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Proposal: Remove "Routine restaurant reviews" from excluded coverage

In June 2011, a line excluded "routine restaurant reviews" was added to excluded coverage. This was apparently doen without any discussion here. The only discussion on the topic I found, a VPP proposal from August 2010 was voted down rather convincingly.

I suppose the intent of the line is to exclude indiscriminate reviews from a local publication that covers all area business. If that is the case, then the line is totally unnecessary as people regularly discount such coverage regardless of the subject. If that is not the intent, then the lien doesn't reflect consensus or make much sense. In practice, reviews are regularly used to establish notability of books, music, movies, computer software, video games, hardware, automobiles, electronics, wine, etc. There is nothing about restaurants that should make them any different. A small town newspaper might indiscriminately review all restaurants, but even if they do, that is only one source (and likely to be discounted by normal "local coverage only" arguments anyway) and insufficient to establish notability. It is certainly not true that big city newspapers do this, nor is it true that travel guides do so - they may list most restaurants, but a list entry never establishes notability. Multiple in-depth reviews by professional critics should establish notability, and in practice do. As such, the confusing line added without discussion should be removed. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:01, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I think this came from a discussion of the New York Times metro section, which certainly does routinely review restaurants as though it were a local paper.

Regardless, an addition to a highly-watched page that has stood over 3 years can be regarded as consensus.

As for your substantive argument, the line is introduced by "such as:". It is an example to demonstrate how the 'trivial coverage' criterion is applied by editors in practice.

Is there a particular AfD or other discussion where the 'routine restaurant reviews' line has been confusing or caused an unnecessary dispute?

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 18:44, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

There was no talk page talk in the archive around the time it was added - if it was the result of a discussion it wasn't here... It came up in a non-restaurant AfD in an attempt to say any product review of any kind doesn't confer notability. If it supposed to mean "local reviews" it should say "Local restaurant reviews" (but again, local coverage is already excluded elsewhere in the guideline). I don't know what a "routine" review is and I doubt anyone else does either. Is there any paper that reviews every restaurant every X months (or at open, etc,), because that is what routine would actually mean. If the publication is choosing which restaurants to review (and which to not review) then it isn't routine.

Again, I'm not saying every restaurant review confers notability (just as every X review doesn't necessarily), I just fail to see how the line is an anyway helpful. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:57, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Did you read this yet, which removed the line briefly, and then ended up leaving it there? Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)/Archive 9#I'm curious why routine restaurant reviews is included there with the rest.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 19:30, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I hadn't seen it, thanks. The irony here is it was restored because "there was no consensus to remove it", when there was not actually any consensus to add it in the first place (as near as I can tell) and that discussion, unlike this one, was not far removed from the addition. The participants in the linked discussion mostly agreed with what I am saying - the distinction of what and what not is routine is non-trivial and needs (at minimum) explanation. I would say the discussion was definitely "no consensus" for or against the line. I realize it has been in place for many years, but if it doesn't reflect actual AfD discussions, then it doesn't belong. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:01, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

To my opinion the exclusion is sensible. Those reviews are seldom helpful for determining notability of a restaurant and will bring articles far too close to the point of advertising (just as signature dishes). A lot of less experienced editors will likely see a load of reviews as load of non-trivial media coverage, leading to too many articles coming in only to be send to AfD. The Banner talk 19:45, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I doubt any restaurant with "loads of reviews" (in RS, not Yelp of course) is non-notable. For that to happen, some of the reviews would certainly be non-local. Nor can I imagine such an article actually being deleted at AfD. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:13, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I think ThaddeusB has a point here. I never noticed the line before... but now that I think about it, I agree that the word "routine" is problematic. In the other examples within the section, word "routine" is used in the context of "short announcements" containing trivial information (announcements of opening and closing hours, for example). In that context one might assume that a "routine review" would be some sort of similar announcement (perhaps something along the lines of: "The special at Joe's Italian Bistro this week will be Chicken Parmigiano... it's delicious!") I don't think that is what was intended when the line was added. So... I think we need to explore what really was intended, and figure out how to phrase it better. Blueboar (talk) 19:47, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree. To quote Diego Moya from the discussion linked above by Hroðulf: Reading WP:Routine makes it clear that it only applies to sources that are mostly based on raw data (sports news and results, logs of events), tied to commercial venues (film premiers and press conferences) or of industry-wide recognized low or trivial quality and verifiability (tabloids and gossip), i.e. ways to avoid Wikipedia:INDISCRIMINATE data dumps. Critical reviews on the other hand are supposed to include a critical assessment on the merits of the restaurant that is to be conducted in the most objective way. This is why reviews are regularly used through Wikipedia to create articles for books, films, music and artists; I find no reason why restaurant reviews should be different. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:01, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Your argument is an excellent one for excluding most local restaurant reviews. Those reviews are "of industry-wide recognized low or trivial quality". The few specialists in the area are not impressed by the restaurant reviews that Hometown Herald runs every Thursday. In some cases, the motivation is local boosterism. In others, it may be little more than a tax dodge, so the editor can go out to eat and call it a business expense.

Also, WP:Routine includes obits and wedding announcements in the list, and routine restaurant reviews are often comparable in quality. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:50, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

• Rather than removing, perhaps what we should do is rewrite. The section in question is supposed to concentrate on "depth of coverage" and how it does and does not establish notability... so let's discuss what "depth of coverage" means in the context of a restaurant.

To get us started, Consider the following scenario: Say a major media outlet such as the NYT carries an article (in its food section) about "The top 10 pizza parlors in the City"... where it gives one or two short paragraphs to each of the restaurants it discusses. I would question the depth of coverage in such a scenario... the coverage (even for the #1 ranked pizza parlor) is far to skimpy ... Indeed, I would hesitate to use the word "review" for such an article. Blueboar (talk) 22:29, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree that rewriting would be equally acceptable. Indeed the section in general tends to be misapplied. Most of the examples are clear enough, but, for example, the merger line is often applied to all stories about mergers even though it explicitly says "brief". Thankfully, since it does say "brief" one can simply point that the coverage in question is not brief and then (in theory) the delete !vote will be discounted by the closing admin.

As to restaurants, I question whether it is really necessary to list it as an example. I looked at every restaurant AfD in the past three months (may have missed a few since I had to guess based on the AfD name in the food delsort) and didn't see one that hinged on the quality of the reviews one way or the other. But, if it is going to be mentioned a different (clearer) word than routine should be used. Since the section in question is about depth of coverage, as opposed to quality, perhaps "brief" would be the right word. I certainly agree with your point that one paragraph in a "places to eat" column does not confer notability. The key is probably whether or not the review offers critical analysis of the food or just lists what the restaurant serves, but I'm not sure how to capture that idea in a few words. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:21, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

this tends to be a matter of judgement. The argument "only one review, so it still won't be notable" doesn't work in metropolitan areas, where there are multiple local papers covering the same territory. to take NYC. At one extreme, the various neighborhood editions of the advertising-supported but respectable The Brooklyn Paper will review any restaurant at all in the neighborhood in a one-paragraph write up. They will give a full-column write up with a picture to selected ones, which seem to be either popular, or interesting, or known to the editors,or presumably when convinced by their PR agent. The first ones are obviously indiscriminate--for the second, it could be argued either way. The New Yorker reviews one restaurant and one bar a week. They;re critical and knowledgable reviews, and I think it reasonable that there should at any one times be about 100 or 200 notable restaurants in NYC (Permanent notability isn the WP sense is a problem, because their average lifetime lifetime is rather short)--notable in the sense that someone outside the city might want to know about them. The NYT had sone various things at different times: when they published regional editions, I've argued that the LI reviews or the NJ reviews did not show notability. New York also does restaurant reviews, which are trendier and less substantial than the New Yorker, and where I doubt they would by themselves show notability. A restaurant reviews in all 3 sources would be notable.

Perhaps the permanence aspect is relevant, considering this is an encyclopedia. Would the restaurant get enough notice in popular culture and general knowledge that anyone would care about it 10 or 20 years later--but that , in restaurant terms, equals famous, not notable. "Routine" is a word with many interpretations, and can be interpreted to suit whatever it is that you want to do, short of truly being a directory and including absolutely everything. I'd suggest leaving the text as it is; it's held up for a few years, and our decisions seem to make sense as a pattern. DGG ( talk ) 07:38, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Your last sentence is rather weird - if the sentence can mean whatever you want it to mean, how does that equate with it should stay? If it doesn't provide any meaningful guidance to someone inexperienced in the area, it doesn't make sense to have it there. It should either to clarified to reflect what actually happens or removed (in which case editors would remain free to evaluate various reviews as they saw fit in individual AfDs). --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:21, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with keeping the exclusion. If we remove it, almost every restaurant in the world could make some claim of notability. I don't see that as helping the encyclopedia at all. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:13, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

It makes sense as an exclusion to me. The problem is that not only local newspapers but national ones have reviews. E.g. The Guardian, once of Manchester but now in London, routinely reviews mostly London restaurants. Without this exclusion it would in theory make every restaurant in London notable as it eventually got mentioned in The Guardian (or some other national newspaper with similar coverage). But The Guardian is only national in its news coverage, it's very local in its restaurant coverage.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:33, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Keep; and enforce: Every town that has a daily paper has reviews once or twice a week; alternative newsweeklies, another 40-60 or so; local slick magazines, one-three a month. So even a mid-sized city like Milwaukee could show you 100-200 longish reviews a month. Much as I love this town, there are simply not that many notable restaurants here. This language is vital, and by my reading "routine" includes, "our restaurant critic does a review this week because that's what we do on Thursdays, and this is the one he/she picked": rote reviews, even if several paragraphs long, without any substantial claim to notability on a global scale or evidence of same. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:02, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

• Delete per ThaddeusB. The word "routine" does not seem to offer useful guidance. I don't think reviews should be excluded only because they are a regular feature ("that's what we do on Thursdays"). That says nothing about the proportion of all restaurants reviewed, the selection criteria, or quality of the reviews (including objectivity and, indeed, depth). In any event, "routine" doesn't belong in a section on depth of coverage because it has nothing to do with depth. We might want to replace "routine" with "brief", "simple", "mere mention" etc throughout CORPDEPTH. I looked at the link for the Guardian and couldn't see any words on that web page to the effect that they review all London restaurants. The argument that if all restaurants are reviewed then we can't accept the fact of review as evidence of notability might be erroneous. If (and it might be a big if) that was true, it might actually indicate that all restaurants are notable. We certainly don't require notability on a global scale. We normally accept national topics and often sub national ones. As for "an addition to a highly-watched page that has stood over 3 years can be regarded as consensus", I disagree. Just because a page is on watchlists doesn't mean that anyone is watching. James500 (talk) 18:31, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
• Change. I think professional reviews, are valid sources that help establish a product (or company's) notability. What may be worth specifying is that what matters is whether the review is a RS or not. A newspaper review is ok, but a Yelp/Amazon/Google one, not. I'd therefore change it to "reviews published in non-RS". --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:09, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
• Remove it - the claims that nearly every restaurant in the world would meet WP:N if we didn't exclude most reliable sources on the topic is patently silly. Things that get routine coverage get it because they're notable, but the routine coverage covers a smaller segment than what's notable - e.g., sports games routinely get covered, but the team is notable, so news contains routine updates. Weather is like this, as well. Regular coverage isn't routine - it's just a newspaper/magazine moving through the notable cases. Number, depth, and scope aren't different for restaurants than most other things. WilyD 14:42, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
• Keep This exclusion makes sense and prevents articles only based on reviews. The Banner talk 20:44, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
• Rewrite; I would definitely agree that a single review (or several reviews from a single source) is no proof of notability. However, a restaurant that has several reviews coming from several different sources is more likely to be notable. bd2412 T 18:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
• Delete Reviews of restaurants tend to be the same as reviews of books, movies, games and the like; there are specialist critics and the results are commonly published in mainstream major media. There seems to be no logical or objective reason to exclude them when we continue use other types of review. The clause therefore violates WP:NPOV and should be stricken. Andrew D. (talk) 16:34, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Andrew, I believe that something written by a specialist critic would not count as "routine reviews". This line is specifically about "routine reviews", not about significant ones. The question is more like "if a journalist with no particular skill or knowledge writes a short review of a randomly selected local restaurant every Wednesday, including fast food, should that count towards notability, or should only non-routine reviews, written by actual experts, matter?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:59, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
    • The phrase "routine reviews" is useless. For example, consider Fay Maschler as I happened to read an extensive profile of her recently and so plan to expand her stub. She is a restaurant critic and so writing such reviews is her routine. She got the position as the prize in a contest and has been doing it for 43 years which seems to be a mix of luck, skill and good connections. The point is that, by making such reviews as a regular routine, she thereby gained expertise and authority. The same sort of considerations will apply to reviewers of computer games or movies who will typically be journalists of no special merit initially but who will likewise gain expertise and authority as they review a stream of similar products and so learn to discriminate between them. I'm not seeing any neutral test which enables us to distinguish reviews of restaurants from reviews of other things such as movies and games. The idea seems to be to construct a special hoop for restaurants to jump through which is not applied to other types of topic. They are being set up to fail because the nay-sayers don't like articles about restaurants (but they do like articles about computer games). This is systemic bias contrary to our core policy of WP:NPOV and so is unacceptable. Andrew D. (talk) 07:20, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
• Keep These local routine reviews are generally done by the restaurant critic of the local paper that the restaurant serves, and alone is not indication of notability of the scale needed for WP. We do want to see more than local coverage. It is likely more necessary for restuarants and other local businesses than other areas as we don't have explicit guidance on the use of local sources for a topic anywhere else in the notability guidelines, and these type of places need it moreso than anywhere else. The comparison to movies, etc. is not necessary the same thing since these are released to a much wider consumer base and so routine reviews these are acceptable since they are usually done by national or regional publications. --MASEM (t) 03:09, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

• @Masem: Following your argument, should the text be changed to "local restaurant reviews" just to be clear? Z22 (talk) 16:32, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

• I would possibly go to say "local routine restaurant reviews" (which generally are the one-paragraph summations that appear in the newpaper's weekly insert). I have seen local papers given a full page review, going into details of the concept of the menu, etc. which are better sources but are also not as routine. --MASEM (t) 16:36, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

• Keep I think restaurants are different from some other types of entities. Thaddeus writes "In practice, reviews are regularly used to establish notability of books, music, movies, computer software, video games, hardware, automobiles, electronics, wine, etc. There is nothing about restaurants that should make them any different." But restaurants are different. Food is a product that is inconsistent. The other products mentioned tend to be more consistent over time. A book does not change significantly with each printing. Restaurant reviews are reflective of non-representative experiences much more so than book reviews, therefore restaurant reviews should be assigned less weight as concerns establishing notability for the restaurant. Bus stop (talk) 17:32, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Depth of coverage

I was recently thrown a curve by the stricture "The depth of coverage by the source must be considered. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability." I thought that this meant that, for example, uh, we have a single source about an organization that makes a comment on the organization — describes it in a somewhat sketchy way, or makes an insubstantial reference to it — so now we need some more independent sources which also refer to the organization in an equally insubstantial way, and if we have enough of those references all told, then the organization is deemed Notable. Note that none of the citations are "trivial or incidental" (they all connect the organization to the subject of the news article in a decidedly non-trivial manner). If this is not the case, and if we do indeed limit Notability to an organization that "has been the subject of significant coverage in secondary sources," then why do we have this paragraph here at all? Specifically, I wrote an article about a law firm that had handled numerous significant legal cases, some of them quite seminal, and this firm was referred to by multiple sources in a non-trivial way (the cases were handled by this firm). The article was deleted for failing Notability. I am still confused by the meaning of this paragraph, and I believe I might not be the only editor so puzzled. Can we rephrase this paragraph so it is eminently clear as to what it means? Sincerely, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 19:06, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Late reply to BeenAroundAWhile:

If we were trying to describe this "rule" in plain English, we'd say something like this: "It's not good enough to just get your name mentioned in the paper, or to get quoted a couple of times. You have to actually have enough independent information about the organization or product to really write a bona fide encyclopedia article with (only) those sources. You could get that information from one or two really long sources, or you could get that information from a dozen short ones that say different things about the subject, but you've got to be able to get enough information to write a real article, and without using the organization's own sources."

WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:30, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

"...a dozen short ones that say different things about the subject..." That is the key bit. If they all say the same thing, or ever-so-slight-variations thereupon, then you still have a wiki-notability problem, see WP:109PAPERS. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 19:26, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Rename this policy to Wikipedia:Notability (organizations)

This is just my minor annoyance as a sociologist, but companies are organizations, and the current name of this policy is weird, just as if we were to say "Notability (organizations and NGOs)" or "Notability (organizations and governmental agencies)" and so on. I know that most of the time we deal with companies (for profit businesses), but I don't think we need anything but a redirect for that. Oh, and company is in fact a more specific concept that for-profit business, so it's not like we even cover that topic... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:09, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Local vs. regional media

The guideline has one part that reads "Evidence of significant coverage by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability." In that, it has a link to the Newspaper#Local or regional. In there, the description is that "local newspaper serves a region such as a city, or part of a large city." Note that the description is unsourced. Just want to get some thoughts from the people who are more familiar with the guideline and its history. Was that the correct intention of the guideline to say that local means a city, or part of a large city? Or there is a better description of what are the differences between local and regional in term of media specifically for this part of the guideline. Thank for your help. Z22 (talk) 23:50, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

I can provide a few examples from where I live that may illustrate the concept. The San Francisco Bay Area where I live consists of three major cities, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. It has dozens of medium sized cities, such as Berkeley, Hayward, Sunnyvale, Richmond, Fremont, San Rafael, Santa Rosa, Vallejo, Napa and so on. These are cities with roughly 100,000 people, more or less. The major regional newspapers are the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News. These papers cover news throughout the whole Bay Area, and have bureaus in Sacramento and Los Angeles as well. They are respected and widely read throughout Northern California, especially the Chronicle. Most of the medium sized cities have local daily papers but their independent reporting is restricted to their home city and smaller surrounding suburbs. The papers published closest to where I live, the Napa Valley Register and the Vallejo Times Herald, do a good job covering local news but very few people in San Francisco or San Jose pay much attention at all to them, or are even aware of their existence. They are simply not regional papers. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:14, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

This means the scope of the "regional" papers have nothing to do with the official regions of the United States? Is there such thing as papers that cover each region of the United States? They (regional media and regions of the US) are totally different concepts, right? Z22 (talk) 00:23, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the closest you'd get to that would be newspapers which are circulated and read nationally, such as USA Today, WaPo, NYT, WSJ, etc. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 09:05, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

As that list makes clear, there are many ways to define "region" in the U.S. and I assume other countries as well. The four official regions, Northeast, Midwest, South and West are far too large to have established regional papers circulated throughout those entire regions. There are smaller, more appropriate regions. I think "major metropolitan area" is a better concept here. A regional paper will cover the news about and be widely circulated throughout at least an entire major metropolitan area. A local paper won't. It will have a much smaller territory in terms of original reporting and circulation. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:49, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

For the US, is it safe to say that a paper with reporting and circulation territory that covers either an entire major metropolitan area or an entire US state should be considered a regional paper? Z22 (talk) 00:59, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

This was discussed in the past; I specifically suggested defining those terms but there was no consensus for it - other opinions were to leave it vague so that we can interpret it for different countries. Anyway, I think for all countries we should consider regional (ex. state-based) sources to be fine, but local (city-based) to be too small. Exceptions of course would relate to city states (Luxemburg, etc.) through I can't even think of a single specific media that would be affected here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:07, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts, Piotrus, and for adding more of a worldwide perspective. I wish we had a clearer defintion, but one problem (at least for the U.S.) is that regional papers usually include the name of their largest city in their names, such as the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and so on. We do not want editors thinking of such papers as city-based rather than regional as in my opinion, all easily qualify as regional newspapers in the U.S. I am unsure whether statewide papers in low population states like North Dakota or geographically tiny states like Rhode Island would qualify. In my mind, a look at List of Metropolitan Statistical Areas is useful. The top 50 or so, with populations of one million or more, would qualify. I would make an exception for Honolulu because of geographic isolation, even though it is a bit smaller. I am just putting forward the type of criteria I use to make such evaluations, rather than describing any established consensus. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:39, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I know one local media in US: the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Now, what makes it different from Chicago Tribune or NYT? Granted, name is not a good guide here. I thought we would have a helpful category, but no luck here. I thought circulation numbers would be significantly different, but they aren't. Sigh. Frankly, maybe we are being too restrictive here. After all, the Pitt's Gazette is Pulitzer-winning, too. The intent, I think, of us cautioning against local media is to avoid having a source of, let's say, Ames Tribune, The Anniston Star or Hometown Journal (itself an article of dubious notability) quality be used as a sufficient source for notability requirements. Now, how can we clearly distinguish between those groups? The circulation numbers, perhaps, but the small newspapers do not report them... we could try do agree on a cut-off rate, let's say 30,000 or 50,000, and call everything < that number (or with no number) too local (TOOLOCAL?) for us to consider a sufficient source. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:07, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

The Pittsburgh metropolitan area has a population of about 2.3 million people and is 23rd on the list of Metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. In my opinion, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette is the best known newspaper there and qualifies as a regional paper. The main difference with the Chicago Tribune is population. Chicago is #3 in U.S. population. As for the New York Times, it is population, circulation and reputation. That newspaper circulates nationwide, is printed regionally across the country, and has an excellent (though far from perfect) reputation among literate people in the U.S. There may be one or two old school newsstands that sell the Pittsburg Post-Gazette in San Francisco, but the New York Times is sold in hundreds of locations there. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:26, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I do not think that raw circulation numbers are an adequate indicator. Some gossipy unreliable tabloids have higher circulations than their more serious regional competitors, and the newspaper business these days is a brutal death match. And the vastly different populations of the various regions have to be taken into account, which affects circulation potential. I will accept Alaska's best papers, like the Alaska Dispatch News, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and Juneau Empire as regional newspapers, though they have lower circulation than many other newspapers which is logical in a low population state. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:39, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Um, "best" newspapers, or do you mean most widely circulated? I live in Fairbanks and there's a reason why the FDNM is known as the Daily News-Menace, Daily News-Mindless, Daily News-Minus, etc. Alaska has been treated as an underpopulated, far-off corner of the globe that hardly matters so many times by Wikipedians, it offers a whole new twist on WP:BIAS. Speaking of which, is the previous comment in this thread the reason why Piotrus just tagged Juneau Empire with {{Notability}}? If so, was that because of Juneau's population and/or the newspaper's circulation figures? I sure hope not, because viewing the world in such black and white is why Wikipedia will never be credible to people who don't view the world that way. The Empire traces its history to 1912, though the masthead attached to this clipping indicates that the paper formerly traced its lineage to the 1880s. It's been more-or-less the newspaper of record for the activities of the territorial and state governments that entire time. Walter Eli Clark and John Weir Troy were both appointed territorial governor largely on account of the stature which came from being the newspaper's publisher (the Troy family owned the paper for over four decades). It was the first Alaskan acquisition of Morris Communications, which later went on to acquire other long-standing media institutions in Alaska such as Alaska magazine, The Milepost and KFQD. In short, how do numbers justify your argument in light of these facts? RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 09:05, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I think we may be conflating two distinct things here: a) the Notability of the media outlet itself (ie should we have an article about the outlet) and b) using that outlet to establish the notability of other things (should we have an article about an organization mentioned in the outlet). Local media outlets can be notable... but that does not mean everything covered by the local outlet is notable. Blueboar (talk) 11:37, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

The reason I asked for this clarification is that in the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Heritage Middle School (2nd nomination), there is a strong believe that the regional media should covers an entire regions of the US. The media that covers an entire US state would only count as local. The case in point is The Star-Ledger which has the reporting and circulation territory of the entire state with total population of 8.9 million people (larger than Greater San Francisco Bay Area). For some unknown reasons, the reviewers in that AfD seems to pull this guideline into the extreme. Any thought on the idea that the coverage for 8.9 million people should still be local media? Z22 (talk) 00:58, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

There is a very strong working consensus that accredited, degree awarding high schools, colleges and universities are notable and should be covered in a freestanding article. On the other hand, most elementary and middle schools are best covered in a school district or locality article. Those of unique historical or architectural significance are exceptions. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:16, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm okay with your explanation if there is a working consensus about only unique historical or architectural significance are exceptions. What I'm confused about is the explanation that The Star-Ledger that covers an area of 8.9 million people and almost 9,000 sq mi, about the same size in area and population as the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, is somehow conveniently considered to be a local media. Z22 (talk) 05:47, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

A bluelinked publisher with millions of readers is WP:RS, as long as they have an editorial-oversight of some sort (aka not The Onion) and a selectivity of some sort (aka not wordpress.com). The argument was not backed by wiki-policy aka WP:PAG, in other words. Agree with Cullen though, that unless the middle school is *extremely* famous they tend to get merged into a subsection of the article about the city, not left standalone. p.s. And if you had said "nj.com" instead of Star-Ledger, and mentioned their pulitzer in 2005, you would have probably had better success; it is unquestionably not a 'local paper' as wikipedia defines such things. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:30, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Got curious, and looked deeper into this question, belatedly. The pre-redirect article on the middle-school[1] had three cites from NJ.com, but two were in the 'local' section of that otherwise-regional-class-newspaper.[2][3] The third was this,[4] a regional piece *primarily* about the republican governor and his positions on education-policy plus how members of the teacher's unions oppose the governor -- the use of the teachers from the governor's alma mater was merely to add flavor. The school itself did not receive much regional coverage, in other words: the two local-section pieces do not count towards wiki-notability, and the single regional piece was only tangentially about the school specifically, and thus only borderline-counts. Similarly, the NPR piece was *mostly* about funding cuts, across a lot of schools, and used the specific middle school in question, but could just as easily have used many other middle-schools for the same purpose.

  That's not to say these are junk-sources; they are all perfectly WP:RS, even the local ones, and they all ought to be merged into the article about the school-district, which was where the redirect-decision at the end of the AfD process points unto. Makes sense to say that Christie was an alum, and the other stuff that was backed by those sources elided from the upstream parent-article (it repeats much of the middle-school article already though). As far as counting towards wiki-notability, though, the non-local-piece by NJ.com and even the NPR piece at best make a borderline-wiki-notable case per WP:42, and even then, given the long-standing wiki-compromise that middle schools are bangmerge unless they are extremely well-sourced, methinks the up-merge followed by the redirect was correct. Anyways, could have been made clearer to User:Z22 that the problem was the nature of the specific pieces, rather than a blanket statement about the publisher NJ.com generally speaking, but the AfD outcome was a good one, and none of the participants were acting incorrectly; communication was non-ideal, but in a text-only medium like wikipedia, that is pretty much unavoidable.

  p.s. Wrote most of this comment some time ago, but forgot to click save until today. Likely nobody cares now, but just in case future readership happen along, figured I would update my comment with the more nuanced take hindsight and a deeper look created. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 10:23, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

75.108.94.227 Thanks for looking into the details. If it wasn't clear to you, I already indicated that didn't protest the outcome here. I was satisfied with other answers. However, I'm really bothered by the argument in the AfD that the Star Ledger and any type of statewide media is local, not regional media. The editor who insisted on that even made an explicit claim that statewide coverage is too small and a media has to cover an entire region of the US (e.g. North or Mid Atlantic for NJ) in order to be considered a regional media by the definition listed on this page. That was why I asked that we should clarify on this page on the term regional media. For US, it doesn't mean the covered area is larger than a state, but in fact, it really means smaller than a state but larger than local, right? If so, it should be clear to prevent editors from misunderstanding or misusing this guideline. Z22 (talk) 12:15, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Just a side note to say that I think this is the first time any editor has given an example of the definition of "regional" being a point of contention in an AFD.

In practice, "regional" means "not local", and has as much to do with the content as the size. A regional paper cares about national government activities; a local paper usually carries only local news (city, county, local businesses, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Apparently it is the new trend in AfD as of 2014/2015... when the item under discussion has plenty of sources, but you still don't like the item and want it deleted, try to argue that the sources are 1) not read by enough people 2) not geographically widespread enough 3) only apply to a specific field of inquiry 4) can otherwise be ignored. Once you've gotten rid of enough sources, pretty soon, bangdelete is the only answer. Wish I were kidding. I've seen it at least a couple other places, not counting the middle-school thing, which I didn't happen to see personally. After the orangemoody thing, the latest twist is "parts of the article were written by COI-encumbered editors" as a reason to delete the content... which is a big reason for the sudden interest in re-defining the corporate-and-organizational-notability-guidelines. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:30, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Adding a footnote

I would like to propose that we add a footnote (similar an explanation for "inclusion in lists of similar organizations") to provide examples of regional media. This is not to set the rule, but just to give some ideas so editors won't just pick some random scope of what to be called local or regional media. It could read something along the line of this:

An example of regional media is a media outlet that has reporting coverage and readership/viewership of an entire area such as: a metropolitan area, a world city, a first-level administrative division in that country, an area with population of at least 1 million people, or an isolated settlement that has no other media outlets that cover the area beyond that settlement.

Based on the comments in the above discussion, we really want to filter out some local media outlets that are specific to a given towns which will likely feature some local establishments that may not necessary be notable. The proposed footnote is structured to provide examples without being too black and white about it. For that it starts with "an example". Then it give some scenarios as people has discussed which we can breakdown to discuss here:

• A metropolitan area: It is a region of populated area that usually comprises multiple jurisdictions and municipalities. I think this is clear to be regional
• A world city: A city that is a node in the global economic system. Its activities have global impacts, so it should be clear that it is not local.
• A first-level administrative division in that country: This should be also clear that one level down from the national level should be at least called regional.
• An area with population of at least 1 million people: If an area covers a very large population, it shouldn't matter what form of government it is. Just the sheer size of number of people impacted, it can't be just local anymore. It might be debatable what that number should be.
• An isolated settlement that has no other media outlets that cover the area beyond that settlement: This is to cover that case where there may be some geographical separation to certain areas that are not practical to have media outlets to span outside of that area. If that is the case, it seems that such area can be called to be in its own region.

@Cullen328:, @Piotrus:, @RadioKAOS:, @Blueboar: Let me know what your thoughts are on establishing some form of clarity to this. Z22 (talk) 02:35, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I would be very wary of this if the goal is to open the floodgates to freestanding articles about elementary and middle schools. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:16, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Z22, I firmly endorse the outcome of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Heritage Middle School (2nd nomination). Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:26, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

This proposal would not have any impact to the outcome of that AfD or any future AfDs that are in similar situation. My point is more about what the guideline really intends to convey. If regional media is actually not acceptable to be used as a source to establish notability, then it should be removed from the guideline. Also notability is not just about what type of source it is, it has many other elements. I think even having this proposed clarification in place, it wouldn't change anything with that outcome anyway because of other elements of notability. That's why I don't think there will be a floodgate to be open with this. I am thinking more along the line of providing a clarity to this guideline so that any discussion will be more productive about other elements of notability (which are also important) than just a technical ambiguity about of whether a source is local or regional media. Z22 (talk) 05:34, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I wonder if a simpler step would be to add "statewide" to the list (i.e., "regional or statewide"). This might not be perfect, since "regional" is actually meant to be smaller than some U.S. states (as mentioned above, The San Jose Mercury News counts, even though it's probably not read much in other parts of California), but it might stop some of the problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

If adding a footnote sounds complicate, your suggestion may be a simpler alternative. At least people tend to agree on the scope of the statewide. The proposed text would be like below (changes in bold):

The source's audience must also be considered. Evidence of significant coverage by international or national, or at least regional/statewide, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional/statewide, national, or international source is necessary.

-- Z22 (talk) 14:13, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Adding a footnote isn't complicated, but they tend not to be read very much, and I have a generally conservative approach to policy writing. There are advantages to making the smallest possible change.

As nobody has objected, I have made the small change. It will take a while for editors to notice the change, but if it continues to be a problem, then please come back here and {{ping}} me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I have added a clarification ([5]). It could be better worded, I suppose, but we need to clarify the local vs regional distinction. Statewide is too US-centric, or otherwise jarring in logic (is statewide larger or smaller than regional...?). Also, since nobody objected, I've added a note on the trade journals for media with limited interest (see discussion above, which sadly did not generate as much interest as this one here). If anyone disagrees with my edits, feel free to revert, but please explain here why and ping me. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:31, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

I've adjusted it slightly. "Regional" can be larger or smaller than a state (or province), depending upon the size of the state. The San Francisco Bay area is a "region" with more people, and more reputable newspapers, than half of the Canadian provinces and five U.S. states. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:26, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not satisfied with either change. Some trade journals of national circulation are widely read and can give notability--perhaps the best known example is Women's Wear Daily Circulation limited to a US State is in most cases not wide enough to give notability--most such newspapers are actually almost entirely about and read in the principal city. DGG ( talk ) 04:44, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I would be surprised if the circulation of any statewide newspaper in the US were strictly "limited to a US State". At minimum, I would expect several subscriptions to be found in bordering states and among homesick snowbirds.

I don't think that we'll be able to provide strict rules here. The Times of Malta mostly writes about the capitol area, but it's a national newspaper. If we say that you must have a circulation of X thousand, then we'll either set the bar so low that all US statewide papers are included, or we'll set it so high that The Idaho Statesman (circ. 47,000) is included but Times of Malta (circ. 37,000) isn't. Also, why shouldn't it be? The Idaho Statesman has more subscribers and reports on an area that contains nearly four times as many people as Times of Malta. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

What we have to accept, I think, is that numbers =/= importance when it comes to geography/notability. President of the USA is much more important than President of Malta, but we accept they are both notable by definition of being a president of a sovereign state. Times of Malta is a national newspaper, and hence it is by definition a nationwide source, even if Malta has a population smaller than some cities, whose local newspapers, with their wider reach, are still local. We could, however, consider an argument that local publications are seen as sufficient if their circulation is high enough, but what would be a good number? Frankly, the circulation of national newspapers of tiny states could be a good threshold to measure that. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:22, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Would it make sense to discuss quality of trade journals in a separate sentence or paragraph? As in, we accept only trade journals which are considered significant enough to have stand-alone notability? Or which are recognized by experts in the field as being neutral and non-biased? Which again leads me to the conclusion that what we need is a list of reliable sources for all disciplines. The point, User:DGG, is not to discard Women's Wear Daily; I've never heard of it but if it is a widely respected fashion newspaper, then an article in likely satisfies our requirement. The point is to make sure that a zillion of fashion zines, pay-per-publications portals, blogs with their own domains and such don't serve as "sufficient sources" for determining whether a topic is notable or not ("this topic has an in-depth article in Children's Wear Weekly, and prove to me it's not sufficient"). The burden, IMHO, should be on the editor adding the content to be able to defend why cited sources are sufficient, not on the AfD/Prod nominator to argue why the aren't. It's an argument for the wiki system sustainability, just like WP:V states that any unreferenced content can be removed, putting a burden on the person who adds it, not on the one who deletes it, requiring it to look for sources. Of course, there is WP:BEFORE, too. Sigh. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:13, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

It might make sense to discuss trade journals separately, even though the concept is the same: local papers are a problem because their interest is too narrow; niche journals are a problem (for notability, not for reliability) because their interest is too narrow.

We accept journals even if they're not notable (also, requiring "notability" for sources is bad policy, because in practice that gets interpreted as requiring bluelinks). We don't care if they're neutral. A political rag can be very strong evidence of notability for a person; why wouldn't an equally POVish trade magazine be good evidence that people are paying attention to a business or product? If your subject is a fashion product, then a fashion magazine (some of which have stronger fact-checking departments than major dailies, by the way) is an excellent proof of notability. Pay-per-publication and self-published blogs don't count under the current rules.

The burden is on everyone: on the authors to avoid attracting attention from deletion-minded editors, on noms to not waste the whole community's time on a bad nomination, and on !voters to do their homework instead of guessing that articles about fashion or women or whatever is WP:BORING to them are not notable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:51, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

At least I think we can all agree on this, that the burden is on everybody. DGG ( talk ) 23:12, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Are trade magazines/portals acceptable?

Background reading: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-04-08/Op-ed and the discussion at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-02/Special report

As I look upon company entries, I see that a lot of them use various trade magazines as sources. This type of a medium seems to be revitalized by the net, as there are thousands of websites which are in essence digital trade magazines / portals. For a case study, the following are some examples of what I consider trade magazines from the category related to cryptocurrencies (I picked this topic almost randomly - there are hundreds other categories filled with companies with similar problems): http://bitcoinexaminer.org/, http://bitcoinist.net/, https://bitcoinmagazine.com, http://coinbrief.net/, CoinDesk, https://coinspeaker.com, https://coinreport.net, http://www.coinssource.com/, http://cointelegraph.com/, https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com, http://digitalmoneytimes.com/ , http://www.followthecoin.com/i, http://insidebitcoins.com/ ... I probably missed some. Another common source for companies in said category are finance trade mags, such as http://paymentweek.com/ or http://www.paymentssource.com/ (just listing two out of another dozen or so...), and of course they are spiced with those covering Internet start ups in general, such as Tech Crunch or VentureBeat (but I mention those just for context, let's focus on the trade mags/portals that are heavily field-specific).

Now, I have no problem with such sources being used to flesh out an article once notability is established with sources of clear reliability, just like primary sources can be used. The question however arises - is a company whose entry solely on in-depth coverage by trade magazines notable or not? Things to consider, in particular, are:

• first, how to distinguish reliable trade mags from PR-outlets which will publish a profile of a company in exchange for payment? Who but an expert in this particular field (cryptocurrencies) can tell which of those websites give reliable coverage, and which release PR promo pieces? I do not think the ones I listed above are "crooked", but honestly, I do not have much of a clue how to judge their reliability. I think it would be very easy for some of the unethical PR people to create websites like those for the generating extra buzz - and defeating our safeguards. Think about it, for a moment... given the Orangemoody's scandal, we are witnessing an escalating arms race. If such websites do not exist yet, it is probably only a matter of time before they do. And it is clear that the we lack experts for most field of businesses, and the few we have are rarely interested in AfDs. Now, let me propose a solution: we should create a whitelist of reliable trade magazines/portals. They could be reviewed at WP:RSN, for example, or a dedicated noticeboard. Until they are accepted, they should not be considered reliable. When the chips are down, how are they better than blogs? Are they really doing fact-checking, and being neutral, or are they just competing for the market share by promoting its constituent companies? Yes, I am suggesting "assume bad faith" for those sources here, but again, does anyone here thinks that Orangemoody's scandal is the worst we have seen?
• second, assuming that we agree some/most of such trade magazines are reliable, I am seriously concerned that it is pretty easy for a company in certain fields to be written about in such magazines. Now, I cannot say for certain whether the cryptocurrency market is oversaturated with trade magazines (through it looks like that to a laymen like me), but what it means is that it does not seem particularly difficult for a start-up in that sector to get one or two in-depth (several paragraphs long) coverage in one of those digital outlets. In other words, I am suspecting that given the competition/motivation in this and similar business segments, it is very easy to get noticed and written about. As such, threshold for getting coverage should, I believe, be raised.
• third, WP:AUD states that "attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation". Aren't trade magazines "media of limited interest and circulation"? If we say that a local publication is not enough, are niche trade magazines better? Here's a semi-random traditional local newspaper that wouldn't pass WP:AUD: Kurier Wileński (Polish minority provincial Lithuanian newspaper, circulation ~30,000). How is [random cryptocurrency trade mag/portal from the above list] any better? As I don't see why, I am strongly suggesting we state that trade magazines/portals are not sufficient sources for establishing notability, safe perhaps few biggest ones, each of which we should discuss and clear on an individual basis. If this seems very aggressive, well, consider the fact that the current flood of such sources is what empowers the existing CORPSPAM problem to a great extent. We have to curb it.

In summary, I think we have to draw a line between companies that get coverage in mainstream publications - The Guardian, The Economist, Wired - and those who do not. We are not Yellow Pages.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:00, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I recently asked a similar question at RSN. Jytdog replied, thanks very much, but there wasn't a wider discussion so I'm glad it's being asked here. About your hypothetical escalating arms race: it isn't hypothetical. Case in point, some guys set up a fake news site "Bangalorean Mag" (bangalorean.net) and we're pretty sure the operators of the domain were actively spamming Wikipedia with for-pay articles, using the "news site" as references to support the existence of the articles per WP:RS. They definitely understood our processes. Background at COIN archive. — Brianhe (talk) 21:10, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I think that trade-mag-type websites that seemed suspicious to editors would be disallowed on the grounds that they are "media of limited interest and circulation" (to use WP:AUD's phrase). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:43, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Trade-rags are fine, as far as they go. But some of them, at least, don't go very far. They are often of limited geographic scope (see WP:GEOSCOPE), and of interest only to specialist-readership. That said, you can say much the same thing about academic publications in loop quantum gravity, comparative hermeneutic literature, and computational robustness in the face of inconsistency. Youtube videos generally have a much larger audience, and an inherently global scope, but that doesn't make youtube count as wiki-reliable! So the size of the readership/viewership is not the key. The niche-scope of the publication, is also not a disqualifier. What matters is whether the publication is well-respected, and has a reputation for fact-checking and editorial-oversight-slash-selectivity. If they publish ANYTHING by ANYBODY, then they are like youtube. If they are reputable, aka have a good rep amongst specialists in the field of inquiry which they cover, then they are like the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy: wiki-reliable, no question about it. So in a nutshell, some trade-rags are household names like PC Magazine, and some are paid-advertorials-only like PR Newswire, but most are somewhere in between, and you have to judge them on a case-by-case basis to see whether there is any wiki-reliability there, using WP:RSN if need be. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:11, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

• As someone who spends time at AfC, my question is: are trade journals ALONE sufficient for notability? I would prefer the answer to be NO. I would like for companies to have to show a broader area of influence than a trade niche. For very specialized trades, trade journals report on every product, corprate officer change, merger, etc. This may be notable to the members of the trade, but I don't see this rising to notability for WP. I would like to require that notability requires coverage in more general press. LaMona (talk) 18:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• I understand the desire for a clear cut "rule" on this, but unfortunately, the actual answer is "It Depends". ... because not all trade journals are the same (just as not all academic journals are the same).

Since the guideline deals with generalities, the best we can say is: the wider a journal's circulation (the "quantity" factor), and the more respected it is by those who know the topic (the "quality" factor)... the more it establishes notability. The fact that a company is featured in journal X may well establish notability... the fact that it is featured in journal Y may not. Blueboar (talk) 22:01, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I like User:Blueboar's rule of thumb, and I think it *should* be possible to create (over a period of time) a list of reliable and unreliable trade magazines. We have such lists for several WikiProjects; I think we should try to link them all together and build it up for more content areas. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:17, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Trade magazines and portals are certainly acceptable evidence of notability if they are independent reliable and secondary, which they can be. WP:AUD is garbage and should be ripped out of this guideline for the reasons that have been explained many times on this page. James500 (talk) 01:46, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

On the requirement for coverage by numerous sources

Now, User:LaMona brought another valid point: even if we consider the source reliable, is coverage in a narrow-audience outlet sufficient? This of course also touches on sources beyond trade magazines; ex. is coverage solely in one quality academic journal, or one book, sufficient? Here I think we require numerous, so 2+ sources. Would this be good rule of thumb? (And: would two articles in different edition of the same source suffice)? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:17, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

The problem with this is that, as mentioned somewhere above, there are now myriad web sites for every possible niche. I recently reviewed a travel-related article, and the number of "how to travel better/more cheaply" sites out there is astonishing. They all exist to sell advertising, of course, and they all report the same info based on the same press releases. -So it is easy to get more than one reference. I can often knock them out of consideration because they have no visible editorial policy, but that's not always the case. In a sense, these industry "suckers" are similar to the non-reputable academic online journals that are popping up. This is why I would like to require a non-industry source - that would eliminate a lot of average companies from meeting wp:corp. LaMona (talk) 15:55, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

We always require "multiple" sources. "Multiple" means "more than one". Specifically, we require that at least two "independent" (of each other, as well as of the subject) sources exist (even if they are not cited), so three articles in the same newspaper count as an insufficient "one source" for this calculation, but one article each in two different newspapers counts as "multiple". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Is this clarification of independent present in the guideline? If not, I'd say let's make this explicit. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:45, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes. See footnote #2, which is linked in both of the main statements about the requirement for "multiple" sources. If memory serves, the footnote was copied straight from WP:N. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:42, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

@LaMona: the only caution there is that there reputable niche sources as well. Such is the case in any field or topic. For example I have a copy of a magazine that deals with old-style printing presses and printing shops in a particular region, which has been in publication for around 100 years, and contains extremely well researched articles. Yet it would not qualify as a reliable source by your definition. Sbwoodside (talk) 04:30, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Any absolute requirement for multiple sources serves no purpose, is inconsistent with GNG, and should be removed. A single source of sufficiently high quality satisfies GNG by the express words of N. ORG should not be different. James500 (talk) 01:53, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Depth of coverage -- funding reports

I propose to add to the Depth of Coverage section, a bullet point (as an example of trivial coverage):

• Routine coverage of pre-IPO funding.

Thoughts? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:15, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

• I do not like the wording "Routine coverage of pre-IPO funding" because "routine" is too imprecise. This wording could lead editors to dismiss coverage of pre-IPO funding that provides "deep coverage", which is defined at Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Depth of coverage as "extend[ing] well beyond routine announcements and mak[ing] it possible to write more than a very brief, incomplete stub about an organization" (my bolding).

  Articles about pre-IPO funding can be detailed enough to "mak[e] it possible to write more than a very brief, incomplete stub" about an organization.

  I like the wording of two other examples in the section, "brief announcements of mergers or sales of part of the business" and "simple statements that a product line is being sold, changed, or discontinued". So I would not be opposed to adding "brief announcement of pre-IPO funding" or "simple statements about pre-IPO funding" to the section.

  Cunard (talk) 21:14, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

• Can you give us a few examples of sources that you believe should not indicate that the world is paying any (significant) attention to this company? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:10, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

• Agree RoySmith DGG, Cunard WhatamIdoing I independently proposed this Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Circle_(company) before checking here (note the article in that AfD may or may not stand on it's own merits, it's the principle). The principle of having enough DEPTH of useful info for writing an article on a notable subject. We have a growing problem with startup articles based on funding RS - money being transferred from one account to another is not notable in itself. If there's depth on what the company does, yes. Agree with principle, wording as above, or
• "Announcements of funding rounds of the business" Widefox; talk 00:05, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

"funding rounds" is too strong. Information about major stock funding or purchases or mergers and the like of major businessesare a key part of business history. I'm not sure of how to word it precisely, but possibly before the ipo, as suggested, would be a good start DGG ( talk ) 05:06, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Of major businesses yes, but when there's no other sources.. ? Is it desirable to limit to the pre-IPO subset of all companies? Widefox; talk 18:39, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose, as not actually routine. And also as a clear-cut violation of WP:V and non-wiki-kosher redefinition of WP:N, on top of that. Routine coverage: startup company is incorporated in the state of delaware, and the state of delaware publishes documents related to this event, on a governmental website. *Every* company does this, see WP:NOTDIR, except for doing business as concerns (e.g. Joe Smith dba Smith Plumbing And Gutter-Cleaning). Not only does Smith Plumbing not have a listing with the state of delaware, since they are not actually incorporated, they don't have pre-IPO funding rounds being reported in business journals. The correct conclusion is not that funding-rounds and venture capital are routine.

  Quite the opposite: incorporation is routine, the startup company pays the state of delaware a fee, and then in return, gets an official legal listing on the governmental website. Venture capital is the opposite situation: famous investors pay the startup company millions of dollars, to own part of their stock (just because the company is still privately-held does not mean they don't have stock!) and often to possess seats on the board of directors. Going public is what happened to Microsoft in 1986, as a case in point. They were worthy of a wikipedia article under WP:GNG-as-presently-written around 1976, as the authors of Altair BASIC, Apple BASIC, and Atari BASIC, amongst other things. Microsoft was a *famous* company by 1981/1982, for coming out with Microsoft DOS for the wildly-successful IBM PC. They first released their most well-known product, Microsoft Word, in 1983. Waiting until after their IPO, would have meant ignoring hundreds and hundreds of WP:SOURCES about 'routine' product releases, and about 'routine' business deals, and about 'routine' investments, and so on. Saying that Microsoft was 'routine' from 1975 through 1985, and only became 'encyclopedic' after their IPO in 1986+ is so wrong-headed I'm tempted to invoke the not even wrong clause.

  If the trade-rags and the VC-rags report on it, that is out clue that it (whatever "it" might be in any given situation) is non-routine. Wikipedia is not the place where wikipedians decide what we personally think is important, and delete everything we disagree with. Wikipedia is the place where we neutrally reflect what the sources actually say, and that means, the business press aka trade-rags and investing-news, as well as the popular press, as well as all the other WP:SOURCES. Saying that some subtypes of sources ("business magazines") are not really WP:RS, or even worse, that some types of topics (news of investment-rounds) are not really all that notable, is a Very Bad Precedent.^TM That said, if we do set such a precedent, I'm immediately bangvoting we next delete all the articles about television shows. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 19:22, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I wonder whether you've actually understood this statement. The story here is that Microsoft would indeed have been notable no later than 1981—but because they did interesting things, and not solely because they got a press release about their pre-IPO funding printed in a newspaper! If they had zero media attention for their interesting work, and the only sources were news stories saying "That Gates guy got another investor last quarter", then it would not be notable. Or, to put it another way, there are tens of thousands of venture capitalists investing in hundreds of thousands of businesses each year. A news story saying that Venture Charlie invested in Local Firm is everyday business, not a special thing. It is simply not the case that every single venture-backed business is notable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:50, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

• User:DGG below suggested a following wording for this page, which I think is highly relevant here: " Articles on new organizations with sources referring only to their initial or early financing or the motivations of their founders are not included in Wikipedia." I strongly agree that receiving some financing is routine for start ups, and we should note this is not sufficient to help establish a company's notability. I'll also note that we see to have a consensus (outside IP's objection) to add something along those lines to the guideline. Ping User:WhatamIdoing, User:Widefox, User:RoySmith, User:Cunard. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:22, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• I oppose this wording, which would allow editors to to dismiss coverage of pre-IPO funding that provides "deep coverage", which is defined at Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Depth of coverage as "extend[ing] well beyond routine announcements and mak[ing] it possible to write more than a very brief, incomplete stub about an organization" (my bolding).

  Articles about pre-IPO funding can be detailed enough to "mak[e] it possible to write more than a very brief, incomplete stub" about an organization.

  I would support the wording:

  Brief articles on new organizations discussing only their initial or early financing do not establish notability. Articles that provide deep coverage of a company by for example discussing a new organization's history or products, establish notability.

  Cunard (talk) 04:57, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

That will need some adjustments, since it seems to say that notability is determined by the contents of the article rather than by the contents of independent reliable sources.

Let's have an example. You're going to write an article about a privately held business. I'll even offer a real-world example that I've wondered about: This pizza joint. It's a small regional chain, and "pre-IPO" in the sense that there will never be an IPO, even if there may have been local newspaper articles about investors or loans in the past. It's been both smaller and bigger in the past. What's kind of content would you look for to declare that this deserved an article on the English Wikipedia? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• Agree with User:WhatamIdoing that a wording tweak is needed. I consider this a CORPDEPTH issue and already obvious from the spirit rather than letter. If we only have sources about funding an organisation, then logically we don't have enough to write an article (primarily) but about just the funding. There's parallels with films in WP:TOOSOON (biography of actress before film comes out). For organisations the product/service and the legal entity are often entwined, but I find that parallel helpful. There's also WP:NEXTBIGTHING (and obviously WP:CRYSTAL, WP:10YT, and BLP1E for the legal entity). We should be averse to including forward facing statements from borderline (or even GNG passes) when there's clear promotion (which is implicit in startups) as WP:NOTPROMO when per startup fail rates and lifecycle timescales are shorter than 10YT. Suggest anything can be added into TOOSOON now, and for NORG the wording is tweaked and consensus attempted. Don't agree to limit this to just pre-IPO (and it's CRYSTAL to discriminate), and size and timescales are thorny aspects. The demand for pre-IPOs to get an article may be more, so aware that may be used with that caveat. Widefox; talk 13:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• See the discussion on Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/DigitalOcean_(2nd_nomination) around reports of funding. In the tech industry, funding events are a common trigger event for coverage of a company. The sources will often use the funding event as a hook for an article about the company. Most of the articles aren't simply about the funding, they include news about the company and its products. Cunard said "I agree that trivial mentions of a company's getting funded is routine business. But if sources provide "deep coverage" (which is the case here), then the company is considered notable under the "deep coverage" standard.". I agree with Cunard that a report that covers or leads with a funding announcement then goes on to provide expanded coverage of the company, product, or team (for example, reporting on changes or developments in the company that triggered the funding) then that would be "deep coverage" and generate notability.--Sbwoodside (talk) 05:07, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

A potential issue may be that at that point they may be (or may not be) high on NEXTBIGTHING, low per TOOSOON. May be worth discounting reports of first funding round as similar to BLP1E (for the non-living, corporate entity). Widefox; talk 13:19, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. Since the notion of 'routine coverage' appears to be incoherent nonsense, I oppose any extension of it. Nor can I see why coverage of pre-IPO funding should be subject to greater restrictions than other coverage. That seems to me to introduce the sort of POV that GNG tends to eliminate. I don't see much point in mentioning "brief announcements" as brevity (in the sense not saying much) is already covered by GNG. James500 (talk) 03:28, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

a desire to increase Wikipedia's notability standards for organizations

Several editors have been discussing a desire to increase Wikipedia's notability standards for organizations as a means of decreasing the volume of pages we need to watch for COI. I could be mistaken, but I believe @Smallbones: and @DGG: were interested in this subject.

I don't think our notability standards need to increase (academics, open-source projects and other fancruft is actually much worse; I would prefer a single, universal notability policy that doesn't give each subject special treatment). But I am frustrated by the idea that a ten-person company engaging in routine business practices can post an article on themselves and then volunteers are accountable for doing a comprehensive search to see if sources to verify notability exist. It use to feel like we were sometimes responding to spam by writing proper articles for the spammer, but I think practice has changed. Also, it's always been the author's responsibility to provide sources when adding content - a principle that hasn't carried over into AFD.

The current page says:

Notability requires only that these necessary sources have been published—even if these sources are not actually listed in the article yet (though in most cases it probably would improve the article to add them).

I think it would be improved if it also said something like

However, small organizations engaging in routine activities with no apparent claim to notability are presumed not-notable, unless at least some evidence exists in current article.

This shifts the burden onto the author of the article to verify the subject's notability in a subset of cases where the org most probably isn't. CorporateM (Talk) 02:30, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Ah. A few hours ago I mentioned something very similar myself, though only on another user's talk p. [6] :" I am thinking of proposing that we make an assumption of non-notability for every new business enterprise, with a specified limited range of acceptable sources to show otherwise." You are probably right it should be expanded to new organizations generally. It may take a few iterations to figure out the right wording. Another variant I had in mind was: "NOT STARTUP: Articles on new organizations with sources referring only to their initial or early financing or the motivations of their founders are not included in Wikipedia." DGG ( talk ) 03:55, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

While I am of two minds regarding the non-business organizations's notability, I am supportive of making it tougher for businesses to survive here. We are not Yellow Pages. A company needs media coverage, or some other clearly defined and agreed upon qualities (like stock listing). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:06, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

As I see it, the main burden of showing notability is always on the original author of an article, and as we all know, notability requires significant coverage in independent reliable sources. If the article isn't eligible for speedy deletion or prod, then it should go to AfD and the nominator should do a quick notability check. This is not onerous. If the sources are out there, the article should usually be improved not deleted. We should be encyclopedia builders first and foremost.

I have written several articles about notable small businesses, and oppose any kind of assumption of non-notability for new businesses. Judge each individually according to what reliable sources say, just like any other kind of topic.

I know that it is a lot of work to maintain an encyclopedia with almost 5 million articles, but who said it would be easy? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:34, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

You're right, Cullen328 I probably should have rebuttable assumption; and I would apply it to new small businesses only, at least at first. DGG ( talk ) 05:05, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

How do we define "new" and how do we define "small", DGG? Is a new business one that is weeks or months or even a year or three old? Is a small business one with less than 50 employees when the Small Business Administration in the US covers businesses with as many as 500 employees? Far more important than the age or size of the business is the quality of the coverage in the independent, reliable sources that cover the business. A non-notable regional distributor of grocery products may have hundreds of employees and may have been in business for decades, while a notable and innovative new restaurant with 40 employees might win Michelin stars within two years. In my view, it is the quality of the sources discussing the business that counts, not the size or age of the company. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:20, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

It would be good to see if we could add this to the rules; this harks to our older discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)/Archive_14#Common_invalid_.22keep.22_arguments_for_commercial_organizations, where I suggested doing so, but where I'll note we couldn't reach a consensus on whether simple numbers (employee numbers, revenue, industry rank) can or cannot be used to claim notability. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:21, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

For me, at least having more depth than just typical startup details...so when the coverage is about funding rounds that's not per se a notable company. It's just transferring money from one account to another. To build an article we need more info on what is notable about the company - what do they do that's encyclopaedic. (as discussed above). Widefox; talk 08:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't really mind trying out a rule that says that new organizations (I'd do this for non-profits, too) of less than ____ size (defined in gross sales, employees, or whatever) must show really extraordinary levels of coverage to have a standalone article now.

In terms of "new", I think I'd define it as being two or three years old; I could go as high as five. My reason for suggesting two years as the minimum is because I saw a report that said about 80% of new businesses in the US fail within 18 months. My reason for focusing on "new" orgs is because that reduces the risk of Wikipedia being abused as part of their funding/marketing plans.

I think that using the US Small Business rules for US corporations might be okay, but they won't translate well to other countries. We could use definitions for microbusinesses instead. Or—how about this? How about applying this heightened-scrutiny standard to all new businesses, regardless of size? There probably aren't very many new large businesses. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:01, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

On paper, there are "new" large businesses all the time (mergers and acquisitions that result in a "new" brand name). But we make an exception to WP:NOTINHERITED in such cases, and simply treat the press-coverage of the company named Accenture as being a continuation of the press-coverage of Arthur Anderson. Which is common sense, of course.  :-)     Rare that wikipedia manages common sense, but that is a case where we do it!

  Point being, I think the five-year-rule-proposal fails WP:COMMONSENSE. Disagree that we need more WP:BURO in the form of a wiki-policy that "organizations less than five years old need to pass WP:43 whereas organizations over five years old can get by with passing WP:42". We already have a standard of scrutiny that we apply, and it is WP:GNG, which wiki-traditionally has the unwritten rule of at least three multi-paragraph-depth sources spread across three distinct independent publishers. If we apply the five-year-rule with draconian precision, that will lead to arbitrary inconsistencies in our coverage of four-year-old-businesses,[7] versus five-year-old-busineses,[8] What secret sauce do the 1306 possess, that the 1025 do not? Well obviously, there is no actual difference, that the overly-precise five-year-proposal elicits. Either the organization passes WP:42 and is presumed worthy of a dedicated article, or it does not.

  Stronger re-definitions of wiki-notability, will always inherently result in deletion of articles. Arbitrarily deleting certain articles as "too young", or arbitrarily deleting certain types of coverage as "too business-y", both seem like they will backfire. Besides resulting in the immediate deletion of a bunch of articles (e.g. the 1025 articles about organizations that are 'only' four years old), the precedent would balloon out of control: why not a longetivity-requirement for BLP articles, a longetivity-requirement for product-articles, a longetivity-requirement for academic neologisms, a longetivity-requirement for political elections, and so on and so forth? Sure, we would theoretically have a much 'easier' time writing about the presidential elections, if there was a wiki-policy that we could only talk about elections at least five years in the past. We would have an article about the United States presidential election, 2008 already, and would be gradually adding coverage of the press-coverage leading up to the 2010 midterms... but we wouldn't want to spoil it for the readership, by telling them the outcome of the 2010 elections, it hasn't yet been a full five years since November 2010, after all. No coverage of the 2012 elections. No coverage of special elections. No coverage of off-year-governor elections. Because after all, WP:NORUSH applies, right?

  p.s. Yes, I fully understand that the five-year-proposal is not intended to be applied in draconian fashion, and that it is a suggestion for heightened scrutiny, not a quantitative mandate. But isn't that just like saying, editors should use common sense, and assess wiki-notability on a case by case basis? If so, then why have a new wiki-rule at all, since the existing WP:GNG standards *already* require editors to use their common sense? The five-year-rule, applied consistently and precisely, results in ludicrous outcomes, so it obviously requires the use of common sense. But in that case, why make it a rule, policy, guideline, et cetera? WP:IAR does not say, that since all rules are merely suggestions, feel free to add as many rules as you like. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:02, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

We already have an explicit "longevity" rule for BLPs: They have to be in the media more than once per WP:BLP1E. However, the enforcement process isn't "draconian"; in fact, the usual thing to do is to let the article hang out for a year or more, and then send it through AFD.

In theory, there is a longevity rule for everything: as the nutshell puts it, we're looking for "attention by the world at large and over a period of time". "Over a period of time" is the longevity requirement. The question here is this: Should "a period of time" be defined (by default/with suitable exceptions) in terms like "over a period five years" rather than "over a period of six months"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Section break

I would like to understand the source of the desire to reduce the number of pages about companies. For example, @Piotrus: suggests that we are not a Yellow Pages, which implies that we should not include articles about companies that have not attracted any independent coverage. There is also some sense that company articles are "spam" which suggest that they are advertisements. The suggestion to apply a different standard to companies than is applied to other topics implies that there is something implicitly different or undesirable about company pages -- what is the source or characteristic that makes this so? Sbwoodside (talk) 04:24, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

WP:YELLOWPAGES is explained here, but I don't think this is an issue of contention. Yet. Are you familiar with the growing number of paid-for spam pushing/COI incidents? Signpost had a series of articles on this problem, and I believe that this new type of vandalism-like spam activity is making some editors, myself include, determine to shine more light onto the topic of where to draw a line between a company that should be in an encyclopedia, and one that shouldn't be. Since you singled me out here, let me invite you to my Signpost Op-Ed, where I've expressed my views in some detail. PS. For other editors and context, I should note that I've nominated Sbwoodside's article for AfD recently: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Parse (company). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:40, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

We are not a Yellow Pages -- yes, you are correct, I agree with that. I read your Signpost article over the weekend. I am definitely familiar with the problem of spam, paid content, etc. on Wikipedia. I founded a company once that was covered in Wikipedia and I was conscientious not to touch the article, but at the same time I'm sure that I know entrepreneurs who have, would and will do so. After all they will also buy users on Facebook, twitter, etc and participate in the paid content market.

Very well, how do we differentiate between paid content and a reliable source. One aspect of confusion is that most startup news is essentially promotional, provided that nothing is seriously wrong with the company. Companies make a strong effort to control their image and private companies have a lot of power to do that. This is a problem with the world, it has been documented in very accessible format in e.g. The_Corporation_(film) which I highly recommend. Magazines and source like Forbes, TechCrunch, even the Wall Street Journal, much of their content is essentially promotional. Articles that appear to be independent are created by company executives and PR consultants. A journalist then evaluates the story to see if it is legitimate and writes it up. That is the system as it exists today.

However, the creation process does not imply a lack of notability. The journalist and their medium, aka the source, are still reliant on their accurate coverage of the industry and thus are a reliable source. To take the example that brought me into this discussion, Parse_(company) has had almost universally positive coverage and the coverage definitely gives an air of promotion. But as noted in the AfD discussion that coverage includes over 400 articles tracked by CrunchBase, and one of them says that over 500,000 apps have been created using Parse. That's a lot of apps. The number of apps is irrelevant to notability, but still -- if we believe, then that's something like 1/5th of all apps in the app stores are using Parse. I was quite surprised to find that Parse wasn't covered in the wiki so I added a stub, which resulted in the AfD and my participation in this discussion.

This is the nub of my question for all editors here: what is the characteristic that makes companies treated differently? Is it just the (admittedly difficult and time consuming) work of filtering out spam? Is it the inherently promotional nature of the coverage? What other factors are at play that make companies pass a more challenging standard than other topics? Sbwoodside (talk) 05:27, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

• I strongly oppose any attempt to generally increase notability restrictions for the sake of doing so. Nothing proposed above serves any useful purpose. The restrictions in ORG are already too deletionist and do not need to be made more so. Frankly, they already express a strong POV against organisations. James500 (talk) 03:46, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Companies notable for one event

Let me now attempt to define another common problem with corpspam: "companies notable for one event". This is a reflection based on WP:ONEEVENT, a policy for notabilty of biographies. I see a lot of company articles which are kept because it is said they had coverage by reliable sources, from TechCrunch/ArsTechnica to Wired and mainstream newspapers like NYT. But what this often means is that said companies had at one and only one instance done something to attract that attention. For example, here's an article from the cryptocurrency category (which I've discussed a bit above), Ghash.io. It's coverage consist of one trade mag (CoinDesk) and then a series of more reliable publications including International Business Times and Bloomberg View, all related to one event in the company history (the site "committed to 40% Hashrate", a term meaningless to laymen but clearly important enough to generate some more serious news coverage). But, I ask - so what? To quote from ONEEVENT: "The general rule in many cases is to cover the event, not the person." Is this event notable enough? Doubtful, WP:NOTNEWS. Is the company notable then? I can't see why. We already in our existing policy caution: "A single independent source is almost never sufficient for demonstrating the notability of an organization." I'd suggest we adopt a version of ONEEVENT, requiring that companies which rely on coverage by media for their notability have such coverage focus on at least two separate incidents in the company's history (of course, with the same disclaimer as for one event - if the event is significant enough, as reviewed on a case by case basis, this may be waved, or such). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:14, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I think this concern has some merit... but would suggest we address it by tweaking WP:ONEEVENT to include entities as well as individuals. Then all we would need here is a brief pointer to ONEEVENT. Blueboar (talk) 12:47, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

@Blueboar: Agreed that one merged policy would be better, but this would also seem to indicate we should probably move ONEEVENT to GNG. It wouldn't make sense for BIO to include a comment about companies. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:04, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I like your proposed solution. It would tie into WP:N's theme that there should be ongoing coverage of the subject, not merely a flash in the (media) pan. It would also help us better implement the spirit of NPOV, because you can't have a truly neutral, balanced description of a subject when all of the sources come from the same brief time period. "What the world thinks about Company X" is not the same thing as "What the world thought about Company X for two and a half weeks last summer". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:27, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Tentative support. Suggest WP:ORG1E/WP:CORP1E, as a parallel to WP:BLP1E. Also, however, note that WP:BLP2E ought to be paralleled by WP:ORG2E/WP:CORP2E. Don't care if this is covered here in the corp-notability, or over in the oneevent page. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:14, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

What do you all think about adding something explicit about time periods/ONEEVENTness to GNG? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:44, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean by this. For now, as we have consensus here to to move ONEEVENT to GNG, should we run it on another talk page (of BIO or GNG), or just be bold and do it? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:49, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

This is a major change with very little feedback, and I think it needs a bit more thought before it goes into GNG. I can think of plenty of examples, for instance, of companies that are primarily notable for one event...and still getting ongoing coverage twenty years later for it. If it's going into GNG, there's also the broader point of...we have plenty of articles about events that are notable for being one event, so it kind of is a bit weird to apply it as a broader logic. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:57, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

This should be discussed at WT:N. I don't recommend doing this as a bold edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:39, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I think it would be easier to get a CORP/1E through the community than it would be to modify GNG. I would suggest getting CORP/!E done to build consensus and then, after it is established, use it as a base to move to modifying GNG. If CORP/1E fails it is always possible to propose GNG changes later but if it fails as a GNG proposal it would be very hard to get it to pass as a CORPN proposal.

However it is done, it should be done and I would support either. Jbh^Talk 12:41, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

It seems reasonable to start with a new subsection on this page, per Jbhunley - and I think we do have consensus for that. After few months, we can consider whether this is useful enough to expand further; for now I too would be totally satisfied with a principle to apply solely for organizations. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:53, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I've added a section: Wikipedia:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)#Subjects_notable_only_for_one_event. Ping User:Jbhunley, User:WhatamIdoing, User:The Drover's Wife, User:Blueboar. Feel free to rewrite, remove or otherwise adjust. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:19, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Do you think that it would be clearer to say "how persistent the coverage is in reliable sources over the space of many months or years"? I can imagine someone trying to push for notability with the claim that a business was mentioned in the news about an event every single day for a couple of weeks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Can't hurt to add that requirement, but wouldn't it also apply to biographies? Don't they have the same potential problem? (Btw, should we use "subjects" or "organizations" in the subheading?).--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:05, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

There is clearly not a sufficient consensus here. I'm not going to NAC this, because continuing discussion might be helpful, but this is a major change which has been nowhere near adequately discussed or publicized to the community. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 14:00, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

• I see a clear consensus here, and this was announced at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people)#Make_ONEEVENT_apply_to_other_concepts_and_move_it_to_GNG, but I've also added a note to WT:N. I do not believe this is a major enough change to warrant announcing it at VP or such, but of course you are welcome to spread the word as far as you want. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:17, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
• I agree with Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk · contribs) that there is not sufficient consensus here to add this to the guideline and agree with his removal. WP:CORP1E was used as an argument for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philidor Rx Services. So far, several editors in the AfD object to the guideline's addition.
  1. The Drover's Wife (talk · contribs)'s comment: "I think if this is considered to fall within that parameter, the parameter needs to go".
  2. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz's comment:

     The change to the notability guideline was not supported by a sufficient consensus and I have removed it. The idea that, even if it were valid it would justify removal is thoroughly wrong: The underlying event was highly prominent, with extended coverage in US national media like the New York Times, the organization's role in the event was not minor but central, and there is no reason to believe the organization will remain low-profile, especially since it's already become rather high-profile. Corporations are not people, and the special considerations that underlie BLP1E have absolutely no applicability to matters like this. This deletion and whatever precedent it would set would be a godsend to corporate publicists and those trying to cover up business malfeasance, and do serious damage to Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission.

  3. Sbwoodside (talk · contribs)'s comment:

     It appears that the change to the notability guideline is no longer present and in any case would be contradictory -- an interesting event that is well covered in the sources would make a company notable.

  I particularly agree with Hullaballoo Wolfowitz that "Corporations are not people" and "the special considerations that underlie BLP1E have absolutely no applicability to matters like this".

  Cunard (talk) 06:26, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't terribly opposed to this change in principle, but that nomination illustrated exactly why it didn't work. WP:BLP1E exists because there are specific considerations for living people who might happen to do something random that gets them public attention and then disappear (and wish to disappear) back into obscurity and not be stuck on Wikipedia in perpetuity as a result of that one thing. That doesn't really apply to business, and the notion of what "one event" is gets murky as heck with corporations - as that illustrated. It had thirty sources, substantially documenting the life of the company, over the whole period of the life of the company, and that many of those (but not nearly all) related to scrutiny of their relationships with their most major corporate partners was hardly "one issue", but something hardly surprising in business coverage. I was tagged because I'd commented on the article, and normally I would never care about a pharmaceutical company AfD because it's not a subject I give a rats about, but it was a perfect example of why a guideline change I'd been open to utterly failed in practice. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:51, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it has almost thirty sources... all of which are either self-published by their marketing firm or themselves (including primary sources about their financial reports), news stories published within a 13-day timespan, or, in one case, a six-month-old news story that's actually about a different company but mentions Philidor in passing. Oh, and a book about chess that's twelve years older than the company, and so obviously doesn't mention it. Yes, the game. (It's used to WP:SYNTH an explanation about the company's name.) That doesn't sound like "attention from the world at large and over a period of time" (to quote WP:N) to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• Chalk me up as another one opposed. Honestly, I'm uncomfortable with BLP1E, on the ground that I don't think we ought to be in the business of making the subjective judgment call that a subject that can meet the GNG doesn't really do so as long as it can be claimed that he or she does so only because of a single event. For a corporation, that's a great deal less persuasive an argument, and I would be very comfortable with a black-letter guideline allowing us to gauge a company's notability on its ability to meet the GNG without needing to parse out why it does. Ravenswing 09:20, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
• I ma also opposed to this proposed change. I am not fully comfortabkle with BLP1E as it stands for reasons simialr to those given by Ravenswing just above, but a "one event" standard is IMO far more fitted to BLP coverage, and the heightened standards we apply to BLP articles, than it is to a more general notion of notability. Once an entity has had sufficient coverage to pass the WP:GNG it is notable. Abn article is not thereby mandated, editorial judgement can still be used, but an automatic denial of notability because of an "one event" standard seems to me unwise and counterproductive. DES ^(talk) 20:34, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. BLP1E has no analogy that can be applied to organisations. BIO1E is questionable, so I do not support its extension to organisations. It would tend to exclude information about the organisation that is not directly related to the event. I see no reason for that. 1E should not apply to organisations. James500 (talk) 03:55, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Clarification of depth of coverage: whether an organization can be notable if it's services, products or activities receive coverage

WP:ORGDEPTH does not discuss it at all, and WP:PRODUCT is currently not clear on whether organization's services, products or activities can make the organization notable. The last sentence states: "Note that a specific product or service may be notable on its own, without the company providing it being notable in its own right. In this case, an article on the product may be appropriate, and notability of the company itself is not inherited as a result." but it does not address the case where an organization's products/services/etc. receive coverage, with organization being mentioned in passing. For example, let's take a think tank, who is organizing conferences, and whose project receive occasional in-depth coverage, up to and including articles in major outlets (Forbes, etc.). Yet said think thank has never been a subject of in-depth, reliable, non-local coverage itself: nobody has ever written about its history or importance, but there are dozens articles about what it has done, ex. "Foo Think Tank conference a big success" (article about a conference) or "Foo Think Tank project generates significant interest" (article about the project). Is this sufficient or not for the organization to be notable? Would be good to clarify that. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:08, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I would consider it an relatively rare circumstance where the organization's products etc. are notable but not the organization. Organizations become notable not for existing, but by doing notable things. The intended application is for those cases where the product etc is much better known than the organization. The example Piotrus gives is of this type: Many an organization exists only for the sake of publishing a journal or running a series of conferences. Almost nobody even knows the name of the organizing body, but the journal or conference series can be highly notable. DGG ( talk ) 04:36, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this may be a varying case and would be best using whatever is best and most sensible (but likely what seems most notable, if the product is most notable, thenthere's no separate one for the company). Cheers, SwisterTwister talk 04:54, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I think it's moderately common to have a barely notable product produced by a barely notable business, and the solution there—as the guideline hints—is to have one article or the other.

In the "Foo Think Tank" example, I would choose the conference (the "product") rather than the organization, but the main point is to not have both. Two separate articles, which basically say the same things in reverse order ("Foo Conference is organized by Foo Think Tank" and "Foo Think Tank is best known for organizing Foo Conference"), is redundant. Ditto for periodicals ("Foo magazine is published by Foo Publisher, who does nothing else and whom nobody cares about"), construction projects ("Foo Tower was built by Temporary Foo Partnership, which was formed by a bunch of building developers solely to fund this one project") and similar instances of notable things whose creators aren't separately notable.

And on the simple question: The bit that you quoted technically answers your question. Notability is not inherited. If you create a notable product but "you" don't get any attention, then your org does not get an article. (However, your org should be properly described in the article about the product.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, I hope you'll forgive me for linking an ongoing AfD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SANS Institute), but this is the case that made me raise this issue here. In my view, this organization has not be a subject to any in-depth coverage; it has however plenty of mentions in passing: "SANS discovers computer vulnerabilities" (many article discuss said vulnerabilities), "SANS does something else that's interesting" (ditto). Lots of coverage of the things SANS is doing, not a single source discussing SANS history, importance, etc. How do we approach that? I do note that our CORPDEPTH section states "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability." Should we add a clarification that "multiple mentions in passing" are sufficient, in the form of "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources that mention the subject in passing should be cited to establish notability."? Because if there is consensus that SANS is notable, I think we have to be specific about it why. PS. I am very uneasy about this entire exception. If multiple mentions in passing are fine, then why not multiple mentions in strictly local media? Or hell, multiple mentions in non-independent (non-reliable) media? Multiple press releases? Where do we draw the line? In the modern word, mentions in passing are increasingly common, this is really inviting us to open a Pandora's box. Does anyone recall when was this sentence added, and was this discussed before here? Is this really an established practice we want to continue with? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:33, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Did you look at all of the many dozens of sources that they list on their website?

The point behind accepting "multiple mentions" is complying with NPOV. An article complies with NPOV when it represents all of the significant WP:INDY POVs. If your "multiple mentions" say the same thing over and over, then it's not notable (doomed PERMASTUB + biased towards the subject's own self-published POV). But if your "multiple mentions" allow you write a complete description from INDY sources—say, one source gives you a couple of facts about the founding, another about the main business line, another about the new CEO (or whatever)—then what's wrong with that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Specifically regarding Startups. Most startup technology companies produce only a single product or service for their first 3-5 years. See e.g. [9] for an explanation of why that happens. As a result, coverage of a tech startup will frequently focus almost exclusively on the product.

As for this section:

Note that a specific product or service may be notable on its own, without the company providing it being notable in its own right. In this case, an article on the product may be appropriate, and notability of the company itself is not inherited as a result.

In the case of a single-product startup, this distinction wouldn't apply. Whether the notability comes from the product or the company is irrelevant, since the company only exists to make the single product, and the product only exists because of the company that creates it. --Sbwoodside (talk) 04:54, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

• This is another piece of junk that should be ripped out of this guideline. An organisation is notable if it is the original creator or perhaps distributor of a new notable product (but not because it starts selling something that was already notable). Perhaps this argument should be expressed in terms of patents or other intellectual property. James500 (talk) 04:08, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Is there inherent notability for some type of companies?

In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dynamic Sport, five out of five keep votes used rationale "all aircraft manufactures are notable", which clearly is not supported by this policy. Wikipedia:Notability (aircraft) has nothing to say about it. It's a clear violation of WP:ORGSIG, but it's not the first time I've seen this happen (through I can't recall a prior case). What should we do? Create an exception based on this AfD or conclude that a special interest group (aircraft fans) have managed to secure a special position for related companies? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:38, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

No... there is no inherent notability for aircraft companies (or any other type of company). All must meet the standards this guideline sets out (all must be discussed by reliable sources that are independent of the company). That said... I think it likely that most (if not all) will meet this standard. Blueboar (talk) 13:33, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

While the phrasing wasn't great, I think the argument reflects a reasonable example of a COMMONOUTCOME. Aircraft manufacturing generally requires a large capital base and is typically engaged in only by businesses whose large scale almost certainly guarantee notability through wide coverage in the business press. There's no need to waste editors' time and efforts rearguing the same matter over and over to its foregone conclusion. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 14:25, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

The point is that such coverage needs to be demonstrated. In the case of the AfD cited, there was no such coverage, but based on a short entry in a source listing virtually all aircraft producers worldwide, the conclusion was the subject is notable. I find it problematic: a tiny company making few dozens of airplanes with no coverage should not be notable just because people think its airplanes are "cool". --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:19, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

There is no such thing as ironclad inherent notability here on Wikipedia, but there are "presumptions of notability" of various types, and of various levels of persuasiveness. Consider the case of Presidents of the United States. There is a very strong presumption, I would argue, that every president is notable. But maybe some insignificant president of the distant past might not be notable, right? Consider William Henry Harrison, who was president for only 32,days, sick that entire time. He's not notable, is he? Well, he was a senior military leader, a Congressman and. U.S. Senator before his brief presence as president. He's notable.

Personally, I consider the argument that "all aircraft manufactures are notable" to be somewhat persuasive although oversimplified. It should be stated even more persuasively as ""all aircraft manufacturers are presumed to be notable in almost all cases. Any argument to delete an article about an aircraft manufacturer must include a persuasive analysis of all possible reliable sources, addressing why no reliable sources can be found or can ever be found in this particular case." Who said anything about airplane manufacturers being "cool"? That sounds like a Wright Brothers or Bleirot marketing argument from 100 years ago. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:15, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I would put it this way... any aircraft manufacturer is certainly likely to become notable... eventually. However, this does not mean that every manufacture is automatically notable. I am thinking especially of new start-ups. It may well be that a new start-up has not (yet) received the depth of coverage we require. Blueboar (talk) 17:16, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I think that you're assuming that "any aircraft manufacturer" means "any aircraft manufacturer that is actually manufacturing and selling non-experimental aircraft", rather than "any brand-new business that hopes to build an aircraft someday". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• For my part, I'm entirely sympathetic to the OP. All aircraft manufacturers are notable? Says who? As WhatamIdoing suggests, there are -- and always HAVE been -- any number of ephemeral outfits in the field. Regarding Hullaballoo Wolfowitz's comment, before we start waving COMMONOUTCOME around, I'd really like to see some evidence that this IS a "common outcome." How many other AfDs of airplane manufacturers have there been, over the years? One? Two? Any?

  Beyond that, if a subject can't meet the GNG, that's a strong indicator that it is not, in fact, notable. Ravenswing 17:24, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

  • As you say, the problem is with said "ephemeral outfits". Nobody is going to AfD Boeing, but I don't accept that a company that made, let's say, a hundred gliders or such, is notable for making something that flies. This of course, gets us close to yet another can of worms, the assumption by some (endorsed by certain project) that each vehicle (i.e. product) is notable, making Wikipedia a catalog of vehicles of all kinds. But that's a discussion for another time. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:00, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
• Yes. An organisation can be inherently notable for reasons of size (including number of people), wealth or other 'clout' (including the possession of extraordinary legal powers, or in the case of a military unit, the amount of firepower at its disposal). It can likely be inherently notable for possession of something like a royal charter or a royal warrant, and will be if it has a special enactment. Organisations in fields that have a large 'fanbase' (such as aircraft, trains, motor vehicles, weapons and anything to do with the military, sport, etc) are certainly more likely to be notable. It would be extremely surprising if an aircraft manufacturer of any significant size were not notable. It would be reasonable to have an SNG creating inherent notability for at least certain classes of organizations within such fields. James500 (talk) 04:28, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
  • In this kind of case, there does have to be a verifiable reliable source that the organisation possesses the characteristic (eg size) that makes it notable. There must also be at least one independent source, not necessarily very detailed, due a requirement in V. One could argue that such notability is not, therefore, literally inherent, but that is just semantics. Such a topic might also be merged if the coverage in reliable sources is relatively brief (and we may accept primary and/or non independent sources to bulk out an article on an exceptional topic: NJOURNALS is a good example of this), but, since notability expressly does not preclude merger, that doesn't mean it isn't notable. And of course, as guidelines, ORG and GNG admit of exceptions. That is why there is a large template at the top of them which loudly says so. And what I am saying here is what actually happens at AfD. James500 (talk) 01:08, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose- there is no such thing as inherent notability for anything. Either the requisite sourcing exists or it doesn't. Reyk _YO! 07:28, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

wp:NSCHOOLS link to wp:SCHOOLOUTCOMES

In an undiscussed edit, the link from the wp:NSCHOOLS section to wp:SCHOOLOUTCOMES was removed. The change wasn't discussed here, AFAICT. It seems terribly important to keep, actually. What SCHOOLOUTCOMES covers is that many many many AFDs have been closed by Keeping articles on high schools and colleges and universities. It is highly relevant to know that, when notability of a school is questioned, and the information has for a very long time been available here. The issue comes up in a current AFD, where I cited NSCHOOLS believing that it did reflect that information (albeit via a link), and it is pointed out correctly that NSCHOOLS does not. At first I thought there might have been some huge discussion and decision to change policy/practice on schools which I missed. In fact all that happened apparently was the link to SCHOOLOUTCOMES was removed. As the link is very helpful, I am restoring it now. Please consider my restoration to be a revert of a bold change, and despite the fact that I think it is very much needed, I welcome discussion per wp:BRD. --doncram 23:51, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I sincerely object against this. Schools should be judged on their notability and available reliable sources, not on some vague, often misused Common Outcomes. Too often I see WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES being used as keep argument. Especially with arguments as "if you did not find sources about a school, you did not search hard enough", this seriously undermines the neutrality (USA-bias) and reliability of the encyclopaedia. The Banner talk 01:58, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

The AFD which brings this up is not one where the existence of the school is in question. Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seattle Institute of Oriental Medicine (2nd nomination). And your reference to USA-bias confuses me, because I believe that SCHOOLOUTCOMES essay/guideline has been helpful in guarding against USA-bias by giving equal rights to high schools and colleges in other countries, opposite of what you seem to suggest.

Anyhow you seem to be arguing against what the wp:SCHOOLOUTCOMES essay states, or how it has been used to settle many AFDs (and fend off countless more) in the past. You are entitled to contribute to that essay or write a new one. That is different than allowing the wp:NSCHOOL section here to include link to wp:SCHOOLOUTCOMES. The link just makes NSCHOOL better as a reference source, serving editors. If there's another essay that should be linked there, I don't object to that being added. I just want NSCHOOL to continue to serve as the good reference source it has been. --doncram 07:08, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

That an essay is (allegedly) "useful" is hardly a valid ground here. Those who find SCHOOLOUTCOMES "useful," I expect, are those whose POV it helpfully shares. Ravenswing 23:47, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I object to this as well. Quite aside from my own animus against SCHOOLOUTCOMES -- I'm eternally perplexed that editors can claim on the one hand that WP:WAX arguments are fundamentally discredited at AfD, while on the other proclaiming them enshrined when it comes to schools -- notability criteria shouldn't hinge on controversial unofficial essays. Ravenswing 23:46, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

• Simplest fix here is to restore the essay.  Otherwise, NSCHOOLS is verbiage.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:27, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Additions of metropolitan newspapers and trade journals to WP:AUD reverted

I have reverted an 9 October 2015 edit by Piotrus (talk · contribs). I don't see a consensus at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)/Archive 15#Local vs. regional media and Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)/Archive 15#Are trade magazines/portals acceptable? to make the changes to bar metropolitan area newspapers and all trade journals from establishing notability.

The change to bar regional sources has been used at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Loma Linda Broadcasting Network to discount two metropolitan area newspapers:

1. The Press-Enterprise is a regional newspaper. It serves the Inland Empire, a region in Southern California.
2. The San Bernardino Sun is also a regional newspaper; it "serves most of the Inland Empire in Southern California. The geographic circulation area of the newspaper spans from the border of Los Angeles/Orange Counties to the west, east to the Arizona State line, north to the Imperial County line, and south to the Riverside City line."

An AfD participant is using the changed guideline to argue that:

Their circulation is limited to the Inland Empire, a metropolitan area in Southern California. "Regional" in the context of the guideline refers to regions larger than one metropolitan area.

I don't see a consensus at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)/Archive 15#Local vs. regional media to treat metropolitan area newspapers as insufficient to establish notability. Metropolitan area newspapers are regional newspapers, so the 9 October 2015 change is contradictory in saying that metropolitan area newspapers do not establish notability but regional newspapers do establish notability.

I support Z22 (talk · contribs)'s definition of "metropolitan area" here:

A metropolitan area: It is a region of populated area that usually comprises multiple jurisdictions and municipalities. I think this is clear to be regional

I am also reverting the trade journal change (made in the same edit) because I do not see a consensus to add it at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)/Archive 15#Are trade magazines/portals acceptable?. As DGG (talk · contribs) noted, "Some trade journals of national circulation are widely read and can give notability--perhaps the best known example is Women's Wear Daily." I do not think the guideline should bar all trade journals from establishing notability.

Cunard (talk) 04:57, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

As for metropolitan newspapers, I agree with you--it's a better definition. For trade journals, most do not show notability, some few do, especially in some technical and professional fields. We need a slightly flexible wording here . DGG ( talk ) 05:15, 1 April 2016 (UTC)`

I agree that trade journals should not be necessarily barred from establishing notability. However, I think some clarification is needed regarding local vs. regional newspapers. While the P-E and the Sun may claim to serve a large area, most of the "Inland Empire", as they define it, is uninhabited desert. In reality, they cover Riverside and San Bernardino respectively, both medium-sized suburbs of Los Angeles. While I do not disagree that "regional" papers should not be outright barred, I do not believe the specific ones under discussion are examples of "regional" papers that would establish notability on their own. Regards, James(^talk/_contribs) 21:23, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, I am fine with not barring all trade jourals, but as DGG noted, "most do not show notability", and we should have some caution about it in the text, or otherwise they will be abused by spam-writers as sources. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:58, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I support the revert by Cunard, the "Ban Everything" movement around here is quite disturbing, I've run into the same problem with using college newspapers for support, even when editorial control can be demonstrated. To start with, local newspapers are no longer "local" the virtually all regional newspapers have websites and global reach. Local events often make national or global headlines, in instances like the 2015 San Bernardino attack, a newspaper like the The Press Enterprise is likely to be the first on the scene and have community insight that no other outlet possesses.

Additionally, WP:N cannot be changed by local consensus of a Project, or local RfC, these hold no more weight than an essay and Projects may not narrow the scope of what may be included in Wikipedia -- per WP:CONLEVEL and the fourth paragraph in WP:PROJPAGE.

The guidance in the GNG already tells us that issues like these are meant to be handled at WP:RSN if the source is challenged, otherwise the GNG states:

• Sources may encompass published works in all forms and media, and in any language.

and

• Availability of secondary sources covering the subject is a good test for notability.

Such a restriction would also limit the availability of "secondary sources covering the subject" where the subject has only one instance of national or wider recognition. The projects can and do insist upon multiple reliable sources to establish notability, but An RfC of the proposed magnitude (changing the defined terms in GNG) would have to gain consensus through the full WP:PROPOSAL process. And, the GNG already prescribes that these issues are handled via RSN -- to include trade journals.

Finally, since virtually every location is presumed to be notable per WP:GEOLAND, the policy on regional media reporting should be inclusive rather than restrictive.009o9^Disclosure(Talk) 18:00, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Political Campaigns Notability

I believe there needs to be a serious discussion as to the guidelines of determining if a political campaign is notable enough for an article or not, most especially active campaigns. Is notability determined by the notability of the political subject (person running for office) or is it determined by the notability of the campaign itself? The campaign itself can be seen as a separate organization to the person running for office as campaigns usually involve at least a few people (if not hundreds of staff members), so if the person running for office doesn't pass WP:BIO what guidelines are needed to determine whether or not the campaign itself does pass WP:GNG if they are considered separate topics? As well, regular coverage of topics by news sources is often considered unreliable to define notability but when it comes to political campaigns news sources are often just regular coverage, so at what point would that coverage be significant enough to allow notability? Acidskater (talk) 00:04, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

@Acidskater Have you looked into WP:EVENT? Political news is mentioned there and WP:LASTING expands. WP:SUSTAINED (in WP:N/GNG) also mentions events in context with notability. 009o9^Disclosure(Talk) 01:13, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Also playing into this is that notability is not inherited - if a campaign of a candidate is notable, that doesn't mean the candidate is notable; similarly the campaign of a candidate is not necessarily notable just because the candidate is notable. I would also stress the importance of WP:NEVENT and that WP is not a newspaper - while a campaign of a candidate may gain a lot of coverage, if it is routine coverage of a non-notable person, that's probably not sufficient to show the campaign is notable too. --MASEM (t) 15:15, 31 May 2016 (UTC)