Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works

Wikipedia's notability requirement is perhaps the most confusing of all of Wikipedia's core requirements and guidance. The system mostly works, but is very difficult to fully understand or explain. Lack of recognition of how it actually works presents a roadblock to progress and clarification in this area. This essay seeks to fix that by defining how it actually operates, with emphasis on areas which are different that are different than common conceptions.

A common meaning of Wikipedia notability is the criteria defined by Wikipedia's notability guidelines. The additional unrecognized meaning is that it is the name for Wikipedia's main "should this be allowed to be a separate article?" criteria and process, which incorporates additional considerations not contained in the notability guidelines. The "top two" of those other considerations are degree of encyclopedic-ness of the topic and degree of importance, impact or prominence of the topic.

Rather than being truly defined in one place, wiki-notability has a defacto definition which is the end result of a complex wiki-notability ecosystem. This ecosystem consists of guidelines, established practices and values, venues and other pages and human decision making.

Terminology

In this essay:

• "Wiki-notability" refers to the entire Wikipedia ecosystem done in the name of "notability". So this does not refer only to the notability guidelines or their criteria.
• "WP:Notability" refers to that specific Wikipedia page
• "Sourcing-GNG" refers to the sourcing-based criteria portion of the WP:Notability page
• "SNG" refers to the subject-specific guidelines listed at WP:Notability, a common abbreviation derived from "special notability guidelines".

The three main wiki-notability criteria

The wiki-notability ecosystem is the main screening system for existence as a separate article. It's main criteria are the notability guidelines, but there are other criteria. Here are the three main considerations in that decision; greatest weight is given to #1 (sourcing) and sourcing is also a main gauge of #2 making it doubly influential.

1. Degree of availability of suitable sourcing from which to build an article
2. Degree of importance, impact or prominence of the topic
3. Degree of encyclopedic-ness of the topic. This is best measured by how thoroughly and easily it passed WP:not. Note that this measurement is different than merely surviving outright rejection under WP:not.

Goals of wiki-notability

The mission of wiki-notability is to screen topics for separate-article suitability based on the following qualities:

1. Has sourcing available from which build a suitable article.
2. Meets some degree of exclusivity sufficiently to be allocated a separate article in an encyclopedia of the English Wikipedia's approximate size. This is a part of being enclyclopedic / an enclyclopedia. An enclyclopedia with 10 million selective articles is a better information source than one with the 10 million articles lost in a sea of 10 billion resumes/CV's, business listings and other pieces of information that are not enclyclopedia articles. These four main factors for this quality are considered jointly, with the greatest weight given to the first factor:

• Existence or predicted existence of in-depth reliable objective coverage of the topic, weighted by the prominence (exclusivity) of the source. Note that this is a second use of sourcing as a measure, this time as a measure of the "Degree of importance, impact or prominence of the topic" quality. The sourcing-GNG is a guide, but sometimes that guide requires & receives calibration in specific topic areas. For example, areas that are coverage-heavy or coverage-light in proportion to that quality.
• Degree of encyclopedic-ness including: by what degree did it exceed the minimum requirements of wp:not and and how closely does it align with the first of the Five pillars (which says that we are an enclyclopedia) ? So this consideration is a matter of degree beyond just meeting the lower bar of not clearly violating those criteria.
• Degree and scale of real-world scale, prominence, recognition, impact and importance, weighted towards endurance of these qualities. Where an SNG exists for the topic, it often helps measure this quality.
• To what extent is it logical/suitable to cover as an enclyclopedia article (vs. some other format of information)

Structure of our notability ecosystem

The ecosystem uses the decisionmaking process defined at Wikipedia:How editing decisions are made, a process which is also used for other decisions. In essence, each decision considers and weighs multiple factors. It's a neural net rather than a flow chart. The wiki-notability ecosystem includes core guidelines, various venues, important closely related pages, plus past traditions, decisions and practices. Due to the quantity of these important items and various other issues, the wiki-notability concept is vaguer and more dispersed in Wikipedia than others which are more contained within one policy or guideline.

Main Wp:Notability guideline

The first section / "lead" of the WP:notability guideline (plus a few paragraphs in the body) is actually a functionally separate meta-guideline covering both overall wiki-notability and Wikipedia's meta statement of the main criteria for existence of an article. For example, this portion gives Wp:not a prominent procedural place and defines the place SNG's (Special Notability Guidelines) have and defines which are official. The remainder of WP:notability is a sourcing-based criteria, often referred to as "GNG" or the "General Notability Guideline"; we'll call it the "sourcing-GNG". Thus the term "GNG" has two common meanings, either the latter, or the entire WP:Notability page.

Special notability guidelines

The meta-guideline at the top of WP:notability says that meeting the requirements of SNG is an alternate way (vs. GNG) of fulfilling our wp:notability requirement. Many SNG's are worded to say that they are merely a predictor of meeting GNG, but this is not always the case...an SNG sometimes:

• Sets up criteria which reflect non-GNG considerations (e.g. WP:Notability (geographic features) recognizes the particular enclyclopedicness of geographic features)
• WP:Ncorp modifies the application of GNG to apply tougher sourcing criteria.
• Several others set up alternate criteria where GNG is not commonly used or usable

Other components

Using the broad "main criteria / process to determine if it's allowed to be a separate article:

• WP:Not can operate in two ways. One is a gauge of enclyclopedicness, the other would be to unilaterally reject articles in the most severe cases. Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion also pre-screens some sever cases
• WP:Five pillars states or summarizes key points
• WP:AFD and WP:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes