Wikipedia talk:How the presumption of notability works

Thoughts

Hi Voorts! I'm here through your suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people) to check it out. Thanks for putting thought into this area of our guidelines. I think the essay does help clarify something that is in need of clarification.

One of the confusing things about how the notability guidelines use the word "presumed" is that, in my view, it means different things when used in WP:GNG versus its use in SNGs. I think your essay is right that, when WP:GNG says that [a] topic is presumed to merit an article, that refers to a presumption of eligibility for inclusion as an article in Wikipedia, which can be rebutted by showing that it fails some other policy or guideline, typically WP:NOT. But with respect to SNGs, I believe a more useful interpretation of "presumed" in (for example) WP:BIO's [p]eople are presumed notable is to shift of the burden of proof (or, I guess more precisely, the burden of production) as to whether or not notability-establishing sources exist. In such cases the presumption is rebutted not by reference to WP:NOT but by demonstrating a failed search for sources. And given that WP:BEFORE says that any deletion proposal should be accompanied by some minimum search, I think we have to say that for any SNG's presumption to have a useful function, it must demand something more thorough than WP:BEFORE. Hence my comment at WT:NBIO.

I don't know how widely this view is shared. Of course, there are those that argue that SNG's "presumption" doesn't in fact have any useful function because, via one argument or another, all SNGs ultimately reduce to the GNG. Jfire (talk) 03:57, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate your position, but I'm not sure that it has consensus, and I'd like to move this essay to reflect what most people agree upon so that I can move it to project space. I might think of a way to include your thoughts in the essay though, perhaps as a footnote. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:29, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Added a section and moved this to project space. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:24, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Jfire. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:24, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Minor technical point

For consistency, you may wish to link creative professionals with WP:CREATIVE rather than WP:NAUTHOR in the first footnote. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 15:29, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Done, thank you. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:28, 30 April 2024 (UTC)