Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 11

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Contents 1 Subsidiary Notability and Articles for Deletion 2 Just a thought 3 Student Newspapers 4 re: Notability is generally permanent 5 Historic houses 6 Definition of "non-trivial" 7 Primary (but not sole) criterion 8 Typo in the menu 9 School notability 10 Why we should avoid "inherent notability" 11 Inherent notability? 11.1 "Generally notable" and complete coverage

[edit] Subsidiary Notability and Articles for Deletion

"Notability (science)" mentions in its introduction, "failure of a topic to meet this [scientific] guideline's criteria does not automatically exclude it, as it may attain notability through WP:N itself or another of its subsidiary guidelines.".

• Perhaps this should be mentioned in all the subsidiary notability guidelines?
• I would like to suggest that Articles for Deletion should not be advertised in subsidiary notability guideline talk pages, since it might give the false impression that notability is not being considered in all subsidiary notability categories. --Iantresman 18:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

• I don't think that your suggestion should be implemented. Quite the opposite, we should actively encourage editors with specialist interests to become involved in deletion discussions: who better to help the community decide whether an article about (say) WWII is worth keeping than those who work and use those articles? semper fictilis 16:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• Absolutely we should encourage editors with specialist interest. My point is that we don't get editors with just ONE specialist interest to judge an article for notability, we get as many as possible.
• To advertise an article for AfD in just one group, does not give editors with other specialists interests to judge it.
• An article on WWII might require the view of historians, social history, science, people, etc etc etc. --Iantresman 00:40, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not convinced, sorry. semper fictilis

[edit] Just a thought

I haven't been following the entire debate, but it seems from Steve's comment that this page used to be a descriptive guideline, but has been liberally reworded in an attempt to make it prescriptive, and as a result is said to no longer reflects consensus. Indeed, I note this page was far less controversial one or two months ago, so controversy seems to stem from recent changes. A reasonable suggestion then would be to revert to a version from one or two months ago that lacks these liberal rewordings. >Radiant< 07:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Well, basically, I can see this going one of two ways:

We make notability in effect prescriptive (policy rather then guideline, etc.), in order to have objective standards on article subjects like we do on what goes into them (V, NOR, NPOV, etc.).

We "downgrade" notability into an essay or something like it, and rely on the vagaries of individual AfD debates. In this case, we probably should also eliminate any pretenses to eliminating systemic bias-in this case, "what do we write about" will be determined by "whatever we feel like that day".

V, NOR, and NPOV are prescriptive, and that's the only way they work-they wouldn't work if they were "Well, you can be a little non-neutral if you really argue well for it and put some original research in sometimes if you really do it well", because that way everyone would want their pet thing to be that exception, and pretty soon it would be meaningless. Just like what we write in articles is determined-prescriptively-by what can be reliably sourced, we should-prescriptively-determine what we write on at all, by what can be reliably sourced. So basically-one way or the other, where it was was meaningless. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 07:12, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

If the notability guideline is downgraded to an essay, then would "ILIKEIT" and "IDON'TLIKEIT" become valid reasons for advocating keeping or deleting an article, given that it had NPOV, met WP:BLP and WP:ATT? Would there be some other reason to cite for wanting to remove an article about something real but also really trivial? Edison 07:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Well, to some degree, I'm hopeful at seeing this text in WP:ATT:

Material from self-published or questionable sources may be used in articles about those sources, so long as:

• it is relevant to their notability;
• it is not contentious;
• it is not unduly self-serving;
• it does not involve claims about third parties, or about events not directly related to the subject;
• there is no reasonable doubt as to who wrote it
• the article is primarily based on sources independent of the subject of the article.

(emphasis added by me)

This would seem to logically imply that primary sources may not be used for an article unless independent ones do exist and are the main basis for the article. That still wouldn't work to clear all cruft (it doesn't, for example, go into the depth of sourcing or actually state it must be a secondary source), but it's a start. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 07:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Hundreds of article about TV/radio masts were deleted with a pretty clear consensus. The articles never relied on self-published, questionable, or primary sources, but repeated what was in official government databases. Articles about minor city streets have been deleted even though they had equally verifiable independent sources (city data bases, directories, Google, maps). The lack of independent sources would as you say be enough to support deletion of many school and church articles where no one bothered to go to the local newspaper files to find stories about the erection of the building, expansion, controversies, awards, or curriculum. Edison 08:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Actually Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Masts found that those pages should be merged, not deleted. - SimonP 08:22, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I'm not sure city databases and such are secondary sources. Secondary sources seem to emphasize analysis as well as compilation, which city databases, map data, directories etc are not. The fact is that towns (esp in non Western countries) are a pure systemic bias issue we have consciously chosen to give an exception to. Of course, there's a bot generating articles on minor towns from US census data, but no equivalent for any other country, so I wonder how much more systemic bias we're introducing. ColourBurst 08:59, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Systemic bias is my exact problem, and the reason I'd like to see notability made prescriptive. We should never have "notability by class", each individual subject's sourcing should be evaluated. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 09:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• The point is that removing the guideline won't actually accomplish anything. Whether people like it or not, deletions for lack of notability happen quite frequently. We can ignore or deny that fact, but that has the effect of shifting AFD discussions from the article they're about ("notable because X - not notable because Y") to whether or not notability is grounds for deletion ("not notable because Y - you can't use that argument! - yes I can - no you can't"). That is clearly not helpful; the former leads to article improvement, the latter to bickering and meta-argument. On the other hand, long-standing guidelines such as WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC have provided guidance to people about where the border lies, and that is a productive solution. People must simply stop trying to use this as legislation. >Radiant< 08:20, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• Radiant, the only way this would work is prescriptively, and without "carved" exceptions like WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC. We only write article content based on sourcing. Why should we not, with equal vehemence, say that we only choose article topics based on sourcing? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 08:38, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

'AFD for non-notability happens all the time, so we shouldn't try to stop it'? POV pushing happens all the time too - we try to stop that. I really don't see much difference. Trollderella 09:33, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

The whole argument stated over whether this guideline supplants the other subject-specific guidelines, which have been around far longer then this guideline. This guideline seems to be treated as a sacred cow that is equivalent to policy.

I mean, why are some editors so opposed to renaming the PNC to something that is more inline with why it was created? If this guideline is suppose to be descriptive of how notability is used in AFD discussions, then a change in the criterion's name in this guideline wouldn't matter.

If someone was also go in to return the counter augments to this guideline so that the guideline more fully descriptive of the process, would those edits stand? Probably not as those same editors who oppose the renaming of this guideline's criterion will feel the counter arguments will weaken the prescriptive use of this guideline.

Notability is subjective. There is no denying that. But relying on only one criterion to determine notability for all topics is like putting a square peg through a round whole. There is more then one reason why a subject can bee deemed notable, but multiple, non-trivial, independent sources is not always one of them. That was why we have the subject-specific guidelines in the first place.

In the end, I do think this page should be returned to the essay that it once was, describing the notability debate on AfD and serve as a central "hub" for the subject-specific guidelines. And contrary to the hysteria of a few editors, Wikipedia will not implode and give birth to squirrels if this page is no longer a guideline (to use an old a.f.sm joke), nor will the notability argument become invalid and go away in AfD either. --Farix (Talk) 14:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

This last bit I do not feel comfortable with. What happens when there is no subject-specific notability guideline available? Just use policy (especially WP:NPOV and WP:ATT)? If there is no "defaulting" criterion, then we are inviting it to be totally subjective in those areas -- which means personal home-baked criteria like "I like it", "I don't like it", "Delete. 370 members? Really. Non-notable.", "It only garnered 15 hits on Google so it's obviously not something most people give a darn about" would be 100% valid! You can't run an encyclopedia like that. If we're going to let that type of hypersubjectivity become totally valid for wherever the rules don't cover, we might as well not have any rules at all -- we might as well throw out all the subject-specific notability guidelines, throw out our deletion policy, and give everyone admin powers to delete and undelete at their whim! That is obviously unacceptable -- so we need some sort of fallback criteria, be it the present criterion lited on the WP:N page itself, "stick to policy", or something else. Either that or write and approve waaaay more subject-specific criteria so every subject is covered, and if not that I'd suggest to ditch notability altogether and rely only on policy-based AFD arguments, with anything based on someone's subjective personal home-baked notability criterion regarded as null and void (in fact they should be null-and-void under any system -- unless of course they're something like "by notability I mean <insert real policy here>", ie. using "notability" as a bizarre synonym for some policy. I'd consider that a policy-based argument though, of course, albeit a strangely-phrased one!). Another thing I'm wondering about is where you said that multiple, non-trivial, independent sources is not always a valid notability criterion -- are you saying then that we may delete articles that are neutral and have lots of sources for failing some other notability criterion? Which of course, begs the question as to how having such articles would harm Wikipedia. If they are well-sourced (like 10 sources or more) and neutral, I don't see the harm. Could you explain this please? 74.38.32.195 20:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Getting a mite hysterical? That is not the issue at all. I might point out that a comic which is available both in dead-tree format and on the Web, is fairly widely read, has sufficient audience support to allow the artist to buy a house, even though the comic is their sole source of income, etc. What's the issue of notability here? What makes this work notable is because it is good! Yes, that is a subjective statement for which there is no perscriptive criteria. Sometimes such things happen, it's an imperfect world deal with it. For me, Errant Story is notable because it draws sufficient audience. For you, it may not be. However, a plain IP address isn't very notable either. Slamlander 22:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Student Newspapers

Can college/university newspapers be used to establish notability or are they solely limited to usage as a reliable source?--Crossmr 07:22, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• I have pretty much argued against using the presence of sources as a measure for notability at any rate, but never mind. To answer your question, it very much depends of the nature of the newspaper. At the University of Bergen the main student newspaper Studvest is a newspaper with a paid staff, and operates much like any other newspaper. It would in my view be as valid as a regular newspaper. The department newspaper for the science subjects, "Q.E.D" is operated by volunteer students and has a fair percentage of in-joke articles, like an extensive 2-page report on "kadonk tiles" outside the main science building, in other words, an article which maps out which of the ground tiles outside the building which are loose thereby making a "kadonk" sound when somebody walks on them (this was the front page headline once). I think that newspaper would be less reliable and not a good way of determining notability. In any case, I think you should use your head instead of the number, type or presence of sources when you consider the subject's notability, and instead consider the quality of sources when you decide if it meets WP:ATT. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)
  • That's generally why we prefer multiple sources -- a single source may get it wrong or write an in-joke, so we'd prefer some backup to check against. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 08:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• I think the number of sources is only important in so far as establishing that the topic has been discussed multiple times over at least a minimal time span. If there's only one reference, then even if that reference is valid it doesn't necessarily demonstrate anything beyond very transient media interest. So it's important to have more than one source spread out somewhat over time to establish that the topic has resulted in some back and forth analysis and that it is more likely to have some longer lasting usefulness to the readers.

Now that being said, even when you have multiple sources you still need to evaluate their reliability. Some publishers are more reliable than others. I don't think you can come up with a hard and fast guideline for measuring reliability of a publisher, so this becomes a matter of case by case discussion by Wiki editors. It's possible the consensus on some university newspapers would be that they're reliable, while for other papers the consensus might be they are not. Thus deciding whether an individual source is reliable is beyond the scope of this guideline, and so the best WP:N can do is to say that editors should probably disregard references they consider unreliable when they look for multiple, independent sources for verification. Dugwiki 08:26, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I'd tend to agree that school newspapers should be used very cautiously, especially if their content is not corroborated by another source. Student editors are not (yet) professional editors or journalists, and may also be writing about topics of very limited interest for which other reliable sources may not exist. However, like anything, a case may arise in which an exception could be reasonably made, I would think that would be up to consensus on a case-by-case basis (as is the reliability of any source, really, we generally would not use an NYT article written by Jayson Blair.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 12:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I agree with Night Gyr that multiple sources are the most important criterion. One source, however reliable, is not usually enough to demonstrate notability. For instance, imagine if X, a non-notable student from East Nowhere, Idaho, were to be the subject of a single human-interest story in a daily newspaper because of his unusually vast collection of Pokémon cards. Even though the newspaper article is a reliable source, that doesn't make X notable - all it means is that the newspaper needed to fill up some space. On the other hand, if X's collection of Pokémon cards were to draw widespread media attention and be mentioned in several newspapers, then he would be notable. If some of these sources were student-run college newspapers, then he would still be notable - but if the only source was a college newspaper, then he wouldn't. Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 12:31, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

To create a good article? Yes. To establish notability? Of course not. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Multiple sources are good, and the more the better. When I'm writing an article, I look for as many sources as I can find. But if I only find one, and I'm writing about a real thing that is not controversial, then one authoritative source is sufficient. Someone else can add more later, but there should be no need for multiple sourcing for everything. Dhaluza 15:10, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I think the general point to keep in mind is that we're talking about a general rule of thumb, not a hard and fast policy per se. Having only a single source is an important red flag that the article probably isn't living up to the normal standards for inclusion. Not only is a single source article less likely to be "notable", since it might only have ever been written about that one time, but it's also more likely to be biased toward the opinion of the author of that source since there hasn't been any back-and-forth published discussion or debate. So while there are going to be some exceptions of articles that only have a single source but are considered ok for Wikipedia by most editors, by and large most of the articles with a single source will probably fail to be kept in afds. Dugwiki 15:41, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

It all depends on the context. If you are dealing with a social phenomenon, where there is a lot of subjectivity, then multiple sources tend to average out the biases, and that is a good thing. But if you are transcluding appropriate public domain material, dealing with a non-subjective technical topic, then the public domain source is sufficient as the single reference. Naturally if you can integrate multiple sources, that's even better. But we should not set that up as a hard and fast wall that is completely unyielding. As an example (at risk of some misguided deltionist AfDing it again) have a look at Machmeter. What's not encyclopedic about this? It had lots of inbound and outbound links, so it supports WP:BTW. And it covers the subject in detail, working from a single authoritative public domain source. Dhaluza 16:00, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Am I right to question this article then on notability: Amiworthit. The two sources from what I'd considered more notable media outlets really consist of trivial coverage, very brief, and really only describing the features of the site. While there are a couple of sources outside of that that offer actual detail, they're from student run papers (and I think from the same school the creator attends/attended).--Crossmr 16:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

There was an argument above that one human interest story in a college newspaper that a student has a large Pokemon card collection would not be sufficient to prove sufficient notability for him to have an article. This is a bit of a strawman argument, since the same article in the newspaper of the small town the college is located in would likewise fail to prove notability. Many of the criticisms of college newspapers as being too "local focal" and prone to boosterism and promoting the activities of friends and associates apply equally to small town newspapers. (This is not to say that Fox News, the New York Times or CBS News are infallible sources of truth either). I would treat a student run college paper as a possibly reliable source, to be examined. If it were the house organ of a diploma mill with articles ghostwritten by the college president to promote his activities, I would reject it. If it were the main paper at Harvard or Columbia, I would treat it with more respect. If it were certain small town or big city papers which have an agenda or engage in "yellow journalism," I would question it. Edison 23:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] re: Notability is generally permanent

I have tagged this section as disputed. I do not believe that it is widely known that this section was added nor that this section would receive clear support if/when it became more widely known.

My core concern is that in the current editorial environment, it creates a loophole within our policies and systems. A number of our "notability" decisions are based on the short-term coverage that a topic receives. That coverage may not be continued or followed up. The coverage may, in hindsight, have been the subject's 15 minutes of fame. The wording of this clause creates the strong impression that once a consensus has been reached that a topic was notable, however transitory or borderline that decision was, consensus can not change.

The primary reason to measure notability is as a proxy for our ability to find enough independent sources and a critical mass of informed and interested editors to ensure that our article on the subject will be neutral, verifiable and permanently monitored for vandalism. If after the passage of time, there are no longer the sources necessary for an online, all volunteer encyclopedia to find and use and/or if there are no longer any interested editors, then we will be far better off without the article.

Wikipedia can not be a permanent archive of all possible knowledge. It is not structured for the kind of historical preservation and research that would be necessary. We write about what we can and leave historical archiving to projects which have the necessary tools and capabilities.

I strongly recommend that we remove this section from the guideline. Rossami (talk) 00:56, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

It would be a start, but it isn't enough. Turning the white noise of routine news reporting into the refined stuff from which encyclopedia articles can be written is a job for experts. Irrespective of what the wording of WP:ATT may currently be, an article which has nothing but news reporting to attribute the content to is original research, or indiscriminate information, or both. Writing this into a policy somewhere (WP:NOT#NEWS: "Wikipedia is not about news", just as n:What Wikinews is tells editors that "Wikinews is about news") would be a step in the right direction. We may not be able to transwiki existing news material, but we can and should persuade editors who submit news reporting to Wikipedia in the future to resubmit it to Wikinews instead. Angus McLellan (Talk) 01:34, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's actually a dispute, but it's important because it keeps people from saying "well, they're unimportant now." Yeah, it doesn't work that way. Unless there's a way to make sure that content isn't lost because people falsely believe notability disappears, I'll be strongly against such a removal, assuming this "guideline" stays as such. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

• Removal of such a guideline sets a dangerous precedent for editors who don't like an article subject to simply say "Well, I haven't heard anything about this in months" and make it disappear as if it never existed in the first place. WIth the removal of this criteria, articles of entities like one hit wonders, cancelled television series, long deceased business people, military leaders, politicians and artists can be removed. For example:not every composer was Mozart. Classical era composer Johann Baptist Gänsbacher was famous during his lifetime, but none of his music is part of the contemporary standard repertory, nor are there recordings available of his music that had wide distribution. Without such an affirmation of permanant "notability" this composer's article would be doomed for deletion. As above, I would also be strongly opposed to a removal of this guideline. --Oakshade 04:55, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

In fact, this section is one of those I have the least objections to on the notability gudeline. Generally because I think that "this thing no longer exists" is a poor rationale for arguing that something is non-notable. (A person doesn't become less notable becuase of death for instance.)

I want to respond to two of Rossami's objections. First, you say: "If after the passage of time, there are no longer the sources necessary for an online, all volunteer encyclopedia to find and use and/or if there are no longer any interested editors, then we will be far better off without the article." I'll concede that "no longer any interested editors" after some time can be a problem, mostly because vandalism targeted at such pages will have a fair chance of being missed because nobody has it watchlisted. Still, that problem is not one of the encyclopedic merit of the subject, but rather an inherent problem with Wikipedia in general (would stable versions help here?). No longer any sources is something I have greater trouble with. If a subject was described in a newspaper, then even 50 years afterwards, newspaper archives will still exist where the source can be retrieved. The sources don't go away just like that, although sometimes they may be harder to retrieve. Second, "The wording of this clause creates the strong impression that once a consensus has been reached that a topic was notable, however transitory or borderline that decision was, consensus can not change" is something I don't quite agree with. We have seen consensus change, or at least shift somewhat as the event moves further into the past (JetBlue Flight 292 produced a strong "keep" consensus the first time on AFD, the second time it was still kept, but only because there were some curiosities about the flight which convinced some people, including myself, that the incident was more notable than a mere news story). When consensus changes about something in the news, the reasoning is not that the event has become less notable over the last few months, but that the previous "keep" consensus got it wrong, perhaps because the consensus was dazzled by the media presence at that time. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

• I'm also kind of confused as to why you felt it was important enough to tag while the page is still in full protection. Was this an oversight on your part? --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
  • There have been some well-thought-out comments and I am taking a few days to consider my responses. In the meantime, I wanted to address this direct question. This particular clause is suddenly being referenced widely. Yet I could find no evidence that this particular clause was much discussed prior to its inclusion in the December rewrite and I remember many discussions held in other places where this premise was hotly contested. My suspicion is that this particular clause was overlooked and that it needs this detailed discussion of merits and risks. Rossami (talk) 14:55, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
• I'm generally in favor of keeping this section as is. Plenty of historical topics may lack recent coverage, but that's no reason to remove their articles. Similarly, I agree that it's almost inconcievable that the passage of time will remove sources. It may make the sources harder to find, but that's a research problem. Also, changing this would lead to the undesirable result where we would write a good article on subject X, then delete it several years later. For example, see Seraphine de Senlis. Are we going to delete her article every few years, re-write it when someone publishes a new paper about her, then delete it again a few years later? The underlying problem - that most local news stories with a few days of coverage can satisfy the "central notability criterion" - is a flaw of the criterion, not with the remainder of the guideline. TheronJ 13:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Support inclusion of this section. If an article satisfies a consensus of editors that the subject isn't a mere news article rewrite, but has merit as an article in an encyclopedia, then that decision is good enough for me. What's of interest in 2007 to editors in 2007 may not be of interest to readers in 2017, but that doesn't empower editors in 2017 to presume that this lack of reader interest in 2017 is assurance there will be no reader interest in 2027 or beyond.

The Wikipedia is an almost real time filter of what news or facts have the character of permanence. After a while, it becomes of interest to researchers to know what editors thought people were interested in at the time. A interesting exercise for people who consider this to be a serious endeavor is to go to a library that has some annual encyclopedia supplements. [1] and see how they incorporated current events from 20 years ago into their paper-based encyclopedias. patsw 12:45, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I also support this section. One of the primary values of an encyclopedia is to help in researching topics that may not be covered in recent reliable sources. If reliable sources are available (even if they are difficult to obtain), no matter how old they are they support notability. If I read a book from the distant past which references a subject presumed to be common knowledge at the time (which would also presume that there were reliable sources covering that subject), but has now faded into almost complete obscurity, I want there to be a Wikipedia article about that subject. I certainly don't want it to be deleted because someone searched Google and found no hits other than Wikipedia and its mirrors, and so for that reason decided it was non-notable. DHowell 22:30, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

• I, too, favour the statement that once something satisfies the PNC, then (short of a major book-burning exercise to remove all copies of the published works that exist in the world) it continues to satisfy the PNC, even if the published works that cause it be satisfied can no longer be easily obtained from newsstands. Having read some of the AFD discussions where this issue comes up, it appears that the major concern here is the continual pressure to devolve from an encyclopaedia into a news service, with articles becoming (in Wikinews terms) news summary pieces for individual events, sourced from news agency coverage of those events.

  As such, I think that the important thing to address is not the idea that notability is permanent, which is uncontroversial in this regard, but when an event actually reaches the bar of notability in the first place. This is where the "multiple" and "independent" requirements are important.

  Another important thing to address is the way in which current events are presented in an encyclopaedia. Clearly, articles should be encyclopaedia articles, not news articles, and that should be reflected in their scopes and their titles. For example: Glasgow Ice Cream Wars is an encyclopaedia article title and scope, whereas "Convictions of Glasgow Ice Cream wars two quashed by court of appeal" is clearly a news article title and scope. Uncle G 16:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to thank everyone in this thread for giving serious consideration to the question. I remain concerned that, as currently worded, this clause will do more harm than good for the encyclopedia. If I may, I'd like to address some of the concerns above.

• I don't think that either the inclusion or exclusion of this clause will affect the decisions or comments of people who misuse the WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument. Invalid arguments need to be shouted down whenever they occur. This clause doesn't help (or hurt) that action.
• Oakshade's example of Johann Baptist Gänsbacher is well-stated but, in my opinion, a strawman argument. Whether or not he is still in the standard repertory, sources clearly still exist about the composer. Likewise, it is very clear that we still have the necessary critical mass of informed and interested editors who are willing to maintain and protect the article. By the only definitions that matter, he is still notable. Personally, I consider it unlikely to the point of improbability that this would ever change. The same can not necessarily be said for the garage band that happens be getting their 15 minutes of fame right now.
• Several people argued that sources never really go away. I'm not even sure that's theoretically true. I definitely have concerns with that statement as a practical matter. If someone writes an article and "sources" it to an 1890 newspaper story that has never been reprinted or subsequently quoted, can Wikipedia really consider that to be functionally verifiable? What about on-line sources that aren't backed up? How does any future reader have any confidence that the source was not fabricated? How will future readers be able to trust the edit you just made if the source is no longer available? Assume good faith is important but it has limits. The assumption that currently-available sources will always be available is impractical. So how should we deal with the problem of articles for which we can not verify the source or content?
• Several people argued that, as TheronJ said, "The underlying problem [is the assertion] that most local news stories with a few days of coverage can satisfy the 'central notability criterion'". If we were on track to correct that problem, I would be much more comfortable with this clause. The discussion at WP:NOTNEWS, unfortunately, does not encourage me that this will be a realistic solution.

This last point really gets to my core concern - as a community, we have shown a rather poor track record at sorting out truly encyclopedic content from the subjects which are currently getting their 15 minutes of fame. If something is encyclopedic, yes, it stays encyclopedic. I have never disagreed with that general principle. That's not how the clause is being interpreted, though. This clause is already being misused as an argument to keep topics which were never encyclopedic and whose 15 minutes of fame are clearly up. The clause reinforces the rampant confusion that already exists between Wikipedia and Wikinews.

Good article's won't get deleted if we remove this clause. (It was only added in December. We were not over-deleting before that.) Bad articles, however, are starting to get harder to clean up because of this clause. Rossami (talk) 21:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Who is God to say what is and is not "notable material" If you're creating an article that is widely-popular to your local area, or even your county, perish or burough, your input is deemed "unnotable" by the forces that be here, thus rendering your otherwise very informative article nonsense in the eys of the community. I believe this is almost as bad as China's great Firewall of sensorship...but then again, you have the power to have others agree with you, making this just an ALMOST losing battle.

I just can't help but think the ones with power are misusing it by sticking so tandem to cold and thoughtless guidelines. --Omnislash89 12:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The main time people complain like this, in my experience, is just after they have been told they, their friends, their band or their friends band is non-notable. Which is exactly the case here. The Kinslayer 12:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that notability is generally permanent, but at the same time we should be able to look back at a news story which made a big splash for a short while a couple of years ago, such as a cute animal stuck in a tree, or a scout who wandered away from camp and inspired a huge search, and decide that we were mistaken in the first place about its notability. The notability didn't go away, it just wasn't really there in the first place. This is one point of the proposed/tagged as rejected guideline WP:NOTNEWS. As a reality check, do you want to see articles about watercooler stories of 100 years ago, which were sensationalistic at the time but of no real consequence? There are countless such buried on the newspaper and magazine files of that era which have the same WP:ATT quality and quantity of stories having substantial coverage.Edison 23:24, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Historic houses

Hi all. A new user is adding articles for a lot of historic Tennessee houses. They're all on the National Register of Historic Places, but does that mean they're notable? I was wondering if there's some kind of guideline about this. Thanks. --AW 20:11, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The obvious answer is yes. The Wikipedia answer is a little more complicated - if there's enough information to establish an article, I think the articles are safe. See the discussions above and at WP:AI, because we're trying to establish how to deal with these better. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:13, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to disagree with Jeff. Some, maybe even most, are appropriate but some might not be. Being on the National Register would certainly be strong supporting evidence and would create a presumption of notability but we still must have independent, verifsources on which to base the article. If the only thing we have is a registry listing (which merely confirms the existence of the building) and a bunch of original research written by people who claim to have visited it, that article has to go. Rossami (talk) 21:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, seeing as the national register is independent of the building itself, it's an independent source that establishes notability. Most towns and cities have historical societies who also write and discuss these buildings, so the existence of such info is possible. Of course, using the self-published materials about it in these cases are not bad things - most of those documents are written after the events that are being written about, using primary and secondary sources from that time. So, essentially, everything published about the places as historic houses are secondary by nature. Speaking only from personal experience here, which I have a lot of in this case. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:15, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

If you visit it and report what the tour says, is that OR? - Peregrine Fisher 21:13, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Technically, that would not be original research. But any edits made based your recollection of what was said during a personal tour would be viewed with justifiable scepticism since they would be functionally impossible for any future editor to verify without going to the site and taking the tour as well. Published sources are always better. Your personal observations, on the other hand, would be original research. Rossami (talk) 21:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

If you accurately reported what the tour guide said, that would not be original research, but it would be unpublished and so unverifiable. If you published a transcript of the tour guide's statements, it would be verifiable but not in a reliable source and people would be rightly skeptical whether your transcript is accurate, whether the tour guide made an error in oral communication, and whether the tour guide is actually an expert rather than someone who read a book about it two weeks before—a book which you should very well read and cite instead. —Centrx→talk • 21:45, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

• What objective criteria are being proposed here for including or excluding a house listed in the National Register of Historic Places? Read the article on the registry -- it is not merely the confirming the existence of the historic place, but there's a formal process for getting on the list. If there's enough information for an article, and motivation on the part of an editor to write an article on the historic place, it should be included. Certainly, they can all be included. patsw 02:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm not so sure everything on the register can be included, many would be permastubs. Of course, many such places may have quite a bit of secondary source material as well. The registry listing would be a secondary source mention, but only one and pretty thin. Additional material would be required. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 12:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Not that permastubs are bad. Again, we can use primary source material, the secondary sources (for instance, the actual register) merely establishes notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
    • A common remedy to permastubs is WP:MERGEing them. Depending on how much information is available on these houses, it may be a good idea to start with a List of historic Tennessee houses. >Radiant< 14:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
      • And, indeed, merger to articles with wider scopes is exactly what this page has suggested for many months. Uncle G 20:30, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• Seems to me the best way to handle this is probably in two steps. First, create a list article that lists all the historic houses in Tennessee as listed in the national registry. Then, for each specific house which has an additional good reference outside just the registry list from which enough information can be culled to write a decent article, go ahead and start crafting an article about it. Houses for which the only reference you can find is the registry listing should not immediately have their own article, but should simply be included in the list article. This way you don't end up with perma-stub articles with extremely little info about a house in question. Dugwiki 15:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Hmm. I suspect anything tourable would have citable material of some sort available for sale. Adam Cuerden ^talk 10:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Exactly. After all, if it's not documented in history books, there's no justification for calling it a "historic" house. Uncle G 20:30, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definition of "non-trivial"

A lot of editors' arguments on this talk page seem to centre around the idea that words such as "multiple" and "non-trivial coverage" are in some degree subjective. I would therefore advocate the following specific definitions:

• Multiple coverage is defined, for the purposes of this guideline, as coverage derived from at least two separate independent reliable sources, preferably not from the same author.
• Non-trivial coverage is defined, for the purposes of this guideline, as coverage in external sources which solely or principally concern the subject of the article. For example, where X is the subject of the article, a news report solely or principally about X would qualify as non-trivial coverage, while a mention of X in a news report on another topic would not qualify as non-trivial.
• All the above must refer to sources independent of the subject itself, and these sources must also satisfy Wikipedia's guidelines for reliable sources.

I hope that will clear up one of the main issues of this guideline. I've never seen WP:N as anything other than a fair, objective test. Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 10:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• • If WP:N is to exist long-term, the problem is "multiple, non-trivial" regardless of how we try to define it. I've addressed this numerous times already - that terminology fails to cover notable subjects, period. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:59, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
• "...coverage in external sources which solely or principally concern the subject of the article". Let me make a hypothetical example. A book about shipping history has a chapter about the steam ships which served a particular line. The chapter discusses four different ships, and jumps a bit between those, discussing them year by year, rather than ship by ship. According to your definition of "non-trivial", this chapter will not give any of those ships "non-trivial" coverage because none of them are the sole focus of the chapter. But let us say the book instead had four shorter chapters, one for each of the ships. The information we can extract from the book about the ships remains the same. Now suddenly, the coverage given becomes "non-trivial", because each of the ships is the sole subject in the chapter. Is this your intention? Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
  • No, it wasn't my intention, and obviously any guideline has to be interpreted loosely at times, and treated with the occasional exception, per simple common sense. Unlike policies, which are often interpreted in a fairly strict and legalistic sense, WP:N has always been open to a certain degree of interpretation. However, in controversial AfD cases, subjectivity becomes a problem, and it is at that point that my wording would be useful. Take, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bonney Eberndu. IMHO, the sources provided for this article were non-trivial, as they included several news reports from the reputable mainstream media that were solely about this person. However, the majority of editors viewed the subject's claim to notability as inherently "trivial", and so ignored the evidence of non-trivial independent sources. This is an example of where subjectivity took over; if the wording were made clearer, cases like this would occur less frequently. Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 18:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
    • "...obviously any guideline has to be interpreted loosely at times". I agree completely, especially on notability guidelines. However, I feel this pretty much illustrates what I'm trying to get through: that any truly objective notability criterion will result in paradoxes and undesirable outcomes. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:02, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
      • "Non-trivial" has never actually meant "sole focus to the exclusion of everything else" anywhere outside of the strawman arguments against it, notice. ☺ The purpose of "non-trivial" has always been to exclude published works that are no more than directory entries, since that simply results in articles that are themselves directory entries, and to exclude subjects that are only tangentially mentioned or superficially covered, in discussions that are actually about something else, from warranting entire articles. For example, this article (a source that I happened to be using today) only discusses Tom Hujar tangentially, whilst actually discussing something else, and so doesn't support having an encyclopaedia article on that person. Uncle G 00:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the definition offered here is unnecessarily complex and constrained. Non-trivial just means that the source talks about the subject directly (but not necessarily exclusively). The real issue is that WP:no original research or synthesis should be needed to use the reference. Whether it treats a subject singularly or as part of a set of related subjects is not relevant--we can discard irrelevant information to extract what is needed. What we can't do is put 2 and 2 together to make 5. I put a simple version of this definition on the page. Dhaluza 23:18, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

In the event of a controversy, however, the complex and constrained version is necessary. I'm not a great fan of lawyering, but it pays to know the exact rules if there is a dispute. I learnt this when standardizing the spelling (american vs. commonwealth) of some articles to whichever had a majority in the article. Since so many people get ticked off that their spelling is ignored in that article, they go through the entire article and change all the instances... take a look at the history of Orange (colour) sometime. I found that (through people asking me to stop what I thought was good work) the rule for spelling is, for some articles, as arbitrary as "whichever spelling the first major version including a variable word used". It's ridiculous, but it's just. Nihiltres 03:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

"Non-trivial" depends upon the work. Being the subject of 5% of a 600-page book is unquestionably non-trivial coverage. Being the subject of 5% of a one-column newspaper article is unquestionably trivial coverage. Being the subject of 100% of a one-paragraph newspaper "blurb" is also trivial coverage. I think we should base it on depth, not on being the exclusive or main focus of a work. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 09:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

No, I think that the long definition drifts into WP:WL territory. We need simple definitions, and people who apply them with common sense. People without common sense are not constrained by overly complex definitions anyway.

As far as triviality, the core issue should be WP:NOR. WP covers a broad range of subjects, and references vary in quality and quantity in different areas. So a one-size-fits-none definition of trivial coverage is not helpful. Let's stick to making this guideline a reasonable interpretation of the WP core principles and policies, without trying to cover new ground, and maybe we can get consensus for this guideline after all. Dhaluza 10:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, this definition of notability is only indirectly related to whether a subject is notable. Notability is not, after all, whether or not a piece of information is properly sourced, it is whether a subject is sufficiently important in the grand scheme of things. The level of importance required in this project is, of course, up for debate, but the majority of important things will be referenced in published sources, that's certainly true. Some important things will not, however - and on the flipside, some things which are non-notable in the long term have many published sources regarding them. Therefore, any guideline which specifies two or more sources should not be called a 'notability guideline', but instead something more fitting; in fact I would suggest that it should be proposed for insertion into the WP:ATT policy. This point of clarification is sorely needed, in my opinion, as too many people misunderstand the Notability guideline, and it is being used as justification for deletion in a ludicrous number of deletions where people simply say 'Not notable' with little or no need to back it up. -Xiroth 07:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that the proposal at WP:AI is preferable to merging this into WP:ATT, as they're fundamentally separate concepts. It's possible to attribute all the information in an article to a reliable source without actually establishing its notability/validity for inclusion; for instance, an article based on a single news story would be fully attributed, but would not establish notability. If you don't like the term "notability" (a viewpoint with which I sympathise) then let's go over to WP:AI. Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 09:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Primary (but not sole) criterion

I edited the list of definitions below the primary criterion to make the intent clear, and to give each equal weight. Each is now one short sentence, with qualifiers in the footnotes. If you wish to tweak the definitions, please keep them brief, and do not add unnecessary comfort words that will only dilute the impact.

I also restored the note "This is the primary, but not the sole criterion, so the converse is not necessarily true. Alternative tests are used in some cases to establish notability", now in the summary, not the bullets. Alternative tests do exist, and they are used. This page is only a guideline, and to get it re-established as a consensus accepted guideline, it will need to cover a wide view of the subject, particularly since this is intended to be a parent to many children. Dhaluza 10:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I've renamed it to "general notability criterion" to help reduce the confusion that it is the most important criterion and overrides all other notability criteria. Yet it still retains the essence that the criterion is the most frequently used measure of notability. --Farix (Talk) 14:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems reasonable to point out that this is not the One Criterion To Rule Them All. >Radiant< 14:37, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Typo in the menu

In the menu at right of page titled: Notability and Inclusion Guidelines
Please Note the Selection: Organisations and Companies
It should read: Organizations and Companies
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Robhuisingh (talk • contribs) 23:38, 27 March 2007 --Robhuisingh 23:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)(UTC).

Actually, it shouldn't. Organisations is an accepted spelling under British English. The Manual of Style makes both acceptable and gives us the guidelines for when one may be preferred over the other. (The short version is if it's an article about a UK-specific topic follow British English, if about a US-specific topic follow American English, if neither follow the first writeup and for non-articles like Wikipedia pages, no one much cares.) Rossami (talk) 23:49, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Rossami.--Robhuisingh 00:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] School notability

I have a question to pose. Recently in AfD, many questions and heated debates have come about insofar as the notability of schools - in particular, high schools. There is a small yet vocal minority that dictates that notability is, at least as far as high schools are concerned, inherent (user:Noroton, for one, states as much on his opinions page); on the other hand, there are those who believe that these same schools are subject to the same notability criteria as per here in WP:N. I am, for one, among the latter group - and it is this debate that has caused much dissent. In short, who is right? I realize that this is what WP:SCHOOL was originally for, but maybe we can really use this? --Dennisthe2 04:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• With the primary notability criterion, all schools in Bergen, Norway would be notable, since they have all at some point been the subject of newspaper articles, and all have an entry in Bergen Byleksikon. Schools in other parts of the World would probably not meet the same criterion. One of my objections to the primary notability criterion is the systematic bias which arises from it. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:09, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Well...couple of things with that. First, the coverage must be non-trivial, so standard newspaper blurbs or human-interest pieces would be routine and likely trivial. (I don't know what Bergen Byleksikon is, but if it covers all schools, it's probably a directory, also trivial). Also, source bias is not systemic bias. We're supposed to work with sources, not to "correct" any perceived bias in them. "Correcting" perceived source bias is original research, and that applies just as much to determining what we should cover as determining how we should cover it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 14:44, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Bergen Byleksikon translates to the "Bergen City Encyclopedia". It is a single-volume book which has descriptions of all geographical features in Bergen, including schools and roads. A typical entry on a sn elementary school is pretty short, noting down which classes are taught, the year the school was built, the architect, and location. Some other articles are longer and more informative, and I used the book as a source when I wrote the initial revisions of Bergen katedralskole. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:08, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• The former is correct in part because of the latter - all schools, technically speaking, have enough source material available to meet the standards of WP:N. The question is whether we can adequately find those sources, which isn't always possible. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:05, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • How do you figure? From what I've seen, most sourcing on schools (even when people have been trying like hell to find it on one that's up for deletion) are primary (government reports, lists of statistics, etc.) or trivial (newspaper "human-interest" pieces, reports of sports-team games, and the like.) I'm not sure all or even most schools do. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
    • If "human interest" stories are trivial, than the word trivial is even worse than I originally thought. And government reports are third party sources - third party sources need not be secondary to establish notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
      • IMHO, a government report would only be "non-independent" if it was published by the government unit that operates the school. (I.e., by the school itself or the school district, for most American highschools). A report by the state or federal government, or an audited report, would IMHO be independent. My guess is that it would not be hard to find two adequate non-trivial newspaper stories about any American high school if you had access to the newspaper archive for the relevant area newspapers. That leaves us with the question of whether "sources almost certain exist, but can't be found immediately" is enough to resist deletion. Generally, that statement has been enough to resist AFD, but concensus is probably still evolving. TheronJ 15:17, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
      • (edit conflict) Government reports wouldn't be third-party or secondary (except perhaps in the case of private schools)-it's the government reporting on itself. The fact that they're different departments doesn't change that, a corporation's report from its accounting department regarding the budget of its production department is still primary and certainly not third-party. (To add in a reply to TheronJ, a parent company reporting on a subsidiary is also primary/first-party, same with a parent government on a subdivision.) And of course human-interest stories are trivial, they're very narrowly focused and usually done as fluff or filler. (If you prefer insufficient, they're insufficient, too.) What can we say based on such pieces? "X School's women's basketball team won the Division 503Z championship in 2003. Mr. John Smith, who teaches history, won the district's teacher of the year award." That's newspaper fluff-let's leave it to the newspapers. We should only write an article if we have enough secondary source material to provide a comprehensive overview of the subject, and for most schools, that's just not there. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Seraphim, what is your understanding of the purpose of the "independent" source requirement? Thanks, TheronJ 15:24, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
        • I think there's plenty of discussion regarding the actual independence of a government report on schools - given the schools operate under the government, but are not actually part of it in the sense that the government exists, and the schools exist, and the schools have to do things to meet the expectations of the government. It's not all that clear cut for Wikipedia's purposes. But are "human interest" stories trivial? Absolutely not. We're looking for enough third-party material to establish notability - an article can be fleshed out by primary sources. --15:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Actually, I'll have to disagree with that: there are so many subdivisions of "governments", all with a large degree of independence (if not in policy then at least in process), that to consider it one whole is not feasible. Also, "human-interest" stories are not inherently trivial as long as a school receives substantial coverage in the article. It's already problematic enough to judge what is "trivial" or "nontrivial" coverage; let's not further complicate this by trying to judge what is a "human-interest fluff piece". -- Black Falcon 17:04, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Think about "independence" as a practical matter for Wikipedia's purposes: One government source is "independent" from another if its statements could not easily be changed by the other. If Schools Superintendent Dr. A wants to stick some information on the school's Web site, and state Education Department Secretary B doesn't want that information there, it's Dr. A who's going to make that decision, and Secretary B can't change that. To have that kind of formal power over a school district, a state would have to pass a law. Conversely, a school principal can be fired if that principal refuses to take information off the high school Web site that the Board of Education disapproves of. So high schools are not independent of school districts. These examples only apply to the United States, of course. Noroton 21:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
          • There are several purposes to requiring independent sources. It eliminates potential bias, as a primary source might be written to play up (or play down) its subject. We require attribution to reliable sources, and primary/first-party sources are only reliable to a limited degree, and only if largely corroborated by independent sources. Primary sources should be used for a bit of "fleshing-out" in an article based on secondary sources, not to base an article on. As to human-interest stories being of substance in themselves (as opposed to being used in conjunction with more in-depth resources), could someone please send me to a human-interest piece from which a comprehensive, neutral (and comprehensiveness is necessary for neutrality) article could be written? I just don't see it existing on most schools. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Kudos to Dennisthe2 for starting the discussion, although I think it will quickly overhwhelm this talk page. I'm not sure what better spot there is for it. A quick comment on the top paragraph: Is it a minority that is dictating to others about keeping high school articles? I don't know how you can judge who's a minority on this question, especially when those who show up for high school discussions have tended to constitute a majority more often than not. Back in 2005, when someone bothered to count, we're told that 85 percent of high school AfDs resulted in no deletion. I haven't kept track, but I think most high school AfDs over the past several months have been kept, and most people commenting have been supportive. Why wouldn't the pro-delete editors be a minority? Why bother characterizing voting strength at all other than to say "a substantial number of editors"? "Dictate"? C'mon, this language is distracting, and given the failed attempts to reach a consensus on policy so far, if we get too distracted we'll be wasting our time. Noroton

[edit] Why we should avoid "inherent notability"

I am writing this under a new subject heading as the discussion above seems to have progressed to a different topic.

I disagree with the suggestion to use some notion of "inherent notability" or "inherent non-notability". As editors, we shouldn't make that judgment. If others consider a topic "worthy of note" by writing about it, then we have proof that it is notable; if no one has written about a topic, then we lack such proof. We can make argue that X or Y are notable or non-notable all we want, but the only evidence we can present to buttress our arguments is the presence or absence of reliable sources.

Unfortunately, too often this definition of notability is misused. Specifically, I identify three classes of misuse:

1. I like it. An article is unsourced and efforts to produce sources have ended in failure, yet people argue that the subject is "inherently notable". Putting aside the bigger problem of having a possibly unverifiable (i.e., original research) article, the claim of "inherent notability" is subjective and cannot be proven.
2. Unresearched. An article about a subject has no sources, so people claim that "the subject is not notable". That's a fallacy! The problem is not notability, but lack of verification. Only after one has searched for sources and failed to find any can one suggest: "the subject does not seem to be notable". We can prove that a subject is notable, but we cannot prove the converse; we can only note that no proof was found to establish notability.
3. I don't like it. An article about a subject is sourced with reliable sources, yet people argue for deletion based on the notion that the subject is "inherently not notable". This is no different from WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:NOTINTERESTING, and/or WP:IDONTKNOWIT and is subject to the same criticisms applicable to the first class of misuse.

Whether some topics are or are not inherently notable is, I think, irrelevant. The only way we can prove that something is notable is by showing that others have deemed it worthy of being written about. Sources themselves do not establish notability, but they prove notability.

A final note. I think the main reason behind opposition to notability guidelines is their misuse, overuse, and overeager use in deletion discussions. Too frequently articles that lack sufficient sourcing to prove notability are nominated for deletion when the nominator has not even conducted a simple Google search for the article's title. Many topics can and are easily proven to meet our notability guidelines with just a little research.

Deletion should not be the first reaction to an article that does not prove the notability of its subject. The first step should be research. If an editor does not wish to research a topic, s(he) may contact the primary author(s) of the article and request that they prove the subject's notability. The article can be tagged with {{notability}} (although that usually doesn't help unless the article is on someone's watchlist). The article can be listed on a relevant WikiProject's talk page (this should usually be reserved for articles that have a lot of invested effort from many editors). I fully support the existence of the notability guideline (the details of "non-trivial", "substantial", "multiple" can be worked out), but am opposed to its inappropriate use.

-- Black Falcon 20:04, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent points all--I was nodding in agreement as I read your very thoughtful post. I think this sums up the major objections to the (mis)use of Notability on WP. And in this, we can find the root cause of the controversy with this page. I posted a while back about the fundamental misunderstanding of consensus applied here, and the recent flare-up over substantial vs. multiple is another example of it. Guidelines on WP are supposed to represent existing consensus, not the contributors' wishes for future consensus. Regardless of how you think WP articles should be managed in the future, there is existing precedent reflecting consensus about how they are handled now on a case-by-case basis. That is what this page is supposed to reflect. Some people want this page to be a hammer they can use to pound flush any nail they think is sticking up. But that is not how things are supposed to work here. Dhaluza 21:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Black Falcon makes some useful points. However, I do think it is useful to have criteria of things that are not notable. For example, at Afd right now there is Hoyland Common Falcons. Arguments used for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hoyland Common Falcons are similar to "way too far down the football hierarchy to qualify for WP" and "English football clubs are notable if they have competed in the top ten professional levels of the English football system". I'm not sure that the latter is still around in guidelines, but it was at one time and it is sensible. We do not want articles on every soccer team in England, let alone the rest of the world. Below 10th level is normally not notable and they should not have articles unless a special argument can be used. This inherent non-notability has nothing to do with sources, although of course sources would be needed to argue a special case. --Bduke 23:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

But that's exactly the trouble with "inherent (non)notability". If we can have a well-sourced, comprehensive article about a Little League team somewhere, we should have it. The reason we don't have many (if any) of those is because those sources don't exist. On the other hand, if we cannot have a comprehensive, well-sourced article about a professional sports player, we should not have that article. WP:NOT a sports team directory, and all these arguments I've seen for "comprehensiveness" flaunt NOT a directory. If we have enough source material to write a comprehensive article, we write. If not, we don't. It's perfectly fine if that leaves "gaps" in coverage-WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of information either, and "How well can we source that?" is a fine measure to use in discriminating. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The point is to balance "well-sourced" with comprehensive. If we have lots of well-sourced articles in a subject area, and a few articles with weaker sourcing, deleting these is pointless. WP is a work in progress, and we can be patient and allow the weaker articles to develop with better sourcing where it probably exists, but has not been cited yet. This doesn't mean we should tolerate unsourced statements, just that we can accept a short article with sufficient sourcing for the limited content without worrying about notability in these cases. Dhaluza 08:56, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely! But the point is "Can we source this", not "Is it sourced yet." If it's obvious that an article's subject can be sourced, the fact that this has not yet happened is probably not an argument to delete (unless it's been quite a while). On the other hand, "I can't find any indication that enough source material exists for a comprehensive article on this subject" is a perfectly good argument to delete. Of course, if some source material exists, but not enough for a good article, that generally indicates a merge and redirect to a parent topic (sports players under their team, albums under their parent band, etc.) Fourteen useful redirects to one good article is a thousand times better than fifteen permastubs. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 09:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but to further nuance this, merging is often appropriate for weak articles, particularly where a subject area has lots of weak articles that can be merged into better ones. But where we have lots of strong articles in a subject area, merging the weak ones is not a good option. In this case they should stand on their own for consistency in the subject area, and they should not be picked off by drive-by deletionists. Dhaluza 09:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inherent notability?

I often see assertions of "inherent" notability in AfDs. What establishes inherent notability? Is there a list of things that are inherently notable? -- Mikeblas 02:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Ask that one to ten people and you'll probably get eleven different answers. Mine would be that there are certainly some things (for example, US Presidents, the basic chemical elements) for which everything in the category has sufficient sourcing for a comprehensive article. This isn't really inherent notability, per se, it just so happens that everything in the category really does meet notability. In the vast majority of cases, though, there are probably some things in a category that have enough sourcing and others which do not. Except for trivially obvious cases, like the ones I listed above, I don't think it's generally a good idea to try and state "Everything in category X is appropriate for an article." If that really is the case, that's trivially obvious anyway, if it's not so clear-cut we should evaluate case by case. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think there are quite a few things that are inherently notable enough for inclusion. For example, everything that has an article in every general encyclopedia would deserve an article in WP. Of course they are likely to all have sources, but that is not the point. Sources do not make something deserving of an article in WP. They merely allow it to be written. We should be defining notability without sources and not confusing notability with verifiability. --Bduke 05:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think listing all categories that are inherently notable as a continuous process would be an excellent idea. This would ensure that many case-by-case problems are avoided. This would go a long way to avoid wasteful debates of the popularity=> notability and non-popularity => non-notability kind. Shyamal 06:17, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that sometimes "inherent notability" can present a problem. For instance, geographical locations tend to be viewed as inherently notable, which is fine in principle but tends to lead to a lot of permastubs. IMHO anything which is "inherently notable", but can't have a decent-sized article created on it, should be merged into a parent article or list. This needs to be enshrined in this guideline. Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 08:03, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think lists would be a fine way to cover stuff that a lot of people obviously think we should (schools and geographic locations come to mind), and on which there's some sourcing, but not really enough to support an article. And of course, if someone finds a ton of sourcing on a given list entry, it can always be spun back out. If it's a rather small location that may only have a few schools, they can probably be covered alongside the parent locality, or on a list of schools in the county. It would sure beat the current forest of permastubs. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:17, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I continue to be worried by your view that you are sure that permastubs are a bad idea. I do not agree. All paper encyclopedias have them. Take a small location, a village for example. I think the reader just wants to know where it is, what its neighbours are and whether it has anything notable in it. A few sentences are fine. They do not want to get to a long list of villages and search for the one they want. Some topics need large articles. Some topics need small articles. Some small articles can be expanded to large articles. Some small articles should not be expanded. There is no "one size fits all" and we should stop using the term "permastubs" which sounds derogatory. --Bduke 08:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you'd prefer to call them? Everyone already hates the word "cruft" (which is not really derogatory either). It's a permanent stub. As to lists, no one has to search them, anchor redirects work fine! Just do a redirect to "Villages in X Location#Name of Village Subsection". Such a list would likely be more useful to readers anyway, quite often they may be looking for a number of villages, and bringing them straight to the list would be quite helpful. And for those readers who only want to find the one, they're served as well, without any need for searching at all! I'm a lot more concerned with the "small, unexpandable articles are alright" bit-by that, we should have single-sentence permastubs on garage bands if it can at least be verified they exist. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I prefer to call them articles -:) --Bduke 23:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the term perma-stub is an oxymoron. A stub is a short article that needs expansion. People write stubs when they only have limited time or material to create an article (for example when a wikilink in another article is red). A short article can be written about a subject if it can be covered in sufficient detail without a lot of text. In this case, the article should not be expanded. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Printed encyclopedias have some very long and very short articles. If a related group of short articles can be combined into a larger article, this is an editorial decision made on a case-by-case basis. We don't need to create an additional systemic bias against short articles. Dhaluza 15:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Things that are actually "Inherently notable" speak for themselves with mulitiple (or substantial) reliable sources. The term "inherently notable", as used in AfD debates, is the opposite of the term "cruft", really just an abstract justification for things that don't meet notability requirments but that people personally find notable. There is no reason why something should need an alternate means, or reasoning, of proving notability. NeoFreak 12:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

"Inherently notable: has too often been a code for "miserably fails [[WP:ATT] , WP:N , WP:AI but WELIKEIT." The Roads project claims that every highway (state, perhaps county) with a number on it, however short and insignificant (1/3 mile is plenty) is inherently notable. High School and Middle School fanciers have claimed that those things are inherently notable. People in the talk page of the notability guide for royalty and nobility claimed that anyone who was given a British title or was knighted was inherently notable and so was their spouse. When you mention U.S Presidents or chemical elements, I can quickly give you as many reliable sources with substantial coverage about them as you want. For some of the cruft, all that can be found is that they exist (in their own website, on a map, as a directory listing in a government database of roads or schools, in a book of peerage, in a government or hobbyists's database). The benefit of a centralized listing is that it could be publicly displayed in a common forum and not in the gulag of a project or a special notability guide patrolled mostly by fans of the subject. It could also be proved by AfD results where or most such articles have been kept when their notability was questioned. It is meaningless to call things with multiple books and articles about them inherently notable, since they are notable as shown by being noted. Edison 13:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. Things that are inherently notable have sources. Things that are labeled as inherently notable but are without sources are just mislabled. NeoFreak 13:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Patently false, and, I believe, a misunderstanding of the argument. Inherent notability comes from things that, when people hear about them, they know of their importantance regardless of what information there is. This includes roads, schools, nations, heads of state, etc. That most "inherently notable" subjects have sources is helpful, but there are plenty that generally do not to the ridiculous standards we have here. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Patently lazy? Anything that people automatically recognize must have been learned about from the existence of sources. Short of divine revelation that means that anything that is just "known" has sources demonstrating their existence. If not then they don't belong in an encyclopedia. That's what makes an encyclopedia an encyclopedia and not the urban dictionary. I'm afraid if there is a misunderstanding here it is what an encylopedia is and isn't. NeoFreak 14:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary. Whether a subject is encyclopedic has nothing to do with the sources, and some subjects are encyclopedic with or without sources. Whether they can remain within Wikipedia without sources is a separate issue that is beyond the scope of whether a subject is notable enough for inclusion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure that you jest as you've been around long enough to be familiar with WP:ATT, WP:V, WP:RS and WP:OR. If you believe that wikipedia policy does not demand sources then I'm afraid you have your own agenda for this project outside of the broad scope and consenus that exists. NeoFreak 14:20, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't jest at all. Notability (i.e., a subject's importance for inclusion) is entirely separate in concept from those policies. Not everything that's notable is verifiable by reliable sources, and vice versa. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I suppose that opinion is really the heart of the matter when it comes to "Inherent notability". You seem to think that a subject that can't support sources, in violation of the fundemental policies that guide inclusion of information, is okay as long as you deem it to be important or "inherently notable". That of course is a position not supported by any of the policies we have here. NeoFreak 14:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I see no policy that contradicts my statement. If an article cannot be sourced reliably, it will be removed - that has nothing to do with its notability, which may clearly exist regardless of "reliable sources." --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:42, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, something can be non-notable even with soures. Something that is thought to be notable without sources is going to be removed anyway, that's why we have policy on sources. So to say that something is "inherently notable" i.e. something that is notable without sources, is not allowed on wikipedia making "inherent notability" a non-issue for inclusion. NeoFreak 14:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

That's where there's a number of steps that need to be taken to judge an article's worth. Sources are merely one of them. Inherent notability is an important concept if we assume that notability is a worthwhile concept to judge inclusion - it means that the subject simply is notable, no matter what anyone else would want to argue. It does not invalidate the important concerns of sourcing, which is a separate issue of bigger importance. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Something that is notable and sourced does not have to lean on being "inherently notable" because its notability is proven. Something that is not proven to be notable through sources is failing the criteria for inclusion because of that lack of sources. Period. NeoFreak 15:07, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) The point remains, that if we're writing a guideline to point people to that says "This is what we will accept", that guideline should mention adequate sourcing. It's begging for confusion if we say "Well, yes, this is notable, but wait, don't write an article on it because you can't source it." Notability in the context of Wikipedia has always meant "appropriate for an article." I believe that may not have been the best choice of words, and in terms of titling I far prefer "article inclusion" myself, but we've never meant "notability" in the terms of "how widely is it known." If we're going by that, the newest Youtube phenomenon is more "notable" then germanium. I also agree that "notability" is often (mis)used as an ILIKEIT/IDONTLIKEIT, but that's more the problem of the title and misinterpretation. Notability, in our usage (and words do have different meanings in their context), means "How well can we source that?" Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Right. Like everything else in wikipedia Notability is viewed through the paradigm of sources. Anyone an claim anything is notable but to say something is "inherent" in its notability to to claim that it is so outrageously notable that sources aren't needed, which flies in the face of every other policy we have. Wikipeia is, after all, a tertiary source. NeoFreak 15:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear this sentiment. But I'm troubled, because I so often read of editors insist that something is "inherently notable" when participating in AfD, for example. Does this mean that the existing policy is confusing? That some commonly-known precedent has set this expectation of "inherently notable"? Why isn't it obvious that both notability and verifiability are both required, and that they're independent? -- Mikeblas 14:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with badlydrawnjeff here. Notability and sources are different. If something is notable, it needs sources to write the article. In this sense sources are key. However, if it is not notable, it should not have an article, even if there are sources. It is in this respect that keeping notability and verifiability separate is important. The trouble is we can not agree how to do it and we can not agree that it has to be done. --Bduke 23:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Indeed we do not agree that it has to be done. I say it is a bad idea.

Notability and sources are very different. Notability is a poorly defined misused term associated with attempting to broadly define (read limit) others contributions according to you own precenceptions of what wikipedia should ultimately look like. Sources, on the other hand, are easily recognised, central to a core policy, and the most important when it comes to reliability.

Notability, whether inherent or not, should be neither a criterion for inclusion nor a criterion for exclusion. Notability, where it means with suitable sources, is a poor reiteration of WP:V, and should be abandoned. Notability, where it is defined distinct from suitable sources, is a confused idea, violates the principles of wikipedia, attempts to limit future contributions with insufficient consideration, and should be abandoned.

Rules of exclusion should be limited to WP:NOT, where they are required to be specific. Rules of inclusion should be limited to WP:5P. SmokeyJoe 02:03, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Generally notable" and complete coverage

The term "inherently notable" is not a good description. It implies that people can be lazy with sourcing, and many people will strongly oppose it based on this. There are some categories that are considered generally notable, so the more important concept is that if almost all items in a category are obviously notable, then there is value in complete coverage (avoiding petty disputes over notability of the few odd items). For example, heads of state are generally notable. Now there are a few minor countries whose head of state may not be all that notable, but there is no sense trying to draw a line dividing out just a few of them. The smallest countries will be notable anyway, just for being small. So we may as well allow them all in, as long as there is enough WP:V/WP:ATT material about them to create at least a brief article. So if someone wanted to fix Yury Morozov the only red-link on list of state leaders, it would be pointless to start an AfD discussion on the number and nature of sources, or whether the leader of South Ossetia was notable enough for a separate article, or should be merged under the country. In this case consistency should trump notability. Dhaluza 15:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Sure but the degree of notability of all the items you've listed can be established by sources. Every nation of the world is going to have a independant source about it, every head of state is going to have sources on them (in smaller nations often from goverment sources). Because of this they don't have to depend on being "inherent" or "general" in their notabilty. Inherent and general can be viewed as "common sense says". Being a big fan of WP:COMMON I would say that this is fine, as long as you can back that assertion up with sources. I hope this isn't confusing my position on the issue. NeoFreak 15:42, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, so let's say I wanted to fix the red-link and all I found on the web was a bio published by the UN, and created a brief article using this source. Then let's say someone else tagged it speedy-A7 or nominated it for AfD saying the article fails WP:BIO. What would common sense say in that case? Dhaluza 15:57, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

That your subject meets the criteria for inclusion because: A person is notable if he or she has been the subject of secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject per BIO. NeoFreak 16:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

A simple biographical sketch would not be a secondary source. In this case, we could assume that the UN provided editorial oversight only, so it would be a reliable primary source (which is OK to use in reference to the subject). And it is only a single source. So it is not enough to meet WP:BIO. But it should be sufficient sourcing to anchor a stub, pending additional content with better sources. Dhaluza 08:47, 29 March 2007 (UTC)