Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)

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Reviewing WP:ENT #2: Large fan bases or cult followings

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

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Has a large fan base or a significant "cult" following.

I think this is a poor predictor of the GNG. We constantly see (at AfD) actors/models/other entertainers who have massive fan bases (tens or hundreds of millions of social media followers, for example) who completely fail the GNG, and only have coverage in celebrity gossip magazines. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:11, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree. I think it's de facto ignored. Starting a discussion on deleting it might be a good idea. The more accurate and less "noisy" we can make SNGs, the better. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:30, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I think it depends on what's meant by "fan base". Social media followers aren't a great predictor of notability but following someone on social media doesn't represent much of an interest. Hut 8.5 11:43, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

For example: having tens of millions of YouTube subscribers and millions of views for every new video posted[1] is a large fan base by any reasonable definition, and a YouTuber is certainly an entertainer. Yet: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SSSniperWolf, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SSSniperwolf, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sssniperwolf. The criteria is probably strongly correlated for traditional Hollywood actors, since any Hollywood actor with a large fan base will likely have coverage in RS. But it's not true for all entertainers/actors/models, since that grouping does reasonably extend to comedians, YouTubers, Instagram models, pornographic actresses, etc. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:46, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that a "large fan base" is so vague as to be meaningless. Is 300k subscribers on Youtube a large fan base? How about 75k? Is 1 million followers on Tik Tok a large fan base? How about 15k followers on Instagram? Another problem is that even if you can establish a large fan base, if there's no significant, independent coverage in reliable sources, what are you going to fill the article with? I recently draftified an article with this exact problem: arguably a large fan base, but no significant coverage in reliable sources, resulting in a sub-par article. I support a removal. JBchrch talk 12:33, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I also support removal. What I take to be the "rational kernel" of ENT #2 is the "cult following" business - the idea that entertainers followed intently by fewer people can be as noteworthy as names everybody knows who are less intensively felt by their publics. But that will always be subject to reliable sources anyway, so I'm not sure to what extent that principle even needs to be articulated here. Newimpartial (talk) 12:39, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I support removal. "Large fan base" is so vague as to be useless. I think a "cult following" is more interesting, but only if it's supported by reliable sources, and at that point BASIC is probably met. pburka (talk) 13:32, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I support removal. Unless the fan base/cult following results in sigcov, there is nothing to base an article on. Not to mention the possibility of purchased followers (bots). Schazjmd (talk) 15:49, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with those above who support removal. This is a throwback to the early years of Wikipedia before the GNG was created and before social media became such a big commercially-manipulated thing, whereby anyone can pay to obtain a large fan base. And surely "cult following" is just the opposite of "large fan base"? If only three people who are in the know and have highly-secret passwords are fans of someone then that's a cult following. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:58, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Support removal as well. Doesn't seem like a good predictor of GNG given the history at AfD. JoelleJay (talk) 18:17, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I've always interpreted this requirement as having to be supported/reported by RS in AfDs; not pure numbers. Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:29, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

• Support removal: largely meaningless and a poor predictor for meeting WP:BASIC. --K.e.coffman (talk) 21:35, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support removal on arguments above Xxanthippe (talk) 00:28, 18 July 2021 (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.

Clarity regarding how many requirements are necessary for someone to be considered notable

Let me know if you have any objection to adding this:

Unless specified otherwise, the enumerated lists in this section are lists where at least one criteria needs to be met. For example, in the "Any biography" subsection, a person who "has received a well-known and significant award or honor" does not need to have "an entry in a country's standard national biographical dictionary".

Dr. Universe (talk) 20:09, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

• I agree with the sentiment of this suggestion, but I think it would be clearer to modify each of the specific lists to be more precise. Specifically, each list item except the last should end with ", or" rather than a full stop. This will provide the same information, but in a form that's also visible to editors who jump straight to a subsection without reading the introduction. pburka (talk) 21:33, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

• Thanks Pburka! I was thinking of doing that too, but was too lazy. However, it is the better thing to do. Without doing that, one would have to hope that the reader has read the top, and people don't always do that. Dr. Universe (talk) 19:08, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
• I've now done it for "Any Bio" and "Creative professionals". How does it look? Dr. Universe (talk) 19:12, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
• @Pbruka: my edit (adding the OR statements) was reverted by an admin with a comment saying it must be discussed first, can you take a look at the version I had with the OR statements and let me know what you think?
• @Cassiopeia: the change was discussed here. There wasn't much participation, but there was ample opportunity. pburka (talk) 19:56, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
• @Pburka: Then we should wait for more editors to participate and have a consensus first prior changing the content as Notability page is a very important page in Wikipedia. Cassiopeia^(talk) 20:08, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

• @Cassiopeia: do you have any opinion about the adding of the "OR" statement for the list in the "Any Bio" and "Creative Professionals" sections? Not having those OR statements right now seems to be causing more harm than good, because the page (which you say is very important) is not clear otherwise (inexperienced editors will not know if its supposed to be OR or AND). Dr. Universe (talk) 00:06, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
• Dr. Universe, Let the discussion run at least a week to see any other editors would join the discussion. Cassiopeia^(talk) 00:10, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

It's been a week since the suggestion to let this run at least a week. Any objections to this change? pburka (talk) 14:26, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - "criteria" is plural; the proposal should read "one criterion". Narky Blert (talk) 12:59, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

NAUTHOR also works, but only AUTHOR is listed

I noticed that WP:AUTHOR is listed as a shortcut, but not WP:NAUTHOR. I thought about adding it, but I first wonder if there's a reason for not including it (or at least saying somewhere that N can be added before more or all of these shortcuts). Without saying that NAUTHOR is a shortcut, I got worried for a second that NAUTHOR doesn't work anymore, but it does. Dr. Universe (talk) 00:09, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

It's common for sections to have lots of shortcuts to them, but only the most popular one or two listed. I've made maybe 5 similar shortcuts myself, ones I find more intuitive than the defaults, but that I chose not to add to the shortcut boxes to keep down clutter. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:38, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Is WP:AUTHOR an SNG?

Hi, I'm a little confused by the wording on WP:Notability and this page. Is WP:AUTHOR a full-fledged WP:SNG meaning that meeting its criteria warrants inclusion per the general WP:Notability (quote: "A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG) listed in the box on the right"), OR... is it the case that since WP:AUTHOR is not actually listed in said "box on the right", unlike for example WP:POLITICIAN, it's merely an "additional detail" in the SNG "person"? My understanding is that it must reasonably be an SNG just like WP:POLICITICAN as their presentation on this page is identical, but a differing opinion appeared in a deletion discussion. I would appreciate a clarification and I also think that the wording on WP:Notability should be made less ambiguous to avoid misunderstandings in the future.Thisisarealusername (talk) 04:09, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:AUTHOR is part of the WP:BIO SNG, which is listed in the box on the right. If you pass AUTHOR then you pass BIO, which means you meet a subject-specific notability guideline. Hut 8.5 07:16, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

However, meeting a subject specific notabilty guideline is just a presumption of inclusion, not a guarantee of inclusion. It still comes down to the quality of the coverage of the topic in significant, reliable sources. I happen to believe that WP:NAUTHOR is usually applied correctly, but let's face it, The person is regarded as an important figure is a loose standard that should probably be clarified and tightened. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:30, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

To be fair, nothing is a guarantee of inclusion, not even a GNG (or NORG) pass. Newimpartial (talk) 16:41, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I think if #3 or 4 is met, then it is a valid defense to WP:NOTINHERITED. So coverage of the author's works would count towards coverage of the author for GNG. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:57, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

NOTINHERITED is supposed to work in one direction only. So coverage of works can make an author presumptively notable, but coverage of an author never makes their works presumptively notable. Newimpartial (talk) 17:01, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't know -- is that really true? I mean, does an invention being notable make the inventor notable? Does a child being notable make the parents notable? EEng 13:12, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm just telling y'all how the guideline is supposed to work: the inventor/invention case (or author/work) are not the same in policy as literal parents and children. That said, an article is never guaranteed just because an SNG (or the GNG) is passed. Newimpartial (talk) 13:22, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Sachems

I raised this point at WP:Outcomes but am wondering is this might be the better spot: Should a sachem have presumed notability? It seems to me that as the paramount chief of their people, they should be at the same level as a colonial governor. The problem, however, is that as native peoples did not leave behind extensive written records there are not going to be as many sources about them as there are about their European counterparts. Presumed notability would solve this problem. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 16:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Bizarre issue when Del-noming an article

When I was putting up a music band bio up for AfD, after a speedy delete was contested, I tried to originally see if I could do a PROD delete on the article first. When I did so, I used "Show Preview" to see if any warning came up saying the article had been nominated for deletion in the past. There was, but the bizarre thing I found was that the AfD the warning linked to was not related to the subject of the article - in fact, it was for an article about a band with the same name (which has since been deleted). If you check this AfD - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Clairvoyants - you will notice that the links seem to go to the article with that name, but not concerning a band, but rather magicians.

Does anyone think when an article is deleted, the name should be tagged and used as a notification mechanism to say something like: "The article's title that you have tried to submit has already been used in an article that has since been deleted. Please use a different name or modify the existing one to highlight what the subject concerns."? GUtt01 (talk) 09:02, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

No. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:17, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Why not? If someone creates an article with the same name as another article that was deleted, and they put it up for AfD, wouldn't that cause an issue? They might find they can't do so, and would need to 2nd nominate it as a result, which seems bizarre, since they are nominating the article for the first time, despite it baring the name of an article about a different subject. I mean, when we make articles about someone, and that person's name is already the subject of another article, we tend to differentiate between the two by highlighting the second by what the subject is. For example, if we already have a subject on a person who was a composer, and then create an article concerning someone of the same name but who was a footballer, naturally we highlight the second's title with "#Name# (footballer)". GUtt01 (talk) 09:21, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

I would have thought that is was pretty obvious why not, and the terseness of my reply was intended to prompt you to think about it for a bit more than four minutes. Phil Bridger (talk)

Wikipedia's policies and guidelines shouldn't be tailored around making it easier to delete content at the expense of creating content. pburka (talk) 13:14, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

No, I'm not saying to make it easier, I just think that creating a new article with the same name as one that had been deleted, on a different subject, should clarify the subject of the new article under that name. It is rather bizarre to have to 2nd nominate an article for deletion, when it was nominated for deletion before but under a different subject to the name, than to the one that the second nomination concerns. GUtt01 (talk) 14:25, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

The fact that someone's created an article under the same name before doesn't mean a new article is more or less entitled to use that name. The possibility of tracking these is technically challenging, because there's no a priori way for the software to tell if a recreation using a previously deleted name reflects an identical subject or a different one. In other words, the large difficulties and small benefits make Phil Bridger's simple "no" an entirely sensible answer. Jclemens (talk) 15:54, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@Jclemens: Thanks for the explanation. So what we can gather from this is that while the matter is certainly bizarre, there is a large, technical difficulty in tracking and keeping record of names used for another subject that was deleted. Ok, fair enough. Just wanted to ask about this at all - I think your explanation makes it clear to me about this now. Guess I should just contend with this as best as I can. GUtt01 (talk) 16:00, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

I have a little more time on my hands now, so I will offer an example of one of the several problems with this. Someone could write an article about me under the title Phil Bridger today, and it would be deleted because I am not notable. Then a namesake could be elected US president in 2036, and he would obviously be notable, but the article about him wouldn't be able to have his name as the title because the article about me was once deleted. That is surely not what we want to happen. The situation that you describe in your original post happens occasionally but is easily dealt with by simply pointing out in the WP:PROD rationale that the article is about a different subject. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:11, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Could another solution be to find a way to code the PROD to recognise that an article that previously held the same name, was already deleted in its AfD? GUtt01 (talk) 09:05, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

But that still wouldn't tell us whether an article is about the same subject or an accidental namesake. This only happens occasionally, so surely rather than have people spend many hours developing and testing something that tries to automate this it's better for the nominator in each case to spend a couple of seconds checking whether the subject is the same, something that's easy for a human to do but very difficult to automate to any acceptable degree of accuracy. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:19, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Okay, fair point. GUtt01 (talk) 09:39, 19 September 2021 (UTC)