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RFC: Should local coverage in reliable sources be sufficient to establish notability?

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

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Should WP:AUD be removed from the guidance, making significant local coverage in reliable sources sufficient for establishing notability for organisations? FOARP (talk) 13:22, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Survey (Remove WP:AUD?)

• Support as nominator. This proposal stems from the discussion here regarding whether WP:AUD should be moved to the main guide for notability. WP:AUD requires that for notability to be established "attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, statewide, provincial, national, or international source is necessary." I think this is unhelpful guidance for the following reasons:
  

1) There is no basis in policy for preferring "large political unit" media over "small political unit" media (however these units are defined). It has been posited that Wiki should only be for articles of 'world-level importance', but no policy states this and very few articles would meet it.

2) The boundaries of political units are entirely arbitrary. Tonga has a population of barely 100,000 people but coverage on Matangi counts as "national coverage". By contrast Warren, Michigan, USA has a population of 134,000 but coverage from the Warren Weekly is "local".

3) The wrongs that WP:AUD is supposed to address (undue influence of local orgs over local media) are already addressed by WP:PROMO, WP:ROUTINE, WP:SIGCOV and other policies. This undue influence is not thoroughly evidenced and the opposite may just as often be true - a local source may be closer to the subject and cover it more accurately.

4) This policy reflects a North America-centric POV in which it is expected that there will necessarily be prominent, centralised, national-level media, and local small-town media which runs fluff pieces on prominent local organisations. Particularly in the developing world, but also to an extent in some developed countries (e.g., Germany), the media (especially print media) is relatively decentralised.

5) In practice it can be very difficult indeed to determine which media are "local" and which not, especially when discussing either events in the past (when did the New York Times cease to be a local paper?) or events in countries with which the editor is unfamiliar. A number of examples of this kind of confusion were raised in the discussion linked above. FOARP (talk) 13:22, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strongest possible oppose AUD should be added to N, not removed from here. WT:N is a horrible place to guage consensus for anything because eventually people give up trying to find solutions and the only people left talking are those who yell the loudest.
  In terms of this, NCORP is the gold standard for notability sourcing requirements. Even in the WT:N discussion, it was understood why this would be in place for corporations. The intention of this guideline is to make it more difficult for spammers to create articles: you’ve managed to identify the one change that would basically invalidate the entire guideline as literally anything on the planet can meet the GNG if there is no prohibition on local sourcing. I’ve bugrudgeonly accepted that N will never be updated to reflect community consensus and practice in AfDs and that it’s a stale guideline. The guidelines that actually reflect community consensus and AfD practice should not be made more out of date by removing standards that help the encyclopedia and are used in practice. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:29, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Why is WP:PROMO insufficient for addressing obvious Promo material, and why does Promo material become not-Promo if it is supported by one reference that is not "local"? FOARP (talk) 14:17, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

In part, because no one explains that WP:NOTSPAM is an equal partner to the GNG as WP:N is designed, and that failure of this is grounds for deletion in itself (see WP:DEL14). On top of that, it is so easy to manufacture local sourcing (I am notable if local sourcing is counted, and I’m not notable in the slightest) that a stronger standard is needed for corporations, who pay tens of thousands of dollars a year, even at small companies, to plant stories in local and trade presses. This is why there was support at WT:N for keeping AUD here and even for possibly expanding it to BLPs (where it already de facto is the rule we use). TonyBallioni (talk) 14:23, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Not seen this used in BLP AFDs and if I did see it used for a reliably-sourced, non-WP:MILL article I'd vote keep and point the proposer to WP:ITSLOCAL. Possibly I've misunderstood you, but you seem to be saying that WP:NOTSPAM actually does forbid promo content, but you don't believe it is applied properly so you use WP:AUD instead. As for coverage of non-notable corps WP:ROUTINE seemingly has that covered. FOARP (talk) 14:33, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. The discussion is reminiscent of Jasper Carrott's joke that he was world famous in Birmingham. Sometimes Most of the time the world doesn't conform to uniformly sized units with uniformly respected media. Tonga is a nation, Warren, Michigan is not. The Manchester Evening News is a regional paper, the Manchester Guardian a national paper. There is no one-size-fits-all definition of a news outlet's (reliability|reach|prestige). Cabayi (talk) 13:55, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you've written here, but this reads like a rationale for a "Support" !vote - if there's no real way of determining whether coverage is "local" or not then WP:AUD seems like bad guidance, since it requires you to decide that. FOARP (talk) 14:11, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

No, it’s saying that it’s obvious which sources have less circulation than this talk page has page views, and that clear lines regarding geography aren’t needed for the guideline to be effective. A national newspaper in a small country is still significant. The Warren paper isn’t. ​TonyBallioni (talk) 14:15, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

So a national paper, even for a very small country (e.g., Grenada), is still preferred over a "local" paper, even for a much larger polity? FOARP (talk) 14:33, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:12, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, in context. A national paper in a small country is likely the most reliable source for the events occurring in that country and less reliable for matters outside its area. The New York Times is reliable for pretty much anything. Not all national newspapers are reliable, as the perennial discussions about the Daily Mail show. The audience matters, the context matters, and it can't be formulated. It needs the editor to apply some judgement. Cabayi (talk) 15:23, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

1) The New York Times was once a "local paper", can you identify the point at which it stopped being one? 2) Yes, editors need to apply judgement, but WP:AUD doesn't actually assist that, instead it mandates, whatever the judgement of the editor, that subjects having only "local" coverage aren't notable, when "local" can mean potentially mean media serving a city of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people. FOARP (talk) 15:55, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

• Support "Media of limited interest and circulation" could describe just about any source and would tend to exclude sources of the highest quality, which naturally tend to address a specialist or elite audience. Many respectable corporations operate in a business-to-business mode, which will mainly be covered by their trade press, but we should not be restricting ourselves to mass-market, consumer brands because this would be a systemic bias, contrary to WP:NPOV. See Cocacolonization. Andrew D. (talk) 13:58, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose There have been attempts to add something of AUD to the main WP:N but its more difficult there because of how broad WP:N covers. AUD in relationship to any commercial organization however remains completely essential to avoid artificial inflation of important due to a narrow field's coverage. --Masem (t) 14:56, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support There is absolutely no foundation to link the size of a publication's distribution with its scholarship. The reliability of a source is instead based upon a critical analysis of its content, i.e. is it thorough, well-reasoned and based on factual evidence; and is it independent, i.e. has the material been curated by a disinterested observer. SusunW (talk) 15:19, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
  • It is not an issue of scholarship but independence - the smaller and smaller the audience for a work becomes, the less likely the work is independent of the content it serves. --Masem (t) 15:49, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Non-sequitur. It simply does not logically follow that the smaller the audience, the less objective the media necessarily will be. Evidence, please. FOARP (talk) 15:55, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

As you narrow down an audience that you select for a publication, the more likely you are going to focus on things of high interest to that audience and less "general" topics. The "newspaper" of a town of 2500 is less likely to report on world and national news, and might entertain some state-level news that affects the town, but is principally going to be focused on the who and what of what is going on around the town (the geographical narrow focus). That doesn't make it unreliable, just not a sign that the topic is of interest to the broader community, and further makes it more potentially affected by promotional goals.

This is why it is important to understand context of a source relative to the body it serves. The example floating around, that a national paper of a tiny country would be considered local is not true. It's still a national paper, so I would expect it to cover stories related to world politics with a spin on how that affects the country. And to take the NYTimes or several other major national newspapers in the US, the bulk of their main sections will be non-local, but we do have to be aware each and everyone has their own "local" section, and articles out of that section should be considered local sources. --Masem (t) 00:54, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Or to tweak an example I used elsewhere: an article about a school bus in New York crashing into a deli no one has heard of before doesn’t make the deli notable if it only appears in the local section of the NYT. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:00, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, even something like that might be contained in the front matter of the NYtimes if it was a serious enough event, but that still would make the deli non-notable more due to ONEEVENT or potentially other factors. --Masem (t) 01:26, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

WP:SIGCOV and WP:ROUTINE have that scenario covered. The deli crash might be covered in an article called 2018 Manhattan Deli Crash if it had sufficient coverage to sustain notability, but trying to base an article about the deli based on the coverage of the crash would likely fail WP:SIGCOV because the coverage would be about the crash, not the deli which woud likely only be mentioned in passing, and even if described in more detail would still only be WP:ROUTINE run-of-the-WP:MILL stuff and thus not notable. No need for AUD on top of that. FOARP (talk) 21:53, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. WP is a national or international venue and should not bring up things unless shown suitable for that level. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 15:26, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose It's difficult for the 99.999% of Wikipedians who don't live in Ballinatown to establish the difference between "significant local coverage" and paid PR. If an organization is only known in a certain small area, and sources within that small area talk about it a lot, but only sources within that small area talk about it, then we need to think critically and ask why. The editors supporting this proposal seem to be primarily interested in making it more difficult for those who do so to get articles deleted/redirected, without a care for the actual policy. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:00, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

We already have a policy explicitly forbidding promotional articles. Why is AUD needed on top of that? And "regional" (whatever this means) and national papers never carry PR coverage? FOARP (talk) 08:33, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Why is AUD needed on top of that? Because there are editors who will say "It's not promotional: it accurately reflects the contents of this local newspaper article. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:17, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

• Support conceptually, but a more nuanced approach than just deleting WP:AUD is needed. I agree that the national/regional/local distinction is artificial and leads to ridiculous arguments in AfDs; after all both the Toledo Blade and Willamette Week have won reporting Pulitzer Prizes and presumably could cover companies/organizations in sufficient depth that we would be satisfied they were notable. But to throw out WP:AUD completely seems to open up too much of a floodgate of non-notable coverage. I would welcome an alternative wording to the policy. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:59, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose: There may be room for some nuance here; however, a lot of the "supports" are based on incorrect interpretation, possibly due to the abbreviation/shortcut that was chosen. It is not about the size of the audience, it is about the reach of the audience. For example, when discussing the literature pertaining to a highly specialized field, even a national-level publication may have very few subscribers. Many "local" sources have national audiences. There is a difference between audience size (number of readers) and audience dispersal (the geographic distribution of readers); WP:AUD refers to the latter, rather than the former. If there are no reliable sources on a subject to be found amongst publications that have broad reach (note: not readership), that subject would fall below notability. Risker (talk) 03:32, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Surely any publication with a website has global reach? And how are we supposed to assess what the dispersal of a publication's readership is when even the publications themselves may not know this? How are we to assess this for media in the past - was the New York Times "local" in 1851?

Finally, if interpreting "local" to mean readers within a small political unit is a misunderstanding, then why do so many people above (including people voting "oppose") state the opposite? I don't think this is a misunderstanding, but simply a reasonable interpretation of what the policy says. The policy quite clearly states a hierarchy of political units listed in terms of size ("at least one regional, statewide, provincial, national, or international source") and says "local media, or media of limited interest and circulation" (that is, "local" media is something different to "media of limited interest and circulation"). This is also how the policy is typically applied in AFDs. FOARP (talk) 08:55, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• Support some formulation that would clarify what is considered to be "local" or "regional", particularly if the "local" paper has a circulation in the hundreds of thousands. bd2412 T 04:33, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose removing the section. Not opposed to modifying to make it clearer if helpful. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 06:12, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. We are not a local news aggregator but an encyclopedia with an international scope; we can and should be selective in this regard. Sandstein 09:30, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strongest oppose possible This is exactly the sort of step we need to take if we want Wikipedia to basically become little more than a business directory for anyone who wants to advertise their local carpet-cleaning business. Personally that is not a step I feel we should be taking. If anything we should be increasing the requirement for wider coverage, given how easy it is for any Tom, Dick or Harry to get published on the internet these days. Yunshui ^雲_水 11:45, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Considering the circumstances for which this particular notability guideline is designed for (paid editing, treating WP like a company directory, COI editing etc.), it would be currently inappropriate to relax the company notability criteria in any way. talk to !dave 11:47, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose If a subject isn't covered at regional level, then it's clear that the subject is little more than a splash in a teacup. This is an encyclopedia, not a village noticeboard. Cesdeva ^(talk) 13:40, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support. AUD is grossly overbroad. The general GNG standards should determine which sources count toward notability. Coverage in small-town newspapers can be discounted, but coverage in major metropolitan dailies should absolutely count toward a notability determination. Cbl62 (talk) 13:59, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support: Notability can and should be established by significant local coverage. Many topics of significant notability are not going to hit The New York Times. Circulation should not be conflated with notability. Also, the definition of "regional" is highly debatable itself -- I've seen AfD discussions claim that major dailies of some of America's major cities such as Denver or Atlanta be dismissed as "local" or "merely regional." Nonsense. Source material from small nations and states/regions of low population should be able to be used with GNG to determine notability. We are not talking about garage bands here; we are talking about notable things. Montanabw^(talk) 17:02, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as is - too blunt a tool, wildly leaves everything and their aunt as a potential source (or at least a source of sourcing disputes). I would be open to amending and putting in some rough guidelines to slightly broaden the band of acceptable sources, in terms of locality. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:28, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Depends how you define it. Are you using a book or journal from the University Press of Kentucky to argue for the notability of a Lexington politician? This is a great argument for notability, even though publisher and politician are in the same city. Are you using a news report from The Hazard Herald to argue for the same person? No way, even though they're located more than 100 miles (160 km) apart, not in the same city or region. As always, what matters is the nature of the coverage. Nyttend (talk) 20:17, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that a university publishing house doesn't count towards notability or interpret AUD that way. Also, this is about corps not people (just pointing it out because of the examples about biographies.) TonyBallioni (talk) 20:19, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
    • The problem is news media coverage, which is virtually always irrelevant, because it's virtually always a primary source. (What is a corps? Do you mean "news corps" or something else?) If it's covered in a reliable secondary source, that counts toward notability, but it's long past time to stop relying on the fringe theory that news reports can be secondary coverage. Nyttend (talk) 20:23, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
      • Corporations. This question is basically whether or not the local paper covering the deli that has been open for 15 years and that all the locals love makes it notable. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:08, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

This is another example of AUD being simply unhelpful and arbitrary. Why should corporations (and, let's not forget, every other kind of organisation including charities, schools, police departments, etc.) be treated differently to individuals? Promo material is just as big a problem for BLP as it is for corporations, but we deal with promo biographies easily without AUD, by just allowing editors to exercise their judgement about what's promotional material.

Even in the area of business, one of the biggest problems right now is promo pieces about cryptocurrency, something which AUD is pretty useless for addressing, but WP:PROMO works just fine on.

Finally, the Deli argument is easily dealt with using WP:PROMO, WP:ROUTINE, and WP:SIGCOV, just as articles about well-known local citizens in local press are in the BLP field where WP:AUD doesn't apply (and shouldn't be applied). The story about the local deli in the local paper is clearly based on PR material? Not an RS. The story about the deli only mentions WP:ROUTINE, run of the WP:MILL things? Not notable. The story isn't really about the deli but about something else and only mentions it in passing? Not significant coverage per WP:SIGCOV. Where do you need WP:AUD? FOARP (talk) 21:47, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree, we should expand this to cover BLPs. We already basically do and it had support at WT:N to expand in that area. Thank you for pointing it out that we shouldn't treat biographies any different. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:55, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

LOL, no, but nice try though. I've been working on AFD for a while now and am yet to see WP:AUD used on a BLP, and if I did I'd just point the editor who did it to WP:ITSLOCAL which clearly states that it's a bad argument to use. FOARP (talk) 21:58, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't support relaxing the notability criteria for corporations. I actually think AUD should be used for BLP also, but that's another discussion for another day. CThomas³ (talk) 21:36, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support per Susunw's and Montanabw's reasoned responses. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:41, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose per TonyBallioni. We are not a directory of local establishments. Removing AUD means weakening our much-needed barriers against promotional content, when what we actually need is to strengthen them in the face of increased efforts to use our project as an advertising platform. (As a side note, I would support the expansion of AUD to explicitly include BLPs). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:30, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose: no compelling reasons to remove this have been offered. Wikipedia is not a directory of local businesses, with local coverage only. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, although I would have no objection to making the "solely" criteria more forcefully stated. i.e to make it very, very clear that AUD only kicks in when all the sources are local, but that local sources are acceptable when used in combination with non-local ones. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:39, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strongest possible oppose per TonyB and Yunshui. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:52, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• Weak oppose I don't see a problem with requiring at least one source that's not just local. As 'regional, statewide, provincial, national, or international' are opposed to local, it seems pretty broad, and still open to interpretation (in a large city, 'local' is probably the suburb or local council area, while the whole city might be the region). I find "media of limited interest and circulation" to be less clear. As an example, in the recent Afd Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/McClarin Plastics, Inc., I found sources in journals and books about the plastics industry. I imagine that interest in and circulation of such sources would be largely limited to people in the plastics industry, but should they be excluded because of that? The journals would have national and/or international circulation within that industry, so would count as non-local for that aspect of WP:AUD. I assessed the sources (as best I could without full access to all of them) against the primary criteria of WP:ORGCRITE, and that showed that only one passed. It wasn't necessary to consider whether, if the sources had been independent rather than based on press releases or conference presentations, they would have to be excluded on the basis that, as articles in industry journals, they were "of limited interest and circulation". And while some companies in some industries might be covered in mainstream media, some might not (as one editor commented in that AfD, "Manufacturing is boring to the mainstream media").
  

Another question that isn't covered in WP:AUD but is by the basic criterion WP:INDEPENDENT, is who owns the sources? If a particular company funds a journal about the industry it is involved in, and has editorial influence, even if it has international circulation it would not count. Mainstream media sources are, nowadays, often owned by only a few media moguls, so even requiring non-local coverage might not be a true indication of notability (or give WP:NPOV, etc) if the owner of the media outlets has interests in the company.

So the basic criteria do seem more useful, but the non-local part of WP:AUD does not seem too onerous to me. I would support either deleting "media of limited interest and circulation" or clarifying what that means more. Does it add anything to the requirement to have at least one non-local source? (An example that comes to mind, although not in the scope of WP:ORG, would be the difference between a parish magazine and a national or international church-based newspaper, magazine, etc. For both, the interest and circulation would probably be limited largely to members of that religion, but one is local while the other is not.) RebeccaGreen (talk) 10:25, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per above. Laxening the policy in this manner may also encourage paid editing and related WP:COI. Brandmeister^talk 21:33, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strongest possible support: Does Wikipedia:Systemic bias mean nothing to those who oppose this? Is keeping Wikipedia "clean and pristine" more important than actually covering the topics that readers want to know about (i.e. the purpose of Wikipedia)? Modernponderer (talk) 03:02, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

  I'm absolutely for the identification and elimination of systemic bias, but I'm not seeing how that applies to AUD. In my opinion, covering the topics that readers want to know about means looking for topics that have at least a modicum of "beyond purely local" coverage, especially when it comes to corporations and organizations who have a vested interest in using Wikipedia for self-promotion. AUD doesn't require only regional sources or better, just one that's taken an interest outside its immediate area. It's not asking for a US-based source, or a purely national or international source. This doesn't, and isn't meant to, exclude regional or national sources from other parts of the world. Significant coverage in sources such as Azerbaijan Today or Angola Press would individually be enough to satisfy AUD. Local sources could be used for verification. Is this not how you see it? Could you elaborate on your views on systemic bias? CThomas³ (talk) 03:43, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

An article about a defunct railway that relies on coverage in old local papers and railway-enthusiast journals would be deleted under AUD, and is the classic example of the kind of thing people would want to know about. Meanwhile this rule only applies to corporations and other organisations, but we don't have a problem with BLP/Event articles that only have local coverage because WP:PROMO, WP:ROUTINE, and WP:SIGCOV can easily get rid of any material you might want to get rid of for being mundane/promotional. FOARP (talk) 06:52, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

FOARP, can you please provide some AfDs (2 or more) in support of your assertion that An article about a defunct railway that relies on coverage in old local papers and railway-enthusiast journals would be deleted under AUD. ∯WBG^converse 15:10, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Winged Blades of Godric, you and I both know no such thing exists, because our actual notability standards are set at AfD not in the policies and guidelines, which we just update from time to time to reflect existing practice via excruciatingly painful RfCs that don’t actually impact how people !vote at AfD. Railways are de facto exempt from every notability requirement we have and it’d be easier to delete the article on Donald Trump than delete an article on a railway. The fact that AUD exists and has existed for a while and railways are still the single most sacrosanct article subject at AfD shows that the above argument is a strawman. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:15, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

AUD may not apply to BLP, but I think many of us (certainly me, see my !vote above) would like to change that. CThomas³ (talk) 15:40, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

@FOARP: I think you should respond to WBG's request above from six days ago. You have been going around bludgeoning oppose !votes with non sequiturs, but when someone presents you with a question about one of your statements in support of your proposal, you seem to just ignore it. This strongly implies you are just pulling things out of the air and hoping no one will call you out on it. Either strike your groundless argument that has been challenged, or defend it with evidence. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:23, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

User:FOARP almost wrote my reply for me, User:Cthomas3, but to add to that: there is absolutely no valid reason to exclude sources merely for being "local" when we already have other policies to keep Wikipedia free of cruft that are much less likely to introduce significant bias – even though they still do so. (This includes, by the way, whether or not a source is reliable – for which being "local" is merely a single component, and does not even come close to automatic exclusion.) Modernponderer (talk) 15:00, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

I definitely understand your point, but I am not seeing where anyone is saying local sources are summarily excluded, even from partially meeting GNG. Local sources are perfectly valid. It just says that to establish notability, one source must have “beyond local” reach. GNG requires multiple sources anyway; the remainder of the significant coverage can absolutely be local. CThomas³ (talk) 15:34, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Establishing notability is the most important thing a reference can do. If two local, reliable sources, and a journal covering a narrow area of study can't sustain the notability of an article, then clearly those sources are not seen as the equivalent of a "regional" (whatever this means, and I've seen people saying that AUD has been interpreted so that even papers covering large cities in Australia don't count as "regional" but are instead local) publication which can. FOARP (talk) 19:02, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia:Systemic bias mean nothing to those who oppose this? Yes. Probably more than it means to MP, who doesn't seem to understand the concept. Allowing local news sources from Nowhereville, USA but not such sources from Nowhereville, Indonesia -- and don't pretend that's not how this proposal would work in practice -- would make systemic bias worse, not better. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:20, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Hijiri88, Probably more than it means to MP, who doesn't seem to understand the concept. is a personal attack. Please strike it out from your comments, and refrain from commenting on other users instead of the subject of the discussion, as you have done at least twice here now.

Your hypothetical situation, by the way, is basically what the opposing side means here. Removing AUD would force sources to be judged on their own merits, instead of the merits of their locales. Modernponderer (talk) 16:39, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

{@Modernponderer: Sorry, my response below was meant here; I mean, your comment below looked like it was more a response to this than to what was going on down there, so I can hardly be blamed for getting them mixed up, but still. Accusing me, the winner of WAM 2017, who has written more articles on marginalized individuals and literary works (Japanese poets who don't even have their own articles on Japanese Wikipedia!) of not understanding systemic bias is the only personal attack going on here; my pointing out to you that I've done more to combat systemic bias here than you or probably almost anyone else is not. And no, we are not "judging sources on the merits of their locales" -- you have either misunderstood the policy, or are pretending to misunderstand it. We dismiss local sources for notability purposes regardless of their locales, and a newspaper from a village in India is treated just the same as a newspaper from a village in America; your proposed change would result in the American village newspaper suddenly becoming acceptable for notability purposes, but the traditional policy would still find a way to be enforced on articles on Indian or other topics; it should be enforced equally across the board, which is how this guideline is currently worded and I don't see any reason to change that. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:52, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@User:Hijiri88: Please note that I am replying in the larger sub-discussion below so as not to maintain two conversations at the same time. Modernponderer (talk) 05:31, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose Primarily per TonyBallioni. This is not just a bad idea, it's a terrible one. This would lower the bar to the point where there would be virtually no meaningful standard for establishing notability. If you want to open the floodgates and let every corner pizza shop get an article, this should move us a long way in that direction. -Ad Orientem (talk) 03:24, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Because every pizza shop has non-WP:ROUTINE, non-WP:PROMO significant coverage in reliable-source local media? Since this rule only applies to corporations/organisations, why isn't Wiki already flooded with BLP/Event material of this kind? Could it possibly be that you are wildly overstating the usefulness of this rule? FOARP (talk) 06:47, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• Maybe. The simplest example I can give is that a subject that if it were truly notable, would certainly have national level sources, generally wont't be notable from local sources only, but a subject which will be notable in a particular area where the field is concentrated, but still be of interest generally, might well have. DGG ( talk ) 10:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't see how removing this reduces systemic bias at all. In fact it will likely increase it, because we will be flooded with articles about trivial small-town businesses. AUD isn't perfectly formulated at the moment; it really should be discussing the reach of a source, per Risker, rather than national vs "local". I for one would not consider something notable if it received attention only in Tongan press and nowhere else, regardless of the fact that it may have received "national" coverage. But removing it is not the way to go, and we should be looking at including it in GNG. Vanamonde (talk) 16:55, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Significant coverage in multiple reliable sources drives notability, regardless of whether those reliable sources are international, regional, or local. There are plenty of notable topics that have not received international coverage, and the concern about systemic bias being exacerbated by an insistence on reliable sources having a broad audience is a legitimate one. 28bytes (talk) 18:08, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Largely per nom. We have other policies and guidelines in place to guard against promotional content, of which the most important is probably that a badly written article can always be improved. A guideline specifically requiring non-local coverage would be open to varying interpretations and would enshrine selection bias. Does more harm than good. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:18, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose Every community has a broad suite of businesses and organisations that are capable of garnering local media coverage whenever they want to because local media are hungry for any local story. Unless we wish Wikipedia to replace Yellow pages, we should only judge WP:NORG based upon country-wide significance. WP:AUD works just fine, and must be retained. Nick Moyes (talk) 01:41, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Local media often suffers from a conflict of interest in the reporting done on local area corporations/concerns/people. Local media, seeing a local business/concern/person as employing and/or interesting a large portion of their viewership/readership, will inevitably lavish disproportionate levels of reporting upon those items. Local media should always be highly scrutinized when determining WP:N and almost never allowed as the sole reference if the community the local media covers depends upon the item as an employer, etc.  Spintendo  07:15, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support I always understood notability to be about whether or not we have the ability to cover the topic, not whether or not the subject could show national importance. If we have reliable independent sources with sufficient coverage, I'm not worried about how widely they were published - just whether or not they're sufficient for a good quality NPOV article. - 07:38, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, especially for companies. The guideline as written essentially defines it by readership, which makes sense. Companies need a higher bar to notability in this way because it is very easy for a publicist to requisition coverage in local or small readership sources, calling into question the independence of small readership sources. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 07:43, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

I've seen people talking about "readership" and "reach" as though this were something easy to assess (what was the readership or reach of the San Francisco Chronicle in 1895?). WP:AUD explicitly doesn't ask you to assess readership, instead giving a hierarchy of political units based on the apparent assumption that these are not simply units of arbitrary size. It says "at least one regional, statewide, provincial, national, or international source is necessary", so regardless of how wide the "reach" or how big the readership of a "local" publications are, they are not enough to sustain notability, but a "regional, statewide, provincial, national, or international source", regardless of how small its readership and narrow its reach, is sufficient to sustain notability. FOARP (talk) 10:26, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong oppose This would make it easier for companies to promote their company and companies are more notable in their local area then worldwide and Wikipedia uses worldwide notability Abote2 (talk) 11:41, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose Local businesses and groups are not notable just because they have run-of-the-mill coverage in a local publication, even if somewhat in-depth, as that remains routine and does not indicate actual significance. This waters down our notability standards as virtually any org/corp can get a modicum of coverage in local media, desperate for human-interest stories to publish that may be useful to those living nearby, but not necessarily that which establishes lasting notability. Reywas92^Talk 22:08, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:CREEP and encouragemnt of WP:PROMO: local media poutlets more enjoined with and/or enbound to local companies, and thus (commonly) less automatically WP:INDEPENDENT. ——SerialNumber54129 22:27, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

How can the removal of an instruction be instruction creep? WP:PROMO is a stand-alone rule that defends itself. FOARP (talk) 00:48, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

@FOARP: Can I suggest you read WP:BLUDGEON before responding to any more opposing comments? I technically agree that SN54129's citation of WP:CREEP is a little odd in this context, but they are completely right on the substance of their comment (as I was in my almost identical comment), which you seem to be ignoring. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:39, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

WP:BLUDGEON is not just something that you pull out when someone is making a certain number of comments, especially not when they are responding to an all-new argument (e.g., this proposal breaches WP:CREEP), a point you yourself say is "odd". Finally, how can someone be partially "odd" but also "completely right"? I trust editors to be able to distinguish PROMO material when they see it, something they already do on BLP/Event/etc.

It might be worth considering why exactly opposition to AUD being applied generally is so high, and even here the support for it is quite weak, FOARP (talk) 12:06, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

You bludgeoned me and my point was not "odd". The fact that one of the multiple oppose comments you've been interrogating is a little weird doesn't mean that BLUDGEON somehow doesn't apply. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:59, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Quite weak in comparison to what? CThomas³ (talk) 08:42, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@User:Hijiri88: Please focus on the content, not the contributor. User:FOARP has been pointing out significant deficiencies in the arguments of the opposing side, which is completely valid – and one would in fact expect the discussion closer to take that into account. Modernponderer (talk) 16:24, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Modernponderer, no, Hijiri88 is right to point out the bludgeoning by FOARP and your linking to the NPA policy to tell him not to point out the obvious behavioral issues here is a misapplication of that policy. I stopped commenting here because my position is clear and I’ve resoonded to the main points, so it was time to let others have their say. Engaging in a discussion like FOARP has isn’t useful to the closer and also discourages others from participating because no one wants to get badgered for their opinion. They should disengage and let others speak their mind; we know their opinion already, so repeating it to new oppose votes when they are made isn’t helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:31, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

User:TonyBallioni, "obvious behavioral issues"!? WP:BLUDGEON is a mere essay, and one that ought to be deleted. Not just because it encourages personal attacks of this type, but also because it flies in the face of the far more widely-accepted Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion – which is something I would expect administrators, of all people, to be extremely familiar with. Modernponderer (talk) 16:45, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Modernponderer, it’s a widely accepted essay that describes a type of disruptive editing, which is a behavioral guideline. Bludgeoning has a chilling effect and makes it more difficult for the closer to assess consensus. Hijiri88 was correct to point it out and it is not a personal attack. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:03, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@User:TonyBallioni: It is not a "widely accepted" essay – in fact, of the enormous number of discussions I've participated in, I cannot recall the last one in which it was so much as mentioned. On the other hand, the behaviour it describes is extremely commonplace as a form of consensus building, i.e. the literal exact opposite of disruptive editing – and this is definitely the first time I've heard of it referred to as the latter.

We actually have a huge problem with users constantly using obviously invalid reasoning to back up their !votes in discussions such as these – you feel that is OK, and nobody should be allowed to call that out!? If you do not defend your opinion against others poking valid holes in it, how can it possibly be taken into serious consideration when closing the discussion (without violating WP:POLL)? Modernponderer (talk) 17:13, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, first, FOARP isn’t adding anything new and is just repeating themselves, which is what WP:LISTEN/WP:BLUDGEON exist to address. Second, of course policy RfCs are votes WP:POLL/the “not a vote” mantra are myths when it comes to this. They are not just votes and explaining reasoning is expected, but they are votes. It is impossible to have a policy based opinion on an RfC about changing policy. This is a guideline so it needs about 66% for the RfC to pass. Policies need 70-75% on average. the guidance on how to close discussions actually points out that closers are generally expected to go with the numbers unless there’s a good reason otherwise, and considering that right now we’d have enough support to add AUD to this policy if it wasn’t already a part of it, continuing to repeat the same thing over and over to the roughly 70% of the community that disagrees with them isn’t exactly helping the discussion aspect of this RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:37, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Please show me where in this discussion I made the point "How can the removal of an instruction be instruction creep?" before. Thanks. FOARP (talk) 19:20, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

I was referencing your line about PROMO standing on its own and similar comments, which you've made nine times. The CREEP comment was a first, but was also unnecessary. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:40, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

"And similar comments" so, not the same comment. And you're saying that a perfectly valid point (using WP:CREEP in this context is problematic, since no new instruction is proposed here) doesn't need to be made because .... well why? Finally, ANI or a talk page is the appropriate venue for this discussion, not in the RFC where it just looks like an attempt to silence debate. I've made only about as many comments in this debate as, say, @User:Hijiri88 made in this discussion or you made in this discussion. FOARP (talk) 19:56, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@Modernponderer: "Focus on content"? Ha! So when you come along and insult me and a whole swath of other people, by placing us on the opposite side of a really serious dispute that has nothing to do with this discussion than we are actually on, with the apparent intent of just making us feel bad, and I call you out about it, it's me who violated NPA? Please. I've done significantly more than you and probably anyone else !voting support for this proposal to combat systemic bias, so please just shut up, let it go, and go build an encyclopedia.

@FOARP: Way to take things out of context. That discussion was not something I had proposed and had received immediate, almost universal opposition, and I was not interrogating a bunch of editors who opposed my proposal with the apparent intent of undermining them. In the discussion you link, I was mostly just defending myself against an editor who was harassing/trolling me, who it turned out had such thin skin that when he received a mild warning for that kind of behaviour stormed off the project in a huff. It would be really nice if ANI was more welcoming to folks like me so I didn't have to wait for other people to open those discussions for me, but that's the way the biscuit crumbles, and I'm not here to complain about it; I just wish you wouldn't bring it up out of the blue.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:48, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@User:Hijiri88: No, I did not insult anyone – and no, I will not "just shut up", as these types of discussions are a critical part of that very encyclopedia-building you refer to. But it seems to me that you think this particular discussion is exactly the opposite of what it actually is. You are certainly correct insofar as the point about systemic bias being a serious issue, but completely incorrect in the claim that it is irrelevant here – because you think that having AUD somehow prevents systemic bias, instead of enhancing its reach and hastening its spread. You think that a policy can be "enforced" without actually existing, but a policy that does exist should "simply" be subject to selective enforcement to achieve a desired (and indeed desirable) goal. That is highly illogical.

@User:TonyBallioni: I have to say that your interpretation of WP:NHC is deeply concerning. In fact, that information page (which in itself has roughly the same level of community consensus as WP:POLL, which is to say none really) merely cautions against supervotes, not weighing opinions on their merits. POLL itself explicitly outlines the extremely rare exceptions in the very lead of that page, and regular RfCs are most certainly not among them. Modernponderer (talk) 05:31, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I most certainly do not "think that having AUD somehow prevents systemic bias". I don't think any of our policies or guidelines, let alone an obscure subject notability guideline "prevent" systemic bias. What I am saying is that (if anything -- you're the one who brought it up and I frankly think it's almost completely irrelevant) it works against systemic bias rather than in its favour. I have already explained my reasoning for this thought process twice, and you have apparently ignored it both times. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:17, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Hijiri88, I did not ignore your reasoning at all – I actually explained why I consider it to be illogical. You think that a policy can be "enforced" without actually existing, but a policy that does exist should "simply" be subject to selective enforcement to achieve a desired (and indeed desirable) goal. (I'll add that the part where you say "the traditional policy would still find a way to be enforced" reads like a conspiracy theory – no offense.) Modernponderer (talk) 15:50, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

You know, dismissing a reasonable point that you know is perfectly logical and highly likely as "reads like a conspiracy theory" may not technically violate Godwin's Law, but there should probably be a similar "law" that once you compare a debate opponent to Alex Jones (or David Icke, or whoever) you've essentially lost the debate. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:51, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Hijiri88, good thing I didn't do any of those other things then. But when someone makes a vague assertion like something will "still find a way" to happen, it is difficult not to make it sound like a conspiracy.

Also, I am asking you one more time in this discussion: please stop attacking me simply because you disagree. For my part, I am pointing out what I see as valid logical inconsistencies and other issues with your arguments. And I, much like Wikipedia policy, expect debate on such a level. Modernponderer (talk) 00:01, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

You call me (repeatedly!) a conspiracy theorist, accuse me of not understanding systemic bias, make groundless NPA accusations, and I am the one "attacking you simply because I disagree"? No, you must stop attacking me. Or not, I don't really care; but please stop pinging me back if you don't have anything substantive to offer and all you intend to do is continuously harass me in this manner. Please drop the stick already. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:05, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Very well, I had just about had it with this unproductive discussion myself already. But I will correct a matter of fact: I did not claim that you specifically do not understand systemic bias; I claimed that, in my view, you interpret this discussion incorrectly – with respect to systemic bias among other issues. Two very different things. (And I certainly respect the work you've done to help correct SB on Wikipedia in general, just for the record.) Modernponderer (talk) 01:15, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Wikipedia is not, and should not become, a spam directory for small companies that are irrelevant to anyone outside of their desert village. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:47, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Would significantly weaken the threshold of notability and make it much more difficult to validate reliability of the sources.Glendoremus (talk) 05:19, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Notability should be determined on a case-by-case basis. The current rule is too restrictive and should be rewritten per WP:CREEP. I also don’t see why companies are held to a stricter standard than people are when it comes to notability. Calidum 16:31, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Removing entirely is not an improvement, although perhaps some refinements can be suggested. The real issue with ORG is it covers too many different things, but this does not address that. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:02, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a business directory of every small town pizzeria and dental office that has garnered some local press attention. I endorse the arguments of Tony Ballioni, Sandstein, My name is not dave, Yunshui, PMC, Beyond My Ken, Ad Orientem, Nick Moyes and Spintendo. I do agree with Montanabw and others that we need some clarification of what distinguishes local sources from regional sources. I have made a similar point in the past. I am sorry to disagree with several editors I respect, but I feel very strongly about this. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:51, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Cullen328, I agree with you on this, and I think it is a difficult distinction to make. I think what AUD is aiming at is the reach of the audience as Risker points out. My example here is the Atlanta Journal Constitution: a regional paper that also has extensive local coverage. If the AJC is covering a bus crash in Atlanta that hasn't garnered outside attention, that is purely local coverage and doesn't count towards the notability of the coach company. If they're writing a review of one of the top restaurants in Atlanta, a major metropolitan area, that is clearly intended for a wider audience than just locals, it is not just a local source. Its a balancing act and the line isn't very easy to determine. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:08, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. It is too easy for run-of-the-mill companies to obtain coverage in local media. Removing the audience guideline would enable Wikipedia to host a relatively indiscriminate collection of business profiles. — Newslinger talk 17:53, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

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

Notability of family members in small business chain

Need your thoughts on a number of drafts over at Talk:Uwajimaya#Notability_of_business_people_in_Uwajimaya. Editor has drafted biographies of family members in the business which is a local supermarket chain in Seattle. It's not Walton family AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 17:09, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

• suggest merging into one family article or into the business article perhaps, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 19:54, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

"best in nation/world" lists of restaurants in reliable sources?

I see there's been some discussion of this at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)/Archive_19 but I'm not sure how to interpret the outcome. I created Crossroads Kitchen and the notability is being questioned here because the sources in question only give about a paragraph to each restaurant, which of course is pretty typical for these kinds of articles. I'm arguing that inclusion on multiple (in this case, 7) 'best in nation' lists in sources that are reliable and not local to the restaurant's area shows notability. This is probably pretty specific to the hospitality industry -- best hotels, best restaurants, etc. -- so it's probably too much detail to provide at WP:PRODUCTREV, but I thought I'd see what people here thought about it. Thanks for any help! --valereee (talk) 13:44, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

I dunno, the number of fancy vegan restaurants can't be that high in the first place, and I'd guess these websites/magazines, whose job it is to churn out as many lists of all sorts of restaurants as they can year after year, tend to work off of each others' lists rather than being independently and objectively compiled (especially buzzfeed's...). Most of these blurbs are fairly short and just rattle off some interesting-sounding dishes. In this case I would hope there to be some sort of substantive sources on it, and the F&W article is pretty decent. But I don't think it's Wikipedia's role to duplicate these lists and assume notability on them alone, even with multiple. Reywas92^Talk 08:36, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Reywas92, not all of the restaurants on the various lists are necessarily upscale or even vegan -- there are multiple lists that include some midrange restaurants, vegetarian restaurants, even just plain ol' restaurants, period. And you might be surprised how many upscale vegetarian restaurants are on one or two of the lists I researched -- only one appears on all of them, IIRC -- but I take your point. --valereee (talk) 09:06, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

REywas92, you've got to go out to dinner more. You's be amazed by teh food at upscale vega places in LA, London, New York and Tel Aviv.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:59, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Valereee I would expect a notable restaurant to have substantial coverage from its local media. This coupled with listicle entries might be enough to get them over the notability hump for me. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:01, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, yes, this restaurant does have significant local coverage. I didn't include it when I created because sometimes that seems to sort of muddy the notability waters -- purely local coverage generally doesn't prove notability for a restaurant by itself. Maybe I should go add that stuff, though, if it's generally considered helpful when added to the national note being taken of a place. --valereee (talk) 13:54, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• My 2 cents: Adding a handful of "top restaurant" listings is OK as a way to establish notability, as long as there is SIGCOV too. But not all lists are created equal. Making a list in the local free weekly ≠ a top ten list in, say, Conde Nast Traveler.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:59, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

  E.M.Gregory, absolutely agree, the only lists I looked at were for national or international publications. Some (F&W, T&L, USA Today) are stronger than others, but none of the lists I looked at were even just regional or state, much less local. I've since included a local list for purposes of expansion, but I wasn't looking to that one for notability. --valereee (talk) 20:17, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Churches

Are there any guidelines explicitly for the notability of churches? I've heard the arguments that churches are notable simply because they meet the description of a megachurch, but megachurches are actually relatively common. Other arguments I hear are that some famous person attends the church, it was where a certain movement, such as a schism, began, etc., even though these are relatively common and insignificant, too. The only true notability characteristic I am aware of is if the building is on the NRHP. However, I've seen some of these other arguments that seem poor used successfully in deletion discussions. Bneu2013 (talk) 04:58, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

• WP:NCHURCH.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:36, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• While it is obvious that we cannot keep any pages without WP:RS, it is also important to remember that the role individual churches have played in the lives of American communities and individuals is out of all proportion to the amount of SIGCOV they get (mostly of in the events column, St. Whosiwhatsis Parish holds it annual Easter egg roll this Sunday). After all, what is there to write about church in a handsome building where the members gather and open their hymnals every Sunday? And yet, anyone interested in, say, Nathan Pusey, Harvard's last church-going President - a fact regarded by historians of education as having a role in shaping the direction of Harvard and American higher ed more broadly links to All Saints Episcopal Church (Appleton, Wisconsin), where he pushed the congregation to move into the "low church" movement. Or say you were curious about Governor Bill Haslam, if you are, it is interesting to know that the pastor he chose to read the prayer at his inauguration was from a church Christ Presbyterian Church (Nashville, Tennessee) that is part of the conservative Presbyterian denomination, not the progressive one. Neither of these churches is sourced to the level that I would expect a local bakery to be it it had a page. But membership in a particular church can be a significant part of the biography of intellectuals and politicians. Therefore, individual churches are functional to the project, even when lightly sourced.E.M.Gregory (talk) 00:46, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

The issue I had was with reliable sources that mention a church in one sentence, but said absolutely nothing about the actual church. Ex: "famous person x attends church x" or "person x, who died tragically, was a devoted member of church x." I was under the impression that sources such as that, while reliable, are not considered legitimate to establish notability. If I'm wrong, please correct me. I seem to recall these exact arguments being used successfully in AfD discussions. There are a number of so called "megachurches" that I am familiar with that would probably meet this criteria, but I never bothered to create them because I assumed they would be deleted via AfD or rejected via AfC. Bneu2013 (talk) 05:25, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

I check the deletion list on Christianity pretty regularly, and when churches appear, I join the discussion, often finding sources that establish notability. I do not remember seeing the sort argument you describe before the current AfD discussion on a church in which we have both participated. It is certainly not a common type of argument in AfD discussions about churches.E.M.Gregory (talk) 09:56, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

I did some searching around and found this AfD, which was for an article that I seem to remember editing. Here this argument seems to have been used successfully. I'd like to know if this is different and if the argument was used improperly. Bneu2013 (talk) 04:11, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Another restaurant notability question

I'm doing a GA review of Nostrana (restaurant) at Talk:Nostrana (restaurant)/GA1 and I'm wondering about notability. This is an article created by a mega-experienced editor, Another Believer and I feel I must be just being stupid, but I was under the impression that local coverage, even in the most respected areawide newspapers, wasn't sufficient. That, for instance, multiple instances of significant coverage in the NYT wouldn't necessarily be enough to show notability of a NYC restaurant, that there would need to also be significant coverage that isn't local to the restaurant's area. Would someone be willing to take a look at the sourcing for the article? I'm hoping I'm just being wrongheaded here. --valereee (talk) 16:00, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Not to introduce bias here (I'm happy for Valereee to seek a third opinion), but I should note like I did in the GA review, The Oregonian is the largest newspaper in Oregon and the second largest in the Pacific Northwest by circulation. I would not limit this publication to local coverage. Thanks to other editors for taking a look. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:06, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Another Believer, my apologies for not presenting that in my question -- I wasn't intending to leave out anything important! ETA: stipulated that the Oregonian is a major newspaper serving the PNW and absolutely reliable. --valereee (talk) 16:36, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Valereee, All good! Just wanted to let other editors know about this publication in particular, because sometimes people see "based in Portland" and assume the paper is local only. Thanks! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:37, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Another Believer I certainly agree with you regarding the reliability and scope of The Oregonian but note that even regional newspapers can be considered LOCAL coverage. However, this factor would only come into play in a notability discussion which GA explicitly is NOT. As a RS I agree with you 100% that it can be used in a GA. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:55, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, my concern is that the instructions for GA say that if it has or needs tags, it's an immediate fail. --valereee (talk) 17:02, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

OTOH, it does also say "can, but by no means must, be failed." So does that mean I can ignore this question? --valereee (talk) 17:11, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Valereee, What tag are you suggesting is needed? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:19, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Valereee If you genuinely believe the topic is not notable I would suggest you pause the review and nominate it for deletion rather than considering a tag of the article. Speaking for myself, given what I know about Another Believer as an editor if he thinks a topic is notable I'd be inclined to trust his judgement and would just do a normal GA review. The tag line is not aimed at articles like this, in my opinion but rather ones with major substantial needs. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:20, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, thank you, that was exactly what I wanted to do ETA: er, just doing a normal GA review, I mean. --valereee (talk) 17:32, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Re the NYT... A lot depends on which section of the paper the coverage appears in. Coverage in the “metro” section will be locally oriented, and conveys less notability than coverage in another section. Blueboar (talk) 16:51, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Political parties

We should have a notability criteria for political parties. After a spate of recent nominations of small and U.S.-state based parties, it seems clear to me that the existing standard is insufficient. The state of journalism state means that smaller parties and state-based affiliates often receive little in-depth coverage, despite recognition by state authorities and repeatedly contesting elections. This is not the fault of the party per-se, moreso of the lack of funding for journalism outside of the national level. This problem is obvious by looking at the Constitution Party of Wisconsin. The party has elected local officials, put its presidential ticket on the ballot since the early 1990s, and yet, few third party sources are available at this moment. I believe that ballot qualified parties should be considered notable if they receive sufficient sourcing to prove their existence and basic facts. Thoughts?--TM 10:55, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

• Existence is not notable. We need coverage in reliable independent sources in order to write an article and demonstrate notability. It may be a “great wrong” that sources don’t cover minor political parties, but Wikipedia isn’t the place to right great wrongs. Blueboar (talk) 11:22, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
• I agree that we should have clearly defined notability criteria for parties. I think that a standard similar to WP:NPOLITICIAN (i.e. presume notability for a party that has representatives at a state/province or higher level of government) would work well, but am less certain about parties that only have local-level representation, such as TM's example of the Constitution Party of Wisconsin. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:12, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Organization criteria confusion

WP:ORGCRIT

These criteria, generally, follow the general notability guideline with a stronger emphasis on quality of the sources to prevent gaming of the rules by marketing and public relations professionals. The guideline, among other things, is meant to address some of the common issues with abusing Wikipedia for advertising and promotion. As such, the guideline establishes generally higher requirements for sources that are used to establish notability than for sources that are allowed as acceptable references within an article.

but further down in the same policy page, it reads:

1. these alternate criteria,
2. the primary criteria for organizations, or
3. the general notability guideline

Why does it say or ; rather than and? If ORGCRIT was designed to set a stronger emphasis to prevent gaming the system to insert promotional contents, but allows meeting the less stringent GNG to substitute meeting ORGCRIT, it cancels it out. Are we sure this isn't supposed to say and rather than or? the intention seems to be that WP:CORP is intended as an additional requirement atop WP:GNG to prevent prevent gaming of the rules by marketing and public relations professionals as said above. shouldn't it say 1 or; 2 and 3; as opposed to 1, 2 or 3 as in the text now? Graywalls (talk) 15:23, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

H-index, very low, indicator for probable G11 tagging.

At WT:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#H-index, I have found myself expounding on how I like to use google scholar to find an H-index to decide on whether to WP:CSD#G11 a woeful PROF-failing self promoting recent PhD graduate. Inviting criticism... --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:19, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

RfC about independent sources for academic biographies

An RfC which might be of interest to watchers of this page has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics)#RfC about independent sources for academic notability to decide the following question:

Current wording: Academics/professors meeting any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, are notable.
Proposed wording: Academics/professors meeting one or more of the following conditions, as substantiated using multiple published, reliable, secondary sources which are independent of the subject and each other, are notable.

Shall the wording in the section Wikipedia:Notability (academics)#Criteria be changed to the proposed wording above?

Editors are welcome to join the discussion. -- Netoholic @ 23:34, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

"Creative carve out" [sic] for game manufacturing companies?

In this AfD (currently under REVDEL), the argument was made that there is a thing called a "creative carve out" [sic] by which profitmaking companies can qualify for inherent notability under WP:ARTIST provided they manufacture science fiction games. I don't entirely understand the argument so I may not be describing it correctly and would suggest anyone interested go to the applicable page if you want a direct description unencumbered by a bad intermediary. In any case, however, this is the first time I've heard this argument broached and wanted to gauge the community's input to ensure my own comprehension isn't in error. Is there such a thing as a "creative carve out" [sic] for corporations to be treated as people if they manufacture science fiction games? Chetsford (talk) 18:11, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

There is no such carve out.

(I do think that we should be less strict on companies that have produced a number of individually-notable creative products (that is, those products have a clearly notable standalone page), where the number products has to start at at least 5 if not higher. Such pages, while thin on details, would as least serve as a means to link from one creative product to the make back to the other products they have made. However, that's not the case in the OP's question ). --Masem (t) 18:17, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

That seems like a good idea. Chetsford (talk) 18:22, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

• Carve-out applies - first of all, we are not talking about "manufacturing companies" - we are talking about game publishers (other than video games). These companies are in the business of creating and licensing intellectual properties and designing and publishing games, books and related products.
• Secondly, the publisher in question, Dream Pod 9, has published dozens and dozens of books (along with other products); these publications have received RS reviews, meet NBOOK and, as noted in the AfD, the key intellectual properties created (such as the Silhouette Core rules system) are IP created by the publishing company and cannot be individually attributed among the small number of designers and authors involved. The carve-out for "co-authors and inventors" applies quite literally to this case as well as other similar ones. Newimpartial (talk) 18:34, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
• The exclusionary anguage of the current draft of NORG, which I am referring to as a "carve-out", concludes the first section of NORG and reads as follows: "This guideline does not cover small groups of closely related people such as families, entertainment groups, co-authors, and co-inventors covered by WP:Notability (people)." Newimpartial (talk) 18:38, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

"we are talking about game publishers", "the publisher in question ... has published dozens and dozens of books" So do you believe IGI Global should not have been deleted as they have published thousands and thousands of books? Or does the "carve out" only apply to fantasy publishers and not other genres of publishers such as western adventure, romance, or non-fiction? Chetsford (talk) 18:48, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

• Chetsford, if you have read any of the reliable sources on game publishing, you will understand that authorship, editorship, and line development are organized differently in this field than in fiction or non-fiction publishing. This is not a matter of genre, but of category: it is as if you were trying to apply to a partnership of research chemists the criteria applicable to paint manufacturers. In game publishing, the publisher typically functions as a design studio or research lab and it is within the publisher that the intellectual properties are produced. This is not the case with fiction or nonfiction, in general.

  Also, Chetsford, perhaps your memory is slipping, but in fact you have seen this argument before, notably in this diff. Newimpartial (talk) 19:00, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  We need to distinguish from publishers and creators at a minimum. There might be some reason to focus on creators/developers of a work because that is where the hard creative work came from. Whereas publishers have little creative input (they might proofread/offer suggestions, but they're not doing the hard work). To a point, that becomes like a storefront, and we are not a catalog. That said, we do want to make sure that in some fields a publisher is also the creative force behind what is published. IGI Global does not at all appear to be in that ballpark. --Masem (t) 18:53, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  The problem, Masem, is that in the field of RPGs and other tabletop games, the publisher typically plays a different role than in other domains. The founders of all major 20th-century RPG publishers, such as TSR, Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf, Steve Jackson Games, Atlas Games, Pinnacle and, yes, Dream Pod 9, were game designers, writers, and developers. In most of these cases, founders and then line developers for the respective games played the key role in the direction, success and failure of the game lines, more so than individual credited authors. Therefore, in this context, it makes the most sense to apply CREATIVE to the group responsible for the artistic creation rather than to one individual author as in the case of, e.g., fiction and nonfiction. If you would like to see this process described, Designers & Dragons is the standard text. Newimpartial (talk) 19:07, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  No, you're right that Dream Pod 9 fits into the "publisher is actually the developer" area. That said, my point before is that we do NOT have a creative carve out as suggested. I would argue for keeping a company which has several lines of notable creative products, but that's not the case with Dream Pod 9 - of their four major products, two fail notability (from what sources are given), one barely even gets their, and the other may be notable but its resting on too many primary sources. That fails my hypothetically allowance test for a company standalone. Not saying there's other reasons to keep Dream Pod 9, but their creative works do no come close to even thinking about a creative carve out. --Masem (t) 19:12, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  The current state of the game line articles is not a factor in Notability for either the game lines or the publisher. There are literally scores of RS reviews of the various publications in these and other lines, in addition to the chapter in Designers & Dragons and the scholarly sources treating the die mechanics of the Silhouette system. If you accept notability of creative products as the basis of a game publisher's notability, there is no question that Dream Pod 9 meets that threshold, though the most influential reviews were in the dead tree era when they were at their peak. Newimpartial (talk) 19:21, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  "the most influential reviews were in the dead tree era" It's fine to cite offline sources but they do, in fact, need to be cited for verification. Notability is established through demonstration, not assertion. Per WP:NPOSSIBLE, "merely asserting that unspecified sources exist is seldom persuasive". If Dream Pod 9 was the subject of articles in Newsweek or the New York Times or whatever, though, it's fine to use those as sources with title, date, article, and page numbers so that they can be verified. However, merely declaring you remember once reading an article about them in 1983 does not crest our WP:V threshold. Thanks! Chetsford (talk) 19:29, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  True, but the GNG is already met by 'Designers & Dragons' plus the RS review I cited here, which goes beyond the individual publication to discuss Dream Pod 9 and its Silhouette Core rules in some detail. I would never support article status for a topic that does not meet the GNG. Newimpartial (talk) 19:37, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  I think your definition of WP:SIGCOV for purposes of the GNG (one mention in a book by "Evil Hat Productions" and on something called "thealexandrian.net") and mine must be a little different. But, I digress, as the purpose of this thread is not to rehash any one specific AfD but to determine whether a thing called "creative carve out" exists and that question has been answered to my satisfaction. Chetsford (talk) 19:58, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Lest you forget, Chetsford, your own RSN notice revealed Designers & Dragons to be RS in this domain. And three of five participants here agree on either a "carve-out" or similarly relaxed criteria for ORGS producing creative works, with the other two showing no sign of understanding NOTINHERITED and CREATIVE correctly. So shouldn't we give it a few more hours before jumping to (incompatible) conclusions? Newimpartial (talk) 20:03, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

"three of five participants here agree on either a "carve-out" or similarly relaxed criteria" I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the proper way to interpret "There are no carve outs", "No carve out", "Nope - no carve out" and "there is no such carve out" but I do appreciate the creativity and passion you bring to this topic. Chetsford (talk) 20:15, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

I think I'll stick to "I do think that we should be less strict on companies that have produced a number of individually-notable creative products" (Masem), "agree with Masem's thought" (Barkeep49) and your "That seems like a good idea." That actually makes four of us supporting distinct criteria for groups of creators.

Also, when I provide a diff I would appreciate if you could read the entire thing (when it's as concise as that one was, at least). I provided the qualifications of the reviewer, so there was no need for you to read the entrails of the web address ("something called 'thealexandrian.net'"). I provided all the relevant information and the direct link, as well, so as not to force you to look for yourself, which I know you resent. Newimpartial (talk) 20:26, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

• Nope - no carve out. A parent may have several notable children... that does not make the parent notable. A company may make several notable products, that does not make the company notable. An author may write several notable books, that does not make the author notable. Notability is not inherited. What would make the company notable is significant coverage of the company itself. Now, there is a strong likelihood that a gaming company that has produced multiple notable games will have the necessary coverage... but it is NOT automatic. Blueboar (talk) 18:49, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  Blueboar, yours is a very common misreading of NOTINHERITED. NCREATIVE makes it quite clear: while authorship will not make otherwise non-notable BOOKS notable, authoring books with RS reviews does indeed grant notability to authors (which is parallel to the case here). NOTINHERITED does not apply to creative works and their creators in both directions, but only in one. Newimpartial (talk) 19:12, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  Read the entire guideline... it does NOT say an author with notable books IS notable... it says he/she is LIKELY to be notable. Huge distinction. Blueboar (talk) 21:06, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, we are talking about presumptive rather than actual notability. The GNG must also be met - there is no "carve-out" from the GNG. Newimpartial (talk) 21:10, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

• No carve out but agree with Masem's thought that a List of notable products made by a non-notable company could be an appropriate article. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:51, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
• Thanks, all. Based on the responses, it sounds like there's agreement that a thing called "creative carve-out" doesn't exist for corporations. I appreciate everyone's feedback. Chetsford (talk) 19:09, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, the first hour was undoubtedly quite conclusive. Not. Newimpartial (talk) 19:15, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

• There are no "carve outs". Reliable sources tell us what is notable (or not) by extensively noting it (or not). We either have enough source material to write a full article, or we, well, don't. Notability is not inherited. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:11, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  Seraphimblade, that is not the relationship between authors and works described in WP:NAUTHOR. And I am not suggesting Notability without meeting the WP:GNG: the question is whether the higher standard of WP:NORG applies to small groups engaged in creation and invention. Newimpartial (talk) 20:17, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  I looked through the linked AfD before commenting, but it appeared to me that even those arguing "keep" mostly acknowledged that it didn't meet the GNG (which the closer should've taken into account; those are delete arguments regardless of the bolded text at the front of them). They discussed some mentions, but no number of mentions or name drops can meet GNG. And they are indeed organizations, so of course any organization criteria apply to them. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:45, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  So is the exclusion at the top of NORG a dead letter for you, then? Also, I don't think anyone conceded that the GNG was not met: there is a whole book chapter about the company, and I recently gave an example of a RS that gives a multi-paragraph treatment of Dream Pod 9 and its core rules system, within a product review. That is not a trivial mention, and is an example of the many available sources I described in my !vote at AfD. Newimpartial (talk) 20:51, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  "I recently gave an example of a RS that gives a multi-paragraph treatment of Dream Pod 9" - Newimpartial, I believe you may have been advised this previously on a different topic but, if not, then I apologize. However, "thealexandrian.net" is only a RS under WP:SPS if it can be demonstrated by other RS that Justin Alexander is, indeed, a subject matter expert. Simply declaring him to be a SME is insufficient. You would need to cite the Wall Street Journal or MSNBC or so forth saying "Justin Alexander is an expert on fantasy roleplay". A WP editor can't just assert "he's an expert" and then declare his blog to be a RS. Anyway, I apologize in advance if that comes across as repetitious. Chetsford (talk) 20:58, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  His multiple publications in Pyramid, Gaming Outpost and Games Unplugged make him a reliable source. <Sniff> I thought you understood. Newimpartial (talk) 21:07, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  WP is not an HR department. We don't evaluate credentials to determine if someone is a SME. We go by what RS say. Chetsford (talk) 22:07, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  An interesting proposition, Chetsford, but not policy. WP:SPS states: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications". That, not subjective reputation, is the policy-compliant criterion, and it is met in this case. Pedhaps you would like to strike your erroneous comment? Newimpartial (talk) 22:14, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  Correct. An (a) established expert, (b) whose work has been published. Not one or the other. In any case, this now seems to be going nowhere fast so I'll have to bow out. Thanks for your input. Chetsford (talk) 22:33, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

• No general "carve out" I agree with Seraphimblade that in general we should be applying WP:ORG criteria to game publishers regardless of the level of creativity their work requires. WP:CREATIVE is part of the WP:PEOPLE guideline and therefore does not categorically apply. I tend to look at the WP:ORG note regarding "small groups of closely related people" requiring at the minimum some visibility of the members in order to treat them as surrogate individuals. To me, a design firm that chooses to brand itself as a corporation should be treated like a corporation rather than a small creative team of related individuals, and all evidence I can find indicates that Dream Pod 9 presents itself in exactly that fashion; I can't even find an "About Us" link on their website. I do agree with Masem that there is some gray area here and I would entertain case-by-case exceptions to this, but I would fall short of endorsing a general rule. CThomas³ (talk) 21:30, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
• No carve out – per the reasoning offered by other editors above. I read that sentence as meaning that a group of people should not be treated like an organization–not that an organization should be treated as a group of people if it is made up of a small number of creative professionals. An actual, legal corporation is NCORP, all the way, even if its product involves creativity and its owners are few. For example, The Beatles are covered by NBIO, not NCORP; but the record company that publishes Beatles records would be NCORP, not NBIO (even if it's owned by the members of The Beatles). I also agree with Masem's point that a List of products by Acme-type article may be permissible under WP:NLIST even if Acme weren't notable under NCORP. – Levivich 01:09, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
• No Carve out - Don't be silly. Every company thinks they're creative, but only some companies are notable. Games companies are not more notable simply because their product is also an artistic work. However, I would say that what we're seeing here is a naturally response to the heavy-handed approach taken towards ORGs on wiki under WP:CORP where it seems almost likely the only company that is notable is one that has negative news out there about it with everything else being dismissed as COI/PR. FOARP (talk) 15:52, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Local businesses and organizations for notability for inclusion into Wikipedia

One particular editor whom I believe to be a marketing or public relations professional has been adding local restaurants, dive bars, clubs in the Portland, Oregon area in mass. We're going back and forth in the discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_talk:Elephants_Delicatessen

One example is a local business called Elephant's Delicatessen. I would say it's one of the more notable ones within the businesses he's added but they all go along the similar path. Local walk-in customer venues of only general interest to those visiting or living in the area. This one has plenty of routine and trivial coverage in local papers and some in the regional paper, but arguably they're relatively routine coverage of mainly local interest and do not satisfy the notability requirements to add stand-alone articles here. I would like to get some input if anyone could chime in.

The editor named these sources:

• https://pdx.eater.com/2014/10/22/7039395/flying-elephants-deli-now-open-near-tilikum-crossing
• https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/real-estate-daily/2014/07/ohsu-research-mecca-gets-a-coffee-shop-and-deli.html
• https://www.oregonlive.com/dining/2012/07/elephants_in_the_park_grill_op.html
• https://1859oregonmagazine.com/guidebook/elephants-deli-flying-kruse-way/
• https://www.portlandoregon.gov/sustainabilityatwork/article/458782
• https://www.wweek.com/portland/article-4689-elephants-on-parade.html
• https://www.oregonlive.com/aloha/2013/08/portlands_elephants_delicatess.html
• https://www.zagat.com/r/elephants-delicatessen-portland
• https://www.oregonlive.com/dining/2012/07/elephants_in_the_park_grill_op.html
• https://books.google.com/books?id=afhADwAAQBAJ&pg=PT305&lpg=PT305&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://pamplinmedia.com/scc/124-business/157812-elephants-deli-opens-on-corbett
• https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2001/03/26/smallb1.html
• https://books.google.com/books?id=ijt8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT35&lpg=PT35&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://expo.oregonlive.com/life-and-culture/erry-2018/08/476dcee2bc9941/17-things-to-do-during-a-12hou.html

Graywalls (talk) 17:01, 13 March 2019 (UTC) Retracting publicly stated opinion that I shared when I was not aware of recommendation against remarking such. Graywalls (talk) 00:32, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Graywalls, You are welcome to invite others to review the draft talk page, but you are introducing bias by falsely accusing me of being paid to create this entry and others you've nominated for deletion recently. You're invitation is not neutral, and many Wikipedia editors know me both on- and off-wiki. You're not helping yourself by introducing me in this way. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:10, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Graywalls: Another Believer is among our most prolific article writers, having created or improved who-knows-how-many thousands of articles over the last decade. That includes some Portland-area topics. If you want to make a [very, very ill-advised] paid editing allegation, the place is WP:COIN or maybe WP:ANI. If there's a disagreement over the reliability of a source, you can settle that at WP:RSN. Discussion over whether that topic in particular is notable is already happening on draft talk page, and there's no emergency so long as it's in draftspace. If it's moved to mainspace, you can nominate it for deletion and make your case there. The question of whether a set of sources makes a particular topic notable is standard fare for AfD. It's true that a page about a company should not exist in mainspace if its only source is the company website, but we're past that. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:30, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites:, What I've noticed about his participation is a boat load of run of the mill bars, clubs and other local things being added that looks like City Search entries. This isn't about one source in particular. I wanted to get outside input in the application discretion of WP:ORG along with WP:N in entries about businesses that are primarily of just local interest. This isn't just for this article but for bettering of the encyclopedia going forward. I believe Noticeboard/N would have been the perfect place, but it is no longer active. Graywalls (talk) 02:45, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Our encyclopedia relies to an extent on the willingness of people to share their knowledge. People who live in a particular city tend to know what restaurants are notable within the city, at least. Portland is also pretty major as inhabited localities go. bd2412 T 03:42, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

But that argument would apply across the board, so that one could argue that in Tinytown USA, Joe's Diner is pretty notable there, but nowhere else. It's why WP:AUD is key here. --Masem (t) 03:56, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

I would agree with you if we were talking about Google Local Guides. But "local guide" is exactly what Wikipedia is NOT. I have just read this article. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-editors-elite-diversity-foundation. This might explain the pattern of a handful of user doing all the editing with controversy that are seen as "valuable contribution" by supporters and littering by opponentsGraywalls (talk) 16:41, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

This is why we have the WP:AUD component of WP:NORG. If these Portland establishments are notable outside of just Portland great let's include them - as noted Portland is written enough about that it's likely several bars/restaurants meet this criteria. If it's really just a local thing well then that isn't what Wikipedia does. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:51, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49:I'm getting the impression that NORG is like GNG but with higher standards to minimize marketing and public relations professionals from exploiting and twisting things around in favor of inclusion to suite their desired outcomes. Am I on the right track? Putting things in a third person view, I don't really care to see articles about eateries and bars in Salk Lake City that is only of interest for someone who lives or visits there. There are travel related sites and wikis that are outside of Wikipedia for those type of things. However, if that place is written about it in the Reporter-Herald, it still wouldn't perk my interest. How does Wikipedia community see it? Graywalls (talk) 17:11, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Graywalls I would indeed suggest that NORG is like GNG but with strictly applied standards to prevent Wikipedia being used as an advertising platform. This observation is based of my experience in discussions like these but also at Articles for Deletion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:13, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

@Another Believer:, you're the one who asked what I thought of it. I'd like to make the experience more productive than simply deciding what you and I can come to a term as it applies to that specific article. On your second point, Is there a certain rule that discourage me from briefly sharing my opinion that I believe you're a marketing or a public relations professional? Accuse is a strong word, but since you brought up "paid", you're welcome to clarify if "individuals and organizations collaborate with Wikipedia in mutually beneficial ways" means if you receive consideration to make edits to Wikipedia or to "work with" others, on matters relating to contents getting placed on Wikipedia for consideration. Totally up to you. Graywalls (talk) 17:44, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Graywalls Yes there are norms around how you would share your opinion that another editor is a marketing or public relations professional. See for instance WP:ASPERSIONS. The Conflict of Interest Noticeboard, which is the correct venue for discussion about a specific editor, also has further information about how such discussions must happen on wikipedia. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:57, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

I wasn't claiming he's getting paid for this.. for the record. Graywalls (talk) 18:11, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Graywalls, Of course you're welcome to accuse me of being a marketing professional, but that doesn't mean you're right. I don't really feel a strong need to explain myself to you, but if you insist, you should know I help facilitate workshops, edit-a-thons, and education program collaborations with many local organizations. You can see them listed at User:Another Believer/WikiCV, which I assume you already know since you've quoted the page. I've helped organize events at the Multnomah County Library, Portland Art Museum, Portland State University, Reed College, Washington State University Vancouver, Oregon State University, the University of Oregon, Publishing Resource Center, Vancouver Community Library, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Yale Union, Oregon Jewish Museum, Pacific Northwest College of Art, etc. My point is I enjoy working with organizations, and this is not wrong. Of all these collaborations, I've maybe been paid $200 in stipends for my time by PNCA, payments which have been documented in WMF grant reports. I don't do these events for the money, but if an organizer offers $100 for 6 hours of my time, I won't say no. You seem to take a skeptical approach about this, but I am very comfortable with and proud of my many contributions to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement in general. Back to the topic of sourcing... ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:14, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

and just to notate it, I believed the user was a PR professional after having read the discussion HERE. I wasn't aware at the time, its discouraged to state my opinion about such, so I retract my publicly stated opinion. Graywalls (talk) 00:36, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

I think what we're seeing here is yet another example of the heavy-handed application of WP:CORP and the almost automatic assumption that anyone writing about companies who is not writing something negative must necessarily be a COI editor or PR profession doing paid editing. Let's assume good faith people. FOARP (talk) 15:57, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Proposal: add contents to clarify how notability is evaluated for software as subsection under products to avoid confusion

There's an essay on software notability which gives an impression that they have less rigorous notability requirements than products. After seeking comment on what standards apply on the general notability talk page, I have received two comment suggesting they should be evaluated the same way as WP:PRODUCTS which falls under the WP:NORG. I propose that something is added under WP:PRODUCTS to clarify the applicable guidelines or even relegate to the software notability essay if there's a broad consensus supporting this.

In an AfD I created, I've experienced an article about a website being retitled to software by an editor "so it meets the requirements for that." referring to the software notability essay. I believe this was a result of confusion about which notability guidelines apply. Graywalls (talk) 09:43, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Software is a creative work of art. A subset of those works may be sold. A subset of those may be sold multiple times and have associated marketing and branding that makes them a product. Hence I think any general advice on software notability needs to take into account the software superset that is not "product". If a work of software is accepted as being a "product", then it seems reasonable that WP:PRODUCTS would apply. Perhaps a software section added to WP:PRODUCTS would be a way forward. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 22:23, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

However, in general, software is a tool or a product intended to provide a function and it is rather uncommon or insignificant purpose of purpose that they're produced for creative/artistic purposes and I feel this page would be appropriate for notability purposes. Graywalls (talk) 16:57, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Analysis table on the page

The table does not include a column for WP:AUD. I feel like it could use one. It's possible for even local papers to get a green check marks on all four columns and you could have two such sources and create an appearance of passing notability. A column for "significant general audience" would be useful in my opinion. Graywalls (talk) 21:28, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

No, because that would not work. The table in its current state requires at least two sources to pass all requirements. WP:AUD requires at least one source to have a general audience. When such a column would be added, it could be possible that there are multiple sources that pass all requirements except WP:AUD and only a single source that passes all of them including WP:AUD. That would mean: it would not pass the requirement for multiple sources passing all requirements. WP:AUD in its current state works fine, because the audience of sources must still be considered. Dwaro (talk) 19:04, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Strengthening WP:LISTED

At the moment WP:LISTED is often ignored when a listed company comes up for AfD. There is also a major bias against global stock exchanges, so that whilst the FTSE and NYSE companies are on wikipedia a much smaller proportion of the companies on the other exchanges are on wikipedia although the individual companies are likely to have a much larger effect on the local economy of India, Brazil, Egypt...etc.

The proposal is that the policy is strengthened so that all listed companies are notable by default and have an entry, it can be just a stub with their stock exchange summary information, but they should all have an entry, so that they are protected from deletion.

Currently we have large number of significant businesses missing and a long discussion at the top of this page about Elephants Delicatessen which is a small Deli chain in Portland Oregon. First I have nothing against Elephants Delicatessen but it relies on an Editor putting in a lot of work to get this page into wikipedia and defend it against AFD, which is great and kudos to the editor in question.

The point is that all listed companies are more significant than Elephants Delicatessen and the 1,000's of other small companies that have made it into Wikipedia through the random process of having an interested editor and getting past AfD. Listed is a simple clear criteria for inclusion and now that we have almost every school, village, and a number of ex villages, listed companies clearly have more significance than other article subjects that are now agreed as notable by default.

When a company is listed on a stock exchange there is always a legally verified document that sets out what the company does along with the ownership and management. This is signed off by two sets of lawyers the companies and the brokers and provides a good reliable source on every listed company. If it is false then there is generally a law suit and plenty of additional reliable sources as to why the law suit took place and what the company did or did not do. RonaldDuncan (talk) 17:47, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

• If you are proposing that companies be deemed “inherently notable“ if they are listed on an exchange, I would oppose. If you are saying that a listed company is VERY LIKELY to have enough coverage to be deemed notable... and so we should be hesitant to delete and should seriously check for sources before we nominate, I would agree. Blueboar (talk) 18:02, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Agree with Blueboar. Unfortunately the pitch has been very muddied by promotional articles by the companies themselves or undeclared paid editors often in editing rings. This has resulted in a reaction by Wikipedia editors that companies articles are treated with great suspicion and scepticism, which is sometimes unfair, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 20:25, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
    • The reason I propose the change is that because of the amount of spam/promotion/myCompanyIsAGreatFirstArticle - Everyone goes > stub company article > delete. The current policy is as Blueboar highlighted a listed company is VERY LIKELY to have the coverage, but unless it has been researched and added to the article a listed company will often get deleted even though it is Notable. e.g. I created a stub for a listed company with some of the largest windfarms in the world which was proposed for deletion and deleted by experienced editors. I had to spend significant time improving the article to get it through article creation. This means that in practice that unless someone points out in an AFD discussion that it is listed it will be deleted whilst being worked on and even if it is pointed out it may still get deleted since a number of editors once they have said delete have difficulty changing their minds.
    • A clear “inherently notable“ policy would ensure that there were entries for the companies that could be built upon as reliable sources published information on the companies. The articles themselves would have the usual challenges of stopping the companies PR company/staff from trying to shamelessly promote the company, but that is part of the day to day grind of patrolling edits. RonaldDuncan (talk) 22:32, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
      • meh... If article writers start by compiling sources, and then write articles based upon (and citing) those sources, the resulting articles are unlikely to be nominated for deletion. No topic is inherently notable. Blueboar (talk) 22:57, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
      • then... If deletionista had to prove 'due diligence' in the AfD proposal, maybe listing the sources they have checked we may approach a level playing field. This current approach is encouraging the proliferation of trivia.ClemRutter (talk) 23:14, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Heads up on a potential request to add single criteria for restaurants

Theire is a discussion presently at WP:RS/N#FC on Michelin stars as a reliable source for notability of restaurants where a strong consensus is developed that says that a restaurant can be presumed notable if it has gotten one or more Michelin stars (in that secondary non-promotion sourcing should easily follow from this recognition). While the RFC is still going, it would like appear to end that we need to add this criteria to NORG under the "Alternate criteria" section. This is a courtesy ping here, since I know this guideline was developed very much on a checks-and-balances between encyclopedic content and promotional/COI stuff, so it might be helpful if the approach suggested there is going to be red flag for addition here. --Masem (t) 02:07, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Priashevshchina

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Priashevshchina. DBigXrayᗙ 06:40, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:ORG" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:ORG. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 18:16, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:BRANCH and political parties

Discussion on how to interpret WP:BRANCH in discussion on state-level organizations of political parties at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bharatiya Janata Party, Karnataka. --Soman (talk) 16:02, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

General information about companies is not promotion

I see on the Help Desk and the Teahouse that people given advice are often told something that I interpret as meaning that if they only provide general information about the company, that is promotion.

I come to Wikipedia for general information about companies. People are advised to use their web site for this information but what many companies do on their own web sites is promotional gibberish that has nothing to do with what I am looking for.

Sometimes (but not lately) I create articles about the companies I am looking for after I have to go in search of the real information. I may not be in agreement with the community on what makes a company notable but if I want to research the company and not have to go all over the place to do it, it seems notable enough to me.

I don't know if this is in the wrong place, but I just had to say it.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:32, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

I didn't see the advice that you heard, but I'm guess that they may have meant that if an article contains only general routine information, it's more likely that that article was generated with promotional intent, including by paid editing. The kind of company that would derive commercial benefit from merely having an article in Wikipedia is probably one that is short on or borderline on wp:notability, and short on in-depth coverage by independent secondary wp:RS's. And so they have less in-depth sourced material to write, and, if paid editing, may not have the skill or money in the budget to develop such material in the article. The editor is going to avoid blatant promotional material which puts a red flag on the article. And so with those two things reduced, you end up with articles consisting of routine info. North8000 (talk) 21:47, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

North, the generous assumptions you're making do your character credit. However, in practice, for some editors, "promotional" seems to mean "not an attack page", especially if the company is the first/biggest/only company in their field. We seriously have had editors claim that it's promotionalism and advertising to say that Company X is the biggest manufacturer of something in a given location, even if every known source agrees and no source disagrees.

In other cases, it's a matter of personal style. I've seen editors seriously claim that it's promotional to write that a multinational corporation is "operating in more than 25 countries", whereas writing that it is "operating in 28 countries as of <date>" is not. That draft was declined for promotionalism, and that phrase was given as an example of the promotionalism. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:20, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing: saying the company is biggest/oldest/first/only to do X in Y can be very much promotional. It depends on how narrow and specific you get with X and Y. Every company can narrow down the category so it can claim to be the biggest/oldest/first/only to make itself seem important. Example: "first manufacturer of computer chips in Egypt" is not promotional, but "first bakery in <a town of 1,000 people> to offer gluten-free cookies" is promotional. It's a telltale sign of promo/COI article based on how narrow and ridiculous these biggest/oldest/first/only claims are. Renata (talk) 14:55, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure, if you wanted to write that a business was the biggest employer on the northeast corner of a single street intersection, it would be WP:UNDUE and silly. In the example I mention, it was the biggest manufacturer of a common household product in the United States, which is hardly an example of promotionalism. (Their primary claim to notability is the number of times they've been sued over employment practices. They were pushing the envelope on Gig workers when Uber's founders were toddlers.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Reviewing AfC articles on companies is a bastard at the best of times, but reviewers (and editors more broadly) going overboard like this is a real menace that does untold harm to our business coverage. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:11, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

It's not promotional to cite a referenced claim for some company being the biggest or the first or such. It is, however, not a sufficient claim of notability. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:56, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Thanks. I wasn't trying to be nice  :-) But maybe I misunderstood the situation. If what they intended was to say was that people are being overly stringent on routine info, then my answer was a misfire. I was more thinking that someone might have said that articles created for promotional reasons often contain only basic info, which is something I'm seeing at new page review/curation and I was explaining what might lead to that. North8000 (talk) 13:27, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

The essay Identifying PR gives a flavour of the kind of phrases that leap out at us as possible promo when reviewing drafts. At one extreme, a draft may be so blatantly promotional that we flag it as WP:G11. At the other extreme, there are minor issues that can be addressed by Wikipedia:New pages patrol once accepted into mainspace. In the middle ground, according to the quick fail criteria in the reviewing instructions only blatant advertising should be a decline. However in practice, most reviewers take a hard line on promo, rightly or wrongly. Perhaps we need some worked examples as to what is and isn't acceptable. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 13:12, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I think that most editors don't know what "blatant advertising" means, because they see so little of it. We used to get articles that said things like "Buy today at www.example.com!" That's blatant advertising. "Widgets Inc. is one of the biggest sellers of widgets in the world" is a claim to notability, not blatant advertising. We might prefer to re-write it as "Widgets Inc. is the third biggest seller of widgets in the world" (assuming that available sources get that specific, which they probably won't), but even that would be rejected as "promotionalism". And more to the point, in the context of this guideline, Wikipedia:Deletion is not cleanup, and if the article would pass AFD, then it passes AFC even without being cleaned up first. That's AFC's prime rule: approve drafts that won't get deleted at AFD.

I looked at Wikipedia:Identifying PR, and I think it's pretty bad. You have to already know what an encyclopedia article is supposed to sound like before you can understand when words like generally (one of its alleged signs of promotionalism, currently appearing in 224,000+ articles), usually (246,000+ articles), or worldwide (146,000+ articles) are appropriate. Otherwise, you just have a ham-fisted checklist that can and will be abused by editors who don't know what they're talking about. I think this page, in its current form, is contributing to the problem rather than solving it. User:DGG, I know you started that page, so I'm pinging you about my concerns. Curb Safe's idea of worked examples might help. If worldwide is sometimes a problem, then maybe the page can be improved by adding examples of when it's good and when it's not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

to start, I don't see why this discussion is on this page, because this page is about notability. It's true that very weak notability and clear promotionalism tend to go together, because in such a case there may well be no reliable references, and even--except the advertising--nothing much to use for contents. But promotionalism is a separate issue, and the place to discuss the standard for g11 is WT:CSD; the place to discuss its use at AfD is the Deletion policy talk page, or AfD talk, and its use at AfC is at the AfC talk page.

But for the issue: The negative keywords are not supposed to be used as a sole justification for G11. It is rarely one word that makes an article promotional, but a combination of multiple elements that are characteristic of advertising, and a style of writing that is characteristic of press releases. The point of the list is to provide clues, not to provide directly the basis for decision. I am as quick as anyone to decline for G11 for promotionalism, and I think some here might be implying too quick, but I've never done it on the basis of a single word, not even "we". One reason why not is that promotionalism isn't necessarily the same as Conflict of Interest--many good faith editors without any COI write what amounts to advertising, because they try to copy what they see here-- I've learned to be slow in accusing someone of undeclared COI.

I can separately discuss each of the entries on the page--some are stronger than others. Just for an example or two mentioned.

"one of the biggest" by itself is not much of a claim to anything--it is a vague buzzword more characteristic of promotional than encyclopedic writing, but rather generally present-and usually to be removed in copyediting. "Third biggest" is something I have almost never to my memory seen supported by a reliable source; "World-wide " has uses (eg., WP has world-wide coverage) , but "known world wide" is never seen outside promotional writing--it isn't absolutely determinative, but it's a strong warning. "Best-seller" is another vague term,--it's an alert only: Amazon bestseller and NYTimes bestseller mean very different things. The most significant hints are not individual words, but phrases and organization. For example, "Before coming to company A, X worked at B", is much more likely to be promotional than "X worked at company B. After that, he worked at A." Some are considerably more complicated. Some are pictures, not words: a photo whose purported ownership does not match the article is a classic one; so in my opinion is a glamorous photograph of someone in a profession other than entertainment, or multiple photographs of the person with various dignitaries. :Accurate use of these requires integrating all the factors: we could design a probability weighting system for keywords, or train ORES. But what we actually do is make use of the human ability to evaluate complex situations. The word list is intended as hints for the humans.

The reason for emphasising the detection and removal of advertising is that the present intensity of advertising constitutes an emergency for WP. Exact distinctions about notability are relatively unimportant--we would be just as much an encyclopedia if we had more or fewer football players. We would not be an encyclopedia at all if our articles were indistinguishable from company or professional web pages--we would be no better than Google. (My current brief explanations are that promotional writing tells what the subject would like to tell the reader; encyclopedic writing is what the general public would expect to know from an encyclopedia. and that "Information addressed only to current or prospective customers, clients, investors, students, or employees is promotional")

So far from contributing to the problem, the use of these keywords is the first step toward the solution. They call attention to the problem, and then the article must be evaluated. But it is only the first step.

Deletion is not the basic form of cleanup, if only a few things need cleaning; but if the article is permeated by improper content, it's usually the only practical way unless someone is prepared to rewrite it entirely. (I sometimes have done this, if the subject is actually famous) And if something needs extensive cleanup from promotionalism, it's a fairly good sign it was written by an undeclared paid editor. Articles entered against the terms of use should be deleted. Further, there are many reasons for deletion besides lack of notability . Fundamentally, the reasons are at WP:NOT, and any one of them is enough. NOT ADVOCACY, NOT INDISCRIMINATE. The combination of weak notability and clear promotionalism isa particularly good reason. DGG ( talk ) 17:37, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

This is relevant here, because people are turning "well written" into "doesn't deserve an article". For example, "Before coming to company A, X worked at B" is decent writing, and that "X worked at company B. After that, he worked at A." is what User:SandyGeorgia, of FAC fame, rejects as "short, choppy sentences". And, honestly, I do not see how either of these are promotional. What exactly is being promoted in the "Before coming to company A..." sentence that isn't being equally promoted in the other formulation?

It reminds me a bit of User:MastCell's comment that whenever he finds a new editor with decent writing skills, it turns out to be a copyvio. Decent writing may be a valid marker of other problems (e.g., paid editing or copyvios), but we really shouldn't recommend or prefer bad writing in these contexts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Just on this point, when a company or university hires an executive or distinguished professor, they think it very important to say from where the persuaded him to leave and join them. We at Soandso state, got prof. X, he had previous been a professor at Yale--with the implication, see how we're rising in the world! Encyclopedic articles for anyone in any field anywhere cover a career the way an encyclopedia does, in chronological order. If you doubt this, look at a few of the thousands of press releases cited as the main source for the first section of faculty or executive articles; it was from following up the references in the articles that I learned the style. (That doesn't mean the succession of positions should be written in a choppy or immature manner; I routinely copyedit such article by combining short sentences. My over-terse example was to illustrate the point). A better example would have been the times when they give the preceding position in the lede, and the previous ones way atthe bottom after everything else, without bothering with dates of title. "He also worked at various times for ..." . That's never encyclopedic writing.

And I continue to think that the totality of the criteria by which we delete articles is not relevant here. The criteria by which we keep or delete articles for problems with notability is what is relevant here. This is not the proper venue for problems with promotionalism, so i can think of no good reason why it is being discussed here. Even if you think its a general problem that we even consider promotionalism or over-consider it to the extent that it prevents us in deletion discussions, the place for that is deletion policy. DGG ( talk ) 05:54, 15 March 2020 (UTC)