Wikipedia:On the notability of species

This essay is concerned with explaining and critiquing the current notability criteria employed for determining inclusion of articles related to species on Wikipedia. The ideas covered apply to all species, from insects and plants to large mammals. We will begin with a brief but important discussion about the difference between concepts such as notability and validity before stating the status quo at the time of writing and explaining the reasoning that lead to it. Finally the consequences of the current policy will be explored and a possible alternative suggested. This essay is written based on the comments of multiple editors and their stated expertise in the area of concern. However, it does mean this article assumes that comments made were accurate. You are welcome to expand this essay but please be aware of issues such as flow, and repetition.

Validity, notability and the current policy

Validity vs notability

Two different concepts which were oft conflated during recent discussions is the idea of "validity" and "notability". Validity, in the context of the discussion about species, refers to whether or not the species exists. This can be established by looking at existing papers or databases. Notability on the other hand is a discussion about whether or not the topic/species is worthy of inclusion into Wikipedia as an encyclopedia entry.

Current policy

Although not officially a policy, WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES is employed in deletion discussions such as this which shows that it is a de facto policy and henceforth will be referred to as policy. The species outcomes policy takes precedent over the more general notability criteria. Species outcomes means that any valid species named in a paper is therefore notable as well and deserving of an article in the encyclopedia.

Arguments in favour

In order for a species to become valid a certain body of work must be undertaken, when the species is accepted as valid it therefore has enough coverage in order to warrant it being notable, even if that coverage may be hard to find or in a different language. The notability criteria does not require that such coverage is found, only that such coverage exists (WP:NEXIST).

There is no need to delete these species articles in the same way one would delete an article for an "up and coming singer" or a company as there is no one attempted to gain financially or otherwise self promote via an obscure species article with perhaps the exception of someone attempting to "refbomb".

Articles that are created automatically by interrogating databases usually come from databases that are well curated by teams of experts. The data they gather is therefore reliable.

Objections

The current policy represents one of the most lax criteria for a subjects notability in the encyclopedia, as such it has caused some to question it as a policy. The general notability guidelines require extensive coverage of a topic. For people, specific criteria relating to their rank, achievements etc are all required. Yet a species simply being valid is currently enough to justify its notability.

We must also consider the stated goals of the notability criteria described in WP:WHYN, which among them the goal is to not have articles which can never extend beyond a paragraph or definition, and without large amounts of duplication across individual species articles, this is clearly not possible for many of the species stubs.

As a consequence of the current policy bots have been employed that created Wikipedia articles en masse by scraping databases (for example User:Qbugbot).

Alternative solutions

Of course one option is simply to be happy with the status quo and not change anything. Several issues may be considered in relation to this topic:

• Bot created stubs
• Articles which cannot extend beyond stubs.

As for bot created stubs, this could be either restricted or removed as an option, requiring users to manually create such stubs on Wikipedia. The information these bots generate could best be included in other wikiprojects such as wikidata.

As for articles which cannot extend beyond a stub as the information provided in the sources does not allow for this, one can introduce significant coverage rules for species in order to prevent what are essentially database entries and not encyclopedic articles.

References

[Discussion of the issue Here]

[Example of a deletion discussion here]