 | This is a humorous essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not 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. This essay isn't meant to be taken seriously. |
The Notability Police (NP) are your friendly neighborhood patrolmen and patrolwomen working to ensure that all articles carry documentation of their notability status. Essential to Wikipedia's mission to categorise the universe into things that are notable and things that are notable, NPers diligently check each new article for the three citations to independent, reliable sources that reassure our readers that they are safe from trivia. Articles caught without the proper citations are detained in custody for six months to allow them to produce them, after which they are humanely disposed of. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, NPers cannot look for sources themselves,[1] accept any irregularities in citation format, or indeed read anything above the references section. Nevertheless, they are the thin blue line separating our gentle readers from information about things that might possibly fall afoul of one of Wikipedia's 13 notability guidelines.
Important note: The Notability Police (NP) is not to be confused with New Page Patrol (NPP), a ragtag group of vigilantes that serve Wikipedia's subsidiary purpose of writing an encyclopaedia. A mere "triage", NPPers barely pay attention to notability, instead focusing on lesser threats such as hoaxes, plagiarism, defamation, and spam. They will often leave flawed articles where they are, free to menace unsuspecting readers with the temptation to try and improve them.
Notes
- ^ The job of the dogged detectives of the Article Forensics Department (AFD)
See also
- Wikipedia:There is no deadline
- Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Analysis and proposal – research on NPP commissioned by the WMF in 2017