpretation of this guideline. patsw (talk) 17:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we should look at applying some sort of notability standards to places. I've seen "municipalities" kept at AfD due to google maps results, even though no definitive evidence was found. Not every local field, hill, and dale needs its own article. ThemFromSpace 18:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

There have been attempts to do this, but none have stuck. The reason that any settlement , recognized by some government, is kept despite the lack of information is because there's a presumption that eventually a history/details of that settlement can be gathered from local sources. (yeeeea, that's iffy).

These are not local settlements, they're highly localized features of a important location (where the battle of Gettysburg was fought). They would not appear in a broad gazetteer, and while they are named by sources, there's no notability to them. In such cases, delete or merging to a list of such features would be correct. --MASEM (t) 18:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I put in a comment at one of the articles that I'm nearly positive isn't notable. The stream is more notable than the other two, and may be worth preserving. ThemFromSpace 18:36, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Is the consensus here that we retrospectively are going to require significant coverage for each place name - that is, that for each place name article some importance (in the context here of notability) has to be presented in the article about that place name. If that's the case, then tens of thousands of articles in Wikipedia currently fail that criteria. So, in principle, should tens of thousands of articles be deleted? patsw (talk) 19:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

If all they consist of (and all that the sources support) is a stub-of-a-stub that says a place exists, I would say: Yes, we should delete these tens of thousands of articles... and about half of the editors on Wikipedia would probably agree. However, the other half would very much disagree. There is no way in hell we would ever get a consensus. It's the old deletionist vs inclusionist debate... and that is a debate that goes back to the earliest days of Wikipedia. And it is not a debate that will be resolved any time soon. Blueboar (talk) 20:40, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:CCC. At one point, prior to 2006, WP had articles on nearly every episode and character of every television show. Those days are long since gone, and unless the show/character meets the GNG, it's merged up. We don't want to lose the information, hence merge and redirect over outright removal, but yes, the goalposts can change with consensus. --MASEM (t) 20:45, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

The point we're all missing is that most places are notable per the GNG or common sense, if you look hard enough for sources. Its only small, minor places that we would have to consider, not "tens of thousands of articles". ThemFromSpace 21:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Which these are. They are not towns or settlements. They are small, local, geographic features. --MASEM (t) 21:40, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

The solution for such places is to boldly WP:MERGE them into their context, not to delete them. It's perfectly find for Wikipedia to include this kind of geographic information—just not (normally) on a separate page. And the reason I specify "boldly" merging these is because the drama-prone AFD is not WP:Proposed merges, and you don't need to obtain written permission in advance of improving the encyclopedia by merging narrow subjects into their proper contexts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

No, it's a delete for lack of notability and not a merge that we are dealing with. The problem is that we have a process called "AfD" where it takes a mere two words to have content deleted from this encyclopedia. It's quick, it's easy, and often unnoticed. In this case, we have a subjective judgment that Blocher's Run is less important to the Battle of Gettysburg than Barlow Knoll which was not nominated for deletion. The nominator is not disputing the significant coverage in the sources given for the two articles, just the point that some places are more important that others. This may be an example of Hard cases make bad law because of the behavior of the article's creator (these articles might be instances of WP:POINT). At stake here is the principle that coverage in published sources is the standard for inclusion. It is an objective method or as close as we can get to objectivity. This is contrast to arguing over importance, significance, consequences, prominence, influence, greatness, etc. -- which are subjective judgment calls by Wikipedia editors over article inclusion which shows up in AfD for notability.

If AfD nominators thought the resolution of a problem was a merge, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The nominators are in some cases use "not notable" to mean "I don't think that's important" and if we wait long enough that practice will become de-facto policy and articles will be deleted which pass WP:GNG or other tests in this guideline. patsw (talk) 13:25, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Patsw, I don't think I'm understanding you. What is it about Blocher's Run that prohibits the two sentences at that stub from being WP:MERGEd into Gettysburg Battlefield#Geography, and the link Blocher's Run being redirected to that section? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Notability is subjective: always has been. And there are editors that unintentionally forget there are options to merge instead of delete. Plus, for all aspects, AGF in the nomination, maybe the nominator isn't from America and doesn't understand the significance of battlefield geography of these places (but that is also a likely mistake given the state of these articles that don't provide sources to explain this).

Also remember: WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a valid argument in AFD. Why the nominator didn't put up Barlow Knoll with the others, that's unimportant to the other articles. Unless its some type of COI (he really liked Barlow Knoll but hated the other places??) we don't care why that's the case.

But the point you state: that coverage in published sources is the standard for inclusion is not right, because you're missing a key word: "significant". Passing mention of a topic in sources is not a standard for inclusion. Mention of a place name in sources is not a standard for inclusion. We are looking for the current existence or strong likelihood of secondary sources that, maybe not specifically about the topic, go into depth beyond plain, factual data for the topic. That is a subjective assessment, which is what is determined at AFD (and thus why it is discussion, not a single-admin action)

In the cases of these articles, I doubt we are ever going to see detailed coverage of such places (due to being battlefield landmarks) beyond the significance to the battle. They are, effectively, naming push-pins on a map. Are they necessary to understand some of the manuevers in the Civil war? Yes, most likely. But they can be understood without using standalone articles for each. --MASEM (t) 14:27, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Masem's comment is on point. Our Notability guidelines are not about whether some bit of information is worthy of being included in Wikipedia or not... the guidelines are about whether the information should be presented as a standalone article. Yes, AfD nominations and closures are subjective decisions ... However, they are subjective decisions that should be based on objective criteria (one of which is whether there is significant coverage in reliable sources). And there are a lot more options available than just "Keep" or "Delete". Blueboar (talk) 15:54, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Place names are an interesting subject from a sourcing and notability standpoint. High profile place names are not difficult to deal with because they are covered by lots of different kinds of sources. On the other hand, run of the mill place names suffer from inconsistent coverage in sources from region to region. This makes comparing the run of the mill place name from a region with good source coverage to a run of the mill place name from a region with limited coverage difficult. But we can assume this:

• If a place name exists, is either historical or in current use, and is contained in some formal geographic names database, then there must be some (probably primary) sources to support the historical or in-use name in the database. (The same assumption can be made for place names that appear on historic or current reliable maps)

• If a place name exists, it came into use through some series of events, i.e. is has a history. The extent to which that history is documented in primary and secondary sources can vary widely.

• A place name that only has a mundane history as to how it came into use, is probably not sufficiently covered in other sources to warrant notability. On the other hand, if a place name (actually the place itself) is part and parcel of other notable events, there is a high probability that it’s covered to some extent in reliable sources beyond the mere history of how it came into use and thus might clearly warrant notability.

In my area and region of interest, there are multiple secondary works devoted to the Place Names of X that go into the origin and history of use of many obscure place names. And in many cases, once you understand the history of a place name you can find other sources to support its notability. On the other hand, there are regions where no one has really documented in secondary English language sources the history of obscure place names. Unfortunately, those kinds of differences in regional coverage of place names, makes it difficult to draw comparisons between the notability of similar features from different regions.--Mike Cline (talk) 16:30, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Every place is notable to the people who live there. But I can think of no notable places in most other countries around the world, and I'm sure people consider my home town with equal notability. I bet most places can be found in most decent atlases, and/or Google maps, it depend on what you say about them can be reliably sourced, which is a different matter. --Iantresman (talk) 00:32, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

We have generally upheld the common outcome that any government-recognized settlement with current residents is likely to be notable for as you describe - its population can supply info for that. This does not extend to geographic features; while features of certain sizes will be obviously notable, when we're talking about brooks, hills, and the like that started this thread, we expect more sources to be present to have an article. --MASEM (t) 01:30, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I have previously cited Barber Island as a geographical place that lacks sources with lengthy prose descriptions.  Yet people instinctively realize that it is a topic worthy of notice.  The existence of names in multiple languages is one example of people giving it notice.  Why did they name it?  Unscintillating (talk) 03:53, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Inhabitation is not a criterion. Wikipedia precedent is not to apply GNG to place names.

I disagree with that on principle and on precedent: Place names extend to uninhabited places such as geographic features, political sub-divisions, places on historical registers, and others. "Inhabitation" has never been an implied or explicit criterion for inclusion of a place name as an article in the Wikipedia. The appearance of a place name in authoritative sources (i.e. government, international body, etc.) deals with conflicts of interest and the possibility of hoaxes. These places exist with the description provided in the article. It's real. It's factual. However, there's never been a requirement of the sources to make a determination of significant coverage applied to place names -- That is, what, according to sources given in the article, makes this place significant, important, prominent, noticed, noted, etc. according to some unstated criteria.

I reiterate that tens of thousands of place name articles already in the Wikipedia do not contain content and sources that would pass a "significant coverage independent of the subject" multiple secondary sources test.

Of course, consensus can change when it comes to a interpreting in a given biographical or event article -- Are the sources reliable? Or is the coverage significant? But when it comes to retrospectively applying newly changed or newly re-interpreted 2012 guidelines to articles from 2002 to the present, and qualify them now for deletion, this is not a change in consensus, it is a redefinition of the Wikipedia and the consequential loss of many articles created in good faith according to policies and practices in effect at the time of their creation. patsw (talk) 20:51, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Wrong.

First, you are trying to argue WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS which we ignore as a rule. Just because there are 10,000s of other geogrpahic features that either exist of the same type, that's not an issue. WP is too large to "police" to perfection, and thus even though concensus can change, we're not going to review every article to match that consensus (unless it is a legal issue like BLPs or NFC). And yes, we don't care if the articles were once created when notability was more lax: again, that's why WP:LONGTIME or WP:EFFORT arguments are ignored at AFD.

Secondly, we are applying the GNG to place names, but taking the view about the likely existence of sources in the long term. That's why populated places are considered because local residences can generate sources in the future; a named landmark can't. We don't have an SNG for place names, but instead we allow them to exist or be deleted per WP:OUTCOMES specifically WP:NPLACE. --MASEM (t) 21:11, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS states that, "...comparisons are important as the encyclopedia should be consistent in the content that it provides or excludes".  It continues with further relevant points, such as discriminating between weak arguments based on "other stuff exists", and substantive arguments based on "other stuff exists".  Unscintillating (talk) 03:53, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

• I've previously drawn attention to uninhabited Barber Island—I don't expect that an editor from a major newspaper will find this island and give it a full newspaper article.  Nonetheless, its merit as a standalone article doesn't seem to be in question, so it is worth asking why.  I think "identifiability" is at work, anyone looking at it detects a pattern.  This in turn leads to people giving it a name.  The lives of people in the shipping industry were at stake during the 1800s, and cartographers put all the area islands and islets "on the map".  In WP:GNG terms cartographers are secondary independent sources recording the topic in substantial in-depth detail.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:53, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Long-shot proposal to modify how notability works

Per discussions at WP:VPP#Proposal regarding Article Rescue Squad, I would like to propose a very substantial change to this document, and possibly other ancillary documents as well. Odds are high that my suggestion is not going to meet with approval, but there's no way to find out without asking--maybe Wikipedia is in the mature stage that I believe it is/should be. I do not have specific wording worked out, but my essential proposal is that the concept of notability be embedded in what the article currently says at any given moment. In other words, I believe that when we judge the notability of something, we should not be judging the notability of the underlying subject, but, rather, whether or not the article itself contains information sufficient to establish the subject's notability.

For those not following the discussion in other venues, you may ask, what's the difference? Well, this difference primarily effects the WP:AfD process. Currently, based on the way WP:N is written, the following can and does happen:

1. I find an article completely or mostly lacking in sources sufficient to establish notability (let's just assume it is sufficiently well-written to pass WP:BLP and WP:CSD).
2. I search for sources, using the tools I have available to me. Alas, I cannot find any/enough.
3. I nominate the article at AfD.
4. During the AfD, someone searches in a different way, or has access to more sources than I do, or even can read languages that I can't, and finds sources. That person provides information about those sources at the AfD.
5. At this point, WP:N, as written now, has been satisfied, and thus the article should be kept (and if I were not the nominator but an admin, I would keep the article assuming no objections to those sources were raised).
6. I am unable to add the new information to the article, because, as I said, for some reason I don't have access to those sources.
7. For some reason, the person who found the information chooses to not add the new information.

• End result: the article can remain in a poor state indefinitely. No one can ever nominate it for deletion, and no one who can't access those sources can improve it.

My proposal is that WP:N be re-written such that an article subject is not considered notable unless the article itself demonstrates that notability. Perhaps this is better changed somewhere else, but this seems to be the most fundamental place to start, so there you go. Please, everyone, tell me why I'm wrong, why this harms the encyclopedia, and why we're better off with the scenario outlined above. Of course, feel free to agree, to, and, if so, help me figure out exactly how and where changes would be needed. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I think it should be clear that if you don't include sources as to why something's notable, the more likelihood you will encounter an AFD on that article. That said, what you're proposing conflicts with WP:V's concept of "verifiability" which by nature we have to extend here. Specifically, WP:V does not require a source to be explicitly in the article to support a fact (save for direct quotes, and for highly contentious statements around BLPs), though you can always challenge those statements. But it is considered bad form that, say, the sources for the article have been identified on the talk page, and no one's brought them into the actual articles, to then called out the verifyability of the information in the article.

In a similar manner, if an AFD closes as your situation describes, with sources spelled out at the AFD but no one adds them to the article, the nomination will be seen as bad form.

I believe this works as part of the larger picture of notability, in that this is why we have SNGs (as somewhat-long term temporarily allowances while sources are located and found) and why things like towns and villages are presumed to have notability despite having no secondary sources.

There is probably existing guidance to deal with the case you describe, particularly if the existence of these sources can't be validated by anyone else. There's a matter of good faith that the sources are providing notability, but if no one can confirm they are out there, much less get their hands on them, then we probably need to dismiss them as an invalid claim and readjust the view of the notability of the topic. --MASEM (t) 01:11, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

First of all, wp:notability is nothing more than a guideline to deciding if we should have a stand-alone article in Wikipedia.  The nutshell clearly states, and WP:NNC follows, that notability has nothing to do with the content of an article.  wp:notability exists independently of the existence of an article on Wikipedia or the content of any such article.  As per WP:NRVE, we can have evidence that sources exist without the sources.  The basic concept of notability requires specifically and only that a topic be "worthy of notice", and WP:GNG makes it clear that passing WP:GNG, even with numerous sources, is not sufficient for a topic to be "worthy of notice".

But a closely related concept is the much stronger sourcing requirement of WP:V.  My personal belief is that we should require, for new articles, redirects, etc., (1) a statement of notability/prominence on the talk page, and (2) a source on the talk page that documents the title.  (3) For articles, I'd also require at least one source citation on the article itself.  (4) Another good proposal was to require that there be a red link for the topic somewhere in the encyclopedia before the topic could be created.

In spite of the absurdity of allowing high school kids to write articles about local "sweater Tuesday" fads, completely unverifiable, the community has not been able to raise the low barrier to creating new articles.  After a great debate with hundreds of editors and long analysis, the community decided to run a six-month trial of preventing new editors from creating articles until they had made at least ten edits and been an editor for four days.  The WMF stepped in and said "no", that the flood of unverifiable articles and the associated flood of deletions by the volunteer admins must continue.  So the place to start with fixing the root cause of the problem with AfDs, that place is with the WMF.  User:Snottywong can tell you more.  Unscintillating (talk) 04:47, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

• This is currently a complex scenario and hopefully rare scenario, but if more sources disappear behind pay walls it could become more common. If a fact was sufficiently sourced to convince an AFD but not incorporated into the article then I wonder if we should accept a link to the AFD in the edit summary when the fact was added to the article? Obviously that wouldn't work for contentious BLP information as you might potentially be repeating a libel. But for less contentious information this might be a solution. Another problem with this proposal is that it is a lot of complication to the deletion policy for a small number of instances. ϢereSpielChequers 16:41, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Sources behind paywalls are not disallowed on WP. But they need to be identified, ideally in a manner that can be confirmed, such as a citation service reference number, or the like. There's still the issue of "is this article really saying what the editor claims to be a facet of notability", but that's a lesser problem than if no sources are identified or can be confirmed to exist. --MASEM (t) 17:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with WereSpielChequers that our notability hurdle and associated guidance/consequences needs improvement. But I am confident that my agreement doesn't extend to the methods proposed. The ideal result from any changes to our notability guidelines and associated processes should result ideally in more notable articles and less deletions, more editors that create notable articles from the get go and fewer editors facing the uncomfortable and daunting task with dealing with our onerous AfD process. A while back I wrote several essays along those lines -- A new way to look at Notability and Archimedes was deleted. We must always remember as we embark on changes to significant policies and guidelines that our goals are--grow quality content, grow editors and expand the scope of subject matter coverage. That means growing WP from 3.9M articles to ~5-10M articles in the next 5 years. Deletion is necessary, but not a goal we should make easier through policy manipulation. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:57, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

It's good to be thinking about things like this but I disagree. You are essentially proposing making notability a function of the article rather than of the subject. Also, notability is really just a criteria for existence of an article, not a mechanism for building of articles. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:03, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The only aspect here that I would emphasis is that: a topic may be considered notable even if its article lacks sources (though defined elsewhere), but the fewer sources you have in an stand-alone article about a topic, the more likely someone will challenge it. Even if you have to use an EL to drop in a reference instead of trying to fight citation templates is better than nothing to reduce the likelihood of a challenge. --MASEM (t) 23:55, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

North8000 - You've misunderstood what I said, so that's my fault for explaining it poorly. I know exactly what our notability hurdle for articles (subjects is the same thing) is. What I was trying convey is summed up like this. If 100 articles are created and 25% of them are on non-notable subjects and thus must go through a deletion processes that alienates editors and saps volunteer energy, we are doing something wrong. Wouldn't it be better if for every 100 articles created only a few or none failed our notability hurdle because we've done a good job of creating guidance and mechnanisms that promote the creation of articles on notable subjects and prevents the creation of articles on non-notable subjects. Deletion is not a laudable outcome, it is an outcome that although necessary, indicates we have failed in more important areas. Our current notability hurdle is fine, easily understood and applied. It shouldn't be made more or less onerous. There will always be debates over marginally reliable sources, but that's OK. Does anyone deny that our goal is to grow WP from 3.1M notable articles to ~5-10M notable articles (subjects) in the next 5 years? --Mike Cline (talk) 00:06, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

On the goal number, I would say yes actually; it will grow, but I cannot expect it to be that close. We're at 3.1M articles after 10 years, eg: 300k/yr. To get to 5M in 5 years would require 400k/yr; 10M in 5 years 1,800k/yr. I can't see that happening at all, in fact, I expect growth to slow down simply because we've exhausted the generation of pages for "past" content, and are only generating pages for contemporary topics. But that's not really a point central to this discussion.

It would be great if a freshly made article immediately met notability guidelines - either by the process of making that new articles are created with notability in mind to start, or that we immediately filter articles that fail notability. Let's talk about the latter process first, because this basically falls into the realm of CSD and NewPagePatrol. I am pretty confident the community has rejected immediately deleting articles not showing signs of notability shortly after their created; there are only a few specific reasons that CSD can be applied to delete articles with demonstration of little importance, and that's for things like people, garage bands, personal companies, etc. that may be seen as COI/advertizing. Even ideas of like having article incubation for a short period (a week) before CSD can touch them has been rejected because it prevent action on blatant nonsense, copyright infringement, and the like. We are never going to be filtering after article creation to assure that nearly all articles created are notable.

That leaves trying to do something on the actual creation side, but to that end, we can't force editors to do anything. We can warn and caution them with big red flags "if you don't have a source for notability, you article will likely be deleted!", but that's as good as a static warning can provide. People will ignore those.

At the end of the day, we have to realize that the means we have now - some filtering of clearly non-notable stuff at article creature, and then consensus-based AFD for anything - is likely the fairest system to maintain an open wiki. --MASEM (t) 00:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I actually hope you are wrong in thinking ~5-10M new articles in the next 5 years is a stretch. If we don't get there, many of today's WMF initiatives will have been failures. One only has to (actually every editor should) read the WMF Strategic Plan in detail. Our goals are all about growth, and they are lofty. The Global Education Program is bringing WP into higher education classrooms around the world and enlisting academia to embrace WP as teaching tool. As an active Campus Ambassador, I've been recruiting professors and students alike for over a year into the WP community. There are millions of unwritten articles contained in the journals and books on the shelves of major university libraries. We have only scratched the surface.--Mike Cline (talk) 02:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The only sured number I can find there on the plan is "Increase the number of Wikipedia articles we offer to 50 million". As that is across all languages, and based on the current front page that has the listed wikis at 10M total, it is more likely the growth is to broaden the other languages, as opposed to en.wiki; if only 10 other wikis did this we'd get to 50 million easily by 2015. ("easily", ha ha). Again, we're an encyclopedia, meant to cover topics in broad scope; there's millions of journal articles, but they cover topics at a fine detail - useful as resources but not as new topics themselves. --MASEM (t) 03:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I think you underestimate the real potential for more and more English language articles. The real problem is that the majority of our workforce is young and focused on contemporary subjects. I've taken students from my MSU Campus Ambassador supported courses into the MSU library and randomly selected books and journals to see if they could find a notable subject that doesn't have a WP article. It doesn't take long. Once one source is found it rarely takes more than minutes to find others that will allow the article, if it was created, to clear the notability hurdle. We need to leave this notability hurdle alone. Its managable and relatively easy to teach and enforce. Any change that would impede the creation of new articles would be a disservice to the strategic goals of WMF.--Mike Cline (talk) 21:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess what I'm saying is that it is not that there aren't more articles to write, but without a push to get volunteer editors to work on non-contemporary topics, I don't think we're even going to get close to 5M in 3 years time.

But I do want to be clear that I absolutely agree with you that we have no need to make notability any more restrictive or difficult to work with. It's actually a rather decent guideline as it is a reasonably low barrier to pass particularly if we're talking the creation of articles leading towards an good encyclopedic article. --MASEM (t) 22:50, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Amen! - but without a push to get volunteer editors to work on non-contemporary topics, I think the push is at least happening here: Wikipedia:United States Education Program and here: WMF Global Education Program. Once these nacent programs really take off, the effort will expand into the secondary education level. We (WP Campus Ambassadors and the WMF) are pushing hard and getting results. Should you want to join us, let me know. --Mike Cline (talk) 23:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

At least once a year, let me remind people that it is the Notability guideline and not the Noticeability guideline. The latter is observation. The former is actually recording (or "noting"). Blame Ancient Rome: nota and nosco are different roots. Streakers are noticed. Despite its claim to the contrary, the Gettysburg Address was noted. patsw (talk) 03:00, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

People are starting to put their feet up on the desk and demanding that articles, both old and new show, a verifiable claim of importance, significance, prominence, consequence, influence, greatness, etc. made by a source within the article itself. Now, I am assuming good faith on the part of the AfD nominators, but raising the bar on what gets into Wikipedia lowers the bar to deleting the contents of the Wikipedia. It's far easier to nominate for deletion with "delete non-notable" than to undertake a search for sources, or understand why sources for importance, significance, prominence, etc. for the topic are not discoverable in Google. Echoing Mike Cline above, I think it will be poisonous to the spirit of the Wikipedia if retroactive guideline changes cause editors to revisit articles they created or edited weeks or months ago only to find that stricter WP:N was applied ex post facto and their efforts were deleted and not improved. If it takes a decade between the creation of an article and improving it with entries of cites showing significant coverage in multiple reliable sources independent of the subject, that's better than deleting it six weeks after it was created. It's not finished. patsw (talk) 03:00, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support: It seems ridiculous that NRVE can apparently be satisfied without references actually going into articles, and it makes perfectly good sense to me that any article (article, not list) that is completely unsourced should be assumed to be non-notable until proven otherwise Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 16:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  And how many unreferenced articles have you personally added references to recently? Or is this a case of demanding that other WP:VOLUNTEERs do what you personally refuse to do, perhaps because it would be easier for you to send articles to AFD if the community endorsed a lazy "no listed sources in the current version, therefore no notability" notion? (You do realize, by the way, that under that rule, articles like Cancer would have been declared non-notable for the first several years of their existence?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  What's that got to do with the price of eggs? And I can tell you how many articles I've created without sourcing them PDQ...zero. And we're past the time when we can get away with large amounts of unsourced text. This is 2012, not 2007. Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 19:37, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I utterly oppose this. It effectively enshrines the (already disgustingly common) practice of using the deletion process as a weapon with which to coerce labor from other editors. WP:VOLUNTEER should be the only counter-argument ever needed. —chaos5023 (talk) 19:18, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The counter-argument is that it's trying to use the deletion process as an overly bureaucratic weapon to coerce labor from nominators Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 19:37, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Again, as long as WP:V does not require the sources to be included , WP:N cannot set a stricter standard. The challenge to notability should be treated like the challenge to a contentious statement: the less you are able to show inline sources to prove it, the more likely it will be sent to deletion. We have to use the same principle here: we cannot demand sources to show notability, but the more you leave an article lacking that demonstration, the more likely it will be pushed to AFD. --MASEM (t) 21:03, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Notability of players of Gaelic football, hurling, and handball

Editors focused on our notability guidelines may be interested in the discussion regarding notability of players of Gaelic football, hurling, and handball.--Epeefleche (talk) 02:55, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Inherited notability

At Wikipedia talk:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, there was a discussion a while back about how to apply WP:NOTINHERITED, and a commenter recently suggested that the discussion be brought here for better input. My suggestion was that we explain that while simply being related to a notable person was not a source of notability, sometimes reliable sources cover a person because of their relationship to someone notable and we shouldn't use NOTINHERITED to second-guess reliable sources. I felt that we were setting a higher bar for relatives of notable people than we were for other individuals. Another user reasonably pointed out that fluff sources like People like to get interested in the children, partners, etc. of celebrities, but that we shouldn't treat that coverage as establishing notability, and said that it was more about what sort of sources are available. Would anyone like to comment? (For context, the individual that prompted the discussion was Marcus Bachmann, who is the husband of American representative/candidate Michele Bachmann and whose business activities had received coverage in various mainstream news sources, but who might not have received that coverage if he were not married to her.) –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

• Eh, if the topic meets the notability guidelines, they meet the notability guidelines. If not, they don't. I think the idea is that you aren't notable just because you are related to someone. But if you are covered because you are related to someone, that's fine. We just care about the coverage. Hobit (talk) 02:28, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
• I agree with Hobit.  Clearly we want at least a redirect on Marcus Bachmann, and I heard enough buzz (radio and TV commentary) that I assume that he passes WP:GNG, but I'd guess without having any more knowledge than that that the topic is better covered as part of the Michelle Bachmann article.  The discussion about the children sounds like a WP:DUE prominence issue rather than a notability issue, the sources are following the children because they want to know more about the famous person, so with the material about the children it is the famous person that is attracting the attention of the media.  Similar case was the policeman in New York City that sprayed some protesters, some editors created an article about the person, but at the end of the day (at least IMO), the material was still about (a member of) the New York police department and not the person.  Unscintillating (talk) 05:20, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Are there avenues to "notability" not mentioned in this guideline?

It seems that there are articles on WP that do not readily fall under the provisions of this policy. For example, the various stand-alone articles governing state organizations of the Democratic Party do not appear to satisfy the requirements of WP:Notability. Can someone explain whether there is a way to include these articles under the Notability policy? Brews ohare (talk) 16:32, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Somewhat similarly, the stand-alone articles listing US Attorney offices contain sources describing origination of these offices, but that hardly seems to satisfy a requirement for notability, as origination in itself is a minor indication of the notability of the organization. I don't suggest removal of these articles, but elaboration of the policy WP:Notability to explicitly include them. Brews ohare (talk) 16:47, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Another example is Federal government of the United States, which refers entirely to primary sources, and so is not notable according to WP:Notability. One might ask whether the same kind of article could not be applied to any government, referring perhaps to translations of primary documents. By extension, the same criteria (if they can indeed be specified at all) could be applied to major organizations, including the structure of the United Nations, the structure of large corporations and, indeed, the structure of WP. Brews ohare (talk) 17:08, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments

Comment: Brews ohare. Both examples you give above are not about Articles, but embedded lists within an article. Notability is a guideline that helps us determine whether or not an Article on a subject should be included in the encyclopedia. Notability is not a requirement for inclusion of content within a notable article. That is covered by WP:Verifiability. If the entries on the list of state democratic parties cannot be verified, then they should be not there, but they do not have to demonstrate notability to be included in the notable article Democratic Party United States. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:06, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Mike Cline: That is not the case. I have provided links to lists, but these lists are themselves lists of links to actual WP articles. Brews ohare (talk) 17:08, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Brews, indeed yes you did. You provided links to embedded lists within a notable article. What is your question then? An embedded list within an article, regardless of what it contains (blue links, red links, no links) has zero burden of notability? On the other hand, entries in an embedded list (and all content for that matter) has the burden of verifiability to be included in the article. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:14, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

You might want to review WP:Source list and note that notability isn't mentioned at all in this element of the list guideline. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:19, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Mike: I'll refer you to the following, for example:

Alabama Democratic Party, Alaska Democratic Party, ..., Wyoming Democratic Party

U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama,..., United States District Court for the District of Wyoming

Brews ohare (talk) 17:24, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Brews, your question is much clearer now. It is not about the notability of the embedded lists you linked in your question, but the notability of the individual articles. I would submit that indeed, each article you list should demonstrate notability via the standard method--there has been significant discussion of the subject in at least two reliable secondary sources. Each one of the individual articles you cite above should be required to meet that standard. Whether they do or not, that's a different question. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:39, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Mike: In my mind, there is really no doubt that these articles should be here on WP. I don't think the present discussion on WP:Notability is really applicable to such articles, and their notability should be capable of being established by different means. For example, if an organization can itself be established as notable, then a description of its structure, a list of its officers, and so forth should be notable ipso facto without further justification, and an appeal to the primary sources provided by the organization itself is the best kind of support for assertions of this nature. Of course, discussion evaluating the impact of the organization, assessing its value, comparing it with other organizations, and so forth, are a separate matter and would require secondary sources as is, in fact, well-described already in WP:Notability. How do you regard this suggestion for modification of WP:Notability? Brews ohare (talk) 18:02, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Brews, in your Federal government of the United States example, you specifically say the article is not notable: Another example is Federal government of the United States, which refers entirely to primary sources, and so is not notable according to WP:Notability. It is an interesting example and well placed for the real lessons of this discussion. Do you believe that there are no significant discussions of the U.S. Federal Government in reliable secondary sources? Of course not, they just aren't listed in the article. That's really sort of a technical violation of sorts. Don't automatically confuse the absence of references within an article with the absence of notability. There may be a connection, but it doesn't mean something is automatically non-notable. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:48, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Mike: Here also, although, as you say, secondary sources might be out there, in my mind they are not necessary to establish notability. This article is about the structure of the government, and reference to primary sources to establish that structure is the best support possible. Inasmuch as one can hardly doubt that the organization is notable, so also is its structure, ipso facto, with no need for further evidence of notability. WP:Notability should be changed to explicitly allow such articles, I'd say. Brews ohare (talk) 18:02, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

To go a step further, secondary sources for articles that are purely descriptive, like these, add nothing to the notability of the article. Containing only facts, and not interpretation or opinion or evaluation, the secondary source is used only to repeat what is already in the primary source citing the primary source, an entirely useless and circular appeal to the secondary source. There is no point in quoting "A says B, see primary source P" when one can say simply "B applies, see P." Brews ohare (talk) 18:22, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I personally think that any attempt to create a different notability standard for a different class of article is really problematic, especially when members of that class are most likely notable under the current standard. It opens the door to endless arguments as to what are the boundaries of the class. We already have endless discussions on the reliability and primary/secondary nature of individual sources. Adding a new standard for a different class will just exacerbate that, not improve it. You ought to dig through the discussions we've all participated in about Inheritant Notability of certain kinds of articles. Everytime, we have those discussions we say no to it, because it creates more problems than it solves. We have a standard and it should apply equally to all classes of articles. It has served us well for 11 years and counting. --Mike Cline (talk) 18:24, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Mike: That's a judgment call. I've seen many pieces of code with confusing work-arounds nobody wants to change for cleaner code because they think it means trouble. However, I'd classify the change I'm recommending as fixing a bug, and so not to be ducked. Brews ohare (talk) 19:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

The fact that a particular article does not adequately demonstrate why it's topic is notable (through citing secondary sources) is a flaw with that particular article... not a flaw with the guideline. The question is: can we find secondary sources to support those articles? If the answer to that question is, "Yes"... then the solution is to FIXTHEPROBLEM by adding citations. If you can not do this yourself, tag the article so that others will do so. If the answer to the question is, "No"... then the solution is to FIXTHEPROBLEM by deleting the article. Again, the flaw is with the specific article, not the guideline. Blueboar (talk) 18:32, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Blueboar: There is no need for these articles to find secondary sources: nothing they say goes beyond the simple facts best supported through a primary source. If a secondary source describes organizational details, it will support its statements with a primary source, just as the WP article already does. Notability of the organizational description is supplied by the notability of the organization itself, and requires no further support. That is what WP:Notability should say. Brews ohare (talk) 18:41, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Brews - To your last point which I missed via an edit conflict and the intervention of an old nemesis. You must ask yourself this question? Why is the article Federal government of the United States considered notable and thus included in the encyclopedia by the WP community? There is only one answer to this question: The Federal government of the United States has received significant coverage in at least two reliable secondary sources. Ipso Facto as you say above, because of that it is notable by WP standards. You cannot confuse the content of an article and the sources used to verify that content with the burden of notability. They are two distinct elements of our WP process. --Mike Cline (talk) 18:33, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Nemesis? perhaps... old? Nah. We just met. Blueboar (talk) 18:36, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Purely metaphorical and spur of the moment lapse of common decency. I am however confident that you are older than some and younger than others, but I may be wrong. --Mike Cline (talk) 18:54, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Mike: Maybe the distinction could be drawn differently: It is not necessary to establish notability for an article outlining the structure of an organization if and provided that the organization can be established as notable. That shifts the question to one of: "How do we establish an organization is notable?" and that is where the notability issue belongs for this type of strictly descriptive article. Brews ohare (talk) 18:46, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I strongly disagree... an organization may or may not be notable... it is extremely rare for its structure to be notable. Interesting, perhaps... worthy of being discussed as part of an article about the organization? frequently... But notable enough for its own article? Nope. In the rare cases where an organization's structure might be notable, there will be secondary sources that discuss that structure which we can use to demonstrate that notability. If no such sources exist, then we can not call it notable. Blueboar (talk) 20:48, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Not notable, huh? Most countries think their structure is their sine qua non, a "government of laws not men" (Massachusetts Constitution, Bill of Rights, article 30 (1780)), to quote one for example. Companies aren't much different. Brews ohare (talk) 21:23, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Which is why notability requires independent sources to show that other people think that is important, and that we aren't resting on a self-assurance claim. Plus, consider how many more people a government's structure is likely to affect (in the millions) compared to a company's structure. --MASEM (t) 13:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Exactly... Notability is not the same as importance. Notability is determined by having other people (especially reliable, independent, secondary sources) discuss the topic... the more that such sources discuss it, the more notable we say it is. The less they discuss it, the less notable we can say it is. The structure of an organization (even a government) may be vital and important, affecting the lives of millions... but if no reliable, independent, secondary sources talk about it, we can't say it is notable. Blueboar (talk) 15:05, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, its great to see two old "nemeses" reach agreement. But about what exactly? Rather than consider the possibility that notability could be established by various means, the agreement is that notability is "what people talk about" and is quite separate from "importance". Well folks, IMO that position really just means that the status quo is so important to you all that any nonsense can be resorted to in its support. Perhaps fortunately, WP is replete with articles that do not satisfy the present notability requirements. So perhaps the de facto situation on WP is wiser than the de jure version, eh? Brews ohare (talk) 15:51, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. There's more than 3 million articles, so we're not going to be able to catch every article that comes along and may only be supported by primary sources; once we see one, its usually taken to AFD which is the only place where this is then checked. The point here is that AFD supports what we have said about this type of sourcing, so that's what the consensus is. --MASEM (t) 16:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Masem: So you now join in, although earlier on WP:OR you suggested that notability need not apply to some articles, and that it could be established for some articles by means other than secondary sources. These are, in fact, reasonable positions, and fortunately WP employs them even though its policies and you all do not.

There is nothing wrong with the articles I've brought up here that do not satisfy notability as it is written. The suggestion that they all should go to AFD is silly. Instead, notability should be rewritten to allow them. Brews ohare (talk) 16:22, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

At OR, I said the exception is for navigational pages like disambiguation. That's still true here. The problem is that you wanted to include articles that no one else would call as "navigation pages" into this broad category of "familiarization pages" and claim notability exceptions for that. That's what we've been trying to tell you does not follow from OR, N, Summary Style and a bunch of other pages.

Also, a point must be made clear: when you say "notability as written", that's not correct. Yes, evidence of notability should be in the article to start with (it avoids the issue altogether), but following the lead of WP:V, we don't require that as long as sources that do establish notability have been identified on the talk page or a similar venue (eg a "keep" AFD result). Yes, if you know them and leave them out, that needs to be fixed during the general improvement of the article, but not including them as inline sources is not a reason to delete. --MASEM (t) 17:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Masem: Yes, the objective is to change WP:Notability so articles like those linked at US Attorney offices and governing state organizations of the Democratic Party and the article Federal government of the United States satisfy the policy. Such a change is viewed with unease by Mike, and with horror by Blueboar.

The response to this proposal has taken a few forms, but all amount to different ways to duck the issue. To take it head-on seems to be difficult. Yet, all that is needed is to state that articles of a purely descriptive nature fall into a category separate from articles expressing opinion, assessment, interpretation, comparisons and so forth. As purely descriptive, they need only primary sources (although secondary sources are possible too). Precautions are needed to avoid uninteresting compilations, but that doesn't seem an insuperable task. Brews ohare (talk) 17:22, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

The thing is, some of those articles you're linking as examples satisfy notability requirements. I can't say all, but certainly Federal government of the United States.

Here's the thing, you're proposing that we want to including these purely descriptive, primary-sourced-only articles. That's understood, and you recognize the line about indiscriminate information, so you understand the problems with these if we allow them unchecked. So we need a line drawn. The line that makes the most sense and fair across the board (for all fields) is that of notability. If there has been some notice of the primary-sourced information by an independent reliable source, then that gives us some justification for including it in detail. If not, then it's just interesting to those directly connected to the topic, and not appropriate for an in-depth article on Wikipedia. It may be a harsh line but it is also the most objective and fairest across all fields. --MASEM (t) 17:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Masem: I believe these remarks of yours do address the issue raised, a departure from earlier discussion by others. Your recommendation as I understand it is that although one can readily distinguish purely descriptive material from other articles, and although it is plain that purely descriptive material requires only primary sources, the unfortunate fact is that it is beyond our capacity to come up with criteria that would avoid uninteresting compilations. Therefore, one must adopt a less-than-perfect approach to the matter, and hope that a work-around using the present WP:Notability will do, even though it is a kludge. Brews ohare (talk) 18:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

We're a tertiary source - we are meant to summarize information. That means that information that is "purely descriptive" either needs to be sourced to secondary sources to show why it is important, or otherwise we need to summarize it within the context of a larger article. Short and simple. We cannot make allowances where no secondary sources do not exist. --MASEM (t) 19:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Masem: The thread you open below refers to Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines, which is nothing less than a whole series of articles about exceptions to WP:Notability. Brews ohare (talk) 12:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

They aren't exceptions, and shouldn't be taken as that. It's showing we expect that secondary coverage will ultimately arise from topics meeting specific criteria. There is no assurance with what you're trying to provide here. --MASEM (t) 13:02, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Help requested

I'd like some help to write a notability guideline. Please see User:Brews ohare/WP:Notability (Descriptive articles) and comment if you can. Brews ohare (talk) 20:39, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I have commented there in more detail... but essentially you are trying to create an Subject-specific notability guideline for something that isn't a subject area. It's the wrong way to address your concern. Blueboar (talk) 21:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I have addressed your remark on the Talk page for this draft guideline. Brews ohare (talk) 13:04, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Policy change for the notability of restaurant reviews

There's a discussion at Notability (organizations and companies) about including some criteria to assess the cases in which critical reviews of restaurants are significant to assert notability. You may want to step in and comment. Diego (talk) 13:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Articles "redirected" which are determined to be nn

Elementary school articles (and probably others) which have been determined to be nn, are, instead being "redirected." This seems to thwart the concept of article notability. I can now search and "find" the "redirect" which in turn, directs me to the School District (or whatever) article. I think a regular search might find it anyway, but why play with notability? I don't see why we don't continue to delete articles that have been judged to fail notability requirements. Redirection seems to encourage the construction of these articles. I can now insert [[non-notable school]] in a "See also" subsection or link it in the article itself, or insert it in a dab. As if it were notable. Student7 (talk) 20:42, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Notability is only to determine if a topic gets a separate article, that's it. It does not limit coverage within a larger target. We explicitly state that non-notable topics can be discussed in the context of a broader, more notable topic. Redirects are cheap and help with searching and locating non-notable information. --MASEM (t) 22:27, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is WP:V verifiability.  WP:N notability is a guideline—it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to the world whether verifiable material is in a stand-alone article or integrated into another article.  Unscintillating (talk) 22:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

This is exciting news. I will now start an article "Student7". When it is (soon) Afd-ed for lack of notability, I will ask that it be redirected to Wikipedia.org. I am certainly verifiable! Then I will be able to list my pseudonym in articles, dabs, etc. Great! Student7 (talk) 13:51, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh yes? Have you been covered by at least one independent reliable source? Diego (talk) 13:54, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Let me try something more realistic. A local high school wins the (large) state 3A championship. State newspapers cover this and maybe even list the players, who are "recognized" at several events. I start a one line stub article on each player, which are then each Afd-ed and "redirected" to the high school. This gets a bit complicated since I have two "Jim Smiths." I guess it would be "Jim Smith (high school tailback)" and "Jim Smith (high school right guard)." Would this be independent and reliable enough? BTW, none of them go on to play professionally.

Since Wiki-entertainment articles in the encyclopedia are quite nearly out of control, I suggest that this be taken seriously. You could literally get a million redirects out of this.

And, BTW, since when does a redirect have to have a "independent reliable source?" I don't notice this on any redirect! Student7 (talk) 14:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

No, we'd not list them.

Yes, they seem to be the same issue - why redirect schools but not include these athletes. There is a fuzzy separation line, but part of that is the idea of permanence and importance. Schools have much longer "lifetimes" than the students within them and the school itself is typically a critical part of the education system within the community it serves. A school athlete is just that, and falls, broadly read, into the idea of BLP1E as well as the concept of WP:ROUTINE. We also have the fact that the set of all elementary schools is pretty much a fixed size - growing and shrinking a small fraction each year - while the idea of school athletes is unbounded. I can't suggest any further rules that say when we split them, as I would think anything else is based on what consensus deems appropriate; consensus has always been in favor of schools, but why not other businesses or places like churches? It is likely that schools are government-recognized, and would be the type of things noted in a gazetteer, compared to other businesses or the like. --MASEM (t) 14:47, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

You don't need verifiability to create a redirect, but you need it to ask that an AfD is closed with a merge instead of a total deletion. There, that's why you can't have your Student7 redirect through the process you described. As for the players, if they are described in the Wikipedia article for the local school of course they could have redirects to that definition - as long as you have enough material to include them per WP:DUE; redirects are created to help people find information available at Wikipedia. Diego (talk) 14:48, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Try Taffy Nivert as a non-made up example. The band had one hit in the 70s. Taffy is WP:NN. Student7 (talk) 23:46, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Let's assume the band is notable (its article has no sources, so I'm not going to push that issue). The only inkling of claim to fame for Taffy Nivert is through the band, so if the redirect was appropriate, that would be the most appropriate article. The question then remains if Nivert is a possible search term, and given that it is the name of a person that once - even for a brief moment - was in the limelight, then yes, they are a search term, and that should be reflected by the redirect to the band article. Now, if the band wasn't notable, I would likely argue that yes, the redirect of a non-notable person to a non-notable band is unnecessary. --MASEM (t) 23:53, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Band a bit more notable: Try Jody Breeze. Listed, at least temporarily as a "notable" resident of Macon, Georgia. We're looking at not just a few, but thousands, if not tens of thousands of these.

I won't get my first choice, which is to fork off one-quarter of the encyclopedia to WikiEntertainment, which would make a lot more sense. They could form their own rules for what seems more like an almanac, anyway. But since that won't happen, the next best thing is to avoid providing a platform for "shadow" notability: redirects. Student7 (talk) 21:03, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, if the band is notable, but the individual members aren't, it does not hurt to have the names of the members as searchable terms redirected back to the band. Listing the person as part of a famous person from a specific town? Heck no - in most cases, we expect "notable residents" to have their own fleshed out articles that are clearly notable. That's how we deal with that aspect of the issue. --MASEM (t) 21:07, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Whether the redirect for Jody Breeze remains or is removed is a consensus decision to be made by the editors of Macon, Georgia. This guideline is irrelevant. patsw (talk) 19:29, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Is Student7's point about content, or redirects, or stand-alone articles? The example given is contradictory, if content in added to an existing article and a redirect is created for it, it is not a new stand-alone article, so this guideline is irrelevant. patsw (talk) 19:29, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Establishing the relationship with the GNG and the SNGs

Bringing this over from a discussion at WT:ORG...

While I believe that unwritten consensus supports this point of view, I think we need to verbally state it in WP:N. That view being composed of two thoughts:

• Notability is the minimum requirement for a topic to have a stand-alone article. (which we already sorta say, but important to the following statement)
• Sub-notability guidelines provide alternative means of showing that a topic will likely meet the GNG, and thus be presumed notable. Commonly this is shown through specific criteria that assures that the sourcing required for the GNG either already exists but may be difficult to locate or collect, or has a very high likelihood of being generated due to the circumstances of the criteria.

A possible third:

• In general, sub-notability guidelines are alternatives to the GNG; a topic failing a sub-notability guideline may still meet the GNG and thus be presumed notable. In select cases, sub-notability and Wikiproject specific guidelines may recommend against creating a stand-alone article for a topic that otherwise is presumed notable if coverage of that topic is better described along with topics, or if there is a possibility of indiscriminate coverage due to the nature of the topic's field.

A section outlining this would help make it clear the purpose the SNGs serve and how they should be developed. None with goes against the current set of SNGs that we have (eg I believe this represents consensus), but it would help when people try to use an SNG improperly to deny a GNG-meeting topic of having an article, or proposing SNG criteria that won't ever necessarily meet the GNG. --MASEM (t) 17:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Masem: Can you spell out these acronyms and maybe provide some links to where they are identified? Brews ohare (talk) 17:37, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

GNG is the General Notability Guideline, spelled out WP:GNG. SNG is "Sub-notability guideline", but the acronym isn't spelled out in long-term form on any page, though I believe this proposed section would be the adequate target for it. --MASEM (t) 17:40, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I see also that the talk page you have referred to is for the guideline Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies), a single page in an entire category of guidelines I was completely unaware of. Brews ohare (talk) 17:47, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd guess that all the articles listed at Category:Wikipedia_notability with the exception of WP:Notability itself are "sub-notability guidelines"? Brews ohare (talk) 18:22, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

They are officially called "Notability Subject-specific guidelines". They aren't "sub" since they aren't under anything, but separate entities. Dream Focus 18:27, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

• You can be notable by either the meeting the General Notability Guideline OR any of the secondary guidelines. They were created because some notable topics do not get mainstream coverage like famous people and other popular culture items do. WP:SCHOLAR shows that if someone's work is cited by peers, such as in college level textbooks or whatnot, then they are notable for their work in their fields, even without anyone writing any interviews or historical pages about them. WP:ARTIST shows that if someone has designed notable monuments or has their worked featured in permanent collections of notable museums, then they are a notable person. There are a lot of things that should clearly be in a serious online encyclopedia, which will NEVER get mainstream media coverage. Wikipedia:Notability article reads: A topic is presumed to merit an article if it meets the general notability guideline below, and is not excluded under What Wikipedia is not. A topic is also presumed notable if it meets the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right. I think that's pretty clear already. Dream Focus 18:17, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I agree that the SNGs like what you list are to help topics that otherwise ought to be including in an encyclopedia that lack the typical, easy-to-search-and-locate, online resources that other topics have. However, even in the cases you describe above of the specific examples, those are framed to point to what others have likely considered about the person at hand, and really are saying that "hey, there's likely secondary sources out there, but its going to take some work and discrimination and time and effort to locate, so for now, we're presuming notability". This is about the selection of SNG criteria to make sure it's towards the minds-eye of thinking about if secondary sources likely exist. This also is meant to prevent creating criteria that do not have a strong chance of having secondary source coverages for all cases - e.g. "any redhead is presumed notable". --MASEM (t) 19:32, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

As a reader of Notability that never noticed this point, I have formatted Notability to break out this important point and make it more obvious. Brews ohare (talk) 18:26, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

What would be the reaction to drafting an SSG along these lines:

WP:Notability (Descriptive articles): A descriptive article is one that includes no opinion, evaluation, comparison, or interpretation of the material it contains, but is restricted to nothing more than guidance to identify the content of primary sources. Potential examples are guidance to governmental agencies including the governing legislation and present and previous officers, guidance to legal documents governing significant issues, and so forth. All guidance is of the form of aiding identification of the relevant sources, not an appraisal of them. A descriptive article is allowed on WP provided it is notable, which is to say, not an uninteresting compilation. Criteria determining notability of such descriptive articles are:

and so forth. Brews ohare (talk) 18:42, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I would strongly object to such a SNG... again, notability is about whether a specific topic is notable. We can not say that an entire class of article is notable. Blueboar (talk) 18:50, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Of course, restriction to a topic is understood and could be made emphatic. Brews ohare (talk) 18:56, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I understand the idea that coverage does not need to be from mainstream (read "popular") sources, and so agree with the caveat in WP:SCHOLAR... But we do need coverage. Thus, I have more of a problem with WP:ARTIST saying "if someone has designed notable monuments or has their worked featured in permanent collections of notable museums, then they are a notable person." Notability is all about having people actually notice (ie comment upon) what the subject has done. Yes, it is highly likely that a sculptor who designed a notable monument, or an artist who is featured in the permanent collection will be notable... but likelihood is not the same as fact. After all, there are many great (notable) works of art that were created by complete unknowns. Don't we need some sort of written evidence to "demonstrate" notability? Blueboar (talk) 18:50, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

No, its basically common sense. You are notable for your accomplishments, not because you agreed to do interviews, or whatnot. Many things get reviewed if they are from a company that buys at a lot of advertisement in the newspaper or magazine reviewing it. Relying on coverage isn't really a good idea. Dream Focus 18:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Blueboar: I'd say that if the work of art satisfies the criteria provided it is notable and ipso facto so is the artist. You don't have to have "chatter" about yourself personally to be notable, and it doesn't make you notable just because you have a following on Facebook. Brews ohare (talk) 19:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

The relationship betwen GNG's and SNG's has always been unclear. I thought that wp:notability explicitly clarified this by saying the meeting a SNG qualifies as meeting GNG, but now I don't see it in there. And, even with that, the reverse was not covered, (oi.e. that the SNG can be ignored if GNG is met. The general consensus seems to lean towards sayign it's an "or" situaiton where meeting one or the other is sufficient. But it is VERY common for someone to say that whichever criteria is more stringent applies, or that an articles must statisy BOTH GNG and the SNG to survive. North8000 (talk) 18:53, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Arguments pop up rarely in AFDs, and when they do the overwhelming majority of editors see it as an either/or situation. Dream Focus 18:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Re: You are notable for your accomplishments ....I completely disagree with this. You are notable because people have taken note of you. You might do all sorts of wonderful things, but if no one notes that you did them, then you are NOT notable. Blueboar (talk) 19:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Explicitly, I am stating that it is still an "or" situation. You either need to meet the GNG or an SNG. My point in this statement is not towards the specific notability of any topic, but to understand that SNGs are developed, as Dream Focus says, to help topics where easily-discovered traditional coverage is not immediately accessible by granting them presumed notability for a stand-alone article. We expect that the GNG can eventually be shown given enough time and resources to locate all such sources, but we don't require that a topic that meets the SNG to meet the GNG as well.

That said, the caveat in this is that while a topic may meet a SNG, if it starts becoming clear after a long amount of time that there are no sources to establish notability given that serious effort has been made, then perhaps that presumption is wrong. That's why it is important to highlight that notability is always a presumption. Say an SNG says a person is notable for winning an award, so the article is created for that person. If after several years, no sources can be found (and it is a legitimate good faith effort to find sources), then it is not unreasonably to send the article to AFD or merge to a larger topic. We hope that SNGs are developed to avoid this scenario, and thus why it is important that SNG criteria are aimed towards ultimately finding GNG sources. How long do they have? Exactly what's prescribed by WP:DEADLINE (effectively, indefinitely), and has much as consensus allows -meaning it could stay forever, or until someone starts an AFD and gain consensus that it no longer is appropriate (which I would definitely say is an extreme rarity, but possible in the larger scheme of things) --MASEM (t) 19:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

There is another interaction issue which your comment does not cover. That is where the SNG is more stringent than GNG. A few examples:

• Musicians SNG which gets interpreted to exclude certain sources (e.g. university publications) from being used to satisfy GNG.
• No expert here, but I think that the SNG for academics / professors is more stringent that GNG and gets applied. Possibly acknowledging that in that publishing-heavy arena the ratio of publishing to real world notability is much higher than in other fields.
• I just weighed in on one AFD where some delete comments say that the subject needs to meet requirements in addition to GNG, based on what the SNG appears to say.

North8000 (talk) 20:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

On the third point, there is a lot of people that mis-read the SNG and believe its GNG + SNG coverage. I even have an article at AFD that was nominated for not meeting the exact SNG despite meeting the GNG. That's miscommunication and needs to be clearer. (if anything that RFC on WP:N about 3-4 years ago showed it was definitely "or", not "and").

On the first and second point, that's what my third point tries to point out; that perhaps for their field, the GNG alone would allow for indiscriminate coverage of a large number of topics. If consensus agrees that for this field, there needs to be more than the GNG, that's fine, but that type of outlining is the exception for SNGs, not the rule. --MASEM (t) 20:15, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

• Needs to be an "and", not an "or". Crossing the GNG is simply the first step that makes it even possible for an article to be included, and the SNGs should generally be tailored to be an additional criteria. Using them as an inclusionary rule has historically created problems with the inclusion of athletes, fictional characters, and insignificant flyspecks on maps. The whole "I think there must be sources out there somewhere" concept is one that we should wholeheartedly reject: if people can't produce an article based on independent, third-party sources with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy, it doesn't even meet WP:V. If an article can't meet WP:V, WP:N doesn't even need to be discussed.—Kww(talk) 21:08, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that both "or" and "and" can have some bad consequences. Right now the reality is that it's sort of a vague combination of the two. GNG has the most influence, and sometimes it gets made looser or tighter via influence from a SNG. A part of this equation is that most respondents at AFD don't generally knwo the SNG's. And higher expectations for responders is not a solution; it would exasperate the problem that right not where are too few reasponders for most AFD's. North8000 (talk) 22:14, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

• • It's not treated as "and" at AFD. However, my point here is that this is a two step process. The first step - the creation of SNG criteria - should be to assure that the GNG can ultimately be met given time and effort but not required at article creation as long a criteria can be shown to be met. That leads to the second step where we say notability is "GNG or SNG" but effectively "GNG or SNG based on meeting the GNG", that is, making that "or" an "and" in implementation. The reason we can't say "GNG and SNG" is because we start of that notability is a presumption.
  • So the issue becomes making sure that we don't have bogus SNG criteria so that this is always met. I have some problems with NSPORT (eg playing one pro game makes one notable?) but for the most part all of our SNG criteria that have consensus are generally assured routes to finding GNG sources eventually. That's how you assure there's no long term problem without having to make that "or" into "and". --MASEM (t) 22:24, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that I agree with you 100%. I'm just pointing out some different cases which are outside of your discussion. There certainly are times where SNG's are invoked to create criteria more stringent than GNG. North8000 (talk) 22:54, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

• As always, I strongly object to the idea that articles should be created because the subject will meet the GNG "eventually". If the topic doesn't meet the GNG now, there shouldn't be an article now.—Kww(talk) 11:45, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. An article does not meet wp:notability, it's subject does. North8000 (talk) 11:50, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Fixed sentence. I'm surprised the error actually was an impediment to comprehension.—Kww(talk) 11:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

They would mean two things that are very different in a very relevant way. Saying the subject would (only) someday meet notability is essentially saying that coverage does not currently exist but might exist in the future. Such is not a valid claim to wp:notability. Saying that the "article" may someday meet notability is in error, but a common one used to purport that existence of suitable coverage is irrelevant if it is not already in / proven in the article...that assertion would be in error. So it's not a matter of difficulty in "comprehension", it was a graceful way of asking whether you really meant the "in-error" version. North8000 (talk) 12:08, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

The distinction between "coverage does not exist" and "coverage has not been found" has never struck me as significant. The only valid way to show that coverage exists is to find it. The whole argument on geographic locations has always rested on the idea that the coverage must exist somewhere, we just haven't found it yet. I'm of the opinion that if no one has found it, we should behave as if it does not exist.—Kww(talk) 12:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

That's contrary to WP:DEADLINE, but we have to drive a balance between frivolous inclusion and allowance for a developing topic. As long as the SNGs are crafted with criteria where by meeting the criteria in itself is typically an action worthy of note and thus likely to have secondary sources associated with just that action, that's addressing the sourcing issue. Now, to wit, there is presently no SNG that covers geographic places: that allowance is strictly from WP:OUTCOMES and something that stands out as a sore thumb, but a discussion about that falls outside this conversation. The thing here is that meeting any SNG presently has always been an alternative to meeting the GNG, as tested at AFD and the like. It would require a sea change to alter that, and I would believe that would pretty much be impossible to change at this point in time. We have to reflect that consensus, but we can be clear that SNGs are meant to lead into GNG-satisfying articles. --MASEM (t) 12:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

There are very valid cases where "coverage has not been found" is not an indication that coverage does not exist. For old topics it's not likely that there's online coverage. For topics in foreign countries there's always the possibility that coverage exists but we can't read it as it's in a different language. Using a strict criteria that "coverage not found doesn't exist" would further Wikipedia:BIAS, and we should strive to fight bias, not maximize it. As long as by consensus there's a legitimate reason for which we can't find existing sources, I don't see a problem to use that reason to establish a likelihood of notability. Diego (talk) 12:46, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

There are SNGs that are normally used as exclusion guidelines, though. WP:NALBUMS comes to mind immediately: it starts out by insisting that the GNG be met, and then sets additional criteria. I agree that meeting an SNG has always been deemed sufficient, but meeting the GNG is not universally sufficient.—Kww(talk) 14:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)This safeguard is set with regard to the ignore all rules pillar. There are situations where meeting GNG is not enough to establish notability, as evaluated by the editorial judgement of editors involved. Conversely, editors may determine that a particular topic has established notability even if WP:GNG is not met. Using WP:N as law instead of as a guideline would be against the Wikipedia way. In this case editors may estimate that the topic is likely to have enough sources to satisfy GNG somewhere, but they can't find them right now. Diego (talk) 12:14, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

No guideline should be used as law, but this particular issue comes up so often as to be virtually institutionalized.—Kww(talk) 12:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Kww, a frequent example that I run across of "coverage probably exists but is not proven" is usually where the text credibly indicates real world notability a near-certainty of existence of suitable sources, but where such has not yet been put in the article. At AFD's these usually occur between a combination of factors including the article not having any editors / advocates combined with some things that make the sources more difficult to find....for example, the topic being very old (pre-internet) or in a non-English-speaking country. And outside of AFD is the geographic articles. (towns etc.) North8000 (talk) 12:51, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

If I may interject, the relationship accepted by DRV and by extension at AFD, which has been hashed out 100s of times, is that SNGs are there as short-cuts to markers that would show that a particular subject is likely to have sufficient sourcing to be considered N. If you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. The overarching policy is V - and it's a 5P that information on wikipedia is verifiable from RS. If there are no sources then the subject cannot meet V and that is where the GNG comes from in terms of inclusion and why N is the standard we generally use to determine that. That said, tracing sources is not always that straightforward, especially for pre-internet or non-english language subjects, which is why the SNGs are useful to allow reviewers to quickly and simply establish if a subject is likely to have enough sources to meet N. The metric we use at AFD/DRV is that a subject that meets GNG but fails SNG should be a keep. Articles that pass SNG may be deleted if there is clear evidence of a thorough search for sources and the SNG is unduly lenient (i.e. PORNBIO) but in 99% of the cases passing a SNG means sources are likely and the discussion will be closed as "keep". Articles that fail GNG and SNG are invariably deleted unless they are considered to be inherently notable such as a geographical location shown on a map or a secondary school. Because there is some wriggle room around GNG/SNG boundaries and discussions are allowed to accept/reject sources to a degree there is always going to be some variation and the closer also has to have regard to wider meta-consensuses that might affect the implementation of a local consensus. That's why DRV won't enforce PORNBIO as an inclusion standard as the wider community consensus on BLP/Sourcing is stricter than the SNG, which has yet to catch up. Hope this all makes sense. By the way oppose to any of the proposed changes to N around this. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:09, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll point out that this basically matches what I proposed - and what I'm proposing adding is reflecting this general consensus in writing (which otherwise doesn't exist anywhere else). --MASEM (t) 13:33, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

If it is likely that significant coverage in independent sources can be found for a topic, deletion due to lack of notability is inappropriate. The word "likely" in here is a probability assessment, and can be proven true only by finding a source, whereupon the likelihood of finding a source becomes a certainty. Like most of this Notability document, vagueness abounds. That has two consequences in my experience: it allows flexibility for good judgment, and it allows flexibility for bad judgment. On WP just which prevails does not depend upon the issue, but upon who is involved and how the battle is fought. In short, vagueness contributes primarily to dispute, not to a good article.

The proposal reads: Sub-notability guidelines provide alternative means of showing that a topic will likely meet the GNG, and thus be presumed notable. This language again involves "likely" and has the same drawbacks already mentioned. It is like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. Brews ohare (talk) 13:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

A proposal I would prefer is: Sub-notability guidelines provide alternative means of showing that a topic is notable. That is tantamount to the present wording: A topic is also presumed notable if it meets the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right. Brews ohare (talk) 14:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Given that Wikipedia does not have firm rules, the vagueness is by design. I also happen to think that it's a good thing. That said, your second sentence looks better as it avoids redundancy - and it still doesn't preclude SNGs from NOT showing notability in some cases. Diego (talk) 14:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Diego: You may be saying something else, but I read the present language as suggesting that if the sub-notability guideline says yes, then go for it. If it doesn't, then you are stuck with the rest of WP:Notability. As for "vagueness by design": it works only if you have wise participants, an unusual occurrence. Brews ohare (talk) 14:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Nevertheless, this is what the founding fathers of Wikipedia police agreed. The IAR pillar works better when there's a wiki where anyone can add and remove content. Unfortuntely AfD makes a weird exception to the process since deleted articles history can't be wiki-recovered; that's why it's good to have safeguard against unwarranted deletions. An "or" criterion of either GNG or SNG will provide more opportunities for the content to be reviewed by more people. Diego (talk) 14:43, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

• I generally take it as an either/or, but that WP:V isn't negotiable. So if we have a RS that some topic meets a SNG, we generally include keep the article. So, for example, an academic where the sources indicate they meet the guideline (say IEEE fellow), but all sources we can find aren't truly independent or in-depth (IEEE has only a sentence, their faculty bio isn't independent, their publication record doesn't talk about _them_), we still keep the article. Hobit (talk) 14:32, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

random break

Part of the problem here is dealing with situations where there are conflicts between the GNG and some SNGs. In practice, there are three types of SNG...

1. Those that attempt to work in sync with GNG and clarify how GNG should be applied when it comes to a specific topic. (this is the approach I prefer)
2. Those that attempt to set "rules" that are more stringent than those listed in the GNG (favored by those with an "Exclusionist" mindset, who don't think GNG is restrictive enough).
3. Those that attempt to set "rules" that are less stringent than those listed at GNG - to state exceptions to GNG (favored by those with an "Inclusionist" mindset, who think GNG is too strict).

The conflicts occur in those SNGs that fit pattern 2 and 3. Blueboar (talk) 14:54, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

The third point I think is one that there can be readily agreed on as long as we understand that notability is always a presumed quality, a necessary factor to allow development of topics that have a strong likelihood of being good encyclopedic articles down the road without enforcing any deadline to react that point. SNGs, well-designed, provide appropriate metrics that point in this direction. Presumed notability can be challenged at AFD, and consensus there can make a call that goes above and beyond the GNG and SNG guidance.

The second point actually has two facets. One are those SNGs that provide a stronger requirement than just the GNG, not because of any implicit "exclusionist" goals, but because consensus has recognized that the GNG is likely too low a barrier for topics within that field (eg take NSPORT's specific occlusion of local sports coverage for high school and amateur athletes); those are fine to encourage as part of WP:N's statement that there are other policies and guidelines that discourage the creation of a stand-alone topic for an article. The second facet of this point are ones that are more exclusionist and want to see it to be "GNG and SNG", and thus interpret the SNGs in that fashion. Given that, at least as sure as I am on it, that consensus is that the SNGs are alternative notability demonstrators (that is, "GNG or SNG"), these are editors going against the grain, and standard dispute resolution is appropriate there. --MASEM (t) 15:23, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it's really a matter for DR, Masem: I think it's a matter of recognizing that both forms of guidance exist. While I disagree with the idea of lowering the bar based on SNG, I recognize that the practice exists. Conversely, while some disagree with the idea that an SNG can exclude material that meets the GNG, that practice certainly also exists. What we need to do is figure out a way to structure things so that each kind of guideline does what it's supposed to do, and we don't bicker about whether a particular sentence is intended to be inclusive or exclusionary. —Kww(talk) 19:49, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

All of this complexity and excellent discussions aside, Masem, I support your proposal. North8000 (talk) 15:34, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

• IMO we don't want to move to a GNG-centric view of notability, it is not a useful benchmark by itself.  The standard that we have now for notability is "worthy of notice", and if editors agree that a topic is not worthy of notice, it doesn't matter if it passes WP:GNG.  Likewise, if a topic is worthy of notice by any of the various other notability guidelines, or editors agree that a notability essay is relevant, it doesn't matter if the topic fails WP:GNG.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:28, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • The reason we want articles to head towards the GNG in time is that by eventually being able to meet the GNG - "significant coverage in independent reliable secondary sources" - you've pretty much assured that WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV have been met to some degree, at minimum, for an article. It's not a necessary or sufficient requirement for that, but for the bulk of the articles on WP, meeting the GNG is the easiest path there.
  • Also keep in mind: this is by no means taking away the importance of the SNGs as alternative to the GNG. The day-to-day function of the SNG is still there. The point here is to explain the function of the SNGs, why they function as alternatives to the GNG and why they are developed as given. It's also important to restress that just like the GNG, the SNGs impart the presumption of notability to allow a stand-alone article, and other factors or consensus can reject that; the SNGs are not absolutes. --MASEM (t) 13:54, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
• The current situation of N=GNG or SNG is fine as far as I'm concerned. GNG is a decent general rule but it is flawed. It simply isn't always necessary to have 'significant coverage' of a topic to have a worthwhile encyclopedia article. 'Notability' as defined in WP is a somewhat artificial concept without meaning in the real world. The key considerations should be encyclopedic relevance and verifiability, and I believe these are what are covered by existing policy and guidelines, including the SNGs. As far as I am aware the idea that SNGs are all about a presumption of meeting the GNG has never been the case - they are simply an agreed set of criteria for encyclopedic relevance.--Michig (talk) 07:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that the current system is kind of fuzzy and ambiguous, but that the fuzziness and ambiguity is usually being used to make the system work. It's sort of an "or" situation overall, and never a complete "and". (Of course a pure "or" would mean often loosening each other up and never toughening each other) Sometimes the SNG's are used to "toughen up" GNG, and sometimes GNG is used to "toughen up" the SNG's. Like many Wikipedian systems, it mostly works until someone starts misbehaving (battling, COI etc.) at which point the lack of clarity makes it open to mis-use. When I was a newbie I was a victim of one of those situations, but they don't seem very common. And the idea that the SNG's being merely secondary to and predictors of ability to meet GNG is often promulgated. I was involved in one where the closing admin used this approach. I think article could have met GNG, but the "keep" notes/presentations all/only addressed the SNG and were for naught/ignored because the closing admin looked at only arguments with respect to GNG, which there were none. And so as a result an article which I think borderline met both GNG and SNG was deleted. So possibly a little clarification would be good. North8000 (talk) 22:28, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Proposed text

In considering the above, this is text I propose to add to WP:N.

"Subject-specific notability guidelines", sometimes referred to as "sub-notability guidelines" or SNG for short, are guidelines that generally perform two functions with respect to notability:

1. Most commonly, they provide one or more alternates to the General Notability Guideline of showing that a topic is presumed notable, typically by demonstrating that the topic has gained a specific form of recognition, such as a person winning an award. In other words, to determine the presumption of notability, a topic either should meet the General Notability Guideline or the appropriate subject-specific notability guideline. It is not required - though strongly encouraged - for a topic to meet both.
   The goal of subject-specific notability guidelines is to account for topics in fields where sources are not readily available and would require time and effort to locate and incorporate. Criteria for these guidelines should generally be taken as indicators of the current and future existence of additional sources that can eventually improve the sourcing quality of the article to satisfy the General Notability Guideline; for example, someone winning the Nobel Prize either likely has significant coverage of their achievements in existing sources that may only be in print and at limited library locations, or certainly would be outlined in present sources in describing the Nobel Prize award. As Wikipedia has no deadline, we presume these topics are notable, and thus appropriate for a stand-alone article, to allow them time to develop.
   Just as with the General Notability Guideline, these subject-specific guidelines are rules of thumb on the presumption of notability, and are not a guarantee that a topic is suitable for inclusion as a stand-alone article. Editors may come to consensus to delete, merge, or redirect topics that would otherwise meet the subject-specific guideline, such as if no other sources, through an exhaustive good-faith search, have been discovered for the topic.
2. In some occasions, they may require additional metrics or set specific limitations on sourcing beyond the minimum set by the General Notability Guideline in determining the presumption of notability of a topic. These are generally needed to avoid indiscriminate coverage for the topic area covered by the subject-specific guideline. For example, the sports-specific notability guideline rules out the use of local and routine sourcing for asserting the notability of high school and secondary school athletes. Wikiproject may also set tighter restrictions on the General Notability Guideline.

A full list of current subject-specific notability guidelines can be found in Template:Notabilityguide, which is repeated at the top of this page and on each subject-specific notability guideline.

Subject-specific notability guidelines generally have the consensus of the global Wikipedia community; changes to these guidelines should be discussed on these specific pages before changes are made. New subject-specific notability guidelines can be proposed by editors to the global community, but editors are encouraged to avoid instruction creep and determine if the General Notability Guidelines or other subject-specific guidelines do not already cover the target cases.

Please note that this is not anything new, but only spelling out what I perceive as current consensus on the issue of SNGs. Any language changes or other improvements are welcome. --MASEM (t) 22:57, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Would need to thoroughly noodle on this, but here's my first gut feel. Pretty good overall, but going from "fuzzy" to explicitly giving SNG's carte blanch to impose additional requirements beyond GNG would be dangerous would/could create problems. Possibly there's a way to limit or balance that? Also "strongly encouraged to meet both" might be a bit much in that direction. North8000 (talk) 23:53, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry, not in favour. I have never agreed with the idea that SNGs (which I have never seen referred to as 'sub-notability' guidelines btw) are just for temporary notability until GNG is met, which seems to be indicated by the proposed text. It has always been clear that notability is satisfied by GNG *or* a subject-specific notability guideline, and the only change I would like to see if any is a reinforcement of that.--Michig (talk) 18:59, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm not saying it's "temporary" (hence throwing out DEADLINE there) but that notability is "presumed" and that the degree that the community accepts a topic as presumed when no additional sources can be found tends to diminish with time from said claim of presumed, a process evident for topics that are nominated multiple times at AFD. This, of course, could mean that the community is completely happy with keeping a SNG-meeting topic around indefinitely even if no GNG sources appear.
  • To stress: I am not trying to change how SNG's are used presently with respect to the GNG, outside of assuring it is "GNG or SNG", and that some SNGs have stricter requirements. More importantly, I'm trying to make sure that when people are talking about modifying or creating new SNGs, they are looking to the larger goal of having a well-sourced article eventually, and thus to avoid choosing trivial criteria that do not lead to this assurance. --MASEM (t) 19:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Like it says, "avoid instruction creep". The best way to deal with SNGs to oppose, ignore or delete them. Trying to regulate them will only encourage them. Warden (talk) 19:48, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • The problem is that they exist but beyond a few lines in WP:N, that's it (hence, for example, the confusion of what an SNG was at the start of this thread). The point is to be better establish what current practice is with the nature between GNG and SNG. It is not regulating them in any manner. I don't see this as instruction creep as more clarification. --MASEM (t) 20:46, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose' First off, no one but you has ever called them "sub-notability guidelines". You guessed what SNG stood for and got it wrong. Secondly, it is not "strongly encouraged" to meet both. That'd be rather pointless to bother with. No reason for this. It quite clearly says already you need one or the other, not both, and its not because sources are hard to find, its because you don't need news coverage to prove something is notable. Dream Focus 01:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • People have been calling them sub-notability guidelines, but changing that practice is easy to fix. The reason we want to funnel articles towards the GNG in time is that the GNG's core "significant coverage in reliable independent secondary sources" is the necessary elements of sourcing requirements for a stand-alone article - and thus one must remember that WP's definition of notability is not the same as the english-language word. There is no doubt that there are subjects we should cover that are notable by the english definition - but that doesn't necessarily mean they need stand-alone articles. Without the likelihood that we can get GNG-like sourcing for an article, the less likely that consensus will allow a stand-alone article. Yes, end of the day, the practical meaning of this is "GNG or SNG but not necessarily both", and topics that meet an SNG will be kept, but at the same time, all this rests on how much presumption of notability there is for a topic, and that can change over a long period of time. --MASEM (t) 02:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I hate the word "presumption"... Isn't there any burden of evidence to show that the topic really is notable? Blueboar (talk) 13:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

You can't prove a topic is or is not notable, because that's an immeasurable quality and highly subjective. Presumption is necessary to translate objective measures - the coverage of a topic for the GNG, or satisfy specific criteria for the SNGs - into a subjective one with the weight of consensus behind it. --MASEM (t) 13:57, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Of course you can "prove" that a topic is notable... by pointing to sources that discuss the topic. Blueboar (talk) 15:00, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

But its not an objective metric. We sometimes consider something that appears in a lot of sources as non-notable (eg spur of the moment coverage like viral videos or the like). There are also the subject-specific guidelines that don't require the same type of coverage to be presumed notable. We have to recognize that we use "presumed" so that editors can create articles that they should have a reasonable expectation of being unchallenged or kept at AFD based on the likeliness that consensus will consider it notable. Any article's notability can be challenged by anyone if someone doesn't feel it is notable (though of course frivolous cases are strongly discouraged). That's why we can't make it an absolute, and can only stay with "presumed". --MASEM (t) 15:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Taking a different tack: Would it be a more universally acceptable statement to make that SNGs are to be used to give guidance in a particular subject area of specific criteria that indicate a subject passes the GNG? In other words, the GNG is law, but SNGs specify how a particular category of subjects meet the GNG. The GNG remains law, but the SNG says how the GNG is applied to the specific category. This would leave open the ability to argue that "Actor X is not notable, even though they have a cult following (per WP:ENT) because the cult following has never been documented in RSes" and would also allow us to argue that "Actor Y is notable, even though they don't meet the criteria of WP:ENT, because they are covered in source A, B, and C." The only codification of these issues that I would support is to say that "GNG is applicable to all articles all the time, SNGs serve to offer criteria which under most circumstances indicate the subject will meet the GNG, however any specific article subject may always be questioned for inclusion due to notability." Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 18:13, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I am not in love with the word presumption. What GNG is all about is the shift of the burden from this topic doesn't yet appear to merit an article, to this topic now appears to merit an article. It's about introducing relevant evidence as opposed to rendering the verdict to use the legal analogies. patsw (talk) 02:51, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Revised proposed addition

This is taking into consideration of some of the points of the above discussion. However, as long as WP:N uses the word "presumed" for notability, I can't change that aspect here; notability is always something presumed since it is impossible to prove otherwise.

"Subject-specific notability guidelines", "SNG"s for short, are guidelines that generally perform two functions with respect to notability:

1. Most commonly, they provide one or more alternates to the General Notability Guideline of showing that a topic is presumed notable, typically by demonstrating that the topic has gained a specific form of recognition, such as a person winning an award. In other words, to determine the presumption of notability, a topic either should meet the General Notability Guideline or the appropriate subject-specific notability guideline.
   Subject-specific notability guideline criteria generally should be derived in considering the likelihood that a complete, encyclopedic-quality article (eg, meeting core content policies such as WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV) can ultimately be made for topics that meet that criteria, but which other sources are not readily available and would require time and effort to locate and incorporate. As Wikipedia has no deadline, we presume these topics are notable, and thus appropriate for a stand-alone article, to allow them time to develop.
   Just as with the General Notability Guideline, these subject-specific guidelines are rules of thumb on the presumption of notability, and are not a guarantee that a topic is suitable for inclusion as a stand-alone article. Editors may come to consensus to delete, merge, or redirect topics that would otherwise meet the subject-specific guideline, such as if no other sources, through an exhaustive good-faith search, have been discovered for the topic.
2. In some occasions, they may require additional metrics or set specific limitations on sourcing beyond the minimum set by the General Notability Guideline in determining the presumption of notability of a topic. These are generally needed to avoid indiscriminate coverage for the topic area covered by the subject-specific guideline. For example, the sports-specific notability guideline rules out the use of local and routine sourcing for asserting the notability of high school and secondary school athletes. Wikiproject may also set tighter restrictions on the General Notability Guideline.

A full list of current subject-specific notability guidelines can be found in Template:Notabilityguide, which is repeated at the top of this page and on each subject-specific notability guideline.

Subject-specific notability guidelines generally have the consensus of the global Wikipedia community; changes to these guidelines should be discussed on these specific pages before changes are made. New subject-specific notability guidelines can be proposed by editors to the global community, but editors are encouraged to avoid instruction creep and determine if the General Notability Guidelines or other subject-specific guidelines do not already cover the target cases.

Wikiprojects may wish to set more specific and restrictive guidelines for notability within their own project (as in the second case described above); for example, the Video Games Wikiproject generally discourages separate articles for ports of older games when they can be covered on the original game article. However, alternative notability criteria set by Wikiprojects are generally not globally accepted; instead, Wikiprojects should attempt to gain consensus for additional alternative notability criteria at one of the existing subject-specific notability guideline pages or proposing a new subject-specific notability guideline globally.

Again stressing: This is to document existing practice, not create new practice. --MASEM (t) 19:21, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Secondary sources

For years the lede of this guideline included a requirement that notability be demonstrated by citation to secondary sources. This was a fairly solid consensus, repeated in several other policies and notability guidelines. I recently noticed that this requirement had been removed from the lede and so I returned it ... stating:

If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list.

The word "secondary" now been removed again (see: this dif). I am not sure why.

Please discuss.

I think what happened was that the old requirement for Secondary sources was lost when we added the requirement for Independent sources. I completely agree that independent sources are needed... but are not secondary sources needed as well? Was there a discussion on this? Blueboar (talk) 21:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Secondary sources are pretty much necessary. "Significant coverage by independent primary sources" is far too common and thus far too much inclusive. --MASEM (t) 22:13, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not sure why it was changed. Secondary sources have always been required. And for good reason. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:27, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

• The linked article is WP:Reliable sources, not WP:Reliable secondary sources a redirect to WP:Verifiability, created by a sysop about 7 months ago.
• The consensus for secondary sources is (and has been) expressed as "should" and not "must". If we want to debate anew that it should be changed, then so be it. Has there been a spate of bad articles with only primary source created recently giving this matter urgency? patsw (talk) 02:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • There are very few policies (much less guidelines) that use "must", and mostly those dealing with legal consequences. Notability, has a guideline, has always been implicitly "should". --MASEM (t) 03:11, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

This is an area where we don't need ambiguity. Every reference to "primary sources" needs the qualifier "should be" for clarity. patsw (talk) 12:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

OK... Can anyone give an example where the following sentence would be accurate: If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable primary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list. ? If not... the sentence should specify secondary sources. Blueboar (talk) 13:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I've never personally seen it. Shooterwalker (talk) 19:48, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

There have been, and I expect there will continue to be, good articles that start with no sources or only primary sources. Some of these articles are improved, eventually, with secondary sources. As I have mentioned before, the retroactive application of the Notability guideline to require secondary sources in Wikipedia could result in the deletion of tens of thousands of articles - erasing the of content of many volunteer editors who are not here participating in this debate. Has there been of flood of new articles which only contain references to primary sources that I have missed? Or is this change directed to a purge of old articles lacking secondary sources? patsw (talk) 03:07, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not about what sources are presently in an article, its whether there are secondary sources somewhere that can ultimately be added. There's no retroactive application here. --MASEM (t) 03:31, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that new or modified guidelines do not apply retroactively? patsw (talk) 15:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

No, they still apply - but we don't go AFDing articles just because there just happen to be no inline secondary sources given for it. If you can reasonable expect that there will be secondary sources but editors just haven't added them, that's not a reason to delete. --MASEM (t) 15:53, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Patsw, I agree with Masem on this. The citing of secondary sources in an article is not a requirement of notability so there's no retroactive impact of this. The hurdle for inclusion has always been clear in my mind that for a subject/topic to be notable it required significant coverage in secondary sources independent of the subject. If primary sources independent of the subject satisfied the notability hurdle, then we might find ourselves in this scenario. I get my hands on public documents that are police investigations of a variety of incidents/people, etc. Those documents are independent of the subject/topic, but primary in nature. If there is significant coverage of the incident in those documents, but the incidents have never been signficantly covered by secondary sources--scholarly papers, books, media, etc., would you consider those topics/subjects notable to warrant inclusion in WP? I personally think that "Secondary sources" should be a key element of the lead. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Mike and Masem here... In order to say that a topic is notable, secondary sources that cover the topic have to exist... whether we actually cite them in the article or not is a different issue. I see this as being similar to the way we deal with verifiability. While we do not require that every statement actually be verified (though an inline citation), we do require that every statement be verifiable (ie: reliable sources must exist, which we could cite if challenged). I think notability works in a similar way. We can assume notability if sources exist... we don't need to necessarily cite them unless someone actually challenges whether the topic is notable. Blueboar (talk) 13:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

So what type of "challenge" raises the bar from the simple claim that "sources exist", to an actual citation? I have seen users that even at the "challenge" level of an AfD seem to think that simply !vote "*Keep - sources exist" without providing the source(s) is enough to require "closure, no consensus to delete, default to keep." And have closing admins apparently agree with them.-- The Red Pen of Doom 19:32, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

A "Keep, sources exist" without either stating what those sources are, or pointing to a previous discussion where they have been identified (past AFD, talk page, whatever), is, basically, a null !vote, and should be ignored. If there are admins agreeing with that and closing it based on the apparent existence of sources without naming them, that should be discussed withe closer and/or sent to DRV. We require verifability and a nebulous "they exist" doesn't cut it. --MASEM (t) 19:41, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Even at AFD, there's no requirement that the citations for multiple, independent secondary sources be typed into the article. The requirement is only that specific instances of suitable sources be identified somewhere. Handwaving assertions that surely the sources exist isn't good enough, but the article may be kept at AFD and still continue to be {{unref}}'d for years to come. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:29, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I have long thought that those who vote "Keep - sources exist" at an AfD discussion should have a burden to actually FIXTHEPROBLEM and add those sources to the article. The sources don't have to be added as inline citations... simply dumping them into a 'references' section at the bottom of the page would be enough. The point being that they would be there... ready to be used by future editors who subsequently wished to review them and improve the article. Blueboar (talk) 18:25, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

That should happen (and exactly as you said, even a link dump is acceptable), but we can't enforce it when it doesn't. Say AFD1 closes, because one editors drops 5 links to sources in the AFD, but not mirrored in the article, and everyone accepted them to show notability. Ideally, before AFD2 happens, someone using BEFORE should review the AFD1 and see the sources, but BEFORE's not required as well here. Someone's got to handle adding the sources, but none of our policies have finger to point to whom should be responsible. This would be a great area that something like the ARS could handle - tag articles that have AFD discussed closed as "keep, sources now found" and then work to add those sources into articles, since if the sources are legit, half the work's done for that. But it still comes to the fact that per our mechancism between AFD closure and notability judgement, no one "actor" in the overall scheme is responsible for adding sources to a previously unsourced article. --MASEM (t) 18:31, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

"but none of our policies have finger to point to whom should be responsible."... well, that omission can be corrected. If there is a consensus that this is a good idea, we can create a policy that says who is responsible. Blueboar (talk) 19:59, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem is: whom do you put that responsibility on? Yes, one line in one policy would be able to fix it, but it's a chicken-and-egg problem, and if you put in the wrong place, you'll have certain people ticked off. --MASEM (t) 20:10, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

The responsibility to (at a minimum) dump a source or two into the article would be put on those who think the topic is notable and opine with a Keep vote at the AfD. Blueboar (talk) 14:29, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Mind you, I would agree with you on this, but there's going to be a significant backlash against that, the ones that, for example, put a LOT of weight in the application of BEFORE. --MASEM (t) 14:48, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any conflict with WP:BEFORE... that provision talks about steps people should take before they challenge notability... my idea would focus on what happens next... after a challenge is actually issued. Blueboar (talk) 14:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not so much the conflict, it's the onus. The thread of logic that I've seen used before: AFD closes with keep with sources identified but not added; AFD2 is started by nom claiming no sources; nom is attacked by those that want to !vote keep because if BEFORE was followed, the nom would have discovered the refs in AFD1 and added them themselves to the article. It's an attitude issue, not policy. --MASEM (t) 15:24, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah...I have seen the same situation... and what I am proposing is an attempt to avoid such situations from arising in the first place. If my concept is adopted, the first AfD would not close until the sources that were identified were actually added to the article. We would never get to the point of having a second "AfD2" (at least not one based on a lack of sources) or its invocation of WP:BEFORE - because the first AFD would result in sources actually being placed in the article. Blueboar (talk) 15:57, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Local sources

This is stemming from the discussion at WP:VPP about the inclusion of secondary schools. Irregardless of that solution, it has been suggested that local sources should be treated carefully, as with routine sources, in determining notability.

That is, a topic whose significant secondary coverage (for meeting the GNG) comes from only sources that are local, may not be appropriate for inclusion in WP. But I don't think consensus would outright dismiss a topic only sourced to local sources (this is, in fact, the impetus for why we have articles on every village and town, based on the likelihood local sources on that will emerge). At the same time, we have to be aware that we would not likely allow a local business, well covered by local sources, to have its own article.

I think we can have some language here (and possibly bring in WP:ROUTINE from WP:ORG), but I think the language has to be, at the end of the day, case-by-case; we can't restrict the use of local sources for notability, but they will remain a point of contention if you can't expand beyond that. I believe we may be able to have a stronger statement (that notability via local sources only is generally discouraged, but still treated case-by-case), but I don't know that for sure. I am absolutely sure we cannot outright reject local sources for notability. On the opposite side, I would argue that due to language in SNGs like WP:ORG and WP:NSPORT that outright allowance for local source notability is not consensus either; the consensus seems to fall somewhere between the extremes. I think we also need to be clear what we consider as local sources; "Smalltown Gazette" is clearly a local source, but then you have larger metro papers like the "New York Times" which no one would certainly call "local" but at the same time has coverage that is clearly meant for "local" consumption and not the broader global readership.

To emphasis this: this is not able limiting the use of local sources as a valid source to meet WP:V. Local sources may be the best to provide references once the topic's shown notable. This is only about their use in notability, nothing more.

Right now I'm testing the water to see if there's a reasonable chance that a site-wide RFC would likely affirm some type of stance on local sources one way or another. I'm trying to get a feel for if there's a better way to think about this as well. --MASEM (t) 19:38, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

First, I don't think we keep articles on villages and towns based on an assumed likelihood that local sources might, some day, emerge... I think we keep them because there are non-local sources that actually exist in the here-and-now that note their existence (regional maps, census data, governmental documents).

As for the difference between "The Smalltown Gazette" and "The New York Times"... it is a matter of distribution and scope of audience. The Gazette will only be read locally, even when it covers international news. The Times, on the other hand is read nationally, even when it covers local news. That means that, barring other sources, local items reported on by the Times will be far more notable than international items that are reported on by the Gazette.

For these reasons, I strongly support the idea of requiring at least regional coverage... small town, purely local sources simply are not enough to support a claim of notability. Blueboar (talk) 20:46, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, on the issue of non-local sources for towns, etc. , those are third-party but primary, non-secondary sources; factually existing is not reason for inclusion. When the arguments about keeping those articles in light of the GNG, it's usually because local secondary sources will likely come to existence at some point. Of course, since we can factually verify they exist, there's no reason to wipe away those articles at this time.

The aspect about the NYTimes having local items of interest read nationally, is a factor pointing to systematic bias. It works two ways here, first that western and first-world countries are going to have more local sources available for documentation than mid-eastern and third-world countries. Since WP aims to be a worldwide encyclopedia, we should consider that systematic bias for the inclusion of local topics. Secondly, that same concept applies to "big city paper" to "small town paper", and creates another level of systematic bias. I agree that it is understanding when the coverage is meant to be local, and when it is targeted towards a larger (at least regional) audience that makes a distinction. --MASEM (t) 20:56, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Note that WikiProject Countering systemic bias, who are presumably knowledgeable in the matter of bias, actually recommend not to fight bias by excluding existing content but by adding content from less well-covered areas. ("this project concentrates upon remedying omissions ... rather than on either (1) protesting against inappropriate inclusions, or (2) trying to remedy issues of how material is presented. Thus, the first question is "What haven't we covered yet?", rather than "how should we change the existing coverage?"). So why should existing local sources be downplayed, against the advice of the experts? (Also note that this would also hinder articles from mid-eastern and third-world countries that depend on local sources, so I can't see how it would help to fight bias unless you only restrict "local coverage in western countries", but that would be bogus). This only applies to your argument about systemic bias; the other points about being careful with local sources are interesting. Diego (talk) 22:48, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I do understand the WPCSB's point, but the problem here is that when it comes to local sources of equivalent nature (say, the newspaper of a small town), the actual existence of that is going to vary by country. It would be one thing if we were talking regional-to-regional coverage, but at the local level, there's just an imbalance that can't be worked around not because sources haven't been added, but that sources of equivalent nature simply don't exist. --MASEM (t) 23:47, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

One thing that's on my mind is that most newspaper articles about organizations and events and such aren't secondary sources anyway. It's complicated, but I think our summary at WP:PRIMARYNEWS does a decent job of covering the basics. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't quite cover it but it is a point to built atop of. For example, taking the case of a local sources for schools, there's usually a lot of local sources about school system stuff ranging from taxes and levies, improvements, academic and sporting achievements, "local" scandels, human interest stories, etc. Clearly not all of these are appropriate for an encyclopedia article, but several don't fall under PRIMARYNEWS either to an extent (to the point, people will argue that factor). --MASEM (t) 17:06, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Like I said, it's complicated. An article about school taxes could be largely analytical and therefore secondary. Articles about which team won what award, however, are primary, as are nearly all local scandals and human interest stories. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Reminder-- Delete votes hurt writers' feelings

When you consider an abstract subject "notability policy", do you ever think about completely different problem of "editor morale"? The two seem distant, but they're actually closely connected, as I learned this week.

I wanted to learn about a subject, so I did what I always do-- I looked in Wikipedia. But we didn't have an article on it. So I was done reading up on it, I made a little article here. Just so the next reader wouldn't have go through the same thing.

Now I'll be the first to admit-- it wasn't a fascinating article-- most of history isn't that exciting. I wasn't passionate about the article, but I never imagined that it would become the subject of a deletion.

I sincerely believed it was a good-faith topic that would non-controversially improve Wikipedia. So when others disagreed and felt my time did not improve Wikipedia, it was a surprising emotional experience.

You see, my time is surprisingly valuable to me. I have family duties, I have work duties, I balance them all. I gave Wikipedia a gift of my time. I gave it a little piece of my life.

If Wikipeda keeps my gift and improves it, I will be vastly more inclined to donate even more of my time in the future. But if you take my hand-made gift and visibly throw it in the trash, I will have a different reaction.

I probably won't feel very welcome here. I may feel "Wikipedia" doesn't like me or want me. I may not feel very open to giving Wikipedia any of my own time. After all why waste more time on things that will just get deleted??

I'm not the point. I'm just one person, not an important one, and I'll probably keep contributing anyway.

We need to be aware-- delete !votes have a very real, lasting emotional consequence that cripples editor morale. Make sure you realize that. Make sure you remember that "Delete !votes" carry a cost to our mission.

We must have deletions-- bad-faith contributions, illegal contributions, vanity article, etc. But when good-faith people are trying to do good-faith things, deletion is a very insensitive tool.

Please try to remember this in the future. You're not just deciding on whether to keep a single article-- you're deciding on whether to keep authors. HectorMoffet (talk) 04:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Note: the above comment was also posted at the Village Pump, and the discussion is taking place there. --MelanieN (talk) 16:17, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 9 March 2012

Please add Leanne Ford, fashion stylist

Coalminersblogger (talk) 18:33, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, you've left this request at the wrong page. — Bility (talk) 18:48, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Why is the american u.s. tv series the BiG BANG THEORY theory allowed to be more notable than what is real, really, The Big Bang Theory

Is wikipedia turning into the "American television watchers' encyclopedia"

Requested move closed by editor who has clear conflict of interest: http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Talk:The_Big_Bang_Theory#Requested_move — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.94.204.129 (talk) 04:32, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll start with the section header question.

The reasons for each page to be listed as they are can be found in the discussion you yourself have linked. Did you not read them or did you just want to let this talk page know that you disagree with them?

"Is wikipedia turning into the "American television watchers' encyclopedia?" - No.

As for the COI, care to explain how it's "clear"? Making such an accusation with no evidence is considered a personal attack. OlYeller21^Talktome 04:49, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• It's kind of meaningless to ask `Is wikipedia turning into the "American television watchers' encyclopedia"`; it has been for the last eleven years. Asking that question is like asking, "is the Earth turning into a planet?" Reyk _YO! 05:25, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• Um... the TV show is not considered "more notable" than the real (scientific) Big Bang theory. We have articles on both. Thus, they are considered equally notable. Blueboar (talk) 13:10, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Holy shitballs - we did consider one more notable. See Big Bang Theory, and Big Bang Theory (disambiguation), both of which I fixed. Hipocrite (talk) 13:20, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Notability is "you are" or "you aren't", there's no scale.

On the other hand, there is "what is more recognizable" or "what is the more common (worldwide) use of a term" or the like, which does have some type of quantifiable aspect, and in which yes the scientific theory should rank much higher than the TV show. But both have "equal" notability.

No, this doesn't change the outcome of the above, just something to keep in mind. This actually might be a rare case where the TV source could possibly have justifiably more sources than the scientific theory, but that doesn't make it "more notable". --MASEM (t) 13:28, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

(after ec) @Hipocrite: There's bold and then there's, well, um, something else. I have undid your bold fix. This has been very recently discussed at length. You are welcome to participate and demonstrate that consensus can change, but there is little benefit to unilaterally undermining the determination of editor who closed the WP:RM discussion. older ≠ wiser 13:30, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not discussing the requested move, and this has certainly not been discussed at length. It's been assumed and then edit warred about. Now that it's getting publicized, I assume it'll be fixed. This is an encyclopedia. Hipocrite (talk) 13:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Your "fix" directly undermined the result of the requested move. older ≠ wiser 13:41, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Requested Moves move articles from point A to point B. Did I change that at all? If you are using requested moves to do something else, you are violating policy. Hipocrite (talk) 13:58, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

You're nitpicking on the result of the overall name discussion that appeared at the RM discussion. Just because it happened under an RM banner doesn't mean the result is invalidated for any other type of page name/disambig discussion. --MASEM (t) 14:01, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm nitpicking because your RM involved "The Big Bang Theory," not "Big Bang Theory," which was the underpinning of the requested move - that it matched the title of the show (with a "The"). Still an encyclopedia. Hipocrite (talk) 14:06, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

That is still nitpicking; whether the "The" was there or not doesn't change how the involved pages work with respect to the capitalization of "theory" or not; that is, the same end results should be gotten by the user if they include "The" before "Big Bang Theory" or not; and the same for "Big Bang theory". The "The" doesn't matter. --MASEM (t) 14:09, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

An interesting argument. Since the RM specifically mentioned the The in !votes by pcuser42, Powers, C.Fred, SlashMe, older ≠ wiser, 117Avenue, we'd have to discount their opinions for the purpose of your analysis, right? Hipocrite (talk) 14:13, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

There are two questions that you're conflating: what is the primary topic of "The Big Bang Theory" and what is the primary topic of "Big Bang Theory". And both have recent discussions that resulted in the same answer for each question: with the capital-T, with or without the "The" in front, the TV show is currently primary. With the lowercase t (and many other variations), the theory is primary. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:29, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I have made an additional clarification at the dab page... the article on the scientific theory is entitled: Big Bang (without the word "theory"... the version with the word it is a redirect). By pointing directly to the actual title of the article, (and noting the redirected title as a secondary alternative) we clarify any confusion. Blueboar (talk) 14:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

You have been reverted, not by me. Hipocrite (talk) 14:38, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

So I see... I think part of the problem may lie in the fact that we have two competing (overly precise) dab pages: "Big Bang (disambiguation)" and "Big Bang Theory (disambiguation)". I realize that there are subtle differences between the two titles, but I think having one dab page would clarify the situation. I propose that we merge them. Blueboar (talk) 14:59, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

They are not overly precise, and the differences are not subtle. No one calls the TV show "Big Bang" for instance, nor the bands "Big Bang Theory". Two different sets of topics ambiguous with two different titles. The cosmological theory is the only one ambiguous with both, so included on both pages (and primary for one of them). I think the problem lies with the misinterpretation of "primary topic" as "most important" or otherwise an affront to any topic that isn't primary -- it isn't; it's simply a navigational aid to the readership, not a judgement of the value of the topics. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:09, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

That is exactly my point... would it not make navigation even easier if there was one single dab page that would list all of these topics and articles, in all variations and permutations? So, no matter what someone was searching for, they could quickly and easily find the article on the topic they were looking for? Blueboar (talk) 15:54, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it would be easier. But Wikipedians are known for rarely being interested in making navigation easy. Diego (talk) 16:47, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:AGF and WP:NPA -- comment on the content, not the editors. No, it wouldn't make navigation easier, unless you beg the question by assuming that readers are always looking on Wikipedia for things (albums, TV shows, TV episodes) titled "Big Bang Theory" by the lazier/more economical search "Big Bang". I assume that readers looking for a titled work search by the title of that work, and so keeping the disambiguation pages separate helps those readers by giving them shorter lists of things that might actually have been looking for, rather than longer lists for the convenience of editors to avoid recognizing differences in titles. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:28, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

All I'm doing is stating that this assumption has been scientifically proven wrong... :'-( Diego (talk) 19:14, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• We had this discussion for Avatar awhile back. Even though the vast overwhelming majority of people searching for "Avatar" were looking for the film, not the Hindu thing, it was decided by some that Wikipedia should have the article about the religious figure. This is different though. People looking for the big bang theory will search for big bang theory and find the page they were after. Those that are looking for the show will search for the big bang theory since that's its name. Dream Focus 17:16, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we can assume that at all... I think it quite likely that someone searching for the TV show might type in "big bang theory" (omitting the "The", and not using any capital letters) and I also think it quite likely that someone searching for the cosmological theory might type "The Big Bang Theory" (adding the "The" and using all caps). Remember that the user searching for information might not know that we make a distinction between "The Big Bang Theory" and the "Big Bang theory". Hell, they may live under a rock and not even know that the TV Show (or the cosmological theory) exists. Now, the searcher may initially be sent to the "wrong" article, depending on what he types into the search box... but that's OK... that is why we have hat notes at the top of the page and dab pages. A few clicks will direct them to the article they were looking for. The only question is... do we need two separate dab pages or would it make more sense to combine them into one single dab page. I think it makes more sense to have one... so that no matter what someone is looking for they can find it at that one page. But if we don't... it isn't the end of the world... it just takes the searcher a few more clicks to get to the "right" article. Blueboar (talk) 17:40, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

It should be one disambiguation page. If you have two, readers won't know if they should follow one of the links in the current page or switch to the other dab page, making navigation extremely difficult (because all the outgoing links provide exactly the same information scent). See my comment here about the misguiding link to The Big Bang (TV series). Diego (talk) 17:45, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• Actually, that's not what will happen. People typically use two-word searches (this is a result by a Google Excite published scientific paper, they should know it); so the majority of people looking for the show will use the query "big bang". (And although the average length has been increasing, the most economical and likely one is the shortest. Moreover, the people most in need of disambiguation will use shorter, simpler queries). Diego (talk) 17:28, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

  WP is not Google. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:28, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Diego is not saying it is... he merely is pointing out that many of our users are likely to search for things on Wikipedia using the same incomplete and imprecise "search terms" that they use on Google. Blueboar (talk) 19:06, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

That's it - because people are people, no matter what tool they're using. The navigation principes of information foraging have been validated on all kinds of web sites, not just search engines. Diego (talk) 19:12, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• There's an ongoing RfC on this topic at Talk:Big_Bang_Theory_(disambiguation)#Primary_Topic_RFC. Diego (talk) 17:30, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Good point... and this should be continued there. As far as any of this relates to WP:Notability, the issue has been settled. Blueboar (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Notability vs Notoriety

I think we need to be a bit clearer as to the difference between Notability and notoriety. This is especially important when something or someone is currently "in the news". I agree that Notability is not temporary, but notoriety can be. I attempted to add something about this to the guideline, but it was reverted. Please discuss. Blueboar (talk) 16:15, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

There is no need for a distinction between "notable" and "notorious". "Notorious" simply means being famous for something bad; it does not imply being non-notable. "Famous" in the popular sense is not the same as "notable" in the Wikipedia sense. Being in the news, for good or ill, may provide fame (or notoriety), but it does not provide notability in the Wikipedia sense if it is temporary. But being in the news, for good or ill, over an extended period of time or for multiple reasons can establish notability in the Wikipedia sense. Whether the person is then considered to be "notable" or "notorious" is simply a value judgment. --MelanieN (talk) 17:05, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I reverted the change because introducing a new concept is a can of worms, since every AfD discusion after that should clarify two concepts, which is now difficult enough with Notability alone; and it isn't really needed to achieve the effect you're describing anyway. Avoiding articles for topics "in the news" is already covered by What Wikipedia is not, which is a policy developing the Wikipedia is an encyclopedia pillar.

Anything "notorious" by your definition that would be better placed at Wikinews is already excluded from Notability by the sentence "A topic is presumed to merit an article if it meets the general notability guideline below, and is not excluded under What Wikipedia is not." in the lead. If you want to clarify the WP:NTEMP section to clarify this idea without changing the consensus, we could put a link in that section to Wikipedia is not a newspaper. Diego (talk) 17:19, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:IINFO

There are several places where Notabitlity links to WP:IINFO under the piping "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information." However, the content at WP:IINFO "As explained in the policy introduction, merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia. Wikipedia articles should not be: 1.Summary-only descriptions of works. ... 2.Lyrics databases. ... 3.Excessive listings of statistics. ..."

Is that really a good/full explication what is intended by the "not an indiscriminate collection of information" directive within this guideline? -- The Red Pen of Doom 13:31, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I think more/better examples could be added. If you propose them here, I would comment on them and perhaps we could get consensus to change the guideline? --KarlB (talk) 04:46, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:BK

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(books)#BKCRIT_3. --SupernovaExplosion ^Talk 08:14, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Geography

Seeking input over at Wikipedia talk:Notability (geography) on writing geography specific guidelines. Kmusser (talk) 20:19, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Spammers are bribing people to write sources.

Just a heads up. There is a new wave of PR companies who are aware of Wikipedia's notability policies and are making significant cash sums in order to get editors of publications considered "reliable" to write "significant" coverage to become notable. They are also telling them to not write articles about their competitors so they will be "not" notable. 178.102.232.249 (talk) 02:51, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

This was long to be expected. We should take care to consider what is a reliable source, or as I prefer for a measure of a good secondary source, what are reputable sources. A reputable source does not cover for a secreet commission and ignore the opposition. Some of this may get though, but any more than a little bit and the style of biased coverage becomes obvious. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:01, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Do you realize, that you just took at face value, a random, unsourced comment from an IP address, that has made a total of 1 edit, which is the edit above? While what 178.102.232.249 wrote may indeed be true, it also may be patently false. These kind of accusations should require the same rules of evidence as we require for articles, otherwise they should be discarded as rumor. Or, it could just be a hoax, to prove exactly the point I just made. --KarlB (talk) 04:45, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Frankly, it has always been the job of the PR industry to get their clients mentioned in newspapers, magazines, and other "publications considered 'reliable'", even before Wikipedia existed, so there isn't much room for doubt about this claim. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

The thing that needs to be sourced/proven, and isn't, is this allegation that reliable publications, or their editors, are accepting cash payments to write stories about certain products/companies and not to cover others. That kind of vague assertion, without any proof and without naming any names, can and should be disregarded. As always, we should continue to apply standards to sources to be sure that they are reliable/reputable, but we should not assume without evidence that they have been bribed. --MelanieN (talk) 18:13, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Common sense need apply as well. Many entertainment venue magazines or web sites take advertising dollars from the producers and publishers of the works they are reviewing/covering. That doesn't necessary mean that there's paid editing going on, though I've seen this argument used before as to reject certain reviews from meeting WP:V/WP:RS and thus WP:N. The history of the RS will be useful to judge that aspect. --MASEM (t) 18:28, 8 May 2012 (UTC)