Wikipedia:WikiProject Beauty Pageants/Notability (beauty pageant participants)

This is an essay on notability.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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This page in a nutshell: A participant in a beauty pageant is presumed to be notable if the person has been declared the winner of a major international- or national-level beauty pageant competition and so is likely to have received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject.

This essay is used to help evaluate whether or not a participant in a beauty pageant is likely to meet the standards for notability, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. The article must provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the pageant-specific criteria set forth below.

If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. Failing to meet the criteria in this essay means that notability will need to be established in other ways (e.g., the general notability guideline, or other, topic-specific, notability guidelines).

The meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be retained as a standalone article.

Applicable conventions

All information included in Wikipedia, including articles about beauty pageants and their participants, must be verifiable. See also Wikipedia's basic criteria for the notability of people and the General notability guideline. Information about living persons must meet stringent requirements for those types of articles.

Subjects that do not meet the pageant-specific criteria outlined in this essay may still be notable if they meet the General notability guideline or a subject specific notability guideline.

Basic criteria

A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of multiple published^[1] non-trivial^[2] secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent,^[3] and independent of the subject.^[4] The criteria on this page are intended to reflect the fact that beauty pageant participants are likely to meet Wikipedia's basic standards of inclusion if they have, for example, won a major international or national competition at the highest level (such as Miss World).

Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion.
Primary sources may be used to support content in an article, but they do not contribute toward proving the notability of a subject.
Some sources must be used with particular care when establishing notability, and should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Local sources must be clearly independent of the subject, and must provide reports beyond routine coverage.

Pageant-specific criteria

Winners of Big Four pageants are generally presumed to be notable.

Winners of the national-level pageants which select participants for the Big Four pageants are likewise generally presumed to be notable. Certain independent national-level or supra-national pageants such as Miss America and Miss Europe, by virtue of long establishment and widespread coverage, are also presumed to indicate notability in winners.

As in all subject-specific guidelines (this being an essay), this presumption of notability in line with the above is rebuttable and not a guarantee of notability.

Winners of sub-national level pageants or subsidiary awards (e.g., Miss Virgin Islands, Miss Congeniality, Miss World Beach Beauty) are usually not notable for such per se, even if they have won more than one. This does not stop them from passing the general notability guidelines for such if the coverage for such either reaches beyond local news coverage, or is substantial and persistent.

Beauty pageant participants who do not qualify for presumed notability under the above specific criteria may very well be notable under the general notability guidelines. (See, e.g. Honey Boo Boo)

Non-notable pageants, absent other general notability criteria, are often characterized by:

A single competition with no significant system of qualifying pageants
Primarily for the selection of a commercial or corporate mascot/model/spokesperson
Not a qualifying pageant for a higher level competition
Lack of longevity: either very new, or discontinued after a relatively short run
Minimal, local, or no television/media coverage

Note that there are pageants that may match some or all of the above criteria but would nonetheless pass the general notability guideline, such as Miss Tibet.

Notes

^ What constitutes a "published work" is deliberately broad.
^ Non-triviality is a measure of the depth of content of a published work, and how far removed that content is from a simple directory entry or a mention in passing that does not discuss the subject in detail. A credible 200-page independent biography of a person that covers that person's life in detail is non-trivial, whereas a birth certificate or a 1-line listing on an election ballot form is not. Database sources such as Notable Names Database, Internet Movie Database and Internet Adult Film Database are not considered credible since they are, like wikis, mass-edited with little oversight. Additionally, these databases have low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion.
^ Sources that are pure derivatives of an original source can be used as references, but do not contribute toward establishing the notability of a subject. "Intellectual independence" requires not only that the content of sources be non-identical, but also that the entirety of content in a published work not be derived from (or based in) another work (partial derivations are acceptable). For example, a speech by a politician about a particular person contributes toward establishing the notability of that person, but multiple reproductions of the transcript of that speech by different news outlets do not. A biography written about a person contributes toward establishing his or her notability, but a summary of that biography lacking an original intellectual contribution does not.
^ Autobiography and self-promotion are not the routes to having an encyclopaedia article. The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself have actually considered the subject notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it. Thus, entries in biographical dictionaries that accept self-nominations (such as the Marquis Who's Who) do not prove notability.

[note2-1] What constitutes a "published work" is deliberately broad.

[note5-2] Non-triviality is a measure of the depth of content of a published work, and how far removed that content is from a simple directory entry or a mention in passing that does not discuss the subject in detail. A credible 200-page independent biography of a person that covers that person's life in detail is non-trivial, whereas a birth certificate or a 1-line listing on an election ballot form is not. Database sources such as Notable Names Database, Internet Movie Database and Internet Adult Film Database are not considered credible since they are, like wikis, mass-edited with little oversight. Additionally, these databases have low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion.

[note3-3] Sources that are pure derivatives of an original source can be used as references, but do not contribute toward establishing the notability of a subject. "Intellectual independence" requires not only that the content of sources be non-identical, but also that the entirety of content in a published work not be derived from (or based in) another work (partial derivations are acceptable). For example, a speech by a politician about a particular person contributes toward establishing the notability of that person, but multiple reproductions of the transcript of that speech by different news outlets do not. A biography written about a person contributes toward establishing his or her notability, but a summary of that biography lacking an original intellectual contribution does not.

[note4-4] Autobiography and self-promotion are not the routes to having an encyclopaedia article. The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself have actually considered the subject notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it. Thus, entries in biographical dictionaries that accept self-nominations (such as the Marquis Who's Who) do not prove notability.

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