Wikipedia talk:Notability (events)

Eclipse RfC

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus was reached to use WP:GNG to evaluate the notability of eclipses; eclipses that fail to meet WP:GNG will be redirected to the appropriate list. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 02:17, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

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How should the notability of solar eclipses and lunar eclipses be decided? Ovinus (talk) 21:05, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1: Status quo; stand-alone pages for every eclipse in the 20th and 21st centuries, and including miscellaneous ones between the 16th and 22nd centuries AD.

• Option 2: Establish a range for which eclipses outside that range must meet the GNG, while eclipses within that range are considered notable.

• Option 3: Keep eclipses for which information beyond mere statistics and observations is known, similar to WP:GEOLAND. For example, Solar eclipse of August 21, 1560 would be kept because it was contemporaneous with famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, while Solar eclipse of May 22, 1724 does not have such information (at least yet).

• Option 4: Default entirely to GNG. For example, Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 easily passes this criterion because it will be the next major solar eclipse to cross North America, and has received plenty of coverage, while Solar eclipse of September 21, 2025 has not received significant coverage (at least yet, and perhaps never).

There is also the question of the redirect target:

• Option A: Redirect non-notable eclipses to their respective Saros cycles. For example, Solar eclipse of May 22, 1724 would redirect to Solar Saros 133

• Option B: Redirect non-notable eclipses to their respective list articles (e.g., List of solar eclipses in the 16th century)

• Option C: Delete non-notable eclipses.

Discussion

I am opening this RfC after a back-and-forth at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Solar eclipse of April 23, 2191. For the astronomically uninitiated: solar and lunar eclipses occur in predictable cycles known as Saros cycles or series, which each contain a set of about 70 eclipses in regular intervals. With technological and scientific advances in the last few centuries, solar and lunar eclipses may be predicted millennia into the future and with sub-second accuracy. In other words, that these eclipses will happen as described is not under question. Potentially applicable policies include WP:NOTDATABASE and WP:CRYSTAL. There are other potential criteria that I haven't put in the options, because there's already quite a few, but perhaps a discussion will come up with good ones. Also note that per WP:LOCALCON, it's possible that Options 1 through 3 are not immediately applicable without a wider discussion. Ovinus (talk) 21:05, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

• 4 and B and when B isn't possible fall back to A. We do not need a special, new standard for this subject. Existing policy and process is just fine.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:31, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
• Comment I am not certain what the distinction between 3 and 4 would be in practice. The older I get, the less fond I find myself of arguments that seem to boil down to arranging acronyms on an imaginary org chart. ("GEOLAND supersedes the GNG!" "No, GEOLAND presumes and clarifies the GNG." "But that would put us in tension with NASTRO, and under the precedent of NBELGIANWAFFLE...") Questions of what makes for a good encyclopedia tend to get lost in the muddle. Is there an example of a case where we really would act differently under option 3 versus option 4? XOR'easter (talk) 00:58, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Sure, where should Solar_eclipse_of_August_21,_1560 go? I agree that it is painful to have a mess of guidelines as we do, and I’m not proposing WP:NECLIPSE here—only how we should deal with the eclipse articles—but as you noted it’s good to get a broader consensus before sending hundreds of articles to AfD. That’s what the discussion is for I’d just like GNG for eclipse articles, period, and believe that would ultimately be best for the encyclopedia to combine the pages. If we can get consensus for that through an RfC then it can be implemented without hassle on individual AfD pages. But perhaps I’m going in the wrong direction. Ovinus (talk) 01:32, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

That's exactly the example that seemed ambiguous; it seems to me that Solar eclipse of August 21, 1560 would potentially be accepted under either option. Sources exist for its influence on Brahe [1][2], for instance. People at AfD might argue over "significant coverage", like we always do (i.e., in the way that we always pretend our subjective judgments are obvious truths). I don't think you're going in the wrong direction; I'm just trying to get a handle on the difference between the options.

I think that in the cases where we do redirect (whatever those cases end up being), listing by century is more reader-friendly than listing by Saros. XOR'easter (talk) 14:52, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

• 4 and B. Eclipses happen and the list of those is well-documented, so any standalone eclipse should show more coverage from the GNG standpoint of why that eclispe is different or the like. --Masem (t) 01:39, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
• 4 and B and when B isn't possible fall back to A. I generally agree with most of the comments. I do not think we need be too obsessive in assigning notability standards. If someone thinks that a particular eclipse is worth special attention because it happened on some saint's day for the third time, big deal! It might interest someone and won't bring down the house. Better that than miss something of general interest because of some obsessive regulation.JonRichfield (talk) 05:57, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
• 4 and B: I suspect full solar eclipses that were visible from land during the last 2-3 centuries are probably going to be notable, if only because they likely attracted an eclipse expedition. All the others need to demonstrate some level of notability, beyond just a computed forecast. Praemonitus (talk) 00:12, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
• 4 and B by preference, otherwise A; next choice 3 B/A. I am mostly thinking of the future dates here. If articles on topics in a "series" consist of 80% boilerplate material and 20% stats that could as well go in a list, and have no realistic chance of being expanded in the lifetime of any current contributor, then those topics should be handled as a table in a higher-level article. Seems pretty uncontroversial to me. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:15, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
• This isn't a well posed list of options. For option 1, I don't see where this 'status quo' is stated anywhere. There's nothing about eclipses on Wikipedia:Notability (events) or WP:NASTRO. Was there a previous discussion somewhere? Option 4 is confusing - notability guidelines cannot overrule WP:GNG, they only supplement it and provide consistency. If a given topic doesn't generally pass GNG, it shouldn't be listed as generally notable on a guideline page. On option 3, I don't see how this would produce any difference in outcome from option 4 - the necessary additional information would have to come from reliable sources, which would cause the event to pass GNG anyway. Option 2 is arbitrary, unhelpful, and there's no reason to think it would fit with GNG. None of the options propose wording to add to any guideline. Unless I'm missing something, option 4 is already the rule and just needs to be enforced. Modest Genius ^talk 12:50, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
  • The second part is much easier to consider. Redirecting is much better than a blank deleted page. Saros cycles are obscure and unlikely to be understood by general readers, so redirecting there would be unhelpful. It's far more likely that readers will be interested in other eclipses that occurred around the same time, not related by some multiple of orbit numbers. Option B is the clear winner here. Modest Genius ^talk 12:50, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
• 4 and B because GNG matters. I know some people want to discount GNG but it is a core guideline. And redirect is appropriate in this instance to help the reader navigate to the appropriate main article. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 02:53, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: It's worth noting that Solar eclipse of May 22, 1724, the specific example given of an obviously worthless non-notable eclipse article, had five book and journal sources (including journal articles specifically about that eclipse), which I was able to find in a couple minutes of dead-simple WP:BEFORE searching. Like I've said at the AfDs for the last couple, eclipses have been considered significant events of great importance and portence by basically every civilization in history -- it's pretty trivial to find sourcing for them most of the time, and I think a presumption of notability is reasonable because almost all of them are going to be written about somewhere. jp×g 15:12, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
  • @JPxG: Yeah, I think this is why special consideration is important, and I apologize for the poor example. Perhaps we should presume notability of past eclipses, because observations of them will be locked up in fairly obscure places, and hence the "range" idea. Ovinus (talk) 22:57, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
• Comment/question I initially voted to delete the one at AfD due to my incorrect memory of WP:CRYSTAL. I read it carefully, it allows for very likely events, if supported by expert analysis. Probably all eclipses meet that bar. But if we look at it like WP:GEOLAND then we could have infinite eclipse articles. Ones in the year 3000AD 4000AD etc. That seems silly. So I guess there needs to be more than that, probably they need to be notable, as per WP:GNG. Right? CT55555 (talk) 01:04, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
• 4 and B There isn't much of a point in having a separate page about an eclipse when all the known information about it is entirely predictable. Any non-predictable information would need verification, which needs reliable sources; any reliable source will necessarily be independent of the subject (it isn't like eclipses are writing articles about themselves), and thus the eclipse would satisfy WP:GNG too. So there's no reason to use any rules other than the default. Second choices are 3 and C, but I've talked myself into 4 being the best option; if only a trivial amount of information about an eclipse is known, it makes the most sense to put that on the list article rather than on a separate page, which means that the eclipse has to be redirected there (i.e. option B). --ais523 22:45, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
• 4 WP:CBALL #2 reads: Individual items from a predetermined list or a systematic pattern of names, pre-assigned to future events or discoveries, are not suitable article topics, if only generic information is known about the item. (emphasis dropped) CBALL #1 also applies to future events, with NEVENT deferring to CBALL. As for the fate of the non-notable articles, recommend B, then A for eclipses too far in the future or in the past to have a list by century, then C. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 12:07, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Are events with several deaths always notable?

Every time there's a mass casualty event, an article gets created for it. This has resulted in massive lists of events at categories including (but not limited to):

• Category:Building collapses by year
• Category:Fires by year
• Category:Industrial disasters by year
• Category:Mass murder by year
• Category:Mass shootings by year
• Category:Transport disasters by century

Most of these articles are, unsurprisingly, biased toward WP:RECENT events and events in the western world. Many of them (thousands if not more) don't meet the criteria listed for event notability or have sustained coverage beyond the time of their occurrence. A large portion of these events seem that they would be better suited for a list article, such as those at List of explosions and List of building or structure fires. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:59, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think there's a problem here. Transport disasters such as plane crashes are routinely brought to AfD and deleted. Garuda3 (talk) 15:18, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that there's not a problem. Editors seem to ignore this guideline in deletion discussions any time they find something WP:INTERESTING, which naturally gravitates toward things like disasters and tragedies. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:55, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Is there a solid way to deal with this sort of news event? I’m currently watching Wellington hostel fire and thinking that this tragedy probably won’t have major lasting impact, but it is entirely too early to tell. If we created (or kept) pages for each event that has potential for historical note we would be wasting a lot of editor time; on the other hand though, if we neglect to create and maintain the page, we risk not having solid coverage of an important event as details are forthcoming. I’ve also watched (and worked on) Auckland children bodies found in suitcases with similar thoughts in mind: thinking that at least while it exists, it should be in as good a condition as we can get it. — HTGS (talk) 05:09, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Right now the best approach is to nominate the article for deletion and hope the notability guidelines win out over the rush of WP:ITSINTERESTING/WP:ITSTRAGIC/WP:ITSINTHENEWS votes. This strategy is hit or miss. The best idea I've come up with so far, as I've touched on above, is combining all of them into a list. The topic of building fires itself is notable, but only a few individual building fires are notable. I think List of building or structure fires is a reasonable compromise, where non-notable fires can be listed so long as they are verifiable. Likewise for building collapses, rail accidents, mass murders etc. I'd be glad to hear other ideas, but regardless of the approach, this area needs major cleanup. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:45, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

"Several deaths" is not a standard for inclusion or exclusion. The standard is whether or not the event has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the topic. The study of mass casualty events is an area of legitimate research and an encyclopedia with 6.6 million articles should cover all such notable events. WP:RECENT is not a guideline. It is an essay. And even that essay says up-to-date information on breaking news events, vetted and counter-vetted by enthusiastic volunteer editors, is something that no other encyclopedia can offer. So, the solution is clear. Delete articles on mass casualty events that do not comply with the GNG and keep those that comply with the GNG. Those concerned about recentism can do as I do, and write and expand articles like 1986 San Francisco fireworks disaster and 1973 Miami Beach firebombing and Timeline of violent incidents at the United States Capitol and 2015 Waco shootout. The encyclopedia is better off with such articles than without them. Cullen328 (talk) 06:15, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that a large number of Wikipedia's mass casualty articles don't comply with notability criteria. They fail WP:SUSTAINED, and they fail WP:EVENTCRIT. For a lot of them, the sourcing is just a handful of primary source news articles that come down to "this happened at this time in this place". And nominating just one for deletion will often get pushback, because there are a lot of editors who think that "this happened and here's a few newspapers to prove it" is enough to establish notability (which is to say nothing of the editors that get morally indignant because they think disregarding an article involving deaths somehow belittles or demeans the dead). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:46, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Genuine mass casualty events are of lasting, historical significance because they are studied and analyzed for patterns and causes, and the study of such events informs efforts to prevent or reduce the incidence of such tragedies. When you make an assertion like a large number of Wikipedia's mass casualty articles don't comply with notability criteria, I think that it is incumbent on you to list a representative sample of such articles that you personally think are not notable, so that we can test the accuracy of your premise. I listed four articles that I have worked on. Do you think that any of those should be deleted, Thebiguglyalien? Will you provide a brief list of some representative mass casualty articles that you really, really think ought to be deleted? Cullen328 (talk) 07:06, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

The concept of mass casualty events is notable, but that doesn't mean every mass casualty event is notable.

Reviewing the four you linked based purely on the sources currently in the article: Timeline of violent incidents at the United States Capitol is fine because it's a valid WP:STANDALONE. 2015 Waco shootout is fine because it clearly had sustained coverage that gave in depth analysis beyond just "this happened". 1986 San Francisco fireworks disaster and 1973 Miami Beach firebombing could go either way. They both have only primary sources stating it happened and then one local news article from several years later with no sustained regional or national coverage. I could be convinced that this combination of brief-national and sustained-local coverage confers notability, but there's room for debate.

Examples of articles where I would vote to delete if additional sources were not found: 2022 Chattanooga shooting, 2022 Anyang factory fire, and 2022 Chandrapur tanker-truck crash. I haven't done a WP:BEFORE search, so it's possible these are notable, but they all provide examples of events with sourcing that fails WP:SUSTAINED and WP:EVENTCRIT. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 07:37, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

@Cullen328 I think you’re putting the cart before the horse there. If the event is studied and analyzed for patterns and causes, then there will be reliable sources that we can use to write the article. We are not in the position to create an article for the event to be studied. — HTGS (talk) 21:53, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

To the contrary, HTGS. The purpose of this encyclopedia is to provide articles about notable topics so that our readers can engage in research and study. We provide list articles and and categories precisely to facilitate the ongoing study of patterns and causes. Cullen328 (talk) 23:51, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Am I misunderstanding you? Surely, the "research and study" needs to happen before the article is created. That's what makes a topic notable. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:20, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

• Seeing this in watchlist but coming from ITN, no not all events with large death tolls are inheriently notable. It depends on what impact the event actually has, and to that end, how much that event is documented. We have to remember that WP is not a newspaper, so not every newsworthy event is necessarily notable. For example, tornado strikes in the US during spring and summer are not unusual, and there can be less-damaging strikes that still kill a dozen people, which is mostly chalked up to acts of God. Floods that take out 100s of people in the far east during typhoon season are similar. These events can be documented on "Lists of <X> in <Year>", but to think there needs to be a standalone one for each case is the wrong starting point. --Masem (t) 12:17, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Why?

What’s the point of NEVENT? If an event happens, and the details are all V by RS, why does it need to have a lasting impact? It’s not like there are space concerns… Events are commonly deleted at AfD even though all the information is true and will probably be helpful to someone. BhamBoi (talk) 16:27, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Here's an event for you: Cody Boy Wins in Spelling Bee. It's the first story on the front page of this newspaper. It's verifiable, and it's a reliable source. If NEVENT is thrown out, then I can create an article for Ben Newcomer's 1923 Park County, Wyoming, spelling bee victory. And just wait until I get to the story directly below it about some people moving turkeys. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:54, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Quick opinion on this pageant

Moved to WP:VPM

Updating event notability guidelines

Based on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2022 Philadelphia shooting, I would like to open a broader discussion on what is consensus for inclusion of these sorts of subjects going forward. Currently the guidelines (such as for WP:EVENT and WP:NOTNEWS) are not clear enough and need updating in my opinion, which is why discussions are often split and no consensus was the result in that case. As I wrote in that AFD, WP:NCRIME in particular is very generic currently and offers minimal help, but crimes are certainly subjects of encyclopedic interest so this should be clarified.

My suggestion was that we define a clearer threshold and then merge articles below it to appropriate list or summary pages, and we could additionally move articles which no longer qualify here to Wikinews with cross-wiki links to preserve them. As long as the material lives somewhere on Wiki, that would be sufficient in my opinion and would have the positive side effects of driving more activity to Wikinews and improving cross-project work.

Not sure a formal RFC is needed at this point, but just want to invite any comments from others. Thoughts? - Indefensible (talk) 16:22, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Indefensible, as the nominator of that AfD, I plan on starting an RfC if no one else comes up with a solution soon. There was a previous discussion about this in July, but it went stale without action. The best idea I have right now is an RfC to determine whether news coverage counts toward GNG, but I don't know what the specific wording would be. To me, it's obvious that there shouldn't be articles based purely (or even mostly) on news coverage of the sequence of events. I tried to start an RFCBEFORE a few days ago, but it hasn't gathered much interest either. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:17, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

I think there just isn't a big enough realisation that news reports are WP:PRIMARY and that we shouldn't have articles that are cited only to primary sources. FOARP (talk) 16:23, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

In any AfD about an event, there's always someone (usually several someones) to come along and confidently, incorrectly assert that breaking news coverage is a secondary source. I've explained that news coverage is a primary source, I've linked to WP:PRIMARYNEWS and WP:RSBREAKING, and I've even provided sources confirming that academia considers it a primary source. Even after that I've still been told I was wrong or to "agree to disagree". Like, where do these people come from? And why are they still allowed to participate at AfD if they're just going to blatantly ignore both reliable sources and our own policies? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:45, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Please send a ping when you do start the RFC. On another note, I did try starting a Wikinews article, but was not very successful. - Indefensible (talk) 15:55, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

@Indefensible I would suggest starting an RFC at this point, it is clearly a big issue. Preferably in the village pump. 71.239.86.150 (talk) 23:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)