Wikipedia talk:Notability - Wikipedia

Are there any notability guidelines for places? Where are they located? If not, do places (such as streets and neighborhoods) have notability guidelines? Minn3s0ta 15:21, 16 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Here is an essay I found: User:Grutness/One street per 50,000 people; but the normal notability guideline should suffice—i.e. has the place been covered in enough reliable secondary sources, e.g. the media? This is important because if there is no reliable sources, the article is not verifiable. The WikiProjects may also have guidelines : G.A.S 15:38, 16 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Other links you might find of use: Wikipedia:Places of local interest; Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Notability; Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Roads and streets; and Wikipedia:Notability (highways).--Fuhghettaboutit 16:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Stick to the basics. If a place has been written about significantly in a credible, verifiable, and independent manner, then it is notable. Otherwise it is not. What could be more simple? --Kevin Murray 17:32, 20 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well even simpler is that places are inherently notable, so notability guidelines for them are unnecessary. However, other guidelines, specifically verifiability, do constrain them. Let us not mix-up our guidelines. --Bejnar 23:06, 25 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Not just places, but populated places. The specific guidance is at WP:OUTCOMES: "Cities and villages are notable, regardless of size." The basic wisdom behind this is that it is pointless to argue whether a village of mud huts in Africa is more or less notable than a subdivision of McMansions in North America. The bottom line is that we allow recognition of any populated place as long as its existence is verifiable, without requiring an assertion of notability other than a non-zero population at some time in history. Normal rules for merging and splitting content apply, so info on the typical subdivision will probably be merged/redirected to a larger political subdivision, but the redirect should remain as long as the place exists. Dhaluza 00:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

It seems as though the criterion used for whether an article does or does not meet the standards as stated in WP:N is quite subjective and not objective as stated in the page. I believe a more standard means of defining if an article meets this criteria should be created. I hope this spurs a good discussion on what Wikipedia should or shouldn't contain in terms of the notability criteria. Simply because a subject is not popular does not seem to be a reliable criteria of whether or not a topic is notable or not. TETFSU 16:41, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Is not "coverage in reliable secondary sources" objective? Understandably, that depends on how you consider the objectiveness of "reliable" and "secondary sources", but still, that's a less-grey line than previously held for notability. --MASEM 16:48, 24 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

The criterion is not stated to be either subjective or objective, and I think it shouldn’t be, because the criterion gets used in cases where its application is neither 100% subjective nor 100% objective. What WP:N does say is that evidence should be objective. --SmokeyJoe 00:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've been researching different Massively Multi-Player On-Line Role Playing Games (MMORPG). The entries currently in this Wikipedia on the different MMORPGs have proven very helpful. Then, just recently I see that many entries "may not satisfy the Notability guidelines."

As I read the current guidelines, they won't allow contributions that include new ground-breaking developments (before agreed upon by many "experts"), controversial topics, or entries that may be of interest to a small population. Only those things that "experts" all agree on, and are of general interest, would be considered notable. This is of great concern to me. I want a place where I can go to find out about every different flavor of Linux, where I can learn about different political systems, and people like Thom Adcox-Hernandez, and where I can find out about every different MMORPG on the planet - even ones that aren't "notable". Maybe notable should be defined as "someone cares about this topic enough to take the time to make note of it in OUR wikipedia."

B.T.W: I never heard of Thom Adcox-Hernandez until I hit the Random article link. If he is more notable than Deliantra (a computer game) per the current guidelines (he's not marked as not meeting the guideline) that is flat-out wrong. I'm not saying that Thom is not notable. My point is that just as many of us care about, and take note of different computer games, as those who care about and take note of American voice actors.

Markkauffman2000 20:37, 25 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Hi Markkauffman2000, and welcome to Wikipedia. The base policy for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability. All articles and content must be verifiable in order to ensure that false information doesn't creep in. The trouble is that the definition of "verifiable" is debatable. What one person claims as verifiable may be considered as not verifiable enough by someone else. In order to overcome this difficulty, Wikipedia requires a very high level of verifiability in order for a subject to be notable enough to have an article on Wikipedia. Wikipedia requires that the subject of the article "has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". What this really means (for the sort of subjects you've mentioned) is that the subject of the article must have received substantial coverage in a respectable newspaper or well-known journal or magazine, which is independent of the creators of the game (or whatever). This is the only way of assessing notability that Wikipedia can accept. Note that press releases, or anything else published by the creators is not sufficient to assert notability, so it can't be used to justify the creation of the article. However, such sources can be used to cite (prove) information that you add to an article, providing independant sources have already been used to justify the creation of the article. —gorgan_almighty 14:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

• • That is a very good explanation of Notability, I would dispute the characterization of "very high level of verifiability" though. There is simply an objective standard that independent sourcing for notability is required, and that standard is not high or low, it just is. Dhaluza 23:42, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Honestly, I think the whole 'notability' thing needs to be removed. This wasn't around when wikipedia started, and if deletionists/censors want notability policies, they should go to Citizendum. LucianSolaris 16:56, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

WP:RS, WP:NOR etc which Notability is based on have been around since the beginning and are core wikipedia policies. Notability is basically an extension of these which makes it easier for editors to make a decision on one specific aspect of existing policies Nil Einne 23:01, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

John Nevins - does notability extend to Bishops? Corvus cornix 22:53, 25 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't think that being a bishop automatically gives one notability any more than being a colonel does. I think that a bishop or a colonel needs to actually have done something notable to be notable. This is unlike archbishops or generals who can be presumed to have done something notable, even if the Wikipedia article in question does not reflect it. --Bejnar 23:00, 25 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, that was my feeling, as well, I just wasn't aware of any precedents. I'm going to nom this for AfD. Corvus cornix 23:09, 25 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Not sure if this is the right place to discuss this but I must disagree that Roman Catholic Bishops are not notable. Many Bishops control dioceses with greater land mass and greater population then some countries. Bishops are chosen by the Pope to "rule" their dioceses untill they die, resign, retire or are appointed to another Diocese. Surely they are more notable then most Secretaries of the Tresury or the Grand Duke of Luxemburg or his childen. So I feel that more thought should be given before such a broad definition is given that Bishops are not notable solely by being a Bishop.Callelinea 04:04, 26 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't bother nominating a Roman Catholic Bishop. While not explicitly mentioned in WP:N it's a common outcome that they pass by virtue of office. As Callelinea pointed out, some of the newer diocese cover multiple countries, particularly in Africa. It's sort of grandfathered in as a regional political office from back when the church had temporal mastery. Now if there's not proof he's actually a Bishop, you've got a chance. I'd tag it first even in that event. Horrorshowj 05:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree and while also doing more research.. there are over 20 categories of Roman Catholic Bishops, some broken down by countries or dioceses.. So obviosly Wikipedia considers individual articles on Bishops acceptable.Callelinea 05:44, 26 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Where do you draw the line? Monsignors? Parish priests? Corvus cornix 15:32, 26 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I would draw the line at the Baby-Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells, and I think many other editors would do well to do likewise.--feline1 16:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

What?Horrorshowj 20:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Personally? I originally agreed with Bejnar that it should be Archbishop and above, since that's a quasi-political regional office. I've argued for deletion on the basis that Bishop isn't notable enough. It went about 15-2 and WP:SNOW keep, which is more competitive than most of their AfD seem to be. Nobody has claimed lower than Bishop as inherently notable, and I doubt anyone would take such a claim seriously. I've seen 10 or so bishops landslide an AFD solely based on office, but the next one I see lose will be the first. It probably should be added to common outcomes at some point. Horrorshowj 20:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I argued for bishops being notable, considering their responsibility for a city or another substantial territory. (note that this applies only to bishops of territorially-organsed churches, not those where bishop is merely an honorific.) Below that, certainly not. For a parish priest, even a Monsignor, the notability would have to be proven specifically--just as for local churches and neighborhood things in general. Part of the reason as I see it is just plain practicality--the greater number of groups of things we can move out of AfD, the more time we have for the serious issues. There's a limited number of things we can discuss, and a great many things that do need to be individually discussed in order to be deleted. DGG (talk) 08:32, 27 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Absent other reasons, the biography of a bishop should be included if the number of adherents in the bishop's church/diocese exceeds 100,000. patsw 15:28, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Bishops, just like any other clergymen, are judged for notability by the general notability guideline, with additional guidance from BIO. No other special criteria are needed (neither more restrictive, nor less restrictive). This is starting to become a very frequently asked question on this Talk page. Please browse though the Talk page archives before asking questions like this. Maybe we need an FAQ section at the top of the page. —gorgan_almighty 16:04, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it is a frequently asked question because many editors think have some specific guidelines helps, rather than going back all the time to the basics. --Bduke 21:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree with gorgan_almighty: the general guidelines cover this just fine. We have some simple principles which can be applied across all articles, and the less we clutter up the guidelines with un-necessary instruction-creep, the better. Some of the specific proposals here are bizarre: if we were to limit notability to priests to the rank of bishops, that would mean that we couldn't have an article on James Horan, a parish priest who had 100% name recognition in Ireland (albeit with a currently weak article on wikipedia). And why give automatic presumptiom of notability to a bishop if the sources don't exist to write a decent article about him which passes the relatively low threshold of notability on WP:BIO? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:52, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

He would pass general. The requirement is to pass general or any of the specifics, not both. An article with enough documentation that the subject meets a specific will pass an AfD, one that can't prove it meets any will get deleted. Horrorshowj 13:09, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I must disagree, Popes are considered notable. Yet some early popes there are no more then 6 lines on them because other then being elected pope there is nothing notable about them. References ae often very few on early popes but they are considered notable. I THINK based on a consensus of the 3 (René Henry Gracida, John Joseph Nevins, Felipe de Jesús Estévez)AFD's just passed that every Roman Catholic Bishop, Archbishop, Cardinal and Pope are Notable and from an Auxiliary Bishop below must pass threshold of notability. Callelinea 18:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

They may be considered inherently notable by you, perhaps, but that is subjective (it is dependant on your point of view). Wikipedia requires objective evidence in order to prevent editor bias. Only significant coverage in independent reliable secondary sources can assert notability. —gorgan_almighty 10:37, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

If you bothered to read the AfD on those 3 bishops you will see that ALL the editos agreed with me with the exception of the nominiator and 2 others. Callelinea 17:08, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't know if this has ever been suggested before, but I'd like to hear opinions on the notability of television programmes. Some might state that all television shows are notable but I wouldn't say so, not with little 3-minute things, educational programmes and digital programmes that have not been the subject of secondary coverage. There are probably some non-notable television channels, at least in the UK on Sky Digital, as they have not been discussed in WP:RS. I'm going to nominate House Auction for deletion after this, to get more opinions. I'd like to make an article about The KNTV Show, but I don't think it's notable. I need help here.-h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 19:16, 27 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

A seperate notability guideline is not needed since such shows fails the general notability guideline: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Seperate notability guidelines could as such only be more strict than this guideline, but I believe that would be unnecessary. See also WP:FICT regarding the requirement for real world information in fiction related articles. Regards, G.A.S 21:40, 27 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, I did make the article that I wanted to, and nominated it for deletion just to see whether people think it's worthy of inclusion.-h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 00:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

See WP:EPISODE and WP:TV for extensive discussion about this kind of thing. It seems that "in theory no, in practice yes" Conrad.Irwin 15:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I want to canvas opinions on adding to the section Notability requires objective evidence a paragraph a generalised version of the following fiction-specific paragraph, which was added recently to Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)#Notable_topics:

• To a limited extent, sub-articles are sometimes born for technical reasons of length or style. Even these articles need real-world information to prove their notability, but might not include that information in the same article (due to said technical reasons).<ref> World of Final Fantasy VIII, Characters of Final Fantasy VIII, and Clone Wars (Star Wars) were evolved from lists of terms, characters, events, and concepts into articles with both real-world content and an out-of-universe perspective.</ref> In these situations, the sub-article should be viewed as an extension of the parent article, and judged as if it were still a section of that article. Such sub-articles should clearly identify themselves as fictional elements of the parent work within the lead section, and editors should still strive to provide real-world content.

I ask this not because I think it's a good idea, but because I can see no reason why notability should be relaxed for a sub-topic of a fictional subject but not for a sub-topic of a scientific, biographical, political, military, religious or other article. I would greatly prefer that this paragraph was deleted from WP:FICTION (see my comment at Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)#Tired_of_this_policy_being_abused), but if it stands, it should be applied across the board. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think this is far too specific, but in general is applicable. Editors may decide to split out content for a number of practical reasons, and should not have to worry that some wiki-sharpshooter will try to pick them off in an AfD. Examples may be content that is rapidly developing in an otherwise stable article, or content that is common to several articles to avoid repetition. In cases like these, the practical considerations should outweigh the Notability guideline. Trying to delete these articles is pointless, because the content can always be merged back into the parent articles. I like the idea of having a sub-article designation to alert editors to this situation. Perhaps an appropriate tag could be applied to the top or bottom of the article in these cases. Dhaluza 23:37, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

The problem is that inherited notability (which is what this) allows the proliferation of unlimited numbers of sub-articles. I have no problem with the rapidly-developing-content scenario you mention, bit this para isn't just a take-some-time-to-sort-out-the-refs principle (which make good sense), but a permanent loophole, which encourages the proliferation of ever-more-detailed trivia. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:06, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Inherited notability would be that Paris Hilton's dog Tinkerbell is notable by association. This is distinct from inherited notability because it is reasonable editorial discretion, while creating trivia articles is not. For example, a topic that is redundantly covered in multiple notable subject articles would not be trivia, but might not have multiple secondary sources specifically about the subject, and would not meet the strictest interpretation of Notability. Dhaluza 00:19, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Editors at WP:FICT have been talking about rewriting the policy (pending discussions here about merging of notability guidelines and at WP:WAF about being consistent between it, WP:N, and WP:FICT), but the gist of the rewrite is that this sub-article is a absolute last resort after several other options. Or, more specifically, we are trying to tell people to not jump and write character lists and sub-articles and all that (the norm right now) from the start, but instead start at the main article and develop that fully, and should the main article become excessively long, and all other methods of dealing with the volume of information have been discussed, then and only then should the sub-article be created. To that end, I've even suggested a talk-page template similar in nature to the non-free fair use rationale template that allows other editors to understand that the existence sub-article that relies on inherited notability was discussed and considered the method of last resort, and that sub-articles like this must try to meet all other WP guidelines and editors should constantly strive to make the sub-article notable on its own. (The lack of said template is not sufficient cause to make a sub-article go to speedy deletion, on the other hand).

There is still a loophole, and as its a guideline there's nothing to stop people from doing it, but I think that the framework we are trying to address around it will hopefully make concerned editors understand the exact times that loophole should be used. Unfortunately, we still have to deal with newer editors that jump in and immediately create sub-articles by WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, and so it's a matter of education. --MASEM 13:22, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

• I am against the addition of this paragraph, either here or at WP:FICT. The most obvious problem with it, as others have said, is that of inherited notability. I understand what Dhaluza is saying, that this isn't intended to encourage inherited notability, but I feel that that will be the outcome. I have no doubt that this paragraph (in its current form) could easily be used to justify keeping a List of uncast Star Trek characters mentioned only by name, simply because Star Trek is a notable subject. There is also a deeper problem with the concept of this paragraph: Wikipedia is a real-world encyclopedia, and all articles are required to have real-world context. Articles that would seem fine on Memory Alpha or Wookieepedia may not be suitable here. This is especially important to remember when writing articles about fictional subjects. My feeling is that any fictional topic that grows too big for its parent article, but can't assert its own notability, probably doesn't have enough real-world context for inclusion on Wikipedia. Such topics should never be allowed to grow too big for their parent articles. And if they do, then they probably need to be cut down to remove trivia.—gorgan_almighty 14:33, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

• This guideline keeps getting brought into AFD debates. The paragraph on sub-articles is interpreted as allowing any article for technical reasons. People interpret it to mean they can ignore WP:Plot and other polices. I know this is not the intention of the authors of the guideline, but it is what is happening. If you look you can actually see debates where people keep changing there votes as the guideline has changed over the past 2 days. this is just one example of about 7 debates that this is having an effect on [1]. This guideline is very visible and the average editor has no clue what the difference between policy and guidelines are. Also I find it disturbing that guidelines are being written that imply that policies can be ignored. You should never "strive" to follow policy you should follow policy. Ridernyc 15:47, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

If you have a very long article where a large section is as such not notable (like a descriptiopn of minor characters), then the solution is to reduce that section, not to put it in a separate article. If, on the other hand, these minor characters do have sufficient verifiable notability, then thers is no problem in the first place. Not everything that appears in anything of note should be described on Wikipedia, only the bare minimum to make the article understandable. Fram 16:10, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

There seems to be widespread consensus, both here and in the wider Wikipedia community, that the general notability guideline (requiring significant coverage in secondary sources) must be met in all cases, in order to assert notability. I propose we take this one step further and agree that "Notability is never inherent". The latter seems to me to be the logical conclusion of the former, and no new concepts are required to take this step. I propose that the following section be added to WP:N:

"==Notability is never inherent==

Inherent notability is the concept that certain groups of topics are so important and/or well-known that their notability does not need to be proved through the use of independent reliable secondary sources. The problem with this concept is that it is subjective (it is dependant on a point of view). Wikipedia requires objective evidence in order to prevent editor bias. For this reason, no topic can ever be considered inherently notable. All articles are subject to the general notability guideline stated above, without exception."

This section will probably deprecate the "Notability requires objective evidence" section. I'm not looking for a straw poll on this issue, I'm looking for meaningful discussion on the proposal, hopefully leading to consensus. Comments please? —gorgan_almighty 10:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I do not agree with this and think that it also goes against the way Wikipedia has worked in the past. The problem with linking notability to sources is that it just moves the subjectivity further away. For example, I do not see we agree about what a "secondary source" is. Is a scientific paper a primary source or a secondary source? I have seen people argue the first and that review articles are secondary. I have seen people argue the second and say that laboratory notebooks are the primary source. Other problems arise with terms such as reliable, independent etc. However the main point is that sources allow us to write an article. They do not do a good job in determining whether we have an article. Notability is the latter. While difficult to define, notability is really about whether people expect to find information about the topic in an encyclopedia. Inherent characteristics are important here. We expect to find an article on any town or village on the planet. We expect to find information on every soccer player who has played for his country in an important match. There is a discussion somewhere recently about bishops and whether they are notable. the point was made that nobody really thinks a Pope is not notable even though in some cases very little information is available. People expect an article, however short, on every Pope. Readers may not always actually find such an article either because nobody has written it or because there are no sources to build it on, but the topics are still notable. The tendency to drive all discussion on notability to whether we can write an article is likely to weaken wikipedia and not make it easy for new editors to know what to write about (or rather look for sources on). I think we should be going in the opposite direction and having WikiProjects and other groupings of editors working out in an open and transparent way, open to criticism by others, of inherent characteristics for topics. The policies, WP:V, WP:OR, etc then take over to decide whether we actually write the article. Deciding what to include in an encyclopedia is always subjective in some ways. Traditional encyclopedia use teams of expert editors. We have to use the good sense that comes from consensus of interested editors working together in a civil way. There is no magic bullet. --Bduke 11:08, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Bduke, the views you put forward on what constitutes notability are contrary to everything that Wikipedia:Notability, and all the other notability sub-guidelines stand for. —gorgan_almighty 11:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

That's a little harsh, Gorgan - let's not forget that WP:N is not a fundamental policy, but rests on WP:V, WP:OR, WP:NOT, etc. I don't think Bduke wants to enforce WP:N any less stringently than you or anyone else, but (IMHO) he has a better way of approaching it. The existence of the sub-guidelines demonstrates the enormous difficulty we have had in creating an inclusion criterion which is applicable across the project. It's still difficult to apply the general terms of WP:N to some specific topics - that's what the subguidelines are for. The projects are best placed to decide how best to interpret WP:N and/or the subguidelines as applicable to their topic. That doesn't mean, of course, that those interpretations can be in violation of WP:N or any other guideline. The wording of WP:N is carefully designed to avoid false positives - it is most important for the project that nothing which should have an article fails the notability guideline. Unfortunately, your proposal, while sound in most cases, falls flat on its face when you consider very ancient topics. I'm sure you do not intend to imply that Aesop's fables do not merit inclusion, but this is exactly what this proposal states. In general, it is key to avoid making statements in WP:N which are designed to cover loopholes which are exploited by certain genres, as many of those holes are necessary for other genres. The "notability requires objective evidence" section addresses this issue, in my opinion, to a satisfactory degree without being overly proscriptive. Your proposal closes a gap which is indeed a loophole in some circumstances, but is also an essential exception in many others. Oppose. Happy‑melon 12:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Bduke, WP:NOR defines primary, secondary, and tertiary sources for you. A scientific paper written with its own sources, and not its own experiments would be secondary. If you were writing something based on an experiment you did, and were using your notes, that would be primary information. The notability guideline is already built around verifiability and original research policies. What it is also built around is the policy on What Wikipedia is not--specifically indiscriminate information. Mean, just because you can verify something with reliable sources, does not mean it should be on Wikipedia. Does every Pope needs his own article? Maybe not, I don't know because I don't know anything about the Pope. Could we have a list of Popes that serves the same purpose, given that there is limited information on Popes...yep. I say, the drive to point discussions to "let's create the article if it's interesting and we can find a source to back it up" will weaken Wikipedia. If we cannot create good articles from the ones that pass the notability guideline, how do you expect to do that with articles that would normally fail the guideline? The general public expects to come here for things that we do not always provide, because Wikipedia has a reputation for have articles and information on everything, no matter how useless and unencyclopedic. Recently, there was a review of the new X-Men comic book, and in the review it said something to the effect of the comic having lost of backstory continuity, so readers should come to Wikipedia to catch up on what happened. Well, no they shouldn't, because Wikipedia shouldn't be a substitution for watching, reading, or listening to anything. Which means, Wikipedia shouldn't have that much information for that particular section to actually accomplish substituting for the media. Just because people have come to expect something doesn't mean that is Wikipedia's goal.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 12:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, I am glad to see I have got people thinking about this issue. I want just to ask about your statement on primary and secondary sources. Are you saying that a peer-reviewed scientific paper is sometimes a primary source (if it describes an experiment) and sometime secondary? Or are you saying that they are always secondary. In either case what you say runs counter to common scientific usage where papers in say the Journal of the American Chemical Society are considered primary sources and papers in review journals such as Chemical Reviews are considered secondary. I have seen confusion on this several times on WP when sources for science articles are discussed. It may of course point to WP defining terms in its policies different from how they are defined elsewhere, as we do of course for "Notability". Yes, I do think all Popes should have an article even if it only gives what we know about the dates he was Pope. Similarly all Roman emperors, English kings and so on should have articles. We should stop trying to invent the wheel on notability, which is only a guideline, and take note of what other encyclopedia, general or specialist, include. We then can concentrate on the policies in how we write the articles. I agree with you about expectations of finding content that should be elsewhere and suspect we write far to much on comics. However, I think that is quite different from the reader having a reasonable expectation that WP will have an article on a topic and point to sources where the reader can find more. --Bduke 22:44, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, the first publishes original research papers--which was what I said was "primary" as it's "new information by that author"--while the second publishes critical reviews of papers--which is what I said was "secondary" because it's people talking about someone else's stuff. Also, just because you pass notability doesn't mean you warrant an article. It's also about size. If you cannot support yourself, your article may be better served in a larger topic. Wikipedia is about "quality" and not "quantity".  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 22:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, I wish it was as simple as that. First, some people call scientific papers secondary because they have been peer reviewed. Second, some reviews in very good review journals, are not "people talking about someone else's stuff" as they often mostly summarize the work of the author's group. That is, unfortunately in my opinion, becoming more common. Third, small can be beautiful. Your view on stubs being merged into other articles is common but not universal. It is contentious as almost everything about notability is. We should be careful about trying to push one view through, as I think the proposal at the top of this section was doing. --Bduke 23:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

The examples. First. They are simply wrong. Second. They are non-independent secondary sources of the previous work (presumably, they comment, and don’t just reiterate). Hmmm, I can immediately think of some reviews that are reorganizations of previous reiteration, all completely non-independent though. Third. I don’t believe that notability should be a factor in merge discussions where related articles are very short. --SmokeyJoe 23:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

First, we have to live with the usages people make and peer review does make something rather more secondary than some primary sources. There is a continuum here not sharp distinctions into the three categories. Do we want to stop citing peer reviewed papers in WP? I think not. Second, it takes a real expert to decide that one article in say Chemical Reviews is independent and another is not. Yet again, we have a continuum, one article may be independent in parts and not in others. Third, I think I agree, but many do not. --Bduke 01:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

(First) Peer review doesn’t make something secondary. A paper reporting the discovery of weasels will always be a primary source for the existence of weasels. A later paper on weasel behaviour is a primary source for the behaviour, but is a secondary source for their existence because it cites the discover and comments on the triviality of the discovery. Its not that complicated, but it is perspective dependent. Again, research the actual real world usage of “secondary source”. “Secondary sources” are a normal concept in literary fields, including encyclopaedia writing, even if the concept is not used much elsewhere. RE: stop citing reviewed papers? Never. Reviewed papers tend to be more reliable and we want reliable sources. However, reliability doesn’t necessarily demonstrate what other people write about, which is what WP:N is about.

(Second) Clear non-independence is when a review article is authored by the authors of the original research, or when the review was funded by the subject. Such non-independent reviews don’t in themselves, demonstrate notability, but they can still be used as reliable sources. Yes, a continuum of independence may exist, but we only tend to exclude obvious dependence, and only from the notability test. At this level, there is no need for expertise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SmokeyJoe (talk • contribs) 02:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

There's always something that won't be the same. The fact that USA Today has an article on The Dark Knight makes the article a secondary source. But, if they conduct an interview with Christopher Nolan, then it becomes a primary source because interviews are primary sources. So, in respect, it's based on what is said as well as who is saying it. Regardless, the original opinion was that we should say "notability is never inherent". There are clear cases when it can happen, but just because something is notable doesn't mean it needs an article devoted to it. Pope John Paul could be considered inherently notable, because of the status that he acquires being the Pope. But, if we know nothing on the man except that he became Pope in the year XXXX, then there doesn't need to be an article for that. You can redirect the name to a larger topic and mention him there. Someone looking him up will find him in the larger article.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 23:32, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

All popes are already demonstrated to be notable because there is plenty of stuff written about them, collectively and individually, even the early ones that are not well verified from any primary sources. --SmokeyJoe 23:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I wasn't denying that Popes were inherently notable, or that there was information on them. I was merely providing an example of an instance in which an entire page would not be warranted.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 00:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I mean to argue a cross-point, that there is never (very rarely?) a case for inherent notability. For every example offered, notability is demonstrable. I am in favour of the opinion that for wikipedia, inherent notability is never sufficient, but actually putting that in writing may do more harm than good. WP:N doesn’t currently allow for inherent notability, but should it occur, it can be treated as an exception. --SmokeyJoe 00:41, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Strongly Oppose would you mind showing proof of this alleged widespread consensus for rendering all the specific guidelines obsolete? Not a vague claim of prolonged discussion, or look in the archives somewhere, I want you to show me something specific. You were one of the big proponents of merging everything into WP:N which was overwhelmingly rejected, but keep claiming there's a consensus for changes that have the same net effect. Of course, I'm still waiting for a response from when you tried this in WP:BIO last month and all that could be found was 3 people in an unmarked discussion. Horrorshowj 13:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

• I think both of you are strongly biasing my comments. I never said anything about rendering all sub-guidelines obsolete. Where on earth did you read that? There is widespread consensus on most AfD discussions that the general notability guideline must be met in order for the subject of an article to be considered notable. If I were to provide evidence of that I'd have to provide a link to most AfD discussions that have ever ended in a delete. Consensus has been reached on here that notability sub-guidelines should not set an inclusion criteria that is less restrictive than the general notability guideline, and all notability sub-guidelines have recently been reformed such that they require this minimum level of notability to be met first. [2] [3] [4] [5] My proposal is simply the next logical step in that process. —gorgan_almighty 17:53, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Gorgan, I agree with you in theory, but not so much in practice. In practice, I agree with the above comments that it is important that the notability guideline be flexible. The general notability guideline is the best method we have been able to devise to try to measure whether something is of sufficiently interest and significance to merit encyclopedic inclusion. However, it's neither perfect nor uncontroversial. My reading of the various dicussions here and at AFD is that there is a general consensus that this should be a general guideline to be applied with flexibility and common sense. Your proposed language sounds more like policy than a guideline.--Kubigula (talk) 20:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Geography as inherent notability

Aren't all geographical entries allowed, even if they only have the primary census data? There are still many articles created by the census dump that never went beyond the primary census data. That is an example of inherent notability. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 22:55, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, particularly for populated places. There are other groups of fact-heavy subject areas that are not usually the topic of secondary analysis that also don't fit the typical notability guidelines like airports and aircraft. There are also groups of topics that are better served by comprehensive coverage rather than haphazard coverage such as Area codes in the United States. This is why the absolute requirement for multiple secondary sources did not achieve consensus, and the current guideline text only strongly recommends, but does not require them. Dhaluza 10:48, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Please SEMIiprot this page. This policy page has been slashdotted. SYSS Mouse 13:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've dropped a request for 1-2 day prot for WP:N, WP:FICT and WP:WAF (full ideally). --MASEM 14:07, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've semiprotected this page for a week. Other admins, reduce or increase at will, no need to discuss this first with me AFAIC. Fram 16:13, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Is a requirement of Notability even necessary? This measurement reflects, at best, a subjective measurement of an editor given an exceedingly difficult to define set of rules. Given that text is easily compressed, disk space is cheap, and the [extreme disagreements] regarding criteria why continue to attempt to enforce notability?

Should Notability be dropped as a guide line? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.18.6.29 (talk) 16:32, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Notability as defined by WP has a pretty objective definition: Coverage in reliable secondary sources. Arguably, "reliable" and "secondary sources" are not completely objective, but they have very little play if we just say "Articles must be notable" without further definition. --MASEM 16:38, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Can we take a vote on abolishing the notability requirement? I've seen several good articles deleted with the explanation being only that it was "not notable". It really hurts my desire to contribute to Wikipedia. Why would anybody want to contribute when anything they add could be deleted by some asshole who thinks it's not important? Or perhaps we could just limit the notability requirement to images, since enormous amounts of text can take up less storage space and bandwidth than a single tiny image. Herorev 16:44, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Wiki isn't a democracy...we don't "vote".  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 16:47, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Good heavens, I hope not. I and many other editors spend enough time now marking articles about some middle-schooler's garage band, a company looking for free advertising, or kids writing about their buddy "who is sooooo gay lol" - without notability requirements, Wiki might as well rename itself to "WikiJournal" or "WikiSpam" or "WikiCrap." Requiring some coverage in a notable venue as a basis for defining notability doesn't seem so problematic to me. As for "assholes" (and please consider WP:CIVIL for that comment) deleting because they think something's not important - if you feel something's been deleted for no good reason, that's what deletion review is for. Tony Fox (arf!) 16:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ok... STRAWMAN: "a company looking for free advertising, or kids writing about their buddy "who is sooooo gay lol"" <-- Those are already against the rules without the notability thing. The other rules cover that already without bringing up notability. Notability seems to exist to further skim the number of articles off for some reason. If ANY subject has sources, is true, and isn't obviously against some rule (sans Nobility) it should NEVER be deleted!

This dude seems to most definitely be a deletionist. I say wikipedians need to revolt against the deletionists and send them packing to Citizendum, where editors can be as 'snooty' as they please with articles. A deletionist's heaven. Maybe deletionists stick around because they all don't wanna compete with the already established deletionists at Citizendum. Well, w/e.

Just like politicians aren't smart enough to run the economy, people aren't smart enough to determine 'notability', especially on a paperless, practically infinite online resource. Wiki is already not an academic source, and i doubt it will ever be, so let's drop notability and reign in the policies of the inclusionist seperatists! LucianSolaris 17:08, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I'm a rampant deletionist running wild across Wikipedia. Shoot me, quick.

So, "if any subject has sources, is true, and isn't obviously against some rule... it should never be deleted," you feel. Some guy trying to break into the acting business puts up his resume of appearances as an extra in some student film, with a link to IMDB - where he's submitted the same information. So it's now got a source; congratulations, we're now promoting him, under your suggestion. A company slaps up a piece on its great new product, with a link to a repost of a press release on another website. It's got a source! To fan the flames of where this discussion is sparking out of, what if someone creates a webcomic about their dog, someone elsewhere writes "ha, this is amusing" on their blog with a link to it and the creator makes a Wiki article - would you want us to keep that?

If we don't want Wikipedia to collapse into a heap of non-notable gunk, notability guidelines are important. If you want an article to be here, then make sure it's properly sourced; if you have a problem with our definition of a reliable source, then discuss changes to those guidelines as well. Tony Fox (arf!) 17:51, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Strawman argument! An encyclopedia is a database of sourceable information, not an advertising medium. I did not say wikipedia should be an advertising medium, but if someone does an article on some random city, or an exotic 15 restaurant chain, it shouldn't be deleted IF THE ARTICLE FOLLOWS ALL OTHER RULES (meaning the article is objective, not just some blatant advertisement). Now I'm going to stop debating strawman makers for me... LucianSolaris 20:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm not saying we shouldn't edit out the obvious junk, but the notability guideline is also abused to take out complete, feature rich articles that the admin decided wasn't 'noteworthy enough'. I'm concerned with the issue of censorship or ego based power trips by one or more individuals influential to Wikipedia. LucianSolaris 20:35, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Deletion review is thataway. Got an article that was deleted that was "feature-rich" and should be replaced? That's where to go. Claiming ego-based power trips is somewhat lacking in assumption of good faith unless you can back it up. Tony Fox (arf!) 20:49, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Notability is important. But some rules would makeour jobs easier. I just had 3 articles on Roman Catholic Bishops up for AfDs because someone thought that bishop are not notable. But all modern day bishops get write ups in papers, so that should make them notable. Rules are good because it saves time in us having to spend time defending articles that get nominiated for AfD when in the end they get saved. I know that I have beeter things to do then have to go over and over again protecting articles from delitions. Its much harder to create something then to critize something.Callelinea 17:06, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Please note that lack of notability is not grounds for speedy deletion per WP:CSD; the closest criteria notability may come into play is in A7 - an article not demonstrating importance may be speedily deleted, but A7 specifically notes notability is a different factor altogether. If a page lacks notability, the page should go to WP:AFD, where discussion about deletion or other methods including trimming, merging, and transwiki'ing, can be held, and allow time for the affected page editors to help establish notability; if all other options to deal with the lack of notability of a page are tried and failed, only then should the page be deleted. There are some people calling for CSD of pages that lack obvious notability, and this is likely where a lot of the trouble begins, but when an article's notability is brought into question, there are rationale debates that should be taking place before deletion comes about. --MASEM 18:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree -- MANY people make excellent points [at this slashdot article] and feel that the Notability requirement is unnecessary. If nothing else, article deletions too easily cause useful contributors to stop contributing and the last thing Wikipedia needs is to piss off valuable contributors.--69.242.121.194 00:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

there are two questions: the first is whether we should have any standards at all on what is significant enough to be worth putting into an encyclopedia, and the second, is what the level should be. We can evade the issue by saying that if one can write an article on the basis of RSs its appropriate, but following the discussions on RSs suggests that will merely change the rhetoric slightly. instead of arguing whether its spam, we'll argue if the sources are sufficiently independent. I draw the line very wide, some people thing much too wide, but there is a separation there. To avoid incessant argument over individual cases, we should look for places to actually put the line in a defensible position based on objective evidence, even if arbitrary--that's the part that needs the specific guidelines. The basic principle is that anything which people might expect to find in a 21st century general encyclopedia of universal scope, should be here. The real problem is how the article should be written. Relatively trivial matters get very short articles. DGG (talk) 04:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've written up a (very rough and embryonic) propsal regarding "semi-notability"; any input, comments, throwing of rotten vegetables, and so forth would be very welcome. Kirill 17:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Should this http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Story_preparation/Wikipedia_versus_the_WebComics:_Define_notability be linked?Herve661 01:39, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ok, after having so many of my articles rather unjustly tagged with notability tag, i am proposing a few guidelines...

they're all pretty simple...

I'll call the first one the "name more than 10" rule...

Basically, if someone put up an article on, say, a Japanese philosopher, and you cannot name more than 10 Japanese philosopher by heart, then you should have no business putting notability tags on the article... The reason is pretty simple, because if you can't even name more than 10 Japanese Philosopher, then obviously you know very little, or worse, nothing about the subject... it would be like a guy who grew up in Sahrawi who is an expert on Camels trying to decide whether Martin van Buren is notable or not...

second rule: "check number of editor" no one is omniscient here, but if 5 different guys decide that they have something to add to some obscure article, then, well, that article probably isn't all that obscure...

third rule is "if the article doesn't relate to your culture", check its equivalent in other languages.... if an English article is a stub with a heading that no one's heard of, but the same article has a super long equivalent in Estonian and then well... it pretty much means that the article IS notable... a general rule of thumb.. if an article appears in two or more languages, each with different non-bot editors, then it pretty much means that it IS noteworthy....

fourth rule, if an article is deemed to be insignificant, and has an equivalent article in other languages, then make sure that when you place notability tags, the tag is placed in all language versions of the article... if editors from the other language decides that the notability tag is inappropriate, then the notability tag is probably not appropriate in English either... Most English editors, i have found, are pretty ignorant in terms of knowing other culture... but get this: not-known-in-English is not the same as not notable... The difference between Sunni and Shiites wasn't very well known in English either... you get the point...

fifth rule,

part 1. copy and paste into google... this is a pretty sure fire way of knowing whether or not something is notable...

part 2, when copying and pasting, make sure you're not just copying and pasting English texts if the article relates to subjects in other cultures...

for example Jin Yong, aka Cha, Liang yong, whose book have sold over a hundred million copies, has a mere 32 google results under his birth name, Cha liang yong, if you don't know any better, you might slap a notability tag on the article... but searching the same thing in Chinese return some 50000 results... and searching for his pen name in chinese reutrns 2.5 million results... see the difference? Philosophy.dude 02:14, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree with the above. Right now it seems it is too easy to delete a page, especially by people who know the rules, but not that much the subject. I vote for more stricter rules. Let me quote some of the arguments made by anonymous at /. (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/10/31/0328239.shtml) Herve661 02:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

[Notability] Honestly, what does it really matter? Information is information, and I thought the goal behind Wikipedia was to centralize as much of it as possible. So long as it's accurate, why does it matter if it's deemed "important"? Importance is hugely subjective - if I were in charge of deciding what articles are important enough to keep in WP, you'd see a whole lot less about Hollywood entertainment, for example. Yet Hollywood information stays - I can go check out Hally Barre's bio if I'm so inclined. Why shouldn't I be able to dig up information on some obscure webcomic, too?

I use Wikipedia to answer this simple question: who/what the fuck is x? If people start deleting articles just because they think x isn't important enough, how am I supposed to find out what x is, even if nobody really cares about x? As long as people don't write their own articles and there's no original research, I don't care whether the article is deserved or not. It's not like those articles take up a lot of room, or that it makes it harder to browse wikipedia... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Herve661 (talk • contribs) 31 October, 2007, 22:58 (UTC)

This standard seems arbitrary and designed just to include the type of articles you want to include. It's also instruction creep. Why would anyone have to name things off the top of their head? Why 10? What if 10 don't exist? You're effectively requiring everyone to be an expert and a highly specialized one at that in the subject (against Wikipedia policies) and requiring them to have a good enough memory for that. There is just too much--most fields of expertise have a very large amount of knowledge, so requiring memorization of anything other than "lists" of things that are rather general isn't reasonable. I can easily look something up online to determine how well known it is without being an expert, what's wrong with that?

it is pretty arbitrary, that's why i say it's informal... These guidelines i'm proposing are more of a self-test for editors... naming more than 10 things in a category isn't at all hard when you're familiar with a subject... anyone who is into, say, wrestling can name more than 10 wrestlers, anyone who's into chemistry can name more than 10 chemicals, etc.. maybe we can consider adding this "either name more than 10 things by heart" OR "know that there aren't more than 10 things in the category"... Are you saying that someone who know nothing about a subject can accurately decide whether a particular entry in that subject is notable or not? Philosophy.dude 08:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

{{notability}} says The subject of this article may not satisfy the notability guideline [...] If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. The tag isn't saying that a topic is non-notable and must be deleted - it says the topic doesn't establish its notability and encourages others who are familiar to change that. And who is better at spotting non-established notability than a reader who is unfamiliar with a topic? – sgeureka ^t•c 09:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Why did you use the standard of 5 people? I could find, for example, 5 people in a local area who know about some local inside joke, does that mean it's notable? Language isn't an issue--the current criteria doesn't specify that it must be notable to native speaker's of the Wiki's language. The current criteria is ultimately based on the principle of "does society as a whole consider it notable" and that makes sense--after all, why should a minority be able to contest the majority on it? Currently, that's judged based on having a number of independent, reliable sources publish about it--which demonstrates that society cares enough about it to be notable. In the case of Japanese philosophers, if the philsopher is notable, you could easily find various independent sources (philosophy journals, philosophy books, etc) that mentioned them. -Nathan J. Yoder 03:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

i'm using 5 editors as an example... like most things related to notability it's pretty arbitrary... However, i think it is a good way to decide whether something is notable when you're uninformed in a subject... It's very unlikely that 5 different people would edit an article on a kid named Todd Baker who live down the street... so, conversely, if 5 different people all decide to add some info about a todd, then even if it is not readily apparent, todd probably did something to get him noticed... Philosophy.dude 08:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

This statement: "and I thought the goal behind Wikipedia was to centralize as much of it as possible" is incorrect. Please see the Five Pillars of Wikipedia and more specifically the first point, What Wikipedia is not, and even more specifically Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Notability is the guideline that defines what should and should not be in Wikipedia.

Further, please be aware that using Google (or other search engines) to try to establish notability is not appropriate. Notability comes from coverage in secondary sources, which Google can help you to find, but counting search results cannot qualify to say something is notable --MASEM 03:28, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Just to expand on that, the fact that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia is why there is also Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (including Wikijunior), Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and even all the wikis hosted on Wikia. Nifboy 04:15, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have to agree. A single one of a class can be notable, or all of a class like the US states, or academy award winners). Or none at all, like the winners of elections for city dogcatcher. there is no quick panacea to eliminate the need for rational thought and sensible judgment. But it's much less than "does society as a whole consider it notable"--specific occupational or linguistic segments is quite sufficient--the criteria for non-local notability do not require world-wide awareness, or very little of what is in here would stand DGG (talk) 03:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I like these guidelines.. it would probable say alot Afd, because people who know nothing about the topic keep nominiating and now nothing on the subject.. People should kknow someting about the subjest if they are going bring ligt to an article. Callelinea 04:24, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, again, it's an informal guideline... Desgined to be used when you're NOT SURE about whether or not something is notable... no one is going to dispute the importance of US states... The point is, ONLY people who can name more than 10 US states would have the proper knowledge necessary to decide whether A US state is notable or not...

Again, please note that WP does not require, at any point, for you to be knowledgeable in a subject to participate. You may know nothing about articles in 16th century Japanese culture but you can help copyedit. You may know nothing about the music of New Zealand but you can help suggest arranging the text to help make the article flow better. And more importantly to this, you may know nothing about the characters in Guild Wars but you can offer your support or opposition to the deletion of the article if you feel it does not convey the notability needed to establish itself for WP inclusion. Editors on WP should 1) not be writing articles to stroke their egos (and thus should understand their work may be deleted with just cause, though we always want to try to keep anything useful from that) and 2) should be writing articles to consider the general worldwide audience and encourage them to participate, and not fans or specific groups or the like. This last point is through all aspects of subjects that WP covers, from pop culture to science to art. --MASEM 13:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Firstly, please remember that a notability tag does not call for the deletion of the article. It simply calls attention to a problem with it, just like a weasel-words tag points out that the article has a weasel word problem that needs fixing, an unreferenced tag points out that there's a lack of references, and so on. A notability tag calls attention to a problem—"I can't tell why the subject of this article is important or significant, nor are sufficient reliable sources cited to assure that it indeed is by the volume of material on it." Articles are supposed to be written for the layperson, and should tell that layperson, who has never before today heard of the topic in question, the answer to their first question upon coming to that article—"Why would anyone care about this?" If an article lacks a good, clear answer to that question that's easily understood by a person who knows nothing on the subject, it has a flaw that needs immediate corrective action. (Or in short, it should ideally always be someone outside the subject who knows little or nothing about it evaluating if the article properly answers "Who cares?", since it's very hard to evaluate objectively if you already know.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:40, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Heh, good that you mention it, i think i should go the google guideline and ask people to change that too... "information with lots of secondary sources is deem notable" "google help you find those info" doesn't adding the two together means that, most of the time, things with lots of google results IS notable...?Philosophy.dude 08:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

No. Google/search engines may help you find anywhere from 0 to millions of usable secondary sources; there is no information about a subjects notability per WP's definition. With the explosion of the blogosphere, there are a lot of searchable hits on google, but personal blogs are, for the most part, unreliable and cannot be used to source something (though if you follow the breadcrumbs, you'll likely come back to one single reliable source that can be used to establish notability). --MASEM 13:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I see that someone has added a link to "rebuttable presumption" in defining "presumed" but has gotten it completely backwards. Notability is based on objective evidence, and once sufficient reliable sources are found, that makes a prima facia case for notability. It is non-notability that is the rebuttable presumption, not notability. We presume something is non-notable if a reasonable search for reliable sources turns up empty. It's not possible to prove non-notability because that would be a negative proof.

Notwithstanding this, I don't think there is any need to presume anything in this guideline. We should simply say that something is notable if we find sufficient reliable sources and leave it at that. Dhaluza 10:57, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I never managed to understand what the “rebuttable presumption” was about or how it got to be there. It did seem weird.

I think the “presumed” might have been added as a compromise following my complaint that wikipedia should not redefine words (ie “notable”) in common usage. My suggestion was the criterion should be stated in terms of “sufficiently notable for wikipedia”. --SmokeyJoe 12:08, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm going to start by quoting a few comments from a slashdot article that I think contain some very valid ideas and then go on to create a synthesis of why I think this policy is a blight on wikipedia.

The great ongoing pop culture notability purges are an ongoing failure point for Wikipedia.

Maybe some admins and users have taken the various "Wikipedia vs. Britanica" comparisons of years past a little too much to heart, and are trying to "improve" Wikipedia by removing all of those articles which wouldn't ever appear in Britanica, but that's an extremely short-sighted thing to do. I mean, "A page for every Pokemon" may be a catchy (if inaccurate) joke about Wikipedia, but it also represents a strength, not a weakness: After all, there are lots of places one can go on the internet to find information about, say, France, or The Battle of the Nile, or Channel Island Politics; there aren't nearly as many places you can go to learn actual facts about Patrick Farley's award-winning comics, or the differences between all of the various Gundam Wing incarnations, or the full internet career arc of Star Wars Kid.

By Ray Radlein

For Encarta or EB to have an article on "Bob the Angry Flower", Microsoft or Britannica has to pay professionals real money to research and write the article for the subject. And in the past, EB would have had the added problem of the size of the encyclopedia adding to its cost and manageability for end users. By comparison, in Wikipedia we're talking about articles that have already been written and contributed for free, that - if truly non-noteworthy - add fractions of a cent to the costs of running Wikipedia as an on-going operation. Bandwidth costs for an article nobody reads are non-existent, the only real cost is storage. How much does 10 kilobytes cost?

I'm not proposing (and didn't propose - I did the opposite) that there's no reason for AFDs at all, but I do believe that as deleting legitimate articles has a real cost and DOES undermine Wikipedia more than keeping a non-notable article, the discretion should be on the side of not deleting. Fast track processes for article deletion in particular need to be reviewed so only the narrowest of criteria can apply to them. That is not the case right now.

Personally I can't see how a periodically updated openly available webcomic is not a legitimate subject for an encyclopedia article in an environment such as Wikipedia's where the contribution cost is free and the maintenance cost is more or less proportional to the webcomic's notability. Unless the comic is being used as a wedge to pass by genuinely unencyclopedic content, there's no legitimate reason to delete such articles.

by squigleslash

Trivia to you may be critical information to someone else. Obscure facts are often important to someone, even if most people could do without them. It may do little good to keep it there, but it does NO good to take it away (and I'd suggest makes it worse, as people will often check WP first knowing that it'll have an article on even the most obscure things, only to find it's gone).

by Firehed

If half of the effort that some people put into finding articles to mark for deletion, deliberating and discussing deletion, checking, verifying and then finally deleting the article - if half of the effort people put into destroying content were instead put into creating or improving content, Wikipedia would be so much better.

by Tom

There simply is no good reason other than what is already contained in other policies to exclude content. Including something that is accurate and verifiable by reliable independent sources does not harm wikipedia at all, while deletion of said material does harm it. Ardent^†alk_∈ 11:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ok, I'm going to start and end by saying one thing--People, stop creating new sections when you obviously can see that the same conversation is taking place above. It's really annoying to have to continue half a dozen conversations in different sections when they're all basically about the same thing.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 11:52, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Verifiability is very different from notability. As WP defines it, it is the need to say "this fact on WP is based on this reliable source". Taking the case in hand about webcomics, most of said articles that were deleted were verifiable (I don't know how well sourced, but say that the pages cited appropriate comic panels) since one must assume the web comic itself is a reliable source about the web comic. Notability on the other hand is coverage in reliable secondary sources which is partially a subset of verifiability in that it has to deal with sources, but now there's an onus to have works outside of the primary source (in this case, the web comic itself) to demonstrate why the article should be a part of WP proper. And remember, WP's definition of notability is not subjective: "coverage in reliable secondary sources" may still have personal wiggle room but sets a pretty significant standard to put all articles against.

Also do note that there is a larger push now to help people move and create side wiki's for such content that may not satisfying WP's notability standards, but certainly can still be Wiki'd about outside of WP. This points back to the fact that WP is not meant to be the full cumulation of human knowledge, but specifically a genernal encyclopedia and that it has many sister projects to help in other aspects of collecting human knowledge. --MASEM 13:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I disagree. The verifiability policy requires reliable sources, and the no original reasearch policy makes it difficult or impossible to justify an article based solely on the primary source. The whole idea of 'notability' hasn't played a role in this line of reasoning. Putting these things together under that name is silly and misleading; I might as well call this policy "Scareability". What I'm saying is not that this allows personal wiggle room, but it allows whole ideas that are not fundamentally true to spring up because the very word "notability" carries a stigma which over time replaces the actual meaning of the policy. For example look at the arbitrary criteria for any of the guidelines for specific things (bands, music etc). These criterion come out of nowhere. Suddenly if a band has charted a hit on a national music chart it is worthy of inclusion according to the guideline. I don't know about you, but "X is a band who charted song Y as a #29 hit on the Czech Republic top 30 national chart" does not strike me as inclusion quality, especially if that's all the reliable secondary source coverage it can muster. Yet suddenly if a band doesn't meet any of the criteria listed, but has reliable third-party secondary sources that document enough information about the band to make it worthy of an article, it is still considered deletable - sometimes even speedy. Ardent^†alk_∈ 13:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Notability guidelines for other projects must derive from this one. The music notability guidelines must not supersede general notability guidelines. (And as I read them for music notability, criteria #1 is reiterating the general notability guideline) If a band has coverage in secondary sources, that band should be included in WP, whether or not they broke any charts or not. This sounds like a case where some editor is mis-using the guidelines for (speedy) deletion, and an example case would be very helpful to further discussion. --MASEM 14:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Really. Unfortunately what you say is not what goes on in practice. And this is precisely my point: the fact that the "notability" criteria is not actually notability criteria, but rather a synthesis of other policies makes it ripe for mis-use and mis-interpretations. If you want examples wander over to the AfD and read a few nominations. To name a few:

Nokia 6256i as well as the other phones - it has product reviews from secondary sources

The entire CHERUB novel series, which clearly from popularity will have reviews from reliable secondary sources

Radio First Termer - which has coverages in secondary sources

Diminished Fifth Records - "voters" agree that there are secondary sources to back up the verifiability but still say delete

the list goes on

so after a <5 minute glance, this policy is clearly affecting people's thinking negatively, and is not necessary in light of other policies. Ardent^†alk_∈ 16:24, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply