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Please clarify confusing notability issue for AfD purposes

Hi. I am involved in two AfD discussions Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/C. Sandanayake‎ and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CE Holkar‎ concerning notability of articles about sports players which seem to meet the subject-specific conditions of Wikipedia:Notability (sports) but, it is argued, do not meet the bigger picture conditions of the Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline.

One editor has argued that the articles must be kept because, per this Wikipedia:Notability guideline,

A topic is presumed to merit an article if:
  1. It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right; and
  2. It is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy.

One of the guidelines in the box on the right is sports. He concludes that whether or not the articles meet GNG is irrelevant, as they meet the SSG, as specified by our overarching notability guideline (in the introduction of this project page).

Another editor, who wants the articles deleted because he thinks they fail the GNG, has answered by saying that there was a village pump policy debate surrounding this issue and consensus was clear that GNG overrules any SSG, not the other way around.

It would seem to me that there is a serious inconsistency here because, if the "village pump policy debate" outcome is correct, the notability guideline introduction is out of date and should be amended to say that GNG overrules SSG. If the debate outcome has no effect on the guideline and the current notability wording is still effective, something needs to be done to ensure that it is consistently followed at AfD discussions. My understanding, having read comments by other editors, is that some articles have already been deleted because they did not meet the wider GNG even though they did meet the specific SSG.

This is an unsatisfactory situation. Please can you provide a solution? Regards, Waj (talk) 16:49, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

@Waj: The guideline page itself clarifies it. Under "Applicable Policies and Guidelines:" "All information included in Wikipedia, including articles about sports, must be verifiable. In addition, standalone articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline." (emphasis added) So the very page you're citing makes crystal clear that articles must meet the GNG. While meeting one of the "sports" criteria creates a presumption that it will, that is a rebuttable presumption if it turns out sufficient references don't in fact exist. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:11, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Notability by either the GNG or the SNGs are a presumption that we can expand the article to meet all content policies (V, NOR, NPOV, NOT) and thus allow the standalone article. That is, while we do allow the NSPORTS criteria to assert presumption for a standalone, we need more coverage ultimately to validate that presumption. However, to challenge that presumption, one is required to follow the steps of WP:BEFORE to demonstrate that there are actually no further sources coming (which includes looking to print sources which might be local). That's the only way to properly challenge the presumption at AFD. --Masem (t) 17:19, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
  • The issue is a very large number of boilerplate articles sourced, if you want to call it that, to a single scorecard entry each. That is, a handful of statistics amounting to at most a few cells in a spreadsheet and no actual prose. It's frequently not even possible to discern the subject's full name. Ambiguities about similarly name people are among the problems that arise from that kind of less-than-minimal information. Since these are biographies of (mostly) living people, more substantial sourcing is necessary and almost invariably nothing more ever turns up. As for WP:NCRIC itself, I think it's clear from the RfC and the outcome of the majority of these AfDs that this SSG no longer enjoys community support (if it ever did). It's therefore no longer possible to blithely wave a hand and yawn "speedy keep- passes NCRIC" and expect that to count for anything. Reyk YO! 17:57, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
    • It likely comes back to the "played one game" element of the NSPORT (which affects NCRIC), which I know why its there, why its argued, but totally agree that it is far too loose a critical to show that the GNG can be met. Right now, it exists by apparent community consensus, but I would expect that could be challenged in a new global RFC, particularly if you can show cases like this for cricket. (Maybe it needs to be restricted to certain spots). --Masem (t) 18:13, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
  • The sports specific guideline does require meeting the GNG and always has. Other SNGs are presumed independent of the GNG by WP:N, unless explicitly stated otherwise. WP:PROF in particular is specifically independent from the GNG, and this has been confirmed by a recent RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:05, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
    • That "RFC" (it never was called out an RFC nor appeared to have been advertised) is problematic given that we already established no SNG can override the GNG. That's going to need to be revisited for community consensus (as the other SNGs have generally been in regards to the relationship with WP:N and the GNG). --Masem (t) 18:10, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
      • Wrong on all counts: if you want to change the unamibgious text of this guideline, you need to start an RfC on or about this guideline: It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right. The PROF RfC was called an RfC, was advertised on CENT and at the village pump, and closed with overwhelming support in rejecting the view that the GNG trumps all. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:17, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
        • Okay, yes, it was called all that, I'm just surprised headers / info about that were not present. I still think it's wrong to consider NPROF overriding the GNG, but this does require reworking how notability should be perceived to better establish the relationship between the core content policies, the GNG, and the SNGs. (See my comment in that discussion, that's basically where we need to go) - basically keeping in mind that the GNG is nothing if consensus still believes that no sources exist to meet V/NOR/NPOV. --Masem (t) 18:30, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
          • The problem is that the GNG has nothing to do with notability at all, it has to do with verifiability. Arguments phrased as not meeting the GNG are better phrased as WP:DEL7 arguments. The best thing that we could do for notability reform on en.wiki is to move the GNG out of WP:N and to WP:V. It would end all of this confusion, and would be much easier to act consistently on inclusion decisions. I know this isn't likely to happen anytime soon, but long-term I see it as the only solution to deal with our evolving standards as we become more relied upon by the public. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:38, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
            • The GNG is all about notability, as it requires secondary sources - those that transform rote facts into something novel and different, things we can't do without violating OR. If we just had WP:V-meeting facts and used that as the minimum requirement, that doesn't help - it would allow a whole mess of things, and we're not supposed to be a collection of indiscriminate info. WP:N is meant to distill to when third-parties have given some degree of evaluation to a topic to judge it to be more notable than just facts. Meeting the GNG - showing that there seem to be a couple of these types of sources available, is a presumption of notability being met. (However, I will point out I don't think that is clear in the current languages of N and the SNGs.) --Masem (t) 20:45, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
              • WP:N combines verifiability with other core policies such as NOT and is designed to tell us what is important enough that we would expect to find it in a general purpose encyclopedia. It was also written a decade ago when the media was significantly different than it is now: any one on this talk page could meet the GNG as written within a month or two if they tried hard enough. It is utterly useless at telling us if something is important enough to be in an encyclopedia, as demonstrated by the existence of guidelines such as CORP, which are basically lists of how to pay lip service to the GNG while ignoring it in AfDs. It doesn't work, and we need to stop pretending that it does. What we do need to do, however, is more stringently enforce V, which really is what most people who oppose SNGs from a deletionist perspective are arguing. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
                • I'm going to work out an essay, because I do think the language in WP:N is outdated to reflect the way we should be handling things. But I will point out that that there are plenty of issues with COI (and thus factoring into NCORP), there are problems with inconsistently handling of AFD closures, and there are problems throughout most of the SNGs in that people do want to have their pet projects included if they can (not to blame them, that's natural instinct). Notability is still important, but how it is handled and treated is too widely varied between all parts of the project and it needs to be fixed. --Masem (t) 21:11, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
                  • Yes: we agree on most of that. I just think the best thing we could do to make the notability system salvageable is scrap the GNG or change it to be very different than it is written today. The SNGs provide a way forward here, and it's easier to fix them than it is to fix the GNG, IMO. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:17, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
                    • The way I have kept in mind is that there's a point that a well-developed article never will be presumed notable, because there is a large swath of secondary, third-party sources to prove it notable beyond a doubt. We aren't ever going to delete World War II for example. Where that threshold exists is impossible to quantify, but we do know the more secondary, third-party, independent sources covering the topic in depth you can add to an article, the less likely it will be ever be challenged at AFD. Note to stress here that except for the articles that suit our purpose as a gazetteer (geographic places), we are not using "inclusion" guidelines, which would that that a topic must have an article because it belongs in a certain class. It is about the quantity and nature of the sources and how that lets us meet the content policies.
                    • Because we don't know where that line sits, we rely on the presumption of notability to allow the article to develop until it reaches that line. This presumption must be based on verified sources and making sure all content policies are still satisfied. To that end, we have the non-specific GNG, that says if you can pull a couple of such sources that may be representative of a larger number out there, then you can presume the topic is notable. That works for most broad topics, but when you get to the subject areas, it may be more difficult to find those sources immediately. So the SNGs exist to be based on a type of merit or accomplishment that, for most cases where that had happened, a large number of sources have been found or will emerge. This emphasizes the "GNG or SNG" approach, but still makes both guidelines that are meant to help guide articles towards meeting the threshold discussed above, while giving these articles the time and space to grow in an open wiki.
                    • The problem right now is that WP:N as read and sometimes used, suggests that the GNG is the notability guideline (it's not), and that the SNGs are to approach that (they're not). We need to make this distinction much clearer. I have been giving a lot of thought to this and making this clarification keeps everything in line, doesn't break SNGs, AFD or other processes, it just strengthens how all these guidelines should come together to support crafting new articles without fear of deletion, while avoiding IINFO and issues relating to COIs and the like. But I need to draft this all out as an essay first --Masem (t) 21:40, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
                    • The key sticking point is that in the real world, a topic is deemed to be notable based on some criteria, such as impact of subject X on domain Y. But for many domains, this determination can only be made by those with specialized domain knowledge. English Wikipedia's current decision-making tradition isn't very well suited to delegating decisions to a smaller subset of persons (and there is a reasonable concern that domain specialists might draw the line of inclusion more broadly than can be managed by the available volunteer editors). So instead the community has, at present, chosen to evaluate real-world significance through the proxy of how independent, non-promotional, reliable third-party sources cover a subject. While using domain-specific guidance for determining if a subject should have an article could in theory be more effective, it would require the community to agree to cede its veto power over article creation, and to trust domain-area specialists. isaacl (talk) 22:14, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
                      • The bigger issue is that, although the community says it's deciding these things through the existence of multiple in-depth published independent reliable sources, it actually has lots of unclearly-documented and unclearly-motivated exceptions (e.g. same-city newspapers don't count even if they would be reliable for subjects from somewhere else) that have nothing to do with verifiability and instead are aimed at some subjective notion of significance. And significance through media coverage is too easily gamed to be a good proxy for subject-specific expertise. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
                        • I was commenting specifically on Tony's idea of scrapping the general notability guideline in favour of topic-specific notability guidelines, which would at least in some domains move away from a coverage-based standard to an achievement-based one. (With regards to the issue you raise, "non-promotional" is one of the tricky aspects with media coverage. Particularly when covering matters of local interest, newspapers will typically provide some degree of promotion. This is especially true for sports journalism.) isaacl (talk) 07:50, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, I'm grateful to TonyBallioni, Masem, Reyk and Seraphimblade. I'm afraid I still have difficulty with this because Wikipedia:Notability says an article is merited if it meets either the general notability guideline or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline. This, to me, says the two are equal (either one or the other). That is contradicted by Wikipedia:Notability (sports) which says, as Seraphimblade quoted, that (sports) articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline in addition to being verified. What makes it worse is that, in the introduction to NSPORT, it repeats WP:N by saying in bold that "The article must provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below". I'm afraid it doesn't help and this to me is a very unsatisfactory situation because it is ambiguous and contradictory. I think that Tony's solution would help and really it needs to be done as soon as possible. As you say, Tony, because the site is "relied upon by the public". Regards, Waj (talk) 20:51, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

The line " In addition, standalone articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline." contradicts what NSport already establishes. I'm going to address that on that page, but that line needs to go because it is flatout wrong. --Masem (t) 21:13, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Thank you, Masem. I think that will help the situation enormously. Regards, Waj (talk) 21:34, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Ultimately, a subject is eligible for a standalone article if there is consensus for that subject to have an article. GNG and the SNGs are useful proxies for how consensus has developed over time, so that we don’t have to constantly flood AFD with articles and waste a lot of editors’ time. As Seraphimblade and Masem properly note, both the GNG and SNGs are rebuttable presumptions, and no guideline is ultimately dispositive – AFD is dispositive. However, The more we can build broad consensus in SNGs, the less time we have to waste on AFDs and/or risk inconsistent results due to lack of AFD participation.--Mojo Hand (talk) 21:46, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
As described in Wikipedia:Notability (sports)/FAQ, the sports-related notability guidelines were explicitly created to provide a guideline to avoid rapid deletion of articles if the written text in the article did not immediately provide sources indicating that the general notability guideline is met by the subject. Meeting the sports-specific notability guidelines is considered to be an excellent indicator that sources meeting the general notability guideline can be found, given some time to uncover them. The article should always have some sources indicating that either the appropriate sports-related notability guideline or GNG is met, so anyone reviewing the article will have a way to verify the basis for the presumption of notability, and that is what the quoted sentence in Wikipedia:Notability (sports) is referring to. If after due diligence, it is determined that in spite of the sports-related notability guideline being met, the general notability guideline is highly unlikely to be met, then the article fails Wikipedia's standards of having an article. isaacl (talk) 21:50, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
The quoted sentence is inconsistent with the key point expressed in both guidelines and it must be changed to correct the ambiguity. An FAQ cannot have any official status, but if it repeats inconsistency then it too needs to be amended or it confuses editors and readers alike and is not fit for purpose as an FAQ. I as a new member am confused, hence this discussion. If an article can pass either the GNG or the SSG then there can be no problem with it having presumed notability, subject to verification and other policies. To assert that it must pass both is ridiculous because then it would be illogical to have both; one would suffice. Regards, Waj (talk) 22:18, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
The quoted sentence says The article must provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below. It doesn't say that the article must pass both sets of criteria. Getting the wording of the guidance changed has, unfortunately, not received consensus approval so far. The FAQ provides context to understand the motivation of the first three paragraphs of Wikipedia:Notability (sports). In an ideal world, a new article would immediately identify appropriate sources to illustrate that the general notability guideline has been met. The real-world compromise we have to avoid wasting time deleting and recreating articles is a set of rules of thumb that help us identify subjects that are highly likely to already have appropriate coverage that meets the general notability guideline, even if the current article text does not list them. isaacl (talk) 22:33, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
No, that is not the sentence in question. The sentence is "In addition, standalone articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline" as quoted by Masem above. Regards, Waj (talk) 22:43, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Well, it's that sentence which you quoted above for which I was providing additional clarification (I said the quoted sentence in Wikipedia:Notability (sports)). isaacl (talk) 02:51, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

This situation is easily sortable. The two basic general notability guidelines contradict each other rendering each of them completely and utterly null and void, meaning the only, completely fair, NPOV way of sorting this out is going by subject-specific notability guidelines. Frankly anyone who doesn't do so is in breach of NPOV and has no interest working on an NPOV project. Bobo. 17:00, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

  • GNG prevails with sports that is the takeaway. Sports fuidelines sepcifically say GNG must be met, which means we must have multiple sources that are more than just stat listings. On the other hand, if a person is only noted in sports and does not pass the sports guidelines, they are not notable. The cricket guidelines almost certainly have to be tightened. I think football and gridiron football rules both need to be tightened. Presumed notability for playing one game in the National Football League, the gridiron football league in the US, makes sense. Presumed notability for all players of at least one game in the totally marginal arena football league makes no sense at all. The sports rules clearly state that GNG prevails, so articles scrapped to stats which are not in any way indepth coverage, need to be deleted. If they are articles on living people, and living is assumed positively unless proved that they were born before 1907 or we have actual evidence of their death, than we should delete expeditiously and only allow recreation if people actually identify good sourcing.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:23, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
  • WP:N is the controlling authority.  If a WP:N sub-guideline is contrary to WP:N, WP:N prevails.  If an RfC is contrary to WP:N, WP:N prevails.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:41, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
  • The notability guidelines are guidelines not policies. Having studied them deeply you may form your own opinion about what is it is best to do. You may find your opinion happens to conflict with something contained in the guideline documentation and if so you may have to give a strong rationale to persuade other people to agree with you. Guidelines are to be treated with common sense and they have exceptions. Some people refute this and say they are rules – these people are, of course, entitled to make such claims but you need not believe them. Thincat (talk) 10:19, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Further insights

Over the holiday, I had a bit of inspiration of how better to see notability, the GNG, and the SNG, that might require a significant change in this guideline that doesn't affect the practice of notability but provides the clarity we currently lack.

First, we have to understand that notability is one possible measure of showing the "encyclopedicness" of a topic. That of course brings up what is "encyclopedicness" and that is best thought of as the balance between WP:V - that we can validate a fact to a reliable source - and WP:NOT - that not every published fact is necessarily appropriate for inclusion. There are a lot of other things that feed this notion of "encyclopedicness", such as that since we consider ourselves a gazetter, we include every recognized place name regardless of any other aspects. Or because we are a reference work, we include core data tables like the Periodic Table of Elements without comment. (In other words, notability is not applicable 100% of the time)

However, the bulk of the topics on WP are shown their "encyclopedicness" through the concept of notability, which we have used as a topic receiving significant coverage by multiple reliable sources independent of the topic. This measure or notability, where an article's "encyclopedicness" will not be questioned, is very subjective, but as I described above, it increases in an exponential fashion with the more reliable, in-depth coverage of a topic that you can obtain, and the more long-tail, retrospective aspects that come to light (not a burst of coverage). What that level is, is hard to say, but I would say that if you take the GNG's metrics, that's not even the bare minimum where "notability" is assured. Yes, you might find two or three sources to show the GNG but if that's all that can ever be found, and there's no other means for the topic to have "encyclopedicness" met, then we'd still likely delete it. We can't expect all topics to have the extensive amount of coverage of major topics like World War II, The Bible, Albert Einstein, etc. but we do expect in the long term something more substance than two or three sources. Unfortunately, where notability is met is very subjective, and very much "I'll know it when I see it".

This is where the GNG/SNG come in. Whereas notability is meant to help balance WP:V and WP:NOT, the GNG/SNG are meant to balance those that judge the instantaneous state of an article, and the fact that we have no deadline to get these articles right. These NGs exist to prevent sticklers on quality from immediately seeking deletion for articles they don't like because they don't feel the current state shows notability, and give time to the article creators and editors to find more sources or wait for more sources to come around. They still represent the presumption of notability, that if no further sourcing can be found through a reasonable conclusive search, then deletion of a topic that will never reach notability is well in line.

This thus establishes what should be the clear distinction between the GNG (which, as I said, if just met is not sufficient to met notability), and the SNG. The GNG is a source-based measure for presumption (if some secondary sources exist, then likely additional secondary sources can be found). The SNGs are a merit-based measure (if a topic has received a merit of a type in its field, then based on past examples it will likely receive additional secondary sources). This makes it clear that we should be treating the presumption of notability as "GNG or SNG" , not "and", nor "SNG to meet the GNG". Both are still presumptions, and thus editors are still encouraged to expand with sourcing as they continue to develop it; each source they can add will help to satisfy more and more people as to the topic showing true notability and having its "encyclopedicness" satisfied, so that no one will question why we have an article on it.

So what does this mean in terms of this page? The core thing I would do is move GNG and listing the SNGs to a separate page, and possibly bring in the stuff from WP:BEFORE into that, since these explain how the presumption of notability works, what the end goals for editors should be, and how the presumption should be challenged at AFD. The current WP:N page I would leave to explain the ideas of "encyclopedicness" (a term I would love to find a better version of), how that is a balance between all published facts and what we are not, how notability is used to measure that for most topics (but where there are exceptions), and then reference to the GNG/SNG page (to make is clear the GNG is not the same as notability) and explain what purpose they serve. We also may need to remain the GNG and SNG to "General Notability Presumption Guideline" and "Subject-specific Notability Presumption Guidelines", to make it clear neither the GNG and the SNGs equate to notability, only that the trend to reach notability appears to be met.

I'm pretty confident that taken all this as a whole, it still represents practice (I'm not redefining how we do things) but it better explains the roles of WP:N, the GNG and the SNGs in a manner to make it clear how they all apply, better than our current page does and avoids issues on the SNGs pages like in the above section. --Masem (t) 15:01, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

  • The practice for many SNGs, despite what is written is GNG and SNG (I'm thinking NFOOTY) or simply SNG or bust (PROF is de facto this way). This practice should be extended universally when an SNG exists. The GNG simply exists to tell us if something can be independently verified. It is not useful in determining whether or not something is important enough to be in an encyclopedia and is by far the most confusing guideline we have on this entire site. Reliance on the GNG alone is meaningless as I could meet it within a month or two if I tried as could anyone on this page. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:08, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
    • There is an aspect here that I was thinking related to the NPROF issue, in that if the site-wide community decides that the "encyclopedicness" of academics is measured in a different way than by notability, we can account for that as being the parts of WP that are encyclopedic but not covered by notability. We do have to be careful that these exceptions are agreed by a wide number of editors (eg the issue with schools is an example where schools do not have that wide consesnsu to be outside notability). --Masem (t) 15:36, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
      • I suppose my biggest issue is that I reject your presumption that the community actually supports the GNG in practice. Yes, we all argue based on it. Hell, even I do that and I think it is useless. At the same time, we have extremely different standards for what it means based on the category (a school by consensus basically only needs one local offline newspaper blurb, while a for-profit company needs articles in the newspaper of record in a country in practice.) This is very confusing to new users, who get mad when we (usually correctly) delete their articles by changing the goal posts on them after the articles have been created. Scraping the concept of notability and replacing it with verifiability+importance=encylopedicness is what we need to do. I'm not particularly hopeful it will happen this year or even in the next five, but we do need to take steps in that direction, even if they are small. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:02, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
        • This is why I think it is important to stress that notability is not equal to the GNG, nor vice versa. The GNG is a minimum quality of sourcing to allow for a standalone article to be created on the likeliness/presumption it can get to notability.
        • This distinction also gives us the ability to add a bit more teeth into the GNG, one I would specifically add being that local, "micro" sources do not count in coverage if trying to judge the GNG for a topic. Local sources can support an article, and once you've shown some wider ranging coverage, the local sources to do help towards notability and encyclopedicness.
        • The idea that "encyclopedicness" is the balance between verifiability and important/what is not appropriate still works, and recognizes that secondary sourcing (the core of notability) is not always the only measure of importance that we can use. But we should be very careful in the ares where that encyclopedicness is not necessarily met by notability and make sure those types of exceptions have strong consensus for them. Notability, while overall widely subjective of when it is satisified, is still based on objective definitions (many many secondary sources giving in-depth coverage, which either exist or don't exist). When you get away from that and try to claim importance on any other type of measure, that needs community consensus, otherwise you'd have arguments over "importance" on measures that are entirely subjective. --Masem (t) 16:33, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
          • User:Masem, "secondary sourcing (the core of notability) is not always the only measure of importance"? This is true, but it represents the dynamic boundary regions of accepted stand alone articles. Geographical features, asteroids, plant species, and historic sportspeople come to mind. In my opinion, all of these that cannot support sourced prose, should be merged, and in many cases the merging has already occurred. Where there are no secondary sources, how are you going to write a paragraph of prose? WP:OR? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:18, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
  • As long as we are clarifying how this all fits together... And discussing potential changes (or at least musing about them)... I have never liked the word “presumption” in these discussions. A better word would be “likelihood”... ie if X criteria is met (be it sourcing or some other metric) then there is a LIKELIHOOD that the subject will be deemed notable. Using “likelihood” makes it clearer that it isn’t a guarantee of notability. Blueboar (talk) 15:19, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
    • I think we could boldly make that change now without an RfC if there are no objections. The historical agreement on this page is that notability is a rebuttable presumption of inclusion. Changing it to likely to be included would not change the meaning and would make it clearer. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:22, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
    • The only reason presumption has worked is that links to the term rebuttable presumption, but I think that can be changed as long as we footnote the use of "presumption" as historical usage and still keep the link. (ETA: This was me, I forgot when I added this ) --Masem (t) 18:38, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
      • Its not the only reason it works. "Rebuttable" carries the implication that the premise holds until someone actively rebuts it. Likelihood is a terrible alternative for the purpose of guiding decision making. "Likelihood" is a theoretical concept dependent on statistical analysis. It is very hard to evaluate for a new topic. It is also confusing as to who is required to evaluate the likelihood, it kind of implies that the article writer is, and I think that is very unreasonable to any reasonable newcomer. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:23, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Masem, I like that you are doing such a much-needed analysis. And I agree with much of what you wrote. Also you attempt to tackle the fuzzy chaos between GNG and SNG's. But I think that your attempt to solve that chaos by defining SNG's as simply a temporary way in for non-mature articles misses the mark. Enclyclopicness is also very useful word for Wikipedia, but I think it logically relates more to wp:not than to notability. I also think that your analysis has yet to include two big factors. One is the GNG is missing a needed guiding light as to what it supposed to do. As a result a portion of it is rudderless and becomes circular / self-referential in the missing areas. (I.E. the goal of the guideline is to do whatever the guideline says) Most other policies get by without this as it's pretty clear. For GNG, the obvious only partially covers it. The guiding light that most people have in their heads could be described as: "Apply an additional criteria of real-world notability where the main metric is coverage in wp:RS suitable sources, and which sets a level of real-world notability suitable for an encyclopedia that is only going to have 10 or 20 million articles." Second, I think that an underlying impetus for the existence of SNGs is that the ratio of suitable coverage in sources to actual notability varies dramatically between fields. My grand-nephew's pewee league baseball team gets plenty of RS coverage to meet wp:GNG, but should fail the wp:notability test. Conversely, every species of animal should probably meet wp:notability, but most don't have in-depthe coverage in a secondary (not tertiary) source. In short, by failing to acknowledge and handle this disparity, GNG is too ham-handed. IMO the solution would be to have GNG acknowledge this and calibrate itself to that, and then eliminate the SNG's. Finally, an observation that if the logical "OR" (or the alternative logical "AND") between having to meet GNG and/or the SNG were strictly implemented, we would have a mess. In each case, the small group that runs the SNG could override the GNG towards inclusion or exclusion. As long as we have the bad situation of conflicting guidelines existing, I think that the current relationship is best. Which is basically a logical "OR", but with the GNG or the SNG having some influence when the other is applied, and the GNG having significant influence on the design of SNG's. Sincerely. North8000 (talk) 17:05, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

I would like to stress the one observation that I came to, that notability is not equal to the GNG, or vice versa. In light of what I talk about above, just meeting the current GNG should not be seen as a minimum to meet notability, it is only a likeliness for notability to be met to allow for a standalone article. Making this distinction alleviates your concerns about the logcal "or" in "GNG or SNG", because as before, with many taking the GNG to be equal to notability, you run into the problems you describe. Instead, by distinguishing the GNG from notability, you can now classify the GNG and the SNG as both equivalent (logical "or") in how they are indicators of likelihood towards notability. Pulling the GNG out of WP:N would go a long way to making clear the historical and present distinction of the relationship between N, GNG and SNGs. --Masem (t) 18:50, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, as I've discussed above, the subject-area specific notability guidelines are typically achievement-based standards for having an article, rather than coverage-based. The key issue that I raised above is that domain expertise is required to establish these standards, and so the community must be willing to cede its veto power over article creation to a smaller subset of editors, managing the potential risk of the standard being set at a level where it is difficult for the volunteer community to maintain the resulting qualifying articles. isaacl (talk) 17:10, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

See, my impression is that WP:GNG has always been a list of criteria that say "if the topic meets this guidance, it means there is enough material that a policy compliant article can be written about it", following the arguments laid out in WP:WHYN. And that SNGs exist at least in part (but not exclusively) as a simplified "if the item meets the SNG that implies that it also meets GNG" proxy. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:04, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
The general notability guideline describes the type of coverage required to indicate that a subject meets English Wikipedia's standards of having an article. Many of the subject-specific notability guidelines provide specific achievement criteria that, if met, indicate a high probability of the general notability guideline being met, as you state. At present, the ultimate test falls back on the quality and nature of independent, neutral, non-promotional, third-party coverage, because the community as a whole has not agreed upon achievement-based criteria. (The community has generally not liked open-ended "encyclopedic" criteria for having an article, because different people have different sets of values regarding what is encyclopedic. For example, some people think only the very elite sportspersons have any lasting impact on society and so are the only ones that should be covered.) isaacl (talk) 20:36, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) We already have that WP:OUTCOMES (not SCHOOLOUTCOMES, but the rest of it), while only an essay, is much closer to actually being policy than the GNG is. Try to include an elderly Catholic priest who isn’t a bishop or academic but meets the GNG and see how far you get. Same with trying to delete any working train station no matter how non-notable it really is. In OUTCOMES and the existing SNGs we’ve already created a merit-based system, and they haven’t prevented us from vetoing articles. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:08, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Even without my scheme above, I think we should have separate RFCs for each bullet point at OUTCOMES to determine now and by wide editor participation if it is the case that a) the OUTCOME reflects a case of where certain classification of topics is considered to have "encyclopedicness" but as an exception to secondary-source-drive notability, b) the OUTCOME is more appropriate as a merit-based SNG (existing or new) due to the classification, or c) the OUTCOME has fallen out of favor, not fitting either a) or b) and thus should be scrapped, though implementing grandfather clause to prevent a mass AFD rush. OUTCOMES is basically making the case for these articles someone else's problem, which is really bad. If there are any of these OUTCOMES that meet a) then we need create a page for the limited set of inclusion criteria that we have, which presenting only is properly defined for geographic places. I suspect that things like train stations are widely kept because we're using topic-biased !votes at AFD (eg members of the respective wikiprojets are more likely going to participate , which swings the trend in what's kept by AFD). And of course, keep in mind OUTCOMES should not be used as a AFD argument, it's self-fulfulling that way. --Masem (t) 19:18, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
      • Pardon my French, but that would be a clusterfuck that would be closed by a super voter with a closing statement that has no basis in the RfC (likely a non-admin partially because no admin would touch it because there would be no close that wouldn’t cause a mob.) Local consensus in AfDs is perfectly fine and the recent obsession with RfCs to challenge established consensus is a negative for the community in my opinion. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:23, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
        • We have to bite that bullet at some point. OUTCOMES is a proverbial landmine. But among all this is being very clear how AFDs should be handled under this scheme, for both !voters and admin. I'm not saying lets rush and do this now, but keep this in mind as part of this spring cleaning of notability that we're discussion. --Masem (t) 19:29, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Based on one of the previous analyses, nearly all of the subject-specific notability guidelines explicitly defer to the general notability guideline, which avoids a lot of arguing over them. If they were elevated to being the actual standards for having an article, there would be a lot more wrangling over every single word. People still keep referring to the "one professional game" criterion as an overly-loose standard, even though last I checked, every sport qualifies this by narrowing down the parameters of "professional". isaacl (talk) 20:46, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
  • I do like the importance of establishing domain expertise within the SNGs, as long as it is kept in mind the SNGs are indicating likeliness of notability (as long as "notability != GNG" is kept in play). When there are problems, like with the MMA area a few years back, we deal with poor selection of merit as determined by the local consensus, but I think most editors involved in making SNGs that I have seen recognize the "merit" factor that is in play here and are trying to avoid overly broad or weak types of merit, and there are then normal ways to challenge the likeliness of notability for a topic kept due to an SNG. It's when we talk the classification of topics that we say have "encyclopedicness" but not for their notability, is where we need global consensus and cannot rely on domain expertise, though such wikiprojects/groups of editors can present proposals for "encyclopedic but not notable" inclusion guidelines based on their domain expertise. (This is effectively where the current direction of NPROF would best head towards, should this process exist). --Masem (t) 19:29, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
    • For example, the only people who are going to know who the significant figures in various scientific fields are others who are in the same fields. Only those actively working in the oil refinery trade will know what the significant trade journals are, and so which articles represent true independent coverage and what are PR-based pieces. To determine if a new telecommunications development is truly innovative and worth encyclopedic coverage, even if independent, third-party, non-promotional, non-routine coverage does not yet exist, someone who is familiar with the latest inventions and products is needed. Global consensus will (not always, but) often lack sufficient context to set achievement-based standards, or even to determine if something is significant enough to warrant an article in absence of meeting the standards. Accordingly, the community must be willing to delegate its decision-making to an appropriate subgroup, which somehow has to be identified without any way to verify the credentials of its members. As I said, it can in theory be a more effective approach, but whether it can attain agreement to proceed and how to put it into practice is still a large unknown. isaacl (talk) 20:17, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Absolutely, domain expertise is critical at AFD for those reasons, but domain expertise can also cause blindness in those areas, which is what the MMA situation. I think editors can distinguish using their domain knowledge to help other editors judge encyclopedicness/notability backed by sourcing evidence without pleading towards evidence-less importance. --Masem (t) 20:48, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
There's enough mainstream knowledge of MMA that the general community was able to evaluate the proposed criteria. But science-domain specific criteria for professors, for example, have never arisen because the community isn't willing to delegate the decision of inclusion to those who have the appropriate context. Because of fear of blind spots, I am doubtful that the community will shift its position on subject-specific standards for having an article. isaacl (talk) 21:06, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Masem, what is Wikipedia notability if not wp:Notability / GNG? I'm asking this because you seem to imply that there already is a wiki-definition outside of this. Or are you referring to a real-world meaning? My answer is that it is missing and should be something like the one sentence missing "guiding light" that I proposed above, and then that the guidelines implement that. On another note, I think that we subconciously we skew notability based on enclyclopedicness rather than wp:not being totally separate. For example, I think that intuitively the bar is set lower for an animal species or a town, and rightly so. North8000 (talk) 20:27, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

How I see it in the context here is that notability is a measure of how well-covered a topic is in secondary sources (effectively our current wiki-meaning). There is a point where notability reaches a certain threshold that nobody would question about why we have an article about this in WP, because its clearly covered to a great degree in sources. What that threshold is impossible to define since it will vary for all, but ideally it should be a case where the article has enough sourcing to be as equivocally comprehensive and meeting all content policies (NOR/NPOV) as other articles from the same topic field that are already considered notable.
Then with that, the GNG represents one threshold along this notability metric. It is not the same as the above threshold where no one would question the retention of a standalone, and is in fact far below that, but it is meant to allow for the likeliness that given time, we can increase the sourcing on the topic to reach the higher metric. Theoretical example, I write an article on a film based on three sources, one being a long-form interview with the director shortly after production started, and two others that talk about early casting calls. That's clearly a GNG threshold, but not a notability threshold. Should that film end up being cancelled with little said of its cancellation beyond "studio said it cost too much", and there's no other proven sources out there, then while the GNG has been met, its very unlikely that we'll ever get to the higher notability threshold (which for a film would include it actually being released, critical reception, box office performance, etc.) so deletion or merge would then be the appropriate action. Hopefully this is clearer. (I think part of this is having editors trying to pick my brain to understand my thoughts here better - see it but can make the explanations too confusing :P) --Masem (t) 20:46, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
OK, so you are saying that all wikipedia notability revolves around sourcing, and the GNG sets only one level/threshold of that. But then do you say hat that concept can be completely dropped if SNG's (with their often non-sourcing criteria) are being used, or does it go back to your initial post where you said that SNG's are used only temporarily to let an article develop?North8000 (talk) 21:19, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
In my scheme, the SNGs are merit-based criteria that suggest that the likelihood for source-based notability can eventually be met, giving editors the allowance for a standalone to work towards that. --Masem (t) 01:31, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Part of the problem here is that too many of our editors have come to see our notability guidelines (both GNG and SNGs) as “rules”... if X then Y (with no grey zones allowed)... if a criteria (be it sourcing or something else) is “passed” then the subject IS notable.
However, our notability guidelines were written back in the days when we thought more in terms of giving “guidance”, not writing “rules”... X is an indication that Y is likely (with lots of grey zones understood to exist)... if a criteria (sourcing or otherwise) is met, then the subject MIGHT BE notable:
The only “rule” regarding notability is this: “an article topic or subject is deemed notable by consensus.” The SNGs and even GNG are guidance... advice to help us reach consensus. Blueboar (talk) 21:59, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes. Agreed 100%. I like DGG's previous comments on this that we have turned the GNG into a religion, when it was never intended that way. The guideline itself is explicit on two points: being notable (i.e. passing the totality of WP:N) is not a guarantee of inclusion and that a failure of the NOT policy and a passage of the GNG is not a passage of WP:N. I agree with your above wording that we need to change it from presumed to be likely, and unless we hear objections to that in the next few days, I think we can do it boldly with a footnote as Masem has mentioned. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:17, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Not against this change but keep in mind "presumed" replicates across most SNGs. --Masem (t) 01:34, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • The standard of notability that can be claimed for WP:GNG can be seen in this Afd. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:28, 28 December 2017 (UTC).
    • Using that as an example, that is clearly an article that allowed per the GNG (you have at least a few in-depth sources), but the article's present state would not meet what most people would consider a definitively notable article. By meeting the GNG the likelihood to get there is granted to keep the standalone. --Masem (t) 01:34, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
I’ve watched this discussion with interest, as for the most part, SNGs are irrelevant to the work that I do—increasing the visibility on minorities, women and people from developing or non-English speaking countries. I rarely comment on policy discussions, as I find the process intimidating and non-productive for the most part. The problem with SNGs is that, while they may be merit-based, they tend to be overly biased toward linear hierarchical accomplishments which may not be universal. For example, while PROF might be valid in a first world country, in a developing nation in which up until five years ago graduating from elementary school was adequate prerequisite to become a teacher, the SNG is unrealistic as a universal measure of accomplishment. Likewise as has been pointed out multiple times in AFDs, the guidelines contain unintentional bias, as they do not take into account systemic biases which effect gender in both media coverage and hiring/publishing practices. For creative people the guidelines are also biased toward the developed world, i.e. phrases such as “national awards/music charts”, “international acclaim”, “featured on national radio or television”, “critical acclaim”, “represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums”, or “appears in standard reference books”. (I could list others, but these two SNG illustrate the point). These are standards that may not be applicable in a country where one is lucky to be published in a small run by a publisher with limited resources and little likelihood of funds to publish later editions, has not developed such things as national charts or art galleries, or is not likely to catch the attention of international audiences. If adequate sourcing exists, to confirm that the topic is unique, relevant, or worthy of an encyclopedia article weighing the time and place, historical context and impact, notability is met. For articles on historic women and minorities, or events which concerned them, if sufficient RS material exists to develop a comprehensive article, there is an “almost inherent indication” of notability, as they were routinely excluded from standard reference books and media in general. Guidelines are simply that, tools. By making them rules, we create a rigid exclusionary path that I am not sure we want to foster. Thank you Masem for opening a discussion on the guidelines, as they could use improvement and clarification, though I am skeptical of whether there is a means or the will to overcome the inherent problems. SusunW (talk) 16:55, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Only to comment that there is the inherent bias that WP:V creates - we are always going to be biased to Western/first-world topics because these places have massive amounts of printing and sources to pull from ,while more desolate areas and third-world countries barely have functioning press. We do alleviate some of this bias by allowing foreign-language sources to meet WP:V, but still doesn't change the fact that WP:V (and all subsequent policy and guidelines dependent on it, including WP:N) favors topics where there large numbers of sources. This is why we can't really use inclusion guidelines, because if we include broad swaths of topics based on some factual element (eg high/secondary schools), there is not always going to be a way for WP:V to be met, unless there is global consensus that including that broad swath of topic meet our purpose, as would absolutely be the case for geographic locations. --Masem (t) 17:02, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
IMO, SNGs actually very strongly favour underrepresented groups and help to decrease systemic bias. That's part of the reason deletionists hate them: the Cricketer from a developing country is included, the minor politician from a subnational legislature in Asia gets in, etc. The GNG is actually *much* more difficult for them to meet. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:07, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Though we still need to remember that SNGs are "likelihood to be notable", they are not absolute allowances. And thus in these less-developed countries, those people may never ever have sourcing come about. But we do have to consider time as well and the "no deadline" factor. Let's take a country like India which has made great economic strides in the last several decades improving the sources available, but, say, 50 years ago, would have been considered third-world. Cricket players from the last two decades will probably have a good chance of getting more sources with India's growing economy, but not those from the 1950s. However, that's why its critical to remember that the onus is on the AFD nom to show sources don't exist, we're going to give the benefit of the doubt particularly for both the place and the time period that notability is likely until one can show that through a search of local papers from that time period that there very much likely no other sourcing. (This is why I stress that moving the GNG/SNG notions out of this page and bringing those with elements of BEFORE, to explain how we practice identifying likely notability and how to challenge that, would help a lot without actually changing the practice).
If we want to include a class of topics without regards to even the third-party sourcing requirement of WP:V, that's going to be an inclusion guideline and that would need global consensus to include. (Not saying that can't be done in any of these cases, just that it does need to be a community agreed decision) --Masem (t) 17:19, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Again, I think you place too much emphasis on large RfCs and not enough on individual AfDs, which is where the policies are actually decided as practice is policy (many local consensuses are the only way to form a site-wide consensus. Otherwise you get an RfC with no answer because no one can agree). In the case f PROF, in practice we are much more lenient on the 3rd party sourcing at almost all AfDs. Same with elected officials at the sub-national level. We don't need an RfC to codify this. The information must be verifiable, but what we require for verification shifts according to the subject. If the community decides it wants to strictly enforce a written policy more strongly than it currently does, we can do it simply by voting to delete at AfDs. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:24, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Yep. In fact, we are now in the completely perverse situation that AfDs that have clearly reached a consensus can be nullified because of discussions like this one, and discussion like this one grind to a halt because those AfDs are being closed as no consensus. Reyk YO! 17:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
This goes back to what I said about OUTCOMES. OUTCOMES is a catch-22 all around, and we need to dismantle that somehow (and very slowly and carefully). AFDs while not "closed" to the community rarely attract wide attention outside of anyone interested in the topic area due to how we advertise these via deletion sorting. If all such interested people acted rationally and put aside their love of the topic to evaluate why the article is at AFD, rather than "this is important, it must be kept!", then we'd not be in this situation. But instead, when AFDs are piled on by interested editors that say articles of a topic type should be kept, and claiming that that numerous AFDs that close this way demonstrate consensus for that topic area, that's not global consensus that we should be having. (Again, the MMA situation from a few years back) There should be no problem with these interested groups wanting to keep classes of articles to suggest an SNG to be accepted by the community as a whole (which should be a relatively easy barrier), or to propose to the community as a whole as written automatic inclusion standards that leaves no doubt to their importance (avoiding the dubious nature of OUTCOMES), but we also have to recognize the community may reject those, as happened at WP:NSCHOOLS or WP:NFICT. AFDs should help inform the formation of SNG or an automatic inclusion standard for a class of articles, but they should not override the core issues of WP:V and by extension WP:N. --Masem (t) 17:52, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
We need a balance because it's inefficient to require all interested parties to show up to AfD after AfD indefinitely in order to maintain an outcome. There is a place for group conversation to establish a consensus that can be used to validate decisions made in AfD discussions. isaacl (talk) 21:54, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
And they don't work. As we saw with the schools and NSPORTS RfC, they only muddy the waters and invite supervoting, often by non-admin closers, because of the desire to provide sweeping answers. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:01, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Lots of topic-specific notability guidelines have worked well in practice. And the sports-related ones continue to be effective at lots of discussions. It's wasteful to ask all interested parties to show up to every AfD so they can outvote the other side. We may as well not have guidelines if they can't be used to guide decisions. isaacl (talk) 22:24, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes. SNGs work wonderfully well. The issue comes when we have broad reform attempts that put questions that have not already achieved consensus to the community. RfCs only work when we need to formalize a pre-existing consensus where questions have been raised. Otherwise they muddy the waters and create more questions than they provide answers. Until we are reasonably certain on what the outcome would be, it is much better to let consensus develop organically and tweak any proposals to accommodate what the community does, rather than have guidelines dictate what it should do. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that guidelines are best established based on what the community has historically done. Ultimately, it will require a group discussion to determine the guideline and enact it. After that, this guidance should be given the weight of the establishing consensus. It should not be necessary to reaffirm the consensus repeatedly at AfD. isaacl (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. The failure to get NSCHOOLS as a guideline shows the community rejected the opinion of a small group of editors claiming every school was important. NSPORTS got passed with global input, defering to sports projects to proper SNG guideance. That's how things should work. --Masem (t) 22:06, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
The NSPORTS close directly contradicted WP:N and answered a question never asked without being advertised as an RfC to change N. It might be the worst RfC close I have ever seen on Wikipedia. The schools RfC close also was pontificating on questions never asked and never put to the community, and the actual close, as expressed by the closers when asked for clarification, wasno consensus to the question asked, which had nothing to do with OUTCOMES at all, but was about whether school notability should be raised to the guideline level. Both were textbook examples of how RfCs should not be run or closed (and I was the one who formulated the flawed question to the schools RfC.) Both closes have made it impossible to predict the outcome of any AfD in the topic areas and an admin can essentially close any AfD in either area however they want now and it won't be overturned at DRV. That is a firm negative for the project. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:14, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
The RfC on the sports-specific notability guidelines affirmed the consensus that has been agreed upon for years now. The sports-specific notability guidelines, by consensus agreement at their creation and ever since, provide guidance on when the general notability guideline is likely to be met. But upon being challenged, editors must determine if there are appropriate sources meeting the general notability guideline for the articles in question. Closers (admin or not) of discussions at AfD or deletion review who ignore this consensus are replacing substituting their own judgment for that of the community. isaacl (talk) 22:31, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
That is not the super vote: you are correct on the SSG. The super vote was that it claimed that no SNG can override the GNG, which directly contradicts WP:N: It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right;. That was entirely inappropriate, and is the type of speculation that broad RfCs invite. There have been RfCs since then that have contradicted this result. The firm guideline of the community is that all SNGs are equal to the GNG. Any individual SNG may subjugate itself to the GNG if it wants, but they start out on equal footing. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
We're talking about different matters: I was referring to your statement that closers can close an AfD discussion in the sports area however they want. Sure, they can, but only by ignoring the established consensus. I agree that the close of the discussion should not have claimed that no subject-specific notability guideline can override the general notability guideline. Not because of the statement at Wikipedia:Notability, but because the establishing consensus for any guideline can choose for itself what relationship it should have with the general notability guideline. isaacl (talk) 22:41, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The relationship between the GNG and SNG and notability needs to be fixed, that's what this thought analysis is all about. It absolutely should be "GNG or SNG", but that is based on the assumption that all SNG are merit-based criteria that are likely to prove the topic to be covered in depth with enough time, making them notable. Unfortunately the conflation of the GNG being equivalent to "notability" makes people think that the SNGs can't override the GNG, when in actuality they mean the SNGs cannot override notability (in that they can't define criteria based solely on importance without thought towards sourcing). Hence my suggestion that we need to separate the concept of notability from the GNG.
As to RFCs, there is no problem with a Wikiproject or otherwise small group of editors working to develop a new SNG with their domain knowledge expertise. But we can't have walled gardens, so the global RFC is needed to evaluate that SNG, or at least make sure it was developed based on the principle of "likely to be notable". That may very well raise questions that the crafters did not think about, or make sure there's proper alignment with related SNGs and guidelines. They have to checked though for community consensus. When you don't do that, you create the MMA situation all over again. --Masem (t) 22:47, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
  • "Encyclopedicness" is not an English word, is not a recognised concept and so is not an improvement on "notability". Trying to develop the concept of importance seems to violate our core principles of WP:OR and WP:NPOV. But, of course, you'll find it's been done already at WP:VITAL. See also WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Andrew D. (talk) 19:44, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
    • I know "encyclopedicness" is a sucky word, I'd love something better. WP:VITAL is not the same thing, it identifies specific topics, not broad classes of topics, which "should have corresponding high-quality articles." Some of the classes of topics that we do include will never have high-quality articles but are included as they are deemed to help "complete" comprehensive coverage of our reference work (eg recognized geographic places). This is the type of importance I mean, how important are these classes of topics as to present an complete reference work, rather than importance judged by others. --Masem (t) 21:15, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
    • @Masem and Blueboar: per this discussion, I have updated the guideline to removed presumption and change it to likely. I have included a footnote of the historical usage of the term. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:42, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
      • You made too much of a change, we're still saying "likely to merit an article", but changing it "likely to be included" very much changes the entire approach of notability. Remember we are not an inclusion guideline here. --Masem (t) 18:48, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
        • I reverted to my revision: the Wikilink adds too much confusion as no one knows what a rebuttable presumption is. Also, how is this not an inclusion guideline? My phrasing just takes what we were discussing above and makes it readable to people who aren't versed in WikiSpeak. I'm open to tweaks, but likely to merit an article with a wikilink to rebuttable presumption is not helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:50, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
          • Inclusion guidelines makes it sound like an automatic thing, and notability has never been automatic. It is always about how to merit if we allow a standalone article, not whether at the end of the day (per DEADLINE) if it should be included or not in the final product. And the concept of using a rebuttable presumption is still the practice defined at WP:BEFORE (the onus on those seeking to delete). The term from "presumed" to "likely" may be appropriate to be better understood, but the meaning is still that the merit for a standalone can be rebutted. --Masem (t) 18:54, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
            • Masem, my objections to likely to merit an article vs. likely to be included is the exact same as your objection to my phrasing: it makes it seem much more automatic, which is why I hate the current wording. Likely to be included is far from a guarentee while likely to merit an article is a much stronger promise of inclusion, even though the word is not used. I'd be fine with reverting to your tweak to my version so long as we add something to the footnote making it clear that notability is not a guarantee of an article. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:59, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
              • "merit an article" vs "to be included" is very different. The former suggests (properly) that editors still need to work above and beyond the GNG/SNG to avoid an AFD challenge, where "to be included" suggests that there is no other work to be done once you hit the bare minimum needed by the GNG or SNG. You can't bury that concept in a footnote (what I had suggested was only to make sure editors knew we historically used the word "presumed" instead, not to displace the entire idea of a rebuttable presumption to a footnote). I know the rest of this guideline still didn't change and still covers this, but new editors are very much influence by what is put into lede guidelines, and we have to make sure those retain what the guideline has said. The wording change from "presumed" to "likely" is fine , but that's the only change that I think can be done without contest. --Masem (t) 19:10, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
                • I think you're arguing for language that to the average reader will sound like the exact opposite of the point you are trying to make, and that my wording makes your point clearer, but I've gone ahead and restored it because I think anything is better than the stable version. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:15, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
                  • The whole debate above (not just about "presumed" vs "likely" is pointing out the various subtleties that are needed to understand how notability is practiced on WP, and why the current approach in the guideline (specifically, conflating "notability" and "GNG" specifically) is not helping new editors to understand those. The wording change is just a tiny step to what I believe we need to do, which is to make it clear the GNG is not equivalent to what we mean by notability. --Masem (t) 19:24, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes. Agreed on that. I obviously want to move away from the concept as we know it now entirely and focus on importance plus verifiability, but until we can do that, I think we need to make it as clear as possible that the GNG is not a guarantee of inclusion. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:27, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

  • The problem with changing to "likely" is that it is a political word to wake people up to the way that WP:N works, not the technically (more) valid word "presumed" with which we are entirely comfortable.  Worse, "likely" implies that there is yet a decision to be made, but this is incorrect--a decision has been made once WP:N is presumed.  (And if I had said "a decision has been made once WP:N is likely", that would be internally contradictory wording.)  Unscintillating (talk) 23:54, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
  • I disagree with User:Masem's premise that WP:N is meant to balance WP:V and WP:NOT. No, WP:V is much lower a bar for the smallest of statements, and WP:NOT is not a base for anything, but is a collection of stronger statements for recourse against persistent people who don't get it. No, WP:N is an extreme case of WP:PSTS. Can the whole topic can be sourced at all to secondary sources? The GNG is basically a restatement of this, in detail, and is the irremovable core of WP:N. The SNGs are mostly easier to evaluate predictors of whether the GNG can be met, as informed by experience at AfD. Two SNGs are different, WP:PROF and WP:CORP, which held consensus before WP:N. WP:PROF provides an independent justification for inclusion, and WP:CORP provides a stronger restriction than the GNG to keep out commercial promotion. The others are just predictors. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:06, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Maybe it's better to say its a balance between WP:V (that we can include it because it can be verified via sources), WP:NOR (that we can say why it is important for inclusion without engaging in OR), and WP:NOT (that it is appropriate material for an encyclopedia). But key to keep in mind is that WP:N remains a guideline, as it does support the content policies. Keeping in mind that WP:N bore out from WP:NOT (eta), and is most closely related with WP:IINFO, I really do thing it is best to think of it as a means to balance verifyability and encyclopedic value. --Masem (t) 01:54, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
      • There is no balancing of WP:V. WP:V is absolute, it is not compromised. The balance comes from WP:PSTS. There must be a balance between primary and secondary sources. WP:N speaks to the special case of no secondary sources, if that is the case, WP:PSTS is not met, core policy WP:NOR is not met, the entire article is not OK, verifiable or not. I think you are trying to impose a flawed underlying theory. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:05, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
        • V may be absolute, but we also know we don't include everything that can be met by V. Also, PSTS is not about balance - we prefer principally articles on secondary sources. (For example, far too many pages on fictional works try to get away with one or two secondary source and then overload on primary-source content - that's not good). The balance I speak of is determining topics that otherwise could be met by WP:V, and that we are not to include indiscriminate information, that's how WP:N should work, putting weight on what is sourced to secondary sources. --Masem (t) 04:26, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
          • WP:V is an absolute minimum standard. It is so low, the newbie claim “but it’s verifiable” is a joke. WP:PSTS is not about balance?? Are you the same Masem if old? Of course it is, and explicitly so. Your fiction example goes directly to balance. (and the answer to fiction is WP:WAF). WP:PSTS is about balance and applies down to the level of sentences. When applied to the whole topic, WP:PSTS meets WP:N. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:23, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
            • PSTS is not so much about balance but more towards the fact we want articles that use secondary sources. Once you have a good number of secondary sources, you can include any number of primary ones, but the balance with primary sources comes more from WP:NOT at that point. That said, if we do consider PSTS one type of balance, it is only how to balance the types of sources within an article, and not a balance directly towards actual content, which is where notability is meant to come in. --Masem (t) 14:39, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
              • User:Masem, PSTS is absolutely about balance. Content must be based on secondary sources, with facts nailed to reliable primary sources. The balance may not be best expressed by source counting, as two thorough secondary source can balance many more very narrow primary sources for finely sliced facts. You seem to be suggesting a number of secondary sources as a threshold, and then cart blanch from then on, and that is certainly not right. PSTS is one very important kind of balance, balancing sourced opinion versus sourced facts. The other very important balance is WP:DUE. WP:N is not balance, it is yes/no. For most topics, if there are independent reputable secondary sources, it is a yes, the topic is suitable. To quote from the first line, "notability is a test". Read on to find "these guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article or list. They do not limit the content of an article or list". WP:N is not about balance. WP:N does not speak to the content of an article, or source use within the article. Similarly, WP:NOT is not about balance, it also is yes/no. WP:NOT is a collection of prominently posted boundaries that must not be crossed. All derive from the content policies WP:V, NOR and NPOV, but they are written to be used as sticks, for remedial action against determined recalcitrant editors. WP:NOT is not about balance. If the question comes down to WP:NOT policy, you are far outside the region of what is included, you are well beyond the boundary regions of what may be included. The part where the boundary of inclusivity approaches the boundary of absolute exclusion would be WP:PLOT. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:00, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
                  • Given that it is entirely possible to write an article using only secondary sources (which can include factual information alongside the transformative material), WP:PSTS not a balance issue, its about the essentialness of secondary material. We give much more weight to secondary reliable sources than primary. Of course WP:NOT is not a balance issue, it is extremes where both topic and content about that topic are inappropriate. Notability is a test of the balance between what can be sources that meets WP:V, and where the content doesn't exceed what NOT delineates, using the sources available (not how the article presently looks). It is why WP:N is a guideline - its not meant to be hard and fast rules like the content policies of V, NOR, NPOV, or NOT. --Masem (t) 01:02, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
                    • It is entirely NOT possible to write an article using only secondary sources. Show me one where you think it is true, and I'll explain to you how for some purposes, the secondary sources are either the primary source, or are reproducing primary source material, thus behaving like a primary source. Primary source material (facts) and secondary source material (context, analysis, meaning) have to be in balance, never all of one and none of the other. Neither is it a matter of weight. Primary sources do not compete or clash with secondary sources.
                      Notability does not care about WP:V. WP:V cares about WP:V. Notability cares about whether independent others have already written about the topic. Others writing about a topic and giving it significant coverage necessarily means they are generating secondary source material. The definitions of these things are well defined in the real world, reflected well at the mainspace article Secondary source, and the policy basis of requiring a balance of secondary sources is at WP:PSTS, not WP:V. I do very much regret the implementation stuff up of Wikipedia:Attribution. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:45, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
                      • Nearly any topic written before the recording of human history is going to be based on secondary sources because no primary sources exist. Yes, I fully agree that secondary sources can and will include primary information without transformation, but they are secondary, with or without those primary sources. And notability, being a source-based means to judge if a topic should have an article, is all about V, at least the part about reliable sources. It also depends on NOR (read PSTS) to make sure those are secondary, and NPOV to make sure there's some degree of independence of those sources. --Masem (t) 05:32, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
                          • Secondary sources don't really work with the word "reliable". A secondary source is a secondary source for the opinion of the author, and that opinion is the words as written. Primary sources are measured by reliability. A better word for secondary sources is "reputability". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:54, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
                            • Is it really true that secondary sources are strictly limited to only opinions and not reliable facts? I find this difficult to believe. I can imagine scenarios where a secondary source could be of factual use and that a summary could consist of reliable facts rather than just opinions. What manual or guideline suggests that a summary must always=opinion or summary never=facts/reliability? I only ask because I honestly don't know. Huggums537 (talk) 09:56, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
                            • "Secondary sources don't really work with the word "reliable"." I disagree, at least as an all-encompassing statement. There are definitely secondary sources that are opining and speculating from a personal view (read: most movie reviews), and in such cases, we consider the secondary sources from affirmed experts in the field to determine what is considered reliable towards notability and sourcing in general. But there are secondary sources that are doing more of the stuff we can't do by WP:CALC, for example, market research firms, that aren't opining (at least when presenting market figures). All that matters for notability (and back to PSTS in general) is that we are aware what a "reliable source" means in the context of specific secondary source and for the topic itself. --Masem (t) 14:33, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
                              • I think the confusion possibly arises out of not properly distinguishing between "secondary" and "3rd party". In the case of a secondary source functioning with WP:CALC characteristics, there is really no question about the reliability of the source itself since the source itself could be fact checked for accuracy, but the question of reliability comes in with regard to whether the 3rd party representing that source is reputable or not (at least for Wikipedia inclusion-thus notability purposes anyway). So, I think "reliable" is still a good word for secondary sources and "reputable" is a better word for the 3rd parties that represent those sources. But, the two are not one and the same. Does that sound like a fair assessment or make any sense? Huggums537 (talk) 16:27, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
                                • Huggums537, here is another excellent essay: Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent sources (aka third-party sources). "Third-party source" has nothing to do with "secondary source" or even "tertiary source". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:20, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
                                  • Yes, that is exactly my whole point. Reliable sources (primary/secondary/tertiary) have nothing to do with the 3rd parties who provide them (independent 3rd parties). There is a clear distinction between the sources themselves and the independent 3rd parties who provide them. I have also read Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent sources some time ago and personally think it isn't titled correctly since it causes this confusion and should be moved to something more accurate such as: "Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent source providers". The essay also needs to be rewritten from a perspective that STOPS describing independent 3rd party providers as "sources" and simply refers to them as what they actually are (independent providers). We often incorrectly say that DailyMail and IMDB are unreliable sources, but this isn't really true at all. They are 3rd party PROVIDERS of sources that have been known to be of bad reputation for providing some unreliable sources. A source provided by them may or may not be reliable, but we reject the entire 3rd party providers because of their reputation for some portion of their sources not being reliable. So, it's not the sources themselves that are unreliable, but the independent 3rd party who provides them. It's utterly senseless to say that ALL DailyMail and IMDB sources are unreliable. I'll bet a bunch of them are perfectly reliable. It makes way more sense to say that the independent 3rd parties are non reputable therefore it's encouraged to find better sources. What if someone wanted to use DailyMail or IMDB as a reference for a WP:CALC statement? I'm sure it could easily pass the reliability test if it can simply be verified with a calculator and it would have nothing to do with the reputation of the independent 3rd party providing it. Huggums537 (talk) 11:09, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
                        • WP:ALLPRIMARY shows us that "all sources are primary for something". This means that it's possible for a source to be BOTH primary AND secondary simultaneously. Just because we have the ability to prove a secondary source is primary for something doesn't mean the source doesn't still retain it's secondary characteristics. Therefore, it IS entirely possible to create an article based solely upon secondary sources (which might also coincidentally be primary sources as well). Many editors are mistakenly categorizing sources as either/or secondary/primary when it's possible to be both according to ALLPRIMARY. Huggums537 (talk) 05:44, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Comment: While I don't oppose this particular change since it has little impact right now, it should be noted again that "presumed" is the word used across most other guideline pages AND it even goes so far as to actually define the Wikipedia meaning of "presumed" in the final paragraph of WP:GNG. To replace any more "presumed" with "likely" would require the removal of the word across multiple pages and the removal of the Wikipedia definition from the current version. Not exactly a change worthy of pursuing... Huggums537 (talk) 02:31, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

  • So, the issue I see is that we've made any exceptions to notability in the interest of "completeness", as mentioned as above. Notability, as has been said many times, is not an inclusion guideline. It is a measure of whether something should be represented as a full standalone article, not a measure of whether it should be included in the encyclopedia at all. It is entirely fine to represent things in other ways. If there isn't enough material to write a reasonable length, complete article about something, it shouldn't be on a separate page. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be anywhere. For example, the right way to handle non-notable populated places would be to include them on a "List of populated places in (administrative division)", with only the notable places being blue links. If all we know about a place is its geographic coordinates and population, that's a list entry, not article material. That doesn't mean we wouldn't include the information in the encyclopedia at all, it just means we should do it in the most appropriate manner for each individual subject. There should never be a case where we have an article on something "because it's a...", it should be because we actually have enough high-quality, reliable, independent sourcing to write a substantial article about that subject. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:45, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Agree 100% with Seraphimblade. Finally, someone who understands... Huggums537 (talk) 13:46, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
    • Not disagreeing, but pointing out with the statement "If there isn't enough material to write a reasonable length, complete article about something, it shouldn't be on a separate page.", this is the ultimate goal, and it is important to stress that we are not supposed to judge articles in their present, immediate state, but their potential to get to the quoted statement. That's why we have the GNG and SNGs, that's the side necessitate by an open wiki to give articles time to develop to that state, and the presumed/likeliness aspect the means to demonstrate the cases where the GNG/SNGs assumptions are proven wrong towards the quoted standard. --Masem (t) 17:03, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
      • Masem, the way I'd like to see it done is add a corollary to WP:BEFORE: "BEFORE you start a mainspace article on a subject, ensure that you have appropriate reference material in hand and that you cite it. If you haven't found the references, you're not ready to start the article yet, but could start it as a draft." Especially with draftspace now available, the expectation should be that sufficient references be present in every mainspace article from the time it's first in mainspace. Articles lacking these, but with some potential hope, should be moved to draft. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:22, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
        • I have to disagree, to a point. Drafts are great if you know there may be difficulty in setting up an article, including references, before you want others to have wide access to it. But a draft by no means needs to be perfect to move to mainspace, and we have zero expectations that a draft should clearly be well beyond the minimum requirement by the GNG or SNG. Right now, there's nothing even close to mandatory with draft space, and we'd need a massive community shift to change that. (I agree that if this was how draft space was to be used as determined by the community, this would be something to consider). --Masem (t) 18:11, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
        • User:Seraphimblade, I also have to disagree about drafts. Your notion, that draftspace enables triaging of non-notable topics, and thus is good for notability-challenging issues in mainspace, is common, but shallow and flawed. DraftSpace does draw witless spammers, promoters, WP:YAMB-writers away from mainspace to a place where they can be ignored, but the collateral damage is all the other newcomers similarly drawn to that place. Moving pages with some potential hope to draft is just a backdoor unregulated deletion process. The genuine promotion can be G11-ed. The clumsy articles draftified will never be looked at again. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:17, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
          • I strongly disagree with you about drafts being worthless. I do AfC reviews myself sometimes, and while the majority of the drafts I review aren't suitable for mainspace (ranging from "obvious spamvertisement" to "just needs a bit of work"), several have been. If even 5% of drafts turn out to be worth moving into the encyclopedia, that's an awful lot of new articles. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:43, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
            • Drafts being worthless? I think you are disagreeing with something I didn't say.
              If 5% of drafts are worth moving to mainspace? How many of these 5% were not appropriate to write into mainspace on their first day?
              My considered opinion is that draftspace is a net-negative, not that everything there is worthless.
              The benefit of draftspace and AfC reviewing is that it supports the meta:Immediatism philosophy. It helps keep witless spamming out of mainspace. The costs include:
(1) Separating newcomers from ordinary editors; Newcomers in Draftspace, pre-submission, receive no assistance;
(2) Cursory, templated, nonhuman correspondence post-submission
(3) Establishing a pedagogical framework by implying to newcomers that there exist Wikipedia experts that the newcomers have to satisfy
(4) Inability to create incoming links from mainspace, or use of fair-use images.
(5) Departure of the newcomer following the unwelcoming atmosphere of AfC.
But my real point was that using DraftSpace to dodge difficult notability questions is a de facto permanent dodge that will see the page pseudo-deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:08, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
  • SmokeyJoe, some people view "the meta:Immediatism philosophy" as a negative, not a benefit. So, if drafts support this philosophy, then it's reasonable to assume that some people might misinterpret your comments as saying drafts are worthless even if that wasn't your intention. I too took your comments as saying drafts are worthless, and it was only after you had to explain it that I realized that was not what you were saying. Surely you can see how someone might misinterpret that after all the negative things you have to say about drafts? Anyway, some of your estimates of the associated costs of drafts may not be entirely accurate. For example:
(1) Newcomers also just so happen to be ordinary editors themselves who actually do have some access to assistance.
(2) If drafts go through a review process just the same, then that would require some "human correspondence".
(3) The article creation process itself already establishes "a pedagogical framework" to some degree so this point is kinda moot.
(4) The inability to create links or use images is not so much a "cost" as it is an ordinary technical bug that probably has a workaround. It sounds more like an annoying nuisance than it does a "cost".
(5) Departure of the newcomer is a result of their experience at AfC. This is the "cost" of whoever is providing the experience at AfC, not the "cost" of newcomers using draftspace.
Drafts get looked at (reviewed) and "permanently" deleted all the time. So, it's inaccurate to say, "...draftified will never be looked at again." or "...that will see the page pseudo-deleted." Huggums537 (talk) 20:24, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Huggums537, I am not a fan of meta:Immediatism, I think it is a barrier to newcomers. It implies that existing editors know the standards, it discourages newcomers from making a mess, and it also discourages other newcomers from doing some fixing. DraftSpace, like the AfC WikiProject subpages, like the Article Incubator, I say are and always have been of net negative value. That means that one could say DraftSpace is worthless. That is not to say that everything in it is worthless. If not carefully stated, yes, this can easily be misstated.
The costs of the AfC system are an interesting topic (probably better for WT:AfC). To your comments:
(1) Newcomers do have easy access to help, but they will find help easier and better in mainspace than in draftspace, therefore, there is a cost to them if they find themselves in drafspace.
(2) Go have a look at some rejected reviews, and come back and tell me how human you think it is. No use of a talk page. No addressing the author by name. A huge amount of templated message. What message there is is inside a WP:template, and these do not invite responses or encourage conversation, and definitely not a third party comment.
(3) Not sure what you mean. Compare with editing in mainspace, even administrators behave like just an ordinary editor. When you have the technical ability to write an article, you just do it, the NPPatrolling happens in the background.
(4) These are not bugs, but clear decisions of the community. WP:CNR, linking from mainspace to draftspace is not allowed. Fair use policy, fair use images are only allowed in mainspace. These two things prevent a draft from being a proper article. No incoming links means mainspace readers and editors will not be led to the new draft article. No fair use images means the draft may not be able to look like an equivalent mainspace article.
(5) Somewhere, there are stats on editor retention of newcomers to draftspace compared to newcomers to mainspace, and they are not good. The loss of newcomers is a cost to Wikipedia.
Submitted drafts get reviewed after a long delay. AfC would like more help, but given the density of good stuff, it is not fun. Drafts get deleted, mostly through WP:CSD#G13. There is barely a single glance before most get deleted. My friend, User:Legacypac, does a lot of good work here, I think he is basically the only Wikipedian reviewing old unsubmitted drafts, and finding the occasional rough gem. There was a backlog of tens of thousands. The delay is untimely compared to the hangaround time of a draftspace newcomer, it may as well be forever from that perspective. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:28, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Those are some very reasonable points. I stand corrected on point #4 as I obviously misunderstood the issue as being of a technical nature when it actually is not. However, my point stays a valid one even in light of my error since there is still a "workaround" by the fact that if those limitations were put in place by the community, then it's possible for the community to change that. Thus, my point that it can be seen more as an annoying nuisance than a "cost" still remains sensible regardless of my mistake. Huggums537 (talk) 05:01, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
  • In case we have lost my point after following these tangents, my point is that sending articles of difficult-to-assess notability to draftspace is not a good idea. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:58, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I think your point still gets through pretty well. I just wanted to make sure that my one particular (rather insignificant) point was not lost just because you were able to demonstrate my error in misunderstanding the issue. Huggums537 (talk) 09:36, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm pretty happy with all of your points and posts. The rest of us here are usually in broad agreement on mostly everything, so we argue fine points. It's been going on fora very long time. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:56, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I'll challenge one point here - Drafts that get CSD G13 do get a proper review (at least every one I touch) but in the vast majority of cases it tales seconds to figure out they are hopeless efforts that will never become articles or are worth additn to articles. If the material was added to a mainspace article or started in mainspace it would be removed by the first competent editor that saw it.
I'm not convinced that Draft space or AfC are good ideas. AfC is just too slow. It is a barrier to good topics going forward to mainspace where many editors can participate in building out a good topic. AfC does keep useless topics out of maknspace, but I'd rather see these useless pages deleted quickly than see the creators encouraged to "fix" the unfixable (no N for example). The allowances and leeway given to Draft space allow useless material to hang around for months and years burning human resources managing it that would be better used in mainspace. Legacypac (talk) 19:49, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
AfC may be slow, but it's essential for keeping promotional material out of mainspace.--unless you can propose some other way of doing that, some better place for COI editors to place their material. It's considerably better than it used to be--the least qualified editors have been removed, the erratic ones are gradually getting instructed, and most items are reviewed fairly quickly. The long delays are for only a part of the material, the drafts that nobody wants to deal with. I and a few other editors check preferentially the most recent few days, trying to accept the obviously acceptable. What we need is better ways of removing the repeatedly resubmitted junk and promotional material, and the simplest way without major revisions to the present system is greater use of G11 and MfD. DGG ( talk ) 17:38, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
I strongly agree with Legacypac here. It's funny, I used to consider Legacypac reckless in his rapid clearing for old drafts (term "draft" used loosely), but now he appears the exemplar in their processing. He is doing a good job in rescuing a horrible situation, but it doesn't justify the mistake of Draftspace/AfC/Article incubator. The mistake is in encouraging the newcomers to focus on their unlikely topics instead of engaging in mainspace content work and becoming part of the community of editors.
DGG, throwing the unsuspecting good faith newcomers in with COI-editors and spammers in the detention processes of AfC, separating them from the real parts of the project, only catches the witless abusers and damages the recruitment of new editors. Yes, it used to be worse, with worse reviewing, but reviewing still is not good. A proposal for a better way is to extend WP:ACTRIAL to all namespaces, to actively discourage newcomers from attempting new pages in their first 4 days. Wikipedia does not need new orphan pages from newcomers, and preventing this will not discourage, but encourage, new mainspace content from these newcomers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:08, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
But about the basic question: requiring both GMG and the special guidelines is a way of making the situation worse. For something clearly encyclopedia - worthy, one good source to establish WP:V for both existence and importance is enough. The true minimum requirement is WP:V. Everything beyond that should have a specific guideline. DGG ( talk ) 17:38, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

More further insights

I'm 99% certain that we can improve how WP:N is seen by making it very clear that the GNG is not the standard for notability, only a minimum amount of sourcing that presumes that a topic is notable. To that end, I think the following logical narrative needs to be established at WP:N

The Measure

  • Notability is a sourcing-based measure of how appropriate a topic is for WP which applies to most topics, with common sense exceptions. It is only a guideline, and not a policy, so notability is not mandatory, but if a topic does not show notability, it should be expected to demonstrate otherwise why it is appropriate for inclusion in WP.
    • The existing LISTN advice would fall under here.
  • Notability is measured based on the real-world definition of "notable", "worthy of attention or notice", translated into what sources there are available for a topic that show it notable.
  • For WP, we are most interested in sourcing that has in-depth and enduring coverage from a broad range of independent, third-party, secondary reliable sources that can include general coverage (like newspapers) and field-specific sources (like scientific journals). Additional forms of sourcing from primary or tertiary sources can be used but they are not considered part of measuring how notable a topic is.
    • In this, we should include discussion of the meaning and importance of enduring coverage, and stress the need to find non-local sources over local sources in some topic areas.
  • The more sources that you can produce for a topic that help demonstrate its notability, the less likely your topic's notability will be challenged at AFD.

The Process

  • Articles showing a high degree of notability for their topic is an end-goal, but not an intermediate requirement. We do not expect new standalone articles on topics to show strong notability at creation: we want to encourage collaborative development and there is not deadline to get to a high level of notability.
  • However, topics must indicate some reasonable amount of sourcing to show why the topic is presumed notable (the topic is likely to be notable).
    • Article topics that outright fail any type of importance through sources may be speedily-deleted or boldly merged/redirected to other articles.
  • To show that a topic can be presumed notable (likely to be notable) and thus allow for a stand-alone article that can be developed over time, as well as to have compliance with core content policies, we have developed notability guidelines.
    • The GNG is a sourced-based notability guideline, showing that as long as there is amount of in-depth coverage in independent, secondary sources, then we will allow the stand-alone article. The bare minimum requirements of sourcing given by the GNG should not be taken to be equivalent to the high degree of notability we expect from articles.
    • The SNGs are merit-based notability guidelines delineated by topic subject area. These define merits that should be shown for a topic through at least one WP:V-meeting source that, from past consensus, is sufficient to assure that additional sources can be located and included, or that new sources will come about to be included, so that in time, the article can be built out as a highly notable topic. SNG criteria are expected to be demonstrated with appropriate sourcing.
    • In general, we allow a standalone article on a topic if either the GNG or the appropriate SNG can be met.
      • SNGs in certain topic areas may have additional requirements above and beyond the GNG due to the potential systematic bias in that area, such as limiting what sources can be used. (These should be listed next to the def of the GNG so that editors know where the GNG does not apply).
    • In either case, articles must still meet or comply with core content policies (WP:NOT, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV) and may be unallowed should the topic conflict with these areas.
  • Article creators are encouraged to make sure that new articles meet the bare minimum of sourcing set by the GNG or appropriate SNG at the point of creation.
    • If you are unsure you can start your article to show how the GNG or SNG are met, you are encouraged to use Draft space first to set up your article, and seek input when it is appropriate to move into mainspace.
  • Both the GNG and SNGs are rebuttable presumptions: they do not guarantee that an article will be kept just because it meets the GNG or SNG, and only are meant to show that a topic is likely notable. We allow for these articles because, by virtue of meeting the GNG or SNG, they should be expandable to show a high level of notability. If only a few secondary sources exist such that the article cannot be built out past a certain point (generally, compared to other articles in the same topic field), then they may be deleted, merged, or redirected.
    • This challenge, however, must follow the principles of WP:BEFORE; those wishing to delete an article on notability grounds that otherwise meets the GNG or an SNG have the onus of showing that expansion of the article towards a high level of notability is likely impossible. This means, in general, that they have to complete a reasonably in-depth search of sources for that article, which may require searching paper sources or traveling to local libraries to find sources. Outside some contemporary topics, this type of analysis cannot be done just through a Google search.

I know most of these points is what WP:N already says in different ways, but in the scheme I'm thinking of, we want to pull the GNG as far away from WP:N to avoid the conflation that "GNG = WP:N" that causes many problems. I'm also addressing a few points made above related to more-strict SNGs, and to draft space. This exercise here is mainly to lay out points and try to figure out how to write WP:N (and potentially a second guideline on the "Process" ) to avoid the confusion from past discussions. --Masem (t) 16:54, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Wow, Masem. You said a mouthful. I don't even know where to begin on all the areas I agree/disagree with, or how I even feel about yet another guideline about sourcing and notability. Perhaps small (but very strategic) changes to the existing structure could be just as effective if leveraged enough to be impactful while still being practical. Huggums537 (talk) 18:50, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I disagree with Masem. I think we can improve it by making clear that GNG (remember, its redirect is also "WP:N" and its title is "Wikipedia:Notability", for good reason), is the gold standard for notability. The primary question to "Should we have a separate article on this subject?" should be "Do we have enough reference material from multiple good quality sources to write a neutral, balanced, and reasonably comprehensive article?" If the answer is "no", that doesn't mean we shouldn't mention it at all, just not have a standalone page created for it. This guideline has been clear that subjects that don't pass it are not necessarily unsuitable to include information about at all, just not in the form of an actual full page about them. Subjects that don't yet demonstrate notability can be merged back to an appropriate place, with an appropriate redirect, and once it develops enough there to be split out, we can go ahead and do that. SNGs should be a guide to when, in almost all cases, GNG will be passed, so we presume that's possible, but we still eventually do require that to be shown, not just handwaved at. SNGs cannot and do not override GNG ("PROF" claims to, but I give that little credence). There is no reason we should encourage, for example, the practice of creating permastub "articles" about athletes for whom there's little more information about than a directory entry. That should go on a list, which would be better watched and less susceptible to BLP issues. Same with professors or anything else, who, if their work is notable but they personally are not, could be mentioned in an article about that work. This guideline is the right one, and should be the chief one, to determine whether or not something needs to be represented with a full article, or not. It is not any consideration to whether something should be represented in the encyclopedia at all. Notability is about a certain way to represent information in the encyclopedia, as a standalone article, but the debate seems to proceed as though if we don't write a standalone article about something, we could never include anything about it at all. There are other and better ways to present things that there just isn't enough material to write a complete article about. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:49, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
    • Except long-standing language on this page has been that the GNG is a presumption of notability, meaning its not the standard for notability. If I can pull 2-3 somewhat detailed sources about a topic to write, say, 1.5k of prose about it, that's sufficient to pass the GNG, allowing for a standalone article to be started, but if I can't ever get past that, notability is not met, and can be fairly challenged at AFD or merged (as long as one has shown an exhaustive search for more sources). The GNG and SNGs are factors needed to account for this being an open wiki edited by many without any deadline to get to a quality article. It is the need for the exhaustive search which few editors want to spend the time doing that ends up with the GNG seemingly acting as the de facto standard because it takes a lot of excess time and effort to prove the lack of sources if a print search has to be done, but this still doesn't make the GNG sufficient for what notability for an article should be. We just don't demand that due to DEADLINE. --Masem (t) 17:38, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
    • I will add that we do need to stress is that notability only is about the ability to have a stand-alone article, and does not affect article content otherwise (we don't exclude non-notable content from topics that are otherwise presumed notable just because the content fails notability. There's many other reasons to exclude that content, but notability can't be used for this, unless set out as an inclusion format for a list.) --Masem (t) 17:40, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
  • No, notability is a minor guideline that identifies evidence of attention to the topic over a period of time to separate standalone material from merged/unmergable material.  Positing that notability is prose-based evidence is neither based on core-content policies nor an extension of core-content policies.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:55, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
    • I never said it was prose-based (and fully agree it can't be). It's a sourcing-based measure that determine how well of an article we can write, but it is 100% determined by available sources, not how those sources are incorporated (AFD is not cleanup). The more sources there are, the better that article can be. The GNG is a sourced-based minimum for presumption of that, whereas SNGs are merit-based that suggest leading towards more sourcing. --Masem (t) 17:38, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
      • Sure, "the more sources there are, the better the article will be".  But notability is free from proving that we can write an article, it just shows that we'd like an article if we can do so.  Writing articles is the job of core content policies.
        Nor should notability be used as a firewall to reduce poor compliance with our core-content policies.  Unscintillating (talk) 18:24, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
        • That's why the GNG is at least written as it is: it requires independent coverage from reliable secondary sources. "Reliable" = WP:V, Secondary to avoid the OR claim of why the topic is important, and independent coverage to remove some possible COI /POV with conflicted sources. It's not perfect, and doesn't specifically address NOT, nor covers all case of NPOV, but it's a step. SNGs are a bit more tricky, because the only requirement they have to show is a WP:V-meeting source that proves out the merit. The NOR/NPOV is presumed to have been considered when those crafting the SNG realize what type of sources are expected to come from the merit. (For example, I would never expect to see a movie that wins a Razzie to be considered a merit, since this is implicitly a negative award, affecting NPOV). And the GNG/SNGs are not guarantees that the core content nature of these articles can't be challenged. For example, I could imagine there are a lot of "Criticism of X" articles that could be written that meet the GNG, but because most such sources are offering criticism without offering counterpoints, we'd never be able to write an objectively neutral article on that, so we shouldn't have the standalone (just not due to notability). The GNG/SNGs are only one test, a necessary but not sufficient condition to grant/allow for a standalone article on a topic. --Masem (t) 18:36, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Two examples:
Skipping a lot of detail and opinion, the deleted article satisfied core content policies on an attractive/popular topic, but was deleted for lacking prose-based evidence in reliable sources.
I've cited this example on several occasions on policy pages, without attracting an AfD because it lacks prose-based evidence in reliable sources.
Unscintillating (talk) 18:02, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Unscintillating, I have noticed you dropping Barber Island into conversations recently and I'm embarrassed to tell you that I don't get it. What point do you think the Barber Island article proves, exactly? From where I sit, a BLP about an actress and an article about an island seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison. Geographic features are (unlike bios and especially unlike BLPs) presumed to be notable. So can you break that one down for me? A Traintalk 18:18, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
The other post regarding Barber Island is off-topic here, and I've posted there.  Here, the issue had been prose-based evidence, which maps are not, and Barber Island is an article sourced with maps.  It was posted before Masem stated that non-prose evidence counted, but he has yet to elaborate with examples, so I'm not sure where this stands.  Unscintillating (talk) 20:02, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
And as for WP:NGEO, it doesn't say what you think it says.  It might be an example of where Masem's logic is leading, though, since it first requires WP:GNG, and then disallows maps for notability but not for WP:V.  And then for islands, lakes, and mountains states, "the number of known sources should be considered to ensure there is enough verifiable content for an encyclopedic article."  We know from WP:NNC and WP:NEXIST that that requirement holds no standing currently.  Unscintillating (talk) 20:02, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Okay, I'm going to attempt to regurgitate your argument back to you. I really am trying to understand where you are coming from on this.
You're saying that NGEO starts with a presumption of notability for geographic features, but later the guideline stipulates that articles about natural features (such as Barber Island) should have enough verifiable content for an encyclopedic article. You contend that because Barber Island is sourced to maps (as opposed to prose sources), a sourced encyclopedic article can't be written, and the article should be deleted the same way that Kyoko Ayana was. Have I got it right? A Traintalk 20:51, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
A common reason we regularly keep geographic features is that we presume there are local sources that will talk about those features, at minimum (in addition to being recognized by government maps). To show those local sources do no exist (per AFD nom) requires effort. If that effort isn't done, but otherwise the SNG is met, we by default keep the article, barring other potenital issues. --Masem (t) 22:33, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Sorry, I didn't state an opinion about a presumed notability of geographic features.  You had opined, "Geographic features are...presumed to be notable", in which the Wikilink cites WP:NGEO.  I replied to that, "WP:NGEO...doesn't say what you think it says."  Then I continued by discussing what WP:NGEO does say.  The lede of WP:NGEO states, "geographical features meeting Wikipedia's General notability guideline (GNG) are presumed, but not guaranteed, to be notable."  That gets me as far as the first comma in your question.  Although I could say more, any relevance of continuing this part of the discussion needs to be tied back to Masem's proposal.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:07, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The big picture of my position is that notability doesn't define article content, and that our failure to effect our core content policies (to define article content) isn't addressed by altering notability.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:07, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Unscintillating, I was trying in good faith to try and unpack your argument in order to understand if, and you're just slapping me away. Below, you've laid down an arbitrary rhetorical line beyond which you refuse to engage with Masem any further.
Talk pages exist so that people can make arguments and convince other editors to their side, in order to form the consensus that the project operates on. You are rejecting opportunities to convince people that your view is correct in favor of gnomic dismissals and high-fiving yourself. Your idiosyncratic style of argument has never (that I have seen) convinced anyone of anything. That's why some experienced editors have given up trying to engage with you, and I'm starting to get why.
I am genuinely trying to understand your argument, because I would like to help you make it, even if I don't agree with it. So please, read my previous post and tell me where it does or does not reflect your argument. Or if you want to keep tilting at windmills alone and getting dunked on in every policy discussion you get into, I guess that's fine, too. A Traintalk 11:14, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
No, you and I recently reached agreement that "Bloomberg endeavour[s] to ensure that the listing in their database are correct", which is a wise thing for a fiduciary to say, diff.  Unscintillating (talk) 12:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
Um, no. You cherry-picked that phrase out of something I wrote to illustrate an irrelevant point whilst completely ignoring the thrust of my argument. I cannot imagine a more perfect illustration of what makes you so frustrating to interact with and with that, I think, I'm giving up on you. A Traintalk 15:54, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
I'd like to pick one specific to confirm we are moving forward here.  You had opined, "Geographic features are...presumed to be notable", in which the Wikilink cites WP:NGEO.  I replied to that, "WP:NGEO...doesn't say what you think it says."  The lede of WP:NGEO states, "geographical features meeting Wikipedia's General notability guideline (GNG) are presumed, but not guaranteed, to be notable."  Do you agree that the Wikilink conflicts with the stated quote?  Unscintillating (talk) 12:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
@Unscintillating:--The interpretation of a policy/guideline is often-determined by it's current practice rather than it's wording.The community has historically accepted, litigating through numerous AFDs, that features meeting NGEO are not just presumed to be notable but is by-default notable.I know that it feels like a violation of the policy/guideline but that's how we are doing the things and will (probably) do the things.DGG may be able to provide some interesting views over the point.Winged BladesGodric 14:08, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Note that the practice of a low notability bar (or a path outside of notability via the word "gazetteer") for geographic features predates WP:NGEO.  How does this comment relate to Masem's proposal?  Unscintillating (talk) 15:31, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
The Kyoko Ayana example appears to follow how N is supposed to work. There were no sources to show notability. There were sources in the article at one point but a 10k removal removed those, and commentators at the AFD pointed out that the removed sources failed RS, thus did not contribute to notability. And they argued there was no other apparent sign of RSes out there. Thus deletion was sourced-based, not prose-based.
And for Barber Island, I've said it above: because we have determined we are a gazetteer, any government-recognized geographic feature has an automatic article; this is WP's only automatic inclusion guideline. It falls outside notability. --Masem (t) 18:23, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
That's a lot of ideas in one post.  But to your first paragraph, deletion was not based on core-content policies, and unless and until you agree that this was the case, I won't be able to advance the discussion.  Unscintillating (talk) 18:43, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
My reading of that AFD shows the delete !voters pointing out that what sources there were in and had presently been in the article were not RSes, meaning WP:V was not met, a core content policy. --Masem (t) 18:48, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
  • The reason I think GNG is a poor idea is that it can be used equally well to make either a keep or delete argument for any reasonably contestable article. For most of the article which have a non-COI divided opinion at AfD, it is equally possible to say the sources are or are not substantial, are or are not independent, are or or not sufficient in humber. There's no general standard for any of these, and I have learned by experience I can go in either direction depending on whether I think the article should be kept or deleted, and so can anyone else who pays attention at AfD long enough. In practice I choose depending on the degree to which it is promotional, or non-encyclopedic in any of a number of other dimensions. And I think almost everyone else does just the same, whether or not they realize it.
It's not really just GNG--I think the entire concept of notability is an error, as is the very concept of keeping or deleting separate articles. We should rather say that the importance of the subject affects the degree to which we cover it--it's a continuum, not a yes/no argument. (the reason we're stuck with it is that people want separate articles because of Google--they give prominence only to separate articles. It's almost reached the point where it's safe to assume anyone arguing persistently to keep an article in some areas does so because of a strong coi.).
The other problem word in our standards is "presume" If it means what it does in English, it means that if something is presumed notable, it is notable unless actually proven otherwise--which for the GNG means an exhaustive search of all possible sources comes out negative, which in most cases is an impossible criterion--one can only prove a negative within a finite set.of sources.
The question is better stated as , What do we want to include in different areas, and once we decide it, how can we make guidelines that can decide on a practical basis with minimum argument. We will not agree completely on what we want, but in most areas we will reach a tolerable consensus if people compromise. Consensus does not mean everyone has to agree, but just that everyone has to agree to live with it.
There's a sense in which my opposition to the use of the GNG is against my interests--I would be much more able to make the contents of WP fit my own preference if we used it, because I've learned to have considerable skill at the sort of artificial arguments that can be made on that basis. Additionally, I rather enjoy the contest at AfD against opponents of equal skill. But those are rules for a debating club, not for doing something practical like making an encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 05:59, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
There are two things here that I have said before that are important. First is key to understanding that we need to distinguish the GNG from equating to notability. Finding 2 or 3 sources may be the right argument to keep an article in development, but if I can prove that those are only the 2-3 sources that readily exist about that topic, then we shouldn't have that standalone for the article. The GNG establishes a source-driven presumption of notability so that we know we have an article that at the bare minimum meets V, NOR, and NPOV, but doesn't establish what we expect a good article at the end of day should be.
That brings up the second point is that what we expect notability to look like for a topic will vary by topic area; different topic areas are going to have different type of sourcing, expected structure, etc. EG I would use routine newspaper reporting to document a current conflict in a country, but I wouldn't use the as signs of notability for a medical procedure. What notability can be defined as will vary by topic, but we do set a topic-neutral minimum bar with allowing topics that met the GNG to have a working standalone. Keeping in mind that I'm stressing that the GNG must be considered not equivalent to notability, and this readily works, and follows current practice (it only spells it out better to avoid all conflicts we have been having). --Masem (t) 06:20, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Masem, would you mind surmising the above bullet points in 1-2 sentences? While I greatly respect you and your thoughts here, part of the reason I've been disengaged from this conversation is that there are so many walls of text (and I recognize I am a part of that reason). A quick and dirty of your current thinking would be appreciated. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:29, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
    • The two key points I think we should be considering:
      • We need to distinguish the notion that GNG is equivalent to what we would consider to be threshold for notability that we want to see eventually. The GNG is a sourced-based means to show that notability can likely be met, thus allowing for the standalone. This helps to make it clear that for the merit-based SNGs, they should be considered equivalent to the GNG in whether we have a standalone article on a topic because we presume it can be notable (read : "GNG or SNG", not "GNG and SNG").
      • Ideally we should have a more explicit guideline page that discusses the processes around notability, the GNG and SNGs, and AFD, emphasizing how the presumption works, how BEFORE fits into play, etc., separating this from what we are ultimately looking for that shows a topic is unquestionably notable. --Masem (t) 14:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
        • Thanks. Any clarifying that the GNG is not notability is welcome. I oppose GNG or SNGs, and think once an SNG has been established it must be treated as exclusionary as well as inclusionary to have any value (and we already follow this unless someone pitches a fit and WikiLawyers an XfD to no consensus.) TonyBallioni (talk) 14:26, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
          • Which is a detail I couldn't summarize easily.... Another subtler point is that establishing that a topic should have an SNG should be a community-based decision, but once established the SNG's individual criteria can be managed by the domain-knowledge experts of that topic area without need to seek consensus, unless they are seeking a merit based criteria that may not drive towards what we normally expect for notability (read: NPROF). Those need to have global consensus to include.
          • A subsequent point is that "GNG or SNG" is somewhat overly broad in that there may be some exceptional cases where the SNG should be stronger than the GNG and/or the GNG is too weak a metric to avoid problems in a topic area, in which case the SNG should outline how it is stronger than the GNG (NCORP). Ideally we don't want to exclude the GNG from applying everywhere but there are definitely push-come-to-shove cases now with COI an issue. When an SNG is stronger than the GNG, this needs to be documented right next to where we define the GNG so it is clear where the exceptions exist. --Masem (t) 14:33, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Masem, I applaud your analysis and efforts. But GNG's and SNG's are a fuzzy Gordian knot that sort of works knitted to implement a non-existent definition/ objective, which is "what is this notability thing that we require?." Trying to clean them up without creating the "guiding light" definition is IMHO an impossible task.North8000 (talk) 17:18, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

There's a lot of steps involved, I don't think it wise to change it all at once. The key step that seems like there is agreement is that we recognize that the GNG should not be treated as equivalent to notability. Making that distinction clear (I don't know how yet) can go a long way to resolving some of the above points without impacting practice. It's only a start, and all the other points I make are things that can come later. --Masem (t) 17:31, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm asking this question to explore this, not to disagree. So, there is a notability requirement for a topic having its own article in Wikipedia. Where is this even vaguely defined? You just said that it is not in GNG or SNG's. North8000 (talk) 17:44, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
It's vaguely defined right in the WP:GNG: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." and ""Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included [have it's own article]. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article—...". I think the wording in brackets should replace the old wording to avoid confusion and I'll be opening another section about this minor change soon. Huggums537 (talk) 20:25, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
OK, so then GNG is at least to some extent the authority on it. Although, even that in essence says sourcing (merely) creates a presumption of notability but does not define notability, and then says that the ensuing (AFD) discussion determines notability. And what rulebook does that discussion use as a framework?. North8000 (talk) 20:47, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
The process around notability is not spelled out well, that's where there's a lack of a single place where all this is discussed. Bits are here, bits at BEFORE, bits at AFD, but these needs to be cohesive. --Masem (t) 21:02, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
There's a couple points to be clear: there is no requirement for a topic to be notable to have an article, as we discount things like lists, Summary-style split articles, etc. There are a small but significant number of topics on WP that most agree never have to meet notability. Even excluding those, notability remains a guideline , meaning there are common sense exceptions. It should never be considered a policy.
That said, for most topics, at the infinite deadline, we want a article on a topic to clearly show that it is notable (covered in depth by many sources, and, in how I see it, comparable in terms of article content to other topics in the same field that are deemed already notable by editors). The more sources you give for a topic, the more likely that no one will dispute why the topic should be part of WP. If we can't get an article to that point, and it will remain weak in sources or otherwise stubby, we should seek some other action like merge or deletion. The problem is to show that an topic/article can or can't get to notability levels like this is a considerable time investment by editors to either find sources or prove those sources reasonably don't exist. Because WP is all about collaboration, we don't want to require articles to show this notability at creation, but we do want newly created articles to at least demonstrate they have the likelihood to get there. This is where we would like editors to show how their topic meets the sourcing-based GNG or the merit-based SNGs at article creation (with the necessary minimum sources to show that). GNG and SNGs give the presumption that a topic is notable to give the time and capability for editors to develop articles without fear of being rushed to deletion.
The problem right now is the distinction of what notability is and what the GNG is, in terms of current practice, is not well-differentiated. The idea of presumed notability and the fact that it is attached to the GNG (which has traditionally been "2 or 3 sources") implies there's a higher level of notability that the GNG does necessarily met, but that is not well spelled out in this guideline. --Masem (t) 20:59, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Well said. Also, your focus here on SNG's has been as a role in new articles. Another role is that in a fuzzy way they have a bit of influence to help calibrate GNG. IMO two things would help. One is a 1-2 sentence statement of what the guideline is trying to implement. In essence notable enough for an enclyclopedia of en Wikipedia's approx size. Second, slowly improve GNG and improve it's calibration. North8000 (talk) 21:52, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't think the GNG can be improved. It was designed when we were in much different shape than we are today, and honestly it has outlived it's usefulness: a 6 million article encyclopedia that has articles on most of the major topics can afford to shift to a subject-specific importance-based inclusion system. I don't expect to get rid of the GNG tomorrow, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that wasn't my longterm goal. Notability is a merger of three things: verifiability, importance, and scope. The GNG tells us if something meets the verifiability, it (very poorly) attempts to approximate importance, and tells us nothing about scope (that is why NOT is an equal requirement to the GNG and SNGs).

Regardless of disagreements on this, I do think we can all agree that the way this guideline is currently interpreted is out of scope with what the historical consensus on this page and other policy discussions has been. I would suggest a few sentences like:

Our guideline on encyclopedic notability attempts to assess whether something is verifiable, important, and within the scope of Wikipedia. While the general notability guideline and subject specific guidelines are useful at approximating notability, common sense should be used, and the likelihood of notability that each provides is not a guarantee of inclusion in Wikipedia.

I hope this has been somewhat helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:05, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

I do agree that the idea of putting more weight on SNG in certain fields is fine, but I also feel that there's a large number of topics that don't and/or shouldn't need anything more than the GNG as the point to have a standalone article. For example, I'll speak for the Video Games project that the bulk of our articles are quite happy with the GNG, as with an industry producing 1000s of titles a year, this keeps out the noise quite well to only those games covered in our sources, and gives us the ability to remove an article if that game ends up going nowhere (cancelled, no critical coverage, etc.). But I can understand the difference for academics, corporations, and others. I'll say again that if AFD practice shows topics in some areas being kept and there's no SNG yet for it, then maybe that's a reasonable step for domain-knowledge experts to step in and suggest a new SNG to present for global consensus. It might not pass (NSCHOOLS) but that's a perfect way that notability should follow practice.
But yes, the minimum step I think we need to do is make sure we have a bright, defining line between what notability is, and what purpose the GNG serves towards that. Anything else takes a bit more thought, but this separations seems to have some agreement. --Masem (t) 00:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Masem, what about something such as

A subject is said to be notable if it demonstrates importance, can be verified, and is within the scope of Wikipedia. The general notability guideline and the subject notability guidelines attempt to approximate importance and verifiability, using independent sources, but not scope. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what is outside the scope of Wikipedia. An article may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them.

I'm trying to pull together consensus wording that can be added to this page that is in line with the thinking that we've been having. I distilling it down to a few sentences and updating the guideline is important for any further efforts in notability reform, and I think there is a consensus that some sort of notability reform is needed. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:01, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

"demonstrates importance" is the tricky line, I think we'd need to add something like "as judged by independent sources", as to make it clear that for notability it should be reflecting sources, not personal opinion. There are things we as editors judge important enough to include regardless of sourcing, but those would fall outside of what notability would cover. --Masem (t) 01:06, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
What about updating the second sentence to include to approximate importance and verifiability, using reliable sourcing, but not scope. Importance is approximated by sources, but is not determined by them. I also prefer reliable to independent here: for some fields where notability is largely merit based rather than coverage based (politicians and academics stick out), non-independent RS will be what gets them over the "keep" threshold. The GNG and other guidelines can set their criteria for relative independence of sourcing. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:14, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I think "independent" still works even for those areas, recognizing that, for example, the Science Citation Index is an independent work compared to any academic listed in it, but still providing the merit-based idea for academics. This also partially hits on the issue of local sources verses regional/national/global. The New York Times is clearly reliable and independent for things on a global scale, but they also have metro stories which would not to be independent for local businesses like restaurant reviews. Now the nitty gritty of all that can be filtered to the SNGs or the like, but "independent" covers that broadly. "Reliable" is just as important too but that is more "can be verified by reliable sources" which keeps that idea with WP:V, where RS is the core principle there. (Basically, I know NCORP is very much fearing COI issues so want to cut those off at the pass). --Masem (t) 01:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I'll bite. It's not something I care enough about to quibble over, and I see your point. I think it could be better described at the guideline level, but I think it is also reasonable to include. I've updated it above in red. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:35, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I have a problem with "Something may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them." since it could be misinterpreted to be guidance for content within articles. "Something" is far too vague. I think "An article may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them." would be better. Huggums537 (talk) 02:41, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 Done TonyBallioni (talk) 03:18, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Something that came to be later is that there is a degree of importance that we make as editors, but that is part of the implicit nature of how the SNGs are crafted. We do assign importance that way in that those merit-based criteria are things that are important in that field as we , WP editors, know. The importance set by sources is best when that's covering topics that do not have an associated SNG. So we're not fully setting importance from sources here, so there might be a way to reword that more. --Masem (t) 03:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, that was my concern with your original suggestion, and preferred reliable sources. The merit-based criteria still require RS to indicate importance, but the importance doesn't come from being noticed in independent sources, but from the acts themselves. Perhaps changing it to as demonstrated by reliable sourcing: that way it shows that the sources demonstrate the importance, but are not always the source of it. The individual guidelines (including the GNG) can pick up the rest of the slack from there in explaining how they handle it. TonyBallioni (ta:::lk) 03:18, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Without commenting on the substance of the proposed changes, the wording ought to be clarified a bit. Importance isn't demonstrated by the subject; editors can demonstrate importance through an evaluation of the subject by some criteria, typically its effect on related domains. Generally speaking, verifying the subject isn't at issue (although I suppose it is when screening out hoaxes); it's the subject's characteristics that need verification. The guidelines provide approximate measures of importance and verifiability. isaacl (talk) 03:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Isaacl: I'm sorry, but I honestly don't see any changes that should be made based on your statements. The above phrasing when read naturally indicates all of what you said, and further specificity would likely be a net negative. I particularly am opposed to changing the language around demonstrates: the subject demonstrates itself to be important, not editors. If you have other specific changes, I'd be interested in hearing them, though. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Importance is not inherent; it is based on a value judgment. "Home run", for example, doesn't demonstrate its own importance. Saying the GNG, for example, approximates importance isn't quite correct as this means the GNG itself approaches importance, rather than saying meeting the GNG provides an approximate demonstration of importance for the subject in question. isaacl (talk) 04:11, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I think you're counting angels on the head of a pin here. The language around demonstrates is about the subject, not the guidelines, and a subject can demonstrate qualitative value judgement (ex. my grandmother demonstrates the quality of kindness). I also think you are missing the point of the suggested text: the GNG doesn't demonstrate importance, it approximates it. A subject is notable if it demonstrates that it is important, and the GNG is one way of helping to judge that, but it is not sufficient to prove it. I'm open to different wording, but I think the way you seem to be suggesting would defeat the point of having an additional passage, which is to make an abstract concept easier to understand. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:24, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Given that a lot of this discussion has been about precision of language, I do feel it is important to make these distinctions. Yes, subjects can demonstrate particular qualities, but importance is a quality that only makes sense based on some standards, and the whole point of your suggesting a move to subject-matter specific standards is to recognize this. Again, when you write that GNG approximates importance, it implies the opposite of what you said regarding GNG not being importance in itself but being a way to judge importance. I suggest something like the following:

A subject merits an article if it is important, can be verified, and is within the scope of Wikipedia. The general notability guideline and subject-specific notability guidelines provide an approximate indication of importance and verifiability using independent sources. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what is outside the scope of Wikipedia.

isaacl (talk) 04:38, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I'd strongly oppose this as a step backwards that would make the GNG even more prominent than it already is, and would be implying the exact opposite of the above. I also think that you are drawing distinctions where drawing them isn't helpful, since the purpose is to explain a difficult concept to people in terms they will understand. A subject is notable if it demonstrates those qualities, and the GNG and SNGs approximate two of them. Your wording seems to imply a guarantee of inclusion, which is the exact opposite of what we want. Again, I think what you are suggesting would make the guideline harder to understand. We are not trying to define what get's an article, that will come much later down the road, but to explain that notability is not equal to either the GNG or the SNGs, but a broader concept that the guidelines help us judge. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:05, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I omitted the last sentence from your wording only because I wasn't making any proposal to reword it; otherwise everything I wrote is a direct analog of your text. Thus, I do not believe this approach gives the general notability guideline any more prominence than your proposal does, and I did not intend it to define what gets an article and what does not to any degree greater than your proposal. "Notability" in the conventional sense does not include scope, and so I don't believe English Wikipedia should include scope under the concept of notability. My suggestion explicitly does not equate notability to the GNG or SNGs, but uses your concept that they provide an approximate way to judge importance. I think it is clearer to be more direct: the goal is to have articles for important topics that have adequate sources to verify the contents of the articles. So I prefer to say that an article is notable if it is important and can be verified, rather than saying it is notable if it can be demonstrated to be important and verified. Then as in your proposal, two examples of guidelines that help judge importance and verifiability are listed. The sentence on scope is the same as in your proposal. Then lastly there could be something like The general notability guideline and the subject-specific notability guidelines are not the only ways to evaluate importance and verifiability. isaacl (talk) 05:40, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Scope is in WP:N currently: it is the second point of a two-prong test: passing a guideline, and not being excluded by NOT. My proposal defines what notability is, whereas your wording defines what merits an article, and doesn't include any qualifiers on that point. I'm generally opposed to the word merits, as I've discussed in the past, but it certainly shouldn't be included without a qualifier. I also think it is better to define the concept of notability, and not go further, since the guideline already explains that passing the two-pronged test makes something likely to merit an article: no need to repeat. Trying to merge our two wordings, what about:

A subject is said to be notable if it is sufficiently important, can be verified, and is within the scope of Wikipedia. The general notability guideline and subject-specific notability guidelines provide an approximate indication of importance and verifiability using independent sources, but do not address scope. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what is outside the scope of Wikipedia. An article may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them.

Let me know what you think. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:05, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually the page says that a subject is presumed to merit an article if the two conditions are met. I disagree with making scope part of the concept of notability, as this conflates two independent concepts. What about this:

A subject is notable if it is sufficiently important and can be verified. The general notability guideline and subject-specific notability guidelines provide an approximate indication of importance and verifiability using independent sources. These guidelines are not the only way to evaluate these characteristics, and so a subject may be deemed notable through other means. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what articles are outside the scope of Wikipedia, even if the associated subject is notable.

isaacl (talk) 06:55, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Isaacl, I think scope is inherently part of notability, and is included in the current guideline: WP:NOT defines what is our scope (by nullification), and is included as a part of notability. There is confusion as to whether our scope is anything that passes the GNG, which it is not. This is why I'd prefer scope be included with importance and verifiability (as it already is in the guideline). I think the text also needs to make clear that passing one of the guidelines is not a guarantee of notability, which you removed.
    I'd accept as a compromise on the scope point adding at the end, and any article must not be excluded by that policy in addition to being notable. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • isaacl, fix ping. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:25, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
    • With the goal of helping people understand abstract concepts, I think combining scope under notability just leads to confusion. In the real world, notability tests do not include scope, and something can be notable and yet out of scope for a particular publication. As you said, the need to meet both conditions is already described in the numbered list, so does it need to be covered again with your proposed clause? (Plus it is essentially re-describing what "out of scope" means.) How about:

      A subject is notable if it is sufficiently important and can be verified. The general notability guideline and subject-specific notability guidelines provide an approximate indication of importance and verifiability using independent sources. As these guidelines are not the only way to evaluate these characteristics, a subject can be judged to be notable or lack notability based on other criteria, whether or not these guidelines are met. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what articles are outside the scope of Wikipedia, even if the associated subject is notable.

      • I'm having a bit of concern of how the second sentence comes off (about GNG/SNG) as it reads to me, in the eyes of a new editor, that the GNG and SNG are sufficient for notability, and one doesn't have to show any more work at that point, which is not what we want. I'm not sure what the right language to add to keep this terse. Maybe a question to ask is where are you proposing to put this statement, to see the context for it. --Masem (t) 14:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Just another spanner into the works: one of the goals by issuing a bright line between what notability is and that the GNG is not equivalent to that, is that we can actually use the proper English definition of notability as the guiding principle: topics that are notable for WP are those that have been noted by sources. We evaluate notability by using importance, verifyability, etc... (Tony's def) Now, at this point, that might be too much of a change without the other facets of discussion, but something to keep in mind. --Masem (t) 14:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I think saying that Wikipedia seeks to have articles on notable topics, where notability is based on the importance of the topic in its domain, lines up with the English definition of notability (from the American Heritage dictionary, "the state or quality of being eminent or worthy of notice"). Evaluating notability is, as you said before, a continuum; the current consensus supports using the GNG and SNGs as a first cut for determining the likelihood of notability. Accordingly the proposed statement refers to these guidelines, but also says they aren't definitive. isaacl (talk) 15:46, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
"Importance" is rather vague and is problematic, as it has different meanings to different people. To hierarchical thinkers, it means one thing to circular thinkers, it means quite another. Things that might be important at one time, are unimportant in others. If the point is to clarify the guidelines it would make more sense to say something along the lines of "A subject is notable if it achieved a sufficient impact within its historical context and can be verified". SusunW (talk) 16:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I think it's close too, I just would want to be clear that we include topics that are notable (English def), but to avoid a fully subjective assessment of notability, we seek to show a topic is notable as demonstrated with some objectivity through either coverage from independent sources or pre-determined domain-specific merits. I don't know if we need this right now, but I would keep it in mind. Why WP:N is named "notability" when its practical definition has always significantly varied fro the English meaning has been a thorn in our side, but we've got a way to get past that with this approach. --Masem (t) 16:16, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Which is exactly why I proposed removing importance, it is subjective and fails to take into account things which may have impact on an era, but are clearly not relevant on a hierarchical measure—discarded theories that were at one time significant, personalities, i.e. Paris Hilton, Lawn Chair Larry, etc., former countries, ad infinitum. Stating instead that it impacted an era is not placing a hierarchical measure or recentism upon the evaluation process, allowing for a much more objective analysis. SusunW (talk) 16:29, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
In my view, importance is typically determined by criteria evaluating the effect of a topic on its related domains. Thus impact on an era would fall under this. isaacl (talk) 17:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
SusunW, I consider impact in an era as falling under importance, like isaacl. I think importance is better though because it is broader: things such as roads, unincorporated places, every train station in the UK, random animals discovered and documented in one academic paper, etc. don't meet the GNG as it is written, but consensus has deemed them important enough for an article if they can be verified. They also likely wouldn't fit under the impact on an era wording. If you could think of a way to phrase this, I'd be very happy to hear it (or to convince me on the impact of an era wording: I'm definitely open to it as it is a step in the right direction, IMO). TonyBallioni (talk) 17:51, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I did not get a ping...there is no "a" in my name. I am not a black and white thinker, nor a hierarchical one. Importance requires some sort of subjective criteria whereas impact does not. Unincorporated places, train stations, random animals, from your example, could well have impact, but be totally unimportant. For the first two, they were founded for some reason and impacted the inhabitants around them, who utilize them, and may well have changed the demographics of a place. For the second, things like the polar-griz definitely impacted our knowledge of species, so while in and of itself is a minor hybrid and certainly not an important species, it definitely changed our understanding of biology. None of your examples indicates importance, but they all fit in an impact evaluation. SusunW (talk) 18:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Impact also requires criteria that are based on a value system, and the value system is subjective. I see impact as the same as having an effect on related domains, just using a word with slightly different connotations. If a topic affecting our understanding of biology, for example, then it has made a clear and noticeable effect, and so is important to biology; I can't see how it would be considered unimportant. isaacl (talk) 19:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I would agree that there is a judgment either way on values. But, "importance" in and of itself is a loaded word, easily misconstrued to discount things that are not in agreement with one's own view. I am not married to "impact", but it has a broader applicability to my mind. Whether it impacted something does not limit the topic to something that is in and of itself significant. Semantics do matter when one is trying to define concepts. SusunW (talk) 19:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
This is why I think if we talk importance in relationship to notability, then we have to identify by what metrics we are using to avoid the outright subjective assessment. Hence why importance relating to notability is what can be demonstrated through coverage of independent sources, or through reasonably-selected figures of merit that can be verified. But one could argue that "impact" is yet a different measurement than importance , and should be included as well.
And maybe "importance" and "impact" are not the complete extent of what "notability" covers either. Take an average , non-Oscar winning film but one that had wide release. It doesn't break any cultural ground, it's not a major success nor failure, it doesn't change anyone's opinions of the actors or directors involved; it just cost millions to make, brought millions in gross, and has the usual extensive reviews and production information. That's notable by both english and WP's definition, but it's not showing "importance" or "impact". It's just been "noted" through thorough discussion of its production and its critical reviews. We can fit it into WP because it has verifyability, and coverage from independent sources. I wouldn't use "interesting" as the word alongside "importance" or "impact" (that's a worse word than "importance"), but its related to how much interest the sources show towards a topic as yet another facet of notability. --Masem (t) 20:45, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Exactly Masem. At Women in Red we typically utilize the theory that an article is typically notable if one can define the scope (who, what) in context (where, when) to weigh its significance (how, why) with sufficient RS to write a comprehensive article without doing original research. SusunW (talk) 21:01, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
A film that gained a significant viewership does have an effect on the film-making domain for its year of release, and possibly its year(s) of production, and so I do believe it fits the standard of importance. Important does not mean it was a landmark, innovative, or creatively distinct. Important topics are just things that should be covered when discussing related domains, such as cinema in year X, because of the effect they've had. A film that hardly anyone watched won't be important by viewership standards, and so would have to meet a different standard of importance to have an article, such as critical acclaim. isaacl (talk) 21:10, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Then that may mean, reasonably, that "importance" or "impact" should be "within their field", which stresses a point Tony's making about domain-expertise playing a role here. Whether that is by appropriate selection of domain sources, or by merit-based criteria, either is fine. We just do need to make sure that no domain -expert area is given too much leeway to make too many broad assumptions of what they believe is notable - the MMA problem from years back. --Masem (t) 21:55, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Well, it's the same point I've been making about domain experts, but sure. And yes, "effect on related domains" includes "within their field", just generalized a bit. isaacl (talk) 23:28, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • It is definitely better to *avoid* using the term "notability" in a general everyday IRL meaning: Wikipedians do *not* determine whether a person, company, or whatever is "notable" in this sense. That would, for instance, make determinations on whether a living one-hit-wonder is notable into a BLP issue, e.g. "yeah, sure, you're a 'non-notable' IRL, Wikipedia has said so..." – this would, for instance, make necessary to close AfDs down before they really get started while saying "non-notable" about an article topic may be a BLP policy infringement.
Of course not, notability is a convention depending on context: in this case that context is Wikipedia. Honorary members may be "notable" for an organisation (which uses its own criteria to bestow such qualification on certain persons), so why shouldn't Wikipedia use its own criteria regarding what it considers "notable" for its own purposes? It should, after all, not be a judgement on how important a person, organisation, etc., is according to other criteria. Buying a V.I.P. ticket to an event would make you "notable" in Wikipedia, while it says so on your (verifiable) ticket, you're not only an important person: you're a Very Important Person. It would make impossible to refuse such person an entry to Wikipedia, while the person is "notable" while they are "verifiably important" (according to someone else's criteria).
I never got why using "notability" in a well-defined context would be in whatever sense problematic for Wikipedia. Everyone does it. Using "notability" in a general ill-defined (e.g. by making it dependent on the even vaguer "importance" concept) sense is much more problematic. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Importance is approximated by either merit-based criteria, or looking at the sources in context, and judging whether they demonstrate it in their coverage. Notability as we use it on Wikipedia is a made up term, and it while DGG has said in the past that we have started to have religious faith in the GNG, I think some people take it to the level of a cult: there is nothing special about having one or two newspaper write-ups. I can do that for myself within the next three months if I wanted. That doesn't make me notable. That means I can pick up my cell phone and call a reporter. We need to move away from this concept that notability is king: it isn't. Consensus is. Notability is just shorthand for "what we have determined through consensus to be important enough to have an article on Wikipedia and is not outside of our scope." We can determine in any XfD that something is notable or not regardless of what the guidelines say. They are clear that they are not a guarantee of inclusion, and they are not a policy. The GNG allows us to approximate subject importance based on what has been noted when we have not determined a subject-specific criteria, but we can, and should, use common sense and throw it out the window when it gets in the way of improving Wikipedia. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Disagree with almost all of that, including what you say about DGG's approach. Oppose changes to the guidance based on such reasoning which would, evidently, make notability-related issues only more, not less, problematic. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:09, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I've made it clear I want to get rid of the GNG, so does DGG. It's worthless, and I encourage people to ignore it in favour of using the SNGs as exclusionary guidelines all the time, because building up a consensus at AfDs is the only way we will ever be able to fix our massive problem of overincluding spam while chasing off topics that actually should be covered in an encyclopedia (AfC and the -help IRC channel do this all the time). My porposed changes above, however, are not aimed at that, but at clarifying this document, which no one seems to be able to understand. It's undertaken in good faith, and includes the GNG despite my distaste for it, because I recognize that consensus currently accepts it. At the same time, while I appreciate all the work Masem has done, I'm beginning to despair that nothing will come out of all of these conversations, because people are too focused on the particulars rather than willing to compromise on wording to clarify what the consensus on this document actually is. If we can't do that, we might as well mark it as historical and not even pay lipservice to it. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Re. "...this document, which no one seems to be able to understand..." – offence taken. Please speak for yourself. I'd be happy to try explain what you don't understand. The "likely" proposal discussed below added another layer of (unnecessary) complexity, and so was unsuccessful in clarifying anything. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:26, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I wasn't discussing you or people on this page who are attempting to help move forward the discussion. The conversation was started when Masem pointed out that we need to better explain the concept of encyclopedic notability: it is currently ambiguous and difficult for people to understand, and critiquing the document as such is not an insult. Many people currently conflate it with the GNG. That has never been the consensus, and we need to find a way to explain it better.

Right now, we have a document that no one reads because they only link to one section of it. Changing the text to make it clear that notability is much more than passing that one section needs to happen. If it doesn't happen, then we are just going to continue to have meaningless fights in XfDs with one side advancing policy based arguments, and the other saying "But the GNG!" (and this goes in both directions, keep and delete).

That isn't good for the encyclopedia: at the same time, I think it might be impossible to actually change this document in anyway soon, even with just clarifying remarks, and efforts might be better spent in the other guidelines working on developing consensus' there as to what is notable and how they interact with the GNG. As much as I really do respect Masem's efforts, having read over all of these threads multiple times, I'm not sure that we are going to be able to get much done on this guideline. My wording above was an attempt to try to get a 2-3 sentence summary of what our understanding of notability was using terms people could understand: not to actually change anything. I'm not tied to those exact words, but if we can't develop a consensus for a 2-3 sentence summary of notability, we won't be able to make any larger reforms here (in the direction I would prefer, or in other directions). TonyBallioni (talk) 17:40, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I totally disagree that SNG are or ever will be more important than GNG. They fail to cover a broad enough definition of what is or is not notable, at this point cover minimal topics, and further fail to take into account media/publishing biases. While one might be able to qualify sports-based achievement (and I know many editors who think those guidelines are flawed), for example PROF has serious issues, in that it is geared toward hard sciences and fails to take into account demographic differences, citation variances, (law never cites someone else's work but rather case evidence; research shows men typically cite other men, while women cite both male and female authorities, name changes affect citation statistics, etc.), and the inherent biases that have typically omitted women and minorities from being included in the "accomplishment hierarchy". What is being touted here as moving toward a defined, rules-based inclusionary guideline is in fact one that excludes a vast number of notable people who have had impact in their place or origin or on a specific era. SusunW (talk) 18:09, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I actually think one of the strongest selling points of SNGs is that they are less likely to exhibit systemic biases than the GNG is. That is one of the main reasons that we have them: they are a double edged sword that makes it easier to include things that are significant, but hard to pass the GNG, and easier to exclude things that pass the GNG because of various privileges and social hierarchies (ex. a young PhD student in Canada knowing how to market herself and call the reporter vs. a top researcher in Africa who doesn't do that.) I also think that the SNGs need a lot of tweaking to account for what you are talking about, but ultimately, what I think needs to happen is a move towards including more of the topics that you suggest, which I don't see the GNG as providing. Those are the areas where we are currently lacking coverage, and the GNG builds in a systemic bias against them. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
We'll have to agree to disagree on that point. SNGs evaluate things in a hierarchical manner, placing value on things that are inherently "important" to the mainstream culture. They also buttonhole people into narrow categories, which exclude the experiences of all but the most notable people in any given endeavor. Many women/minority's experiences did not allow them to be singularly notable for a specific field, and yet, evaluating the totality of their role, clearly they had impact on their place and time. People and things are typically not one-dimensional and SNGs tend to place more significance on one facet than on the entirety of the topic. SusunW (talk) 18:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I think SusunW brings up several valid points here. The proponents of doing away with the GNG have not taken into account that the community will overcompensate for this by a dramatic increase in SNG's to establish a foothold for their favorite topics. This will result in coverage of tons of topics in SNG's where there is currently a minimal amount as SusunW pointed out. Spammers will always find a way to spam and putting exclusionary restrictions on the community at large is not the answer since that "punishes" the good editors the same as the bad. That is a plan of action that when followed to it's logical conclusion actually hurts the community more than it helps it. I fully understand the reasoning behind the idea, but I just think it's a bad idea. The Crusades and Spanish Inquisition were thought to be good ideas at the time as well, but I'll leave it to the readers to decide if they were a bad idea or not... Huggums537 (talk) 18:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
It should also be pointed out that a significant increase in SNG's statistically raises the odds that there will be more contradictions between the various topics related to policy, creating even more confusion about notability and policy in general. It is far better keep the amount of SNG's to a minimum by the KISS principle and why we have both WP:CREEP and WP:POVFORK guidance. The GNG helps us to accomplish this by providing a simple location of single coverage for virtually unlimited various topics. (With the possible exception of those that are currently limited to the SNG's). Huggums537 (talk) 19:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
One thing to keep in mind is that the GNG can be made field specific simply by defining what the RSes are for that topic, which may be more specialized than a general topic. Back to Video Games, we maintain WP:VG/S to comply with WP:RS requirements of what sources in video games are appropriate (in addition to any reliable general news source), so that we don't need a specialized SNG, just the GNG with our source list. This doesn't work for all topics, but it is a possible route to avoid too many SNGs. --Masem (t) 19:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, see my post below regarding the problematic approach of having an ever-increasing number of rules. I think it's probably moot, though: my feeling is that the community is not yet ready to have the subject-specific criteria replace the general notability guideline, as this would require delegating authority to domain-area experts who have the required context to create appropriate criteria. The community remains wary of giving up its veto power, given the inability to validate credentials and the understandable concern that the standard may be drawn too broadly and thus result in more articles than the Wikipedia community can adequately maintain. isaacl (talk) 20:58, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Technically it is already the case that SNGs have some ability to create new merit-based criteria, but this is after the global editor community agrees that an SNG in that area is appropriate. (EG the current NSPORTS was put in by a global RFC, but the small changes made to it since have been strictly limited to consensus on its talk page). We don't have formal processes, but if we did, that's pretty much how I see it being handled. If the community finds that an SNG has, though its own control, added a number of criteria that are problematic, then another global RFC can be held. That may be a result of when a series of AFDs of articles that rest on the SNG are shown to be a problem; we can enforce our "veto" in this fashion. This can help urge to only create SNGs when there is a clear need for it; reusing existing ones or see how the GNG can be used instead, and keep the CREEP of having a few dozen different SNGs to worry about. --Masem (t) 21:06, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Perhaps you feel the winds of change differently. At present, I don't foresee a large-scale movement to make subject-specific notability guidelines supersede the general notability guideline in the intermediate future. Until English Wikipedia's consensus decision-making tradition shifts to something that scales better, personally I don't think matters will change much. The sports-specific notability guideline has only survived through its deference to the general notability guideline. isaacl (talk) 21:16, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
This whole discussion came from the previous section of whether the GNG or the SNGs were superseding the other, of which I've pointed that has has traditionally been, that it should be neither superseding - it is "GNG or SNG" as WP:N is written as well as most of the SNGs that defer to the GNG should the topic not met its criteria. To align several different conflicting statements made since, I think it is important to stress that most of the confusion can be resolved as long as it is understood that the GNG is not sufficient for notability, it's only a presumption of notability to allow a standalone. This makes the GNG equal in weight to any SNG (barring those like NCORP that seek to be more restrictive than the GNG for good reason). The GNG is the necessary catchall, and though it and how articles grow and survive, it can lead to completely new SNG and/or additions to existing SNG to cover new topics that emerge (for example, as eSports are coming into a major growth mode, we may need to see how applying the GNG works, and subsequently how that factors into the SNGs; this is a potentially good test bed of this mechanism). But all this is not to change practice or make any massive guideline change, but provide clarity that I'm seeing on how to define notability, the GNG, the SNGs and the processes around it to avoid confusion that the misunderstandings between editors come up when discussing the roles of these guidelines. --Masem (t) 21:55, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I've been following this discussion and many others that we've been having for years now, covering these exact relationships and roles that have been raised in this current thread (achievement-based standards, presumption of notability, gradual increase in sourcing in articles, and so forth). We've tried many times to add clarification to these guidelines. But so far, they have just been too many different opinions and not enough desire to modify the current text. isaacl (talk) 23:42, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Ultimately it's unclear if your initial statement I think there is a consensus that some sort of notability reform is needed is true. English Wikipedia's community is just too large and decentralized for consensus to work as a decision-making mechanism (as I have discussed previously), particularly for changes that affect underlying guiding principles. In the place of empowered groups to make decisions regarding, for example, the need for an article on a topic, balancing encyclopedic coverage with the available resources to maintain articles, the community tries to enact a set of self-governing rules, and tries to patch them bit by bit as issues arise. Eventually the community may see that this approach has too much overhead and is too complex, as Clay Shirky discusses in "A Group is its own Worst Enemy", versus biting the bullet and adopting some form of hierarchical structure. (Hierarchies of course have their own weaknesses that would have to be mitigated.) isaacl (talk) 17:59, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, we are in general agreement. It is why I prefer working in AfDs and other pages to develop local consensus first and then develop proposals from that. I do think there is a general desire to clarify our conception of notability, but I think where consensus is lacking is how to do it. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:03, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Would it be possible to give some examples of AfDs which, in your appreciation, went south for the wrong reasons? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:32, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

"Likely" revisited

  • There is no consensus for the recent change from "presumption" to "likely" or anything else [1]. Please do not make such changes without something approximating community wide consensus. I am changing it back to what it was. I also don't agree with "Historically, topics were "presumed" to merit an article by meeting these condition. "Were" indicates this is no longer in play on Wikipedia, which is not the case. Topics "are" presumed, not "were" presumed. Nor do I agree with stripping out anchor-links without consensus [2] if they have been long standing without consensus. Thank you. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 06:36, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
    • Steve Quinn, there was a consensus on this talk page to do so. That was why the edits were made. There is no need for a community-wide RfC on minor changes. Most changes are done piece by piece, rather than by large discussions. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • This is not a minor change. Changing the tense of the verb makes it look like this practice is old hat, which it is not. We have not thrown out any of the criteria just yet. It is pretty clear already what is "presumed" notable already. I don't see any need to make the change that was made - unless we are making the criteria old fashioned (on a whim). Also, "consensus" in this discussion consists of about five editors. Some larger consensus seems to be needed. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 06:46, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I'll be honest. To me this appears to be a AGF- POV edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steve Quinn (talk • contribs) 06:49, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Which is the norm for most project space discussions: editors boldly edit to clarify the meaning of the text to make it reflect the current understanding of consensus. Presumption has only historically worked because it was assumed to be rebuttable. An editor raised the concern that the word is confusing. People use it in a way that was never intended to be used: the consensus here currently and historically has been that the presumption is not a guarantee, but a starting point. Likely captures the meaning of that consensus better, and still links to the rebuttable presumption page. The footnote is describing what word was historically used in the article. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:53, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Tony ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Steve Quinn, not a problem. I would appreciate if you struck the AGF-POV thing, though. This type of consensus building and bold updating of policy and guideline pages is normal, even for very significant ones. As a project space regular, I do this frequently to make policies and guidelines reflect current consensus or practice, and would never have done so if it appeared controversial. We don't need a project-wide consensus for things such as this unless there is enough objection to it. There seems to be now, so I'm willing to drop it because it is minor. The only purpose here is to help people understand that notability is not a guarantee of inclusion, which is the reason for this insanely long thread with subthreads. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
@TonyBallioni: Sorry for pinging you again. Hopefully this is the last time for awhile. No problem with striking the comment - it has been struck. Regarding another matter, maybe its because I am a little late in this thread - but what do you mean that notability is not a guarantee for inclusion? Supposedly, the only way a topic can have an article is if it is deemed notable. If it is deemed notable - it stays. So how do I wrap my brain around this idea? Is this something you fleshed out earlier in the above thread? If so, no need to repeat yourself, I will try to see for myself. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:56, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
WP:N is a guideline that provides a rebuttable presumption of an article. There are 14 reasons for deletion, and notability is only one of them. Additionally, we can choose to limit our criteria to whatever we want, even in XfDs and decide that the guidelines are wrong and that we don’t want an article on something. IDONTLIKEIT is actually a perfectly good reason not to have an article, so long as the reasoning behind why you don’t like it is very strong and doesn’t contradict policy. We should and do delete plenty of things that are notable and we should and do keep many things that aren’t. TonyBallioni (talk) 08:07, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Support proposed change, or something like it. We do need some way to make it clear that the various SNGs don't provide automatic notability and that many of them are not accepted by the wider community. Reyk YO! 07:24, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Support likely as well, not just for the SNGs, but also for the GNG, which per my and DGG's mantra, isn't really worth anything. Importance is key here, and we are free to disregard notability if we don't think we want an article. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:26, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Sometimes, if you think of, analyze and write down what you intuitively judge, sometimes you really have something. IMO on notability such is really a combination of importantness and enclyclopedicness, with wiki-suitable sourcing being being a key objective quantifier of those two things. And the context is for an enclyclpodeia of the approximate size of en Wikipedia.

So we should not go too far with requiring importantness in a vacuum. For example, an article on an obscure, low prevalence animal species is appropriate. An article on a person whose only importance is that they got 20 million hits on youtube last week may not be. North8000 (talk) 13:52, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

  • Support - As the editor who suggested the change to “likely” in the first place, I obviously support it. “Presumed” is all too often misinterpreted. “likely” captures the nuance much more accurately. Blueboar (talk) 14:35, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Mild oppose This weakens the main GNG statement, and the GNG is the best guide that we have regarding notability. North8000 (talk) 17:23, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • As I said above, importance is a value judgment and so has to be made with a set of criteria in mind. Typically the criteria evaluate the effect of the topic on its related domains. So articles on species are important for their particular zoological niche when they are significantly different from other similar species (where many species are very similar, Wikipedia will often group them together). As some editors are advocating to move towards evaluating importance (which for people typically means achievement-based standards), they have proposed text to lay groundwork for evaluating notability from an importance perspective. But to fully commit to this approach, as I also stated earlier, will mean deferring to domain experts to set the criteria, since for many areas only they have sufficient context to do so. It remains to be seen if the general community is willing to adopt this approach. isaacl (talk) 17:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose changing "presumed" to "likely". It causes the guideline to move in the direction of non-actionable theory. "Presumed" links properly to rebuttable presumption. The presumption is strong, despite loose aspersions recently. The vast majority of accepted topics meet the WP:GNG. Browsing WP:AfD is to explore the boundary region, and leads to the problem of hard cases make bad law. The GNG does work well, and the problem is that decisions in the boundary region should be expected to be difficult. "Likely" will only makes things worse, because it becomes unclear what someone should do when unhappy. The decision can't be made on what is "likely". The decision begins with what the GNG or SNG says, and failing that, the onus falls on the unhappy editor to actively rebut the presumption that the guideline applies to the particular case. NB. Lists have always been a problem, and SPINOUT articles are an issue very far from the problems that WP:N addresses. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:26, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, "likely" is a much better way to put it. That captures the essence of it both ways: SNGs should be a way of specifying what demonstrates that a topic is very likely to meet the GNG, and conversely, passing an SNG makes it likely that it does. Rather than trying to explain "rebuttable presumption", that makes it clear that passing an SNG, while a reasonable likelihood of meaning the subject passes the GNG, doesn't exempt it from passing. If we don't in fact have sufficient sources for a decent and reasonably comprehensive article on a subject, it should be covered as part of a parent or related article instead, rather than as a standalone. The last thing we need is more permastubs that are hard to clean up because "But it passes "WP:NXXXXXXX!" Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:28, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment – I think we need a wider consultation on this: proposing to proceed with an RfC. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:50, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment Francis I recommend letting those advocating for this change create an RfC - if it is so desired. I can't see doing an RfC when it is other editors who support this idea. If it matters, it will happen. Imho. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
    • I don't care too much who writes it (it should be worded neutrally anyhow). The only thing I wanted to say with my comment above is that with the current apparent lack of "local" consensus it doesn't seem very well possible to make such change to the guidance unless there is broad support for it (which we're not going to get when keeping this local). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:27, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose  I'm already on record above with this statement:

    The problem with changing to "likely" is that it is a political word to wake people up to the way that WP:N works, not the technically (more) valid word "presumed" with which we are entirely comfortable.  Worse, "likely" implies that there is yet a decision to be made, but this is incorrect--a decision has been made once WP:N is presumed.  (And if I had said "a decision has been made once WP:N is likely", that would be internally contradictory wording.)  Unscintillating (talk) 23:54, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Unscintillating (talk) 23:20, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Relative Notability

After trying to write an article about an obscure subject, I found it difficult to find sources that other wikipedians would consider notable, I started thinking about how we consider something notable. The system we have right now works well, but it certainly excludes topics that experts in certain fields would consider notable in their respective fields. The article I was working on (McCallum Bagpipes Ltd) is on the largest bagpipe manufacturer in the world, and only bagpipe publications (the largest of which) write about it. It has small mentions in major news outlets but no specific mentions. As the largest bagpipe manufacturer in the world, shouldn't it be considered notable? That's where my idea of relative notability comes from. If something is considered more notable under its specific topic, then it should be considered notable enough to have a Wikipedia page.

Now, you could say, I've got a rock in my backyard that's definitely more notable than the others, does it get a Wikipedia article? Nope, that's where the second rule comes in. That rock would have to belong to some category that is notable. Say, you're Bill Gates, and the rock in question is some big boulder out in the backyard of your mansion. Now we're in the category of "Things at Bill Gates' mansion" which (when related to Bill Gates) is notable. Another user on the IRC, I can't remember his name, was writing an article on a Mongolian filmmaker, who was a very prolific artist, but only well-known in Mongolia. He would not normally be considered notable, but if we bring my idea of relative notability to the table, he would be considered notable.

I know there are all sorts of edge cases to my idea, but I'm sure that, with time, it could be developed further into a workable idea that could be implemented into Wikipedia's idea of notability. Any comments or ideas for changes would be greatly appreciated. Rey grschel (talk) 18:14, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Within our editor culture it would be much easier to make a case for notability based on coverage in those specialist publications, than being the largest company that does X, whatever X may be. Industry-specific journals or publications can certainly satisfy notability guidelines, so long as they are considered independent and reliable of whatever subject you are trying to write about (i.e., not merely McCallum Bagpipes Ltd press releases). There's no requirement for mainstream media coverage, nor is there a requirement that someone be internationally famous (re: your comment about a Mongolian filmmaker). postdlf (talk) 18:33, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
That's a good point. Most of my argument is about the coverage in specialist publications, not really about being the most X. {{u|Rey_grschel}} {Talk} 17:34, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I think What is being described is the subtle distinction between Notability and “noteworthiness”. Being Notable means something gets an entire article devoted to it... being “noteworthy” means it can be mentioned in a related article. The big rock at Gates’s mansion might be “noteworthy” enough to mention in the Bill Gates article, but probably would not be Notable enough for WP to have an article devoted to it. Blueboar (talk) 23:35, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I think that's something I missed for sure. {{u|Rey_grschel}} {Talk} 17:34, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
  • The problem with that premise is that every topic or sub-topic, however obscure, is important to its aficionados, and they'd likely consider their leading lights prominent. Heck, take me. For fourteen years, I played the most powerful wizard in a large New England LARP, and everyone in it knew who I was. By this concept of relative notability, that character would qualify for a Wikipedia article, even though no one outside the LARP (and, likely, not all that many currently in it, seeing as I quit fifteen years ago) would recognize me from a hole in the ground. Wikipedia, by contrast, requires that the outer world has heard of you, and if they haven't heard of this bagpipe manufacturer, then it's no more notable than "Prince Morgil" was. Ravenswing 00:21, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
I think that bagpiping is certainly a much larger group of people than the LARP you participated in, but I understand your point. Some aspect of "this subject is notable under the context of a notable topic" would need to be amended into my idea. {{u|Rey_grschel}} {Talk} 17:34, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Linking non-notable subjects to their WikiData entries

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Linking to wikidata.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  13:53, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Unclear or misleading content

In the "Why we have these requirements" section there is "We require the existence of at least one secondary source...". Would someone point me to this specific policy or guideline giving the number "one secondary source"? WP:PSTS states "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation." and further "Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them.". This may need to be reworded as simply "We require the existence of secondary sourcing. Otr500 (talk) 11:24, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:11, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
"sourcing" seems too much like verbing if you ask me (and might be somewhat unclear to the casual reader). Don't see what is wrong with the current wording, when compared to the PSTS policy requirements. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:28, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
"...Wikipedia:No original research's requirement that all articles be based on secondary sources", in the same bullet, is however wrong afaik: there's no such requirement in the WP:OR policy afaik. It omits the possibility to write starting from tertiary sources, e.g. a copy-paste job from the 1911 Britannica (like many articles used to be). --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:36, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
I would argue that a copy-paste of something like Britannica - which should include what sources it used - is not a problem since we can go to their sources to use to expand further or be more specific where the sourcing comes from. Additionally, this is pretty much no longer done since we've exhausted that. But relevant to this is trying to keep in mind that there is the end-state of the article that we want to get to to show clear, unquestionable notability, and the presumption of notability from GNG/SNG; copy-paste of a proper tertiary source would be basically meeting the GNG by default as long as the tertiary source had identified sources to start from. --Masem (t) 14:26, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
... which doesn't address the problem: the WP:N guidance should not redefine the WP:NOR policy by claiming something is in that policy which is not. The example is a tangent to illustrate the problem, not the problem itself. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:45, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
The key to Notability isn’t primary/secondary/tertiary nature of the sources... it’s the dependent/independent nature of the sources. We need to demonstrate that someone independent of the topic considers it significant. Blueboar (talk) 14:55, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Independence is a key factor, absolutely, but it is not the only factor. There are many many independent sources that are just presenting data without any transformation of that information (read: primary sources) that would not be sufficient as the sole sourcing for an article. --Masem (t) 14:59, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
WP:PSTS says "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources." Yes, the line here is too strong by saying its a requirement, but it is a very strong recommendation, and why the GNG is built atop that. --Masem (t) 14:59, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
...which still doesn't address the misquoting of the WP:NOR policy in the WP:N guidance. One of the core ideas of the NOR policy is not interpreting what is in sources, but rendering them correctly: this is leading by bad example, i.e. practising exactly the opposite of what the policy tells a Wikipedian should do. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:05, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, we need to change it, but I'm finding there's a circular argument between the pages, at least with the words quoted, so it's not just a straight forward change. (WP:N says to go to WP:OR, WP:OR says to go to WP:N)
Right now we have We require the existence of at least one secondary source so that the article can comply with Wikipedia:No original research's requirement that all articles be based on secondary sources.. I think we need to change it to We require the existence of secondary sources so that the article can comply with Wikipedia:No original research's requirement to avoid novel interpretation of sources, and coupled with the need for independent or third-party sources, objectively demonstrate that the topic has received attention beyond simple rote repetition of primary information from an independent source to establish the topic's relevance to its field. (bold changes). The first two bolded phrases fall immediately out of discussions above, but the last one is very much new and I'm not married to the language. We need something that gets to the point of why we want secondary sources, more than just avoiding OR. It's not the only reason for secondary but I'm not sure if I have captured it in the most succinct way. --Masem (t) 15:30, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Tx. Maybe makes it a bit too complicated. "As an article can't be based on primary sources alone, per the WP:NOR guidance, at least one secondary or tertiary source is needed to write it" or something in that vein (without the abbreviations and duly linked) might work. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:49, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
This article only has an external link, but no explicit sources currently. If I'd be improving its references I could find primary sources and tertiary sources (the Deutsch catalogue to start with), but maybe not secondary sources (I've never seen a secondary source about this composition). Just an example again, just trying to make clear what we're talking about. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:02, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
That's a case where the article should be put to Wikisource, and on WP, linked into a list of all Schubert's works, ultimately. The fact you have the tertiary source, that at least justifies having the present stand-alone. But if someone decided to dig into sources and found nothing that talked of that sonata further, then it should be removed, but in this case we have several ways of retaining the content within WMF projects and still listed/searchable within WP. --Masem (t) 16:06, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Re. "That's a case where the article should be put to Wikisource" – don't think so. We know that multiple independent sources must exist. That's GNG. I don't think that the idea of the "existence of at least one secondary source ... per NOR" needs to be transformed into something that reiterates the entire GNG. I'd transform it rather into something practical: you must have at least one non-primary source at your disposal to set up an independent article about a topic, or there's no way the article can comply to WP:NOR. That you must be able to demonstrate that there are more than the one you have access to (if you have only access to one) is GNG. That there's no way to get started with the article if you have access to none is NOR/PSTS. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:47, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
This goes back to separating "notability" as the end goal for an article (without a deadline), and the GNG as a presumption to allow the creation of one for deletion. They are not equivalent. Notability should be proven out though secondary sources at the end of the day, but for right now, the coverage in the tertiary source (which is supposed to collect primary and secondary sources alike, not just primary) seems reasonable as a GNG metric for the article. I fully accept that its listing in the tertiary source suggests more sources can be found, so the article shouldn't be moved at all yet. But if I really wanted to get rid of it, and I spend the time and effort to go to Europe and exhaust the bulk of printed records since the composition of that piece, and found nothing, then I have proven out the GNG presumption was wrong, it cannot be shown notable, and then we can talk deletion or moving it. But I have to do that work to start that. Until that point, we're fine with the tertiary source showing the GNG is met and retaining the stand-alone.
Also keep in mind, various SNGs can be met by a primary source, as long as that source is reliable. (Eg if a person wins a Nobel prize, I can use the Nobel's committee's blurb about that person to establish the article as a primary source). That doesn't violate NOR off the bat, but clearly the article would need more sources to be improved beyond that to better meet NOR and notability. --Masem (t) 17:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
BTW, I found an accessible secondary source on the Schubert sonata too (not much text about the composition but at least it is a secondary source).
Re. "Notability should be proven out th[r]ough secondary sources..." – no, it shouldn't. It is demonstrated by non-trivial independent sources (i.e. independent of the primary source). Secondary and tertiary sources are grouped as "independent". The tertiary source may be a mere listing, in which case it doesn't count towards notability, but a separate detailed article in e.g. an encyclopedia does count. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:12, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Primary/secondary/tertiary are not the same metrics as independent/dependent or first/third party; WP bases the nature of secondary sources as having tranformed primary (and sometimes other secondary) information, regardless who makes it (An autobiography is a dependent secondary source). --Masem (t) 17:49, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
"...not the same metrics": correct. Thus, "...should be proven out th[r]ough secondary sources..." incorrect as a generalisation: it should be proven through independent sources. "An autobiography is a dependent secondary source", generally: incorrect – an autobiography would be a primary source regarding the person who wrote it. It can be secondary and/or independent on certain other topics. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:01, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
It's not just independent sources, or just secondary; it is "independent secondary sources" that is critical for notability - authors unconnected to the topic (independence) providing some type of transformational evaluation of primary sources (secondary) to show the topic's relevance to the its field. Many sources are independent but not secondary - this is typically news reports (not op-eds), which is not sufficient for notability. Sources can be secondary but not independent, such as press releases praising a person or company or product, and leads to COI-type issues. Sources that are being used for the GNG and towards notability need to be both independent and secondary. --Masem (t) 18:10, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
And to add, an autobiography can be secondary, if the writer is opining on their past (just as interviews are generally taken as secondary). If they are just listed out what they did and when they did it, that's primary, but framing those events to how they impacted their career is secondary. --Masem (t) 18:12, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
No, it's independent sources for WP:N. Secondary is another metric. The sentence that currently tries to make a connection between WP:N and WP:PSTS's "secondary" is dodgy while it ascribes content to that policy which simply isn't there. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:23, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
It's always been independent and secondary, the secondary nature to establish why the topic is deemed significant in the field. Yes, the sentence in question needs to be fixed, but WP:N has long based on demonstrating the existence of independent and secondary sources. --Masem (t) 06:44, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Ec

Francis, I find this section hard to follow. Every statement seems agreeable and I can’t find an actual problem. What is the problem you see below with the current text connecting WP:N, secondary sources, and WP:PSTS? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:48, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
"We require the existence of secondary sources so that..." should be tweaked to read "We require the existence use of secondary sources so that..." The burden of proof should not be left to other editors to prove that a secondary source "exists" somewhere out there. -- BullRangifer (talk) 17:28, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
As long as its understood, based on AFD practice, that as long as the secondary sources have been identified at either the talk page or the AFD (but may not yet be incorporated into the article) with consensus to keep, that this is considered the "use" of secondary sources. We've used "existence" to mean that they have been proven to exist and identified, but not required to be included. --Masem (t) 18:39, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
That makes sense. Thanks. -- BullRangifer (talk) 18:48, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
  • From WP:V#Notability:
===Notability===
Further information: Wikipedia:Notability

If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.

I believe that this is generally understood to mean one source, but this can be difficult to confirm.  Discussions can be found at WT:Verifiability/Archive 49#Notability section and WT:Verifiability/Archive 64#Minimum third-party sources in an article, below which the content fails WP:DEL7.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:27, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
It obviously means more than zero, but even at zero, “should” leaves some wiggle room. Biographies from ancient history, for example, will be kept, even if the only source is a biography by the subject’s son. One third party (aka independent) source is sufficient (not ideal, not preferred) for squarely encyclopedic topics such as distant history or non-controversial science. Multiple third party sources, sometimes more than two dependending on depth of coverage in each, is required for current commercial products, companies, their founders and CEOs. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:53, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
This is where I think there's a point made above discussions. First, separating the notion of what notability should be after an article is fully developed compared to the GNG, and the idea that notability should be evaluated with more weight with other similar topics in the same field. The GNG is purposely absent of how many sources is required to satisfy it, because it is more about the total coverage from the sources, but in generally, the GNG is a minimum number of expected independent, third-party sources with secondary coverage, and ultimate, the final demonstration of notability should be based on many many more sources above that. But as SmokeyJoe points out, if we are talking ancient history, people from those period may only be documented well in a few sources, in contrast to bios today. And of course, the type of sources that apply changes with field as well. We're never going to include a number as that will immediately be gamed. --Masem (t) 01:15, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Unscintillating since WP:STICKTOSOURCE also says: "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article about it.". I also agree with SmokeyJoe since in many cases, a single independent source is sufficient. In fact, since WP:ALLPRIMARY shows us that all sources are primary for something, the example Francis Schonken provided us with This article actually has TWO sources in one! (Primary/tertiary). So, we see that in this case a single source meets the minimum multiple sourcing recommendations. Huggums537 (talk) 11:29, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
I think to address the confusion of the the problem, WP:PSTS needs to be changed. "Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them." is terrible wording since WP:ALLPRIMARY proves that all sources are primary for something. Therefore, according to this wording, no article with a single secondary source should exist either since the secondary source would also be primary for something. All anyone would have to do to argue for the deletion of the article is argue over whether it is a primary or a secondary source, when it is in fact both. Huggums537 (talk) 12:24, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment  The issue at hand is the "Why we have these requirements" section of WP:N, which is not a part of the WP:N guideline proper, and in ANSI standardization committees is printed as a separate document called a Rationale.
    It is further my opinion that the ideas serve poorly as a rationale, and that they in fact represent an essay espousing historical ideas that contradict fundamentals of WP:N, that WP:N is not a content guideline.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:47, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment Not "secondary_sources"_for_the_film's_reception_are_NOT_the_same_thing_as_what_many_editors_are_likely_to_read_"secondary_sources"_as this again? Can't we word our policy pages based on the assumption that editors are competent enough to know the difference between a primary and secondary source in any particular context? The wording in question is meant to forbid articles on topics that have only been covered in sources written by themselves and that kind of thing, for example an article on a supposed literary genre that was invented by a living person, who wrote a few "sources" describing it himself, but was unable to convince anyone else to follow suit. It's not meant to forbid all articles whose sources could be considered primary for something. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:42, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Actually, the notion between primary and secondary, and that sources can be one for one topic and another for both has proven to be a point that is not well understood by new and experienced editors alike, and I would not say this should be treated at an expected CIR. In part, there are other ways one can define primary vs secondary (one being that secondary is "one step removed" which is more about independence) which makes it confusing when we focus on the transformative nature. We need to be explicit when we use the terms in policy and guidelines. --Masem (t) 14:18, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Well, I just looked at that film discussion, and that dispute really had little to do with primary/secondary distinction of publsihed sources, it had to do with WP:V 's "directly" requirement (you need a source that directly says reviews have changed) and NOR synthesis injunction (don't take a bunch of reviews and make your own original statement about them) - so, it does help to isolate the issues (so, the connection to primary/secondary was more, 'are you, the Wikipedia editor trying to be the original secondary source?'). As for N, the issue really is, 'have a bunch of qualified independent people taken notice of a topic?' (Which is more akin to the undue requirement when discussing article text, because there the issue is often 'have enough independent qualified people taken notice of something in this context, so that it is due in this article') -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:49, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

RfC to raise NCORP standards

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)#RfC:_Raising_NCORP_standards Jytdog (talk) 02:27, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

How niche is too niche?

How broad does coverage need to be to satisfy the GNG? Would a few independent and reliable niche-market sources suffice? Is a video game notable if it’s only discussed by websites that cater to gamers? Are there any WP:pages I missed that discuss this? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 00:57, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

If a certain field has a wide variety of sources (as like video games), that means its likely not niche. On the other hand, if there's only one work that covers the field that is underwater basketweaving, that's probably a bit too niche to be considered notable without non-nice sources. --Masem (t) 01:03, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, gaming was probably too mainstream of an example. What about a small number of established reliable sources that specialize in covering underwater basketweaving?
Or what about non-English media that’s covered only by English-language sources that specifically cover non-English media? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 01:48, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
It's really hard to draw a line, but one thing I would consider that if something is not niche is there is infrequent but sufficient coverage of the field in more mainstream sources to show that the field has attention, even if 90%+ of our coverage of topics in the field are limited to the field's only works. If the championship of underwater basketweaving appears in national newspapers every few years, that's something, for example. Can't give exact numbers, obviously. --Masem (t) 01:54, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Okay, so we’ll say underwater basketweaving itself is plainly notable. But are topics in the field notable? Should we have an article about the AquaWeave 900x that was thoroughly reviewed in virtually every underwater-basketweaving publication (but nowhere else)? Or the HydroTurbo Duo Pro that only a few of them discuss in any depth? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 02:06, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
That's what I'm saying is that if you can show a reasonable handful of topics get some coverage outside the field, and you have a means to determine reliability of the niche sources, then its reasonable to have articles on notable topics within that field. That said, you can't go overboard. The best example I do know I can point to is the MMA field. Several years ago there were problems with proliferation of articles from this rather niche area, and caused a number of problems. It did end up with Wikipedia:WikiProject Mixed martial arts/MMA notability and so you might find more history there (Talk page archives) or looking at the archives at WP:AN. --Masem (t) 02:13, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Remember that something may not be notable enough for its own article, but it can still be noteworthy enough to discuss in the parent article. If the new “Hydro-Weaveomatic 500” is only reviewed in the niche sources... but THEY make a huge deal about it... it probably isn’t notable enough for its own article, but it probably IS noteworthy enough to be discussed in some detail in the main “Underwater basketweaving” article. Blueboar (talk) 02:28, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Right, but what I was wondering is whether the article should be kept or merged, not whether we should discuss it at all. Thanks, though! —67.14.236.50 (talk) 02:46, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the concrete example! I’m trying to find a universal rule of thumb I could take away from that, but it’s not coming. But the reason I asked was, there’s an anime series I’d never heard of, and it seems to have zero mainstream coverage; its article lists only a few anime-specialist sources, so I’m not sure it’s even that well known in animedom. They are well-established, well-known sources, though. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 02:46, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Anime would not be a niche subject for Wikipedia. We even have a whole Wikiproject for it - see WP:ANIME. In fact, you might want to ask there (on their talk page) for help to find sources. Also keep in mind that we do not require sources to be in English; so if the anime is well-known in Japan, you can use Japanese anime-specialist sources for it. (This happens often with video games that only get a Japanese release and we have to rely on sources from Japan for this.) --Masem (t) 02:52, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Not that the entire field is niche (there’s plenty of various mainstream coverage); the coverage of the particular subject, this one series, is limited to that field’s niche (the publications explicitly specializing in it). Like a little-known indie game that had a tiny story on GameSpot and not much else. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 03:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
If the anime itself is reported about in RSes in the field of anime, then its reasonable to presume we can have a standalone on it. --Masem (t) 03:28, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Seems a little generous, but all right. I’d require some kind of mainstream/generalist mention if I made the rules. Guess I’m too exclusionist. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I would say, a topic is a niche if every secondary source is authored by someone connected to the topic, and to every other author of any secondary source. Thus, a niche topic is one with zero independent secondary sources, when the bare minimum for a topic is two. Such a niche topic would therefore have to be merged into a broader article. Do you have any borderline examples for commenting on? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:31, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
    • I strongly object to redefining "independent" to mean "ignorant". Independent sources are sources not by the topic or its creators. They are not required to be sources by people who don't have any connection to the subject. For instance, textbooks written by experts on their subject are perfectly valid secondary sources. Or, to get closer to the subject of the article: reviews of anime issues or series in regularly-published magazines devoted to anime (that are not published by the same company as the anime in question) are probably valid secondary sources. We shouldn't require our sources to be written by people who have no connection to anime as a whole. Web sites can also be valid, but it depends on how close they are to the magazine model: big web sites that regularly publish well-edited stories under multiple levels of editorial control probably count, but someone's personal blog or a fan forum probably doesn't count. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:56, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
      • The way I took his comment was, if we had a review written by an intern who worked on the anime, and a review written by the director’s best friend, and an article by that reviewer’s cousin… that would probably not be notable. That kind of “connected.” —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
    • Oxford says a niche is “a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service.” What you describe is a rather extreme example of that. But no, the article I was thinking of does have more than two IRSes. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
      • A topic without two reliable independent sources is not suitable for its own article, there is no need to consider “niche”. I don’t think niche is a characteristic needing specific attention, the GNG is a better requirement than “non-niche”. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:09, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

rcb team

which player who play for rcb next year Kanha chauhan (talk) 16:33, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Do you have a specific article in mind?Slatersteven (talk) 16:51, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Sekou Franklin?

Hi. Could someone please take a look at this and let me know if you think Sekou Franklin is notable or not? If you look him up on Google News, he comes up a lot for his social justice activism, which is how I came to hear about him. Please ping me when you reply. Thank you.Zigzig20s (talk) 17:01, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

RFC to update NOTDIR to preempt GNG for lists of transportation service destinations

There is an RFC to update WP:NOTDIR to state that wikipedia does not include lists of transportation service destinations, even if the individual services pass WP:GNG. See WP:VPP#transportation lists BillHPike (talk, contribs) 02:36, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

There's no need for that, really. Passing GNG is doesn't guarantee inclusion, just allows for it. Articles that pass GNG, but fail other content policies, such as NOT, are still not acceptable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 07:52, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

We need to set a minimum rate of article creation

REJECTED
It seems clear that the primary proposal has been strongly rejected as unworkable. The other issues involved can continue to be discussed in new threads if desired.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

According to WP:SIZE, in 2017, the rate of article creation fell to 605 articles per day, which is the worst level since 2004. Since 2007, there has been a general downward trend (with two interuptions, the first in 2015 and the second this year). Since it appears that more than 95%, and certainly the vast majority, of notable topics are missing, mainly due to systematic bias (eg geographic and anglophone bias, recentism, and bias against the sort of topics that are taught, researched and studied at a university or equivalent level or above, etc), the rate of article creation should not be slowing down at all. The reduction in the rate of article creation is caused by the editor retention problem, which is in turn caused by excessive nomination and deletion of topics that ought to be included in the encyclopedia. If the rate of article creation falls to zero, or gets close enough to zero, the project will collapse from lack of editors. Therefore:

We should introduce a minimum rate of article creation (eg such and such a number of articles per day) below which the actual rate of article creation is not permitted to fall. If at any point the actual rate of article falls below the minimum rate then: (1) Advocacy in support of increased deletion or increased prohibitions on the permissible topics of articles should be forbidden until such time as the rate of article creation exceeds the minimum rate. (2) The introduction into notability guidelines of anything that would make it harder for topics to satisfy those guidelines, or that would make it easier to delete articles, should be forbidden until such time as the rate of article creation exceeds the minimum rate. (This probably applies to WP:NOT as well, though notability seems to be by far the main problem). James500 (talk) 05:45, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely not. We're a volunteer project and so article creation rate depends on what volunteers are creating. Second, forcing a minimum rate means a lot of potentially junk or bad articles. No one is worried about how many articles WP has, that's not anything connected with notability. --Masem (t) 05:55, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
No way. Firstly, the quality of the encyclopedia can't be boiled down to "write X number of articles a day". Quotas invariably lead to a degradation of quality. Just look at DYK and all the errors that get through because they have to get a certain number of hooks onto the main page. This proposal will have the same effect. Second, there's no connection between deletion of bad articles and editor retention generally. We're more likely to drive good editors out if we suddenly tell them certain opinions are forbidden to express if some arbitrary condition isn't met. Reyk YO! 16:12, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Just no. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:17, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Well, I started about 90 articles in 2017 myself and so did my bit, but I'm not sure how a quota would work. What James500 might do instead to stop the number sinking even lower is to attend to the RfC in which TonyBallioni proposes to make it even harder to create new articles. It's remarkable that he does not seem to have noticed that discussion yet while its supporters are trying to close it early on the grounds that everyone has had their say. At some point, I expect the WMF to wake up and realise that they risk turning the success of Wikipedia back into the failure of Nupedia but maybe they need to learn the hard way. Andrew D. (talk) 16:57, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

    Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

    — George Santayana
No, at multiple levels. The concept of a quota, and the suggested action when it isn't met. But maybe this could be a kicker to discuss the topic in general. North8000 (talk) 17:02, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
The reason why article creation has slowed is that a vast number of fine articles have already been created and it is becoming less easy to find subjects that justify one. Even if no new articles were to be written, Wikipedia, in its present state, takes its place as a magnificent resource for the world. There is no point in creating junk articles on more and more trivial subjects. That is why I direct my own efforts to curating existing articles rather than creating new ones. In the existing mature state of Wikipedia I don't see merit in creating a lot of new articles unless they are good ones. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:48, 5 April 2018 (UTC).
I agree with you reason for fewer new articles, but I think that it operates in a more complex fashion. The number of subjects that can garner the big expert volunteer time investment needed to make an article on them has diminished. Also the number suitable for mass production of stubs by by bots has diminished. North8000 (talk) 13:37, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely no. Further to Andrew D's comments respectfully he has it backward. Retained Article Growth was not impacted by ACTRIAL. The continued creation of trash by any idiot with an impulse to immediately throw up a new page on Wikipedia using a throw away account sucks up the time of Admins and experienced editors who would all rather be creating good pages or expanding existing ones. If you really want to support new page creation join WP:AFC where more than 2000 new topics are waiting for review. Legacypac (talk) 00:09, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

  • Comment. Thanks for the alert to this debate which I had not been aware of before. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:28, 6 April 2018 (UTC).
  • I would almost consider this an April Fool's joke if it were a few days earlier, but it's best to AGF and assume that James500 is serious. To which I'd have to ask by what possible stretch of the imagination can Wikipedia's merit, utility and popularity be gauged using the rate of new article creation as a metric ... followed closely by what manner of logic can one conclude that a slackening in the new article creation rate must by definition result in a lack of new editors? I'd much rather see people's attention devoted to improving the articles that already exist than in creating new ones just out of some weird notion that We Must Have Lots Of New Articles, and would much rather see a quota that a certain number of articles a day should be improved out of stub-class.

    But that being said, James500, shouldn't you be part of the change you're advocating? Like Legacypac, I've been pitching in some at Articles for Creation, where the average draft submission languishes for about six weeks. If you're worried about retaining new editors, this is an area where a lot of newbies get discouraged and drift away. Ravenswing 05:28, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

  • Comment. (1) The results of the ACTRIAL are irrelevant. They only relate to the prevention of article creation by non-autoconfirmed editors. They say *nothing* about the effect of increased nominations and deletions of existing articles on autoconfirmed editors. There is both a qualitative and quantitative difference between being prevented from doing something for ten edits and, at the other extreme, being wikihounded with endless vexatious nominations and improper deletions and subjected to invective and votestacking and etc etc etc for years on end. In any event, the trial took place over a relatively short period of time, and its results are probably an outlier. A blip. (2) AfC should be abolished and all its drafts should be mainspaced immediately. They will improve far more quickly in the mainspace, where they are prominently visible, than hidden in a place most editors don't know exists and can't easily navigate due to the lack of blue links. Not to mention all the absurd rejections for frivolous reasons in violation of WP:SOFIXIT. (3) There is a direct correlation between the deletion of good articles and the non-retention of good editors. A high proportion of deletions and nominations for deletion are wrong. There is serious misuse of CSD A7 (which will presumably reduce if we fix our notability criteria), at least half of all PRODs are wrong, and a large majority of AfDs are wrong (partly due to a determined refusal to apply ATD, which seems to be stirred up by the notability guidelines). This wastes the time and exhausts the patience of content creators and the patrollers of the aforementioned processes. (4) A minimum rate of article creation (set at a reasonable level) would result in the creation of a large number of good articles. If a small number of bad articles slip through the net, that is a price worth paying. I am not saying "We Must Have Lots Of New Articles", I am saying "We Must Not Have Zero New Articles", because that is unsustainable. And that is where we appear to be heading. (5) I also invoke some of the arguments made in this edit, such as that other encyclopedic sources are growing much faster than we are, and this project is far from mature. As far as much of Africa is concerned, for example, Wikipedia is like a gigantic black hole from which information does not escape to readers. Coverage of wealthy non-anglophone countries, and even the history of anglophone countries, is extremely poor, with most notable topics missing. Likewise with topics not normally taught at a high school or secondary school level (ie compulsory education). And etc. (6) I'd like to know why I did not get a notification on my user talk page that the ACTRIAL RfC was taking place because that is A Big Deal. I suggest a mass message be sent at once, especially to the new editors who are on the receiving end of that. James500 (talk) 07:49, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
I’ll only say two things: 1) there is no such thing as wrong on a consensus based project. If you think there is, you are welcome to fork this project and create your own wiki with a firm set of rules. 2) We don’t mass message for RfCs. The ACTRIAL RfC was widely advertised (I either posted it on 7 or 9 community boards/forums and WP:CENT.) Kudpung may also which to speak to the latter point. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:55, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
[[

File:Anaximander world map-en.svg|thumb|150px]]

The current ACTRIAL debate is already becoming one of the most heavily subscribed RfC in recent times. Not only, but it also has a massive consensus just like its predecessor did in 2011. I cannot really believe that James500 believes what he is saying in his tl;dr - it seems to me to more of just an antagonistic diatribe. Either that, or he just dosn't have a clue. I take his comments with as much seriousness as I would those of a flat Earth theorist. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:14, 7 April 2018 (UTC)


Well, I don't think a quota system is feasible either, but nobody here except James500 seems to be worried about the rate of article creation, when I think we should be. There is no shortage of topics that need articles. I think in large part he's speaking out of frustration at his experiences at AfD. When I was participating there it was frustrating to me how WP:CORP would be extended by analogy to areas that had nothing to do with corporations. This wears you down, and eventually I just quit. I think we can all agree that nobody wants slick, professionally written corporate PR on Wikipedia. But that doesn't mean that praise should be outlawed. One of my recent edits cited an award to an architecture magazine that was full of praise. IMO they deserve every word of it and more. But if that article ever came up at AfD, I'm pretty sure it would be attacked as spam. That's going too far, and I think it ought to be corrected. – Margin1522 (talk) 10:22, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
There are endless attempts to apply ORG by pure fiction. One of the most common is to try to pretend that some building or other location is an organisation. Restaurants, hospitals, churches, embassies, shops, factories, offices and school houses are all buildings. Yet there is this endless attempt to pretend they are not, because ORG contains absurd restrictions on sourcing not present in GNG or NGEO, or because, if the topic were admitted to be a building, it would have to be merged to the wider area in which it is located, rather than deleted. James500 (talk) 09:56, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
No, those are all organizations that have their business (or whatever) in a building. They might have had the building made for their business, or they might have bought those buildings, but the entity in the building and the building are two wholly different topics. --Masem (t) 13:12, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
We might be getting a little off topic here, but while it's accepted in theological circles that the Church is not a building. , the fact is there is still such a thing as buildings known as churches, which are often highly noteable landmarks, deserving coverage even if they are not the true Church. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Well I principally agree that many articles still need to be created and low article creation rate can be an issue, but this needs some perspective. WP is essentially never-ending process, that will always be in need of "important" articles still to be created. This is simply the nature of the project.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:49, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

The suggestion seems mostly nonsensical to me. Already the goal of minimal article creation rate seems rather questionable to me, you can set such ("mandatory") goals for paid work but not for voluntary work or in a voluntary project. Furthermore what's that point in allowing article/material to be added that does match our usual criteria just to match the article creation rate? Polemically speaking this is asking us to drop being an encyclopedia as long as not enough articles are created- that makes no sense to me. Aside from that we have already have more problematic content than we can effectively manage. So why on Earth should we artificially push to worsen that problem?--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:42, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

I know we traditionally use things like "seems", "to me", "in my opinion" etc to soften our commentary but this is not one of those situations. This is an objectively bad idea. To say articles should be included just for the sake of creating N new articles per month is patently ridiculous. In my opinion this is the trolling conclusion to a long term push to decrease notability and sourcing requirements to negligible levels. At least in those cases it was possible to see the good faith intentions and reasoned if not reasonable arguments behind the proposals. This time it is pure silliness to advance a goal I can not fathom. Jbh Talk 16:53, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
That is simply a personal attack and you know it. You would not like it if I was to claim the inclusion of detrimental restrictions in ORG was an exercise in deletionist "trolling". You would be the first to start screaming AGF. James500 (talk) 09:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
  • So many howlers in James500's rant I don't know where to begin. I still have no reason to think he's insincere, but I'm thinking that if he wants so badly to edit an encyclopedia where anyone can post everything they want, blithely rules-free, I'm sure he'd be welcome over at the Urban Dictionary. Ravenswing 18:03, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
    • The "everything they want, blithely rules-free" comment is unfair. You will not find a stronger supporter of verifiability, accuracy and neutrality than me. James500 (talk) 09:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
    • James500 is not insincere. He has always been very open about his determination to drag down Wikipedia's quality and reliability while censoring anyone who objects about it. See, for example, User:James500/Deletion_reform_2015. Reyk YO! 20:46, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
      • 'Notability' does not create quality or reliability. (Neither does "PROD for any reason no matter how absurd" or the "consensus can't change" clause in CSD G4 or etc.) We have verifiability and neutrality for that. I would not, for example, oppose an accuracy requirement. James500 (talk) 09:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I withdraw the proposal for a quota because it is clear that it is not going to achieve consensus today. It would probably have been better to propose a particular number from the outset. The declining rate of creation is still a problem though. James500 (talk) 09:37, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
A wise thing to do. Thanks so much though for having the courage to make the proposal. As you imply, it's a matter of timeing. Things probably have to get even worse before they get better, but one day inclusionist values will return to their central role in this project. Just like they've been becoming more central in institutions all over the world. I look forward to the day when GNG is demoted to an essay, and no articles are deleted except for attack pages, hoaxes, and non-noteable BLPs. Keep the faith! FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:18, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Part of the problem is that most of the “obvious” topics (topics that the average person knows something about and can work on) now HAVE articles... and we are at the stage where we are filling in the gaps... writing articles on more “obscure” topics. Yes, we have a lot of gaps to fill, but The missing articles are on topics that require a degree of subject expertise to write (because they ARE more obscure). There are not a lot of editors with such expertise... and fewer editors means a slower rate of new articles being written. Meanwhile, the rest of us are being productive... but we are working on enriching and improving EXISTING articles, and making them better. That work does not show up in a “new article” count. Blueboar (talk) 12:16, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Blueboar, that makes some sense, and would make total sense if we lived in a static world with a fixed amount of notable knowledge. But we don't live in such a world. Due to population growth, increased levels of education, proliferation of reliable sources, technological change and various other forces, new notable topics are arising at an accelerating rate. The world's total amount of knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate. It might be useful to read a description of Fuller's "knowledge doubling curve" - i.e. , up to 1900, it took a century or more for the world's knowledge to double. Now such a doubling happens in about a year, and by 2020 it could take less than a month. Yet as per WP:Size, our current appallingly low article creation rate means it may take this project ~15 years to double its no of articles! Unless we massively relax our insane deletion criteria, this project seems doomed to contain only an increasingly tiny fraction of the world's knowledge. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:08, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes... there is more information, but it is increasingly specialized. Which means a more limited pool of potential editors who can write about it. In the early years of Wikipedia, we had lots of generalists were writing generalized articles... the rate of new article production was high. Those generalized articles now exist, and we need specialists to fill in the gaps. There are fewer specialists in any given topic... so the rate of production goes down. It does not mean production stops... it’s just slower. Blueboar (talk) 15:17, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
There might be more information out there, but as an encyclopedia, we also then must apply appropriate guidance to keep to topics that at least have some longevity, which means that that information doesn't always translate to a new topic. We're still going to be vetting sources, and our number of RSes really don't change that fast, and they're not pushing out more content. We already have a problem with too many editors jumping to write articles on current events despite WP:NOT#NEWS, and there's far too few admins and editors already to try to mitigate issues with promotional materials that are sneaked into the work from those with COIs. And it still remains this is a volunteer project. --Masem (t) 13:28, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
It's an important point you raise about us being a volunteer project. Our number of active volunteers has declined since 2007, even though the number of internet users has more than tripled since then. The key to why is in the link I posted above: "significant boundary-spanning scientific consensus [finds] that human beings all desire the freedom (Autonomy) to get good at things (Mastery) that are meaningful to us (Purpose) ... it is only natural that people will resist the idea of being perceived as less-than-competent."
The current excessive focus on Quality repels many potential volunteers who understandably don't like being perceived as incompetent Randys. So we don't retain them as editors. Studies by the WMF have found it's deletions and reverts that are the primary reason for us losing valuable volunteers. It's mysterious why so many seem determined to keep raising Quality Control standards, make us ever more like the failed, elitist Citizendium, rather than the casual, inclusionist and fun project Wikipedia used to be in the early days. Still, as James suggests, this is probably not the time for Consensus to change on these matters, so I'll say no more for now. Thanks Masem and Blueboar for at least discussing this in a polite and collaborative way. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:54, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Those immersed in it usually can't see it, but entering Wikipedia editing is a weird alternate complex universe, and a very very mean one. Probably the biggest loss is of the much needed experts.North8000 (talk) 14:09, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
We were bemoaning the lack of experts even back in 2006... we didn’t lose them, we neve attracted them in the first place. What we have today was built by generalists... people who knew a little about a lot of topics. It added up to some great articles. But what we need now is a way to attract specialists... people who know a lot about a little. That’s harder to achieve, and so it is not surprising that the rate of production goes down. Blueboar (talk) 15:24, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
I don't know how many never came, but I know that they routinely get chased away. This is from experience, helping experts that are going through the Wikipedia meat grinder has been a particular area of interest for me. And while it often involves them conflicting with people who are using policies to keep the quality level up, the more serious cases are conflicts with people who use policies to pursue personality disorders. North8000 (talk) 16:06, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
It appears that what you are describing is what I for lack of a better term will call the "Blog Model", where someone writes what they want, however they want - there are some aspects of Wikipedia that are like that and will always remain so, but Wikipedia having thousands of other people to create this 'blog', means every individual blogger (editor) has to deal with those others -- adding more others is dealing with more others telling each of us what the pedia will say - so that in effect will always mean, for any individual editor, they are beholden to all the others, not 'free'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:44, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
I would think in light of this one of our goals is to write WP as if it were an accredited, highly-reliable source, even though we will never be able to acknowledge that because we are an open wiki. Keeping that in mind should help explain why we promote quality over raw information, which notability, at the end of the day, helps to support. --Masem (t) 15:22, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Perhaps, but my point is that this is a multi-person endeavor, which means multiple people will always be telling the individual-user what they can and cannot do, there is just no escaping that - and, people who just want 'to be free' will not be happy, nor will those same people in most every circumstance, here, actually hold to 'anything goes', which means, whether they admit it or not - they have standards, they want on this website, and its users, to apply. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:16, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't think that a need for expertise is the main problem. A lot of these missing topics would require only average intelligence plus the ability to use a search engine on Google Books, Internet Archive, and the like, to write a valid stub or better. There are a lot of highly prominent topics, with entire books about them in English easily found in full view or preview with a search engine, that the average person could easily throw up a stub or even a better article about, that are still missing. There is still an enormous amount of unused reliable public domain material that even a person who was none too bright could copypaste. An ordinary person might have real difficulty writing articles about advanced mathematics and science (if his source is still in copyright: maths doesn't go out of date), but he should be able to write valid stub articles or better about much of the arts and the humanities, including history and biography. Yet even that is missing in super abundance. The main cause is our deletion criteria and processes. Consider the user talk page messages that are placed when an article is nominated for deletion. There is a great deal of "you can't create this", but no constructive suggestions whatsoever as to what topics are notable. The templates ought to contain a link to a list of missing notable topics, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Tracking or Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles generally. James500 (talk) 23:52, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Massive change to WP:CORP proposed

Please see Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)#RfC: Adoption of the re-written NCORP guideline.

It is a massive proposal that, among other things, looks like it will remove Wikipedia's notability guidelines for sports teams and all schools (not just K–12 schools). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:14, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Meh... there isn't a lot that is new in the proposal... most of it simply reorganizes language that was already in the guideline. Of course, the reorganization might have unintended consequences, so more eyes would be helpful... but let's not panic about it. Blueboar (talk) 13:10, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Delete ORG. ORG is a gigantic pile of wholly unmeritorious incredibly extreme mega-deletionist garbage that is so far removed from the opinions of the vast majority of the community, and is so wantonly pointlessly gratuitously destructive, and is such completely bizarre absurd ludicrous logic defying nonsense throughout, that it should be subjected to the full force of WP:IAR whenever it is invoked as grounds for deletion, and then it should be demoted, deleted, oversighted and finally salted so that it can never come back to plague us again in any way, shape or form. (Slight caveat: I haven't looked at ORG for a while, but it never seems to improve). James500 (talk) 21:17, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
    • All the rewrite did was codify what was already the standard practice at AfD. Now there is less room for WikiLawyering. Practice is policy, and thankfully we've finally updated ORG to be in line with what we were already doing, so AfD couldn't be WikiLawyered to death to save spam. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:22, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

"Best-selling book" as a notability criterion

How much weight should be given to notability claims regarding a subject writing a "best-selling book" (or BEING a "best-selling book"), given how the system is often manipulated? For example:

  • This article on how a first-time writer and publisher got on -- and off -- the NY Times YA besetselling list. Despite the obvious manipulation being exposed, Lani Sarem still calls herself a best-selling writer.
  • And then there's ResultSource: The company states "'We create campaigns that reach a specific goal, like: "On the bestsellers list," or "100,000 copies sold.'" For example, for a negotiated fee ResultSource will guarantee that a book becomes a bestseller. It does this through bulk book buying programs designed to manipulate the metrics used by Nielsen BookScan and the New York Times Best Seller list, among other strategies.

It seems to me merely appearing on a best-selling books list is essentially a meaningless assertion of notability. --Calton | Talk 01:31, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Agree. "Best-selling" is shallow-disguised prmotion speak. It verges to pseudo-objective meaninglessness. "Most sold", whether by number or price, for a defined time period, is objective, but the present-tense continuing "selling" infers current continuing sales and it almost certainly connected to a motivation to promote.
What is interesting to Wikipedia-notability is not facts, whether subjective or objective, but who is saying what. For any notability claim, Who is commenting? Are they reliable, reputable, independent? Are they commenting directly on the subject? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:48, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Doesn't really matter. The fundamental underpinning of notability guidelines is not "how significant or important are you?" but "has the world noticed you?" Those who are listed on the NYT Bestseller Lists gain the world's notice, regardless of how they got there ... the same way that musicians who got on the Billboard lists gained notice regardless of how many DJs got kickbacks, the same that politicians in notable posts gained notice regardless of the manipulations of local "machines." We don't use the NYT lists to judge the merit of a book, we use it to judge the book's notability, and a book is notable not because lots of people (allegedly) buy it in any given month, but because it's on that list. Ravenswing 03:33, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I'd be very suspicious of a book claimed as "best-selling" that doesn't eventually have multiple in-depth published book reviews. And if it does have those reviews, they (and not the sales figures) are what provides notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:46, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Best sellers are notable. A best selling book is absolutely always notable. Provided that you understand that the expression "best seller" refers to a book that has actually achieved a sufficiently high degree of (real) sales, and not merely been included in a sham list or bought by its own author etc. The expression "best seller" has nothing at all to do with promotion. There are several objective scholarly definitions of "best seller" proposed by academics. These are based on, for example, achieving a particular absolute number of sales, achieving a certain proportion of total sales, or achieving a level of sales that is considered exceptionally large by the standards of the time and place where the sales are occurring. See, for example, Greenspan and Rose, Book History and Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing. Wikipedia certainly does accept that a topic can be objectively notable in the absence of 'significant coverage'. That is why we have SNG. This is necessary for a number of reasons. For example, the reliable sources available to our editors have epic systematic bias against less recent history, poor countries, non-anglophone topics, and anything faintly intelligent. They also fail to provide adequate coverage of topics that are genuinely important. We also need a way of dealing with deletionist trolls at AfD who have no intention of looking for sources and who will refuse to accept that coverage is significant no matter how much is presented. Such deletionist trolls need to be silenced with objective precisely worded criteria that they cannot twist and wikilawyer. And of course GNG is in some respects seriously unsound. There is for example no justification for demanding secondary sources. Professional historians regard over reliance on secondary sources as a sign of serious incompetence. And the theory of primary, secondary and tertiary sources invented by historians has no application whatsoever to any discipline other than history, and the way GNG seeks to apply that theory to everything other than history is pure WP:RANDYism. (It doesn't help that most of our editors have no idea what a secondary source is, either). To be honest, our policies and guidelines contain quite a few ideas that are pure 'wikiality' and have nothing to do with real scholarship. You should not be suspicious of un reviewed best sellers. My sources tell me that "low brow" best selling books "frequently" receive zero book reviews of any kind (P N Furbank, "The Twentieth Century Best Seller", in Boris Ford (ed), The Pelican Guide to Literature, Penguin Books, 1961, volume 7 ("The Modern Age"), page 430.) I don't see any reason to assume this indicates anything wrong with the sales figures. It might simply mean that some book reviewers consider that sort of literature to be beneath them. Or it might mean that the sort of people who read that kind of literature do not read book reviews (this will certainly be true of at least some children's books as very young children do not read book reviews). A book that appears on a very prominent bestseller list such as the NYT will very likely be notable because appearing on that list will make it famous. That sort of coverage certainly counts towards GNG. How that coverage has been obtained is of no relevance to GNG. I think I should point out there are some problems with the article ResultSource. The link to WSJ article in the first footnote brings up a page that says that the WSJ article no longer exists or is currently unavailable. This makes it impossible to assess the accuracy of our article. James500 (talk) 19:10, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Music is considered notable based on sales. Books should as well if you can find a source that no one has any reasonable doubt is credible. Dream Focus 23:09, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Music sales may be an indicator on a sub-notability guideline, but if sales figures are all there are, if there are no independent secondary sources that discuss the music, there is no sourceable prose and the music article should be merged to the artist or composer. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:16, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
      • I see now that WP:NALBUM and WP:NSONG now have something above them saying it doesn't matter if it meets any of these requirements anymore, it still has to meet the GNG, and if it meets that then these things don't matter at all. Why not just erase them entirely then? Also they aren't sub-notability guidelines, but subject specific guidelines. Proof that you can be notable even without meeting the GNG since scientists who make notable discoveries don't always get press coverage like famous people do, and textbooks may only mention them in a single sentence, not know anything about their personal lives. Plus other educational content for this encyclopedia doesn't always meet the GNG. Of course many have argued for years that instead of thinking for ourselves, we should only have articles that the media decides to review for whatever reason, and ignore the subject specific guidelines entirely. Dream Focus 23:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
        • Why not erase them entirely then? Because it is productive for editors to make the stub, and later for the stub to be merged to artist or composer. It is not trivial for the stub writer to know straight up that there is insufficient coverage for a standalone article, and the subguideline serves well in identifying topics that should be covered. People need to stop thinking that notability divides "keep" for "delete". It very often divides "keep as stand alone" from "merge to parent topic". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:59, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Not Necessarily Being listed on a best-seller list does not constitute, on its own, "significant" coverage (the most important, yet most overlooked word in WP:GNG). Don't be lazy, go get those sources that show significant coverage! I'd also like to bring editors back to WP:NOTINHERITED: even if the book has significant coverage, the author needs significant coverage too for their article to survive a deletion discussion. UnitedStatesian (talk) 06:27, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
NOTINHERITED is only an essay, and it is extremely problematic. Claiming that a book reviews do not contribute to the notability of their author (1) violates the guideline WP:AUTHOR and (2) is WP:SALAMI, because writing the book was part of the author's life, and the book itself is nothing more than the author's thoughts committed to paper. They are not really separate topics. This line of reasoning leads to absurd results such as: commentary on words a person speaks orally out of his mouth contributes to his notability, but if he writes them on a piece of paper, then the commentary is on the piece of paper. Utter nonsense. James500 (talk) 08:18, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
  • If someone claims to be a "best-selling" author without any evidence to back that up, I wouldn't count that as evidence of notability. However, I'm of the opinion that if a book makes it onto a major list (like the New York Times Bestseller list), that inherently makes the author notable. I think there's a bias on Wikipedia where some editors feel like people must "earn" a right to having a page, as opposed to focusing on whether there's been significant discussion about that person. Additionally, I don't think it's easy to get on these lists. Just because someone is selling a product that claims to turn any author into a best-seller doesn't mean their method actually works. And if someone was able to get themselves on and off the NYT best-seller list at will, that seems pretty notable on its own. Lonehexagon (talk) 02:00, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

unfair notability

If someone played just one game of professional sports, they are notable in Wikipedia. Don't laugh. Within the past month or two, there have been at least two people in the US who have done that, one for basketball and one for hockey.

On the other hand, if an actor was in one movie, even a major studio, they are not notable.

This is not fair. What is the solution?

Solution A. The player must have played in at least 5 games. (This change would be in WP:ATHLETE)

Solution B. The actor in one movie, if named one of the top 5 credits, is notable. (This change would be in WP:BIO)

Southwest Boat (talk) 17:41, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

  • Support Solution B That would result in no new deletions from sports bio articles. Southwest Boat (talk) 17:41, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose I see absolutely no reason to make any changes. The current guidelines are not “unfair” as you allege. SportingFlyer talk 18:53, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Indeed, we could carry this mathematical exercise further. Surely, for instance, someone who's won just one election, that could be a fluke. They should win five in order to meet WP:POLITICIAN! So ... why don't we indulge in such absurdities? Simple; subordinate notability criteria, such as the various ones in WP:NSPORTS (WP:ATHLETE was superseded years ago), WP:BIO and WP:POLITICIAN, do not reflect some notion that the numeral 5 is sacred, or somesuch. They reflect the likelihood that a subject can meet the GNG. Like it or not, the odds are that an athlete playing so much as a single game of top-flight sport will have received a fair bit of coverage, while the odds are that a minor actor in a bit role (however much in a major studio release) will not have. If you'd like to go on from there to decry that our culture is so heavily focused on sports, feel free. For my part, I gnash my teeth that our culture pays more attention to whether the Khloe Kardashians or Holly Madisons of the world had a nipslip at the latest red carpet than to the doings of all the Nobel Prize winners of last year combined, but nonetheless, Wikipedia isn't written to please me. Ravenswing 22:48, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Note OP blocked as a sockpuppet. Acroterion (talk) 23:52, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not going to edit-war, but...

@TonyBallioni: You "see no reason to simplify the already clear language". I see no reason to revert a simplification where meaning is retained. If you see a specific area where meaning was lost, please point it out specifically, but I am going to revert it back to my revised version, since I carefully considered the implications to meaning in that edit. Less policy to read is better for everyone. E to the Pi times i (talk | contribs) 15:32, 11 April 2018 (UTC) @TonyBallioni: E to the Pi times i (talk | contribs) 15:33, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: I have also replied to your accusation of disruptive editing. It was inappropriate to post that warning to my talk page. E to the Pi times i (talk | contribs) 15:44, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

What is the minimum expectation from Wikipedia to post a biography of a doctor

Hi All,


I created a page in memory of India's most reputed Dental Doctor who has been serving the people for the last 50 years and died last year. He has contributed to the society in many ways and I wanted to publish the information about him in Wiki so people can come to know about his achievement. But the page is been often deleted under "Speedy deletion". Can someone help me in fixing the issues on this page so that it gets posted?

Venkaram (talk) 07:28, 17 April 2018 (UTC) Venkat.

You should take a look at WP:BASIC which provides guidance on what is required to support a biographical article. In short, the guideline provides: "People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." In the case of your dental doctor, you would need to find "significant" coverage of him/her in multiple, reliable, and independent sources. Cbl62 (talk) 12:54, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
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