Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)

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Every playmate is notable

Some recent afd discussion have raised attention to a notability guideline that says that every Playboy playmate is indisputably notable. This is item 3 of Wikipedia:PORNBIO.

I believe this is arbitrary and problematic in that in many cases it goes directly against WP:BLP1E and the overall spirit on WP:N. --Damiens.rf 08:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a good point about 1E. If further notability beyond that "month" isn't there, I would agree that 1E should override it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Then shouldn't the same apply to people who have no apparent notability beyond winning a major award? Epbr123 (talk) 20:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

These things are never simple, are they? Isn't an award more like a kind of secondary source in itself, in that it is a determination of notability of what has come before? If an award is really "major", then wouldn't there always have been prior apparent notability? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

It certainly seems arbitrary. Being featured by one particular magazine once? Seems a relatively easy way to get automatic notability in comparison to other areas. Dougweller (talk) 21:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that earning or winning an major award based on an accomplishment would be grounded on a significant series of events or work. This is far different from an one time selection to be featured in a magazine, even a notable one such as Playboy. Playboy playmate of the months is much more like an one time event, so BLP1E would apply, yes. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 22:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not totally in favour of this part of PORNBIO, but there are many users who believe being chosen as a Playboy Playmate is equivalent to winning an award. Epbr123 (talk) 09:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

When someone wins an Oscar Awards or a Nobel Awards (or even some of many less-known-but-still-notable awards), it comes as an acknowledge of the person's outstanding work in some area. Strictly speaking, it's not the award, but the "work", that makes the person notable, the award being only a strong indictment of notability.

Being selected to be featured on the cover of Playboy is not an acknowledgement of outstanding work in any area. It's an acknowledgement of an outstanding body. This per itself does not makes anyone notable. --Damiens.rf 14:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

A corollary problem is that there isn't just the American flagship version of Playboy to consider. Is every Playmate in every international version of Playboy notable? There are at least a dozen international versions currently in publication. (France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Estonia, Greece, Romania, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, etc.) Seems US-centric to me to deem US Playmates notable but not Colombian or Greek ones. Townlake (talk) 17:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Interesting observation. This somewhat dilutes the significance of the recognition since it localizes it.I agree that we would need to include all or none if we include the Playmates. As I state above, I don't think that a Playmate is an award that would mean the person is automatically notable. One for-profit publication highlighting a person is not indicative that they have accomplishments from outstanding work. It seems to me that this is much narrower type of recognition and would fall under BLP1E. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 17:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The American Playboy probably has a much higher circulation than the Colombian or Greek versions, so the American Playmates are more likely to be notable. Epbr123 (talk) 19:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree, but the current guideline doesn't say that. I would be perfectly happy if all Playmates worldwide were deemed notable, but I think this is a standard that ought to be clarified. Townlake (talk) 19:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I'm not seeing the amount of circulation of the magazine as being tied to the notability of the person. The point of selecting the Playmate is magazine sales. So circulation is related to the notability of the magazine not the person. I'm still not convinced that an one time appearance in a notable magazine is more than BLP1E. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 20:56, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The notability of the magazine is related to notability of its model. It similar to how the star of a blockbuster film is more likely to be notable than the star of a B-movie. Epbr123 (talk) 21:33, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think circulation gets us anywhere here. The point above was that it is culturally narrow to assume that U.S. Playmates are more notable than those from smaller nations. The rebuttal was that, based on circulation, the U.S. Playmates are more likely to be notable. But none of that gets to whether any of them are notable. The original argument, that, absent other GNG evidence of notability, being selected is 1E, remains correct. It's very unconvincing to say that there is something notable about a particular Playmate that led the magazine to select her for that month, in a way that would be comparable to being selected for a major award. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The main reason for the criteria is that it's a fairly good indicator of whether a model passes WP:GNG, as Playmates tend to have received coverage. Penthouse Pets were recently removed from this criteria as it became clear that most didn't received much coverage. 1E would be an issue if the coverage received by Playmates mainly focused on them being chosen as Playmates. Epbr123 (talk) 22:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

In many occasions, this is exactly the case. For many playmates, there's nothing written about them that is not directly related to the cover appearance, and for some others, there's not really any coverage outside Playboy publications themselves. --Damiens.rf 00:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I've just looked at the Google News hits for all the Playmates of the 1990s, and 85 out of 120 had significant coverage that didn't violate BLP1E. Epbr123 (talk) 11:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

You know this "playmate" thing didn't start at the 90s, right? By the way, congrats for the huge work! Checking the level of coverage of 120 people on Google news? Astonishing. --Damiens.rf 13:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

If 85 pass GNG then let them stay. I personally feel that Playmates are not notable if Pets are not. Getting either is a good step towards meeting significant coverage. In regards to international versions mentioned above, the one Playboy I have from France has the same chick published in the States (Sung-Hi Lee is hot). Do different countries get different spreads? I assumed a Playmate in the US was a playmate in Greece.Cptnono (talk) 13:40, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Nope. There's possibly some overlap, but all the recent international versions I've seen lately have had none. A lot of the international versions strive to localize their content as much as possible to appeal to local markets; they'll sometimes have one-page one-picture articles on US Playmates, but won't use them in the centerfold. Townlake (talk) 20:31, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Playboy was at its peak in earlier decades, so the Playmates before the 90s should be even more notable, although the availability of online sources on them would be less. Epbr123 (talk) 13:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

So, why do we need a criterion giving them notability out of their playmate status? --Damiens.rf 14:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Like many of the WP:BIO criteria, its so we don't delete articles on people who probably have coverage somewhere, but the coverage is hard to find, such as Playmates in the 1960s. Epbr123 (talk) 14:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Then I guess the question is "why not?" That just seems to encourage people to do it wrong, i.e. to rely on subguidelines rather than actually finding the sourcing. Finding and citing the sourcing in every individual case is the requirement, not just asserting it's probably out there somewhere. And realistically, 80 of 120 is only a 2/3 success rate, so we're far from being able to say they're "all notable"—it seems a check showed only 2 of 3 even possibly are, and that's providing the remaining sourcing is actually reliable and in depth for those other 80. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 14:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

That's an argument against WP:BIO in general, rather than this criteria. There are other WP:BIO criteria that would have a much lower than 2/3 success rate. Epbr123 (talk) 14:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

The fact that other problem exists should not stop us from improving this one. We should concentrate the discussion on either or not this criterion is bad, and not on how it badly it compares to other (possibly just as bad) criteria. --Damiens.rf 15:47, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

(Outdent)As people began writing the specific notability guidelines these guidelines began to take on a life of their own and now are seen by too many people as the main controlling factor about whether an article should remain on site. And it gets worse when people justify keeping one set of articles because another group are just as likely to be flawed about whether they are an good indication of our ability to write a comprehensive verifiable neutral article. We need to step back and look at the big picture by putting the notability guidelines into proper perspective as we make decisions about keeping a single article or set of articles.

If we are not able to craft an article that gives a comprehensive verifiable neutral account of the person then we are not writing an biographical article about the person. Instead we need to look for other ways to present the content so that it gives an accurate and complete presentation of the material that is available about the person. For example, pages with brief profiles about several Playmate would be more realistic way to cover most of these people. If they are notable beyond this and other information is readily available, then that person can have a separate entry. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 16:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Following up on this but admittedly tangentially, I once took a tiny radio station to AfD only to be told that there was an informal guideline by precedent that because it had an FCC licence it was automatically notable (a 2006 document was cited). I find this sort of "No, you can't AfD this because we didn't AfD such things in 2006" ridiculous, but have no idea what to do about it except moan occasionally. Dougweller (talk) 17:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

This is a fine balancing act, between WP:CCC and trying to provide shortcuts for editors to understand what's kept and not without having to find out the hard way. WP:OUTCOMES has been under attack recently by editors (well, primarily one) who doesn't like cataloging past outcomes--or at least not in any way that could be cited in future AfD's. Jclemens (talk) 17:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

My experience is that it is self-perpetuating and used as a fiat -- a trump card that overrules anything else. Which seems to be pretty inevitable. 'This is the way we did it last year so that's the way we do it now', despite the fact that our standards, guidelines and policies have changed. Dougweller (talk) 17:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Personally, I think things would be better if the thing was deleted, but that will never happen. Instead, it is contiuiously used against its own instructions as a reason to keep. I've seen it as well for tiny radio stations, tiny high schools in little 300 people towns, etc. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 17:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

(outdent)This conversation seems to be dying, but I hope something will come of it. I don't think this piece of WP:BIO criteria should trump BLP1E, I don't think there's a rational argument that Playmate of the Month (American or otherwise) is an "award", and I don't think that all Playmates of all time should be labeled "pornstars" by Wikipedia. There are really a lot of problems with this criteria that deserve community attention beyond shot-at-the-bow AFDs. Townlake (talk) 20:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Bit of history

Just as a bit of history, the criteria has been created on April 2009, because it "reflects consensus of wikiproject pornography".

The change was announced on this very talk page, as can be seen by this brief discussion, where the playmate criteria was actually contested (!!!). The change was implemented nevertheless.

The change followed a internal discussion in the Wikiproject:Pornography. I didn't read it all but, by searching case-insensitive for "playmate" in the page and reading around the relevant discussion/context, I believe the criteria was added after a general belief that playmates will always be covered by multiple third party sources. Also, the criteria seemed to have evolved from a view that "being a playmate" is an award, what was disputed on the discussion, when some users noticed that playmates are almost always unknown faces "discovered" by the magazine.

I'm still more inclined to remove the criterion... --Damiens.rf 19:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Just for your information, the original notability criteria for porn stars, which included the Playmate criterion, was formed in 2006 after discussions here. Epbr123 (talk) 19:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I fail to see anything on that page that looks like a consensus to have this criterion. The criterion is proposed, but always refuted. --Damiens.rf 02:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Outcome

May I wipe the item #3 out, or we need go trough an RFC or some other bureaucratic path? --Damiens.rf 13:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I have no objection. Others? --Tryptofish (talk) 16:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Go for it. Dougweller (talk) 17:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I am going to object because I want to review first the uncited recent AfD discussion that have demonstrated that community consensus on this issue has changed. This debate has been ongoing since at least 2008. Morbidthoughts (talk) 17:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to oppose after reviewing what I believe is the afd that triggered this discussion.[1] I don't believe community consensus has changed on this notability issue. Per WP:VOTE, under the policies and guidelines header, guidelines describe current practice. Changing the guidelines on this issue is controversial and contentious as seen by the debate. Being BOLD and changing it despite this will result in a just as bold edit war to change it back. Morbidthoughts (talk) 19:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Those AFDs used this criterion as a defense, and now the criterion is being defended based on the AFDs.This circular argument actually avoids a real discussion over the merits of this criterion. --Damiens.rf 19:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Strongly support. Just no basis for such a criteria that actually meets Wikipedia policy and other guidelines. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 17:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• Object to such a significant change at this point, as it would impact the viability of many articles and the work editors have put into them. Recommend RFC or a similar outlet with a broader audience. Townlake (talk) 19:55, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

  "Impact the viability of many articles" is not exactly a great argument for not fixing a problematic guideline. The articles that become "inviable" are those which shouldn't have been created to begin with.

  Asking for a broader audience is acceptable, though. --Damiens.rf 02:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

You misunderstand my point about the viability of articles. I'm not saying the criteria shouldn't be corrected because of editors' previous reliance on the criteria. I'm saying the criteria should be corrected through sustainable consensus-building because it'll change something editors have been relying on for a while. We are talking about removing a lot of work from WP; I think respect for the community indicates toward doing that in an orderly fashion (if it is to happen). Townlake (talk) 20:27, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

• Meh. I'm torn. On the one hand, I do tend to agree that being a Playmate in and of itself might not be sufficient for notability. On the other hand, we have events such as conventions where the primary draw are the Playmates (though the exact name is eluding me at the moment). Plus there is the fact that my fingerprints are on PORNBIO and to that small extent I do feel like it's my baby. And then I have this half-fear that if this criteria gets dropped, someone's gonna shove every Playmate through PROD and AFD at once... but the biggest gripe I have right now is that it seems to be a small number of editors trying to make a change to a notability criteria that was crafted by a project which (beyond Epbr123) they aren't a part of. If you can show consensus beyond the small group of people discussing above that Playmates are not notable, then I will fully support it as it will mean there is broad community support. Tabercil (talk) 02:59, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

  Be careful not to count heads instead of judging arguments. If you believe most playmates articles are PRODable without this criterion, then it's surely a BLP#1E case.

  I would agree with an RFC. Would you like to start it? --Damiens.rf 03:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

  I'm trying not to count heads, I just to ensure that it's a community consensus and not the feedback from a very noisy subset of the larger whole. And I'm quite aware of Epbr123's report earlier of 85 out of 120 '90s Playmates being notable outside of Playboy; I guess I'm just cynical enough that some idiot's gonna take the removal of Playmate as a measure of notability and use that to try and purge all the Playboy stuff from Wikipedia. Tabercil (talk) 04:01, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose This additional criteria is pretty well supported at AfD. It was subdivided out from the main awards criteria after Pets were held insufficient in a few AfD's and discussions. Also, Tabercil is right, if it's not concretely listed somebody will try pushing the majority of these through prod or afd; counting on inattentiveness or I don't like it to kill ones that should pass gng. Horrorshowj (talk) 14:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Please, clarify a point, since I'm probably getting this wrong. Are you and Tabercil agreeing that most articles on playmates would be PRODable under lack of notability if it wasn't for a criterion explicitly stating that playmates are notable? --Damiens.rf 15:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Not so fast there. Playmates are considered to be notable by the particpants of WP:P*, because we recognize that they tend to gather a good deal of publicity from that status. Someone gets into trouble with the law for assaulting someone at a club? Probably won't make the paper. If a Playmate gets in trouble with the law for the same thing? It stands a good chance of getting reported at some level: Carmella DeCesare as seen here. By explicitly stating that a Playmate is notable, we short-circuit a lot of contentiousness about the issue. Tabercil (talk) 23:41, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Any article that hasn't already survived a prod or AfD is theoretically PRODable by instruction. Even if it meets the GNG it can still be tagged for prod, and chances can be increased by claiming trivial coverage. If the article isn't on someone's watchlist... Unfortunately, overworked administrators usually don't verify claims about coverage even on AfDs. We're cynical about the nomination prospects, because dealing with a crusader is nearly a weekly occurrence for us.Horrorshowj (talk) 05:14, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
• Not a vote, but I do fully support changing this (and the comparatively ridiculous guidelines under athletes, but that's a different discussion and this is a good start). There is no inherent notability. If "all Playmates are notable", there's one way they can be—they've been covered in depth by multiple reliable sources. Is that true? Go source them. Why do you need to now? Sourcing is not a nicety or something to do when you get around to it, it is a requirement from the first edit, and that goes triple for biographies and ten times over for biographies making an inherently contentious claim (that someone was in a porn magazine). If you ensure to have reliable and in-depth sourcing in front of you before you start the article, as you should, and ensure to cite it, as you also should, you'll never even have to deal with a deletion discussion, let alone a successful one, unless they're poor or trivial sources (in which case we're back to the "Why did you start the article?" question.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seraphimblade (talk • contribs) 05:15, February 2, 2010 (UTC)
  • Yeah - the fact that many recent Playmates don't have coverage beyond the one modeling job and related PR appearances pretty much guts the argument that the sources exist but are just hard to find. If Playmates aren't easy to source in the Internet age, this criterion should fail. I'd start an RFC, but I don't understand the protocols involved in doing so. Townlake (talk) 16:00, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Support a tougher notability guideline here, it is very lax. They hand out hundreds of awards. Ktlynch (talk) 19:05, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's see... it is somewhat tougher than the standard: the "any biography" standard states "The person has received a notable award or honor, or has been often nominated for one." The PORNBIO standard states that only people who win in the specific categories are eligible, and nominations only count if in multiple years. For instance, a common accolade in the porn inductry is the "Twistys Treat of the Month" (as reported here), yet that was deemed non-notable. And the multiple years nominations is to ensure the focus is on notable porn stars, which are presumably those who have been in the business for some years. But we're talking about the Playmate criteria, not PORNBIO in general. And one last question: how is the "hundreds of awards" for porn any different from the Grammys which, by my count of the entries on List of Grammy Award categories, gave out 145 awards last Sunday night? Tabercil (talk) 00:31, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• I'd support removing it. It is BLP1E, regardless of what an "honor" it is. Many Playmates do go on to establish notability, like appearing in movies etc. But notability solely based on a one time selection as a Playmate is wrongheaded. Niteshift36 (talk) 16:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's not an "award" nor is it an "event." Playmates are the subject of a monthly feature that is the very core of the Playboy magazine and brand identity, and they retain association with the Playboy brand and company long after the issue has left the newsstands, often through public appearances or modeling in other Playboy publications, and always through reprints of the centerfolds and pictorials in compilations. The company's motto is "Once a Playmate, Always a Playmate". Playboy in particular has been very successful at establishing this cultural identity far outside of the actual audience of Playboy (think of the jokes in Married...with Children, for example, about Ted's obsessive memory of Playmates from issues in his youth), and it invests a lot in nostalgic recaps of the history of Playmates (Penthouse Pets clearly less so). BLP1E is being stretched beyond all recognition in attempts to apply it here. postdlf (talk) 17:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
  • While your arguments validate the (undisputed) point that the concept of Playboy Playmate is notable, it does nothing to support that every playboy playmate is notable on herself. Being selected as a Playboy Playmate is an event, regardless of what you said. Reprints don't take away the WP:BLP#1E character of the issue. People famous for just one newsworthy event will be "remembered" every time the news-tory is reprinted as well, that won't make them any more notable.
  • Of course, it sometimes (often) happens that Playmates become celebrities, models, actress, whatever.... In this case, they will be notable due to third part coverage and will not need to rely on item #3 of WP:PORNBIO. This criterion can only help the playmates that didn't achieved any notability, and its omission will never damage a really notable playmate. --Damiens.rf 17:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Reducing it all to an "event" of "selection" is a very strange way to characterize it; you'd have a point if all the company did was announce a name of a sexy woman every month. But the substance of it is a lasting, published product (the photos and profile in the issue), associated with the permanent branding of the model as a "Playmate" by the powers that be. If it can be reduced to anything, it's a modeling and public relations gig. Really, if that qualifies as an "event" under BLP1E than that criteria is beyond useless, but it seems clear to me that WP:BLP#1E is talking about one-off news stories, so as to protect people who are coincidentally involved in public incidents. It's not about people doing a job (which is what modeling for Playboy is) and producing a published, commercially marketed and sold product. postdlf (talk) 18:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
      • Do you agree that item #3 can only be used to help playmates that could never be anything more that just a playmate? Even those that have become mediocre actress or models will be notable without relying on "I was a playmate". --Damiens.rf 18:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
        • That's rather the point, isn't it? postdlf (talk) 18:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
          • Not according to Tabercil. I believe he says that every playmate ends up being notable beyond her playmate status, and this criterion exists only to "short-circuit" possible discussions. Experience, thought, shows that sometimes former playmates are never mentioned beyond her status of being a playmate. Do you see the issue just as him, or you believe that once you're a playmate, you don't need to do anything more to become notable (even if all third parts sources conspire to ignore your existence)? --Damiens.rf 18:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
            • We could view notability as a matter of the inherent notability of certain subject matter, or solely as a matter of counting sources rather, but fact-based notability criteria would still be valid as presumptions that sufficient reliable sources exist (or will exist) for particular subjects, even if we don't have those sources at present. I'm quite comfortable with this criteria under either perspective. postdlf (talk) 18:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
              • I understand your view. What I dispute here is that (1) being a Playboy Playmate is inherently notable (in the "spirit" of WP:N) and (2) that every Playboy Playmate will eventually become notable.
              • Saying that in a less formal way, if item #3 is correct, it's unnecessary. If its' necessary, then it's incorrect. --Damiens.rf 19:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
• I support removal. Well, I would do, wouldn't I? See my comparison with Vogue covers below (postdlf's comments about reprints apply to these too). And my whiny remarks in the AfD would be relevant too. Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:38, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Completely agree with removal. The almost double standard alone (Penthouse is not too far behind circulation wise) makes it an issue. Decades ago being a Playmate was relevant. Playboy Cyber Girl of the Month receives just as much attention with nowadays (dang kids and their new media) so cute girl from Kansas is really just another person we get to see naked. Many go on to receive significant coverage. They don't warrant an article here if not.Cptnono (talk) 11:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I disagree with the notion that Playmatehood has become irrelevant, and with the comparison of Cybergirls to Playmates (the former title isn't broadly known in pop culture, the latter title is the basis of numerous movies, songs, and long-term academic studies). I do agree with your destination - that there shouldn't be a notability exception here - but I disagree with how you get there. Townlake (talk) 15:12, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
    • "Irrelevant" might have been strong but being a Playmate now doesn't hold the same weight as it once did. And most of the big names are big for doing other things which means they satisfy GNG. But you are right, I wouldn't tell a friend if she got it "You suck and it isn't a big deal, sweetheart." :) .Cptnono (talk) 07:04, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

• Criterion #3 needs to be removed. Just being one isn't enough of a boost to notability, it's a BLP1E. Nor does it guarantee an eventual rise to the top in some celebrity based career. Nor is it an "award" except in the very loosest sense. Nor is it unique enough to be automatic. Time for this one to go. ++Lar: t/c 04:04, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

There is also an RfC below for this.Cptnono (talk) 04:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

New Point I'd like to start a different, but related train of thought that is a little less US-focussed. In the UK our big national newspapers regularly feature a topless model on Page Three. The largest circulation daily UK newspaper The Sun has a daily circulation of about 3 million - which is greater than the monthly circulation of US Playboy. I would argue that a regular Page Three model should be equal criteria for notability, if not greater on sheer circulation (and hence notability) terms. Regular Page Three models often become reference points in UK culture (and further around the world. Again there is the perennial porn problem of finding information about their real lives rather than the descriptions given under their working name(s), but it is quite frustrating to find only deleted pages to refer to these people. 80.41.164.144 (talk) 08:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• Weak keep However, models not making Basic Criteria don't pass BIO. - Stillwaterising (talk) 18:05, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Candidates for legislative elections

The closing admin in a recent hotly-contested AfD implored that a consensus be reached on how to treat articles on political candidates. I agree with the closing admin that a consensus needs to be reached, especially in advance of a big election year. We have recently seen a number of AfD nominations on candidates go different ways, which is, in my view, an undesirable outcome.

My initial view is that there are roughly three options for a consensus position:

1. That all candidates nominated by major parties for national level positions, such as members of a national legislature, and for chief executive offices of states or provinces, (or their equivalents in other jurisdictions) are presumed notable. For people nominated as mayor of a city, or a seat in a state or provincial legislature, notability depends on the presence of reliable sources offering substantial coverage according to the general notability guideline.
2. That a person is presumed not to be notable if the person's only claim to notability is his or her candidacy in a legislative election;
3. A middle ground: that the notability of a candidate depends on particular factors, such as:
   • the extent of the coverage of the candidate in reliable sources;
   • the extent to which the coverage is of the candidate as opposed to the election generally; and
   • the extent to which reliable sources indicate that the candidate has a genuine prospect of success in the election.

Of course, there is a fourth option, which is to do nothing and let the interaction between WP:POLITICIAN and WP:GNG solve each case. I do not believe this is acceptable.

My preference is for Option 3. We should include articles on candidates who receive significant coverage and who have a real prospect of winning election. But I do not see long-term encyclopaedic value in including articles about long-shot major party candidates who only receive coverage because they are candidates. --Mkativerata (talk) 01:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• I'm pretty hardline about this kind of thing. I think we already have far too many marginally-notable BLPs out there, without adding to the list by relaxing WP:POLITICIAN. Therefore, I support option #2. UnitAnode 02:02, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Anode, I need to remind you that at the present state of Google News this is likely to result in articles for minor party candidates, people running for town councils, and even people just running for the nomination of a party. It would have been restrictive 3 years ago, but no longer. I remember encountering early here a trained local historian, who could find 2 technically acceptable but obscure secondary sources for almost anyone in his state in the 20th century--I did a lot of delete !voting for his articles. What his skill and local resources could uniquely do then, is very much easier to do now --for at least the US.

but the proposal I like least is no. 3. point 3. I do not think we can reasonably judge the probability of success in the election--this is the sort of value judgment we should not be making--and as far as showing that in RS, almost all news sources have a political inclination. Where such a consideration might be relevant is in considering minor parties.

I don't agree with this objection to point 3 of option 3. The reliable sources qualification adequately removes any value judgements. If a source has demonstrable political leanings, it is not reliable and should be discounted. There are many independent reliable and accurate election analysts whose judgments could validly be applied: eg Cook Political Report in the US and Antony Green in Australia. --Mkativerata (talk) 03:36, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• I propose a modification that somewhat limits the effect of no.1:

1. ALTERNATE: That all candidates nominated by major parties for national level positions, such as members of a national legislature, and for the chief executives of states or provinces, (or their equivalents in other jurisdictions) are presumed notable. For people nominated as mayor of cities, or state or provincial legislatures, then it depends on the presence of Reliable Sources offering substantial coverage according to the WP:GNG, with the emphasis on substantial. DGG ( talk ) 02:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
   • I'll go so far as to amend option 1 to reflect your suggested alternate. I think it is better and obviously less extreme (I can't imagine anyone preferring the original to the alternate, but we'll see). --Mkativerata (talk) 02:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• Strong support for option 2. We have too many marginally-notable people here already. Ironholds (talk) 03:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

What are major parties? For the US it presumably includes the Dems and the GOP and excludes my party (oh well) but how do you judge that for Ghana (to pick a country randomly) where they may not be very well known? Or even Germany, where there are more than 2, or Israel where there are many. I think this definition may be too US/UK centric. I applaud the idea and probably would go for option 2 if that was cleared up. ++Lar: t/c 04:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

You're right that it's a can of worms, even in countries with multiple parties. I mean, there are four clear major parties in Canada (Bloc, Conservatives, Liberals, NDP), but are the Greens major? That said, in theory, the best answer is that candidates who are notable only as candidates should get a minimal description in the article about the election. If there's more well-sourced material than will go there, then it's time for them to get an article—as they probably meet GNG at that point. Besides, even if we had a specific notability criterion for candidates, the general notability guidelines could be held up as the unmet standard in an AfD nomination. I know that leaves fuzziness and subjectivity in deletion discussions, but that's why we leave it for humans to make a call about notability in cases like this. —C.Fred (talk) 05:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, even that suggestion is problematic. If we contain information on every candidate in every election in a constituency, it's going to be filled with a lot of gunk. Ironholds (talk) 08:36, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that option 1 is unrealistic. For many countries, it's difficult to find information on even major party candidates for the presidency, and elected members of national parliaments. Even in North America and Western Europe, where details are more frequently available, the same applies for elections more than a few years ago. Option 3 initially sounds ok, but it is very unusual for an otherwise non-notable candidate to attract sufficient attention that the person becomes notable, regardless of whether they are elected, but there are rare instances, such as some perennial candidates. On the other hand, pretty much every candidate will have self-published material which may well receive brief attention in media covering the election, and will claim that they have a chance of success. Besides which, I don't believe that chance of success is a guarantee of notability - simply of the chance that they will become notable in the future, and we are not a crystal ball. This option is likely to lead to the creation of many, many articles by supporters of candidates who have done very little of note, which will be taken to AfD and deleted. This leaves option 2, which I am closer to, but would modify to something along the lines of "That a person is generally presumed not to be notable if the person's only claim to notability is his or her candidacy in a legislative election; excepting where reliable sources specifically covering the candidate, as opposed to the election generally, indicate that their candidacy has had a much broader political impact." Warofdreams talk

• Strong support option 2. The most important thing is that we need to be consistent in our decisions within each country so that we don't show any political bias. The recent AfD for George Lee resulted in no consensus, with many !votes saying that being a PPC of a major party is enough to make someone notable. In the UK we have 646 seats, which are probably fought by about 5 "major" political parties each, which would give us in the region of 3000 BLPs for boarderline notable people. We also have many more loonies and single issue politicians. To have this many articles of this nature, which won't be on many peoples watch lists, will be absurd, especially in the run up to a general election, where debate can get very personal. So I support option 2, especially in the UK, however I think there is room to decide this on a country by country basis if e.g. being a candidate for congress is deemed notable. Martin451 (talk) 16:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I am going to add that I think that articles should be redirected instead of deleted as per my earlier suggestion. Martin451 (talk) 22:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Two thoughts here:

1. Whatever else is going on, I do not support outright deletion of such articles. Even if we determine somebody's not notable enough currently (say, a candidate for Congress) for an article of their own, there is (for major party candidates) a decent possibility of their becoming notable, which is sufficient for us to try to preserve the material. Hence my earlier suggestion of redirecting rather than deleting such articles, which I suppose can be strengthened some, maybe to "you should" rather than "consider." I present this as a way of mitigating the information loss even if we should decide that certain candidates are non-notable.
2. I think it's dangerous to paint with too broad a brush. Considerations to take into account when considering the notability of a candidate include, but are not limited to, the amount of press coverage, the duration of an election campaign, the size of a constituency, the power wielded by the office, the importance of the individual candidate to the election, and the probability of the candidate's victory. In some countries, the candidate is just a cipher, and it's the party name that's important (in some countries the candidate doesn't appear on the ballot at all!). In those cases, the candidate is much less likely to be of an enduring historical importance. In others, the person of the candidate matters a lot more, and can easily reverse the partisan polarity of the election. Or, to put it another way, a hypothetical: if Scott Brown, as of early January 2010, had not previously held an office in a state legislature, wouldn't he still have been notable, even if all the coverage of him was purely in the context of his candidacy? On the reverse end, nobody in their right mind would say that a random 18 year old at the bottom of the SDP list for the Bundestag merits an independent biography. Forcing the issue one way or another when it doesn't fit is a bad idea. Perhaps we could put something that abjures editors to use common sense in such gray-area deletion discussions, rather than lawyering the letter of the guideline.

Ray^Talk 17:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support 2, but employ redirects/merging liberally. Number 2 is basically my thinking on this, but I want to strongly endorse RayAYang's first point above. Whatever we decide here (or don't) these articles will be created, generally by people in good faith who don't know the guidelines. I'm in favor of "not notable if just a candidate and nothing else" as the standard, but the standard "fix" to an article like that should not be an AfD or a WP:PROD, rather the article should be redirected (and often merged) to an article about the election, which we clearly should have. If that article has not been created yet, the person doing the redirect should take three minutes to create a one sentence article ("The 2010 election for the ____ congressional district will take place on _____") and then list the candidates. If they don't want to do that they could ask the person who created the bio to do that, and tell them that some basic candidate info could be imported there. Articles about elections for national office can be extremely useful, and some of these biographies will contain useful information that we won't want to lose even if we go with option 2. So rather than just tagging for deletion, we should redirect/merge to "event" articles (in a way this is per the key policy WP:BLP1E) which is quicker than an AfD and preserves useful info (if there was any) in a non-BLP. We should also avoid biting people who create these articles, and instead say "good work creating this, but these are our standards for these kind of political biographies, so let's move this into an article on the election where people can still get the info." If we proceed in this manner I would hope we could get a consensus for option 2 which avoids the mess of a bunch of new BLPs that will go unattended after the election but still keeps encyclopedic information of historical importance. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support option 2. To make it work, and avoid a lot more AfDs where candidates' supporters pile up the number of local press cuttings and argue that the GNG over-rides WP:POLITICIAN, I would like to strengthen POLITICIAN to say explicitly that references arising from candidacy for a political office do not count towards notability. This seems to me perfectly consistent with the GNG, as an elaboration of the exceptions allowed in its last paragraph, which says that coverage in reliable sources only establishes a presumption of acceptability, but that editors "may reach a consensus that although a topic meets this criterion, it is not appropriate for a standalone article."

To Ray's first point: deletion does not meant that information is lost: any admin can undelete a candidate's deleted article if the candidate is elected or otherwise becomes notable. To Bigtimepeace: I'm not so sure about redirects - we still end up with "the mess of a bunch of new BLPs that will go unattended after the election," even if they are hidden under redirects. Also, I can imagine edit-warring as supporters revert the redirects. But we maybe have to go the redirect route to avoid endless AfDs unless we can agree a new speedy for "Political candidate with no other notability, for whom an entry has been made in the article about his constituency." JohnCD (talk) 22:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

See what you think of my proposal below—for one thing if we make a more clear statement as I'm proposing I don't think the edit warring would be a problem, they would be going against the guideline for these kind of articles which eventually would become disruptive. As to the BLPs hidden under redirects, I don't think that's generally how we think about biographical articles that get turned into redirects and/or merged elsewhere. There's a huge difference between having a full BLP article laying around (which will likely end up at the top of google search results) and a redirect that someone will find only if they type the person's name in the search box. If there's a serious problem where people are restoring old candidate articles (which I doubt will happen) I think we would notice it, and if we're really worried about that possibility we could always protect the redirects and only unprotect when someone argues they can prove notability sufficiently for there to be a full article. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 23:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, your points are good, and I support your proposed change, though for the reasons above I shall propose below it an additional change to the wording of POLITICIAN. JohnCD (talk) 11:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support option2. Option2 is basically the status quo: that candidacy itself is not evidence of notability. The other options are all flawed: option 1 would lead to the creation of lots of of articles people abut whom there aren't enough source to say much other than "she exists and is candidate" , while the presumed middle ground of option 3 introduces a lot of subjectivity which would lead to endless disputes. JohnCD's rider seems to me to add unnecessary instruction creep, and could have some perverse consequences: a very high-profile candidate who attracts lots of coverage would be deemed non-notable despite passing WP:GNG many times over. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:53, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Strong support option 2 missed this discussion at the time but do want to register my views. There's been a number of afds for UK political candidates where the "but she's a major party candidate" argument has been used even though in some cases the person concerned hasn't a hope in hell of election. It's good that this potential loophole is closed. Valenciano (talk) 11:57, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
• My own view is closest to option #2, although I'd also agree with #3 to an extent. I definitely don't think a person can generally be considered notable if their only claim of notability is having been an unsuccessful candidate in an election, but I don't think we can make a blanket assertion that it's impossible, either. I try to take into account things like the depth and breadth of sources, the circumstances of the particular election and how strong a claim of notability the person would have if we took their electoral candidacy out of the equation; even though Anne Lagacé Dowson lost her bid for election to the Canadian House of Commons, for example, she was already notable as a radio host. And I think that the greater degree of coverage given to some of the more prominent offices — such as a national presidency, leadership of a state or provincial government, the United States Senate, etc. — means that candidates for those offices may generate enough coverage to meet WP:GNG and WP:RS just for their candidacy alone, but that doesn't necessarily hold true for candidates for the lower house of a legislature in an individual electoral district. Bearcat (talk) 00:46, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed change to WP:POLITICIAN

In re-reading WP:POLITICIAN, I'm realizing the language we have there largely already says what I would want it to say (see my above comment) though we could strengthen it a bit so it comes off more as "this is what we do" rather than "here's what you might do." I would suggest we change the sentence "In the case of candidates for political office who do not meet this guideline, consider redirecting to an appropriate page covering the election or political office sought in lieu of deletion" to read as follows:

In the case of candidates for political office who do not meet this guideline, the general rule is to redirect to an appropriate page covering the election or political office sought in lieu of deletion. Relevant material from the biographical article can be merged into the election or political office page if appropriate.

And actually I don't care that much about the exact wording of the italicized phrases, the point is that we should not merely "consider" redirecting, rather it's what we should do as a rule, and furthermore useful material can be merged and the guideline should encourage that. This would result in a few positive outcomes in my view: 1) It means that we simply do not keep candidate articles as stand-alone articles, unless the person passes WP:N already; 2) It avoids an AfD once an article like this is created; 3) If the article creator is edit warring over their article being turned into a redirect, we can point clearly to the guideline which is now much less ambiguous; 4) We encourage merging of useful material. In terms of the original reason for starting this thread, I think this change would largely resolve future questions as to what is to be done about articles on candidates for national office.

Thoughts on this? --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 22:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• I'm a strong supporter, as you can probably guess from my comments above. Ray^Talk 23:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support. It gives effect to a sensible approach (preventing a proliferation of articles on candidates) but also preserves material from outright deletion. It is consistent with my general view that coverage of a candidate tends to be of the election, not of the candidate. --Mkativerata (talk) 23:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support But is there anything to stop this being done already? Off2riorob (talk) 10:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support in any case, though for reasons stated above I would like to see POLITICIAN strengthened, and have proposed below a further change to its wording. JohnCD (talk) 11:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose -- While I do not want to see a profileration of articles on "No hope" candidates, I am unhappy with the prposal that they should be deleted out of hand. Articles should not be allowed until the selection process (primary, causus, local party meeting, or whatever) is complete. This will not apply to US Presidential candidates, because they will generally be notable already. I would suggest however that articles on candidates should be tagged with a template (with fields "candidate for election", post [nomrally a link to an article], date of election, and pre-election notability ["yes or no"]). After the election, unsuccessful cnadidates (without pre-election notability) would be deleted wholesale by the PROD process. I suggest the "pre-election notability" field, so that discussion could take place before the election on whether the person should be subject to the automatic PROD after it, enabling the continuing existence of the article to be defended. A major reason for making this arguemnt is that we have a UK election due within about three months. It is almost inevitable that we will get a vast number of candidate bio-articles. If my suggestion is not taken up, these will all have to go through the AFD process. Accordingly I support suggestion 1 above, but care is needed over the use of "mayor", as in many UK councils, the mayor is a senior councillor, whose turn it is to chair the council, without haivng any executive authority. I would suggest "directly-elected mayor" or "excutive mayor", and that this should be limited to major towns and cities. The Mayor of New York will certainly be notable, but the mayor of fooville (pop. 1002) will usually not. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

This strikes me as too complicated and unworkable, and also it is not accurately describing the proposal above. For one thing current policy at WP:PROD allows any prod to be removed by anyone, so letting all of these articles be created and then "prodding" the non-notable ones after the election would not necessarily lead to deletion. The article creator could simply remove the prod and we'd be at AfD, which is not desirable at all. This would also be the only situation of which I'm aware where we basically allow for creation of an article of a non-notable person on the possibility that they will later be notable. This clearly goes against WP:CRYSTAL which we basically cannot do. As worded your proposal would allow for an article on every minor party candidate in every national election, which would be quite out of control. Plus what do we gain from it? Why not just merge their info to an election article? Finally you'll note that my proposal as worded does not call for deletion at all—quite the opposite in fact. It says we create redirects (which preserves the edit history) and target them to the election article. If the candidate wins we convert the redirect back to a full article, no problem. The whole point of the proposal above is to not go through AfD (rather creating a redirect would be the standard approach), so I'm not sure why you think we'd have to go to AfD if we don't take your suggestion. You might be misunderstanding the proposal I made above, and even if not I think your suggestion would rather make matters worse and would inevitably result in a ton of bios of non-notable people, which is literally the last thing we want to happen. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 22:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support with the proviso that we do take account of the occasional loony candidate. Martin451 (talk) 22:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Enacted. Just a note that RayAYang has gone ahead and made this change (which I only noticed when I tried to change it myself) which I think makes sense given the support for it here, and the fact that there is probably implicit support for it in the "support option 2" comments in the main thread immediately above this. I'm not sure there is support for the change suggested in the sub-thread that follows, but I would say that the "for reasons unconnected with their candidature" idea as it pertains to general notability is already fairly implicit in the language we have now. Hopefully this change will be helpful going forward, and editors who come across new articles on candidates for office who are not otherwise notable should feel free to redirect the article to the appropriate target, while also leaving a note for the article creator explaining the consensus view on such articles and pointing them to WP:POLITICIAN. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:16, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Further proposed change to WP:POLITICIAN

Repeating a point made above: there is a tendency to try to game POLITICIAN by piling up references to events connected with the candidature, which can always be found in the local press, and then claiming that the candidate passes the GNG and that overrides POLITICIAN. I don't think that was the intention of POLITICIAN or how it used to be interpreted, and if accepted POLITICIAN becomes more or less a dead letter. This proposal adds words to say explicitly that references arising from candidature for a political office do not count towards notability. This seems to me perfectly consistent with the GNG, as an elaboration of the exceptions allowed in its last paragraph, which says that coverage in reliable sources only establishes a presumption of acceptability, but that editors "may reach a consensus that although a topic meets this criterion, it is not appropriate for a standalone article." I propose that paragraph 3 of WP:POLITICIAN should be amended to read (proposed new words italicised):

3. Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if, for reasons unconnected with their candidature, they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article."

JohnCD (talk) 11:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support except that "for reasons unconnected with their candidature" should not apply to local officials (that's another debate entirely!). --Mkativerata (talk) 19:21, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Comment A little too strong, I should think. I think, if a candidate becomes notorious to the point where, say, major papers run a full-length profile on him, we should include him, even if the sole reason for notoriety arose from the candidacy. It's a tricky line, between coverage that arises strictly in the way that one would expect from an ordinary, unremarkable candidacy, and ones that rise above that to significance. This knotty area is not, I suspect, amenable to the method of Alexander. Ray^Talk 22:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I think that wikipedia is flexible enough that articles for the occasional loonatic or otherwise notable candidate to get past a guideline such as this one. Martin451 (talk) 22:45, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Stong Oppose This would mean that someone who was notable if they were not a politician would fail WP:N. NBeale (talk) 12:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Comment. Maybe if it was just made clearer that such candidature is one event, and that coverage should be gauged accordingly? Abductive (reasoning) 21:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
• Stong Oppose per NBeale. Apart from adding yet more instruction creep, it would be more than perverse to deny notability to a politician who meets WP:GNG just because they becmae notable through a particular aspect of politics, while people who unambiguously fail WP:GNG are presumed notable under one of the get-out clauses (e.g a ball-game player who made a brief appearance in part of one game at the required level). --18:01, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment: Although I would support some kind of wording along these lines, I can understand the concerns of some people around the specific wording proposed here. As I pointed out above, I think that for some higher offices, candidacy alone may be sufficient to support notability in light of the much deeper and broader coverage that such races garner — but not as much for lower ones.

I'd like to note here that I've started working on a much more detailed rewrite of WP:POLITICIAN, meant to go into much more depth about what is or isn't generally accepted by AFD than WP:POLITICIAN currently does. It's very much a work in progress, so I'd welcome input and/or suggestions from anybody who's interested in participating — but it's important to note that I'm not trying to create new rules or contribute to instruction creep, but simply to provide a much more detailed summary of where existing consensus actually stands. It's at User:Bearcat/Whatever for now, though I will eventually move it to another title once it's more developed. I'd welcome any comments or assistance that anybody is able to provide. Bearcat (talk) 00:46, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

RFC: Every playmate is notable

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.

---

Consensus seems to be in favor of removing the relevant section from WP:PORNBIO. The Wordsmith^Communicate 23:51, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The third criterion of WP:PORNBIO states that any Playboy Playmate is notable. Is this at odds with WP:BLP1E? --Damiens.rf 18:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

At the time of the opening of this RFC, ongoing discussion on the matter was taking place at #Every playmate is notable. --Damiens.rf 18:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

A layman's opinion here, but part of BLP1E reads "If reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a single event, and if that person otherwise remains, or is likely to remain, a low-profile individual, we should generally avoid having an article on them." I'd say most playboy playmates to go on to do other things, but of course there's always the exception to the rule. Ironholds (talk) 19:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Playmates inherently are not, and never can be, low profile, so BLP1E is inapplicable. Jclemens (talk) 19:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Nor is their modeling job for Playboy, portrayal in its magazine, and all that entails, an "event" within the meaning of BLP1E (or any usual meaning of that word; see my further comments on this issue at discussion linked to above). postdlf (talk) 19:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem is for some girls who have never been mentioned outside of the context of being a playmate. Your focusing on the definition of event derails the discussion from the merit of the assertion that "being a Playboy Playmate is enough to justify a biography on an encyclopedia" (I can her the "not-paper" arguments coming...). --Damiens.rf 19:58, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

You asked the question of whether considering every Playmate presumptively notable was in conflict with BLP#1E, to which I (and others) replied that BLP#1E does not apply to Playmates. That doesn't alone answer the question of whether Playmates are notable, only that there's nothing presumptively tipping the scales to a negative answer. But you can't complain that people are focusing on BLP#1E after having raised the issue, unless you want to agree that it doesn't apply. postdlf (talk) 04:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

When judging if they remain "otherwise low-profile" (that's actually what the policy says), you're supposed to list her achievements beyond being a Playmate. By not doing so, you're begging the question: BLP1E does not applies to Playmates because they are not low-profile. This girl is not low-profile because she is a playmate. --Damiens.rf 19:58, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure this RFC asks the right question. Whether 1E applies or not, my question is, "are Playboy Playmates presumptively notable?" Remember, there are worldwide versions of Playboy and each has its own population of Playmates, many of which don't overlap with the English-language magazine. My viewpoint is Playmates shouldn't be presumed notable because many of them don't receive coverage outside limited and temporary coverage of their Playmatehood / related PR appearances. It would not be unduly burdensome to require each Playmate article to be properly referenced, rather than auto-tagging all Playmates ever as notable pornstars merely because they posed nude once. Townlake (talk) 20:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Why the middle pages of Playboy and not the cover of Vogue or Harpers & Queen? Hmm. I dislike the whole idea of notability (for people, things, ideas; places are different) resting on anything other than the availability of coverage in reliable sources. And for living people, it has been decreed, rightly or wrongly, that someone notable for a single event may - may, not does - not belong here. There is really no call for these odd exceptions to the "notability is not subjective" GNG or policies popping up in a guideline somewhere. Some of these women are notable, some aren't. On the whole, I suspect they're no more, and perhaps less, notable as a group than people on the cover of Vogue or Harpers & Queen. Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Also where is the long term coverage, oh she was a playboy centerfold in oct 1994, so? What value is that to a reader? Little or none imo, if someone is interested there s plenty of pornography on the internet, I say they are not notable unless they have other claims to fame and I think the exception should be removed, the section above is about how someone who is a major political candidate in a major election is not notable and yet some centerfold is? Clearly One event should apply. Off2riorob (talk) 10:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

What is often overlooked is that the many subsections of WP:BIO are just that, subsection and a list of additional criteria. They all still have to meet the basic criteria, "subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject". Just "meeting one or more [of the additional criteria] does not guarantee that a subject should be included". J04n(talk page) 10:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

As a practical matter, though, that's not how WP:BIO is used - it's used as a default to notability. Editors - especially new editors - rely on the guidance of WP:BIO in creating new articles and editing existing ones; as a volunteer project, we do need to have reliable standards that ensure the time people choose to use here is well spent, and I can't blame administrators who interpret WP:BIO with an inclusionistic mindset. Townlake (talk) 15:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Remove. As I previously said in the discussion above, I would favor removing this criterion. If the person satisfies GNG anyway, then they are notable. But if an individual fails GNG, this alone should not be an exemption. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Playmates are the crème de la crème of softcore modeling, and the very least Playmate of the Year should be kept. Any WP:BIO must meet general notability guidelinesBasic Criteria first, the idea that every Playmate is notable is not substantiated by this criteria. Stillwaterising (talk) 19:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I think everyone here would agree that being named Playmate of the Year results in sufficient, easy-to-find coverage. The issue here is more about Playmates like Michelle McLaughlin and Nicole Whitehead who (apparently) remain low profile after Playmatehood. In practice, this criteria is regularly used at AFD to substantiate the idea that every Playmate is notable, and it works. Townlake (talk) 20:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

While these two examples could be nominated for deletion, nobody has (that I can tell) making me wonder if Afd system is working the way it should. Stillwaterising (talk) 21:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Pointless to nominate because they'd be auto-kept under WP:PORNBIO. Should that happen? No. Is it an ironclad lock they would be? Yes. Townlake (talk) 02:39, 10 February 2010 (UTC) (Expanded to note that I actually used the Keep - Pornbio rationale in a recent AFD on Charlotte Kemp. I supported it because pornbio and past AFD results collectively establish the expectations for volunteer editors to work under, and I value Wikipedia having reliable standards for us to work with. I also value our potential to correct wrongs through avenues like RFCs, rather than a long succession of AFDs that could end in different results for similar articles. Townlake (talk) 02:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC))

Nobody who does not meet GNG or WP:BASIC should be "auto-kept" just because they pass a solitary Additional Criteria. - Stillwaterising (talk) 23:07, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

And yet, that's why WP:ATHLETE, WP:ACADEMIC, and, indeed, WP:PORNSTAR (among others) exist.  Frank  |  talk  23:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

• Remove. Too much special pleading for single issue appearances in a given magazine, namely Playboy. With so much porn on the net, I doubt it has much real-world relevance today. This kind of (historical) info is much better suited for the article on Playboy Playmate. I see the proliferation of Playmate stubs as fancruft. Instead of aguing over these stubs, maybe someone can put some quality time into improving the article on Playboy, which is pretty crappy, and fails to give any market penetration figures. Pcap ping 07:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
• This exception needs changing to: is a Playboy Playmate of the Year . Off2riorob (talk) 09:11, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
• Remove I don't think this should be in the criteria at all in any way. The trouble with it is that people can also argue "yes X appeared on the cover of Playboy but was not a "Playmate" so is not notable". Appearence in Playboy is in my opinion half way there to notability, whether the individual was playmate or not. However, if the Playboy coverage is the only coverage then the person is not automatically notable as an individual without further coverage of them as an individual per WP:BLP1E. There is absolutely no need to state Playmate of the year as a specific criteria as this would automatically qualify the individual as having a notable award per WP:ANYBIO. Polargeo (talk) 17:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

  I don't think it would be obvious to everyone that Playmate of the Year is a notable award, while Playmate of the Month isn't. It certainly isn't obvious to me. Epbr123 (talk) 17:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• Remove. Many or most Playmates (whether "of year" or not) are independently notable. But singling out a particular feature in one particular publication is silly. LotLE×talk 18:11, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Remove per most of the reasons already stated above. Far to specific and gives a highly inappropriate blanket notability to a small class of people on a flimsy, at best, reason. If the playmates are notable, its notability can be established in the same way as any other living person or entertainer - through significant coverage in reliable, third-party sources and not just "here is the Playboy article that went with the pics". -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 18:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Remove as a significant number of Playmates will not meet WP:GNG. Although, I'm not keen on the double standards being applied here. There are much worse WP:BIO criteria (eg. WP:ENT), and several other criteria also violate WP:BLP1E (eg. WP:ANYBIO 1, WP:ATHLETE 2, WP:CREATIVE 2, 3, 4). Epbr123 (talk) 19:08, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Remove, special pleading. If a playmate disn't springboard her appearance into something more, then manifestly she is not notable. However, this appplies only to articles, not lists, such as Dead playmates. If somebody nominates Dead playmates for deletion, this change should not be used to bolster the case for deletion. Abductive (reasoning) 20:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Keep - Notability is not temporary. This is a competitive award that has been bestowed monthly for more than 50 years. Even if its recipient never does anything else, it's still not a "1E"...it's one in a series of over 600 such similar events.  Frank  |  talk  20:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• And therefore better suited for lists if she did nothing else... Abductive (reasoning) 21:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, its clearly good for a list, not a two line stub that is never going to get any bigger. Off2riorob (talk) 22:16, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• Which begs the question of what the whole point of this is one way or the other. Even without independent notability criteria, every three sentence Playmate stub with an infobox would still get incorporated into a list of 12 such stub subjects, say List of 2009 Playboy Playmates. Compare to a TV episode list, or the formatting could resemble this case list I created. Each Playmate would still get covered to the extent sources allow, just not in stand-alone articles, though redirects could still be maintained for independent categorization of their names. If the sourced content on the Playmate grows larger than a paragraph, then add a {{main|Pamela Anderson}} link to the entry in the yearly list to a standalone article. It's certainly a better solution than outright deletion, and it doesn't tolerate a lot of three-sentence stubs that may never expand. postdlf (talk) 22:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• I agree that this merge solution is better than delete, but how should Pornbio #3 be changed? If consensus indicates it is to be removed, can it also be agreed that Playboy Playmate of the Year is a well-known award? -Stillwaterising (talk) 00:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• I would say yes regardless of the outcome for individual Playmates. postdlf (talk) 04:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced. WP:NTEMP does still apply. This business about articles remaining stubs being a problem flies in the face of how the community has chosen to treat notability. This may look like WP:OSE but really, it's common practice around here: there are any number of minor league baseball players, association football players, WP:ACADEMICs, and yes - actors (pornographic or otherwise), whose articles are overwhelmingly likely to remain stubs. It may well be that most of those articles (along with some of these Playmate articles) ought to be deleted, but certainly not under current policy. And yes, this RFC is an attempt to change policy in a small way, but I disagree with it. More to the point, however, I don't see how it could be done without directly implying that stub articles aren't worth keeping around if we know they are probably always going to be stubs; I think that would apply to thousands of articles.  Frank  |  talk  08:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

All valid points. postdlf (talk) 11:46, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

The merge issue is irrelevant. A different discussion entirely. The notability of an individual which is what we have been discussing is not based on whether their name could be included in another article or even featured as a redirect, it is based on whether they are individually notable and should have automatic notability as an individual. At present they do have automatic notability per guidelines and this is what is being debated. Polargeo (talk) 16:37, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• Pointless. If the Playboy Playmate has received non-trivial coverage from reliable third parties then she is notable. If she has not received such coverage, then notability ought to be questioned. I don't buy in that notability is instantly inherited if somehow the person is lacking other pertinent biographical coverage. JBsupreme (talk) 10:07, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  And a human (bio) posing nude (graphical) wouldn't qualify? ;-)  Frank  |  talk  12:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  So? There looks to be a consensus to remove.. I prodded this one a few days ago Kelly Carrington and they improved it as much as they could, she played netball went to uni and was in playboy, without this playboy protection she is not notable. In the edit summary they proudly announced..meets WP:PORNSTAR . Off2riorob (talk) 18:27, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  Who is this "they"? Aren't we all working on the same encyclopedia? Are you suggesting it's an us vs. them type situation? And to be more precise, what you did was not put a prod tag on the article but a notability tag. And the edit summary to remove that tag was not as short as you claim. To be exact it was "rm notability tag - meets WP:PORNSTAR with WP:RS refs"Dismas|^(talk) 23:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  They would be in the context the editors who think that she is notable enough for an article, you are correct when you say I only added a notability template, I wanted to prod the article but did not due to this exemption, I see the article was nominated for deletion which is a bit of a shame as this discussion was not over, but iimo there clearly is a consensus now to remove this exemption. Off2riorob (talk) 09:46, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Remove: As I understand it, this point is aksing the community to accept notability based on a company (Playboy) publishing an article/pictorial about one of its own employees, making any Playboy source a primary source. According to WP:PSTS, this is not enough to really establish the basis of an article, which is what this criteria is asking for; the ability to establish notability based on a single primary source. I would certainly support any article if there was significant secondary coverage beyond a single appearance as a model (including secondary coverage of a person over a modeling career), but I cannot see how this fits an exception to basic notability and verifiability. LonelyBeacon (talk) 22:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

That looks similar to "Sports Illustrated publishing an article about a baseball player is a primary source." The only difference is that baseball players work for MLB. But the women chosen come from wherever and whether or not they are employees is beside the point; they are chosen and awarded the honor. What happens after (the employment relationship being asserted to exist here) is beside the point. It's competitive; you can't just become a Playmate because you want to. And there have been barely (you'll pardon the pun) 650 or so in the last 55 or so years, in a country whose population exceeds 300 million today. In a magazine which is itself notable and has a fairly high circulation, that's pretty notable.  Frank  |  talk  17:27, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

But, the Sports Illustrated analogy isn't the same. What would be the same is if the New York Yankees published an article about Derek Jeter. Jeter is a contracted employee of the Yankees; very close to the same relationship that Playboy has to their models. A Yankee report on Derek Jeter's baseball career or some aspect thereof would, I have to think, be considered a primary source. Sports Illustrated and Playboy may both be journals, but Sports Illustrated rarely does stories/pictorials about people under contract to them. I may be wrong, but I think it is rare for Sports Illustrated to enter into a contract with an athlete to write a story about them. I will admit that it is not the most black-and-white case of a primary source, but I think it is pretty darn close. Modeling itself is a competitive business. Sure, the centerfolds have to compete to become one of the 12 annual women who have that spot, but couldn't the same be said of the other women in the other pictorials? How many pictorials does a standard Playboy edition have (2-3 total?) I'm just not seeing how being a centerfold endows someone with automatic and special notability. LonelyBeacon (talk) 21:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

• Remove. It's one event. If the person is marginally notable due to other accomplishments then being a playmate may be a factor of notability, but it is not sufficient by itself. For many playmates all we know about them is what was written in their profile, a single source of dubious reliability. (Playboy can be a good source for their editorial content, but the facts of the the playmate's lives are another matter). Furthermore, there are issues concerning the many non-English language editions, some of which may have substantially smaller circulations than the flagship edition. For most of these women it would be adequate to include them in a list rather than having stand-alone articles on them.   Will Beback  talk  22:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
• Remove. Should not in itself establish notability. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 00:56, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
• Keep and expand presented list of genre specific publications that might show notability for genre-specific actors and models. Even if removed from PORNBIO, Playboy magazine is one of the sources currently accepted to show genre-specific notability. And yes, as pointed out a few times above, the playmates often go on to do other things that receive other coverage. Being the Playboy cover story, or the cover story of Playgirl or Penthouse of even Hustler, meets the criteria of WP:GNG... whether listed at PORNBIO or not. As Wikipedia recognizes that not all notable subjects receive coverage in the Times or Washington Post, far better to have accepted genre-specific publications listed to diffuse the inevitable future arguments at AFD. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 22:42, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
• Remove. There's no hint that having your photo here is recognition (by the Playboy company) of notability. Rather, having it here is, I infer, supposed to show the conferring by Playboy of notability. This seems an extraordinary notion to me. Playgirls are a subcategory not of some species of people who have appeared in photographs but instead of Category:American female adult models, who presumably have reliable sources for their notability in their careers, or at the very least evidence of more activity than displaying their "assets" for a single published set of photos. Indeed, there's not even a proper category for people who have appeared in photographs; the closest is Category:Photographs (people), which includes a very small number of people notable for being photographed, e.g. Phan Thị Kim Phúc (who "gave a speech at the United States Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Veterans Day" as a result of her photographed experience) and Federico Borrell García (whose photograph has led to about as much discussion). We read above that Playmates are the crème de la crème of softcore modeling but (i) no evidence is adduced for this claim, and (ii) if the claim were true one would expect to find the buzz in the mass media that is taken in Wikipedia to constitute "notability" for other minor slebs (reality show contestants and the like). -- Hoary (talk) 09:16, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Community consensus is clear here that this notability exemption should be removed. Off2riorob (talk) 09:48, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• Consensus in this discussion may well be clear; calling that community consensus on the basis of less than two dozen opinions is another matter.  Frank  |  talk  20:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

There is a clear consensus here to remove the exemption, that is how the wikipedia works over these small issues, do you dispute the comments here represent a support for removal of the exception? Off2riorob (talk) 20:17, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

a) Nothing I wrote in any way implied I dispute what the consensus is here thus far. My dispute is with what conclusion to draw from what is shown here.

b) As for how Wikipedia "works over these small issues", I dispute that this is a small issue. The consensus I am seeing is that a Playmate is not notable because as a single criterion for notability, what results is some number of stub articles. The problem is that there are many thousands of such stub articles; this RFC seems to be establishing a precedent that an individual is non notable if the resulting article is a stub, as would be created if we "decide" that being a Playmate remains sufficient. As I described above, I think that deciding against notability for Playmates on this basis just about wipes out a significant portion of association football players, many Major League Baseball players and even more minor leaguers, as well as many minor movie folks (including actors). Whether this consensus would be extended to those others is questionable, of course, and I am neither inclusionist nor deletionist. But I think this establishes (or begins to establish) a precedent that is not in keeping with past policies and community consensus.

c) I don't see that the opinions of fewer than two dozen people are sufficient to accurately gauge community consensus.  Frank  |  talk  23:24, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

This RFC still has more than two weeks to run. No need for anyone to declare it complete or to protest perceived results at this point. Townlake (talk) 16:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed; my own comments merely reflected what had occurred thus far, and were in response to another editor's comment.  Frank  |  talk  17:48, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

• Keep oddly those citing special pleading are employing it, apparently based on snobbishness towards the subject matter. There is no requirement to pass both the basically useless GNG and additional criteria. There are people under every additional criteria whose articles don't show that they would meet the general guideline. Those supporting removal haven't shown evidence that the percentage of violators is worse for this additional than any other, and the total number of articles under the criterium is ridiculously small in comparison to most of the additionals.Horrorshowj (talk) 23:46, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
• Keep or at the least, Listify into something like "Playboy Playmates of 2010". There is competition in becoming a Playmate. Additionally, I think I should point out that several Playmate articles have gone through AFD and all have been kept. You can see all of them (I think) listed here. Also, the statistics related to Playmates (their measurements) have been used in at least three different studies. So, their information is worth keeping. Dismas|^(talk) 23:49, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
• Keep Let's be frank about what all this "tightening" of individual notability definitions is about (or weakening of Wikipedia coverage, if you look at the large picture): It is about applying WP:GNG "equally" to all subjects. The reason for the growth in "Notability" definitions in the first place was because GNG is inherently flawed, biased, elitist, and subjective. First, not all subjects worthy of coverage have been subjects of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". I'm sorry to fart in your church here, but this is an entirely artificial definition created by a few Wikipedia editors and stamped "consensus" only because anyone who would object was busy elsewhere. Second, many-- if not most on a global/historical scale-- subjects that have been the subject of this sort of sourcing are not readily available on the Internet. So applying GNG "equally" is about intentionally biasing Wikipedia to the current and the Anglophone. Just from my work on Japanese subjects I know that sourcing comes on and off the Internet rapidly-- meaning that even the relatively little sourcing that is available on the Internet is only there for a short time, after which a "notable" subject (according to Wikipedia), is, as far as anyone can show "unencyclopedic". These inherently subjective "Notability" criteria weaken Wikipedia by intentionally and unnecessarily making Wikipedia's coverage narrower and shallower than they could be, and by wasting editor time in endless argument in the process. Censorship is about: "examin[ing] [material] for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds". "Other grounds" in this case being a self-constructed, biased definition of "notability". It says, "We know what people should and should not read". It is completely the opposite of what Wikipedia should be about. Also: Playboy and the Playmate feature are icons in US popular culture and have been for decades. And anyone who asks me to waste time sourcing that obvious statement can take a flying fuck at a donut. Dekkappai (talk) 01:02, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I love ya, 'Ppai, and I'm always up for a flying fuck. Yes, Playboy is a well known magazine. Yes, many "playmates" went on to C-list celebrity, notably by starring or anyway appearing in the terrible drive-in movies that you and I both so enjoy. Yes, any that went on to C-list celebrity merit articles. Indeed, I'm temperamentally in favor of blanket inclusion of "playmates" per WP:HOTTIE. Any "playmate" who has an article with just about any independently sourced assertion beyond having her tits out for that one time and "making appearances" for that one corporation merits an article. But really, does more than a tiny percentage of any nation's male (let alone female) population know who the current "playmate" is or who her recent predecessors were? What I object to is the blanket statement that an article on a "playmate" is merited simply by being a "playmate". Just to look at the US and A, there must be 500 or so of them; what do you do when somebody insists on an article on Pixieta Froufroukova for her "appearance" as the Playmate for Slovakian Playboy for Vendémiaire 2006 (source for this assertion Slovakian Playboy Vendémiaire 2006)? For me at least this has nothing to do with any moral panic. In a thread lower down this very talk page I briefly discuss "Mia Banggs", apparently renowned for her encounters with male organs (not something that's in the repertory of most "playgirls"); I'd never heard of her till today but if her AfD were taking place now and I could be bothered to participate I'd probably vote ("!vote") "keep" for her. -- Hoary (talk) 06:59, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
• Comment Many of those kept articles on playmates were argued based on the very policy under discussion here. I cannot be sure if those articles' AFDs were argued before or after this point was added to the criteria, but if they were, that is circular reasoning (apologies if those deletion debates happened beforehand). Dekkappai notes that These inherently subjective "Notability" criteria weaken Wikipedia by intentionally and unnecessarily making Wikipedia's coverage narrower and shallower, however the GNG requirement is rather broad, and in no way precludes including subjects whose coverage came about before the internet. It seems by including "special" points (like playmates) is subjective ... Why Playboy Playmates, but not Penthouse Pets? That seems subjective as I understand the word. And on that point, speaking only for myself, I am a bit resentful about being labeled a "censor". Just because my opinion differs from yours, and favors a restriction does not make me a "censor". Not all restrictions are about suppression. Turning this into a "good guy"/"bad guy" discussion is not a healthy way to have a discussion. LonelyBeacon (talk) 02:52, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Penthouse Pet failed at a few AfDs. Thus the Porn Project took the initiative to change the guidelines based on what appeared to be consensus. There really wasn't any dissent to the removal. Playmate, however, has consistently held up at AfD even when it wasn't an explicit standard as an additional criteria. Horrorshowj (talk) 06:31, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Pets are often already adult models (e.g. Silvia Saint, Victoria Zdrok, Vicca, etc) and the appearance is more or less another modeling gig. The text accompanying the layout is often called into question as to whether it came from the model or from the editors. Meanwhile, Playmates are chosen through a vetting process. Everyday women have to go through a process to be chosen. The text that accompanies the layout is actually about the real life of the model and the Playmate Data Sheet is filled out by the model herself in her own handwriting. So, Playmate has been seen as an award whereas Pet is often a marketing tool for the magazine, i.e. they see a rising star and go out to get her to be a Pet. Dismas|^(talk) 13:03, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Please explain where "Playmate has been seen as an award." My opinion is that Playmate of the Month is not a pornographic award suitable for WP:PORNBIO, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. Townlake (talk) 16:56, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick search while I had a minute turned this up where it's "of the Year" that is being awarded. I'll look again later to see where I can find a mention of "of the Month" being an award. Dismas|^(talk) 02:54, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

• Remove not auto notable YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars photo poll) 02:29, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
• Remove as insufficient. But I would go with Playmate or Pet of the Year, except where WP:BIO1E is violated. While implicit, that should be expressly stated in any portemanteau criteria. --Bejnar (talk) 22:00, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
• Keep' per Frank. I find it difficult to believe this discussion exists. It is my view that some of those in the 'remove' camp are headed down a very slippery slope regarding Wikipedia, and reveals an attitude regarding 'notability' that is emblematic of a type of mindset that like to dictate to others. If we err, let it be on the side of caution when it comes to judgements about who can and can't be in an on-line encyclopedia. Jusdafax 17:43, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
• Remove this line has bothered me for some time and I'm glad its up for discussion again. It asserts inherited notability due to one event in a model's life, which is not enough to write a comprehensive article out of. It is easy to imagine subjects that get permastub articles because all we can write about is their appearance in Playboy. We have to be able to write more than "X was a Playboy playmate" in our articles. Being a playmate certainly helps a subject gain notability; but it shouldn't guarantee an article in itself. I also think that having lists of Playmates per year is a good suggestion but which ones get get individual articles should be left up broader notability guidelines such as WP:N. ThemFromSpace 21:08, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

  It looks to me like you are suggesting (as others have above) that if an article is or is likely to be a "permastub" article, that means its subject is not notable. That's a perfectly valid opinion to have, and feel free to correct me if I'm interpreting incorrectly. However, I think that is the sort of policy change that is far outside of this RfC. To me, support for such a point of view directly implies that articles in categories such as these are also unworthy:

  Baseball-outfielder-stub articles

  Baseball-infielder-stub articles

  Baseball-pitcher-stub articles

  Baseball-catcher-stub articles

  Film-director-stub articles

  Football-stub articles

  Footy-stub articles

  Footy-bio-stub articles

  The list goes on: Minor league baseball players who played two (or 12) games, Hollywood people who worked as a key grip on three movies, people who published a single volume of poetry...you get the idea. I'm not saying that all of these people are necessarily notable, but the community consensus on the topic has fallen on the side of a minimum threshold of notability for each of these categories of people. If we are discussing this individual criterion and saying that it should be removed because the articles it engenders are stubs, then that kind of reasoning necessarily affects other similar groups of people.  Frank  |  talk  21:27, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, generally if there isn't enough information to create a comprehensive article about a subject we shouldn't have an article about it. The wording here permits, and has been used to encourage, articles about subjects with very little publicized information. Writing about what we don't know smacks to me of arrogance and foolishness: we can't write about what we don't know! I'm not saying that we should delete entire categories of articles; each article should be selectively looked at to see if the subject meets the relevant notability guidelines. If the guidelines themselves permit articles which cannot be expanded beyond a mere stub they should be reevaluated (as we're doing here). ThemFromSpace 04:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

• Remove. Yet another pointless exception to WP:GNG, and more instruction creep. If the person doesn't meet WP:GNG, an article about ththem will be a sorry perma-stub. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:56, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  Actually, the secondary notability criteria are not meant as exceptions to WP:GNG but rather as additions. See for example, WP:ACADEMIC and WP:ATHLETE.  Frank  |  talk  18:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  Exceptions, additions, it just depends how you look at them. But either way, this is yet more instruction creep, creating another exception to the simple, durable general and throughly NPOV principle of WP:GNG. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:23, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Frankly we could do with a few more well considered additions to the inconsistent, subjective and near-infinitely abusible general guideline. Horrorshowj (talk) 13:16, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

• D'oh. I am so sorry. I was looking at the three subsection above with the "outcome" and failed to realize there was an ongoing RfC. My bad. So if we are going through yet another round: remove. Being a Playmate alone no longer offers the level of notoriety it once did. Girls that get features online (which I assume is viewed more than the magazine) and other magazines with not that much less circulation are not considered inherently notable. The General Notability Guidelines may still apply and most of the girls will receive significant coverage from other sources making this not an issue.Cptnono (talk) 22:54, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  With all due respect, your assumption about whether or not the online version is viewed more than the magazine is not the point; it cries out for a {{cn}} tag. Nevertheless, let's assume you're correct. Publishing has changed significantly in the last 20 years or so, as the Internet has grown in accessibility, so that literally anyone can publish nekkid pics of her- (or him-) self for the cost of a dinner at Outback Steakhouse. Nevertheless, some magazines have endured and still manage to achieve impressive print circulations. In fact, according to List_of_magazines_by_circulation#United_States, Playboy (at #39 on the list) has higher circulation than Newsweek, Money (magazine), Men's Health (magazine), Rolling Stone, Golf Magazine, Vanity Fair (magazine), Vogue (magazine), Popular Mechanics, U.S. News & World Report, and many others. For a slightly different perspective, according to List of newspapers in the United States by circulation, Playboy's monthly circulation exceeds the daily circulation of 99 out of the 100 top newspapers in the United States, and is more than double that of 98 of those 100. It seems to me - more so as I consider this - that being chosen to be the centerfold of this magazine is most definitely inherently notable. Attempts to claim otherwise because the Internet is so ubiquitous in the United States ignore the enduring status and continued popularity of the magazine, and the iconic nature of the brand itself.  Frank  |  talk  15:16, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems like a decent assumption. I will try to track down how many hits it receives. We did track down the numbers for Penthouse v Playboy several months ago and Penthouse was not far behind. Playboy does have more circulation but I don't feel that a girl who is one of several naked girls shown in a month is notable. Being a playmate doesn't event guarantee the cover. The brand is iconic and already has an article.Cptnono (talk) 23:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

• There appears to be a clear consensus to remove this exception, I removed it but was reverted here, how long is this to be kept open? Off2riorob (talk) 15:24, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
  • This isn't quoting any policy, but I'd prefer to see this RFC run for a full 30 days before any action is taken. I believe there's a consensus to remove, but (1) I'm clearly biased, and (2) I can only assume Dismas and perhaps other editors are still in the process of seeking backup for the argument that "Playmate of the Month" is an award instead of a Playboy modeling job title. I do hope the conversation will stay focused - the human beings who appear in Playboy, under the Playmate of the Month designation, are the only entities described in the disputed criterion. Townlake (talk) 19:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Remove - I hadn't actually added my !vote here. As for the question as to how long this is to be kept open, let's count the opinions to see what we have. Dougweller (talk) 16:39, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
  • We have imo 17 Remove and 7 keep . This discussion has been open 20 days, I would say considering the tally that unless there is a coach arrives from the playboy appreciation society that consensus at this point is clear enough. Off2riorob (talk) 19:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC) Off2riorob (talk) 19:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

  I know a tally was requested, but...when was WP:CONSENSUS tossed out the window? There are "remove" opinions that call it "silly" (but no link to a policy against silly), "pointless" (same), and wording similar to "not automatically notable" which is essentially saying "delete because...delete". However, I think (with all appropriate humility, of course) that I've raised several policy-based discussion points that have not been refuted. If you take out the "vote"-type removes, it's much more of an even discussion, with equally strong numbers on both sides, and (again, in all humility) less convincing arguments on the delete side. The WP:IDONTLIKEIT observation seems apt, but last I checked, that's not a policy-based reason to alter something or declare consensus.  Frank  |  talk  22:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you really saying that as an admin you would close this discussion as Keep? Sorry I disagree with you. If thats your thought on the issue then lets find an uninvolved admin to close it now, there has been plenty of discussion over such a minor exemption. Off2riorob (talk) 23:26, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Certainly I'm not saying that, and answering your own question as if I were saying that casts my opinion in the wrong light. Furthermore, adding as an admin as if it confers some measure of additional weight is an unnecessary twist, especially as that's not how I behave around here. I have an opinion, as others do; that's the extent of it for purposes of this discussion. I think no consensus to remove may turn out to be a reasonable determination. I'm not saying I expect that, but I really do feel that this discussion has consequence outside this one line-item (which, by itself, isn't so important), and I personally am not seeing much recognition of that in this discussion. My concern is that it will then be used to move through several other categories (described above) with the same logic. At any rate, there's no need to rush to judgment...there is a process here that generally runs 30 days.  Frank  |  talk  14:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, thirty days here, I didn't get that point but I see its value now, i'm slow but once I get something I never forget. Sorry if you feel I misrepresented your comment as regards consensus, I think we will have to disagree on that one for the time being. Its true that all decisions create waves that is part of their very nature.Off2riorob (talk) 16:26, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

• • • I think I was the first of those 17, but I'm in no hurry. I think it would be ok to wait until 30 days. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:59, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

• Remove with a change to Playmate of the Year (hopefully there's less of a debate that this higher standard presumes notability). As Frank (an endorser) said earlier it "it's one in a series of over 600 such similar events" (emphasis added) and so WP:BLP1E clearly applies. I reserved judgement until now as I was searching for news articles regarding Playmates in general, and have come to the conclusion that while certainly a substantial number of them generate additional coverage I don't feel comfortable with a mandate that all of them are notable, as their PMOM award is not a significant event per WP:BLP1E since it does not generate persistent coverage. For what it's worth I also happen to be a believer in waiting a full 30 days for the RFC since it's a significant policy, to allow other editors (like me) who need extra time to think about things before weighing in. VernoWhitney (talk) 00:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
  • For what it's worth, I disagree with simply changing the line to PMOY; adding PMOY to this standard should be a separate discussion. Arguing for the notability of PMOY is an easy way to blur the real subject of this RFC, the Playmates of the Month who are mentioned in the disputed criterion. Townlake (talk) 15:12, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I have no problem with it being a separate discussion, I just feel that it's one that should be had should the consensus finalize as remove. From my perspective the reason PMOM doesn't imply notability is that it's a single event and with PMOY there's at least two events (the second one more significant) so WP:BLP1E no longer applies. I suppose it doesn't really matter as I doubt any PMOY would fall at AfD, but unambiguous guidelines are always nice. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

• Remove. Presumably the purpose of having a notability threshhold for inclusion is so that there is enough reliable information on a subject for a neutral article to be written. Neutral in the case of biographies meaning a well rounded selection of facts about the person. Knowledge of only a single fact (XYZ was a Playmate) does not provide that information. The purpose of these types of guidelines (WP:AUTH, WP:PORNBIO etc) is to give us a class of subjects where we would generally expect that sufficient reliable information exists, but has not yet come to light. Their purpose is not to provide an end run around WP:GNG and allow biographies where we simply don't have enough information to write a decent bio. For those lesser known Playmates, a list entry is a good solution. Kevin (talk) 05:20, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Want to point out that some conversation continued at the last round of talks on this page (where it says "outcome" up above because it was presumed that it was ready for removal) after this RfC was started. The ratio offering opinions for removal is high if just reading this RfC but is even higher with even more reasoning if reading the other section as well. I really don't see how it could not be removed unless some amazing shift in opinion or some wonderfully perfect argument comes up while this is open. Will anyone besides Frank (only pointing you out since you made it clear where you stand) continue to dispute this if there is no drastic change in the next few days?Cptnono (talk) 12:28, 26 February 2010 (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.

Pornographic actors

I propose a slight refinement to this section after recent discussions in several AfDs where it has been argued that the pornographic actor met ARTIST but fails PORNBIO (e.g. WP:Articles_for_deletion/Michel_D'Amours and Talk:Alec Powers). These cases were due to an actor having a significant body of work (30, 50 and in one case 250+ films) with a number of these films (where they took a credited leading role) winning international awards (such as AVN awards) but without a specific award being found for the actor themselves. Consequently I suggest that "Has won a well-known award, such as ..." becomes "Has won a well-known award or had leading roles in a number of films winning well-known awards, such as ...". Ash (talk) 11:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Completely agree. PORNBIO is already a little broken in my eyes. This might help alleviate that since someone with a big role in a film that has been received by critics is a big deal. GNG would more than likely be met with this standard but not necessarily.Cptnono (talk) 11:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify that the phrasing above deliberately excludes someone only notable for appearing in one award-winning film. In such a case other supporting factors would have to be raised for notability to be achieved. In particular it would be more appropriate for an article about the notable film to be created and not separate articles about the leading actors within it. Ash (talk) 12:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Q: how would you define "leading role"? If we're going to place that into PORNBIO, I want it clearly spelled how it's defined. Tabercil (talk) 13:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • With the caveat that the film in question has won a well-known award, I suggest that either they are:
    1. clearly noted in the cast list as "leading" (or equivalent, such as appearing in "Three Brothers" as one of the brothers),
    2. they are one of a few actors in the cast (say, up to 4) and appear in a significant proportion of the film,
    3. they feature as top-billing members of the cast in promotional material - for example Alec Powers is one of 4 "big-name" actors on the DVD cover of Glory Holes of Chicago when a total of 15 actors are on the cast list.
  • Obviously, such a definition automatically excludes compilation videos and anthologies and evidence of the above would require reliable sourcing (such as the printed DVD cover rubric or the publisher's on-line catalogue). Ash (talk) 13:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Rather than using the term "leading roles" in the proposed guidance, the phrase "top billing" may be a more accurate representation of the above. Ash (talk) 14:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

"Films winning well-known awards" would also need to be better defined. Would the AVN Awards for "Best Packaging", "Best DVD Menus" or "Best Solo Scene" count? Epbr123 (talk) 13:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• The phrase is as currently used so you are suggesting additional refinement to the current text. I agree and suggest that "award" become something like "award (directly relevant to the subject of the biography)". If the biography were for an actor who is also the producer then production or marketing related awards may be relevant and it would be unfair to automatically exclude them. Ash (talk) 14:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm not in favour of the proposal. Its definition is going to be too complicated and subjective, so will lead to a lot of arguments at AfD. Plus, if a performer genuinely is directly responsible for a films success, they should have received an award themselves. Also, there's no equivalent criterion for mainstream actors. As you can see from discussions above, people want the PORNBIO standards to be raised, rather than lowered. Epbr123 (talk) 14:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your opinion. With regard to creating more arguments, at the moment I'm seeing a lot of arguments in AfDs you have raised (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) due to interpreting PORNBIO when ARTIST is easily satisfied due to an existing notable body of work. The intent with this proposal is to avoid repeating that same debate from first principles in every similar deletion discussion. Ash (talk) 15:38, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
      • Ash, with no slight intended, you are the only editor I can recall posing the WP:ARTIST criteria as applicable to porn performers rather than the specifically focused WP:PORNBIO. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
        • None taken. So far, nobody has pointed to any existing guideline that says that editors can and must only apply PORNBIO to a biography of a pornography actor. When it comes to judging their work and in a common-sense way they seem notable, yet that work does not seem to fit PORNBIO then ARTIST seems highly appropriate when considering notability of "collective body of work". Just because I am the first person you have noticed pointing this out (and to supply examples where the guidance seems inadequate), this does not make me automatically wrong. Ash (talk) 16:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• This is just the Playmate stuff again. But it's just as wrong here. Either there are independent, reliable sources to establish notability, or there aren't. And if those sources don't exist, we don't cover the subject. Either these notability sub-guidelines comply with N, NPOV, V and BLP, in which case they aren't harmful but probably aren't necessary, or they don't, in which case they are wrong and shouldn't be given any credence by anyone. Exceptions to policies need to be set out in the policy pages: start at WP:V and WP:BLP. Angus McLellan (Talk) 15:54, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • This appears to be a rationale to delete WP:PORNBIO altogether rather than a suggestion to improve it. Perhaps you would prefer to create a RfC to do exactly that? Ash (talk) 16:03, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

    Not at all: I don't care if there is or isn't a supplement to the GNG for any group of people, but I do care that it doesn't contradict the GNG or core policies. The policies are unlikely to change. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:52, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

    I'm forming the understanding that all sub-guidelines are supposed to be somewhat redundant to the general policy, intended to be used more or less like a local rule-of-thumb to determine notability according to our overriding policy. In this sense, the guidelines can always be contested in it's accordance with policy. Just like the "playmate criterion" is being contested as a valid rule-of-thumb for determining notability, any other criterion could be disputed just as well, without the implied need to eliminate the specific sub-guideline notability itself. --Damiens.rf 18:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, in which case I do not see an issue. If an actor has had lead roles in a number of performances that have won established independent awards then the notabliity criteria of WP:ENT (point 1 and point 3) are met whether this is on stage or in film. I am proposing text that aligns PORNBIO with these criteria, not a contradiction to the GNG. At the moment there is a descrepency that is resulting in the spurious deletion of articles that otherwise meet WP:ENT and WP:ARTIST but fail to identify a reliable source for a well-known award to the individual rather than their works. Ash (talk) 18:14, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

But the "general policy" is Wikipedia:Notability, although in fact it's a guideline. The relevant policies are WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:BLP. Angus McLellan (Talk) 18:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

In which case I honestly fail to understand your point. The assumption here was that the actor had appeared in films with well known awards. If reliable sources demonstrate that fact then NPOV, V and BLP are not an issue. Ash (talk) 19:00, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The point is that "appeared in films" is not part of the general notability guideline, nor is it mentioned in policies like verifiability, neutral point of view and biographies of living persons. It's coverage in independent, reliable sources that's needed to satisfy policy. One film could make someone notable, and allow an article to be written that met each and every applicable policy, if it led to the sources existing; a thousand might not make someone notable, nor let us write a neutral point of view encyclopedia article, if the sources didn't exist. Arbitrary criteria like awards or appearances don't really matter, independent reliable sources are what matter. Uncle G's essay remains as valid today as when he wrote it. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The proposed text is not "appeared in films" but a clarification that the actor had lead roles in several award-winning notable films, with records of the awards being reliably sourced. The clarification appears to address all the issues you have raised here. Ash (talk) 09:09, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The subject specific guidelines are a substitute for the general, but still have to meet WP:V. That's why the general says meet any of the guidelines at right. This is as it should be. The GNG inspires great ideological fervor, and sounds like a great idea, but in practical application it's ridiculously vague and easy to abuse. The additional criteria may be arbitrary, but at least applying them isn't completely subjective.Horrorshowj (talk) 20:02, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no suggestion in the proposed wording that we ignore WP:V. I agree that PORNBIO is arbitrary, my proposal makes it slightly less so, particularly considering the Paul Carrigan deletion example. Ash (talk) 22:10, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Damien had incorrectly stated that only general mattered, and everything else was redundant. I was replying to his comment, which is why it's tabbed at that level. I'm not really sure that the proposed change improves anything, or if it just complicates things more.Horrorshowj (talk) 02:58, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support the User:Ash modification. It adds clarity to this often disputed and muddied sub-guideline and would act to reduce arguments at AFD. Also, I advise clarification of the term "well-known" in PORNBIO #2, as it is a subjective term open to cultural and systemic bias. I further suggest adding a PORNBIO #6 that allows for consideration of an actor's historical contributions or impact in the porn genre for eras that predate the modern awards listed in PORNBIO #1 or the modern organizations listed in PORNBIO #4. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 04:43, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

• There are many awards on the list that are no where near the general understood description well known, a promotional award given by a simple pornographic magazine is not imo a well known award , I would like to see this list discussed. Off2riorob (talk) 15:32, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence to support your claim that they aren't? It really seems like you're just arguing that anything you haven't heard of, or don't like, must not qualify. You appear to be talking specifically about the AVN, which has 1270 gnews hits [2], including NPR and the New York Times [3], and the award ceremony is televised on Showtime. Cat 1 has held up at several hundred afd, and there have been at least four discussions of the matter on either the project or the various notability pages. Horrorshowj (talk) 23:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I am not arguing anything, just commenting, a discussion is the most I would accept and I assure you it is not that I simply don't like it or I haven't heard of it, it is my position that the notability levels for articles in this field appear to be set a bit low. I thought the idea was that notability has to be asserted, it is not for me to provide evidence that they are not notable, notability is not the default position, actually I am not talking about any particular award as yet but there are couple I have looked at and thought them imo to be not well known awards,I simply wanted to get a clarification of what the level of expectation is presently set at and then look at the list and see if awards are there that are below the expectations and possibly adding a comment to the list or the policy setting a clear guideline as to what the phrase well known article actually represents. However, there is a lot under discussion here and I think it better to wait until a couple of other issues have been closed. Off2riorob (talk) 23:42, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

There is a huge difference between your claimed position and your actions on the guideline. Since you're challenging a repetitively discussed consensus, it actually is your responsibility to provide factual support for your position. At the very least, go through the archives and familiarize yourself with previous discussions. I will point out that last time Athlete came up somebody decided to use Pornbio as a strawman argument, so I actually counted them. There were roughly the same number of total articles in the categories for porn performers (male, female and transexual) as there were for American Football Linebackers (roughly 1200). There were 7000 screening tests for performers last year by AIM. Throw in international sites and you're looking at the entire industry's history being represented by about 1/9 the number of current performers, including a great many who are. On a percentage basis Pornbio is actually one of the hardest to pass based on the additional criteria, and became even harder with the changes earlier this year. If you are claiming that additional criterium is to easy to meet, exactly how difficult in comparison to the rest are you demanding?Horrorshowj (talk) 04:41, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you confusing me with somebody else? Which actions have I taken as regards this guideline? Your statistics are good but I don't see a connection, I am not also comparing anything also, as I said I just feel that the entry qualifications for this field are set a bit low in specific regards as I said to the point having won a well known award, thats all and I just think it is worth discussion, Other guidelines that I think are a bit low are professors or academics and perhaps athletes. Off2riorob (talk) 16:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:PORNBIO criteria 1 and 2 are basically just there to clarify how WP:ANYBIO criterion 1 applies to porn stars. The criteria can't be raised without WP:ANYBIO being raised also. Epbr123 (talk) 16:36, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment I think that the word "several" (in ANYBIO and ARTIST) should be redefined as "2 or more". The words "several" and "couple" have different meanings to different people. - Stillwaterising (talk) 16:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Several means three or more, according to my dictionary. Epbr123 (talk) 18:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

There was a redefinition of the sentence being proposed, this is not the same thing as claiming that "several" might mean "two". Ash (talk) 18:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

From m-w.com - "2 a : more than one b : more than two but fewer than many c: (chiefly dialect) being a great many", but that's beside the point. I'm proposing that the wording be changed, several be removed due to vagaries, and a specific number be set. I'm proposing it be two or more. Rationale: one nomination is BLP1E and three or more is too restrictive. Thoughts on this? - Stillwaterising (talk) 19:23, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I would like to see nominations removed from the criteria altogether. There are currently too many unexpandable stub articles on award winners, let alone nominees. Epbr123 (talk) 19:36, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

That appears an odd statement, wanting to delete all these stub articles. This would make "adult entertainment" a very special exception to the consensus on deletion of articles. I understood that the big issue on Talk:List_of_male_performers_in_gay_porn_films was that a large number of people did not want red-links (or in fact any mention of actors without articles created due to potentially defaming them by implying they might be gay) even when there were footnotes explaining what awards they had. Now you don't want stub articles either, does that mean that your objective is to purge any mention of actors who have won notable awards from Wikipedia just because they have been credited with gay pornography and they are not otherwise generally notable? If you don't want them mentioned on a list and don't want articles for them then I cannot think of where else they would be mentioned. I imagine there are very few actors both notable for pornography and that are generally notable. I think we should take care to apply the spirit of NOTCENSORED. Ash (talk) 11:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

You've already been warned about assuming bad faith. This discussion is about redefining ANYBIO and ARTIST, not PORNBIO. Epbr123 (talk) 11:18, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) That's not very nice, you appear to be referring to an ANI discussion that is yet to complete. The section you are writing in is called "Pornographic actors" so if I missed the fact this thread had drifted off-topic, perhaps you could give me an ounce of good faith? If your objective is to scare me off you are doing a darn good job. With admins setting the example it has been made blatantly clear that people who attempt to create articles in this topic are going to encounter hard-line resistance at every turn. Since starting to create articles on actors in gay pornography I have been quizzed about possible COI with no supporting evidence, accused of making personal attacks and repeatedly threatened with admin action. Nothing has come of these threats but any editor must quickly tire of such nonsense. You will probably recommend that I need to take a break from this topic, it appears rather too toxic to contribute to for any length of time. Ash (talk) 12:02, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

The Paul Carrigan example deletion

In order to support the above proposal of a refinement of wording of PORNBIO, I would like to highlight the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Carrigan where PORNBIO is being used as an extremely heavy blunt instrument. Corrigan happens to be the second most credited actor in the history gay pornography (with IAFD showing 250+ credited roles) and has had leading roles in many award winning films. Contrast his impact on the field with Christopher Ashlee who amazingly passes PORNBIO because he was once named (along with seven other actors) in a group scene award in a 2009 Grabby but is notable for absolutely nothing else and has been credited with just 2 not-particularly-notable films. The proposed deletion of this article about a notable veteran of gay pornography is being strongly defended and may well go through, which appears a triumph of literalness over common-sense. Ash (talk) 14:22, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

This could be taken as a non-neutral canvass-type note - as you clearly are not neutral in the AfD and are specifically claiming it is a "poor deletion nomination" despite current consensus there agreeing it is a valid one. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 18:39, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Fair comment, thanks for pointing this out. I can see how it may have read as canvassing and I have removed the offending text in the sub-title. My intent was to highlight an example for the clarification of PORNBIO rather than canvass for comments in the linked AfD. Rational comments for deletion or to keep in any of the AfDs mentioned are welcome. Ash (talk) 00:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Note, a userfied draft is at User:Ash/Paul Carrigan if you wish to consider how PORNBIO may be better worded to cater for such a BLP. Ash (talk) 22:32, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:AUTH

My impression is the criterion 4(d) of WP:AUTH is too weak in its present form and needs to be made a bit more restrictive. Currently it reads: "The person's work [...] (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums, or had works in many significant libraries. " I don't like the idea of declaring an author notable simply on the basis of the fact that a particular book of that author is held by many libraries, and in the absence of additional evidence such as multiple published reviews of the book in question. For example, in the academic world there are many decent but not all that prestigious book series such that most good university libraries automatically get all books in that series. For example, in my own subject, math, most books published by the American Mathematical Society fall into this category (the quality of AMS books is presumed to be fairly good, and their prices are relatively cheap). However, in practice, many of these books turn out to be fairly average and not at all "big hits". Yet they are widely subscribed to by university libraries. I do not think it is reasonable to confer automatic notability on the authors of such books in the absence of additional evidence, such as high citability of a particular book in the work of others and/or multiple independent published reviews of it. I would prefer for the part "or had works in many significant libraries" to be removed from 4(d) in WP:AUTH. Nsk92 (talk) 00:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I have a different question. In Criterion 3 of WP:AUTH we say "The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." I have always interpreted this as meaning "ie one that has been the subject...", so if the work has been "the subject of ...multiple independent periodical articles or reviews" the criterion is met. But to my astonishment in an AfD (about me, so I must declare an interest!), people were arguing that although the work had been "the subject of ...multiple independent periodical articles or reviews" it was nevertheless not "significant or well-known". It seems to me that if we allow this, the whole thing becomes incredibly vague and subjective, and based on whether we WP:LIKE the subject. What do people think? Should we clarify by inserting "ie"? NBeale (talk) 08:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I made an edit in the article as it seems discussion without an edit and revert will not happen. Beale, I'm sorry, but the overwhelming majority of established editors voted delete, so the conclusion is not that this guideline is to be clarified to prove them wrong, but rather make sure this guideline encodes what the community really thinks. In any case, we both agree WP:AUTH #3 is completely useless as it is currently is written. Vesal (talk) 12:21, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Vesal, I don't see why it was necessary to make an edit just to support Nicholas Beale's ego. First of all, this is only a guideline so it's ok for there to be exceptions (I've already pointed out one, Harvard Girl, where the book is incredibly famous but the authors probably not notable). And guidelines like these are meant to have some wiggle room, for just these reasons. In Beale's case, it was clearly argued at the AfD that 1) he appears to have had only a marginal role in the book (and also in his presentations with Polkinghorne, if this is anything to go by); 2) the book is not even as notable as he makes it out to be, given that he's on a campaign to promote it on Wikipedia; and 3) the refs that are about the book are not about him personally. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 12:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Well there were a number of lies told to induce people at the AfD to vote delete. But in fact I wrote c60% of the book, the hostile review from Grayling refers to the "author" as Beale-Polkinghorne and Polkinghorne also explains that I wrote the "Three long appendices which give techically careful discussions of three topics of central importance to our argument" (QoT p xiii) and represent over 1/3rd of the content. So if this is a genuine concern, open to reason, it is easy to address. NBeale (talk) 15:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't object to your revert and reasoning, but I do object to your implications that I did this to satisfy Beale. In fact, he placed his comment here three days later than my comment below. Please leave Beale aside for a moment, and comment on my reasoning below. While I can understand that wiggle-room and common sense are important, having ridiculously low secondary criteria that will inevitably be over-ridden by the primary notability criterion doesn't make much sense. Vesal (talk) 12:56, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:AUTHOR #3 is unclear

The third criteria is almost useless in its vagueness:

The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.

There is a huge difference between being the subject of an independent book, being subject of full-length research articles in academic journals, and having multiple reviews in newspapers. The sentence here leaves everything open. The only thing preventing any co-author of any book with a couple of reviews to satisfy this criterion is the vague modifier "significant or well-known", but this could mean anything from being part of the classical canon to having received some media coverage. This is not a very helpful guideline. Vesal (talk) 21:25, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the criterion is a little too loose, but your edit stipulating that only reviews in scholarly journals are enough is too strict, I think. There are probably plenty of unquestionably notable books that haven't attracted scholarly attention. Off the top of my head, Twilight might be one (although, glancing at the article, I see that it's been covered in Publishers Weekly, which appears to be more of a trade publication, and School Library Journal—but even if it wasn't, I'm sure no one would question its notability). The Time Traveler's Wife also doesn't appear to have any (nor does Her Fearful Symmetry, but it's pretty much guaranteed notability based on who wrote it). The authors of each of those books, however, are unquestionably notable.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's any black-and-white criterion that's going to work here, it just takes some judgment. In cases like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicholas Beale (5th nomination), if the significance of the individual's role in creating that work is in doubt, and the work is of questionable notability, and the individual has done little other notable work, and there is no other substantial coverage of this individual, it can be argued that he's not notable.

That being said, perhaps what's needed is not a new criterion, but a specification of whether or not the criterion is sufficient. In cases like the ones I listed above, coverage in academic journals is clearly not a necessary criterion. At the same time, the AfD and your comment seem to show that the current version (reviews in periodical articles) is not in of itself a sufficient criterion. Perhaps it would help to specify that this criterion can contribute to notability (and clinch it, if there are other arguments for notability), but it alone can't confer notability in spite of other facts. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 13:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, my suggestion clearly set the bar too high for important authors in recent popular culture, but the more critical question is about your last paragraph. I assumed all additional criteria are sufficient for inclusion. (The section introducing them actually makes clear these criteria are neither sufficient nor necessary, but places more emphasis on saying that they are not necessary and can be overridden by WP:N.) Considering how independent coverage in reliable sources is the main deal, the only practical use of these additional criteria would be to ensure completeness and consistency, e.g., when a subject is so important that any decent encyclopaedia should at least include a stub even if substantial independent coverage is lacking. If I decided how things were done, I would take these criteria as sufficient for inclusion (although merely indicative), but more importantly, I would set the standard high enough that these should only be invoked for really important topics. This would avoid the kind of confusion we saw at the Beale deletion discussion. Still, I'm satisfied with your explanation and clearly there is never a substitute for common sense. Thanks, Vesal (talk) 14:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Without wanting to get bogged down in the specifics of N.B. it seems to me that the present wording still leaves it open to question whether someone a major role in co-creating... However to require in addition that "the individual has done lots of other notable work and there is other substantial coverage of the individual" is setting the bar far too high. I don't believe this "criterion" applies in policy and I'd be interested to see if it has ever been used in any other AfD. In addition "multiple independent periodical articles or reviews" is a lot more than "a couple of reviews". The only thing that is even slightly unclear as far as I can see is whether it means "ie one that has been the subject..." NBeale (talk) 15:32, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Vesal that the concept of a "significant or well-known work" is too vague, and probably needs to be made more specific, in order to set the bar higher. But I think the answer to your question, NBeale, is very simple. Having been the subject of a book, a film, or multiple articles or reviews is not a definition of "significant" but an additional criterion. That is the way it is written at present: the only possible interpretation of the syntax is that it refers to a significant work that has also been the subject of x, y or z. And I think that is the way it should stay. But what exactly does "significant or well-known" mean? That is where the vagueness lies. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 15:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Addendum - maybe it would be clearer if it simply said "The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work", and omitted the stuff about reviews etc altogether. That way, it relies on a simple concept called significance - which is subjective but at least does not add further potentially confusing words and open the door to the sort of (IMHO) misinterpretation suggested by NBeale. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 15:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the additional part was added to reflect book, as otherwise you have people wikilawyering over what constitutes significance. Personally, I'd say drop it all together, as a single "significant or well-known work" alone does not necessarily make the author notable, even if the book itself is. As with all topics, significant coverage of the author should be the defining factor. If he has created a historically significant, or highly recognized work, then most likely he has notability, but those are different from just "significant or well-known work". -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 17:06, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Snalwibma. The syntax isn't really quite so clear (see Fowler/Gowers on the subject of "that") and one wonders whether it makes sense to talk about a "significant or well known work that has not been subject..."? But in the case of a book we could perhaps approximate to significant/well known by considering library holdings and ghits? (PS "or had works in many significant libraries" had just been deleted from Author#4 - I have reverted since there was no consensus. NBeale (talk) 16:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Fowler's is not an academic linguistic analysis and contains many errors, just like Strunk & White. There is no syntactic ambiguity in the guideline as it is currently written. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:34, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

So we could specify "For a book this would mean being held in over 100 libraries, having over 10,000 ghits and being subject to multiple independent reviews in notable publications". This would have the advantage of precision. But I do think we should let people who were not involved in the NB AfD comment! NBeale (talk) 16:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd strongly disagree with such a specification. Google hits mean diddle squat and do not reflect notability. Neither does how many libraries hold a copy of a book. Author should NOT give an author notability for something the book itself can not get notability through from WP:BK. Author 4 should have the entire library mess removed all together as it is not a sign of significance at all. Significant coverage always has been, and always should be the primarily determiner of notability, and being in a library does not mean it is or is not significant. There are many significant authors with their works in few to no libraries, while many unnotable ones with them in many. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 17:03, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that ghits etc.. don't make the book notable. But how else might we "measure" "significant and well-known". We could of course simply say "a notable book" and that would be clear as well. NBeale (talk) 18:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary numbers (like "100 libraries" or "10,000 ghits") are useless, as are the COI editors who want to insist on using them to force an article about themselves into this encyclopedia. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:34, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

@Vesal: You are correct in your statement (way above) that much of the current wording is redundant with the GNG—the only difference being that here it applies not to the article subject itself, but to works by the article subject. Perhaps the whole wording could be simply replaced by something like "is the creator of a work which itself uncontroversially meets the GNG", with the caveats discussed above about necessity vs. sufficiency. (For what it's worth, I agree with you that it's safer to have a more restrictive guideline that is sufficient, rather than a more inclusive guideline that is necessary: basically the former would make articles that meet the guideline be deemed notable while articles that don't are up for discussion, whereas the latter would make articles that don't meet it be unnotable, and articles that do meet it be up for discussion. In other words, a more restrictive guideline can tell you uncontroversially what is notable, while a less restrictive guideline can tell you uncontroversially what is not notable.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:16, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Out of interest can you produce 2-3 examples of people being deleted when they have played a major role in creating or co-creating a notable book, just so that we can see what the normal practice is. In every other AfD debate I have seen this would be enough for a keep. NBeale (talk) 22:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

(I have moved part of this comment from the section below, as it was not relevant to my proposal in that subsection).

I have already pointed to Harvard Girl several times, if you bothered to read my comments. The authors have not been deleted, but no article has ever been created for them because they are not notable by themselves. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Although nobody happens to have created an article for it yet, I would regard The Corrupting Sea as a notable book (cf. [4]) about whose co-authors we lack adequate sources for biographical articles. EALacey (talk) 07:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I was just reminded of this topic on coming across another example: Jim Theis was started in March 2004 as an independent article but redirected in September 2006 to The Eye of Argon. EALacey (talk) 19:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

In other words, not a single example of the co-author of a notable book being deleted. Even Jim Theis who apparently did nothing remotely notable since he wrote a sci-fi aged 16, gets a redirect. QED. NBeale (talk) 22:21, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Deletion was not required in any of the above cases because nobody was campaigning for Wikipedia to have biographical articles about the authors in question. I think the lack of controversy strengthens rather than weakens my case. Can you point to articles in which co-authorship of a single work has been considered a sufficient basis for an independent article? EALacey (talk) 11:38, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I thought you said Jim Theis was merged. The guidelines explicitly allow the co-creation of a single notable work. As for examples Francis George Fowler springs immeditely to mind, but there must be many others. (eg Emanuel Schikaneder) NBeale (talk) 22:17, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

• I would not enjoy a result that allowed articles about people who wrote only a single clearly notable volume and did nothing else. In that case the article should be about the book, and none is needed about the author. WP:BIO1E Multipe notable books, one notable book and an a reasonable academic career (say full professor), one notable book and a purple heart, one notable book which is an autobiography, all are acceptable, at least there is something notable to say. Without that we have articles empty of significance. --Bejnar (talk) 21:52, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the criterion is too loose. I've seen a number of cases where biographies were kept because Wikipedians held the opinion that such-and-such creation of some author entitles him/her for a bio. This is clearly a bad criterion, because it relies on subjective interpretation WP:OR. I suggest that only the work is recognized as of exceptional importance in reliable sources, this criterion may be used. Suggested removing "multiple independent periodical articles or reviews", which qualify almost any author of a reviewed work. Any software that has a bunch of reviews qualifies its author that way. Clearly too loose Pcap ping 22:32, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Merge with AUTH #4?

The more I look at it, the more AUTH #3 seems to be redundant with #4:

The person's work either (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.

They are both, essentially, saying "the person might be notable if they created something super-notable". Perhaps we can find a way to merge them together (somewhere along the lines of the sentence I just wrote, but with more grown-up language). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Note however that this is not quite what Auth#4 said for the last 2 years (see below). NBeale (talk) 22:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

(out) I never really got a response on this (since User:NBeale seems to have commandeered the whole discussion and made it about himself), but I really was hoping to get some input on what I am hoping would be a constructive suggestion. My idea for a reformulation was something along these lines:

The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work or collective body of work which itself meets the general notability guideline beyond reasonable doubt. Notability of the work may be demonstrated by the work's having either been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent scholarly reviews, or been represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.

Thoughts? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with merging 3 & 4 and I like your wording. J04n(talk page) 16:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

This is a step forward but needs a bit more thought:

1. What does meeting GNG "beyond reasonable doubt" mean? The only thing that is clear is whether the work is indeed notable.
2. This is OK for someone who has created/co-created one notable work. But what about someone who has created/co-created a considerable body of work, no one item being notable?
3. We're talking about authors, the reviews don't have to be "scholarly". JK Rowling is certainly notable NBeale (talk) 12:45, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Changing Author#4 to remove "libraries" without consensus

I note that some ingenious wikilawyers have changed WP:AUTHOR #4 to remove " or had works in many significant libraries." This has been present in some shape or form since at least 2007 ("(d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries, museums or internationally significant libraries." is arguably better but the idea has been there for ages). Ineteresting that people are so desperate to "justify" an absurd campaign of personal attacks that they are trying to remove long-standing parts of the guideline. Could some neutral third party restore it, until there is a consensus from people who don't have an axe to grind. NBeale (talk) 22:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

There are two separable issues here. First, you shouldn't be editing this guideline in your own favour, whether adding, removing, or restoring. You've already tried to change one policy, WP:NOR, to make it easier for yourself to have a BLP. That kind of thing really has to end.

On the issue of libraries, a book isn't notable just because it's held by notable libraries. A copy of every book published in England, for example, goes to the British Library, and most end up in Oxford and Cambridge too, and the other two copyright libraries, plus one in Dublin. Right there, you have several notable libraries, but it's meaningless. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 23:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec)The people who removed it are not the ones who suggested it (both User:Nsk92 and User:Collectonian suggested removal), and you're the only person who has disputed that removal. You yourself are in a COI regarding this page, given its relationship to your own deleted article, and really should not be editing it at all. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Obviously being in the Copyright libraraies does not constitute notability, but that is not what the guideline says. As for COI, since Rjanag and Slim apparently came here to justify retrospectively their strange vendetta they are equally COI on this matter - I will refrain from editing if and only if they do.

New restriction on Author#4 need revisiting

It looks like, late last month, 2 (or at most 3) editors intent on restricting notability removed the libraries clause. I attempted to restore this, but one of those two, Collectonian, quickly reverted it. It is true that I had not seen the discussion here (all the way back on Jan 23) but 2-3 editors advocating a contentious restriction of a longstanding guideline because of such faux "consensus" really isn't a good thing. It's even worse since there was vocal opposition to the change, in fact the title of the discussion just above this. LotLE×talk 23:43, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

There is consensus, and books being in a library is in no way, shape, or form a proper notability criteria. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 16:48, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

No there is not a consensus, and the library point has been part of WP:AUTH in some form for at least 2 years. NBeale (talk) 12:29, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

And? Being there does not mean it should always stay or even that it is valid. How is an author's books being carried in a library a sign of notability? And why should it equal auto notability for the AUTHOR when its the books, not the author, who are carried. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 14:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The idea of WP:AUTHOR has always been that you are notable if you have created a sufficiently notable body of work. This is pretty clear if one of your books in notable, but what about the situation where you have written several which collectively make a substantial enough body but not necessarily individually? So the idea was (as I understand it) that if a great many important libraries had taken the trouble to buy your work and hold it in their permanement collections, this was a good inidication of notability. Obviously a work that is held in (say) almost every major university library is likelt to be more important than one which is not. NBeale (talk) 12:40, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

No, that is not "obvious" and how to do "prove" that every major university bought an author's books because he was so super notable in his eyes that it didn't and doesn't matter if no one ever reads it? It's a useless and unhelpful criteria at best. If an author is notable and has created multiple notable works, they should have the necessary coverage to not need some random "escape" clause just to throw out an article about them. Either they are notable or they are not. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 13:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

The big copyright libraries in the UK keep copies of most books published in the UK, among them the British Library and the University of Cambridge library. So there you have two notable libraries right there. But it is entirely meaningless. It tells us nothing about the notability of the book, and even less about the notability of the author. There is a general feeling in Wikipedia that notability for living people needs to be tightened to reduce the number of borderline notable and vanity BLPs. This has strong Foundation backing. Collectonian is exactly right when he says that if an author is truly notable, he won't need to rely on a random escape clause or policy loophole. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 17:29, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you have some pointers to Foundation policy or discussion in this regard? I would be interested in participating. --JWB (talk) 19:42, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I see an April 2009 resolution which says nothing in favor of restricting notability. Policies does not have anything obvious on BLP. --JWB (talk) 20:21, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

April 2009 meeting minutes has more of the discussion preceding the resolution. One person suggested "creating a level of notability based on the traffic an article receives", which did not make it into the resolution. Nobody even tried to propose restriction of notability based on other criteria. --JWB (talk) 20:35, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The resolution you linked to says: "Many people create articles that are overly promotional in tone: about themselves, people they admire, or those they are paid to represent. These are not neutral, and have no place in our projects. Generally, the Wikimedia community protects the projects well against this common problem by deleting or improving hagiographies." SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 20:51, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it says the community is dealing well with promotional articles. It does not say that notability tests need to be tightened. The tone of the resolution and discussion is very much towards intelligent editing, common sense, and humanism, rather than deletionism and the proliferation of arbitrary rules making legitimate contribution more difficult. --JWB (talk) 06:07, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

We set ourselves up as "The sum of human knowledge", and we-- well, a few of us-- create rules to consciously exclude books/authors/subject which libraries accept. Dekkappai (talk) 20:47, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Readership standard for WP:AUTH

For many years–since at least 2004–the WP:AUTH test included a commonsense standard that authors who are widely read are notable enough for WP articles. At some point more recently, that was removed, and the "creative professionals" section was replaced by something essentially duplicating the WP:PROF guidelines (which have themselves become drastically more restrictive over time).

<rant>This is bad! In particular, the revisions seem to be part of a mad deletionist trend in which more articles are being deleted than created nowadays. There is a faction of editors who seem not to want to allow Wikipedia to cover anything that is not included in Britannica, which destroys most of what is best about WP. I have had numerous friends/colleagues/acquaintances who have been active contributors to WP, but who have given up on WP precisely because of this deletion trend. I have also seen media discussions of exactly this destructive trend.</rant> Ok, I had to bitch, but let me get to a specific suggestion.

In my mind, wide readership should be sufficient for notability. The old 5k book sales "author test" was probably too low, but that just means that we should nudge the number up, not that we should have thrown away a readership standard in favor of mass deletion of author biographies. Probably something similar applies to musicians and other creative professionals, but I have not watched other categories very closely.

If 50k people have read works by an author, why on God's green earth shouldn't we have an article for some of those readers to find out biographical background on that author?! Or maybe some other number, but around this range we often have a substantial readership, but not necessarily a wide amount of "critical commentary" (depending on genre and other factors). The notability is true for any genre, e.g., even readers of schlock romance novels are perfectly right to want an article on their favorite authors, and no good comes of deleting good, existing biographies. Obviously, that does not mean that biographies that are just WP:ADVERT are still in need of deletion, or at least thorough repairs. And within those, we still need WP:RS sources to support whatever WP:V information is presented (including the fact of readership numbers). But we need not–and should not–delete every article of an author who isn't "preeminent" or "fundamentally original".

Obviously, this "readership test" is not necessary in all cases. For example, in a technical or academic area, a far smaller number of readers than this is not incompatible with a work/author being a major influence (and widely cited, etc). An academic writer about entomology might sell 1000 copies, and be the "standard work" in its field (there was a recent AfD bio like this). Such a low-selling book will be cited by numerous academic papers and the like, and its author becomes notable on that basis. On the other hand, a romance novelist might sell 100,000 and receive zero critical commentary, but still be plenty notable in a different way. The former case is somewhat addressed by WP:PROF, but the notability of more popular works is now essentially excluded from this guideline.

I believe we desperately need some additional clause in WP:AUTH that takes reasonable account of readership as a criterion of notability. LotLE×talk 23:37, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

No such criteria is not appropriate. HOw do you know who read anything without actual significant coverage in reliable sources? A single claim from one source is not WP:V and is not enough to create anything close to approaching significant coverage. Randomly claiming "well, X number of people must have read it because we said so" is not any indication of notability. 100,000 readers out of 6 billion people in a planet, and no coverage? Not notable, its that simple. If its notable, tit will have sources. If a novelist is notable, they themselves will have significant coverage. If not, while they may be popular among a few niche areas, that doesn't make them notable for coverage in an encyclopedia. Popularity != notability. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 16:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

FYI, the rule was removed in 2006: Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)/Archive 2#Another try to get rid of the "hard" 5000 rule. Pcap ping 12:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• No. If they have not received mention in multiple reliable sources, then -- to borrow a phrase -- "why on God's green earth" should we have an article about then? UnitAnode 12:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Yes It is perfectly sensible to put the definition of "notable" in the hands of authorities, not Wikipedia editors. In what parallel universe can an author be nationally-published, (or a film to be nationally-released) and yet not "notable". (I think we all know what parallel universe that is :-( My objection would be to the assigning of any random number of "readership", which is Original-Researchish. But for us as editors to step in front of a national publisher and say "No" this author is not worth writing about is even more Original Reasearch-ish in the worst way. This sense of authority/elitism should not be put into any guideline here, and it is unfortunate for the project and our readers that it has. It should stop. Dekkappai (talk) 21:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
• Comment I'm not sure what "nationally published" means. Surely any book that is published and available on Amazon is "nationally published". It seems to me (but I must declare an interest, since I meet this criterion) that if you have written/majorly co-written a notable book you are notable, but that you may be notable if you have written/majorly co-written a series of books that are significant enough taken together. NBeale (talk) 02:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  Comment Hi, NBeale. I don't understand the "if so & so... then we would have a whole lot of articles!!!" argument, if that's what you are driving at. Yes, we could. So let's get to writing them instead of deleting perfectly reasonable stubs. Have you ever looked up a name of an author or performer on Wikipedia, and found no entry not because no one wrote anything on the person, but because some barstool know-it-all with online access managed to get it deleted? That tells me that Wikipedia has lost its way. And our editor-driven personal-opinion, Original Research definitions of "notability" are one of the main reasons for this. This should stop. Dekkappai (talk) 04:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with much of what you say. But I don't think we can say "anyone who gets a book published should have a WP article" either. NBeale (talk) 10:55, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi NBeale. I'm unaware of this particular vendetta, but I've seen "notability" used to fuel many similar things-- vendettas, crusades, biases-- and it convinces me all the more of the fundamental wrong-headedness of our "Notability" definitions. These are easily used as fig-leaves for vendettas/biases of all sorts. Above we see the Playboy Playmate criterion under a "discussion" which amounts to nothing but the personal opinions of individual Wikipedia editors. Whichever side gets the largest "consensus" during the short time-span of this discussion wins. Who says being a Playmate is notable? Who says it is not? No "reliable sources", no authorities or experts are cited, only personal opinions. Whoever is loudest wins out. In a way, I think the recent massacre of unsourced BLPs should be the way to go: Sourced? Stays, Unsourced? Goes. That simple. (Though an editor who attempts to delete an article for lack of sourcing without first showing evidence of attempting to source the article should be blocked ;-) "Notable" is inherently subjective, biased, Original Research, and has shown itself over and over to be a terrible tool for judging what should be deleted here. Stub or not should make absolutely no difference. Dekkappai (talk) 14:29, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• Our current biographical guidelines are just fine. If a person has been the subject of non-trivial coverage from reliable third parties then they should be covered by Wikipedia as well. If they have not received such coverage, then the same would apply to our encyclopedia. JBsupreme (talk) 10:05, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  I agree with the principle-- i.e., anything in a Wikipedia article should be sourced. This is covered in WP:V. The idea behind this good policy is muddied, biased, "POV-ed" in every "notability" description. The concept of a Wikipedia-defined criteria of "notability(s)" was poor to begin with. But with the current draconian enforcing of WP:V, it is now completely unnecessary, and only a tool to spread bias through the encyclopedia through deletions of the articles on subjects which take a little more work than others. The fundamental error in WP:GNG is that the availability of all sources (even when they exist) on all subjects is equal. This biases our articles to the current, the on-line, and the English-language. Dekkappai (talk) 18:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  • But there is no WP:DEADLINE. If someone later finds those sources, be it from an off-line source, or a non English-language source, we can always create the re-create the article at that time from those sources. I don't see this as an error in WP:GNG at all. JBsupreme (talk) 18:51, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

    • That's an elitist twisting of the fundamental concept behind Wikipedia: Start a sourced article, no matter how small, then everyone who can chips in to improve it. What you imply is that no one should start an article-- even a sourced one-- until it meets a subjective "notability" definition put in place by a group of editors who happened to be active at the time the definition was put together. And, more to the (last) point, it guarantees biased coverage to the current, the English-language and the on-line. In the spirit of WP:BIAS we should work against this, not ignore it, and certainly not actively promote it, which all forms of "notability" do. Dekkappai (talk) 19:03, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

      • I disagree. We should not be writing articles about subjects which have not been documented in a non-trivial manner by reliable third party publications. If we, as Wikipedia editors, cannot locate said sources then we can and should wait until those sources become available or can be found. This is especially true when dealing with WP:BLP subjects. JBsupreme (talk) 21:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

        • Remove the biased, subjective judgment and I'll agree with you: "We should not be writing articles about subjects which have not been documented by third party publications." WP:V covers this adequately. The rest is Wikipedia-editor-inflicted bias. Dekkappai (talk) 22:07, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment There are many reliable ways of establishing wide readership, it's not just "anything published on Amazon". For example, Amazon itself has sales rank data which give indication of sales numbers. Or other similar sales lists and the like. In some genres, you have a pretty good idea of sales based on publisher and series that a book might fall in. In many genres, however, quite broad popular sales are not generally accompanied by much, if any, critical commentary. Academic journals in genetics have a different readership than do space westerns, for example. What Wikipedia has turned into is a bunch of amateur gatekeepers of "official knowledge", and indeed as per Dekkappai, well-cited, reliable and informative articles are now as likely to have previously existed and been deleted as they are to have simply not yet been addressed. It is a sickening and destructive situation, that has turned Wikipedia from the "repository of human knowledge" into a politburo of "canon maintainers". LotLE×talk 18:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• But does an alternative exist? These are well-meaning volunteers. Abductive (reasoning) 21:42, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, restore 'widely read' and any other recently deleted sufficient criteria for notability This inexplicable trend toward increasing arbitrary restriction is purely destructive to Wikipedia and must be stopped. --JWB (talk) 22:09, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

What happens (and I must declare an interest, this has happened to me) is that someone creates an article about X. It is then deleted, and that fact that "an article on X has been deleted" is used as an argument for deleting subsequent articles, even if the sources of X have substantially increased. Later X writes a notable book. The article is then deleted "second nomination" and a major argument used is "we deleted this last time". Some third party who knows nothing of this sees that there is no article about X, thinks there should be, writes one, and it is snow deleted "because it is worse than the last time". This creates a gap, which another person fills and the article is nominated "N-th nomination". This time it worked on by a dedicated editor. there has been a full page article in a major newspaper mainly about X's work. But it is still deleted, the main argumement being "we have deleted this article many times before". NBeale (talk) 23:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• • Yep-- "Somebody salt it so it never comes back!" And all the while this sourced stub has been deleted, someone who happens to have interest/sourcing in the subject could have substantially improved it. It all works against the interest of Wikipedia and its readers. You said it well-- We as editors should not be gate-keepers sternly sending sourced information away, we should be hosts, humbly welcoming, arranging, assembling that information into useful articles for our readers. Somewhere along the line the self-importance of the Wiki-editing community became a bloated monster... Dekkappai (talk) 23:42, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Pcap mentions above an archive of the discussion where the so-called "hard 5000" rule was removed. Way back then–in 2006–the tenor was actually pretty reasonable. Observations were made that 5k sales/circulation was more than needed in some areas, and less than needed in others. However, at that same time, pretty good replacement language was suggested (and I think this version was in the guideline at some period, but I haven't traced through years of edits), e.g.:

• Published authors, editors and photographers who received multiple independent reviews of or awards for their work
• Recording musicians with significant sales in a major market or genre or whose work is independently recognized for its influence (see WikiProject Music's Notability and Music Guidelines)
• The person has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person. (Multiple similar stories describing a single news event only count as one coverage.)

The point is that while there are minor problems with any sort of hard threshold, it's really not difficult to find language that recognizes significance in a reasonable and encyclopedic way. Which is almost the opposite of what we now have. At this point, authors selling 50,000 or 500,000 are often deleted to it they don't meet elitist canon standards in a few narrow fields that fall under "approved knowledge". This is absurd. While I don't want a magic number of 50k, it is also pretty horrible that authors with that sort of sales–and sometimes much more–still have articles deleted, articles that are well-cited, verifiable, neutrally written, and so on.

What we need is simply guidelines that follow commonsense and that have a goal of actually providing information rather than restricting it. Abductive claims above that the deletionist mob are "well-meaning volunteers". This is false: they are certainly volunteers, but they don't come anywhere close to well-meaning. But sanctions are neither practicable nor efficient; what we need is clearer and better guidelines. LotLE×talk 07:51, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

• Guidelines are fine right now. When articles get deleted due to failing WP:V that's nothing to do with a deletionist mob. Self-referencing and referncing to resumes shouldn't be acceptable, simple as that. COI on the other hand has no place on Wikipedia and those who edit with COI are the ones that aren't exactly well-meaning, and should be sanctioned. —SpacemanSpiff 08:01, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I am a bit concerned that two of the people seeking to weaken WP:AUTHOR guidelines coincidentally published autobiographical articles on Wikipedia about themselves, articles which were eventually deleted. This is a serious conflict of interest in my view. :-/ JBsupreme (talk) 07:57, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
    • With regards to Wikipedia as a whole-- not this set of subjective standards based only on the personal opinions of a small group of editors-- you use the term "weaken" incorrectly. Allowing biased editors to put up subjective criteria to exclude coverage of what they do not want to see seriously weakens and damages a project that purports to represent the "sum of human knowledge". And if you have any concerns about the actions of individual editors, this is not the forum for it. Dekkappai (talk) 15:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
• Request. My learned friend Dekkappai, some way above: Have you ever looked up a name of an author or performer on Wikipedia, and found no entry not because no one wrote anything on the person, but because some barstool know-it-all with online access managed to get it deleted? Hi! Barstool know-it-all speaking. (A Chimay white, please.) No, not an author or performer. (Those areas aside, I do remember that happening once, with "Ghost Rider (motorcyclist)".) Can we have one or three examples of articles with content not criticized as unverifiable that were deleted because of non-notable productivity? I'd like to have my memory nudged. -- Hoary (talk) 10:36, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
  • • This has happened to me dozens of times. I don't think there's any point of trying to rehash some specific AfD discussion, where deletionist might provide some ad hoc rejoinder about how such-and-such bio really should be deleted (and "the ground it lived on salted"). It is incredibly easy to find many, many examples of the same thing just by browsing the recent deletion sorting pages for Authors or Academics. In about 2/3 of those where the result is delete, there is absolutely no argument that the content is unverifiable (and not even usually that it is not concretely verified by WP:RS in the existing text). Rather, the argument is almost always exclusively that this academic/author is not of "extremely high prestige" (e.g. some high number H-index for citations), or that the sources that discuss the academic/author are not themselves high enough prestige (e.g. a review of works is accused of being a "blog" rather than a newspaper... which usually itself misses the point, since all reviews are editorial rather than objective in content).
    • Moreover, even in those AfD's the result in keep, the arguments made by the very same few deletionist editors are exactly the same, wholly about some bio subject not being "important enough", and almost never about the sources being absent (or even where absent, exceedingly rarely that efforts failed to locate such sources). It's just an accident of which 8 or 12 editors happened to come by a particular discussion, and which closing admin decided to close it (since the admins, often with deletionist bias), frequently ignore the general predominance of AfD comments in favor of deletion. LotLE×talk 07:47, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

• • Hi Hoary, your erudite chum here. Not being an admin with access to deleted articles, nor an editor obsessed enough with the deletion of other people's work-- though it does bother me-- randomly typing in actor/author names for one that has been deleted would consume more time than I'm willing to put in here. So I'll have to pick a couple quick that have come across my watchlist: (let the tittering begin) Tiffany Towers, Julia Hayes, Mia Banggs, Chantelle Fontain, Alex Arden, Barbara Summer, Dominique Dane, the list could go on for pages, and pages, of course... and a lot of Playboy Playmates are soon to join their ranks, because a few barstool know-it-alls don't want them here. You'll have to take my word for it that I've come across "legit" actors/authors who have met a similar fate. Authors? Michael Tsarion? William Schnoebelen? (Not exactly "legit", and yes, it will be very easy to piss on each and every one of those examples above, proving my point-- that these criteria are based on elitism.) But surely you're not doubting that real, verifiable actors and authors with no (apparent) "significant coverage in third-party reliable sources" are put up for deletion based on editor-conceived "notability" criteria? We see that with Japanese subjects all the time. Dekkappai (talk) 16:17, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Ppai. First, I think I was sleepy yesterday: after all, "Ghost Rider (motorcyclist)" is himself a performer. On the "Playmates", no, this particular lounge lizard is not keen to run them out of Wikipedia. Instead, I oppose the notion that a single appearance in the centre of one particular magazine confers significance that overrides anything else. ("No need for pointy-head 'sourcing' of the article on Pixie Frou-Frou, dumbass: she was Playmate for Brumaire 2010!") We see the result in arguments over earlier, very bizarre versions of this article, where the mere fact that the biographee had been a "Playmate" seemed to be taken by certain SPAs and SP IPs as conferring significance on anything and everything she did. (Well, er, not everything. Not the embarrassing bits. But certainly all the vanity-published astrological stuff that her miscellaneous websites were hawking.) ¶ Let's turn to your list of articles. (I've only looked for four so far; I may or may not continue, and of course others are very welcome to do so.)

• Tiffany Towers: deleting AfD, last version. Comment: Nomination for the second AfD seems to be for (alleged) lack of notability, but delete votes are on grounds of lack of sourcing/sourcability. The last version was completely unsourced.
• Julia Hayes: No article so titled has ever existed.
• Mia Banggs: deleting AfD, article in what may be its largest form, article in close to its final state. Yes, this deletion is simply for (alleged) lack of notability.
• Chantelle Fontain: deleting AfD, article in what may be its longest form, article in its final form. Deletion seems to be for (alleged) lack of notability; but that aside, neither of these two versions of the article has any sourcing whatever.

I've therefore only looked at three. I have no reason to think that these three are representative, but for what it's worth I notice several things about the deletions. The AfDs have few participants, most (all?) of whom seem interested in porn. Within the AfDs, there are no disparaging or even tittering comments about porn in general, this porn in particular, or coverage thereof in WP. Indeed, there's hardly any visible dispute. (This could be because potential "keep" voters such as yourself weren't aware of the AfDs or because they thought their participation would be a waste of their time; I don't know.) But even my sample (?) of three of them shows some variety: rightly or wrongly, Banggs is deleted for lack of notability (there's no criticism of the sourcing of what the article does say), Towers more for lack of sourcing (the notability-related nomination is largely ignored). -- Hoary (talk) 02:54, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

• In general I agree with JBsupreme above. Non objective or non measurable standards like the one proposed just lead to trouble. Namely the subjectivism described and decried above on both sides of the aisle. If a book is well enough read, then there will be a sufficient number of reviews in reliable sources. Given the nature of ephemera that appears in Wikipedia, I would almost ask for a five year moratorium on any event (music release, concert, explosion, book publication) before an article would be accepted. That would get rid of a lot of fan-cruft, but is not feasible, unless there were a companion Wikinews to absorb those articles and free up Wikipedia to be an encyclopedia. --Bejnar (talk) 21:40, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Hoary. Well, I feel like I was a bit "suckered in" by giving those examples-- you've got me at a disadvantage, since I'm unable to see what state the articles were in, I don't keep a record of what I perceive of as Wikipedia making wrong decisions, and I just grabbed a few that came to my eye easily, hoping that they didn't look unduly ridiculous. Since most were in the adult entertainment area, I can answer for myself as to why I gave no input at the AfDs. First: I have no interest in it. (Maybe a surprising admission, but I'm more interested in the (s)exploitation cinema, mainly the Japanese pink films, and US drive-in/grindhouse cinema.) Second: Once, a couple years ago, I did actually source many articles like these which were up for deletion on "notability" grounds, even though I had no interest in them. I found the experience to be an extremely frustrating waste of my time. Not only did sourcing and saving those articles take time away from work I wanted to do here, the effort of saving them was wasted when every one of them were re-nominated (again under "notability") and then, with my, and I presume other editor, patience worn out, deleted. I've seen articles which passed "notability" then get deleted en-masse once these purely subjective definitions were changed.

Forgive me if I'm being dense, but I'm not getting your point. Are you saying that an article that does not pass "notability" criteria will not be deleted as long as it is sourced? If so, then there is no reason for these criteria-- unless it's one of those harmless "Importance"-rating games the Wiki-projects engage in... But, if you are saying this, I think you are in error. I've come across AfDs on Japanese subjects several times where "consensus" was unanimously "Delete" until this barstool know-it-all suggested searching in the Japanese language... and lo and behold, even our own "notability" was sometimes passed. That's just in the rare areas and cases that I have looked into. So, I think sourced articles do get deleted regularly because they don't meet certain editor-created "notability" criteria. Particularly in areas outside the knowledge of the average English Wikipedia-editor demographic. Dekkappai (talk) 19:59, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment LotLE proposal above seems to me to offer a very sensible approach. Understandable and allows for variations of the definition of "notable" in different fields, whereas arbitary numerical thresholds which suit one field are bound to fail another. It also allows for the experts in a particular field (who may well be active in a Project for that field) to set (by consensus) suitable further guidelines for articles which fall within their remit.--Plad2 (talk) 07:48, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree with LotLe provided some source (even primary) exists on which to base the article. --Cyclopia^talk 23:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Putting a shortcut to WP:BASIC pointing to Basic Criteria

WP:BASIC was created assigned as a redirect to the paragraph marked Basic criteria in BIO in November. That was over 3 months ago and neither the redirect page or myself has received any comments at all on their creation.

So now that the redirect is established, can we get a consensus to put the shortcut on the BIO page?

Also, since the Basic criteria are the core of Notability (people) shouldn't they be renamed to Basic Criteria (caps on both words)? - Stillwaterising (talk) 00:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

 Done - No objection was raised to this in over a 7 day period. Went ahead and made changes. - Stillwaterising (talk) 14:56, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

RFC: Change "This page in a nutshell"

I don't think "this page in a nutshell" sums up WP:BIO correctly. The first line rephrases WP:GNG when it should be rephrasing the Basic Criteria. Proposed revision is as follows:

-Stillwaterising (talk) 04:13, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The criteria for including people is more stringent in certain fields and less in other fields. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 16:05, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

To much jargon. A nut shell is meant to be void of all but the most basic language. A306200130048123 (talk) 15:50, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

If Notability (people) can't be summed up in a nutshell then I suggest nutshell be removed. - Stillwaterising (talk) 02:03, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:Athlete Amateurs vs. Professionals lines blurred

This comment is being made assuming that both a professional athlete and an amateur athlete do not make it under the standard WP:BIO. Now a days professionals can compete in the Olympics for many events. For some sports where amateurs and professionals mix throughout the highest level of competitions does it really make sense to have professionals considered more notable. Basically, why do we require amateurs to be the best in their sport (better than almost all professionals) in order to be considered notable. Take track and field or swimming, for example. Shouldn't making the finals of the the Olympic trials or national championships count for notability. Basically making the finals in these events means you are in the top 8 or 9 competitors in the respected country. How is this not notable. Of course the Olympics is the highest level of competition, but it seems like a huge double standard to compare the Olympics to the professionals in my opinion. I also think the equivalent to professional level event is confusing. Would a national championship count as a equivalent to a professional event. I just commented on an AfD for a strongwoman, who although seemed unnotable, fit the definition of WP:Athlete because she competed in the highest level professional league of strongwomen. How can we say that someone like this is more notable than someone who makes the finals of the national championships, who just happens to be not professional.MATThematical (talk) 01:12, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I expect that one could put forth several distinguishing characteristics between an amateur and a professional, but if the key basis of recognition of an individual is the relative performance in the sport itself, however measured, then it ought not matter whether the athlete is a professional or amateur, notwithstanding the difficulty in arriving at a concensus on the definitions of professional and amateur. If one ran a hundred yard dash in 8 seconds, it would be a notable athletic acheivement whether the person was a professional or amateur. Understanding the reasoning of the Olympic Organizing Committee in allowing professionals to compete might be informative.--Newwhist (talk) 16:07, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. There are obscure events that label themselves professional and auto-entitle someone to a biography, e.g. bodybuilding, (see a couple of sections below, I'm not talking about the well-known professional events that have wiki pages), while in other sports amateur events are more notable, but don't label themselves "professional" because they don't cross the line into entertainment as much. Pcap ping 22:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:ATHLETE in relation to referees

WP:ATHLETE clearly lays out notability guidelines for athletes that do not pass WP:GNG. However, Bradjamesbrown brought up a good point at Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Ian_Rogers_(rugby_referee). Referees are not included in WP:ATHLETE. For example, this person does not seem to meet the general notability guideline, but they certainly would pass WP:ATHLETE if it applies to referees. I'm inclined to personally say that it does not, but I figured it would be good to get a discussion on this topic going. So, do referees apply to WP:ATHLETE? NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 05:47, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I think your inclination is right. It does not make sense to apply WP:Athlete to a non-athlete. Referees are not athletes. MATThematical (talk) 23:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I know the hockey project has in the past taken WP:ATHLETE to include referees. Because atleast in hockey, you follow basically the same structure to get to the top referee positions as you do to get to the top level of play. And in hockey referees names become fairly notable as they are often mentioned in the press and different ones have different reputations etc. But in general, I would use WP:BIO to them anyways. -DJSasso (talk) 23:51, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

In hockey where referees develop a reputation from being mentioned in the press, they basically make wiki bio notability anyway. I agree with you that in general it is best to apply wiki bio standards here.MATThematical (talk) 19:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

RfC regarding applying notability of people to article contents

There is a current RfC at Talk:Incidents_at_SeaWorld_parks#RFC:_including_or_excluding_victim_names regarding applying notability standards to article contents. Gigs (talk) 18:42, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Participation in professional bodybuilding events

I suggest this be added as an exception to WP:ATHLETE. There a number of obscure BB events that label themselves "professional", but hardly qualify for a wiki page themselves, but are used to prop up some obscure biographies. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wendy Lindquist for an example. Much of the bodybuilding stuff doesn't squarely fit into the athletic department, because much of the fame and money (at least in the female branch) comes from posing for various muscle magazines. I suggest that bodybuilding be treated more like WP:ENTERTAINER because of this. Pcap ping 21:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Disagree about treating them like entertainers, as there is a clearly defined level of fully professional. That said, I don't have the faintest idea why the hell anyone would think that article qualified.Horrorshowj (talk) 05:26, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:Athlete addition

Based on the comments above I would like to add something to the amateur section. Instead of it saying usually considered to be participation in the olympics or world championships, I would like it to read "Usually considered to be particiapation in the Olympics, World Championships, or finals of a respective country's National Championship. It seems bizare that for professionals we require only national recognition but for amateurs we require international recognition. Finals of a national championships is a very strict requirement, very few athletes would be added because of this as compared to participation in a notable professional league. I want to get some concensus before I change the article. MATThematical (talk) 23:14, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose I agree with the sentiment, but it would make the subguideline too broad. Some amateur sports are very notable; others are not. A finalist in Australian Rules Football in Russia is not inherently notable, nor is a swimming finalist in a country without an olympic swimming pool. I think its best to leave the inherent notability qualification of the subguideline narrow, and apply WP:GNG on a case-by-case basis for the narrow category of amateur athletes who may be notable despite not competing at international level. --Mkativerata (talk) 23:40, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. I too would have concerns about that. I'm already bothered about the way amateur "participation" is often a free pass for those who "participated" but never performed well, and this change would tend to make the resulting recentism worse. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure this means you are especially bothered that professionals get a free, pass. This is clearly a worse problem. I have rarely run into a page that featured an amateur who qualified under the exemption of competing in the Olympics or World Championships who did not meet WP:GNG. However, there are tons of pros who don't make GNG who get pages under the pro exemption.MATThematical (talk) 02:25, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

No, I meant what I said, but it applies to both. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:09, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Obviously you mean't what you said, I never insinuated you didn't, I was just pointing out that this line of logic should apply to all athletes both professionals and amateurs (which you seem to agree) if it is going to be applied. It is my view that the WP:N guidelines need not only be practical but also consistent and logical. Your concerns are certainly valid, and I actually agree with them to a point, hence the new proposal below. However, it seems like my proposal is being opposed based on a double standard. If we want to restrict the pro definition to say "professional games of the highest level, usually meant to mean the playoffs of the MLB, NHL etc. or the single most prestigious international tournament of the year" fine at least we are being consistent. From what I have seen people have given arguments based on the fact that WP:Athlete is too light as it is, and we shouldn't allow more people in. I agree it is light, but a notable national championship is at a higher level than a random mid season professional hockey game. In any one hockey or basketball game you are lucky to have 1 or 2 players be olympic caliber. Yet we hold amateurs to a different standard. It doesn't make sense. Of course the NFL is a more widely watched sport than gymnastics, but WP:GNG takes care of that, letting in all otherwise unotable pros, but not some of the top gymnasts in the world, who may not have substantial coverage, doesn't make sense. MATThematical (talk) 22:37, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

New Proposal WP:Athlete Amateur

NEW PROPOSAL Based on the comments in the above discussion, I am changing the proposal to "competed at the highest amateur level of a sport, usually considered to mean the Olympic Games, World Championships, or the finals of a notable National Championship". This does not change the requirement but just clarifies what the highest level of an amateur sport means. Another option is to use the current wording but remove the word usually, and replace it with for example. The main point of this proposal is that the highest level of competition very often (often enough to justify the removal of the word usually) is at a national and not necessarily only at the international level. Take the women's 100 meters in track. Out of the top 25 athletes in the world 17 of them were from the USA. The 4th - 8th place finishers in the National championships may not make WP:GNG, but meet WP:Athlete, because they competed at the highest level of their sport, due to their particular country having a notable national championship. I am not really changing the exemption for amateurs at all, just clarifying the incorrect statement that for an amateur, usually the highest level of their sport means olympics or world championships. That is simply false. If the national championship of a given country is notable as an athletic event, then it is almost always at the highest level of the sport. To say the Olympics or world championships is usually considered to be the highest level of the sport, is like saying if a football player does not make WP:GNG he is only notable if he competes in the playoffs. I just think we should make the exception for professionals and amateurs consistent.MATThematical (talk) 03:23, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

• No. If the standard is inherently controversial and requires mucho explanation, it shouldn't be added here. GNG is already full of too many end-arounds and is already too often misapplied without more stuff like this. Townlake (talk) 00:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
• Politely oppose - this opens the door to far too many non-notable athletes. Speaking from a strictly US-centric viewpoint, this opens up the possibility of articles for any collegiate athlete who competes in an NCAA national championship in football, soccer, cross country, softball, fencing, wrestling, skiing, shooting, bowling, etc. Not all of these athletes are notable. LonelyBeacon (talk) 06:34, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

• It does not open that possibility at all. An NCAA championship is not a national championship. It is a collegiate championship. A national championship is one that is open to the best athletes in the country regardless of whether they went to college. Some NCAA athletes make it to the finals of a national championship, but very few are good enough to do so. But you definitely point out something we have to be wary about, because we definitely don't want an NCAA championship working its way in here, because in my experience an NCAA championship is never at the highest level.MATThematical (talk) 19:43, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

That is a matter of opinion based on how the proposal is worded, as I suspect many people do consider collegiate championship as national championships ... The proposal would have to be very specific in excluding national collegiate championships. In many cases, the national collegiate championships are far more notable than the other amateur championships (for example, in wrestling, the NCAA championships are televised while the true national championships are hardly noted in any major newspapers or sports programs. Given this, I am not sure that national championships grant notability. LonelyBeacon (talk) 20:00, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Interesting example. My guess is that depending on the wording both would not automatically grant notability since for wrestling the true national championships may not be considered a "notable national championship". I think that you might be right that some people would consider the NCAA champs a national championship, and careful wording might get lengthy. Do you think the compromise of removing "usually" and replacing it with "often" or "for example" is a good one. In my opinion "usually" is too strong, but perhaps it is necessary to set a high standard in people's mind when they create pages. My only concern is whether athletes in sports where national championships are the highest level of competition (equivalent or better than the Olympics) are being restricted here. Perhaps these athlete's pages would survive on a case by case basis, when accessing how high a level their national championship is. After all even "usually" doesn't mean always. So do you think the word "usually" still leaves enough room for personal judgment in an AfD discussion. MATThematical (talk) 23:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

• A compromise: would be to abandon my proposal and just take out the word "usually" and replace it with something a little more accurate and a little less strong like "often", or "for example", the word usually is inherently controversial, because it is factually inaccurate. There are many sports where strong countries are limited to a couple of participants in the Olympics or world championships. Their national championships are at a higher level than the Olympics, this is actually very common. My guess is that highest level trumps the usually part, so perhaps in AfDs this could be done on a case by case basis. But I think "often" makes more sense here.MATThematical (talk) 19:43, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. I am sure that this proposal is made in good faith, but really: enough is enough. The current looseness of the notability guidelines is leading to the creation and retention of far too many biographies of relatively obscure people who don't meet WP:GNG. They are likely to be hard to reference unless kept as tiny stubs, and the scale of the proliferation of makes them hard to patrol for BLP problems. Given the recent demonstrations of wikipedia's BLP vulnerability, we need this attempt to create a further class of GNG-exempt BLPs rather less than we need to be rubbing salt into a hole in our heads. And it's not as if sportspeople is exactly one of wikipedia's less-thoroughly-covered topics.
  We need fewer exemptions to GNG, not more of them, and even Jimbo has recently been bemoaning the current laxness of the notability thresholds. It's time to delete some of these GNG-end-runs, and since the nominator is concerned about consistency, I suggest a simple solution: remove WP:ATH, and keep only those sports biographies which comply with WP:GNG. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:35, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Your simple solution is perfect! In fact, it is the one I proposed a long time ago (at least a half a year ago), but if I remember correctly it didn't take too well. Getting rid of WP:Athlete has always been my preferred solution, way better than loosening the amateur requirement. I am a big fan of consistency and this would definitely be the most logical and consistent thing to do.MATThematical (talk) 04:28, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. Agree with BHG above. WP:ATH is too prescriptive and wide as it is (covering anyone who's come off the sub bench in Football League Two is rather absurd). If a non-international amateur athlete is genuinely notable, there'll be coverage to get them past WP:GNG. --Mkativerata (talk) 00:52, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose I think that Mkativerata hit the nail on the head. The change suggested is not necessary for the people that it indicates need to be included. The general guideline will be sufficient for that purpose. --Bejnar (talk) 03:41, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose The current guideline is already very broad. You're not considering how this will actually be applied at AfD. There are at least 3 Powerlifting organizations in the US with national championships. The NCAA has 4 divisions of athletics, and every athlete on every football team in divisions 1AA-III would suddenly qualify by virtue of being in a national championship tournament. Pretty sure that would apply to most other sports also. Every player on every team in any NCAA title tourney. International competition is a reasonably high bar for an exemption, to the vote stacking guideline.Horrorshowj (talk) 08:28, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Pornographic actors and models notability level

Pornographic actors and models notability level

This is regarding WP:PORNBIO specifically these conditions:-

• (1) Has won a well-known award, such as those listed in Category:Pornographic film awards or Category:Film awards.
• (2) Has received nominations for well-known awards in multiple years

It seems to me that we have a raft of article about what are basically not notable porn actors that are singe line stubs and have no chance of ever developing into a decent biography. These actors are gaining inclusion through what I feel is a very low notability threshold of being a recipient of what is supposed to be a well know industry award. There also appears to be no clear definition as to what conditions are met for inclusion on this list. I would like to see inclusion for this field of people raised to a decent level which would remove the possibility of these one line stubs that so and so has won some low level industry advertising award. For example this sort of thing, recently created, Adam Bristol and Bruce Hill . Please comment, thanks. Off2riorob (talk) 10:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

• This is a problem with WP:ANYBIO, not WP:PORNBIO. ANYBIO has allowed a raft of stubs on people of various professions, not just porn stars. I don't see why porn stars should be singled out. Epbr123 (talk) 11:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

It is not singling anything out apart from this specific two points that I have numbered above, the two articles I have linked to are not being allowed to be created because of ANYBIO but have been granted notability through as I said, the low level of inclusion through having won what is called a well known award and this what is at issue here. Off2riorob (talk) 12:12, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

If you proposing that "well known" award should be changed to "notable award", then I would agree, but it wouldn't affect the two example articles you've given. The GayVN Awards and Gay Erotic Video Awards appear to be notable. Epbr123 (talk) 12:30, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

As the creator of both these articles, I would like to point out that I only created these stubs because they were deleted from the List of male performers in gay porn films. The only way to make the list comprehensive (for award winners), in the current environment of hard-line interpretation of BLP, was to go ahead and create stub articles using the exact same references that had already been included in the list they were deleted from, in order to "prove" there were no BLP concerns. Perhaps you could suggest an alternative compromise? Ash (talk) 12:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

The proposed change above seems good. I'm not sure what the above discussion is about, it seems to have little relation to changing the additional criteria. I am concerned that Category:Pornographic film awards will become a new page to dispute over. - Stillwaterising (talk) 14:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I want to see the level for inclusion raised, so as to a level that for example the two articles I have linked to here become below the threshold for notability, lets face it, one link to a industry advertising award is a pretty worthless stub, the people that benefit the most through it are likely the pornographic magazine that is linked to the award, Ash himself has said of the two stubs I have linked to here, that he only created them so that he would then be allowed to re-add them to the pornographic actors list, which is not really a good reason to create BLP stubs. Off2riorob (talk) 14:40, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I do believe it would be highly odd for Wikipedia to have no mention of award winners (I can think of no non-industry sponsored awards for gay pornography). As to whether these articles have "no chance of ever developing into a decent biography" as you claim is less certain. I disagree with you as I have no idea how you would prove such a claim, particularly if improvement is impossible as the articles get deleted on sight and the barriers for creating a stub are so high that it becomes impossible to establish and then improve a new biography in this area. Generally, as stated before elsewhere, my concern is that Wikipedia is developing a natural bias against actors involved in gay pornography that is non-American and dating before 1995. Even where the work of such actors has well known significant cultural impact on gay identity of the 70s-90s decades (gay identity of the period being highly influenced by increasing sexual liberation) it would be remarkably difficult to identify sources (such as gay erotic magazines and reviews) to firmly substantiate this sort of notability if award winners are not an exception to the automatic delete-on-sight policies being lobbied for. Ash (talk) 15:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Well that a bit floral, we are not talking about that this actor has as you claim had a significant impact on sexual identity, those actors are few and far between and I can name most of them and they all qualify as notable in their own right, also this is not a anti homosexual bias, recently I was involved in the discussion that saw the level of notability rise for female playmates when the automatic centerfold inclusion was removed. What we are talking about here is a pretty much unknown porno actor that was given a industry self advertising award in 1993 for a great blowjob the stub says, Pornographic actor who won a grabby in 1995 for great blowjob , usually with a single industry citation. Off2riorob (talk) 15:59, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I have made no claim of anti-homosexual bias. If you read the bias guideline I referenced it primarily concerns geographic bias. Please do not characterize my comments in this way as it would easy to misinterpret as a claim of homophobia.

I made no claim that any actors mentioned here have significant impact on sexual identity, you appear to be attempting to make a parody of the point I was trying to make. I do not appreciate de-railing my comment in this way.

You are assuming that the awards mentioned in the stub articles are all that could ever be found for these actors. Your assumption is not based on anything but your personal speculation. As these articles have only existed for a short time, there have been barely any contributions apart from mine. Consequently I see little grounds for your presumption that they can never be improved.

From the way you are describing the awards ("great blowjob") you obviously feel that an award for best oral sex scene or best three-way are always going to be trivial by their nature. Consequently your viewpoint appears to be that no pornographic actor could ever be considered notable for their performance. Such performances by definition are going to be sexual, a fact you appear to have a problem with. If your viewpoint is that all such articles should always be deleted due to their fundamental nature, then we can have no common ground for agreement here and I see little value in you continuing to contribute to the discussion. Ash (talk) 16:54, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I am always willing to compromise, please don't over complicate the issues and personalize the discussion, it's not about you or about me, it's a simple discussion, there are multiple articles of a similar nature that have existed for lengthier periods of time that are similar stubs. I would like to see the level of notability acceptance through this well known award clause raised a little that is all. IMO a lot of these awards are not well known at all. The suggestion above to change the wording to notable award is a good reflection of the issue, any industry advertising award that can be cited to a few independent locations becomes notable, to be in receipt of one such award is not imo the level of general notability that is a worthy level of wikipedia entry. Off2riorob (talk) 18:33, 7 March

2010 (UTC)

• You're not censoring articles on porn performers, you're just demanding a significantly higher standard of notability for them than any other category of bio? I've already pointed out numerically how few meet the existing standards compared to the other categories. The percentage of performers who meet the guidelines is minuscule. Your claim that this isn't driven by subject matter is ridiculous in light of your earlier removal of the entire category from the criteria. Horrorshowj (talk) 23:34, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

As Epbr123 points out, WP:ANYBIO states that a person who "has received a notable award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times" is deemed notable. The two requirements that Off2riorob point out are specific interpretations of ANYBIO in the porn context. (Remember, PORNBIO was first drafted back when to stand as a separate notability criteria before it got folded into the larger WP:BIO page same as all the other category-specific requirements.) If we drop those two rules from PORNBIO, then we must also drop them from the ANYBIO requirements, and that's a different debate altogether. So for now, I say no to the proposal. Tabercil (talk) 22:52, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Gay porn awards

With regard to gay porn performers specifically, I believe that clarifying which awards are considered notable would be a good first step. While the Grabby or GayVN awards would likely be considered notable, there are some more marginal awards like the Golden Dickie Awards which are unclear, and some like International Escort Awards which are used to bolster claims of meeting WP:PORNBIO although they are actually not porn-related. I attempted to raise this issue in a proposal I made to reduce the friction associated with gay porn BLPs but the discussion was not productive. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:40, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this is probably the most logical first step as well. We need to be specific about what awards are notable and what awards are not. MATThematical (talk) 00:28, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Taking the International Escort Awards point, these specifically include the award for Best Porn Star Escort, so to say they are not porn star related is a misinterpretation.

Some may get confused between an article for an award showing the award is notable enough for an article and whether the award itself would demonstrate notability of some sort when conferred on an actor (or studio or director). Conversely non-existence of an article is not a definitive indication of non-notability. Each award may have it's own issues and the Golden Dickie Awards are a case in point as they are a rare example of awards that were given to porn star actors and studios notable for bareback sex at a time in America when all other awards actively banned any studio or actor from getting awards who did not promote safer sex in their videos.

If this is a serious suggestion then the discussion may require some time to layout a case for any award being challenged and an individual RFC with time to gather comments, responses and evidence may be the way to go and avoid some of the sort of ongoing issues, repetition and disputes in this area. I do not believe that many would be challenged anyway, probably only 3 or 4, so this is not perilously burdensome. Perhaps PORN would be a better place to hold such a discussion rather than here. Ash (talk) 07:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with going to the project for a discussion would be wise. Golden Dickie award is definitely not a "notable" or "well known" award. It was awarded in a single year by a relatively minor retailer, and nobody appears to have covered it. I'm not entirely convinced it needs to be mentioned in an article that otherwise meets notability, but it definitely shouldn't qualify the article for it.Horrorshowj (talk) 08:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems clear to me that the definition of a notable award is any award that meets WP:GNG. If the Golden Dickie Award has no coverage, then its not notable. Whether or not an award has its own article is a good indicator of whether it passes WP:GNG. Epbr123 (talk) 12:06, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad for you, however your opinion is not a consensus. Just to clarify, are you arguing against having a more formal consensus process in order to reach a conclusion?

You appear to believe that because someone wins an award that has an article this always means they are notable. Perhaps someone would care to come up with example exceptions to Epbr123's rule of thumb, if not, I would be delighted to second this simple scenario for notability. Though I do wonder what would happen if an article about an award were to, say, merge, split or be deleted at some later stage. Retrospective propagation would be a bit of a nightmare. Ash (talk) 12:56, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

That definition of "notable" does actually have consensus. If an award was later deemed non-notable and merged or deleted, then all the stub articles relying on it would also need to be deleted or merged, similar to the above Playboy Playmate situation. Epbr123 (talk) 13:14, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, seems like even more good reason to have an established consensus on particular awards at issue. Presumably if an RFC on a particular award went ahead you would have no problem falling in line with the result as you have not given any reason to think such a process would not be acceptable. Ash (talk) 13:21, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Clearly any awards that do not have there own article should not qualify anyone for asserting their own notability, this is the point, I don't see that having won one of a multitude of what are nothing more than minor industry advertising awards is any sign of personal notability at all, it would strengthen the guidelines and raise the chance of a developed article being created if only the actual well known major awards qualified to assert personal notability. We should remember that at least some of the recent creations have only been created with the objective of being able to then reinsert the names onto the pornographic actor list and not what should be the idea that..This person is a notable person worthy of his own biography, I can write a decent biography of this person. Off2riorob (talk) 13:19, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Your earlier examples do not meet your statement here about what is "clear". For example the Men in Video Awards (Probies) would be considered notable but does not have its own article and the International Escort Awards (that you had a problem with) does have its own article. I repeat yet again, if the case is to be established then each award will have to be separately debated in an RFC before being dismissed as a suitable notable award for demonstrating a BLP as notable. Ash (talk) 13:28, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

How are you asserting the an award is notable if is has not even its own wikipedia article? The actual objective is to raise the standard of the automatic notability entry of the group, the major awards can be the automatic assertion of notability and the minor awards can be perhaps a starting point towards notability but requiring further independent assertion.This way there need not be excessive individual discussions about each and everyone of them but a single discussion to see from this collection of awards which are the well known major awards from amongst them. It appears to me to be exactly the same issue as Playboy playmates, that entry level for automatic entry was set too low, a very low percentage of the playmates was individually notable without the award, as is the case here, we have a multitude of essentially not notable people asserting their claim of notability from this low level of entry, thereby allowing the creation of a multitude of stubs which can never be developed are are of little or no value to the reader.Off2riorob (talk) 13:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

This is a wiki. There are many millions of things which are notable, but do not have their own Wikipedia article. In the case of a gay porn award, it could be that there are a limited number of people interested in fleshing out (so to speak) the topic of gay porn on Wikipedia, and nobody has bothered to write it yet. I, for example, watch plenty of it, but have no desire to write about it. The Wordsmith^Communicate 13:50, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Excessive individual discussions? We are talking about gay pornography here. So far I only see a maximum of maybe 3 awards that might be disputed one way or the other. I am suggesting an entirely standard consensus building process. You don't have to take part if it's too much hassle for you. Ash (talk) 14:07, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I know there are notable things that have not got articles but imo if you are going to use that notable thing to assert notability in other things then an article would be a requirement. Off2riorob (talk) 15:07, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Ash, your position comes from the standpoint that the majority of these awards infer a wikipedian level of notability and my position is that only the major awards from the list of awards are actually well know and notable enough in themselves to individually assert a person is wikipedia notable and through only the winning of such an award worthy his own article. Again Ash, please try not to personally direct comments at me, as in that this is to much hassle for me or that if such and such is my opinion I have nothing to add to this thread, please keep those personal opinions to yourself. Off2riorob (talk) 15:16, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

No, that is not a fair description of my position. I have not made any statement as to which awards I personally consider notable or why. Which list of awards are you referring to in your comment and what is the existing definition of "major" (and hence "minor") for these awards? I remain unclear if you are still against having RFCs to ensure a well established consensus exists for disputed awards. Ash (talk) 15:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not against anything as such, one thing I would like to discuss previous to anything else is in this porn bio section of notability and expressed as policy/guideline in the two points at the top of the section, what is the accepted consensus here regarding what exactly is a well know award? Off2riorob (talk) 16:10, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Interviews as evidence of notability

I'm looking for feedback on if interviews should be handled differently than feature articles on a person in terms of notability. What I had been doing was to to separate word counts or air time for the lead and question/answer session. The lead is usually the interview talking or writing about the subject and thus covering her while the question/answer section is material from the subject herself and thus more along the lines of WP:SELFPUB material though she gets to use the interviewer's space or air time to comment on herself (and sometimes to promote her product or service).

I've also seen that the lead is normally NPOV material. The interviewer is trying to hook reader or viewer interest. Thus, while I have used the existence of the interview as evidence that the subject was noticed I have often classed interview itself as "trivial coverage" unless it has an extensive lead.

Another editor wrote during an AFD, "when somebody is interviewed by a reliable source, that source is giving significant coverage to them." This seems to be a valid point and so I'm running it by here to see what the consensus is and if we should add something about this to WP:PEOPLE.

It's come up because in some AFD discussions in turns out that interviews are the only coverage a person has received.

While I have print interviews in mind this question would also apply to radio and television interviews. I'm making the assumption that the person interviewed is the interview subject, and that the source is reliable, independent, etc. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:31, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

As with a lot of these notability questions, I think the answer is "it depends" - on the context, the genre, the content of the Q&A. If, as you describe above, the Q&As appear to have been supplied by the subject and roughly replicate material on the subject's own website, then I think we have to say "trivial". If, on the other hand, the publisher is a reputable source, the questions seem to be theirs and the answers are in a different style or clearly different or offering additional information than from the subject's own website, then I think they can be used. Finally, in my area of expertise, Children's Literature, Q&A interviews are often used as a way of imparting information to children in an informal manner. That format doesn't invalidate either the information or its reliability. So, in summary, I don't think there can be a hard and fast rule. As with so many issues here, one has to use a healthy dollop of common sense.--Plad2 (talk) 07:17, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

However, as a general rule, interviews should be depreciated since they do not contain analysis and evaluation. --Bejnar (talk) 16:33, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Any rational, actual, scholarly, published, biography uses interviews with the subject if they exist. Interviews present the subjective view/opinions/quotes of the subject of the biography, naturally, they are not "reliable" except for those views/opinions/quotes. But those views/opinions/quotes are invaluable to any real, fully-fleshed-out biography. That some Wikipedians carry "NPOV" "NOR" "RS"-- or whatever other alphabet soup they've cooked up-- so far as to suggest intentionally excluding interviews with the subject of a biography from his or her biography just shows how far off base some people can become when working in a mob-like atmosphere, such as WP rule-making boards like this one. Dekkappai (talk) 17:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The interviews I'm thinking of are the ones commonly seen in newspapers and web sites. For example, this interview of a book author. The usual structure is a one or two paragraph introduction or lead and then it's questions/answers. I see that WP:N is empathetic that material qualifying for notability be independent of the subject, that it be "works of their own" (by the person writing the article), and that it "address the subject directly in detail." What's troubling me about interviews are

1. Interview questions tend to not contain a significant amount of information "about" the subject or to address the subject in detail.
2. Interview answers tend to not be the interviewer's own work but are usually either the subject's words verbatim or with minor editing.

Also troublesome is that many interview leads are an extract of information from the subject's standard bio. For example, with the interview above all of it is from the bio in the book being discussed though it's restated in the interviewer's own words. Interviews like this are being used, in good faith, as the foundation for why a subject is notable.

Unfortunately, I can't think of an easy solution. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:05, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Help on clarity of thought

Small question. If a person, say a sportsperson, has a bio article about them is it required to meet the requirements for both WP:ATHLETE and WP:BASIC, or either criteria? Additionally is the person notable if they meet only general notability? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

• Meeting either WP:BIO or WP:ATH would usually be sufficient, but note that neither criterion confers automatic notability. Satisfying WP:BIO confers a presumption of notability; same goes for WP:GNG. Those who meet WP:ATH are generally notable.--Mkativerata (talk) 23:14, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
• When someone seems to meet a specialized guideline such as WP:ATH, but does not otherwise meet WP:BIO or WP:GNG, that tends to be a recipe for an AfD debate, or a debate in this talk. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
• I've always viewed it as WP:BIO is the first check for athletes, if they meet that standard then they are notable. Surely tons of notable athletes didn't meet any of those requirements in WP:Athlete. However, in other cases like Academia WP:ACADEMIA limits notability since people in the academic world are constantly publishing and hence may be considered notable by the WP:GNG standpoint even if no one has ever heard of them. So the answer to your question is that it depends on the subject.MATThematical (talk) 05:10, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
• I use an informal point system for determining notability. If a person qualifies for WP:ATHLETE item 1 or 2 it counts as "points" towards possible notability. You'll find many articles that survive a deletion discussion as the subject has a collection of minor points. Thus to answer SunCreator's question it is that it's "and" but that a person does not need to have bullet-proof WP:BIO credentials if they qualify as WP:ATHLETE. If an athlete has a brief and undistinguished career the odds are low you'll be able to develop consensus that the person is notable based on their athletic career as there will be little or no WP:BIO material. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:35, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I just thought of something else. WP:N has the core criteria and WP:PEOPLE adds more detail related to people. Within WP:PEOPLE is WP:ANYBIO where it could be argued that winning a state championship or selection by a semi-pro or college team is evidence of notability as that championship or college team is notable. WP:ATHLETE was developed to address this by raising the bar and so that it needs to be competition at the fully professional or highest amateur level to count. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:54, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposed clarification of WP:PORNBIO

Section 2 of WP:PORNBIO, "Has received nominations for well-known awards in multiple years," does not specifically address the situation where a performer receives nominations for the same film/video for different awards in different years. Typically this happens when a film/video appears late in the calendar year, and the award-givers have different standards for deciding which year a release is eligible in (eg, one goes by official release date, the other by the date its review appeared). I suggest either adding something like "for different releases" following "nominations"; or (preferably) adding more detailed language to footnote 9 making the point that, for release-specific nominations, at least two different releases must be involved. I don't think this should be controversial, but who knows? Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 16:45, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

How often has this glitch come up already? I know this scenario arises due to the different award-giver's eligibility calendar but how many articles is this affecting? Even if this is put as a footnote, it seems complicated to have to explain the 2 release distinction. Morbidthoughts (talk) 16:59, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I've never encountered this situation before, and if this ever arose at an AfD I think people would apply the criteria with common sense. Although, it wouldn't do any harm to add it to the footnote if it can be explained simply. Epbr123 (talk) 17:12, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm against the change as the assumption is that such a scenario would automatically be non-notable. If a performer has several nominations for the same performance, this may well be notable as different awards bodies have recognized the performance as notable enough for nomination. Taking the ad absurdum case, if an actor were nominated for 8 different notable awards by 8 different bodies, would anyone really think that the actor is non-notable, making insignificant impact in their field?

BTW, I note that Hullaballoo Wolfowitz has been canvassing for opinions from selected parties. As a result this proposal may suffer from supporting bias. Ash (talk) 17:22, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I haven't checked who Hullaballoo was canvassing, but I suspect it's the active people who are in WP:P* who are those who are most likely to have an opinion on the topic. Tabercil (talk) 22:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe, though Morbidthoughts is not listed as a member of P* and they were canvassed, whilst I am listed as a member and I was not (both of us recently taking part of the P* talk page). I guess some opinions were more welcome than others but I have no way of knowing the selection criteria here. Ash (talk) 00:20, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

What are you talking about? I'm still on the list. Tabercil, Epbr, and I were the ones who pushed the multiple years of nomination criteria into PORNBIO. We're the ones who would have an opinion what it was meant to mean. Morbidthoughts (talk) 04:23, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with that. I even thought he made the change to "multiple years" with questionable consensus so he for sure is someone who should be contacted if making changes.Cptnono (talk) 04:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

There is a presumption that we know every award system in existence and have already weighted them and have created separate articles for just the notable ones. I don't think this is true. Wikipedia has systematic bias and I think even more important there is cultural bias. There is an entire Japanese gay porn industry but it remains all but invisible here, ditto with many countries, developed or not. The awards we have tend to be very US Centric and depending on the era are heavily weighted towards major companies, certain stars, away from bare-backing, etc. The more I was digging through the big list the more I was finding. Unfortunately that all got hijacked before a comprehensive look to see what we do and do not have. Frankly I'd rather house several of the awards in one longer article thus negating the need for a companion article about the history of gay porn awards et al. -- Banjeboi 18:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I see Hullaballoo's point, but I think it's a solution in search of a problem. We can revisit the proposal if we do find in the future that the described problem does exist. Tabercil (talk) 22:41, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I've seen at least a few relevant cases, but it's taken me a while to spot a pure case where it's the only claim to notability. I've just started this AFD - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Dalton (pornographic actor)‎ -- so we can see if there's any genuine controversy. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 19:03, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Restore Pornbio #3 with strikeouts

On a related topic, now that Pornbio#3 has been removed, #4 has become #3, #5 has become #4, and #5 ceases to exist. Now older Afds that use the old numbers may not make sense. I propose that #3 be reinserted with strikeouts in order to preserve existing numbers and provide a reference for older debates. - Stillwaterising (talk) 19:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary. The criteria have changed many times since they were originally composed [5], so a lot of older AfDs are already out of sync. Epbr123 (talk) 19:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Even back then #3 concerned Playmates. I'm not saying this is necessary rather it's desirable to preserve the existing numbering system instead of creating more confusion. - Stillwaterising (talk) 20:53, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

The Playmate criteria has also been at #1 and #2 at times [6][7]. I see your point, but WP:BIO changes so often that the whole page would end up covered in strikeouts. Epbr123 (talk) 21:16, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Let's keep the numbering system simple. Tabercil (talk) 22:43, 15 March 2010 (UTC)