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Notability is subjective

I see that an attempt has been made to make an objective definition for notability... "a topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself."

I think this is too simplistic, does not reflect what happens at AFD and would lead to an enormous systematic bias if this indeed was the criterion for notability.

All fatal car crashes in Bergen, Norway would be notable. There are at least two independent newspapers in Bergen, Bergens Tidende and Bergensavisen who would write an article about it, and it would also wind up in the evening news broadcasts of NRK and TV 2. Hence, multiple, reliable references would be found about them. On the other hand car crashes in countries where the media is less developed would not be notable. This would be a huge systematic bias. Thankfully, this does not reflect reality since consensus is generally clear that fatal car crashes are sadly too common to warrant an article, whether that crash be in Norway, the UK, Mongolia, South Africa or China. This is of course quite subjective, what is "too common"? We could have a reasonable debate on whether fatal bus crashes "too common" to have articles. I am quite sure that "only include the bus crashes which have been mentioned by at least 4 newspapers" would not be the outcome of such a debate. We would demand at least one reference for verifiability but an x number of fatalities is a far more likely notability threshhold.

Look, I am not arguing against notability as a criterion for inclusion. Notability is very important to prevent the encyclopedia from turning into a newspaper archive of all incidents or a collection of personal webpages about random people which hardly anyone would care to read about. I am just saying that trying to make a catch-all definition of notability which covers all topics and bases is doomed to failure and that we would be better off not trying to do so. Notability is something which almost needs to be discussed on a case-by-case basis and we are much better off trying to define notability on smaller scales by means of discussions such as WP:WEB, WP:FICT and WP:MUSIC. On such smaller-scale discussion we can produce reasonably objective criteria for predictability and consistency while at the same time preserving the subjectiveness of common sense for flexibility when something is notable even if it doesn't quite fit into the mold of objective criteria.

Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Strangely, I came here to post a very similar open question. I'm unsure of the answer to this myself, and would welcome other views.

This stemmed from a post in the village pump about articles on recent news topics. The case cited was about a cat who was so fat he got stuck in a dog door [1] There were numerous sources, some of which were from the same AP wire, but apparently at least two were independent (I haven't bothered checking, it doesn't affect the merits of this discussion). Now, according to the current criteria, I could start an article on this and defend it based on this guideline and the core policies. It would be NPOV, verifiable, wouldn't contain original research and would be notable. If it went to AfD, the only way I can see it being deleted is consensus to ignore all rules.

Now from the discussion at the Pump, it's fairly obvious many people think that this event shouldn't get its own article. People won't care a month from now, let alone a year (or a hundred years), so delete it. The obvious counter to that argument is that Wikipedia is not paper; so long as it's sourced and meets core policies, then there's no need to exclude it. However, articles like this (or the above example on car crashes) are deleted on AfD, so obviously many people hold a view that certain subjects have such a lack of significance and importance, that they should be deleted.

So I guess the question is: is there any limit on the triviality of things that can still have their own article? Would anyone support the cat owner having a short entry? If so, then why are articles like this deleted and so few created. If not, then shouldn't there be some sort of guideline saying why, and at what limit does something becomes trivial? If there is a limit, how can that be set objectively? I would be very interested in any replies. Thanks. Trebor 16:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Both of your comments address an important point, and I am in agreement with you about the encyclopaedicity of articles about road crashes or fat cats. A productive approach may be that notability is only one of the requirements for encyclopaedicity. Other requirements include, notably, verifiability, nonoriginality and - this is what saves us from the cats and carwrecks - not being an indiscriminate piece of information, because we are not an indiscriminate collection of badly written synopses of badly written newspaper clippings.

So the solution may be to expand or spin off WP:NOT#IINFO, to hone our sense of discrimination and maybe to emphasise here that notability is not enough. I'm not convinced, at any rate, that removing our present definition of notability would lead to us having to AfD fewer articles about cats and carwrecks. Sandstein 16:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• I suspect this page simply needs some tweaking. It's quite clear from AFD precedent that the proverbial car crash article would end up deleted for lack of notability and/or the fact that this is not a news site. >Radiant< 16:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem I find whenever I imagine how this page will be tweaked, is that it involves adding some wishy-washy sentence about how some topics are too trivial (or small or insignificant or unimportant or easily forgotten or something) to be included, and it would set some sort of arbitrary limit. I can't see any objective way of wording it, nor a way that won't contradict the "notability is not importance" principle. AfD precedent suggests there's something there that people are judging from, but I can't see a way to put it into words.

Aside from here, WP:NOT#IINFO would seem the other good place to put it, but again the problem of wording comes up. Wikipedia's not a collection of badly-written synopses, but certain recent events can and should be summarised in articles. It depends partly, I suppose, on the pervasiveness of the "event" into world news. But that's also hard to judge objectively. I'm going round in circles here, I'd like to hear any suggestions for the wording. Trebor 17:31, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Exactly... Passing the notability criteria means that some wiki somewhere could write a solid verifiable neutral page on the subject, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it fits in within Wikipedia's scope (as specified in WP:NOT). The procedure for changing a car's oil has been covered in depth many times by reliable sources, but that doesn't go here, it goes in Wikibooks. --Interiot 20:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

So do people think it'd be better to expand WP:NOT#IINFO or spin-off into a new notability guideline? Trebor 16:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

"Independence" needs to be viewed more strictly. If the two newspapers and the television stations are basing their information only on the statements of the police department spokesman—or on each other's reports—that's not independent. Beyond sourcing, the immediate news report is not enough to make an encyclopedia article; there would need to be sources independent in time that go back and independently investigate the case afterwards. —Centrx→talk • 00:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

As others have noted, this conversation is very similar to one that is going on at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). I proposed some preliminary ideas for a current events criteria there and I've copied them below. GabrielF 01:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

In order for an event to be notable, the length, breadth, depth and prominence of the media's coverage of that event must be greater than average.

• Prominence refers to the degree to which the news media itself feels that an event is notable. Events that were covered on the front page or the lead of a news broadcast are far more likely to be notable than events that were covered on page E22 or as the last story on the evening news.
• Breadth refers to the number of media outlets covering a story. An event that has generated only local coverage is probably only of local interest and therefore not notable, but an event that received significant coverage in every news outlet on the planet probably is.
• Depth of coverage refers to the type of coverage the media has given an event. Did news outlets try to answer questions about the event beyond "what happenened" and "where and when and how did it happen"? Did the media analyze the importance of an event and come to the conclusion that it would result in some kind of important change? Did they spend any time discussing what had caused the event to occur? Was there an op-ed piece or a political cartoon? If the media has reported the facts without analyzing the event and what it signifies, than the event was probably not notable enough to be worth analyzing.
• Length of coverage is, among other things, a measure of the degree to which the media believes that an event will be interesting to its audience. If nobody is talking about an event after five days, it most likely wasn't significant enough to warrant a wikipedia article.

Thoughts? GabrielF 19:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I think they're a start in the right direction, although may need some tweaking. If there's any consensus that a specific guideline is needed, then they'd be a good base to work from. Trebor 16:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

As another example of this kind of issue, there is David Beckham move to Los Angeles Galaxy. For a couple of days this was a huge story and the initial AfD was a speedy keep because it was on the main page. However, now the main furore is over, it's nominated for deletion again and looks like it will be deleted. This seems to be a case where some firmer guidelines over what should happen would be useful; at the moment, it's a very subjective debate. Trebor 13:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Make "trivial" and "independent" explicitly more strict. All of these articles are launched from a single news event, and are one article out of many rather insignificant articles in a magazine or newspaper, with a "human interest story" twist thrown in. They are not even the featured articles of general magazines like Time. There should be something explicit that individual newspaper articles do not constitute being "the subject" or the "in-depth subject of the works" (see under the Merging section) and/or that any sort of news event must be followed over a long period of time in order to be notable. The Washington Post is not going to have an article focusing on this in six months, and I don't think any non-tabloid non-sports magazine or newspaper had this on its front page even now. —Centrx→talk • 19:41, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that the guideline at the moment doesn't make sense when applied to newspapers. No single topic is the subject of the whole newspaper; it obviously covers a large number of topics in varying degrees of detail. But a decent-length article on one subject doesn't qualify as a trivial mention either. Are we saying that newspaper articles aren't enough to establish notability (although they're used quite a lot at AfD)? I think the idea of sustained coverage would be better, but then you get into conflicts with notability not being permanent. There are quite a few factors involved here (as GabrielF said) - length, depth and prominence of coverage all play a part. Trebor 20:37, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to say that I find the "Notability is not subjective" section to be poorly written, and imprecise in an attempt to be overly precise. The fact that an editor has indeed heard of a topic is at least prima facie evidence of its notability in the wider world. Likewise, if people interested in a general area have not heard of some new concept that lies within their sphere of interests, this is prima facie a case of neologism or original research. The question does not end with these inquiries, but it reasonably starts with them. - Smerdis of Tlön 20:05, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

PARDON THE SHOUTING but may I direct your attention to the newly proposed notability guideline for news. All your input will be invaluable. Zunaid©® 15:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Notability of elements within articles

I have yet to find good guidelines for this. Are there notability guidelins for statements, sections, paragraphs, etc. that are within articles. The problem arises frequently with WP:BLP. "Controversies du jour" get added even if they generate very little impact and stop being discussed completely after a couple weeks. However, once added and persisting for a while they become very hard to remove even if trivial. The end result is that a lot of BLP (especially of controverstial figures) end up with litanies of minor non-controversies, trivial events, etc. that become very hard to remove. I would love to get some help from more experienced Wikipedians. Thanks. --Rtrev 05:11, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

To my understanding, notability is about what subjects can be included. The weighting of subjects within an article is more a matter of "undue weight" explained at WP:NPOV. Trebor 07:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

There are also references to this sort of thing at Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Self-published sources in articles about themselves and at several places in Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. —Centrx→talk • 22:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Newsworthiness

I disagree that notability and newsworthiness are different concepts. I'd like to see the argument that they are discussed here. Wjhonson 19:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I think, by that, it means that notability isn't about whether the subject is in the news at the moment, whether much is currently heard about it. Older or more obscure topics may never have been in the news, or may have been in the news but are no longer "current"; this doesn't mean they aren't notable. Trebor 19:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

In a truth table, there are four positions. You are arguing one of them, that is, that, "not newsworthy does not imply not notable." But the effect on the main page is that all four positions are equally false. I'd like to hear the argument that says "Newsworthy does not imply notable." Wjhonson 18:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Why would you like to hear this argument? (I'm not intending to be critical, I am seriously curious... I'm in a discussion with some others concerning this issue as well.) Sancho McCann 18:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It has quite a bit to do with several things. First, encyclopedic notability is different then newspaper notability. A "flavor of the week" or "human interest" article might sell a few papers (or at least fill a few inches on a slow news day), but it's not of the lasting or historical interest necessary for encyclopedic notability. A "cute" story might similarly make several papers through the AP newswire (again, especially on a slow day), but again, probably not of the lasting or historical interest necessary for encyclopedic notability. The big problem here is, when many papers run a story (especially, through AP, run the exact same story), a news event might very technically satisfy "multiple non-trivial secondary source coverage", and yet there will not be enough coverage to write any more then a stub stating "This happened once", nor will there ever be. Finally, we have a project for news coverage, but anyone coming here to do it typed the wrong URL. The correct URL is here. If we allow coverage of run-of-the-mill "news" events here, we damage our sister project-just as we would damage Wiktionary by allowing dicdefs. We also damage our own project, by allowing in things that are outside our scope and that we're not well-equipped to handle. Seraphimblade 18:20, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Would people be open to making the criteria stronger than simply the requirement to be in multiple, non-trivial... etc. sources? Could we work in something saying that certain types of news coverage are trivial, or that coverage must extend over a certain period of time? Or perhaps not allow coverage in daily publications to count as a non-trivial coverage. This way, only subjects that are important enough to end up in at least a weekly publication (Time) could establish notability solely from "newsworthiness", which in the case of a weekly publication would be a stronger argument.Sancho McCann 18:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I would generally think that coverage in Time or Newsweek would be a far stronger assertion of historic and lasting notability then coverage in the Podunk Daily News, provided that the coverage is a full piece and not just a brief. A proposal is currently in the works at WP:NOTNEWS. Seraphimblade 18:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• American Heritage® Dictionary Definition of newsworthiness: "interesting enough to the general public to warrant reporting". This is fairly similar to the definition for notability in the guideline "worthy of being noted" or "attracting notice". The link from this sentence goes to a paragraph where the concept of newswothiness is not discussed but permanence is discussed, so based on the above discussion leading to this conclusion, I made the change at the project page --Kevin Murray 04:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) That's...correct, but also to some degree useless. Who "the general public" is, depends on one's intended audience. For example, a community college student newspaper might report on a proposed tuition hike. Is that newsworthy to the intended audience (the students at the college?) Absolutely! Is it newsworthy to our audience (worldwide readers of a general-purpose encyclopedia?) It is not. Hence why I said we should consider the breadth of a publication's audience-the New York Times will print things of interest to a very broad audience, the Podunk Daily Mail might, but also might print things only of interest to Podunk (population 251) residents. Even the NYT things might publish things that are interesting but not really encyclopedic (flash-in-the-pan events likely to have little or no historic significance, etc.). Like any publication, we should judge anything we run against suitability to our audience (the whole world).

However, there is also the question of suitability to our purpose and scope. The New York Times would not publish a 200-page scientific paper, no matter how important it was. If important enough, it might report that the paper was published and a very brief synopsis of its findings. Similarly, we shouldn't publish news items for the sake of being news-that's not our scope. Our scope is as a worldwide, general-purpose encyclopedia. Therefore, we should concentrate on events which have historic, lasting value. The hundred-year test (or even ten-year) is an excellent one! A newspaper's scope and ours has some overlap (certainly both the newspaper and Wikipedia would comment on a war or presidential election), but the overlap is not total (we would not publish obituaries of non-notable people or a piece on an entertainment event at a local mall, a newspaper would). We should evaluate things not just based on "Did the newspaper cover this?" but "Is this subject appropriate to our audience, scope, and purpose?" Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 04:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

We agree right down the line. That's why the term "newsworthiness" is so weak and ambiguous. --Kevin Murray 05:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Notability of online petitions?

Are online petitions ever notable enough to be included in an article? I don't think they are unless they are proven to be successful. If they're not successful, are they notable? Maybe if there's media coverage of them, but I think this would be a case of something the media would cover but an encyclopedia would not. Шизомби 23:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• Well, if they got non-trivial coverage they're notable... in this case the media coverage makes them notable because a lot of people heard/cared about the petitions, even if the petition didn't go anywhere. The one about renaming The Two Towers (film) got media coverage and was pretty notable for such a thing, but obviously it didn't succeed. It was still pretty well known and our coverage of that movie would be incomplete without mentioning the petition. However, as is the case here, these usually are best just mentioned in the article on the topic they're petitioning against. I guess it could have it's own article based on WP:N, but sometimes merging just makes sense. --W.marsh 02:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's discuss the relationship between primary notability criterion and other criteria

I'd like to get some discussion on how the primary notability criterion interacts with the various subject-specific notability guidelines. Over a month ago, WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC were updated to reflect that there is a "central criterion for inclusion" (that the topic "has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person") and that there is "some criteria that make it very likely that sufficient reliable information is available " (such as star on Hollywood Walk of Fame, won a major music award, etc.) This made perfect sense to me at the time and seemed to reflect actual practice in AfD discussions. You can see those versions of the guidelines for People here and Music here. Earlier today I updated the WP:WEB guideline to make it consistent with those versions of WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO; this edit to WP:WEB was reverted and then WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC were reverted back to the month-old versions as well. So, I'd like to get some discussion on the relationship between the primary notability criterion and the various subject-specific guidelines and whether, as I believe, that it is an improvement to structure these guidelines so that there is a "Central criterion [with] additional criteria that make it very likely that sufficient reliable information is available." I believe, as it was described a month ago, this improvement, "bring[s the] guideline into modern times a bit [and] stress[es] the importance of existance of reliable information over more subjective criteria." [2] -- Dragonfiend 03:50, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. This is, in essence, how I've tried explaining it to others, and I've seen too many AfDs focus on a questionable award/sponsorship (such as the ongoing Keenspot argument discussion) when the point is that we want sources. Nifboy 04:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the new version meets the exact idea of notability-the central question is "Is there enough source material out there for a decent article?" Meeting other criteria in WP:BIO, WP:BAND, and so on, is certainly a good indication that there's a good chance of that material existing, but not that it does by definition. I've seen far too much lawyering over "This band has two albums on Insignificant Records, which is a major indie label, so they must be kept!" or "This person won the Obscurity Award, that counts as major!" This would get the focus back in the right direction-finding the sources, not just insisting that since rule X paragraph Z is technically met we're required to assume they're out there in the big blue somewhere. Seraphimblade 06:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I also agree with the above. But in addition to helping us respect WP:V, the sources requirement has a purpose of its own, or it would not be necessary to reiterate it in WP:N. That purpose of its own, together with WP:NOT#IINFO, is to delimit the scope of Wikipedia as a general interest encyclopedia, which is necessarily narrower than anything-goes Internet content collections like Everything2 or blogs. We benefit from a delimitable scope by, simply, not having to deal with (wikify, libel-proof, delete, undelete, argue about...) overly trivial crap. I'd appreciate it if the guideline would make a hint in that direction as well. Sandstein 06:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Are these additional criteria meant as a guideline for whether the PNC is likely to be satisfied, or as asserting notability in their own right? In WP:CORP, it says that we should include companies used in ranking indices because "this criterion ensures that our coverage of such rankings will be complete regardless." That is very different to saying "this suggests there are multiple sources so keep". At present, all the criteria suggest the first meaning; if an article meets any of these criteria, even if it doesn't meet the PNC, it can be kept. Which meaning is the consensual view? Trebor 15:45, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The big question for me is whether notability standards should be higher than verifiability ones. Not saying that anything that can be verified should be included, but while verifiability doesn't call for the multiple, notability does. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• My feeling is that in cases where the subcriteria can be verifiably met, but no one has presented "multiple independent nontrivial published sources," that's enough to prevent deletion on notability grounds. In many cases, you can write at least a stub or start class article based on "trivial" or non-"independent" published sources that meets the core criteria. The question then becomes whether to delete the stub as non-notable. My feeling is that if you meet the secondary criteria, the article shouldn't be deleted on notability grounds -- it may be necessary to find those independent sources to get the article past "start" class, but if the article is sufficiently sourced to meet WP:V, I say keep it because the sources are extremely likely to exist.
• To use my favorite example, Man Plus, the article is a verifiable book stub. Back in 2005, an editor asserted on the talk page that it "seems to be a much-written-about novel", but no one has added any sources since then, and independent reliable non-trivial published sources are not easy to find using free on-line resources. The book was a multiple award winner and nominee in 1976 and 7, and I am confident that an editor could find independent sources if he or she used a comprehensive library or had access to the right subscription-based databases. However, if someone nominated the book for deletion on notability grounds, I would recommend keeping it - the stub is verifiable as is, and the book's award status and notability of its author are sufficient guarantees that when someone wants to bring it past a stub, they will be able to find the resources necessary to do so. Thanks, TheronJ 16:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • If the specific criteria can always be used to establish notability, because they suggest sources exist, that is no different from making them assert notability. Can articles that meet these criteria still be considered notable if extremely dedicated searches for sources come up blank, or is that not enough? Trebor 17:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
    • That's a good question, and I think we may have achieved consensus by deliberately failing to address it. To start, I would expect an "extremely dedicated search" to mean a sufficiently comprehensive search of library and subscription databases to indicate that no sources exist -- what we normally see is "minimal ghits" or a partial search. Personally, I would tend to say that if the article's content is otherwise verifiable and not original research, there are conditions under which the article should stay even in the absense of independent published non-trivial accounts. Man Plus is a decent example - why shouldn't we have stubs on all Nebula award winning novels, if the contents meet core policies? TheronJ 17:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Yeah, my question was more a hypothetical; practically, we don't have time to give each article such a thorough searching, so we have to work on rules-of-thumb. On a slightly different point, I'm not convinced that labelling articles as stubs because they're short, even when all the information dug up has been included, is a good idea. Not really relevant, but I don't think the current definitions at WP:STUB really apply to some articles; they are short but lengthening them (if possible at all) will require a lot of research. Trebor 18:30, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• These are all very interesting points, but let's not forget that WP:N is a Guideline and WP:V is Official Policy. Just because something satisfies WP:N does not mean that it should automatically be kept. Look at it this way: Because of X paragraph in WP:N the article is notable for Wikipedia's purposes. Which is just fine because if it can't satisfy WP:V, it gets deleted anyway. It must be understood that the guideline alone is already nothing more than a way to ensure that it is likely to find sufficient verification. The real test is if the article satisfies WP:V, if it doesn't, then no amount of notability should ever be able to save it from the brink of deletion. WP:WEB, WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC are fine just the way they are without cluttering the page with different levels of criteria. They also already match the existing format of WP:CORP and WP:PORNBIO. Instead of reduntantly trying to sub-divide the criteria into different levels of importance, all we have to do is stress that these are guidelines, and that just because an article is notable does not necessarily mean that it satisfies policy. With that distinction made clear, what is the point of subdivided criteria levels? I suggest we leave the criteria formatted exactly the way it is, and add a paragraph in the beginning that warns that just because it is notable doesn't mean it doesn't have to pass verifiability. --Daedalus 00:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

As the person who made these changes, I think I argee with Dragonfiend's explanation of them. These guideliens always seemed to me to be aiming to be "checklists" of things that mean someone probably has enough verifiable information to write a non-directory style article about them, but (pardon the analogy) they also seemed like Plato's shadows on the cave wall, and sure enough people quickly come to think that the items on the checklist were reality, and more important than the existance of verifiable information which they represent. So you see AfDs full of subjective arguments about who's important "enough" to be included, and people never bother mentioning the lengthy article in the New Yorker on the guy, and so on... I thought rewriting the guidelines like that was simply the sensible thing to do, so they clearly indicate what inclusion is actually about. It's really a lot simpler than having to memorize some ever-changing checklist, and leads to a lot less subjectivity. --W.marsh 02:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The primary notability criterion fails to address WP:NPOV, in particular the requirement that the views expressed in the multiple sources arise to a level where they are shared by at least a significant minority including prominent adherents (plural). A New York Times frontpage article probably passes the prominent adherent threshold, since it usually triggers a response from other media outlets (including the blogosphere). An article on page C4 of the Little Rock Star doesn't. So the pnc really only establishes the necessary criterion based on WP:NOT, WP:V & WP:NOR, and the individual notability guidelines have to establish what is sufficient for inclusion as a subject of a stand-alone article. That's why it is nonsense to insert the pnc into the individual guidelines as it's currently done in WP:BIO. The guidelines are there to establish what "multiple" and "independent" mean in the various subject areas. That's something that cannot be done in the general notability guideline since an overarching definition of "significant minority" would have to be so general as to be meaningless. ~ trialsanderrors 02:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Except WP:BIO without the "pnc" really isn't about establishing who we can write a factual, NPOV article on... it would just exclude a lot of people, many of them have plenty of coverage, so leaving out the pnc just exludes a lot of people for no particularly good reason, other than to have fewer articles so the average article is on a "more important" person. I'm just not seeing why adding subjectivity is a good thing... at any rate, doing nothing other than removing the pnc stresses making subjective arguments about importance over actually providing evidence, which is another big step backwards. --W.marsh 03:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

If you mean "WP:BIO without the pnc" as in "ignore the pnc" then certainly not. After all it's a necessary criterion. It's just not sufficient, and WP:BIO currently presents it as necessary and sufficient. ~ trialsanderrors 03:41, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to disagree... unless you mean somehow taking the pnc out of WP:BIO, yet still including biographical articles that meet it and not the subjective planks of WP:BIO, which would seen quite odd. If you just look at the items on WP:BIO other than the "pnc", I think we'd be excluding a lot of topics on which we could write accurate, NPOV articles... and there's really no good reason to do that. I suppose we could war and feud for years writing hundreds of specific situations where it's almost certain that a type of person will have sufficient coverage, but that seems quite pointless to me when the PNC and some common sense already does that quite well. --W.marsh 03:54, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The pnc with its qualifiers "primary", "non-trivial" and "multiple" allows for much more subjectivity than most of the original criteria (state-wide office, professional athlete) which are mostly based on tangible characteristics and establish a modicum of consistency between articles of the same type. The pnc either requires much more individual interpretation or, as it's already happening, converges towards a "mention", "local", "1 1/2" interpretation. Neither of those two scenarios are particularly desirable, for different reasons. ~ trialsanderrors 04:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

But the very idea that someone must hold state-wide office and so on to be included is pointlessly subjective and excludes a lot of people on whom we could write good, useful articles. Anyway, a mere mention is clearly trivial, it can't be helped that some people misapply it. Like I said, it takes a bit of common sense, there's no getting around that. --W.marsh 04:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

They should not be if the guidelines are well crafted with a view on precedent (which they probably weren't in this case), and even subjective bright line criteria are better mechanisms than ones that require wishful thinking (as in everything that starts with "we could write") and that tip the fickle balance between quality and comprehensinveness in one direction. ~ trialsanderrors 05:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

You call it wishful thinking, I call it a basic part of what a wiki is. If sufficient sources can be shown to exist, an article can be improved... we've never deleted articles just because they aren't very good right now. We also don't do precedents... see WP:NBD. WP:BIO was always a non-conclusive list of reasons someone would make a good subject of a Wikipedia article, I thought people understood it wasn't an attempt to define the only people we could write biographical articles on but rather to provide common reasons people are good subjects, but you learn something new every day. --W.marsh 14:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The notability guidelines are not rules for inclusion, they are a list of common sense reasons that something may be worth writing about. The rules for inclusion are the official policies. Anyone who uses these guidelines as rules for inclusion should be pointed directly to WP:V, and if they can't satisfy it, then their argument has no merit. By pproviding "Primary Notability Criteria" and "Criteria that makes it likely" we are now presenting the guideline in a format that suggests it is rules for inclusion. I see the resulting arguments in AfD's going this way:

Scenario 1:

User:A - Delete per WP:V.

User:B - But this article satisfies a Primary Criterion.

User:C - Keep per User:B.

User:D - Keep per User:B.

User:E - Keep per User:B.

This is wrong, because the policy should trump the guideline.

Scenario 2:

User:A - Delete, fails notability.

User:B - Keep, satisfies WP:V with 7 non-trivial sources.

User:A - Only satisfies one Likely Notability Criterion, Non-notable.

User:C - Delete per User:A.

User:D - Delete per User:A.

User:E - Delete per User:A.

While the opposite side of the coin, this is equally wrong, because now notability has different tiers according to the rules, and it's verifiability should be the final judge on inclusion. This is why I see the proposed change as a step backward. --Daedalus 15:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone ever successfully argued that an article that can't meet WP:V should be kept because it's notable? I have trouble imagining that circumstance. IMHO, the much more likely occurrence is articles that can satisfy WP:V that are nevertheless deleted as "non-notable." TheronJ 18:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm quite certain that it happened before, maybe less so in the recent past since the message that WP:V is consensus-overriding has trickled down the system. But when AfD was still mostly VfD "looks good to me" and "Keep and source" were pretty frequent reasons not to delete. ~ trialsanderrors 19:44, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

My general observation, for what it's worth, is that an article will only be deleted on WP:V grounds if there's reasonable evidence that it's actually unverifiable rather than currently unverified. If you can verify at least a few statements about the article subject (e.g., that WidgetCo exists, that it sells a product called the Wonder Widget, and that it is publicly traded under the symbol WGCO), then the remedy is usually stubbify, not delete. Since WidgetCo's own website is a reliable source to verify "non-controversial claims," the stub for a medium-large company will almost always meet WP:V. As a result, it's difficult to delete many articles under WP:V. (Garage bands, obscure theories, etc., may qualify, but they typically fail WP:N also). WP:N, on the other hand, has more impact in deletion debates -- we don't ask whether you can reliable prove that WidgetCo exists, but whether you can reliably prove that it's notable. TheronJ 19:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes they have in the past successfully argued that notability trumps verifiability, but the tide has now turned and several of these articles (e.g. The Game (game)) have been deleted. Guy (Help!) 21:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

(reset indent) W.Marsh: If sufficient sources can be shown to exist, an article can be improved... But the pnc requires multiple sources, not sufficient soources. A subtle but important distinction. If we replace all NG's with the pnc the "sufficient" goes out the window. There is much more need to clarify what sufficent is than we can fits into WP:N. Also, we have Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Precedents, linked directly from the {{notabilityguide}} box. WP:NBD (WP:CCC) doesn't negate that empirically, similar types of articles get similar responses at AfD. ~ trialsanderrors 19:44, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) Generally, I think we should think of WP:V as a necessary but not sufficient condition. If we followed just the core policies (WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR) I could write an article on myself including my name, address, date of birth, cars owned, family information, and so on. All of that is quite verifiable, requires no original research, and would be entirely neutral, satisfying the core policies. What that would not be is encyclopedic, and that's what WP:N is intended to prevent. We shouldn't have articles that can never be more then a stub with the existing source materials. If we have stubs, that should be because they haven't been expanded yet, not because they can never be. Seraphimblade 19:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The primary notability criterion per User:Uncle G/On notability is, to my mind, entirely persuasive. Subjects that meet the primary notability criterion would seem to me to be unambiguously encyclopaedic. Can anyone give an example of a subject which has multiple non-trivial independent sources and is not notable? Excepting obvious cases like dicdefs, I mean. Guy (Help!) 22:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Keeley Dorsey is a perfect example. Technically, yes, the guy was mentioned in several sources. I'd make the argument that the mentions are pretty trivial, as they're basically large-scale obituaries, but they might technically meet the "non-trivial" guidelines. The same is true of many types of "news" items-they might make coverage in a few papers, even a decent bit of it, but most of them belong at Wikinews and not here. We should be sticking to subjects that are going to be of lasting interest, not which just got some media coverage for passing interest. Seraphimblade 23:49, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, or according to the rest of the world? If I hunt through my contributions, I'm sure I can find many books, films, and authors that have gone by the wayside. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Right, so we have one example of trivial mentions and one of "I'm sure there is something there somewhere". Anything more concrete at all? Guy (Help!) 23:54, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[what I had in mind], the redlinked ones in particular. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That does not seem to be answering the question, in that you are arguing that the subject is notable. I am looking for something which we all agree is not notable despite being the subject of multiple non-trivial coverage in reliable independent secondary sources - in other words, a case which challenges the fundamental premise of that test. Guy (Help!) 09:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Such an article could not be written anyway according to WP:NOT since your only reliable resources would only turn up data that qualifies as directory material. I think all of them should be considered together, and none of them should be considered "sufficient". And I don't think WP:N should ever be allowed to trump WP:V. The Guideline template itself says that it requires common sense and may have the occasional exceptions meaning that it's possible to have an article that does not satisfy the criteria. So failing WP:N's criteria should not be definitive grounds for deletion, which is where the "common sense" comes into play. This description gives me the impression that Notability was meant to be a flexible and interpretable term, and I feel that making the criteria more definitive and rigid goes against the spirit of the guideline. If we want to make the criteria more rigid and defined, then it should be upgraded to Official Policy (which I'm not necessarily against). But as long as it remains a Guideline, I don't think anything should be so set-in-stone as the proposed format would imply. --Daedalus 22:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Sensationalism and notability

Guy, since it just popped up on DRV, how are you reconciling your view on Uncle G with your prior opinion on the Marsden-Donnelly case? ~ trialsanderrors 03:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That was mostly about the article being used as part of an attack on a living individual. I am still of the opinion that it is not a particularly important case, editors who study law have not said it is used in legal texts, for example. It all hinges on whether one equates sensationalist with non-trivial, I suppose. Guy (Help!) 09:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually that pretty much drives my point. Your claim now is that the factual basis for the article, which passes the pnc with flying colors (about 40 newspaper articles on the subject, ongoing national coverage including multiple Toronto area and national papers like The Globe and Mail), is insufficient to establish neutrality. This is exactly my claim what the pnc is missing right now, and what the specialized notability guidelines have to do, independent of the pnc. It seems your argument draws from the fact that the case did not become a legal precedent, which is nowhere near what the pnc requires. ~ trialsanderrors 21:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• No, what I'm saying is that non-trivial coverage of a legal case means critical review of the case and the precedents it sets. Sensationalist reporting of the case does not seem to me to amount to anything above the trivial. If, say, The Times or the BBC legal correspondent discussed the case in some detail, or even if it was featured by Marcel Berlins on the pop-law programme Law In Action or some such, I would almost certainly count that as non-trivial. So: we look at the coverage and assess whether it contains substantive critical review of the case, or simply repeating the facts (which is the job of Wikinews). Maybe it does, here, I don't know. My major problem was the WP:BLP issue. Guy (Help!) 19:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

• Ignoring your unsupported weaselword "sensationalistic", your ignorance of the basic facts of the case is quite astounding. First, this was not a legal case. The case was decided in mediation, agreed upon by both parties, a priori and a posteriori. Second, the case was primary case for various op-eds on sexual harrassment by reputable media outlets. Third, the sheer amount of coverage exceeds even the most extremist reading of the PNC: Coverage was national, ongoing, headline-making, and picked up by reputable media outlets covering the Canadian political spectrum, none of which disagree on the key facts. Newsbank has 16,000 words on the case in 1997 alone, and that's only from broadsheets. Fourth, there is no "must set legal precedence" criterion anywhere in WP:N, and it clearly clashes with the PNC which has no such provision. The case is included based on its newsworthiness, and we have a Front Page box that makes it clear that newsworthiness by itself is a criterion for inclusion. You're simply constructing a new criterion for yourself in order to cope with your squeamishness about the subject matter, but it has nothing to do with either the PNC, or any other established notability criterion for that matter. ~ trialsanderrors 20:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability and verifiability

One thing that's worrying me is that this is now being used to downgrade other areas of notability, even though this page points them in that direction. This is, quite frankly, a major problem, because "notability" is now being treated as "verifiability," which are separate concepts. This is not a positive turn. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that N is now treated as the amalgamation of NOT, V, NOR and NPOV (with my disclaimers about NPOV above), which is it's only raison d'etre. I think what you mean is that there are different rationales for deleting, 1. as unsourced (fails V), and 2. as non notable (fails N). The difference is that the only requirement to have an article restored under 1 is to provide cites that source the original claim to notability. Under 2, the subject needs a new claim to notability with new sources. ~ trialsanderrors 23:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

But it shouldn't be, that's the point. Especially since I'm afraid of this turning into an end-around on speedying articles without sources. We have the individual guidelines for a reason, this should exist only to point people to them. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:49, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The reason is that the idea of having a firm, well-defined requirement of high verifiability or promise of high verifiability was not fully conceived when those guidelines were created, and they also contain additional subject-specific information for indicating notability. —Centrx→talk • 01:37, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Re bdj: I guess what you're saying is that a subject can be notable if the claim to notability is not verified. That's perfectly fine, and I agree with it. The proper wording should be that notability is established for a subject rather than just claimed. I see the point about the end-run around A7. Articles should never be speedied if notability is claimed but not sourced. ~ trialsanderrors 02:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well Uncle G has taken great pains (especially in his essay) to ensure it goes well beyond simple verifiability. Really, I think we need to look at the big picture. All of these subjective guidelines are really not needed anymore, except as checklists that it's likely that a given topic meets WP:N. Wikipedia is changing... WP:N is just so much much more simple and objective than a dozen little inclusion guidelines people have belabored over for years instead of actually writing articles. A lot of these guidelines have very incoherent connections to including topics we can write good articles on, as a result of all the bickering and compromises. WP:BIO if written in stone would exclude thousands of people we could write good articles on, WP:PORNBIO would include thousands of people whose articles could never consist of more than filmographies and descriptions of what sex acts they performed and for how long. This is subjectivity and it's bad.

I think it's time to move on. The more people who understand WP:N's concepts, the less convoluted deletion will become, as it becomes clearer that adding sources gets articles kept, and just arguing endlessly without doing anything productive will get articles deleted. We've seen this endorsed at the highest levels of Wikipedia. GNAA, the highest profile WP:N offender, was deleted purely for WP:N reasons and Jimbo said we did it exactly right... this is obviously the direction we're moving in.

Moving away from subjective argumentation is a good thing... ironically though as this talk page is argumentation central. --W.marsh 23:50, 26 January 2007

I don't even think On Notability is particularly well thought-out, starting with the odd premise that N is driven by Not a directory, and the omission of WP:CSD#A7 (which requires significance and importance) and Not indiscriminate (which itself calls on WP:N to establish the notability of classes of entries). Also the idea that we're "moving away from subjectivity" is bogus, we're just moving from one kind of subjectivity to another. As soon as we're done moving away from subjectivity we can use bots to determine the fate of articles. ~ trialsanderrors 00:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well it seems like you're fundamentally opposed to WP:N... I don't really see what I could say that would convince you otherwise. --W.marsh 00:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That's both bull and lazy. I wrote a similar essay a month before Uncle G., and even if it's not up to date on my current thinking about the topic I still believe it comes closer to the requirements of encyclopedic articles than one that allows for interpretations of 1 1/2 = multiple, page 3 local news = non-trivial, and 2 lines = subject. ~ trialsanderrors 01:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Uhh well that was my point... we could go back and forth endlessly but all that would do is waste my time, given your stance. I've said all I can say without being redundant. I'm just being honest. --W.marsh 15:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

On a totally different matter, I would like to find out how the hell can a person post an article on a sobject that everyone knows about, but there has been no studies of! I am talking about Scenes in Society, and not just subculters either (which DO have a page). I have NOT be able to find any mention of how to post it, except one what said I have to have verification of sources for study, yet there has been no study of it! I can't refer to Scenes unless I make the page, so I can't properly edit other pages to add things that are missing!

I am putting this here as it seems to be the only place I may be able to get some answers of the matter! (Since this IS under Notability and Verifiability.) Corrupt one 00:37, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

• I've volunteered to help Corrupt with his question directly (see his talk page). --Kevin Murray 00:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

After more thought...

I have a ton of respect for W.marsh and JzG, more than anyone else here, which is why I've slept on this as opposed to getting into it right away. With that said, I cannot endorse changing the specific discussions to mirror this for a number of reasons:

1. This guideline specifically points to those specific guidelines. It does it for a reason.
2. This guideline, in noting the "multiple, non trivial" portion, only notes that it is a trait shared by all the subject-specific guidelines. Although it's not entirely accurate (and I'll submit a quick fix to that shortly), at no time is it considered the central one for "notability."
3. I can't stress this enough, especially for speedy deletions and the like - "notability" is not verifiability. A "notable" article that is not verifiable should not be kept, even the Vile Dark Lord of Inclusionism agrees with that. An article that meets the "notability" standard, however, could be verifiable, and requires and deserves the full time period to possibly find sources and have a discussion on its merits. I worry (and unfortunately already saw it in action once) that the change in "importance" of said criteria will be used to expand speedy deletions past what they were intended, and, more importantly, past what is already being soundly rejected at Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles .
4. I agree that "subjective" "notability" is a bad thing, as we all do here. If we want to fix the "subjective" portion, we need to abandon "notability" entirely. "multiple, non trivial" is as subjective as "has two albums out in a major label" or a "widely recognized contribution" to a field.

If we want to change the individual specific guidelines to match this at all, consensus must be gotten at those pages, because I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of users are unaware of this being promoted to guideline after being an essay/untagged for so long. I look forward to further discussion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I for one absolutely do not look forward to further discussion :-) But I have a bad habit of being blunt about how I really feel towards meta discussion. I just don't get how this guideline can spell can spell out why we include articles, and then point to a guideline that says "Oh wait, sometimes we include people who don't meet WP:N but they've had a porn video named after them, or we exclude people who do meet WP:N but lost a state-wide election/didn't play at the pro level/etc.". That just will never compute. Either we follow WP:N or we don't, I've always followed it and it's worked out well for me, and I find it to be so very simple, especially compared to the endless discussion related to the subject-specific stuff. It's actually sad to me that we spend so much time discussing what should be a simple concept. I think that's points 1 and 2.

As for point 4, tired old argument here, having multiple albums doesn't guarantee that we can write a good article on a band, unless you consider a good article to consist of track listings and lyrics (or what random Wikipedians think the lyrics are). Having non-trivial information from mutliple sources does virtually guarantee a good article can be written. People like to fret over hypotheticals, but I have started hundreds of articles with WP:N as my guiding principle, and the one article I've ever had taken to AfD seems to be getting kept (and it took 1.5 years for that to happen).

As for point 3, I dunno, this seems like one of those hypothetical, semantic things that isn't really a problem in the field. If something was written about non-trivially by multiple sources, there was a reason... three journalists didn't just write articles on the tree outside my house for absolutely no reason. So figure out why people cared enough to cover the topic non-trivially, and there's your assertion of importance. I'm not going to defend A7 here, obviously some people take it way too far... but if something meets WP:N it is by definition verifiable. I really am not going to be able to argue the semantics of "notable" and so on, I don't care what you call these concepts so long as people understand and follow them. --W.marsh 16:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Then why not ditch notability entirely as an inclusion criterion, and only focus on verifiability? {{historical}} the lot of it and point it there? --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Huh? That would be a terrible idea, as verifiability doesn't imply non-trivial coverage, or multiple sources. It's all in Uncle G's essay. I'm not at all saying that simple verifiability is why we include articles... existance of enough verifiable information to write a non-directory style, factual and NPOV article is why we include articles. This has really seemed to me to be what Wikipedia has always been about, it just took a while for Uncle G to finally put it in a coherent form. --W.marsh 16:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

1. "This guideline specifically points to those specific guidelines. It does it for a reason.": What do you think that reason is, and why is it necessary?
2. Is there any subject-specific guideline that does not imply that the topic has the promise of reliable sources?
3. Notability here is topic-based, high verifiability, or promise of it. All manner of facts are verifiable but do not warrant independent articles, and an article full of unverifiable statements may very well be on a topic that is notable. This is not equivalent to verifiability.
4. As with all guidelines there are fringe areas, but there is nothing subjective about zero sources consistenting of anything beyond a one-line mention of the topic, and there is nothing subjective about ten published histories that have the topic as their main subject.

—Centrx→talk • 17:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

1. It's necessary because "notability" is different for different things. Trust me, it would make my life a lot easier if we ditched "notability" entirely, but we're not going to do that. But "notability" for a musician is inherently different than "notability" for a website.

   There's plenty of "notable" topics that do not have Wikipedia's current version of "reliable sources." That's a different discussion.

   Okay...?

   Sure there is. Part of it is problems with other guidelines, though, and part of it is because "notability" is inherently subjective.

--badlydrawnjeff talk 21:43, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

How is "notability" for a musician inherently different than "notability" for a website? To me they seem quite similar: Since we don't do original research or write from our own point of view, we base "notability" on whether non-trivial sources have noted a topic. -- Dragonfiend 22:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Becasue different things make a website "notable" than make a band "notable." We're still confusing verifiability with "notability." --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I find "because" to be unpersuasive. I don't see much confusion between verifiability and notability, though they are related. Notability could be described as verification of importance. Plenty of things are verifiable, but not verifiably important, which is why notability of topics requires things like multiple non-trivial independent sources, whereas the verifying of facts can often be done with single sources, trivial sources, self-published sources, etc. -- Dragonfiend 23:43, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

But "importance" is subjective. Essentially, what we're differing on is the ability to make the best article and the ability to maintain a valid, useful stub. In your content situation, the former helps make a complete article while the latter makes a necessary and valid stub. Both are of worth to the encyclopedia, and that's why the individual guidelines end up being useful - it shows how something can be "notable" without having enough verifiable information to complete a detailed article. As our sourcing requirements are ever-changing, stubs aren't bad. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Verifiability requirements are not "ever-changing"; the only thing that has changed about sourcing is strongly encouraging, and in some cases requiring, that sources be explicitly cited. —Centrx→talk • 02:37, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

In terms of what's acceptable sourcing, I should say. Excuse my not being clear. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I am a huge supporter of the primary notability criteria structure, and have always thought of notability as a shortcut to ensuring sufficient coverage to satisfy WP:V and WP:NPOV without WP:OR. Importance doesn't matter, obscurity doesn't matter, all that matters is that enough has been written about a topic to satisfy those. My biggest issue is that people confuse and conflate wikipedia-notability with real notability. The full line of winchester cartridges might be non-notable to the average person, but there are product reviews and testing data and other information out there for us to write articles on them. The biggest problem that we have is when people forget that notability is not subjective, and conflate it with importance, as happened right here. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The very reasons you just quoted are exactly why I disagree with the structure. By placing it into tiers you sow the notion that notability is synonymous with importance. However, I feel that notability is subjective. What is highly notable to one sub-culture, is not necessarily notable to the general public. Does anyone in the general public care about Jumpsteady? Probably not, he has absolutley no notability whatsoever outside of the Juggalo subculture, but within said subculture, he is one of the most influential people, especially with his creation of Morton's List and his involvement with the JCW. Clearly, notability is subjective. --Daedalus 17:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability, or wikipedia-notability? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Jumpsteady does not have real notability being that he is specific to a subculture and nonexistent beyond it. He has wikipedia-notability, because he is a verifiably prominent figure of a prominent subculture. Wikipedia-notability is subjective so as to include all encyclopedic information necessary to educate on a subject, which by process must also include information that is only prominent to that one subject else be rendered ineffective as an educational device. Jumpsteady is a good example as he is necessary to fully educate someone on the subject of Juggalos, yet has no educational value beyond that subject. Hopefully that clarifies my previous post. --Daedalus 18:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Related dispute

This discussion here is being used to force changes without related consensus at WP:WEB, WP:BIO, and WP:MUSIC. I would appreciate if some editors would give their two cents regarding the issue at those related talk pages so we can put that part of it to rest. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

College newspapers and notability

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations) under topic 4: Placing the 'bar of notability.' This may be of interest to those discussing standards for notability, with ongoing debate about the {{WP:ORG]] proposed guideline Assertion of notability: The following cannot be used to assert notability: 2)Student run papers since it hinges largely on whether student-run independent college newspaper can ever be considered reliable and independent sources to establish the notability of groups on campus. Edison 21:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

What about groups loosely affiliated with the campus but not actually on the campus? I'm thinking companies started by alumni, etc. ColourBurst 04:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change

As I removed the following edit, I'm placing it here for discussion:

• "One of a series", meaning not necessarily hugely notable in himself but an integral part of a set or list of people whose individual entry may be expanded by others.

For my part, I believe this is ambiguous and nearly meaningless. A series of what? I'm one of a series of people, and I actually have a notable ancestor, but that doesn't make me or any of his other descendants notable. Nor might every part of a series be notable-for example, if one issue of a relatively obscure comic creates a huge controversy, that doesn't make every comic in the series notable-just that one. Seraphimblade 07:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I am hugely in favour. For example, one in a series of Peers or Baronets, or (Lord/Deputy) Lieutenants of County Armagh, or Lord Mayors of London or Colonels in chief of a Regiment or Air Marshalls of the Royal Air Force. Having a notable ancestor or being the owner of a prescriptive title would not in itself be adequate. - Kittybrewster 07:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not even entirely sure all of those there would be notable-certainly the top royal family get a lot of coverage, but do all the lesser ones tend to get secondary source coverage? (It's entirely possible they do, just asking.) If they get that coverage, it's a nonissue anyway, they all pass on that. If not-well, then they're not all notable. Seraphimblade 08:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Endorse removal. The whole can be notable even though every individual part isn't. I acknowledge that there is sometimes some reflected notability, but it's nearly always incredibly dilute and best dealt with through a paragraph or a line in the main article. Regards, Ben Aveling 08:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Endorse removal. The examples Kittybrewster cited are either notable by themselves or not notable by themselves, but that has nothing to do with making a series. For example, I imagine every Lord Mayor of London would be notable, as mayor of one of the world's largest cities, millions of people throughout most of history. But surely we don't want to say that every chief of a regiment would be notable - a regiment is about 1000 soldiers, so there are tens of thousands of chiefs of regiments at any given time. And this would be opening a huge can of worms, since we'd have to define what makes a notable series: what about Vice Presidents of Fortune 1000 companies? Captains of Battleships? Unsuccessful Presidential Candidates? AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 13:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

• I suppose the intent might have been to not make entries on e.g. every individual MacDonalds restaurant throughout the world, but rather merge that information into a central article since there isn't much in particular to say about any individual franchise. It may be useful to point something out, but it'd need different language than there is now. >Radiant< 13:15, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse removal as well, simply because I am unable to parse the meaning of this text. It's word salad. I guess what may be meant is "Individuals are notable if they are part of a distinct set of people." Which is nonsense. Every human belongs, in some sense, to a set of people, such as a nation or a family. Sandstein 18:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse removal, unless an alternate phrasing can be proposed that isn't so vague. Then maybe keep depending on phrasing and intention. As it stands now it's a definite removal. --Daedalus 19:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment, the number of members of a class is not a rule against its notability; there have been thousands of medal of honor winners, but that doesn't rule all of them unworthy of inclusion. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment True. Doesn't rule for them, either. Having been the subject of multiple, nontrivial secondary sources rules in favor of it, having not been so rules against it. The Medal of Honor may raise the likelihood that this might happen, but if it does, the person's notable, if not, they're not. Seraphimblade 11:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Should notability be mentioned in the new page template?

Notability seems to be one of the most important guidelines for Wikipedia articles. If a topic is not notable, reliable, verifiable sources frequently don't exist. If a topic is not notable, few or no future editors will improve the article. If a topic is not notable, sufficient sources to make an NPOV article are unlikely to exist. Et cetera.

Considering the importance of notability to Wikipedia, I believe it should be mentioned in the MediaWiki:Newarticletext template. What are other's thoughts? Lyrl ^Talk _C 00:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability of buildings and structures

I am also posting this question at the help desk, but anyway, the question is, what are the notability guidelines for buildings and structures? I'm asking because I would like to create pages for numerous skyscrapers and don't know whether they'd be considered notable. The points for are:

• Each of them has been a subject of numerous newspaper articles and received non-negligible media attention outside the internet.
• Each skyscraper in question is unique, but may or may not have symbolic value for its location.

However, it still seems strange that nearly all unique/named (mostly this means non-residential) skyscrapers above 100m height should have their own pages, which will be the case if I start creating the articles (talking about skyscrapers in Israel). So, does anyone know any notability criteria for buildings and structures? -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 10:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• We were researching a local skyscraper and honestly couldn't find a darned thing about it in print other than the year built, the architect, the height and other statistics about size. To me this constituted just directory style information, and didn't really warrant an article. Which was odd because this was the tallest building in the state for years, you'd think more would have been written, but they sure built generic buildings in the 1970s... this thing's just 40 stories of black windows in a flat rectangular shape, nothing unique whatsoever. Anyway, I say this just as an example that some buildings over 100m really don't warrant pages. However if there are sources with non-trivial information, like criticism or praise of the individual building, details on its history and pre-history (planning, site history, etc.), other things that make it unique, etc. then an article would go beyond being a directory listing, and would meet WP:N, and should be fine. Skyscraper articles taken to AfD tend to want a building to reach an arbitrary level of importance (top ten largest in the area, stuff like that) but there's no actual guideline, and if you can flesh out the article to truly be more than a directory listing, it should be fine. --W.marsh 15:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Someone should point JzG to this entry right here - a "notable," verifiable structure that appears to not have the "multiple, non-trivial" works readily available. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't see how a tall generic building of which there are thousands in the world is especially notable. It is apparently not notable enough for anyone else to write about it. —Centrx→talk • 20:26, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
      • "Tallest in the state" is certainly a feature that attracted at least local notice. If is was built in the 1970s then it might be hard to retrieve local news articles online, but it is a reasonable assumption that the coverage exist, so if the basic facts are verifiable it might make sense to close an AfD as no consensus and tag with {{source}}. That's the whole point of the specialized notability guidelines, to create empirical classes where we can be reasonably certain that sufficient sources exist, even if they are not immediately accessible. The current attempt to override those empirical classes with the PNC is an attempt to institutionalize WP:BIAS. ~ trialsanderrors 02:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
        • Which building are we talking about? --Dragonfiend 02:24, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
          • No idea. A hypothetical building that has a claim to notability of "tallest building in the state 1971–75", as documented by, say, the local chamber of commerce (not independent but probably reliable). Some unsourced claims about architectural features that are interesting but by themselves would not make the building notable. Even though we have no evidence that the claim to notability was actually noticed by independent observers, the quality of the claim itself makes it very likely, so a sources tag might be a better option, at least in the first AfD. ~ trialsanderrors 03:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
            • W.marsh wrote: "We were researching a local skyscraper ... this was the tallest building in the state." That didn't sound like a hypothetical to me. I see a lot of information in my newspaper every day about major construction projects; I doubt that building the tallest building in the state escaped everyone's notice. -- Dragonfiend 04:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
              • I'm sure he's talking about a real skyscraper. I'm talking about a hypothetical case based on his example that drives home the difference between the PNC and SNG's. ~ trialsanderrors 04:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

• Jeff, I saw it. It's not notable, it's just another skyscraper, like the man said. Generic black glass box. You want notable skyscrapers, visit Düsseldorf. My company's London office is across the road from 30 St. Mary Axe - that's a notable building. Another office is close to One Canada Square - that's notable. Plenty of other big buildings are not. Guy (Help!) 21:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

• So the largest building in a state is not notable? I don't buy that for even one second. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

• It certainly is, but depending on the coverage it might be better to cover it in the city article rather than in a stand-alone article. Notability discussions tend to take this partisan "it's good enough" — "no, it's not good enough" spin. The point is really, what is most helpful to the user? If I read an article on Wichita, Kansas and click on a link to a supposedly notable building, just to get to a two-line stub I'm usually slightly annoyed. On the other hand, like in this case, merging would be silly since she was connected to multiple people, and if I click on her link in her dad's article, I want to reach her bio, and not the one of one of her husbands. These are common sense considerations that tend to get steamrolled by our AfD discussions. ~ trialsanderrors 20:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

moving this more in line with intent

This was discussed at WP:BIO to uncontroversial, and somewhat supportive, results: change "the primary subject" to "a primary subject" regarding multiple non-trivial works. My rationale is that it better falls in line with the intent of "notability" (finding enough information to base an article), and still removes the "this guy saw a fire and was mentioned and is notable" nonsense that's sometimes seen. Thoughts? --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. It avoids any chance of wikilawyering over whether something is the primary subject. Trebor 19:46, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The term I use is "central". My pet case: Marion Keisker, whose role in the history of Rock'n'Roll is amply documented, but usually in biographies on Elvis Presley. Of course I won't agree to a change from "primary" to "central" unless "multiple" gets changed to "sufficient". ~ trialsanderrors 20:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting take. I actually like that wording a lot better - both "central" and "sufficient." Anyone else object? --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the main point is the primary notability criteria is to ensure that there is enough secondary source material to write a verifiable, neutral article but I see wikilawyering on the horizon over the word "sufficient". ColourBurst 05:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

That will never go away, even with multiple. But multiple doesn't ensure NPOV. ~ trialsanderrors 05:35, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Do I actually agree with Jeff on something? I like the "central" and "sufficient" criteria too-a book, for example, could contain plenty of biographical information about several people besides its central subject. As to lawyering, there's already been way too much of that over "multiple" as it is-"Well two sources say this guy's name, so he's notable!" In this case, it at least allows sufficiency to be questioned when, for example, there are several source mentions, but all of those mentions are about the same event, and there's nothing or nearly nothing available outside of that on the subject. That might also help cut down on news-type "event of the week" articles, while ensuring that we include those who might not have been a central player in anything, but had enough of a hand in enough things for there to be tons of information available. Seraphimblade 05:32, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Non-notable web pages becoming notable?

I'm seeking clarification after erroneously creating Transgender_Day_of_Remembrance_Webcomics_Project, which I thought was notable but which, under WP:WEB is clearly not. The general notability guidlines mention that Wikipedia:Notability_criteria#Notability_is_generally_permanent Notability is generally permanent due to "multiple independent reliable published sources", and this is echoed on WP:WEB.

My questions are:

• Would a page such as the one listed above become 'notable' at a future date when multiple independent reliable published sources occur? e.g. Reference in a publication about web comics; numerous journal references et cetera.
• Is such status for the wep page "permanent" (since the offline references would continue to exist)? Under what conditions would it cease to be notable?
• Would future deletion of web page referenced (for whatever reason) also be cause for deletion of the wiki page referring to it, or would that page merely note that such a page had existed and when? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LauraSeabrook (talk • contribs) 22:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC).

In answer to your questions, in order:

• • Absolutely, if those mentions were to occur in the future, the subject would become notable. That's true of most of our articles-Joe's Garage Band is not notable today, but if they become the next Nirvana in a couple years, they certainly are at that point! The same is true of the scenario you put forth.
  • Offline sources are perfectly fine to use, and a mix of online and offline sources is generally best of all. Part of the rationale behind the requirements for multiple non-trivial published sources are so that even if a source becomes unavailable, others exist as well. The page would not be deleted just because a web source went offline. Also, there are methods in place of dealing with web pages used as sources that later go offline, and they generally remain available through the Internet Archive. The reference to the previously-existing web page would remain, it would be updated to note that the source is no longer online, and a link to the Internet Archive version of the page would be provided if available. That in itself would not be reason to delete the page-generally, notability isn't something that can be "lost" once it's achieved. Seraphimblade 02:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Unless there's say, someone from Ancient rome who was famous in his day but all records since have been lost. Then there's no more sources and he can't meet our notability anymore. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Not necessarily: Amafanius and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amafanius. Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

'Notability as central criterion' revisited

A bunch of thoughts regarding whether the "two multiple non-trivial independent published references" (let's call it "2N-TIPR""MN-TIPR") rule is the "central criterion" to notability, and whether it supercedes the subsidiary notability rules. In most cases, the distinction isn't particularly relevant. If an article satisfies one of the subsidiaries' elements, it is very likely, but not certain, that there exist multiple non-trivial independent published references for that article. However, the rubber really meets the road on notability when we ask "should this article be deleted?" Let's look at a couple semi-hypothetical examples.

1. Is MN-TIPR necessary to satisfy WP:V and WP:NOR? The answer to me seems clearly to be no. Take a look at my favorite example, Man Plus. What policy or guideline does it currently violate? If we decide, as an encyclopedia, to write an article about every Nebula Award winning novel, every platinum-selling music album, or every fortune 100 company, we can do so, if necessary, entirely on the basis of "non-independent" and/or "trivial" published accounts and still satify WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:NOR in every respect.
2. If an article nominated for AFD satisfies some of the subsidiary criteria, and editors argue that MN-TIPR "probably exist", but no editor can currently currently identify even one N-TIPR source, should the article be deleted? My guess is that there are a number of articles that would not be deleted under such circumstances, including novels that have won major awards, extremely popular music and software, etc. (For a real life example, I recently nominated Alcohol 120% for deletion. There was a landslide of opinions that the software was so notable that there must be some non-trivial independent publications. No one could offer any, but the overwhelming consensus was that because the software was so important, the sources must exist, and the article was kept).
3. Are there any circumstances under which it can be proven that MN-TIPR do not exist for an article that meets one or more subsidiary criteria? A sufficiently skilled and motivated researcher probably could find published material regarding any major league baseball player, any publicly traded corporation, any award winning book, any platinum selling music album, etc. Given that, and the answer to #2, above, is there a distinction between saying "Fortune 500 companies are notable because it is almost certain that MN-TIPR exist" and "Fortune 500 companies are notable?" Only if we will delete entries on Fortune 500 companies if the editors can't come up with MN-TIPR within the 5 day AFD discussion period, and my experience is that we won't.
4. Is it possible for the editors to form a consensus that some classes of articles are notable even in the absense of MN-TIPR? My guess is yes. As stated above, we can write articles through the synthesis of "non-independent" and "trivial" published records that fully comply with all core policies. Whether we want to is an issue of consensus, and my experience is that there is probably a consensus to keep certain classes of articles even if there are no N-TIPR available, so long as the articles can meet WP:V and WP:NOR.
5. Is there a clear consensus that MN-TIPR overrides the subsidiary notability criteria in all cases? I would tend to say no. The primary guideline, WP:N, was tagged as guideline over substantial objection because it allegedly reflected common practice on AFD. I think that was fair and appropriate, but I am a long way from convinced that common practice on AFD is to delete articles that do not contain references to MN-TIPR if the articles are otherwise viewed as notable. (See, e.g., television episodes, award-winning books, bestselling books, awardwinning persons, fortune 500 companies, etc.). It is possible that there is a silent consensus that every Star Trek episode is individually notable because there are probably MN-TIPR somewhere for that episode, but it's equally possible that there is a silent consensus that the episodes are notable in their own right.

Sorry for the philosophical digression, but I hope it's helpful. TheronJ 17:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Taking one of your points only. If an article is up for AFD and the consensus is that sources probably exist but we can't find any yet, I suggest it would be a mistake to delete because this policy would undoudbtedly result in someone's hard work being deleted on subjects that are ultimately shown to be notable. I'm not sure 5 days is long enough for someone to go and find sources. Perhaps where the consensus view is sufficient sources probably exist even though they are not cited, the AFD should be suspended to give time for editors to come up with sources. This would only apply if editors think that sources probably exist - as you point out it is practically impossible to prove that sources dont exist. AndrewRT(Talk) 19:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but five days at least leaves the possibility. If we dare make this the "central criterion," it leaves the door wide open as an end around to the proposal that we speedy delete unsourced articles, a proposal that lacks any consensus whatsoever. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't quite follow this argument. No one here is calling for the PNC to become a speedy criterion (variations on that were discussed and rejected as you say). If there is fear that it would be incorporated into A7 a note against that should be added to A7 (saying unsourced articles should not be deleted under this criterion but send to pord or AfD). If something is nominated under the PNC then it gets 5 days. And my hope and understanding is that if it meets secondary notability criteria (from a single or non-independent source) it should get more time. Eluchil404 09:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

My faith in people to interpret it properly is not nearly as high as yours, apparently. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I would disagree. The problem with this is that people will come along and vote "keep" and say sources probably exist, save the article and then never find sources. Five days is a reasonable amount of time, I feel, to ask for people to find sources. If it is deleted, then it can be recreated when sources are found. For Alcohol 120%, I expect some of the reasons people wanted to keep it were because they had heard of it; this just shows a systemic bias because editors tend to be more technically-minded than the norm (for instance, if it had been a similarly unsourced article about a poet nobody had heard of, I expect it would have been delete). The burden of evidence is not on those wishing to delete. Trebor 19:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Trebor, I'm curious whether you think the community can agree to standards of notability in addition to the "twomultiple non-trivial independent publications" central criteria. For example, would you support deleting Man Plus if editors were unable to find independent literature within the five days permitted for AFD? The Man Plus article as currently written is absolutely verifiable by reliable sources: the book exists (WorldCat and the book itself); it won the Nebula award (the Nebula award website); all of its publication data can be verified by reliable sources such as WorldCat; and the brief plot summary can be sourced to the book itself. However, each of those references is either not independent (the book itself) or is trivial (WorldCat and the Nebula award website). I agree that the article would be better if non-trivial independent published sources were introduced, but in an AFD, I would vote to keep strictly on the basis of the verifiable award. What do you think? Thanks, TheronJ 19:57, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I am...undecided, about the whole notability area. Given I've only really been active in this topic for 2-3 months, I can't tell how all the guidelines came about, and I frequently feel that I'm stepping into a long ongoing argument (which makes me slightly nervous). So I'm not sure. I mean, for books and albums and films, there's always some verifiable information (track listing, plot, artwork, author, date of release, characters, etc.) to flesh out an article with, but it's whether there's enough information to avoid being just a directory-style entry, or alternatively whether the topic had done/been awarded something "notable" and so should be included despite being a directory-style entry. Does being written by a notable author automatically confer notability? Does winning an award do that?

Personally, and although I hate the term, I would tend towards inclusionism. So I would support keeping the Man Plus article and using more specific guidelines to determine notability (although your actual question was whether I think the community can agree, which is a whole other matter). And I think this general criterion is useful for places where the specific guidelines aren't firmly in place. But although this should assure notability, I don't think it should exclude it; in other words, I don't think an article must have the 2N-TIPR. Trebor 20:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The Man Plus article appears to suffer from the sort of problems you find when the author lacked secondary sources: half of it seems to be unsupported exegesis. Who says that existentialist isolation is a common theme in skiffy? How do we know that the separation is intended allegorically as well as literally? ... For a notable work of fiction, the editor can dispense with reading the work, and simply paraphrase what critics say. Rather than picking away at the check lists, those who don't like the existing system should be looking for a way to measure the encyclopediality and potential NPOVability of articles. All the current system is designed to do is ensure that Wikipedia remains an NPOV encyclopedia. Find a better one and everyone will cheer. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:00, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that independent sources make an article better, and would support a style guide to that effect. The question I was addressing here, though, was whether there was room for notability criteria in addition to the "twomultiple independent non-trivial published references" that is emerging (appropriately, IMHO), as the most commonly applied test. Leaving aside whether it's a good article, would you support deleting Man Plus as non-notable if it came up on AFD and no one could find another source within the five days? Thanks, TheronJ 21:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Award-winning and award-nominated novel from 1976? I'm pretty sure there are secondary sources, albeit they'll predate the web: skiffy mags and yearbooks for 1976-1977 in this case, but in other fields it might be different mags, or newspapers. It may need a lot more than five days to find them, just as it would for many things pre-internet. I'm more interested in outcomes than process, so that's a 'keep'. Pending the better guidelines I mentioned, I don't think there's much choice but to have all sorts of crufty check lists. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The criteria is that the sources exist, not that they're cited and present. Citing them is the best way to prove it, but if you can argue in a debate that they probably do (as is the case for award-winning books or albums from popular artists) then we can keep it around pending sources. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so in the hypothetical where a subject met a specific guideline, but we could guarantee that there did not exist the 2N-TIPR, should it be kept? Do specific guidelines confer notability in the absence of meeting the general one, or are they just suggestions that the general one is probably satisfied? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Trebor Rowntree (talk • contribs) 21:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC).

Notability is a guideline, guidelines have occasional exceptions. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines should and do have occasional exceptions. I would agree that, in the case of Man Plus, if it were nominated for deletion the first time due to lack of sourcing, I would be responsive to a "keep pending the existence of probable sources" argument. On the other hand, if it were coming up the second and third time, and it had been months since the first AfD, I would likely change around to a delete argument-on the simple basis of "Alright, we granted the presumption that they probably exist, but where are they?" I'm also really tired of the "someone's hard work" bit-part of doing the "hard work" is doing it right, and that means source it before you even think of clicking the "create this page" link. Most of the new pages come in are so far below any type of standard it's not funny-spam, vanity bios, incoherent nonsense. See for yourself if you dare. Fortunately, most of that "hard work" is caught and speedily deleted-and sometimes, it really is clear that someone put quite a bit of work into a vanity bio, and certainly into many of the PR puff pieces. What they didn't put any hard work into was caring to learn what they should be doing. Maybe we should encourage some more work into that area. Seraphimblade 01:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I'm in basic agreement with Seraphimblade. If consensus among editors were that there were serious doubts whether sources existed to expand something like Man Plus. I'd expect someone to bother to go to a library and go look up its October 17 1976 review in the New York Times, or maybe cite that it made The Times of London's list of "The Literary Editor's selection of interesting books" back on April 25 1987, or maybe the Chicago Sun-Times' June 12, 1994 review of Mars Plus, which called Man Plus "one of the definitive explorations of the concept of the cyborg." -- Dragonfiend 02:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll add my agreement to this point. Someone's hard work is worthless if they're not sourcing their hard work. --Daedalus 17:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

2N-TIPR is not an automatic thing. The number of reliable third-party sources is largely dependent on the reliability of the sources provided. I would advise not to use such wording and leave as stated in the guideline: "The "multiple" qualification is not specific as to number, and can vary depending on the reliability of the sources and the other factors of notability". ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

You're right, Jossi - I should have said MN-TIPR. (I've been shortening "multiple" to "two" in my head, but I definitely shouldn't have.) I'll correct my earlier comments. TheronJ 18:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Definitions and claims

I just realized a bit of a miscommunication above. My proposal to use central was in the wording of WP:BIO: The person has been a primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person. This should read "a central subject of sufficient blablabla", as discussed above. The P/CNC is not a criterion at all, it's the definition of notability, or more exactly notedness. The specialized criteria (award, 2 albums, 100 porn flicks) are examples of claims to notability. Any article that isn't in the exempt group (cities, highways, etc.) has to include a claim to notability, usually in the form of "best known for". There are hundreds of possible claims to notability, and we only codify a few of them in the specialized guidelines based on established precedent that certain levels of notability almost surely lead to keep or no consensus decisions in AfD's. ~ trialsanderrors 20:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I follow you, and support this, but please bring it up there? --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Too much Wikitalk involvement already. My point here was the clarification what the functional difference is between our two types of supposed citeria. ~ trialsanderrors 20:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and it should be the phrasing both here and there. ~ trialsanderrors 20:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree, but others might there, which was where my request came from. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd say we try to figure it out here first, per WP:MULTI ~ trialsanderrors 21:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

How the hell is that a guideline? Regardless, very well, but it can't be expected that it will carry over to the respective criteria, because not as many people watch this page. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

No idea, it might win an award for the most obscure guideline ever. I think it's a guideline because it expresses a Good Idea™. ~ trialsanderrors 21:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability in deletion and merge disputes

Resurrecting the idea of a "Notability in AfD" meta-topic (see /Archive 6) for exploring abuse/misunderstanding of WP:N, but expanding the scope of the original idea to merge debates as well. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ

Santorum (sexual slang) and Savage Love merge

This is a really "interesting" case (in the sense of the Chinese curse...) See Talk:Santorum (sexual slang) (bogus article) and Talk:Savage Love (merge target). The short version is that the proponents (and boy do I mean proponents; the principal author of the article is User:Santorummm!) of Santorum (sexual slang) seem to be under the firm belief that if they can provide 20 or so citations to Dan Savage talking about his own protologism (i.e. not "independent" sources), and one or two articles that mention his activistic memetic experiment and its results that this a) establishes notability at all (which it certainly does not in the first case, and arguably does not under the "multiple" requirement in the latter case), and b) establishes notability of "santorum" as a term in notable currency in English slang (justifying the article title, as opposed to something like Santorum (meme)), which it absolutely, positively does not. So, please come on over to Talk:Savage Love#New merge proposal and back up my effort to get this garbage "article" merged back into its parent to the extent any of it is salvageable at all. Or at least wonder and be amazed at the fervor with which former "Mr. Anti-Notability" cites the revamped WP:N. >;-)
— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Stop throwing around rhetoric and focus on the evidence. IS it a recognized neologism by others? Yes. Is citing it 20 times to the guy who publicized it excessive? Yes. Is that proof it has no currency beyond him? No. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 13:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe I've seen the whole santorum bit covered in quite a bit beyond Savage's writing, so I'll have a look. If secondary sources have covered it, that'd be a nonissue anyway. (Personally, I know what it means, but of course that means absolutely nothing.) Seraphimblade 13:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

It is not a recognized neologism, at least per published independent sources. It may have independent citations but no such sources are given in either of its two AfDs or the talk pages of the two pages mentioned. I believe the AfDs established notability for the political act -- that is, not for the neologism as a word, but as an act of political activism. There were certainly enough citations to establish that. For that reason I believe the current page title is misleading, but a proposed rename to make it clearer the article was about political activism received no support. SMcCandlish, if you were to propose a rename to "Santorum (meme)" I would certainly support that. Seraphimblade, if you can find evidence of independent usage other than the cites already examined and discarded by e.g. Wiktionary (see last entry on that page, in particular), then that would be very valuable -- it's not what's needed to establish notability per WP:NEO, but it would settle the question of whether this is truly a neologism or a meme. Mike Christie (talk) 18:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Another example of something obviously "notable," but may not meet the "multiple, non-trivial" standard. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but under the WP:AMNESIA test, how do you write an article if you don't have multiple, non-trivial mentions? ~ trialsanderrors 21:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

To use your criteria, there's sufficient information to build an article off of. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

But would it meet our WP:NPOV#Undue weight policy? ~ trialsanderrors 21:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Why wouldn't it? --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the article, I possibly agree. ~ trialsanderrors 21:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

But it does have multiple non-trivial mentions; not for usage, but for notability. It gets substantial treatment from Jesse Sheidlower, the North American editor of the OED, and in the Scranton Times-Tribune. The other references in reliable sources (Philadelphia Inquirer, Montreal Mirror, The Economist) cited in santorum (sexual slang) are more in the nature of asides, and could be regarded as trivial, but these two seem unimpeachable sources that directly discuss Savage's coinage -- as political activism, however, not as a valid neologism. Mike Christie (talk) 21:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm almost inclined to move this to the article talk page. Btw and fwiw, Santorum would pass the scientific terms standard at WP:SCI as a diffused neologism. There is an agreed-upon definition and a pattern of wide-spread usage. ~ trialsanderrors 21:46, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

A topic is notable if ...

... it has been a central subject of a sufficient number of reputable and independent encyclopedic sources

See current version at User:Trialsanderrors/On notability

Discuss at User talk:Trialsanderrors/On notability