Wikipedia talk:Notability

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2005–Sep 2006 (related to page now moved to Wikipedia:Notability/Arguments) Sep–Oct 2006 Oct–Nov 2006 18–25 Nov 2006 Nov 2006–Dec 2006 Dec 2006 Dec 2006–Jan 2007 Jan 2007–Feb 2007 Feb 2007 March 2007

N/A to article-content (continued)

(Continued from 'Does "notability" apply to the content of articles? -- Proposed add to guidelines: "N/A to article-contents"',above.)

Fifth draft

This is what was added to the guidelines 21:22, 20 February 2007 by Lonewolf BC, but then deleted from them 03:32, 21 February 2007 by Centrx. It's of two parts: The upper bit went at the end of the introduction of the guidelines, and the lower part was a last section of the guidelines.

Note that these are guidelines for allowable article topics within Wikipedia, not for allowable content within Wikipedia articles.

....

== Notability is not needed by particular article-content ==

These and all the notability guidelines are for allowable article topics within Wikipedia, not for allowable content within a legitimate Wikipedia article. Although issues of article-content are sometimes discussed, on talk-pages, in terms of the content's "notability", that is not exactly "notability" in the sense of these guidelines, which do not directly apply to such matters: "Notability", in the sense of these guidelines, is not needed in order for particular information to be included in a Wikipedia article. For such article-content issues, see the guidelines on verifiability, reliable sources, and trivia. (Note also, though, that within Wikipedia's guidelines, generally, the term "notability" means what it means in the notability guidelines.)

Discussion of 5th draft

Centrx's reason for deleting it (copied from "Problems with recent changes", above):
Also, as explained above, notability is relevant to whether article content is included. The notability of the information and the reason for the notability of the subject is explicitly referenced in WP:BLP and WP:RS, and otherwise is the major factor in whether information is included in an article and how it is organized. —Centrx→talk • 19:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC-8)

Centrx, I believe that the aspect of notability of your concern was taken into account by the chosen wording. If you think otherwise, you must be more specific. Please either explain what you mean well enough that I can better accommodate it, or write a draft yourself that does so. Naturally, I have already consulted BLP and RS. I really do not see what problem you see. -- Lonewolf BC 01:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC-8)

Okay, I think I might see your problem, now. You are construing the fifth draft as saying that notability, in the common sense of the word, is not a consideration for article-content, or at least you are worried that it might be construed that way. That is not the intent. The intent is to make clear that "notability", in the special sense of compliance with the notability guidelines, is not needed by each piece of article-content. (Indeed, this whole business arises from equivocation upon "notability" -- its common and special senses.) I'm still not positive I have rightly understood you, though. -- Lonewolf BC 18:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC-8)

One thing to consider is that if garage bands are not notable, would an article on Garage bands in the Detroit metro area be notable if it was just a compendium of non-notable article content? I would think no, but that is just MHO. And of course, if there were multiple feature stories on the bands as a group, that could make it jump the shark. Dhaluza 04:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC-8)

Notability, in the special sense of the word, is relevant to whether article content is included. Article content must be relevant to why the topic is notable in the first place, especially for any biography of a living person and any weakly reliable source. Articles do not simply contain any and all verifiable information about a topic. —Centrx→talk • 07:04, 22 February 2007 (UTC-8)

Your response leaves me puzzled, and thinking we have not been understanding one another at all well.
Who said anything about "...any and all..."? Certainly I did not, and that's not at all what I'm driving at. Nor do I think that any of the draft versions have implied such a thing.
I think we must have different ideas of what "the special sense of the word" is. I used it to mean the requirement for multiple, non-trivial, independent sources. If you mean that same thing by it, then you would seem to be saying that all article content must have multiple, non-trivial, independent sources. This goes right back to my initial question (now archived, unfortunately), and would answer it contrariwise to the way a number of other people did. I somewhat doubt that that is really what you mean, but if it is not, then just what do you mean? Likely it would help if you told me what is your understanding of the "special sense" of "notability". I'm thinking (and hoping) that it is something like what I mean by the "ordinary sense of notability" -- "worthy of note" -- which of course is relevant to what goes into an article, although not in an all-or-none way.
This brings me to your middle sentence: I believe that you are misinterpreting the other guidelines that mention "relevant to notability". For example, JRR Tolkein is notable for his fiction, not really for his career as an academic, and certainly not because his father-side ancestors were craftsmen with roots in Saxony, yet these are covered in the article on him, which was lately a front-pager. Scarcely anyone is notable because of where they were born, and in most cases the exact place makes no difference to their notability, yet birthplaces are ordinarily given in biographies. Rather, there are particular classes of potential content that need to be "relevant to notability" (controversial matter about living persons, particularly). -- Lonewolf BC 23:09, 25 February 2007 (UTC-8)

Sixth draft

Notability guidelines do not specifically pertain to the content within an article. For content issues, see verifiability, reliable sources, and trivia.

Seventh draft

Notability guidelines pertain to article topics, but do not specifically limit content within articles.

• This one seems to be the clearest and most supported by the notability criterion: "a topic is notable if ..." -- Black Falcon 11:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC-8)

Eighth draft

Notability guidelines pertain to article topics but do not specifically limit content within articles. For issues of article content, see especially the guidelines on verifiability, reliable sources and trivia.
I think that is still not immune to the pig-headed, but it would be better than nothing. -- Lonewolf BC 23:09, 25 February 2007 (UTC-8)

Ninth draft

(to add at end of introduction)

Notability guidelines pertain to article topics but do not directly limit content within articles.

(to add as a last section)

== Notability guidelines do not directly limit article-content ==

These and all the notability guidelines are for allowable article topics within Wikipedia, not for allowable content within a legitimate Wikipedia article. That is, not all material included in an article must, in itself, meet these criteria. For issues of article content, see especially the guidelines on verifiability, reliable sources and trivia. Note also, though, that other guidelines refer in places to "notability", meaning notability as defined by these guidelines.

-- Lonewolf BC 09:56, 3 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Century High

Im not sure you understand my school dosent do fake diplomas. Gevo2267

Wrong page buddy-Hamster2.0 18:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Induction vs. Deduction / Subjective (Dis)Like

A number of the comments on this page seem to be of the type: "Well, I want articles on topic X to be kept/deleted, so let's adjust the notability guidelines accordingly" or "Well, articles on topic X obviously do/don't deserve to be in an encyclopedia, so let's try to find a way that excludes them". This is really nothing more than adjusting guidelines based on WP:ILIKEIT and WP:IDONTLIKEIT. I think it is counterproductive to try to change or keep the general notability criterion in order to allow/exclude certain topics.

Shouldn't the issue at hand simply be: is there enough information available on this subject to write (at least) a stub-class article? That there is plenty of information on Pokemon cards (an example from this talk page) or other subjects that some editors consider "crufty" is no reason to try to find ways to devalue those sources (that's a subjective preconception that Pokemon is inherently unencyclopedic). Conversely, that there are no independent, non-trivial sources on a Carthaginian general to allow us to write at least a stub-class article on him/her is no reason to try to find ways to get this individual included by changing guidelines (an example similar to one in discussion above). Exceptions can be made under WP:IAR, but the whole premise of a guideline should not be to make a positive or negative exception for articles on a certain subject. I urge all of us involved in this discussion to keep this in mind. Thank you, Black Falcon 11:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Actually there's more to articles than just whether or noth there is enough published verifiable information for a stub. For example, I could theoretically write a stub or greater size article summarizing everything discussed for a given issue of the New York Times. I could list all the headlines, give a short synopsis of every story, sum up all the editorial opinion articles and letters to the editor for the day, and provide a run down of any other notable bits from that day's paper. Clearly such an article would be verifiable and, so long as I kept everything objective, not original research. I imagine such articles could be reasonable in length, too. I also don't see anything that it would violate in WP:NOT either.

But despite meeting all those policies and passing the "stub" test, I'm fairly sure we have good consensus that Wikipedia isn't supposed to have an article for every daily edition of the New York Times or any other paper. So the question isn't just whether there "is enough published information for an article", it's also "is there more than just a few days interest in this specific subject?" Dugwiki 12:27, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I do not mean to suggest that sufficiency of information to write a stub should be the only criterion, but rather that it should be the minimal criterion, from which we may then move on. I am fairly confident the NYT example you bring up is a case for WP:NOT#IINFO point 6: Wikipedia is not an "annotated text". In any case, my comment was intended as a criticism of comments of the type, "well, this guideline allows for articles on topic X, which are inherently unencyclopedic, so the guideline must be changed". Such judgments about the inherent (un)encyclopedicity of topics are inherently subjective, except in cases of pre-existing definition. By "cases of pre-existing definition" I mean cases which are directly relevant to the Enligsh-language definition of "encyclopedia". For instance, the definition of an encyclopedia precludes it from being a dictionary (I realise that the former developed from the latter, but this development took place long ago and the distinction has existed for over a century). This distinction is expressed as WP:WINAD, but WP:WINAD did not create this distinction; it existed long before Wikipedia even came into existence. -- Black Falcon 13:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I think we're almost in agreement. I would say that there isn't a "single minimal" criterion for articles to be kept, but rather there are a handful of two or three loosely related criterion. One of these criterion is, as you said, that there should be enough verifiable information to produce more than a couple of sentences for the article. A second minimal criterion, though, would be that even if an article is verifiable that the information should be of less than completely fleeting interest to Wikipedia readers. That second requirement is defined in part under WP:NOT, and WP:N also is intended to help futher refine the definition.

Now obviously people are going to have different opinions on exactly where lines should be drawn in borderline cases. But I think almost all the editors agree that most (not all) articles which have at most one verifiable reference should probably not be included in Wikipedia as a practical matter for various reasons, even if they otherwise meet the policies. It's not simply a matter of "taste" or "bias against cruft", etc, but more of some actual limits on editorial maintainence, fact checking and helping readers by filtering out information that the vast bulk of the readers will probably never access. That trimming helps keep the encyclopedia more efficient for both readers and editors alike. And the guideline WP:N comes into play by trying to help make those trimming decisions as consistent as possible. Sure, editors don't HAVE to follow a guideline, but by and large its in editor's best interests to try and follow guidelines unless a good case can be made for an exception. That way article authors hopefully don't have a "moving target" they need to meet to avoid a possible editorial consensus against keeping their article.

For my part, my opinion is that WP:N should hopefully represent a bare minimum level of sourcing that almost all editors can agree to. That allows us to use WP:N to filter out the "worst case" offenders efficiently and focus our possible deletion discussions on the borderline cases. It also represents an increased challenge for borderline articles to be deleted, because if they meet WP:N there is an implication that by default the article should probably be kept unless there is some important reason not to do so.

My appologies for the somewhat rambling reply. Hopefully I was able to explain the points I was trying to get across. Dugwiki 14:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I would generally disagree to the "stub" test, we shouldn't have permastubs (articles which could never be expanded beyond a stub). We should be able to write a comprehensive article using only secondary sources about a subject, with primary sources relegated to a limited role. In terms of localities, above, census data and the like is not a source which allows a comprehensive article. Books and such on the location would be. Nothing is notable "because it's a...". It is either notable because significant amounts of secondary sourcing have been written about it, or non-notable because that has not occurred. That is not a bias. It is a prevention of bias. It places the determination of what's notable or not squarely out of the hands of editors, where it does not belong, and into the hands of those who write our source material, where it does belong. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 15:55, 2 March 2007 (UTC-8)

User:Seraphimblade, I think you make some excellent points. :) Travb (talk) 08:12, 3 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I think Seraphimblade's argument that "census data and the like is not a source which allows a comprehensive article" is demonstrably false. For example, see: Centre County, Pennsylvania. This is just one sample of thousands of similar articles created using only U.S.census data. It is far more comprehensive than many notable WP articles. Also, based on his argument that the guideline should reflect the consensus of what the community actually does, this means that the standard of notability that requires multiple secondary sources does not have consensus. I think the multiple secondary sources standard is applicable to a wide range of subjects, but as I have been trying to point out repeatedly, it is not universally applicable to all. Dhaluza 11:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC-8)

WP:ATT (derived from WP:V and WP:NOR) is an official policy, the work of widespread consensus, and specifically states that primary sources should be relegated to a limited role, and should never be the sole basis for an article. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 11:48, 3 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Yes, but that is a relatively recent addition. When these articles developed, they were consistent with policy. And I think that the recent crusade to change these policies is misguided, as the example I presented is clearly encyclopedic, and it's loss would not improve WP. Continuing this would should not require following WP:IAR. Dhaluza 12:06, 3 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I disagree with your declaration that WP:ATT specifically states that primary sources should be relegated to a limited role, and should never be the sole basis for an article. It specifically states both that Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, published secondary sources wherever possible and that (m)aterial from self-published or questionable sources may be used in articles about those sources, so long as the article is not based primarily on such sources. Let's let the policies speak for themselves, rather than use our inferences of what they mean, it keeps everyone on the same page. Steve block Talk 12:14, 3 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Agree with Steve block. While it may be possible to make such a restrictive interpretation of WP:ATT, that interpretation is not explicit in the policy and such an interpretation is most definitely not policy. older ≠ wiser 13:35, 3 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Ah, but it states that more specifically. "Material from self-published or questionable sources may be used in articles about those sources, so long as: ... the article is not based primarily on such sources. (emphasis mine)." So yes, it very specifically states that primary sources should be relegated to a limited, supplementary role, and not used as the primary basis of any article. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 13:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I think the point is that you appear to be conflating "primary sources" with "self-published or questionable sources". They're two quite different things. While self-published or questionable sources may also be a primary source, that does not in any way deprecate quality primary sources. older ≠ wiser 14:21, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Yes, I saw that. But here's how that works. If only very obvious information from primary sources is put in with no interpretation, we've got a directory entry or indiscriminate collection of information, which fails WP:NOT. On the other hand, if interpretation is performed which is not from a secondary source, it must have been performed by an editor here. That editor's interpretation is a questionable, unreliable source. So either way, articles cannot be based solely or mainly upon primary sources. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 14:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Well, in a sense that leap in reasoning you made there goes to the heart of the perpetual confusion on WP about what exactly is a "primary source" as well as other contentious issues. As a reality check, would articles about music albums that contain only track listings and production note and perhaps some sales figures would fail your test? I think that is probably a clearer example of the use of primary sources than place articles based on Census or Survey data. older ≠ wiser 14:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Yes, if that's all that's available, the album should be merged and redirected to its parent band, not covered in its own article. (We can even redirect straight to the album section, "anchored" redirects now work.) That's a very clear example of primary-source only articles. (Of course, if secondary source materials are later found, and the album can be expanded, it may then merit spinning back out.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 14:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

To a degree, I agree with this. But I wouldn't want to see it promoted as some sort of general rule (that stubs should always be merged) or even as s simplistic algorithm to determine which stubs get merged and which don't. Such merging requires a fair degree of skill to do it well. Besides, there are problems with anchored redirects that place limits on their usefulness. Subsequent editors may not consider the merged material to be sufficiently relevant to the parent article and delete it or whittle it away to a point of making the redirect useless. Or the section heading may be altered, making the redirect not go to the right section, leaving a reader wondering why a link took them to an apparently random article. older ≠ wiser 15:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

As one of the authors of that complicated policy, I'd like to pipe in here. I certainly am not claiming priority in interpreting what we were aiming at, but it was a very long, complex, adversarial conversation that led to the wording. Let me say, that *if* an article is based entirely on primary sources, then it probably does not pass the bar that states that it must be "the subject of multiple, non-trivial, third-party...". In other words, the issue should not come up *here* at all, since it cannot pass the lower bar. My second point is, that if I were to read an article which was evenly divided between paraphrasing secondary sources and quoting primary ones, that is 50-50, I'd have no problem with it. In fact I'd think it's quite good. And yes, I advocate, in all cases, quoting primary sources, not paraphrasing them. That way leads to madness. Wjhonson 13:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

So are you saying the example listed above (Centre County, Pennsylvania) "cannot pass the lower bar"? Dhaluza 13:43, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I don't think the sole criteria would be the amount of text attributed to primary sources, but rather their importance to the article. In some cases, an article 50-50 split between primary and secondary might be very clearly based on the secondary sources, in others it may mainly use the primary ones. As to Centre County, I'm sure plenty of secondary source material is available on any US county, scholars and analysts study at a county level all the time. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 13:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

In this particular case, I quickly reviewed the article and note several statements of fact that could not come from Census reports. Simply because the Census bureau doesn't collect some of the facts that this article sports. So apparently there are other sources. The sources for the article are not named. Perhaps a tag could be added to try to tease them out. Wjhonson 13:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

FWIW, I don't think Census Data really qualifies as a "primary source", at least not in the form released by the Census. The actual survey questionaires and the raw tabulation, yes that is unquestionably "primary" material. But the data released for public consumption by the Bureau has been processed, even some corrections made, and I would hope some level of verification that the released data is accurate (at least to the standards used by the Bureau). It is not a primary source in the same sense as a collection of a correspondence or unpublished notes or a transcript of a dialog. older ≠ wiser 14:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

FWIW, better think again. From WP:ATT/FAQ: "Examples of primary sources include...census results..." Dhaluza 14:50, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Hmm, while I respect the hard work people have put into WP:ATT/FAQ, but it doesn't necessarily get everything right. It is not policy and isn't even an actual guideline yet. My point, if there was one, is that there are different types of primary sources and it does not help to treat all primary sources the same way. I mean, yes, census numbers are pretty much just data, and are primary in that sense. Drawing conclusions from the data is interpretive/analytical work. But re-presenting the numbers without additional interpretation is not a problem. I guess your objection would be that if the article contains nothing other than census data, there's no encyclopedic value. I disagree, and I think repeated !votes in the past to delete the Rambot-generated articles have failed, usually be a wide margin. I think a consesnus has developed within the community that such articles about populated places are valid encyclopedic topics and justifiable as placeholders for eventual expansion. older ≠ wiser 15:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Let's start a categorization

I've started this page to help us out in the case that we decide to rebuild this guideline. I think the steps on that page would allow us to write something useful and informative. The plan that I've outlined there obviously isn't in stone... feel free to tweak it. I've started this ahead of the outcome of the above because it will take some time to do thoroughly and with consensus at each stage. The first part doesn't take any time for people to contribute to: it's just a categorization of a bunch of topics onto each side of the notable/non-notable dividing line. Please add to this list. We might not end up using it if the decision from above is not to rebuild but it will be good to have in the case that we do. Sancho (talk) 10:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I don't understand what you are trying to do. We could just look at precedents from AfD, rather than building an arbitrary list. There is a page that covers this already: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes. Dhaluza 10:26, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• Okay, we could populate it with common outcomes, that would make sense. I was trying to make a specific list of topics from a bunch of people so that we could see if other policies explain the division already. Hopefully people will put borderline cases that they feel aren't explained by the other policies. Then we would know exactly where the other policies are deficient and have clear direction for what this guideline needs to add that the other guidelines/policies don't cover.Sancho (talk) 11:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

The answer is easy anyway, without picking out a whole bunch of arbitrary examples.

• Notable for an encyclopedia: Anything on which we can write a good-quality article (not just a stub, stubs are acceptable, but not if that's all that can ever be done), from the use only of reliable secondary source material, with primary sources relegated to a limited, supplementary role.

• Not notable for an encyclopedia: Anything else.

Really, it is that simple. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 10:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• If that is the simple answer, why has it not been agreed to by consensus on this page? Sancho (talk) 11:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Why are stubs not acceptable? Won't they eventually get merged or expanded? Isn't that the point? And how do you know a priori that a subject will only support a stub? Do you already have a more comprehensive definitive reference? Dhaluza 10:31, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I'm thinking that he probably means "if it cannot be expanded beyond being a stub". In other words, if all we can write that satisifes Wikipedia policy -- especially the two core policies of WP:NPOV and WP:ATT -- is just a stub, it doesn't belong, as a stub that cannot be expanded is pretty much worthless. 74.38.32.195 12:17, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

When you write stub here, you clearly don't mean the same as Wikipedia:Stub. On some subjects you could write a thousand words, and it still would be a stub. On others, a hundred words might be the limit of the possible, so that a stub version there might be two sentences. The state of being a stub is only tenuously related to article size. People keep taking stub tags off articles because they're big, and adding them because they are small, but that's entirely wrong. The only way you can tell if an article is a stub is by trying to expand it. Easy? It was a stub. Hard or impossible? It wasn't a stub. Angus McLellan (Talk) 10:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Then replace all instances of "stub" in my post above with "article which is very short or does not cover the subject comprehensively," the exact definition of "stub" was not the point I was trying to make. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 10:47, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Well, the point I am trying to make is that this is supposed to be a collaborative effort. Making an article comprehensive is a shared task, and we should not put an unnecessary burden on the original contributer. Dhaluza 10:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Please do not respond to a straw man argument, but to what I actually wrote. I specifically stated that stubs should be considered acceptable. What should not be considered acceptable are permastubs, subjects on which, using secondary sources, we could never write a comprehensive article. Not for lack of collaboration, not because no one's done it yet, but because the sources simply do not exist. There's a difference between saying that an article is now very short or uncomprehensive, and to say that the article will always be very short or uncomprehensive because we just can't do better. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 11:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Seraphimblade, could you give an example of what you mean by "permastub"? I think Wikipedia should have articles that will always remain short (say, 15 sentences) as long as their content is comprehensive. This seems to be the same as what you're saying, but could you please clarify with an example? Thanks, Black Falcon 11:09, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Well, hit "random article" ten times and you'll see plenty. I hit one the first time, have a look at Pierre Planus. The only thing I can turn up is mirrors of our own article, and some very basic, directory-style information on the guy. WP:NOT a team-roster directory, any more then it's any other kind. That article could not realistically be expanded beyond where it is now. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 11:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

L'Équipe has sixteen articles that mention him. Sudouest has 31 with his name in them. This turns up the interesting fact that Planus's brother Marc is also a footballer, and has played against him. That's the sort of stuff that fills up the Saturday sports pages, and sure enough, Sudouest had an article last year entitled "Planus versus Planus". His signing with Angers must have made the pages of Ouest-France. He may not be David Beckham, but Angers are a fairly significant team within the area that Ouest-France sells, and a new signing in the off-season will have generated press. It's a stub, and like any other stub, it can be expanded. Angus McLellan (Talk) 11:49, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Having one's name in an article does not imply non-trivial coverage, nor do random bits of trivia imply that an article is not a permastub. I'll see if I can find another example with sources I can read though. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 11:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Here's several more hits of random article, let's see what pops up. SERVO Magazine, permastub, directory entry, I can find no secondary sources that mention the magazine. Next hit is Miss BC World, which is quite evidently notable and not a permastub. Grote Nederlandse Larousse Encyclopedie, it's a stub now, but I seem to find a lot of material in Dutch on that, so that's probably not a permastub. Estimated Family Contribution should be merged to FAFSA if the information can be sourced (which I'm sure it can), I'll probably do that myself shortly. It is a permastub as a standalone article though. Alabama (song), it's a state song and I'm sure secondary sources are out there regarding its history, adoption as the state song, etc. Certainly would not be a permastub. Val Fuentes, only things I can find on him are name-drops, should be merged to his parent band. Standalone, it's a permastub. Albarella, I can't find a thing for secondary sources on that, appears to be a permastub (and borderline G11). Oliver Dohnányi, currently is a terrible mess, but there is enough secondary material for an article. Not a permastub. Dexter Smith, permastub, all I can find is some directory/statistics information and a couple of very short quotations from him in sports media. Royalton Hotel, all I can find for it at first blush are ads, but there might be something on it. That one's unclear, but certainly may be a permastub. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 12:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• I am still a little unclear on what this attempts to do, but if it seems to be what I think it is, I oppose it: we should not build a guideline based on what topics we think are or are not notable. That is a purely subjective exercise that will only result in an outporing of expressions of individual likes and dislikes per WP:ILIKEIT or WP:IDONTLIKEIT. I do believe (as I'm sure all of us do) that some topics are inherently notable or non-notable (such as heads of government and the scratching habits of my next-door neighbour's cat, respectively). However, I would not want these to be expressed in the form of a guideline or policy (in fact, I oppose notability being a policy at all). A suggestion to work our way down (e.g., continents are notable; countries are notable; provinces are notable; etc.) until we reach a lack of consensus would have been better, but I'm even ambivalent about and semi-opposed to that. -- Black Falcon 11:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)
  • The purpose of this is to check if other policies already explain the division that we want to create. Sancho (talk) 11:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• • I agree with this approach. We have consensus and precedent that towns and villages are notable, but things in the town like buildings, shops, local streets, etc. are not. Heads of state are notable, but the mayor of a small town generally is not. In the military, the lowest ranking soldier can be notable for valor in battle, but most officers get promoted through the ranks while leading an undistinguished and non-notable career, so there is no particular rank that confers notability. Why can't we boil these non-controversial principles down to their essence, and create a reasonable guideline that really can archive a true, broad, and stable consensus? Dhaluza 11:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)
    • This is also an direction that would be worth following. Sancho (talk) 11:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

And how do you know what is a "perma-stub"?

Without a WP:CRYSTAL ball? Dhaluza 11:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Well, it would be easier with a flowchart, but for a very simple test:

1. Is the article currently very short or has very little information? (Yes) go to 2. (No) go to 4.
2. Does the article cite any secondary sources? (Yes) Go to 3. (No) go to 5.
3. Could those sources be used to expand and flesh out the article beyond a stub? (Yes) The article is not a permastub. (No) Go to 5.
4. Is most of the information in the article based off primary sources or no source whatsoever? (Yes) Ignore all primary-sourced or unsourced information and go to 5. (No) The article is not a permastub.
5. Can more secondary source material be found with a reasonable search (Google, Google Print, other subject-specific searches?) (Yes) Examine those sources and return to 3. (No) The article is a permastub.

Very easy, and no crystalballery involved. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 11:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• OK, so if I read this right, would this be an example of a permastub: College Township, Pennsylvania -- Dhaluza 13:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• I'm able to find quite a few secondary sources on it, so no, that's not a permastub just because those aren't currently cited in it. Permastub means "not enough source material exists", not "not enough source material is currently cited". Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 13:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• OK, that was probably a bad example. I took a random article walk as you suggested, and came across this one: Malé Ozorovce. Is this a better example? Dhaluza 13:26, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• The answer there is, probably not, I find a good deal of material, but since I can't read most of it I can't comment definitively. I posted some examples down below that I found on a random walk, hopefully those will be somewhat clear. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 13:39, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• I don't doubt that you can find lots of examples of articles we should not have on a random walk. But if you want to make a guideline (and especially if you want to promote it to policy) it has to be universally applicable. I think your method fails at step 5, because you are relying on the "Google Test", and although this is widely applicable, it is far from universally applicable. It obviously does not work with subjects not covered on the web, and with subjects in foreign languages, especially with a non-latin alphabet. So although you may believe in good faith that something is not notable, there could be plenty of source material in a specialized library somewhere not accessible from your keyboard. Dhaluza 13:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• Really? Non-latin subjects often have the subject written in that language, thus faciliating google searches even if one can't read that language. However, finding reliable sources is a different matter entirely. Plucking a random example, the first seven or so pages of the google search for Aiko District, Kanagawa gives nothing but maps, hotels, weather and places to live - stuff that would actually be relevant to people wanting to go there and stay. jawiki has quite a bit of (unsourced) history in it, so I'd imagine the info is somewhere in some history book. I do think this is of concern though - it just doesn't seem comprehensive, but I can't find an example where this would be the case (if someone wants to try, I'd suggest starting from Oceania and working your way up.) ColourBurst 14:35, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• Well, generally with foreign subjects, if someone known and trusted to the community claims to have read a foreign-language source and can explain why it's reliable and comprehensive, I'd tend to defer to that person's judgment. However, with Fuentes, he could easily be covered under his parent band, until/unless someone found enough secondary material to justify a separate article. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 15:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Was this a bad idea? I thought the best way to learn a classifier of topics into the categories notable and non-notable would be to first find a collection of training examples, then to extract the features from those training examples that are most discriminating as regards their class membership (notable or non-notable), then to build a classifier that performs best on our training examples as well as a set of test cases that weren't considered during our building of the classifier. Is there a better way to build this guideline? If there is a better way, or if you just don't like this idea of learning an accurate classifier, then I can request that this categorization page that I started be deleted. Let me know... Sancho (talk) 13:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Don't worry, there are no stupid questions. I didn't mean to suggest that your approach was a "bad idea", just that I didn't understand it. And it started a somewhat tangential, but nevertheless active discussion. Dhaluza 15:12, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I don't think examples are generally a bad idea. I posted this above, but maybe it's more appropriate here.

Here's several more hits of random article, let's see what pops up. SERVO Magazine, permastub, directory entry, I can find no secondary sources that mention the magazine. Next hit is Miss BC World, which is quite evidently notable and not a permastub. Grote Nederlandse Larousse Encyclopedie, it's a stub now, but I seem to find a lot of material in Dutch on that, so that's probably not a permastub. Estimated Family Contribution should be merged to FAFSA if the information can be sourced (which I'm sure it can), I'll probably do that myself shortly. It is a permastub as a standalone article though. Alabama (song), it's a state song and I'm sure secondary sources are out there regarding its history, adoption as the state song, etc. Certainly would not be a permastub. Val Fuentes, only things I can find on him are name-drops, should be merged to his parent band. Standalone, it's a permastub. Albarella, I can't find a thing for secondary sources on that, appears to be a permastub (and borderline G11). Oliver Dohnányi, currently is a terrible mess, but there is enough secondary material for an article. Not a permastub. Dexter Smith, permastub, all I can find is some directory/statistics information and a couple of very short quotations from him in sports media. Royalton Hotel, all I can find for it at first blush are ads, but there might be something on it. That one's unclear, but certainly may be a permastub. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 12:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• • Supposing I wanted to dispute your examples, I could say:

1. Servo--I see no reason why there might not be articles referring to the magazine in reliable moderated robotics blogs. I accept these as a source. But i found two university official sites using it as a source, one for class assignments. 2. Dutch Larousse. I find refs to articles in it, but the others are just listings in library or book dealers catalogs. 3. EFCA is how to do it, and I doubt its encyclopedic nature or the authority of the interpretation 4. Alabama, OK I cannot find a way to dispute that one. 5.Val Fuetes, I see a few reviews in what might be reputable online sources. 6.Albarella. should be in at least 2 printed or online tourist guides. Just a lazy article that didnt bother to look. 7. Dohnany, yes. , but people have tried to delete similar as unsourced because they dont recognize the name & assume the links are spam. 8. Dexter Smith, again, I would need to check specialized publications. Many athletes below our usual current level will have articles somewhere 9. Royalton, there will certainly be travel guides. and given a history in 1898, printed newspaper sources. So it is possible to find agreement on some of the most notable. But not necessarily on any of the others. Its the others that are the problem. I'm not saying my arguments are necessarily right, just that arguments can be made, I can't decide on borderline cases at an article/minute. DGG 14:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

(I presume you agree on Miss BC World). The thing with the borderline ones there is, though, they could probably all be easily dealt with, if people would just leave it alone when someone does. SERVO probably would require deletion if nothing were available on it (blogs aren't reliable, even if moderated, they have to be editorially-controlled and fact-checked. Similarly, a name-drop of the magazine on "You may want to look at this" doesn't make any source material for an article). Dutch Larousse I honestly can't comment intelligently on, since most of the source material I found I can't read. If you can, I'd defer to your judgment on that. EFCA, yes, but certainly anything which is verifiable could be merged, anything else could be left out, and the article title made into a useful redirect to FAFSA. For Val Fuentes, I wouldn't say reviews alone are enough to write an article unless they're very in-depth, he'd still probably be better covered under his parent band. If someone can find tons of material later in the future, it always can get spun back off. Albarella, I did look. Tourist guides are probably biased sources, and shouldn't be considered reliable, everything else I could find was basically advertising. Probably handled better as a one- or two-liner mention in the parent geographic region (and, again, spun back out if better material can be found later), and in the meantime redirecting to the region. For Dohnányi, trust me, "I've never heard of it, delete" drives me just as crazy as "You hear about that everywhere, keep". For Smith, maybe he does, but he could be covered in the meantime under his team, and that article could redirect to the team. Once again, if a ton of sources come around in the future, it can always be spun back out. Royalton, same thing, probably could get a one-liner under its parent locality, redirect, and be spun out later if it turns out you're right.

I'm probably as much or more a mergist as a deletionist, I've got no problem with a merge and useful redirect when possible. What we need, though, is some way to make a merge "stick", and not just have people reverse it (which I've had happen more then once), or say "The parent article is too large" (if a parent article with very little secondary sourcing is very large, it needs cutting, not to have the unsourced information spread around to get even bigger). It's great that we grow so much, I just wish people would give less grief to those who cut. That's as necessary a part of editing as the writing itself is, but everyone seems to take it as some type of personal insult. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 14:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

And a thankless job it is. I have no problem with removing unsourced material that is questionable or controversial. And if there is nothing left, then the article should be deleted. But there is nothing inherently unencyclopedic about using primary source material. Yes, it's a great fancruft filter, but it is not applicable to everything. Dhaluza 15:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

This were mentioned as possible arguments, not as the views I would actually take. The comment about Dohnányi was merely mentioned as the sort of absurd argument that unfortunately is actually seen. But the question of RS for travel guides illustrates my point that the failure to have good N guidelines will turn the discussion to RS, sorry, ATT, and will not help much in resolving disputes--we will just learn to use different words. What we really have at issue is not wording or dividing up the policies, but basic differences about what the encyclopedia should contain. DGG 16:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Stubs

I am puzzled by all the discussion about stubs and permastubs. If you look at paper encyclopedias, you will find very long articles and very short, even two sentence articles. If there is little to say about something, but the topic is separate from other topics and the name is something a reader might search for, then we should have a small article. There is no need to merge it to something else. We can take off the stub tag, particularly if it is going into WP 1.0 or some more stable version. --Bduke 14:24, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Or we can merge it into a parent article, and redirect to that section (anchored redirects to sections are now possible, thank the developers!) That way, we've got the subject explained in context, we've added more information to an article which is about a notable subject, and the reader searching for something there still finds something. In a paper encyclopedia, "see related entry under X" type "redirects" are clumsy and awkward for the reader, as the reader may need to go pull out a whole different volume, find the other subject, find where under that subject the desired coverage is, etc. For us, redirects are effortless for the reader. If we design them properly the reader gets taken right to the heading in the other article. We do more of a service for our readers that way, since that makes the context readily available. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 14:49, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Yes, but that is mixing apples and oranges. Whether to merge or split content is an editorial decision that is based on the content and how it fits with other content. It has little to do with notability, which is the filter for what content to include. We should not merge the article about your car into the article on the make/model, we should delete it. Dhaluza 15:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Very true. But what should be in a separate article of its own should be based on notability. If the information is inappropriate period, as with the car, it should simply be deleted. If it's appropriate and sourced, but just insufficient for its own article, it should be merged. If a stub has significant, clear expansion potential, it should be left alone. That's somewhat related to notability, and maybe should have a place in the MOS as well. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 15:30, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I still think you are mixing separate issues. If it's appropriate, then where it goes is an editorial decision. It can stay as a short article if there is no logical place to merge it. If there is some place it can be merged, that does not mean it should be merged just because it's short. It should be merged there only if it makes sense. Encyclopedias can have short articles, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. It's better than sticking a round peg in a square hole. Dhaluza 15:38, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I'm not seeing that, I guess...those things in separate articles should be separately notable. Those things which are not notable on their own but are relevant to a parent article should be merged to the parent article. Those things which are just totally inappropriate or non-notable should be deleted. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 15:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Yes, I agree, it just has nothing to do with being short. Dhaluza 16:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I agree with Dhaluza. There is no need to merge something that is self-contained and notable. Anyway, how do you determine what the parent article is? --Bduke 16:14, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Here's an example: Zax (tool). It's a short article, but what else needs to be said? Where would you merge it, to Slate? That makes no sense. Dhaluza 16:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

That one looks like a dicdef, probably a good candidate to transwiki to Wiktionary. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 16:39, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

You're not serious, are you? Just in case you were, here is the dicdef Wikt:Zax. Dhaluza 16:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I think he's totally serious. I think I'll slap a prod on it right now; that's not an encyclopedia article, it's a definition. Brianyoumans 17:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I was indeed serious. It certainly looks to me like little more then a definition, what appears to you to be more? (I would encourage Brian to remove the prod, though, obviously Dhaluza does not agree.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 17:39, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

One is 12 words, and the other is over 100. Can you see why so many people think this nonsense is elitist? Dhaluza 17:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I guess I'm not understanding what's "elitist", no. Everyone is allowed to participate in deletion discussions, policy discussions, everything else you can imagine. The only time we tend to get unilateral action from "on high" is on things that could place the product in legal jeopardy. That seems to me about as anti-elitist as you get. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 17:58, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

(To respond to Bduke) Sometimes it's pretty easy to determine (for example, a non-notable album by a notable band would be merged to the band article, a non-notable book by a notable author merged to the author bio, a non-notable fictional character from a notable work of fiction merged to the fictional work's article, a non-notable corporate officer from a notable corporation merged to the corporation's article, etc.) Of course, if there is no parent article and the subject has no notability of its own, that's a good indication that deletion may be in order. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 16:42, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

and if there is no parent article and the subject has notability that is a good reason to keep a brief article when only a small amount of material can be written about it. --Bduke 18:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Well...that depends how you reason notability. If you go with subjective guidelines, such as WP:MUSIC, WP:BIO, and the like, yes, that situation could arise. I define notability as the ability to write a comprehensive article, though I suppose sometimes an article could be comprehensive but extremely short, I would imagine that to be a rare case. (Also, unlike many who are more toward the deletionist side, I adore lists for certain purposes. The above "Zax" would probably fit very well on a "List of construction tools" or the like.) Lists would provide an acceptable solution to many short articles, so long as the concept is not overdone to the point of (removes beans from nose, this better never turn blue) the good old List of non-notable people. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 18:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I encourage editors to read the section on dealing with non-notable subjects in these guidelines again. Deletion is not the only way to deal with non-notable subjects. Nominating zax (tool) for deletion in order to make a point was poor form. The problem with that article was that no-one had yet written an article with a broader scope into which it could be merged. It is only as of today that we even have an article about the trade of slater. The zax is discussed in published works in discussions of slater's tools as a whole. The guidelines say very clearly to rename, refactor, or merge articles where the subject is discussed in published works as part of a broader scope, and to create any necessary broader-scope articles if they don't already exist. Stop treating deletion as if it were the only tool in the toolbox! You are Wikipedia editors. You can write articles, too, as well as deletion nominations. Please follow the guidelines. Uncle G 04:59, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

• My nomination may have been a bit hasty; on reflection, the solution which you implemented was in fact the most sensible one. I guess I have been a bit discouraged by attempts to work through a merge, by, for instance, the hate messages I received about merging many of the Notre Dame dorm articles into a list (which I need to redo someday soon). Taking something to AFD gives a merge decision a stamp of finality and officialness which can sometimes short-circuit ugly tedious edit wars (especially ones that involve long complicated merges). And, I really hadn't seen something like Zax (tool) taken to AFD before and was curious to see how it would go; if there had been firm support for deletion/merge, I would have worked on merging more tool articles. After the AFD, I don't think I will, despite your own post-afd decision to merge. --Brianyoumans 05:18, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)
  • You shouldn't AfD things just because you're "curious to see how it would go". That's even more WP:DISRUPTive than {{prod}}ing it to make a WP:POINT. Dhaluza 05:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)
    • Well, without a comprehensive policy on what is suitable for Wikipedia and what is not - which I think we can all agree will never be formed short of dictates from above - I'm not sure how one is supposed to determine the sense of the community about a certain type of article except by sending it to AFD (or looking at the results of past AFDs, which is frankly not an easy thing to do, I've tried - ever try looking through the archives for a particular obscure type of article? Tedious and difficult.) If the community wants to keep a particular class of article, I don't try to delete them - I don't try to get rid of run-of-the-mill high school articles any more, for instance, although I personally don't feel they have a place on Wikipedia. On the other hand, after several AFDs of elementary schools in British Columbia passed, I am now slowly prodding the other 130-odd articles (at least, the ones where I can't find any possible notability). --Brianyoumans 06:01, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)
      • Well for starters, you knew I used it as an example, another editor de-proded it, and another, though sympathetic, thought you were being too bold. Did you try discussing it further outside of AfD to draw out other opinions first? Dhaluza 06:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)
        • I wasn't sure whether the opinions of people here represented the opinions of editors at AFD; as it turns out, they did. I thought the process was pretty quick and efficient, really - only 4-5 people posted to the AFD discussion before I withdrew the nomination. Is that much different from asking 4-5 people their opinion on their talk pages (and getting whatever sample error from choosing people who I selected?) And I would point out that, although there were better ways to do it, the somewhat anomalous end result - the merge to Slater - seems to be a solution that no one here is complaining about, and I feel is an improvement. Let's let the subject rest, or take it to my talk page if people wish to continue to chastise me for my wicked deeds. Brianyoumans 06:27, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)
• Excellent job, Uncle G. You actually went to the trouble of looking it up, rather than just saying WP:IDONTLIKEIT and trying to get rid of it. I'd say this misguided adventure in elitism was more than poor form--just look at the AfD discussion. Maybe this helps explain why so many people object to this Notability guideline and how it is misused. True, this case was based on a misapplication of WP:DICDEF, but it is illustrative of the larger problem. Dhaluza 05:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Wikipedia:Availability

I created this as a separate page, although it's mainly a renaming, in an attempt to clear a lot of things up about notability, and to hopefully replace it with a leaner, (not really) meaner policy. Ideally, we'd throw out all of the stuff that we use to explain to newcomers that "no we don't really mean the same thing by notability as the rest of the world" and make it explicitly clear that what we're talking about is a standard of availability of sources. I realize some may disagree with my characterization (those who view notability as a bar of historical significance or other higher standard than basic sourcing), but this is mainly meant to remove the subjectivity. If people really want significance as a standard, it shouldn't be conflated with sourcing. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Will our readers be interested?

As I noted in the straw poll above, I have serious issues with letting the availability of sources dictate our notability requirement (short version: the primary notability criterion confuses the concepts of notability and verifiability, and it leads to a lot of systematic bias since media coverage around the world is uneven). I have written down what I think is a better standard for notability, although I freely admit that it is highly subjective, and will be debated on a case by case basis if it were the only criterion. Here goes:

A subject is notable if we can reasonably expect a sizable number of people to be interested in finding an article about it in an encyclopedia.

I think this will include all towns and villages, as well as most islands, lakes, rivers and streams of reasonable size. People expect articles on settlements and major geographical features in encyclopedias. It will not include most car crashes because even though media might cover them, almost all people would turn to a newspaper and not an encyclopedia if they were interested in reading about such events.

As the only notability criteria, this definition sucks of course. I can see that right now, but if you want to point it out as well, then by all means do so. If this were the only criterion, we would never have any agreement on whether or not a sizable number of readers are interested in reading about an individual elementary school (it doesn't seem we are getting one now either but never mind that). I hold this standard only as a first iteration to defining notability in the context of Wikipedia. I am very much in favor of more specific guidelines for narrower categories such as WP:MUSIC. (Note how that guideline, instead of focussing on independent media coverage, focuses on things the musician has released and sold and performed, instead of what that is the type of thing which might make a person interested in seeing an encyclopedia article.) Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

"Will people be interested in it" would be terrible. We don't have a means to survey and check any of these, so all we have is people's personal opinions. Why do we need a stricter criterion anyway? WP:NOT#PAPER, after all. We have room for all of those things, and the car crashes too. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 08:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I suggested "encyclopedic suitability" for a name-I think there should be some concept that stories are suitable for an encyclopedia, not just a newspaper. (We've currently got that going at WP:NOTNEWS, but I think it could be integrated into notability, or its replacement, with just a paragraph or two.) Also, WP:NOT specifically states some things are inappropriate, whether or not they're sourced-dicdefs, directory entries, howto manuals, and so on. We certainly could always add WP:NOT the newspaper there, and it would work. This project might not be paper, but that doesn't mean there should be no scope limitation, it just means that we should cover anything that falls within that scope. It doesn't mean we can't say "Well, that really falls outside our scope." Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 08:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Why do things have to fall outside our scope? Dicdefs, howtos, etc. are a matter of content -- not enough content, or the wrong kind of content for an encyclopedia article. But if a topic has sufficient content available for an encylopedic article, rather than original research or pure plot summary, for example, WP:NOT#PAPER says that we don't have to limit the topics we cover. Every tiny town in the united states, for example. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:32, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Generally, unless there's some secondary coverage, pure coverage from statistics/census data/etc., maybe with GPS coordinates, is a directory entry. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 09:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Census data is secondary (since we're looking at it as description of the town, rather than writing about the census), it's just unanalytical. But you're right about many of our bare town articles being more directoryish. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 10:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

"Primary" doesn't only mean "non-independent", though that's one way a source can be primary and that's a common error. A source is not necessarily secondary because it's independent. Raw statistics without interpretation are by definition a primary source (and also generally an independent one). Of course, if the Census Bureau then publishes a report interpreting those statistics (or a sociologist does so in a peer-reviewed study, or the NYT comments, or...) then those would be secondary sources. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 10:24, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Another problem with this concept is its circularity. Wikipedia, by its very existence, has already redefined what people look for in an encyclopedia. (I admit that I look here for TV episode guides, for instance.) We have a high enough profile that people will come here looking for whatever we provide; if we got rid of WP:WINAD, people would use Wikipedia as a dictionary.

If the idea is to restrict Wikipedia to things people would be interested in finding in a traditional encyclopedia, then it really just boils down to "articles must be encyclopedic", using readers' interest as a measure of what is encyclopedic. Since, as Night Gyr points out, we can't really measure readers' interest, I don't find that helpful. —Celithemis 18:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

In many ways a valid point. I realize that the definition involves a lot of hand-waving. But we can for instance assume that if there is a musician with numerous released albums which sell reasonably well, there will be readers interested in reading about that person. Therefore, a musician which releases albums which sell well passes the WP:MUSIC guideline. Due to the sales, the musician will probably also receive the "non trivial references" in published sources. However, I think that it is not the sources we might gather which make the musician notable. It is the released albums which sold well which make their creator notable. (Sources do make the article verifiable however, which is also very important, but a different story.) I feel that the basic goal the community aimed for when constructing category-specific notability guidelines was distinguishing the subjects which readers do care about reading from subjects which the readers don't care about reading and where such articles would only make Wikipedia look like a random website where anyone could post their private resumes. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:59, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

You nailed it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 09:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Disagree with Jeff. I'm sure people are interested in reading a lot of things that aren't suitable for placement here. I know a lot of people who would be interested in reading the Seattle bus schedule, a directory of websites that sell music, the full text of Les Miserables, song lyrics, dictionary definitions, and a thousand other things. What we're doing is building a reference work. That means, above all, we must have references. We are also building a tertiary work, with a strict prohibition on original research, which also indicates that the vast majority of our sources should be secondary. This guideline assures we stay within scope. Yes, WP:NOT paper, but how quickly those who throw that overlook on the very same page that WP:NOT indiscriminate either. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 09:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I do disagree with you - references are absolutely necessary for accuracy, but have nothing to do with the things you mentioned. This guideline has nothing to do with staying in scope - if it did, it would have realistic expectations for "notability" instead of arbitrary hurdles. The subject-specific guidelines handle notability much better because of this. --badlydrawnjeff talk 09:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I guess I'm unclear on how this guideline is arbitrary (it requires that an article have sources, we're required to work from sources, I guess I see that as easily keeping us within scope), while the other guidelines (two gold records? Why not platinum? Why not one? Why not five? A "large fan base or cult following"? Who decides large?). Personally, I liked your "sufficient" idea, so long as we can agree on a definition of what's sufficient. "Non-trivial" is the only thing I see having any degree of arbitrariness or interpretation to it left in this guideline. I agree with you that a lot of people misinterpret notability (ILIKEIT/IDONTLIKEIT, ITSPOPULAR/ITSOBSCURE, and many other similar ones), but that's the fault of the person, not the guideline. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 09:18, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Because sources don't indicate notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 09:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Then, what does? And more importantly, how would we write about a sourceless topic without using original research? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 09:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

It depends on the subject. And I'm not saying we should keep sourceless articles around, I'm saying that we shouldn't be removing them because of notability concerns, but rather verifiability issues. --badlydrawnjeff talk 10:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

So rename the page to Wikipedia:Applying policy to AfD. Done. Nifboy 12:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

What about Wikipedia:Encyclopedic suitability? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 12:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

No, because it again implies something that isn't true. I'd be fine with a rename to that if we rewrote the whole page - one section pointing to WP:ATT, the other to the subject-specific guidelines, but as currently written, it has nothing to do with policy. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

The one thing we seem to agree on...

We need a page for, if nothing else, discussing AfD. There are a number of pages that discuss what gets deleted, and then there are the pages that describe what we want in an article. Lastly, there's a lot of sand in between where we draw lines.

What we don't agree on is whether the criteria, as written, does a good job of tying all these pages together. Nifboy 20:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC-8)

However, letting someone crow "DELETE! Non-notable!" with no further explanation or policy-based argument and considering that a valid !vote is silly and unprofessional, in fact it is totally counter to the goal of a real encyclopedia. Making rules is easy, getting people to follow rules is not. We could have the most precise and exacting notability rule ever, but if everyone is allowed to say "It's not notable because I say so" and be accepted, then it does absolutely nothing but look nice. 74.38.32.195 12:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

please put up yiddish interwiki link

like this: [[yi:װיקיפּעדיע:מערקווערדיג]] thanks--yidi 06:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Done. —dgies^t_c 22:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Rewrite this page completely.

Per above, there's a few things we now know:

1. There's really no consensus for this as written or proposed to be written.
2. We can't really come to an agreement on this using the current template.

So I'm proposing a radical change to this entire page. The page is to exist at Wikipedia:Article inclusion (this text actually exists there now, and this should become a redirect) It should be in three sections. The first, the intro/lead section:

"Wikipedia has a series of tests that Wikipedians use to judge whether an article's subject is worthy of inclusion. These tests, based on various policies and guidelines reached by consensus, form Wikipedia's standards on encyclopedic inclusion."

The second section:

"All articles on Wikipedia must abide by our policy on attribution - articles should be well-sourced and verifiable, preferably with independent third party reliable secondary sources.

"All articles on Wikipedia should generally meet a standard for notability for the subject matter it falls into. For example, a musical act's notability is judged by our guidelines for music subjects, while web-content is governed by our internet guidelines. In the absence of a subject-specific guideline, sufficient third party information on which to base an article is generally enough to establish notability."

"Biographical articles on living people are held to a much stricter standard, due to legal and ethical concerns. While there are many nuances to articles concerning living people, the guiding principle, especially for controversial figures, is "Do no harm."

"Most importantly, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and subjects must have encyclopedic value. As Wikipedia is not a web host, a directory, or a dictionary, it is possible that some contributions may belong in other Wikimedia projects, such as Wiktionary or a Wikia site."

The third section:

"Articles that do not meet Wikipedia's standards for inclusion are handled in a variety of different ways.

• "If the information is useful in a different article, or a number of smaller articles may be useful as a larger treatment on a subject, merging may be the most appropriate option."
• "Articles concerning unencyclopedic topics or subjects may be handled via deletion. Proposed deletion is a form of deletion for uncontroversial subjects, articles for deletion is a forum for discussion of an article's encyclopedic worth, and many articles qualify for speedy deletion if they do not assert basic notability, lack context, or are believed to be spam."

And that's IT. Finis. Done. Add some links to the bottom, don't tag the page, and we've reached a workable compromise - the subject-specific guidelines continue to act as the arbiters of notability, we have a page that reflects our policies for inclusion, and there shouldn't be any problems. So why not? --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:24, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

The problem is, this is an unworkable compromise. Others would see the compromise (including me) as far simpler.

First and only section:

An article's subject is appropriate for Wikipedia if sufficient secondary source coverage is available to write a comprehensive, non-stub article on it. All articles written on subjects which do not fit this guideline should be merged into a parent topic or deleted as appropriate. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 14:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

"My way or the highway?" So how is it unworkable? Nifboy 14:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I think it's important to note that sources should be both independent of the subject (to avoid autobiographical bias) and have multiple sources that weren't written essentially simultaneously (to weed out things like sports articles about day-to-day games and local minor crime stories that were written about in multiple local papers). I think it also should indicate that it's possible to have an exception to the guideline, but such exceptions should have a strong rationale for why they are kept despite not meeting the guideline.

That's where the individual guidelines come in. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I like Seraphimblade's version because it's pretty concise and easier to understand, but I'd want to modify it slightly to address the issues I mentioned above. I could probably get behind something like this -

"An article's subject is appropriate for Wikipedia if sufficient independently written secondary source coverage is available to write a comprehensive, non-stub article on it. Such sources should be independent of the subject to avoid autobiographical bias, and should not all be written in the same one or two day period (to avoid things like local sporting events and crime stories that might have multiple independent articles about them at the time of the event). Articles written on subjects which do not meet this minimal sourcing guideline should be merged into a parent topic or deleted as appropriate unless a strong reason for an exception is presented."

That's just a possible suggestion, but it would get to about the minimal bar I'd prefer to see. If Jeff's much longer version could be modified to address the multiple independent non-simultaneous sourcing issues I mentioned, then I could probably support it too (although I think it's a big long). I'm also ok with the current guideline as is, since it meets my minimal general sourcing recommendations for keeping articles. Dugwiki 15:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I'd go for that as well. My main concern is eliminating the concept that subjective "secondary" guidelines can provide an exception to the sourcing requirement. We should work from secondary sources, no matter any other considerations. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 15:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Again - for establishing notability, sources are not the be-all end-all. I cannot stress this enough, and I cannot be clearer on it. Articles that are notable but still lack secondary sources will still be deleted for failing the core policies, so your concerns are unarranted. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

The idea is not to have an overreaching notability guideline - a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work. I don't mind similar wording in the intro (I'm going to try and incorporate it now), but the idea is not to have a one-size-fits-all, but note that article inclusion is based on a number of factors. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I have gone and added some of what you wrote above. The last sentence duplicated information in the final section, and your nod to recentism is, IMO, unnecessary, as it's covered adequately elsewhere, but I think it ties together the section nicely. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:52, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Jeff's version seems like a good start, but note that WP:RS is now a redirect to WP:ATT. I prefer Jeff's version to SeraphimBlade's because I've seen the future, and it sucks as far as relying on WP:N goes. The webification of government means that any guideline which rests solely on the availability of independent reporting runs in to the OFSTED problem: every school and kindergarten in the UK is notable because OFSTED writes statutory reports on them. Regulatory agencies abound, and although most do not make their reports available on the web—not yet—they will. If a health inspectorate did, every kebab shop and curry house in Hackney might suddenly be notable. As written, every UK care home, and every temp nursing agency, and many more health service entities, would be notable. The statutory reports are on the web, and they are comprehensive. So let's not pin all our hopes on a sufficiency of independent sources. Mentioning NOT, and ENC, and ATT, and BLP, and so on, is a much broader approach, and less open to abuse. Angus McLellan (Talk) 15:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

OFSTED reports are primary, as would be health inspection reports, so those wouldn't much matter. What we should be looking for is that someone who is not affiliated with the subject, and is not required to write about the subject, did so, in depth. Web or not shouldn't matter though, we should certainly be able to use offline sources as well as online to establish that. The only requirement is they should be secondary. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 15:27, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

OFSTED reports aren't really primary for the purposes of sourcing - they're secondary for the subjects they're writing about. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

As for WP:RS, I forgot about that. But it's apparently going to some FAQ, so that can be fixed when the time comes. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

OFSTED reports would be primary per WP:ATT (and the normal academic definition of a primary source). They're a government report on a government entity. An example of a secondary source would be a sociologist using an OFSTED report as part of a study of a school, or a newspaper mentioning the results in context with an article. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 15:53, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Reading the section at WP:ATT, I disagree, but that's really neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:59, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

(Major edit conflict - I'll add it and then return) I have concerns that the phrase "sources should be independent of the subject" keeps being said without realising that this removes a great deal of material from articles and articles themselves that are perfectly encyclopedic. It over-complicates things and is far from what we actually do. I agree about autobiographical details. These should be avoided. I agree that some non-independent sources are biased or advertising. However in many cases they are just more accurate and more detailed than independent sources. One example I know about is that some readers want to know about a Scout organisation in a particular country. I do not come from the US, so let me talk about the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Readers want quite a bit of detail and we provide it. Secondary sources, are by and large incomplete and inaccurate. This is not surprising. Why should a newspaper or magazine article go to a lot of detail? Books will only cover parts of what is needed such as biographies of key people. To get accurate material we go to BSA sources. These are perfectly OK. The crucial point is that independent sources should be required if anyone challenges anything in an article. Until they do, almost any kind of source is adequate to avoid OR. Verification is needed if a statement is challenged. I suggest the same should be done about suitability criteria. Let the Projects define it. Put their pages that do so in a category and let them stand until someone comes along and challenges one of them as leading to inclusion of material that is unsuitable for an encyclopedia. In fact the challenge would be best as a specific AfD proposal that challenged a Project's criteria. A successful AfD would lead the Project to modify their criteria.

A few other points:

• what does "is not required to write about the subject" really mean? A newspaper editor says to a reporter "Go and write about X". Sources are sources. Use them until the information is challenged.
• what is wrong with some primary sources if they give information that should be in the article. Again, use until challenged.
• The notions of primary and secondary sources are blurred. In science articles we use original research papers as well as review papers. Even review papers often include new work by the author or work that is cited as "personal communication".
• Angus McLellan is essentially correct. If we rely on sources, we will have articles that are really not encyclopedic. We need to decide on encyclopedic and then find sources to write an article. A good start is a whole series of things, like "teams in major leagues (defining that term specifically)", "country and state associations of international movements, but not individual groups/chapters/whatever in one town or village" and so on. All need debating by people who know the subject.
• badlydrawnjeff's ideas are closer to what I think is needed than anything I have seen so far. --Bduke 16:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Several things were added while I was writing the above leading to an edit conflict. I agree with badlydrawnjeff in the new discussion. --Bduke 16:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

This still does not address the subjectivity issue. Nothing I've seen, other than a single, uniform notability guideline, based on secondary sourcing and secondary sourcing only, addresses the subjectivity issue. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 16:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Notability is inherently subjective, so this isn't an issue. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Regarding your concerns about independent sources, I should clarify that better and will do so following my reply here - I need to make it clear that the secondary is necessary only to establish notability. Regardless, pointing to WP:ATT is the important step there, so feel free to reword it. Regarding 'is not required', I don't know where that's coming from. Hopefully, I can get your continued support. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

(edit conflict again - in response to Seraphimblade) A single uniform guideline does not do it either. First, we decide what we are going to write articles about. Second, but more importantly, it is likely to be too brief to cover everything and we still have to decide whether the sources are reliable, or non-trivial. I remain convinced that consensus is the only way. We are writing an encyclopedia. We include stuff that is encyclopedic, with sources. Someone comes along and says "This kind of stuff is not encyclopedic". We discuss it and come to a consensus. We also already have a great deal of stuff that does exactly that - "a school play ground soccer team is not encyclopedic" and so on and on. We codify and build on what we have. Material based on "secondary sourcing and secondary sourcing only" can still be not encyclopedic. It may simply be too local or too trivial. --Bduke 17:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

But we should still write down an agreed definition or set of definitions for what "encyclopedic" actually means, instead of letting it be totally subjective, ranging from "I like it" to "6000 hits is kinda nice", "it's known in my hometown", "10 books were written", etc. even if it's not a single brief guideline, but a whole bunch of subject-specific guidelines. Relying entirely on unwritten rules is not a good idea. If we decide that X is non-notable and should be deleted simply because it makes our tummies queasy when we read it... Discuss and come to a consensus, but have consensually-agreed rules that provide rational, logical bounds for what can and cannot be a notability criterion. We cannot just have a free-for-all that changes with the wind and the phase of the moon. 74.38.32.195 20:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Above I have suggested that WikiProjects have a set of criteria and they stay until challenged at AfD. There could be other "subject" pages that are not covered by WikiProjects, although they are getting fewer by the day as more Projects are created. Anything not covered by a Project can be handled by AfD. Let people who know about a topic propose criteria. There are too many AfDs with inappropriate comments because the editor making them does not understand the topic. --Bduke 20:59, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

But "I like/don't like it" should never, ever be a good criterion. Also, N criteria should best be proposed on the N-related pages, not on AFD discussions. Also, are you saying that you (or whomever) may dismiss criteria simply because you think the proposer does not know enough, without any other argument or challenge to the proposed criterion itself? 74.38.32.195 22:09, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

That is essentially what I said. There would be N-related pages with criteria. However some articles may slip through the cracks and AfD could handle them. I understand AfD or Vfd predates WP:V and dealt with deletions perfectly well. No, I am not saying what you suggest about dismissing criteria. I am suggesting that good criteria will come from people who understand the area and the range of articles that exist and could exist. I think this is true whether we are talking about webcomics or quantum theory. I am not asking for "experts" to determine this. I am talking about the people who participate in a project because they are enthusiastic about the area. For example I am an expert, of a kind, on physical chemistry, having taught it for 40 years, but I am an enthusiast on wine but not an expert. I know about the articles on wine that do exist and might exist and I have some ideas about how detailed criteria could be written to allow some wine topics and disallow others. The criteria would need to gain consensus by the Wine Project, which has members who also have this enthusiasm and together have a broad international view of wine. Others would need to respect this by doing some serious work before rejecting the criteria, and not just say "It is'nt like the criteria for comics" or even "It is'nt like the criteria for food". We already have a lot of detailed criteria of the kind I am talking about scattered around, and it is often respected on AfD. We need to formalise that process and expand it, building consensus in the Projects and where necessary more widely. --Bduke 22:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Let me share with you a bit of history, specifically WP:WEB, which started off as the "webcomic inclusion criteria", and is probably the noisiest sub-N guideline in existence. Wikipedia:WikiProject Webcomics was started when someone in the webcomics community suggested that all webcomics with 100 or more comics should have a Wikipedia article.

We (in the loosest sense) haven't gotten along since. Nifboy 23:21, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

But how would one handle the AFD discussions when no N guidelines are in place for the topic yet? The thing is we cannot allow "I like it/I hate it" to be used. It's too subjective and free-for-all-y. Also, if a good criterion comes from a non-expert, it will still be considered, right? Expert contributions should be valued, yes, but less-than-expert people can still make a good contrib here and there. You also said that there are criteria scattered around -- should these perhaps be collected, formalized, and put together into a comprehensive "notability rulebook" of some sort covering all sorts of topics, with WP:N serving as a primer and "table of contents" to it? I'd also suggest it should provide pointers and procedure perhaps for dealing with topics where no subject-specific guideline set exists. 74.38.32.195 21:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

In particular the people interested in Webcomics have not agreed ever since. The debates on this articles at AfD show a consistently great disagreement about both the basic principles and their applications. If even in this one pioneer area there is no consensus, how can we expect to build a policy from individual subjects? The arguments about schools is another example--the basic ideas of what ought to be in included have never been resolved, and the same repetitive views are repeated time after time. There is a particular scientific subject--not chemistry--where many of the qualified specialists have very high standards for inclusion--much more so than those in other sciences--one even expressed the view that almost all university professors in the field are not notable--including himself. Shall we therefore base our selection accordingly, with sharp variation by subject? How narrow shall we go? The Wodehouse specialists may want standards of their own, and so may the Buffyverse fans. The people interested in different sports seem to have different standards. DGG 23:41, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

(Not sure where in the thread to put this, so I'll put it here at the bottom) There seems to be a some disagreement over whether OFSTED is secondary or primary, but that discussion is sidetracking the problem presented: that there will be a systematic bias in how many sources we have available between different countries and regions. OK, instead of OFSTED, let's look the Bergen Byleksikon (Bergen City Encyclopedia, definitely not a primary source) which gives a comprehensive coverage of all the geographical features in Bergen, Norway (which is my home town). This book has entries on

1. Every school in the city, including elementary schools. (Entries for high schools are longer.)
2. Every street, road, driveway, and alley in the city, with an description of where the road runs, and at least a short history describing when the road was named, and why it was named as it was.

Would this mean that every street, road, driveway and alley in Bergen is notable? I know there are some who regularly call for the inclusion of such articles, but in general AFD precedent has been to delete minor roads. Saying that all these roads became much more notable in 1994 when that book was published (thereby creating a secondary source was made which gave non-trivial independent coverage) simply does not make sense. Saying that the roads in Bergen are notable while the roads in Hamar are not notable because there is no Hamar Byleksikon simply makes no sense. Nothing changed about the roads themselves when Bergen Byleksikon was published. Whether or not those roads or streets are notable today, if they were not notable in 1987 they are not notable in 2007 either. The roads play an equally significant or insignificant role in Bergen as they do in Hamar. The difference between them, whether or not a source is published, does not do a good job of discriminating the notable from non-notable stuff in this situation. Sjakkalle (Check!) 23:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Notability criterion should involve sourcing?

Hi.

I noticed this on WP:ATT: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material is attributable to a reliable published source, not whether it is true.. On the old WP:V page, it said "The threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth.". So, it's official policy:

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material is attributable to a reliable published source, not whether it is true."

So, according to this, I think then that a source-based notability criterion for topics where there are no subject-specific criteria, like the one we have now, would make sense given Wikipedia's Official Policies. 74.38.32.195 22:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I suggest that this is talking about including the material. Of course it has to be sourced to be verified. Notability is somewhat different. It is the prior decision. Should we even consider adding this by trying to verify it through sources? The problem to me is that material can be "attributable to a reliable published source" but we still do not want to have it in the encyclopedia. This is why there is so much discussion about notability. We all agree that we are adding verifiable stuff, not necessarily true stuff. We agree stuff should be sourced. We do not seem to agree about what fits into an encyclopedia, although we agree about a lot that does not fit and about a lot that clearly does fit. We are undecided about criteria for a relatively small amount of stuff in the middle; the stuff that often turns up on AfD. --Bduke 23:17, 6 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Part of the problem with this Notability guideline is that it conflates what should be included with sourcing. We already have the WP:ATT policy that deals with sources, so covering the same ground here is redundant at best. And a guideline should not modify policy, so there is no sense defining Notability in terms of sourcing. Despite the repeated drum beating over multiple secondary sources, they are valuable, but not essential. UncleG merged zax into slater using one tertiary source, not multiple secondary sources, in the example we just saw, so let's drop that red-herring. Dhaluza 00:33, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Again, notability is different from verifiability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

To reply to Dhaluza, you can write articles that meet all the tenants of WP:ATT but which are routinely considered inappropriate for inclusion. For instance, you can write an article about a local sports match that has multiple articles from the sports pages of the related cities, but we don't have articles about such games. WP:N is intended to present a minimal standard for the quantity and quality of references which otherwise meet WP:ATT and thus provide a minimal rule-of-thumb guideline that articles should meet. It is not redundant with WP:ATT, since WP:ATT deals with the reliability of various types of sources while WP:N is more of an extension of WP:NOT in that it handles articles which are verifiably accurate but which should nonetheless probably not be included in Wikipedia. Dugwiki 08:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Can't find info online proves what?

There's an AfD going on for Fazal Mohammed right now, and it illustrates one of the problems with this guideline. Basically, wikipedian sit at their computers and use google to decide the fate of articles, which leads to bias. There are a few mentions of Fazal on the web, but not enough to satisfy notability. He's from Trinidad, and he died in the 40's; of course he isn't going to have a large presence on the web. This page talks about how notability is generally permanent, then basically makes it impossible to save articles about subjects that are pre internet and not from the devoloped world. Can't we do better than this? - Peregrine Fisher 00:03, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

The problem you point out is real, but this article is not a good example, because it does not include even one source. If the person is worthy of inclusion, there must be something to verify their existence and claim to notability. Dhaluza 00:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Basically, Dhaluza said it. The "fate of articles" doesn't rely solely on Google; if you can provide appropriate secondary sources, such as magazine articles, reviews and so on, to demonstrate the notability of this person, then the article will be kept. Google is only used as a fall-back option for those articles with no sources, to test whether there may be sources out there that haven't been added to the article yet; an article will never be deleted solely on the basis of a low ghit-count when there are sources in the article to demonstrate notability. Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 01:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Ditto the other responses. Verifiability is an important characteristic, in my view more important than notability, for any Wikipedia article. Even if a subject is notable, lack of verifiability can still doom an article. (This does lead to a systematic bias as well, but for something as important as verifiability, that is a price we must pay.) However, I think there is a fairly good chance that one might find some paper sources for the article if someone has access to a local library. Even if the article is eventually deleted for lack of verifiability, but someone then finds sources to verify the article, then the situation has changed, and that will be a definite thing people will care about on a DRV nomination. Sjakkalle (Check!) 02:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Fundamental misunderstanding of consensus

If we try to dig down to the root of the problem with this guideline, past the disputes over tags, and wording, I think you find a fundamental misunderstanding of how a consensus based organization works, and how that applies to a wiki. People who can quote chapter and verse about how you can't write a WP article without sourcing, seem to completely miss the corollary that you can't write WP policy and guidelines without consensus. Just as in journalism where "you can't write the, story you want to, you have to write the story you have the sources for" in a consensus based organization, you can't write the policy you want to, you can only write the policy you have consensus for.

Since policy has to reflect consensus, you can't beat people over the head with it, and maintain consensus. So it's futile to think you can get your ideas written into a WP policy or guideline, then quote that at AfD claiming it represents consensus, and get away with it for very long. That's just not going to fly. And I think that's what has happened here. Enough people saw enough nonsense at AfD, traced it back to the source, and said that's enough!

So I think it's time for people here to get off their soapboxes, and start listening to the different points of view, and look for common ground. If this guideline is going to survive at all, it's time to stop pushing pet theories, and see if there is anything we can agree on. Dhaluza 01:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

I think the point is more that this shouldn't survive. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC-8)

Disputed wording or inclusion of the notability criterion

A topic is notable if it has been the subject of non-trivial coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject.

Given that it seems we must have a notability test, I don't consider the wording or inclusion of the notability criterion to be disputed any more. Who does? SmokeyJoe 08:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

This is not to say that further refinement might not be a good idea. I still think that "sufficiently notable" ["for wikipedia" is implied] is better because then we would not be redefining in absolute terms the meaning of notable. I'd like to see the explanatory note for secondary sources link to a good definition of secondary sources, as is done in the criterion itself. I don't much like "primary" in "primary criterion", though I am pretty happy if it is left out of the section header. Maybe its OK in the normal text if others really do feel it fits like a glove. I felt it might confuse with primary/secondary sources, but I don't think it actually does. But none of these concerns are that serious to me. SmokeyJoe 08:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The wording does not reflect community consensus, thus the tag. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

bdjeff, could I trouble you to light a(nother) candle instead of cursing the dark? The latest (4/23) language I saw you propose was: "Notability of an article's subject is based upon a consensually-reached criteria for that topic. It is expected that editors adding that information do so using our policies regarding verifiability and reliable sources." I don't find that helpful at all: I don't understand your distinction between "subject" and "topic", I don't understand your reference to "that information" (I assume you mean "information on the subject's notability," but I don't know for sure), but would welcome further enlightenment on your proposal, or a different, positive proposal. But I do think we tend more easily to reach consensus incrementally instead of radically: what is the ONE WORD in the current text you would most like to change (is it "multiple"?), and to what? (Then we can move on to the second word . . .) UnitedStatesian 16:30, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I assume that, if we were to discuss such wording, we could adjust as we went. For one, "topic" and "subject" are interchangeable - I was trying to reduce use of the word "subject" and inadvertently created some confusion. Secondary, by "that information," I meant "information on the subject of the article," i.e., "It is expected that editors adding information to Foo do so..." As for incremental consensus, the radical change was this PNC. No incrementalism existed in the establishment of it, and consensus is clear that the current wording lacks support. My problem words with the current criterion? "is," "subject," "non-trivial," "multiple," "secondary". None of those words in the current criterion reflect the reality of consensus or help distinguish whether something is notable or not. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I too dislike "non-trivial" but we have not been able to form consensus on another word. I would support an alternative. --Kevin Murray 16:47, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that the word "subject" is misleading, but the problem is mitigated in the bullet points, substantially reducing my objection. --Kevin Murray 16:47, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the need for including "secondary." Primary sources which are not primary research may establish notability, based on the notability of the primary source. Clearly this adds more subjectivity, but it seems impossible to have a purely objective standard for inclusion. --Kevin Murray 16:47, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we absolutely have to have "secondary," because to do otherwise would be contrary to WP Policy, which states: "Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, verifiable, published secondary sources" UnitedStatesian 17:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

At no point would it be contrary to policy to allow primary sources to establish notability in some cases. It only becomes contrary to policy to allow an article to exist without any secondary sources, which is a different situation. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Which policy requires that all articles have at least one secondary source? --Kevin Murray 17:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:V. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:11, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually I took the quote above from WP:NOR, and note that it uses the plural, "sources." UnitedStatesian 19:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Keeping in mind that none of the wording has consensus support, the only issue I have with your comment here is that "subject" is somehow mitigated in the bullet points - I'm not seeing it. Perhaps you mean the section in non-trivial that says that it need not be the only subject, but it doesn't solve the issue, especially in terms of notability - a series of "trivial" mentions can establish notability, such as mentions in greater articles about important things, a few sentences about a related subject, etc. One or two may not establish much, but if you have 5 "trivial" mentions that say five different things, it establishes the importance. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

This is subjective based on the definition of "trivial" which is such a loose word. But I do agree that notability can be cummulative from many sources. I just don't think that we can codify this to absolute objectivity. How can we achieve your goal without opening the barn door to the nonsense? --Kevin Murray 16:58, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

There's no such thing as objective notability, so we're never going to achieve this. The way to make sure the "barn door" stays shut is twofold: 1) leave the subject specific guidelines be, who have traditionally done a good job keeping that door shut, and 2) in the abscense of the subject-specific guidelines, simply make sure that we expect that there's a sufficient amount of information to demonstrate the notability, and allow the various processes to hash out the details (i.e., make the AfD question not about lawyering over multiple sources, but rather about whether the sources presented establish notability). --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I feel that the current version allows enough flexibility within the bullet points to address extraordinary circumstances where multiple sources are not available. While I have preferred other versions, I feel this is fairly close. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it has demonstrated consensus, but it has my support. However, quoting this at sub-pages without the bullet points will be misleading. --Kevin Murray 14:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

For anyone who has a problem with the word "subject", I can suggest an equivalent wording that omits it: A topic is notable if it has received non-trivial coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. To me, "has received non-trivial coverage" and "has been the subject of non-trivial coverage" are essentially identical in meaning. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

No strong objection, but the word "coverage" implies press coverage, rather than inclusion in books etc. Can we come up with something better? --Kevin Murray 17:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

. . and I would suggest using either "topic" or "subject" consistently, and not switching from one to the other. UnitedStatesian 17:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, switching words leads to ambiguity. --Kevin Murray 17:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree about consistency ... I don't the reason behind the notion that "coverage" implies press coverage, but please see the section above titled "Coverage". -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:30, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Centrx. However, I see problems with both coverage and subject, but for lack of a better word, would rather support coverage. --Kevin Murray 17:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it solves that problem, I think, but not others. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:48, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm concerned that consensus is too hard to measure at any single point in time, since voting is impracticle and frowned on at WP. I think that consensus at WP needs to be demosntrated over time and the surviving text of edit challenges etc. seem to represent defacto consensus. I think that the best that we can do is to come up with a compromise among the editors now involved here and see how it gels over time. It should be very clear though that the guidleine is flexible and is not set in stone. --Kevin Murray 17:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

How about this: "A subject is notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia if it has received non-trivial coverage from reliable sources that are independent of the subject and verifiable." Let the multiple be implied from "sources" and clarified in the bullets. Perhaps discuss primary/secondary in a bullet? --Kevin Murray 18:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

We're getting somewhere, but the non-trivial is still problematic as I've detailed above - significant trivial coverage sometimes demonstrates notability in a better way than minimal non-trivial coverage. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:11, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

"A subject is notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia if it has received significant coverage from reliable sources that are independent of the subject and verifiable." Let significant be discussed further in a bullet point. --Kevin Murray 18:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

• • It's better, although I'd link to RS and V. Perhaps the best we're going to get with the flawed premise at least. As long as this doesn't get forced anywhere else, I could probably support it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I must disagree with Jeff ... I think "significant" is a far more subjective term than non-trivial. Also, the "and verfiable" part is probably redundant. Could you perhaps clarify how you'd define "significant" in the bullet point? -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:39, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Subjective concepts require subjective terminology, for one. For another, "non-trivial" eliminates substantial "trivial" coverage from establishing notability, which creates problems. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

For a definition of significant let's start with Webster:

Main Entry: sig·nif·i·cant 1 : having meaning; especially : SUGGESTIVE <a significant glance> 2 a : having or likely to have influence or effect : IMPORTANT <a significant piece of legislation>; also : of a noticeably or measurably large amount <a significant number of layoffs> <producing significant profits> b : probably caused by something other than mere chance <statistically significant correlation between vitamin deficiency and disease> --Kevin Murray 19:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

How about "extensive", rather than "significant"? Or maybe "ample" or "considerable"? Xtifr _tälk 06:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Notability of lists

Could someone point me toward the notability guidelines for the inclusion of lists in Wikipedia - if one exists? My feeling is that the bar for inclusion of a list article vs. a standard article is set somewhat differently. Thank you. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 10:26, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• We've been meaning to write a page on that along the lines of overcategorization. We appear to have quite a number of lists that have unclear inclusion criteria, or are irrelevant intersections, trivia, or original research. It would seem that some pruning is called for. >Radiant< 10:31, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
• Yeah, there's no specific guideline for list inclusion, other than that a list article as a whole should meet the normal notability guidelines and other policies. For example, a list, taken as a whole, should be about a topic that is minimally notable. Individual entries within a list wouldn't have to be notable by themselves, but taken as a complete list it should be an accetable topic. Also, as a general rule of thumb, anything that is good enough to be a category is probably also good enough to be a list article. So if a list article is directly associated with a reasonable category then it's probably an acceptable list. (The converse is not true - not everything that is an ok list makes for an ok category. Hence the frequent "listifying" of bad categories on cfd.) Dugwiki 15:25, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• At the List of geologists, which I help to maintain, we're limiting inclusion to notable geologists, and providing a capsule summary of the listees' notability, which seems to work pretty well. Pete Tillman 03:36, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Relisting proposal, to attract more comments

I propose changing "primary" and "criterion" to "general" and "guideline" throughout the guideline page. For my longwinded reasons, and the reaction so far, please see Wikipedia talk:Notability#Trying to help Please add further comment below.UnitedStatesian 21:23, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

What do you propose as the relationship between the "general guideline" and the subject specific guidelines?--Kubigula (talk) 21:26, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I intend that the change from "primary" to "general" remove a possible interpretation that this guideline is somehow superior to the existing SS guidelines. I see them as peer guidelines, and I like this GL's current language that reads "shared by many of the subject specific guidelines . . ." This guideline is most important in its applicability to subjects that have no SS GLs. Let me know if this helps. UnitedStatesian 21:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

It helps me understand your proposal, but I don't think it solves our problem. The problem, as I see it, is that we have a web of guidelines on notability that don't mesh with each other very well. Almost all of the subject specific guidelines have some variation on the "general guideline", though the language is subtely different in each. To me, this creates confusion and opens the door to wikilawyering. Also, there is an inconsistency in saying a group of comedians should be subject to a slightly different version of the general guideline than a group of musicians. To me, the whole notability scheme would make much more sense if we could agree on a single basic "general guideline" for notability - I personally have no problem calling it that rather than a "primary criterion". This guideline should then be incorporated into the subject specific guidelines - not as a trump, but as unifying theme. Frankly, I rather like the way WP:MUSIC addresses the issue - you are presumed notable if you meet the general guideline or if you meet one of the other subject specific indicators of notability (charted hit etc).--Kubigula (talk) 03:10, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

"Main" is the word you are looking for. —Centrx→talk • 04:21, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I have no preference, but we are seeing resistance at the sub-guidelines to titles that suggest primacy of this concept of notability over the subject specific “exceptions”. I advocate a consistent primary guideline, but it seems to be non-PC to have a PNC. --Kevin Murray 04:28, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Someone Disagrees With This Policy

That person is me. Look, I want to have a wonderful free encyclopedia as much as the next guy, but I don't feel that this policy behooves that vision. The big argument for the notability policy is that it is conducive to an environment were people write poorly sourced articles, but there is already a policy regarding this matter, so the notability policy is redundant at best.Jamestown James 04:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Actually, there are things that this policy covers that would not be covered by core policy. To take an extreme example, I could write an article about my car that passes all core policies. That article would be neutral, would use verifiable, reliable sources (government documents and a police officer's accident report), and would require no original research. Such an article would not be a directory entry, crystalballery, or any other NOT entry. What it is, is non-notable. A good encyclopedia article should tell the reader "Why is this subject important or significant?" We could not possibly write a good article on Microsoft, or Albert Einstein, or agriculture, without explaining why these subjects are important and significant. So if the answer is "It's not important or significant", we shouldn't have an article on it. Seraphimblade

^{Talk to me} 05:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

This is fine and all, but there are much more relevant AND sourced articles that are lined up to get the chop. Here are a bunch of articles with value that are nominated for deletion by this outrageous policy: Airship (Final Fantasy), Awakening (album), Krista Benjamin. Now, I admit that I don't care for the poetic work of Krista Benjamin, but there are people out there who buy her books, and read her poetry, and go to her readings; and they deserve to read a reasonably well written article on her. Look, if we are all together to create a free, international encyclopedia that is capable of storing most all human knowledge, why not blow twenty kilobytes of memory on the work of Ms. Benjamin?Jamestown James 00:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, none of those are nominated for deletion yet. I may nominate them, but first will do some looking to see if any additional source material is available. We don't go by our personal thoughts or opinions, we go by third-party published works. In the case of the Final Fantasy airships, I fail to see how they have notability or significance in the real world. They may be notable and significant within the fictional Final Fantasy universe, but that makes it suitable for a Final Fantasy fan wiki, not Wikipedia. (There are also way too many fair-use images in that article, I'll be cleaning those up as well. One would work to illustrate the topic.) In the case of the author, I can't find much at all. In the case of the band, I can't find anything besides that one web review.

What would serve you better than anything here, though, is to go look for sources. If you can prove me wrong, and go find a bunch of reliable independent source material for these subjects, there's not a chance in hell they'll be nominated for deletion. On the other hand, if the sources cited are all there is, those articles should be deleted. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:01, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see how wikipedia would be lessened, exactly, by the presence of the article you've suggested above. If an editor can meet NOR, verifiability, and NPOV guidelines and is sufficiently motivated, there hardly seems to be a reason to deny that editor an opportunity to toil away in obscurity. To say that an encyclopedia article describes "why a subject is notable" really amounts simply to saying that an encyclopedia article describes a subject efficiently and well; articles on non-notable subjects can certainly meet that goal. Orphic 08:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

How so? We require writing from sources, notability requires sources. If very little sourcing is available, you can't exactly write a comprehensive article. As to lessening Wikipedia, there are a lot of things we are not, and an indiscriminate collection of information (even verifiable information!) is one of them. Every article we have requires continuous effort in vandal-patrolling, upkeep, fact-checking, and the like. We're not here to do that for people that want to write a vanity autobiography or a fansite for their favorite garage band or a memorial on their recently-deceased family member. We're here to write an encyclopedia, and part of that is some editorial control and a limitation of scope. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

If we eliminate the Notability policy, we open the door to every crackpot 9/11 conspiracy theorist videologist on the planet. Let's not let Wikipedia become a soapbox and advertising vehicle for every Nutburger craptologist hawking Wikipedia:Vanispamcruftisement.  MortonDevonshire  Yo  · 06:09, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Let the people say AMEN. Edison 06:24, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

What are you talking about?Jamestown James 00:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

This is perhaps one of the most commonly held misconceptions of wikipedia, and one reason the notability policy is as entrenched as it is. Verifiability and original research policy are sufficient to deter the kinds of articles you're worried about. Frankly, notability is a very poor tool for this, as it's difficult to pin down and easy to subvert.Orphic 08:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Independent+non trivial? Debretts, Whos Who etc

Opening statement

I would like to seek some guidance here on whether or not it is appropriate to consider entries directories such as Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage and Who's Who (UK) as meeting the requirements of The notability criterion. If this is the wrong place to ask for guidance on interpretation, please redirect this discussion somewhere else.

Background

The problem relates particularly to the British gentry and aristocracy, especially to Baronets (a hereditary title best confering the title "Sir", a sort of halfway house between a knighthood and a peerage):

• There are a number of articles, particularly those on British gentry and aristocracy where these volumes have been cited as references, and claimed as evidence of notability
• So far I have seen three schools of thought:
  1. That holders of hereditary titles should be treated as inherently notable, since that is an inherent characteristic of nobility
  2. That in the UK, the only hereditary titles which confer a presumption of notability per WP:BIO are those which confer (or conferred) a seat in the House of Lords (the history of that subject is a little complex, and needn't concern us here); the other titles are irrelevant
  3. That most holders of such titles meet the criteria for notability through their inclusion in at several of the guides such as Debretts and Whos Who

The above is my attempt at a neutral summary of the discussions at WikiProject Baronetcies. I hope that I have summarised the position accurately, but if any correction is needed I would ask that people try not to rehearse all the details of the positions we discussed at great length, but just briefly add to or clarify the summary.

Assessment

The first position (automatic notability), is one which goes a little beyond WP:NOBLE, a proposed guideline which did not achieve consensus. I suggest that anyone is free to try to revive that process and seek consensus for a new guideline, but in the meantime, there is no such guideline, and that there is therefore no automatic presumption of notability for those such as baronets whose titles have never conferred a seat in the House of Lords.

The second position is roughly the status quo, strictly interpreted; it provides an answer only in conjunction with the third point.

The third point is the one which I am bringing here, because it seems to me (per my contribution to a recent AfD on a Baronet) that it offers a resolution to the dispute:

• If these directories do meet the critera, then articles referencing those sources meet the notability test
• If Debretts etc do not meet the notability criterion, then any such articles need other sources to pass the notability thresholds.

Caveat

Anyone reading the recent discussions will be aware that feelings are running very high on this question. Amongst the protagonists there are thoe who hold the British honours system in contempt, and those who revere it: both POVs are, of course, entirely legitimate and honorable, but unfortunately bring us no closer to resolving the dispute within existing guidelines, and our overriding requirement to neutrally accommodate all points of view. I would therefore ask contributors to this discussion to avoid those wider perspectives, and to focus solely on assessing whether volumes such as Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage and Who's Who (UK) meet the the notability criterion. My proposition is that if we can resolve that relatively simple question, we will be much closer to reaching agreement on the fate of the individual articles

I personally lean towards a conclusion that those volumes don't meet the notability criterion, but it seems to me to be a very grey area and I have not made up my own mind. Here are the points which I have seen raised so far (I have labelled as pro those who reckon that Debrett's, Who's Who etc meet the criteria):

Notability criterion

1. The non-trivial test
   • Pro: Proponents of the directories argue that while the entries are tersely written, they are nonetheless non-trivial, and in some cases extend to a full page; opponents argue
   • Anti: Opponents argue that most of the entries are little more than genealogical lists and potted biographies like a condensed CV, and that many include only a short paragraph on each individual
   • but both sides seem to agree that no original research is needed to to extract the content
2. The Independence test
   • Anti: many of these volumes rely heavily on input from the subjects (when they are alive), and so cannot be counted as independent of the subject (e.g. subjects draft their own entries for Who's Who)
   • Pro: regardless of who drafts the entries, they are checked by the publishers, and any falsification would be rapidly noted by some of the many expert readers. Since falsification would be detected, it would serve only to damage the reputation of any individual who tried it
3. The Independence test, take two
   • Anti: there is ultimately a lack of independent sources for much of the material in these volumes, so they probably feed off each other a lot more than is acknowledged
   • Pro: That's inevitably the case with biographical data, but what matters is that there is proper checking of primary sources.
4. The reliability test
   • The two sides dispute both how much checking is actually done in compiling these volumes, and how effective those checks are
5. Secondary sources
   • I have not seen any dispute that these are secondary sources

Intention arguments

1. • Pro:Those directories are intended as directories of notable people, so inclusion in those directories is in itself evidence of notability, and it is not wikipedia's job to reject widely-accepted definitions of notability
   • Anti:Those directories have their own criteria for notability, which may or may not be wikipedia's criteria: we should not automatically presume that they are. In particular, Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage is evidence of notability only if one accepts the premise that peerage and baronetage are inherently notable (though that does not of course apply to Who's Who)

So there's my summary. I've probably omitted some things and been mistaken in others, and welcome correction/clarification etc ... but please please please can we keep this discussion focused on the narrow question of which (if any) of these volumes meet the tests set out in Wikipedia:Notability#The_notability_criterion? Thanks! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

• Excellent summation. I would only add that the pro camp do not contend that acceptance of this perspective should lead to creation of numerous article on transiently-notable people (not that wiki allows such a concept). Also these books which send out proofs to the subjects invite inclusion of anticipated events - so errors do creep in but will be corrected in later editions. - Kittybrewster (talk) 11:34, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
• This is a discussion better suited for WP:BIO, but these are reliable sources that are published independent of their subjects regardless of one's feelings about them, so it's not really an issue. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I thought of WP:BIO, but I reckoned that a discussion focused on the notability criteria was better placed here. Elsewhere, another editor says that the discussion belongs at WP:RS, so I guess there's no place for it that will satisfy everyone. However, I'll leave a note at WP:BIO for folks to look here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Actually, someone beat me to it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
• Looks like they're relatively reliable, but in and of themselves, relatively trivial and of questionable independence. In effect, those books would be the "nobility directory", and we wouldn't just automatically include anyone in them, any more so than we'd do so for the telephone directory. They'd be fine for supplemental material on people who have other material published about them, though. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 14:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
  • The whole point of a phone book is that it includes everyone (unless you are ex-d) it is universal in nature. It is also very basis name/number/address. The various publications in question select for inclusion a small minority - in this case anyone they believe to be notable based on their criteria and give more general (sometimes substantial) discussion/details. If some fictitious sporting organisation produced sportsmen of the world I might quibble about any particular entry but not broadly that inclusion/exclusion and the infomation included must be some indication of notability. Alci12 14:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• I'd go for a liberal criterion, ie the first school of thought re nobility, and we should be comfortable with Who's Who and Debrett's for establishing notability, SqueakBox 01:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
• The key here is whether these sources are independent, and I note that one source that is not, according to the guidelines, independent is an "autobiography". I do not know much about deBretts, since we here in the States had the good sense to get rid of the nobility a long time ago and now just debate the notability of D list celebrities who, at the least, are better looking, but Who's Who is essentially autobiography with perhaps a veneer of editing to the more flagrant abusers. There is absolutely no point in treating Who's Who, or anything like it, as a reliable source, given the lack of indepdence. As to whether nobility is inherantly notable, well, I will leave that to those who need to put up with them - certainly they are not inherantly notable outside the borders of their own country, where those titles may retain some meaning. A Musing 20:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• That is pretty much my take on it also, not only should an entry in Who's Who or Debrett's convey automatic notability I would also agrue that may they should not be used as they do not conform to to the critieria laid down in WP:RS due to their lack of independence and heavy autobiographical nature.--Vintagekits 13:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• A few years ago the foreword to "Who's Who" made a comment to the effect that people had sometimes regarded the invitation to contribute an entry to their publication as a distinction. That, they said, was the last thing it was: it was a recognition of distinction already achieved. The stated intent of Who's Who is to be a biographical guide to all those notable in British society (they take a rather traditional and conservative approach to who is notable). Debrett's People of Today, its competitor, has practically the same aim but a slightly different approach: they remove people who are no longer notable, whereas Who's Who generally do not. But I think the general approach to be taken is clear: they are independent secondary sources which can be used to judge whether a person is notable. I would not however say that a general rule "Anyone with an entry in Who's Who is notable" is justified. Sam Blacketer 21:30, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• Why are they "independent"? I know that for Who's Who, every person is given the opportunity to proof their entry before publication, and, in most cases, the information that is included is submitted by the person or by a colleague. It strikes me like any other autobiography - the presence of an editor or publisher does not make it reliable under Wikipedia's standards.A Musing 21:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• That's a separate issue. The discussion is whether inclusion of a person in Who's Who etc. is a measure of notability, not the value to be placed on Who's Who as a source. For what it's worth, normally the details supplied are checked so that blatant inaccuracies are removed. Entries are often inaccurate on precise details (particularly years in which a particular post was held). The most serious concern is that subjects can remove from their entries items which they do not wish to be included, so one gets a partial view. Sam Blacketer 21:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• The fundamental guideline for notability states that a subject is notable if they have significant coverage in "reliable" and "independent" sources; the question here is whether Who's Who or DeBrett qualify as both "reliable" and "independent"; if they do not, then notability must be established elsewhere.A Musing 22:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with Sam, this is a dead conversation and two new ones with different focus need to be opened. The opening statment states "I would like to seek some guidance here on whether or not it is appropriate to consider entries directories such as Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage and Who's Who (UK) as meeting the requirements of The notability criterion." - that is easy to answer, it doesnts - we have WP:N and WP:BIO - WW and Debrett's apply different critieria to assess what they see as notable and we have ours. Now like I said we need two new discussions. 1. Using WW, Burkes and Debrett's as a source and 2. Does being a Baronet give automatic notability.--Vintagekits 21:56, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
  • To answer, in order: 1. They would be good as a supplemental source, but since the information in them is largely autobiographical, they should be used according to the caveats regarding self-published sources. 2. No such thing as "automatic" notability. An individual subject is notable or not, "notability by category" doesn't exist. (Granted, there are some categories, such as US Presidents, British Prime Ministers, or basic chemical elements, in which every member of the class happens to be notable. But that's not "because I say so," that's because every subject within those categories really is sufficiently sourced for a comprehensive article.) It appears for baronets, the answer is the same as for anything-some of them are notable, some of them are not. WP:NOT Who's Who, and we should make that distinction. Notability is not nobility. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Vintagekits, if the question as easy to answer, we would by now have arrived a clear answer, but in fact we are a long way from reaching a consensus :( As you will see above, only one of the "pro" arguments rests on the notion that inclusion in Debretts confers notability; the other points are all related to the question of whether the entries in those articles meet the notability criteria, which effectively a specific formulation of WP:RS.
      You say that two new discussions are needed, but I note that we already failed to reach consensus on automatic notability ... and how would any new discussion on Using WW, Burkes and Debrett's as a source differ from this one? The issues it would have to address are the ones raised here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
      • No concensus was reached as the discussion was held on the talk page of the Baronet Project (hardly neutral ground for that type of discussion) and it was just me and other members of the Baronet Project discussing it. Like I said I think two new discussions need to be opened. Your discussion on the notability of Baronets was perfectly formed but needs to be sorted out in a different venue (I suggest here) but this discussion is too vague and it trying to tackle too many overlapping issues at once. But thats just my view.--Vintagekits 12:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
        • Just to clarify the above, I think the reason people are bring up the WP:RS in a discussion about WP:N is because if the publication fails WP:RS then there is no chance the it can convey automatic notability. Like I said this conversation is one conversation to early. We should discuss whether or not it is a reliable source first and then move on to this. This conversation is putting the cart before the horse in my opinion. I am not in anyway denigrating your contribution as it is most welcome, useful and insightful and you also seem to be the only one from the Baronet Project that seems to be able to critical appraise anything got to do with regards the subject. --Vintagekits 16:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving forward

Reading much of the discussion above, I've made some changes to the text:

1. I've made some changes to the meat and potatoes based on the discussions we've had - it incorporates much of everything, mostly based on Kevin Murray's text.
2. I've added a tag to start further discussion on the actual subjectiveness of notability, which appears to have been established. Further discussion is necessary.

Thoughts as we continue on? --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Jeff's edit

Question: Why must these be secondary sources? Some primary sources are legitimate. I think that secondary somewhat implies tertiary, but is this ambiguous? I like the word sources better in the first sentence and then clarify below in a bullet paragraph. --Kevin Murray 17:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You're right, that's a poor oversight on my part. As long as independent is there, that's the important part - independent primary sources can establish notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The current wording of "Significant" in this context means providing enough information to establish the notability of article's topic. is hopelessly subjective (not to mention extremely exclusionist). It's not the content within sources that proves notability, but rather the existence of such content. The former requires a subjective judgment to be made by editors. Who's to say that "Olympic gold-medal winning" is not an insufficient claim of notability, if I choose to argue that way? Sure, the majority will disagree with me, but this turns article deletion into a popularity contest. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:23, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, notability is subjective - this is simple fact. It's not the existence of the content that shows notability, that misunderstands the entire concept. I also don't understand your re-addition of "multiple," which was discussed at length above. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I also don't see the need to mention "mutiple" in the lead paragraph, since it is discussed in detail in one of the following paragraphs. --Kevin Murray 18:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

(moving my comment below following an edit conflict; also to reindent) Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems that significant or non-trivial are equally subjective. I a tie, I would vote for the non-hyphenated word. --Kevin Murray 18:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I support your changes, Jeff. Kevin's note about the sources is a good point, too. I really dislike the wording of footnote 9, though. Maybe we can come up with a less cliche figure of speech to adequately explain that a well-research deletion nomination/argument is preferred. — Scientizzle 18:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this better for footnote 9: "* Template:Fnb Wikipedians have been known to reject on nominations for deletion that have been inadequately researched. Research should include attempts to find sources which might demonstrate notability, and/or infomation which would demonstrate notablility in an other manner."? --Kevin Murray 18:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, quite. Nicely done. — Scientizzle 18:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

We have two possible definitions for notability, Jeff.

1. A topic is notable if it is worthy of note. This is inherently subjective and can never be proven.
2. A topic is notable if others have considered it worthy of note. This is objective. If others have written about a topic, that constitutes proof that they considered it worthy of note.

I use the second definition. The first definition would turn AfD into a subjective free-for-all where people could even claim that small countries like Luxembourg are not "worthy of note". It's an extreme example, I admit, but then again, there's no arguing with a statement that is inherently subjective. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I like the second option also. --Kevin Murray 18:58, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

There's no real difference between the two. The first is more semantically correct, the second simply more explicit. How do we choose whether something is worthy of note? By discussion. Notability, being inherently subjective, recognizes this. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

There's a massive difference. In the first case, we make the judgment of whether something is "worthy of note". In the second case, the judgment is made by those who publish sources. We shouldn't choose whether something is worthy of note (parly because it's OR and partly because we'll never agree ... by "we", I mean the Wikipedia community, not the two of us specifically). -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm on board with the collective we. If you're concerned with OR, we should junk notability entirely, as all notability, using that barometer, is original research - we're choosing whether something meets a threshold of note, not letting something else indicate that threshold. The OR argument holds no water - we instead come to the conclusion of what's notable - worthy of inclusion - by discussion and consensus, and not making any actual commentary on the subject other than whether we should include it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I see your point in the abstract, but we have to make some concession to what is practical in the real world. No purely objective standard is possible in the realm of notability, but the more subjectivity that can be removed the better. Otherwise, is subject to infinite tests at AfD and subject to the luck of the draw as to who is participating in the debates that day. --Kevin Murray 20:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Practicality in the real world is exactly why I'm pushing for these changes. A source-based test has no real world practicality or legitimacy - see, for instance, Wikipedia's reputation concerning webcomics. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Jeff, that's my point. We shouldn't be choosing whether something meets a threshold of note ... we should simply reflect whether others consider a topic to have met a certain threshold of note. The original research is not done by us, but rather by people who create published works. I agree that their (i.e., writers') choices are subjective, but that needn't be our concern. The legitimacy of a source-based test lies in the fact that the presence of sources proves that others have considered a subject worthy of note. We can create a subguideline for webcomics that deviates from the PNC, but our general framework of notability should not be based in the ever-changing subjective whims of editors. --Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

So we just wait until someone says "So-and-so is notable?" You may as well eliminate 90% of our articles in general then, since those words don't ever show up. No matter what, the test we apply is going to be subjective, so it may as well reflect reality. The subject-specific guidelines do a good job of that, a sourced-based one does not, as demonstrated in the February and March archives. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You are again focusing on the content of sources. If I write about topic X, it means that I consider topic X worthy of note, irrespective of what I write. If I didn't consider the topic worthy of note, I would not have bothered writing about it. You claim that any test is subjective, but ... how is the presence or absence of sources subjective? We either are able to find sources or we are not. There's nothing subjective about that. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Because the assumption that sources = notability is subjective. And once you establish that, you must establish the basis for when those sources are useful. And once you establish that, you have to figure out if those sources are actually worth using. And that's where the subjectivity comes in. If we simply say "sources," then, again, this is not a useful page, because anything and everything has some sort of source. Ultimately, whether we can find sources or not is irrelevant to whether something is notable enough for inclusion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The issue of the type of sources that may be used is partly covered by WP:RS. Some parts of the PNC are indeed arbitrary (though not subjective): the "multiple" criterion, for instance. Any test will include some agreed-upon arbitrary criteria. However, the basic premise that the presence of published works proves that others consider a topic worthy of note is not subjective. If they didn't consider it worthy of note, why would they write those works? If we can agree on that basic premise, the other parts (multiple vs. single, substantial vs. non-trivial, secondary vs. independent) can be worked out through consensus. However, the starting point must not be subjective. To say that a topic is notable if we editors say it is will leave us in a hopeless pit of subjective confusion and will also legitimise the deletion of "notable" (per my definition) but unpopular articles. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

If we want to use RS as a barometer, again, fine by me - open the barn door wide open, I'm all for it. Realistically, though, it can't be done. "Multiple" is just as subjective as anything else, by the way - you've made a subjective decision that a single source cannot establish notability, which is completely false anyway. That's why I can't agree with the "basic premise" - it's unrealistic. Sources don't constitute notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's forget the "multiple", let's forget "non-trivial", let's forget everything except the basic premise I initially advanced: the existence of sources about a topic proves that people outside of Wikipedia have considered it sufficiently noteworthy to write about it. You've stated that it's subjective and that you disagree with it, but have as yet not stated why. So, why is it subjective? Which part do you disagree with? Also, I hate to nitpick, but while the choice of "multiple" is arbitrary, its inclusion does not make the PNC subjective (it makes it arbitrary, but not subjective: different people with the same information should arrive at the same conclusion). -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Because sources do not constitute notability - notability is being worthy of note, which is done by action, not by who can be arsed to write about it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Jeff's statement is right. The conflict here could be avoided by WP:N talking about "sufficiently notable". "Notable" has a dictionary definition that is not the one asserted here. SmokeyJoe 00:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that just writing about a subject is indicitive that the author perceives notability. The only remaining issue then is verifying independence. I think that determining NPOV and accuracy are more related to our content rather than determining notabiltiy. --Kevin Murray 21:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree with your final statement, but we're not quite there yet as a project. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Never thought I'd say this, but I like most of Jeff's change. I don't object to removing "secondary" as redundant (independent sources are by definition secondary anyway), and independence of the source from the subject is indeed what we should be focusing on. I did take out reference to the subject-specific guidelines as an "override", since that seems to give the impression that if something passes a subject-specific guideline, we should write on it even without independent sourcing. Per V, this is incorrect-"If an article topic has no reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it," and of course core policies override either this guideline or the subject-specific ones. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

My problem with removing "secondary" is that it opens the door to independent tertiary sources (e.g. the phonebook and similar) to establish notability. Many, many of these are unfortunately used as "sources" for wikipedia articles UnitedStatesian 00:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

"independent sources are by definition secondary anyway" is not true. "Independent" here is not well defined. If Seraphimblade disagrees, please cite the definition. "Secondary sources" is the important term, and is well defined in scholarly fields, even if the boundaries can be fuzzy. UnitedStatesian is wrong to assert that a phonebook is a tertiary source. A phonebook is a primary source. It is co-temporary and offers no transformative commentary or analysis. SmokeyJoe 01:05, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at WP:ATTFAQ for primary, secondary, and tertiary. As to the phone book, we can classify it as a 16th-level Paladin source if we want to. It's still a trivial (or insignificant, under the new wording) source, so it still makes no difference. "Independent" means that the person or organization who published the information is not related to the subject of the information. So, for example, a corporation's own report on the quality of its products is non-independent, as is the report of testers hired by that corporation. On the other hand, the results of Consumer Reports or Underwriters Laboratories would be independent. A person's autobiography is non-independent. A biography written by a scholar or author is. A reprinted press release from a corporation or other entity is non-independent. A story in the press written by a reporter is independent. Hopefully that gives some clarity? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

“As to the phone book, we can classify it as a 16th-level Paladin source if we want to.” Only if you think this is an exercise in frivolity. “It's still a trivial (or insignificant, under the new wording) source” A phone book is neither trivial nor insignificant. If you needed to cite the address of a certain person at a certain time, a phone book entry would be suitable. It is depth of coverage of a subject that should be described as trivial, or significant, or incidental, not the publication itself. Do you need examples of independent sources that are primary, and others that are secondary, and yet others that are not independent but are secondary, for you to understand that independent sources and secondary sources are not the same thing? SmokeyJoe 02:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) I don't think the nitpicking-at-words bit is really necessary. For the purposes of determining whether we should have an article, which is all we're discussing here, the phone book is a trivial source. If you need to order a pizza, it's an excellent source, but we're not discussing how to order a pizza. As to "primary independent sources", I would indeed be interested to see one of those. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:12, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Seraphimblade, we are discussing whether “secondary source” should be ditched in favour of “independent source”, or as redundant. I’m saying it definitely shouldn’t. The only way I can see WP:N as having reasonably interpretable meaning is for it to be written in terms of secondary sources, which is definitely not the same thing as independent sources. When you say “the phone book is a trivial source”, you are ignoring my example where the phone book could act as a robust source. You are also perpetuating the clumsy language of UncleG’s PNC. The triviality of a source is a peculiar, useless concept. You’ve even admitted in your own words that you consider the triviality of the phone book to be context dependent. This makes “triviality of a source” not a useful measure.

Two people who separately witness a traffic accident first hand are "primary independent sources". The two people are primary because they can give accounts not influenced by any intermediate between them and the subject. They are independent of the subject, and they are independent of each other (unless they confer with each other).

Even though wikipedia is not a reliable source, you might consider Independent sources, Wikipedia:Independent sources, Primary source and Secondary source. Note that only the last two are well referenced.

Do you wish to defend your position that “independent sources are by definition secondary”? --SmokeyJoe 08:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

No need, you did it for me! The article you pointed to on primary sourcing already very nicely addresses the bias/non-independence issue. Under some circumstances, it is possible that a primary source could be independent (for example, the account of an eyewitness to a crime, an old journal found writing about someone who put something about a historic event in it). But the converse is not true, secondary sources (the final police report on that same crime, a historian's book on that event) are always independent. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 09:00, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

A book, covering the history of a school, funded and published by the school, written and edited by staff of the school, is a non-independent secondary source, with regard to a covered historical event within the school. A company annual report, where it comments on company activity, is also a non-independent secondary source. Your historian's book on the crime is non-independent if the historian was the criminal, the victim or was otherwise involved in the crime. The final police report is non-independent if the driver paid the police. --SmokeyJoe 21:59, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

A topic is notable if others have considered it worthy of note. Is that objective?

Sorry, I do not have time to be here all the time so I keep coming back to see what you are discussing. On the face of it, this statement does appear objective, but I think when you explore it further it is not. "Others considering it worthy of note" simply means that they have noted it - i.e. mentioned it somewhere. We then have to decide whether the mention is trivial or not trivial, really independent of the subject or dependent, significant or not, reliable or not, and so on. All of these are subjective. It is in my opinion a mistake to use words that appear objective when they are not. Also writing about something only means the author wanted to write about it. It is does not imply the writer thought it notable. I go back to my earlier view that we use as many specific guidelines as possible for broad subjects, possibly by using WikiProjects and then discuss topics that fall between the cracks at AfD. The more we try to pin this down, the more we will be using this to delete articles that should not be deleted. Note, I am neither a deletionist or an inclusionist, but I do say it is better to keep an article if it well written than to delete one. Readers being interested in the topic is just as valid a claim of notability as the ones we are discussing. --Bduke 22:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Good points. My personal criteria for encyclopedic inclusion is whether there is likely to be significant curiosity about the topic. I think that we are here to answer questions, and when we can we should, but always accurately. --Kevin Murray 23:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

But accurately is the point here. Yes, obviously, if we can give a good, well-sourced answer, we should. But if all we can give is guesses, interpretation, and original research and unreliable material, we're doing the reader the greatest service by saying "We don't have enough material to give you a comprehensive overview. You'll have to figure this one out on your own." We're not Google, we don't need articles on every passing Internet fad or flash-in-the-pan current events story. That's Wikinews' job, not ours. Ours is to wait for reliable secondary sources, and if and only if there are enough of those to write a good encyclopedia article, write one. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with almost all of Black Falcon's points above, and a few of Jeff's too :). In fact, I agree with Kevin (I'm very agreeable) that the basic definition of whether something is notable is really whether it is likely to be of some general interest - i.e. of interest beyond those involved with the subject. The subject specific guidelines do a pretty good job of setting criteria of what is prima facie notable within that subject. Beyond that, the best objective proxy for general interest is whether reliable sources can be arsed (thanks Jeff) to write about it.--Kubigula (talk) 23:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we should move the page to Wikipedia:Noted since the actual state of being noted (rather than the capacity to be noted) is what we're looking for here. Nifboy 01:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Trying to tie things together

Because I refuse to allow this to die on the vine - if conversation stops, it's because we've come to a conclusion and moved on. I'm reading the above discussions, and there's a lot of agreement here amongst those of us who have been in this battle for the long haul, so here's my new attempt:

A topic is generally notable if there are sufficient reliable sources available to verifiably establish the topic's importance. In most cases, the sources should be independent of the subject.

This is radically different from anything we've seen on the page so far, but I think encompasses everyone's input at this stage:

1. It requires verifiable reliable sources.
2. It at least assumes a sourced-based scenario without flat-out requiring it, allowing for the exceptions that are provided elsewhere.
3. It notes the independence in a second sentence - this way, it's not part of the quotable section, which is the first line most will point toward, but is still part of the actionable content, recognizing that there will be *some* cases where non-independent sources can establish notability.

I think this is as good as we can get at this point - it does a better job forcing the right kind of discussion than any previous version, it doesn't get bogged down in language that invites the type of lawyering many hope to avoid, it's closed-ended enough to keep the "firehose of crap" from entering the doorway, while open-ended enough to allow for sensible flexibility in the absence of a subject-specific guidelines. Any objections? --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I like it. — Scientizzle 23:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. My initial concern is that "importance" becomes a key word in this definition. Defining importance then leads us in a circular direction.--Kubigula (talk) 00:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

But isn't that what we're trying to do anyway? --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

What I think we are trying to do is to find the most objective guideline for an attribute that is admittedly subjective - i.e. what are people likely to find interesting or informative. As I said above, it seems to me that the most objective proxy for whether something is of interest is whether reliable sources have found it interesting enough to write about it. Personally, I'm pretty happy with the current wording of the guideline. Though, you have convinced me (at least) that there is no need to treat it as the "prime criterion" that trumps the consensually reached individual subject guidelines. I like the way WP:MUSIC incorporates the general guideline. Jeff - do you have any thoughts or objections to the way this issue is handled at MUSIC?--Kubigula (talk) 01:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:MUSIC is probably the perfect way to do it on a subject-specific level - it mentions it, but doesn't treat it as more or less important than anything else. We'd be smart to continue to do it that way across the other subject-specific guidelines, tailored to the issues at hand. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, it should still require multiple sources. There may be the occasional exception to that, but guidelines always have the occasional exception. Also, we don't need sources to verify the topic's importance, per se-we've already got "Notability is not fame or importance", and I entirely agree with that. What verifies notability is how much something's actually been noted, in reliable sources. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Multiple has little support, and misses the point. Why are you still insisting on it? Also, notability is fame or importance, another fallacy this "guideline" has touted. We're trying to make this more in tune with reality. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing radically different about the first sentence- you're just rewording the primary notabilty criterion. I don't like the "in most cases" though - non-independant sources generally count for very little. Friday (talk) 02:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Then you have no problem with it as a whole? --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I cannot agree with that definition. It does not even match the spirit or the letter of the subject-specific guidelines. Here are my problems with it:

1. "generally notable" ... exceptions to a guideline are needed, but it's best not to introduce this amount of ambiguity at the very start.
2. "sufficient reliable sources" ... sufficient for what? who judges 'sufficiency'?
3. "establish the topic's importance" ... notability is not importance (importance is itself a hopelessly subjective concept ... how do you propose to measure it? The # of people who've been "arsed" to write about the subject?); also, it is the existence of sources, not their content, that proves that a topic is notable.

   (edit conflict). Notable is defined as "worthy of being noted". The best way of knowing whether something is "worthy" of being noted is to see whether anyone has noted it.

4. "In most cases, the sources should be independent of the subject." ... to establish notability, the sources should always be independent of the subject (sure, we can make some exceptions via IAR, but again, there's no need to make the guideline ambiguous).

In short, I believe that proposed notability criterion is hopelessly subjective and would render Wikipedia:Notability essentially worthless as a guideline. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 04:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Seraphim/Friday/Falcon - may I ask you your opinions of how this issue is handled at WP:MUSIC? I'm curious if the approach taken there is something we can use as a basis for a larger solution?--Kubigula (talk) 04:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

My view is that Wikipedia:Notability should consisty solely of the general notability criterion, preferably some variant of "has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent from the subject and reliable" (copied from WP:MUSIC). That should be the general criterion which establishes notability for all topics. I have no problem with the subject-specific guidelines adding other criteria and/or requirements if there is consensus to do so. WP:N should be general in scope, but neither vague nor overly detailed. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 04:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that this idea has been soundly rejected, see the March archives. We have to start looking beyond it. Consider WP:N as a general starting point and I think you'll have a better go of it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I think I wasn't very clear as to what I was asking. I am trying to see if there is some consensus for a general approach, as I believe it would greating behoove us to have some basic consistency in how we approach notability across Wikipedia. The current version of MUSIC says you can either meet the general notability guideline/criterion or the other subject specific criteria (charted hit, etc). Prior versions of Music (e.g.) used to say that we have a primary criterion that determines notability, but we also have these other specific indicators that make it likely that the subject is notable. Personally, I found the old structure confusing as the relationship between the primary criterion and the specific criteria was ambiguous (e.g. if a band had a charted hit but was not shown to be the subject of multiple published works, should they be included or not?). The current version of MUSIC has the virtue of being much clearer.

So, I agree with Falcon (and I think Jeff agrees too) that WP:N should solely be a general criterion. However, I am looking forward to a possible integration of N with the subject specific guidelines and asking if the way the current version of MUSIC has done the integration is something that is palatable to the people involved in this discussion?--Kubigula (talk) 05:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The primary criterion never really had consensus, which is why it's not there anymore. The way WP:MUSIC is handling it is how all the subject-specific guidelines have handled it historically, and with relative success. The general preference, I believe, is to continue to handle it in that way. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

(In response to Kubigula) The handling at WP:MUSIC is improper. Sourcing should be the sole criterion. Any other criteria should be solely advisory as to when multiple, non-trivial, secondary sourcing should exist. They should not justify the inclusion of an article in the absence of such sourcing, and under absolutely no circumstances should they set a criterion such as "every album by a band that barely scrapes by notability is notable too". Every article should be judged on its own available sourcing, period, no exceptions, end of story. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 13:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course, to address your latter first, there's no such thing as an unsourced album, and the articles are merely sub-articles with better formatting and a better way to present information. The handling of WP:MUSIC is how the general consensus is, has been, and continues to be on this one, the same with albums. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I strongly agree with what Seraphimblade has said above me. Sourcing is the only important criterion. To sum it up in one sentence: if multiple independent reliable sources about a topic do not exist, then that topic should not be included in Wikipedia. On the topic of albums: as far as I'm concerned, albums of a notable band are not automatically notable. They are only notable if the album itself, not the band, has been the subject of sufficient coverage in sources, e.g. news stories or reviews in the mainstream press. Walton ^{Need some help?} 18:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

If that's the case, then there should be no need for any of the subject specific guidelines. In a perfect world, we would all have access to all possible sources, and there would probably be no need for subject specific guidelines. However, I think the subject specific guidelines are generally built around the reality that sources are not always easily available. In other words, we know, for example, that there are reliable sources about a musician with a charted hit, even if those sources aren't uncovered with a quick google search. So, we have agreed on an set of criteria that make someone or something likely to be of interest and to have sources (by the way, I fully agree with you on the album issue). If we are ever to have a consistent approach on notability, I think we need to either have both WP:N and subject specific guidelines structured like MUSIC, or just have WP:N and delete the SSGs. I support the former option for both the pragmatic reason that there's no way we will get consensus to delete the SSGs, and because at this stage of Wikipedia's existence it is reasonable to have mutually agreed subject specific presumptions of notability (though we should also be more aggresive about challenging weak presumptions like the one regarding albums). As WP becomes more comprehensive, and information and sources become more available, it may more sense to drop back to a single universal notability criterion.--Kubigula (talk) 15:17, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

So, if no one has access to the sources yet, why not say "Hey, wait until someone who does have access to the available sourcing is able to write the article?" It'll still get done by the deadline. In the meantime, we won't have to guess at when sources might be available, have endless disputes over what's true or not when no sources are available to resolve the matter, or have inconsistent standards. WP:V is pretty clear on the matter, and I agree with it-you want it kept around, source it. Not at some point, the moment you write it. As to the album itself being a source, that's a garbage argument. By that rationale, I'm a source on myself, and can go write a vanity autobiography article based solely upon that. That's why we require secondary, independent, reliable sources, not just any old source. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I cannot stress this enough - sourcing ultimately has nothing to do with notability. Notability exists - period. You're either notable or you're not. This is why the subject specific guidelines work, this is why WP:N's ideas on sourcing were thoroughly rejected. As for my album example, if we were to be rid of all the album articles tomorrow, they'd be merged into the artist areas. And it would be the exact same content, except formatted poorly. Why would that be okay? We can use the albums as primary sources about themselves. Album articles are simply sub-articles designed for ease of navigation, so can we please regain some focus here? --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't go one bit for the "Well if it's a splitout, or we call it a navigational aid, it's okay!" argument. If the article doesn't stand on its own, but there's an appropriate parent topic, merge it. And yes, just like anything, we require verifiability. Including of notability. In the case of notability, the verifiability question is "Well, show me it's actually been noted." If not, you can state it's notable all day long, but you can't verify it, so for our purposes, it's not there. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to go for it, it won't change what it is. As for your second comment, absolutely, but it's beyond the purview of what we're doing here. We're trying to figure out how something is notable, not how we prove it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:25, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) Jeff, I think you are right that I am blurring concepts - particularly notability versus measuring notability. As WP:N says, notability simply means that something is worthy of attracting notice. That is a subjective concept, as different people think different things are worthy of their attention. So, the only absolutely objective way to measure notability would be to run a worldwide poll on each article and only include the ones that X number of people say are worthy of their attention. Obviously we can't do that, so we have to rely on the best objective proxies for measuring notability. Right now, we have two mechanisms - (1) coverage in reliable sources and (2) by consensus of Wikipedia editors. Coverage in reliable sources is a good objective method because such sources usually wouldn't and couldn't cover topics unless they were of some general interest. Also, reliable sources allow us to meet the Wikipedia policies of WP:V, WP:RS and WP:NOR. Consensus is also a good objective proxy because if enough Wikipedia editors think a given topic is of interest, then it is of general interest. Aristotle isn't notable because people have written books about him, he is notable because people want to read about him. If there was only one book about Aristotle (to meet V, RS and NOR), he would still be notable because I think we can agree that enough people want to know about Aristotle. If we could get enough people to participate in every AfD, we wouldn't need notability guidelines - if 500 editors think something is worthy of their attention, then it's notable by definition. Consensus, assuming there is sufficient representative participation, is a perfectly acceptable way to measure notability (though not V, RS and NOR). So, the more I think about it, the more I like the approach at MUSIC - it uses the two best methods we have devised to measure notability.--Kubigula (talk) 17:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

...I think for the first time since I started watching this page has it actually made sense to me. Nifboy 18:12, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I thank Kubigula for the first comment recently that offers a way to resolve the contradiction between the two general approaches that has been discussed here interminably. (though there were some other approaches to a rational combination of them as well) I haven't been participating much in these discussions for --quite frankly--I thought them unlike to lead anywhere, and that I had heard all the argument several dozen times on every possible policy page. (And also that I had myself no solution whatsoever to the apparent stalemate, so why should I add to the confusion.) I want to think a little about where we should go from here. DGG 18:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Gere letter about marriage notability

There is a dispute regarding notability regarding the addition of several sentences to the artcile on Richard Gere. The proposed text is...

In April 1994 the French weekly tabloid Voici wrote that the marriage was a sham and that Gere "preferred men" [1] In May, 1994, Gere and Crawford took a full-page ad out in the London Times, announcing that, 'We are heterosexual and monogamous and take our commitment to each other very seriously. Reports of a divorce are totally false. We remain very married. We both look forward to having a family.' [2] On Dec 1, the couple released a brief statement announcing their separation, calling it a "personal and painful decision". [3]

User:FNMF is against inclusion and says: "I believe the other example given in WP:BLP, about a messy divorce, remains relevant, and I re-iterate its message: "Is it notable, verifiable, and important to the article? If not, leave it out." I don't believe this material is notable, nor do I believe it is important to the article. This material is not encyclopaedic. And I continue to reiterate: no credible source asserts the allegation about Gere's marriage as true. There may be verifiable sources that the allegation exists. But there are no verifiable sources prepared to assert the allegation as true."

User:sparkzilla is for inclusion and says that 1. Gere wrote the letter himself and placed it in a major newspaper. 2 The story has been picked up by are multiple independent secondary sources: The Independent [4], Entertainment Weekly[5], People[6], L'Humanite L'Humanite, at least a couple of published books, [7] [8], The New York Times [9] , The Biography Channel [10], BBC News [11], and of course, The Times itself [12] [13] [14]. Most of these sources explicitly say that Gere placed the letter to counter rumors that he was a homosexual.

Please also note that there is a related on "The meaning of sensitivity in BLP policy" here: [15]

Question: Is this event in Gere's life notable enough to add to the page? Please try to keep the scope of the discussion to points regarding notability. Thank you for your comments. Sparkzilla 16:18, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Please place requests for comments in WP:RFC and not here, and add a summary to the article's talk page. I am tempted to do this for you, but I would prefer you do that yourself. This page is for discussing the policy and not specific cases. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering if this was the correct place...I'm confused though - where should I put the text above. I don't want to put it on the article's talk page. I would prefer to have some comment from editors who are independent of the existing discussion and who are more familiar with the intricacies of notability issues. I appreciate your advice. Sparkzilla 16:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I can see that you continue to disregard numerous requests from admins to stop posting these Gere related requests in policy talk pages. This is becoming disruptive, and could earn you a block if you persist. Please keep the conversation about this dispute in the article's talk page, and use the WP:RFC mechanism to pursue WP's dispute resolution process. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

You can find the instructions here: WP:RFC#Instructions. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Let me help you out here. I will create the RfC for you so that you can see how this is done. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:47, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Done. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I am sorry that I misplaced this item, and it is not an intention to spread it far and wide, but to get a real answers to a difficult question. Might I suggest the creation of a "Notability Noticeboard" - that way we could get more independent discussion of notability concerns away from highly-charged article talk pages.

Please note that I am acting in good faith to find answers to this issue. The other major party involved does not want to submit to consensus and has stated that he will only allow the material to go on the page if policies are changed. Other editors have commented that this is not in the spirit of WP. I am spending a lot of time and energy to try to get resoution of these issues through RFCs and other discussions.

Regarding the discussion on Talk:BLP -- I am discussing the implications of "sensitivity" in the policy using Gere as an illustration of how the policy is inconsistent. I could use other examples, but Gere's simply the one to hand. The discussion of inconsistencies in the policy, which will affect many thousands of pages, is in the correct place. Thank you for your understanding. Sparkzilla 17:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

PS: I added some text to your RFC to try to limit comments to the notability of the event. Thanks again. Sparkzilla 17:12, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

A topic is (sufficiently?) notable if

Should the notability criterion include the word “sufficiently”, or would that be too convoluted? We don’t want it too convoluted, but as the criterion stands (has always stood), it begins by asserting a fallacy. Notable, as defined by the criterion, is different to notable as defined elsewhere, and as used in the real world. Is not wikipedia supposed to communicate in standard English, and so should use standard English definitions? As it stands, the criterion implies that notability is boolean. Of course it is not. Something can be not notable, barely notable, kind of notable, very notable or extremely notable. The insertion of “sufficiently” clarifies that while there may be a range of degrees of notability, that notable enough for one purpose may be different for another, and that whatever the test of notability used elsewhere, this is the agreed measure for wikipedia. Thoughts, anyone? SmokeyJoe 06:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Something is either notable or isn't. I personally see no reason to entertain the idea of "borderline" notability and leave that door open further. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Smokeyjoe. - Kittybrewster (talk) 16:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

And I agree with Badlydrawnjeff. --Coolcaesar 17:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Jeff as well ... the use of the word "sufficiently" introduces uncertainty to the guideline that is, in my view, unnecessary. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I think such qualifiers would just cloud the issue. Whether something is "barely notable" or "extremely notable" has little bearing on the policy. In both instances, it would be "notable". Things that are more notable should likely be treated in greater depth with a wider variety of sources. However, that's a matter of article-building, as opposed to determining notability in and of itself. Vassyana 22:27, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

A fresh start?

I have drafted a proposed rewrite of the lead and first section of this guideline at User:Kubigula/Notability. My own views on this whole subject have changed a bit as a result of the above conversation, and I ask people to keep an open mind when reading this. I believe the primary virtue of my proposed language is that it can provide some harmony and consistency between this guideline and the subject specific guidelines.--Kubigula (talk) 05:30, 4 May 2007 (UTC)