Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)

WP:AUD

WP:AUD requires at least one regional, national, or international source. I have some questions about this.

1. If a news story is published in a local paper, then reprinted in a national one, will it still be considered a "local source"?
2. If NYT reports something in New York, will the report be considered a "local source"?
3. How to determine whether books or research papers are "local" or not?--180.172.239.231 (talk) 02:39, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

1. Usually, it's "national" then. The goal is someone thinking that it's worth national attention.
2. Not usually, but it depends. National and regional papers do report on local issues, but they do a lot less of it compared to local newspapers. If it's specifically in a local section, then it might be considered local-only news.
3. This is almost never raised as a concern for anything except periodicals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:14, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

The key here is readership numbers (ie how many people are likely to have read the report). If something is only reported on by a news outlet with a readership of a few hundred, that something will be far less notable than a similar something that is reported on by a paper with a readership of thousands or millions. Small town papers tend to have tiny readerships... the NYT, on the other hand, has a huge readership. Blueboar (talk) 12:18, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Notability of company

Hi there,

i have updated the article but got declined from the admin on the basis of adequate reference. I just discover that there is a way of acceptability for notable company, but wondering how should i establish the company is notable. Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.179.166.182 (talk) 15:50, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

As explained at WP:GNG and on this page, notability is normally established with multiple reliable independent secondary sources discussing the subject in detail. WP:PRIMARY sources (e.g., the company web site, press releases, etc.) and sources offering only trivial coverage (e.g., of announcements of personnel changes, openings and closing of local branches, etc.) do not contribute to notability. Msnicki (talk) 20:30, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Msnicki is correct... to establish notability you need to cite secondary sources that are independent of the company itself. Once you do that, however, you can use primary sources (company publications) to flesh out the details of the article (Note: See the WP:PSTS section of our WP:No original research policy for more on how to do this appropriately.) Blueboar (talk) 12:43, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Revision for listed companies

I do not think that the presenttext reflects our actual practice. It now reads:

There has been considerable discussion over time whether publicly traded corporations, or at least publicly traded corporations listed on major stock exchanges such as the NYSE, NASDAQ and other comparable international stock exchanges, are inherently notable. Consensus has been that notability is not automatic in this (or any other) case. However, sufficient independent sources almost always exist for such companies, so that notability can be established using the primary criterion discussed above. Examples of such sources include independent press coverage and analyst reports. Accordingly, article authors should make sure to seek out such coverage and add references to such articles to properly establish notability.

Editors coming across an article on such a company without such references are encouraged to search (or request that others search) prior to nominating for deletion, given the very high likelihood that a publicly traded company is actually notable according to the primary criterion.

In reality, we do not consider the NASDAQ, or the minor parts of the NYSE such as the former American Stick Exchange, as major exchanges. Companies listed there are usually not kept, unless they happen to be major companies that have maintained their listing there rather than moving to the major exchanges, in the absence of special factors of newsworthiness; advice to the contrary here is plain wrong: anyone who follows it is very apt to find their work wasted. For most NASDQ companies, even if there are sources of a sort, in practice we usually find a way of rejecting the sources as either non-indpendent or non-substantial or as routine indiscriminate listings. Probably 2/3 of the NASDAQ companies at AfD have been deleted; most never get that far. There is no point in having guidelines that do not reflect reality--they just guide people into confusion. (Of course, I would have no objection at all if we did keep essentially all publicly traded companies, & I have proposed it in the past. But since we do just the opposite, we should say so.) DGG ( talk ) 05:10, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I suggest we simply modify this by removing the word NASDAQ. We could then add a paragraph about other exchanges but it isn't really necessary--the general rule holds. DGG ( talk ) 05:10, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for pointing out the problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:52, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Significant coverage not required for nonprofits?

WP:NONPROFIT states: "Information about the organization and its activities can be verified by multiple,[1] third-party, independent, reliable sources."

At first this sounds like a reiteration of WP:GNG, but absent from this is GNG's requirement of "significant coverage". Is that really the intention to give nonprofits a free pass around GNG or is this just an accidental omission? -- intgr [talk] 09:09, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Good point. I'm sure this was an oversight. Coretheapple (talk) 15:42, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

This is one of the problems with having short cuts that point to specific sections instead of pointing to the entire policy or guideline. People only read the section that is being pointed to and not the entire page. Note that this guideline starts with the statement:

• An organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability. All content must be verifiable. If no independent, third-party, reliable sources can be found on a topic, then Wikipedia should not have an article on it.

This covers all organizations... non-profits as well as for-profit organizations. The fact that the phrase "significant coverage" is not repeated in every single section does not mean it does not apply. Blueboar (talk) 15:58, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

True but I can see this omission used in deletion discussions. I think that the best course is to add a few words about "significant coverage" to this section. Coretheapple (talk) 16:37, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

I think it can be interpreted like that regardless of the shortcut. The lead section sets the "general" criteria, but the nonprofits subsection is under a section called "alternate criteria". And it re-states only part of the general criteria, why would it do that unless the point is to relax that criteria? IMO that implies that it does not work in conjunction to the general/primary criteria. And due to confirmation bias, people are prone to accepting the interpretation that suits them best.

Sorry to digress, but this always puzzled me, why do we even have all these enormous subject-specific notability guidelines if it all boils down to GNG? The section "Alternate criteria for specific types of organizations" says...

Organizations are considered notable if they meet one of the following sourcing requirements

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

So by your interpretation the choices are... (1) GNG + more restrictions; (2) GNG + more restrictions; (3) just GNG.

And WP:N says "It meets either the general notability guideline below or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed" great...

Is it just me or can we completely throw away WP:ORG without affecting anything? Because GNG is always sufficient, and is always required anyway. I get the impression that nobody actually thought this stuff through. -- intgr [talk] 18:24, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with intgr that the point is usually to relax or clarify the GNG.

The most recent relevant discussion I can recall was one about a small learned society that published an important journal or ran an important conference. The problem was that a national non-profit in a legitimate academic discipline does not easily satisfy GNG, yet appears on the face of it to be notable to the Wikipedia community. I don't recall the details, though perhaps someone can offer a link. The conversation on the specifics reinforced the consensus around the exception that intgr describes in the opening question.

It can be useful to revisit these topics from time to time, especially if it gives the impression that "nobody actually thought this stuff through" to an experienced editor. Goodness knows what newcomers think.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 15:55, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Agree that we need to revisit the criteria. We absolutely do not want to provide more relaxed criteria for nonprofits. There are a massive number of them out there, most absolutely unremarkable. Coretheapple (talk) 16:14, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I would prefer if the subject-specific guidelines were abolished entirely. The only times I've seen them being used is when someone tries to weasel through vanity articles that couldn't possibly be expanded from permastub status without original research, due to lack of good sources. The GNG has a good rationale at WP:WHYN, but no such justification seems to exist for the (in my view) arbitrary criteria in subject-specific guidelines. -- intgr [talk] 20:29, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

This exists largely to help explain the GNG in a subject-specific context, and to give people a realistic idea of where the bar stands at AFD. In practice, it's the people at AFD who decide whether the subject needs to "only meet the GNG, or whether ORG's "GNG+more' model is more appropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:55, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

"Deciding" to require ORG's criteria in a deletion would be dishonest, wouldn't it? Both guidelines state unambiguously that just GNG alone is sufficient, as I listed above. But I digress...

There seems to be a consensus here that the requirement of significant coverage in WP:NONPROFIT was an omission, or should be added. It seems that word doesn't fit very well in the current sentence structure, however. I propose replicating GNG here, which should reduce misunderstanding:

The organization has received significant coverage in multiple reliable sources that are independent of the organization.

The current word "third-party" seems redundant, "independent" already implies that, right? -- intgr [talk] 18:38, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

There is technically a small difference between those words, but for notability it doesn't really matter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:02, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Well it's been a week without any for/against comments, but I believe it reflects a consensus of the above discussion. Am I within my rights to change the guideline? -- intgr [talk] 17:46, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:NSCHOOL and the meaning of "this guideline"

At WP:NSCHOOL, which points to level 4 heading 4.1.1, entitled Schools, it says:

"All schools ... must satisfy either this guideline or [WP:GNG], or both."

The meaning of this guideline is unclear. Since there was nothing further below this sentence in 4.1.1, it couldn't refer to that, so I thought it maybe meant the encompassing section 4.1, Non-commercial organizations, which did not seem unreasonable. However, someone else suggested this guideline refers to the entire page (WP:ORG) instead, which also seems reasonable, given the hatnote that refers to it as a singular guideline:

"This page documents an English Wikipedia notability guideline."

Based on that, I added the highlighted clarification at [1]:

"All schools ... must satisfy either this guideline (WP:ORG) or [WP:GNG], or both."

Any problems? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 21:51, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

You are correct: the whole guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there are problems. I 'm not too keen on the way this entire guideline slowly but surely gets and sneakily perverted over time by POV notability pushers without prior discussion. There was a jolly bit of edit warring going on about schools, almost exactly a year ago to the day, where if I hadn't been involved (by having made only one edit - based on fact - that was subsequently radically removed without discussion), I would probably have issued some formal EW warnings. Perhaps one needs to be reminded of the comment box at the top of the guideline wherein it is clearly stated that there may be exceptions. Schools quite clearly and indisputably enjoy an exception. The text that was removed went something like:

− Current Wikipedia practice is to consider Bona fide mainstream high schools (secondary schools that provide education to the equivalent of Grade 12 in their respective regions) that are proven to exist and provide education to that level as being notable, due to the very strong likelihood that sources will exist that discuss them. Other schools, such as primary (elementary) schools, middle schools, and schools that only provide a support to mainstream education must satisfy WP:GNG.

The only things that should be altered in this guideline without discussion or clear evidence based facts are typos, punctuation, and MoS issues. And for those who need to brush up their grammar, while the modal must can be used in a policy, the nearest a guideline can get is 'should' - which does not imply an obligation. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:48, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

WP:PGE disagrees with you about must, and I hope that you agree that "mere guidelines" like WP:External links correctly use the modal must when they say things like "External links in biographies of living persons must be of high quality". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I think Kudpung's statement above is the existing consensus,and should be restored. The version now in the statement simply does not represent current practice. and should be removed. I interpret Kudpung's wording as a replacement for the current sentence, not a supplement to it. There is no point in a guideline that provides a guide opposite to what we do. People following it will be misled, because in the last 3 or 4 years at least there have been to my knowledge essentially no exceptions whatsoever at AfD. But Kudpung I think forgot that colleges and universities need to be included also, so it should read

Current Wikipedia practice is to consider degree-granting universities and colleges, and Bona fide mainstream high schools (secondary schools that provide education to the equivalent of Grade 12 in their respective regions) that are proven to exist and provide education to that level, as being notable, due to the very strong likelihood that sources will exist that discuss them. Other schools, such as primary (elementary) schools, middle schools, and schools that only provide a support to mainstream education must satisfy WP:GNG.

I would also make several interpretative notes

(1) "Grade 12 or equivalent" means Grade 12 or the equivalent grade that prepares for entrance into a university (in much of the world, grade X), or is the equivalent final year of secondary education for those not going to a university."

(2) This does not include tutoring academies, language schools , or vocational schools that do not lead to an academic degree. All of these may or may not be notable, but there is no presumption.

(3) "Colleges and universities" include "junior colleges" with programs that lead to an Associates's degree or the equivalent (normally 2 years after secondary education). It does not include programs that lead to a certificate only (normally one year of post-secondary education.

For all of these interpretative notes, I base what I say on precedent in the last two years. They have held in that period without significant exception, and I think in fact without any exception at all; that is long enough to make a guideline.

I personally do not like the general approach of thinking of it as "implied notability:"; I think it rather is an expression of the fact that the general notability guideline is not seen as applicable in all cases, and the very GNG guideline says that--beyond the general nature of guidelines that Kudpung mentioned. I would personally remove that part of the statement, but I'd rather keep it than fight about it. The true basis for the special guideline about schools s that it represents a compromise which developed in the period 4 to 6 years ago to avoid disputation in thousands of special cases. Before that, we fought over not just every secondary school, but every primary school also. I don't think we want to go back to that.

More generally, I think the entire ORG guideline and possibly the entire Notability guidelines are best justified as a practical way of avoid promotionalism, rather than as some sort of general principle. An encyclopedia with even a very broad inclusion principle is still an encyclopedia. With promotionalism, we would not even be an encyclopedia in any meaningful sense, and there would be no reason why anyone but advertising agencies would bother writing here. DGG ( talk ) 12:08, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't generally follow this talk page much but I do notice in another thread above that Blueboar makes an excellent observation: "This is one of the problems with having short cuts that point to specific sections instead of pointing to the entire policy or guideline. People only read the section that is being pointed to and not the entire page" and when the statement they land on is practically the opposite to the standard accepted practice, then the problems start, such as the frequent clogging up of the AfD system by newbs who have nothing else better to do - all in good faith of course, but it's one heck of a job explaining to them that they are investing their time in the wrong quarter. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:52, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

We're talking a bit at cross purposes.

• Are most high school and university articles kept? Yes.
• Why are they kept? They're not kept because they're schools, and we've all decided that schools are just so terribly important. They're kept because they do meet the criteria in this guideline.
• What is the proposed addition? To spell out that we treat these kinds of schools as being "notable, due to the very strong likelihood that" they meet the sourcing criteria in this guideline.

The reality is that, for better or worse, nearly all bona fide mainstream high schools and universities can meet ORG with half their sources tied behind their backs. Requiring them to "meet ORG" means we keep these articles. So there's no sort of contradiction or divergence from actual practice here. It's just a question of whether we spell out reality, or keep the guideline more concise. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I think I should chime in here since I made some amendments to the wording earlier. I considered objecting to the "must" wording at the time for the reasons Kudpung gave earlier, though there are a number of guidelines which used the word already. I did however change the wording to make clear that the WP:GNG can be used to satisfy notability regardless of what WP:ORG says, as SNGs are an alternative path to achieve notability, not an additional burden, as per WP:N.

I share Kudpung's general frustration of this guideline having been slowly re-written by a very small group of editors without any real substantive discussion, let alone consensus. The proposal of local sources not counting towards notability, for example, has been rejected multiple times by the wider community (with the exception of WP:EVENT, which is a special case), yet it has made an appearance in WP:ORG.

I don't have a strong opinion on whether a sub-section for schools is appropriate here, though the current layout hasn't been well thought through at all – the shortcuts and sub-headings only mention schools, yet the content mentions universities. Universities have always been looked at a little differently from school articles and are looked after by their own WikiProject. Furthermore, this section has been lumped under non-commercial organizations – yet there are plenty of commercial schools and universities in the world. Are they exempt from this sub-section? CT Cooper · talk 14:59, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Responses to this comment have been moved into #Revising WP:AUD below. 22:29, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

In my opinion, it would be far better for Wikipedia when every school have to prove in the article that they are notable instead of assuming that the school is notable, based on vague assumptions as When you search hard enough, sources can be found. The Banner talk 16:56, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I think we do need the paragraph added to show the prevailing practice of keeping colleges and secondary schools (and it should be "secondary schools", not "high schools", as a more inclusive term - many associate "high school" with America), established by long-standing de facto consensus. There are too many nominations for deletion, which are invariably defeated. However, I believe it should be grade 10 and not grade 12, since 16 is the legal school-leaving age in many countries (and this has also been established by consensus). It should also be "age 16" and not "grade anything", since the latter is also an Americanism and Wikipedia is multinational. The fact that private schools that meet the criteria are kept should also be recorded, as this has been an issue at AfD in the past. It should thus read:

Current Wikipedia practice is to consider degree-granting universities and colleges, and bona fide mainstream secondary schools (that provide education to the age of 16 or above), both public and private, that are proven to exist and provide education to that level, as being notable, due to the very strong likelihood that sources will exist that discuss them. Other educational institutions, such as vocational schools and colleges, primary (elementary) schools, middle schools, and schools that only provide a support to mainstream education, must satisfy WP:GNG.

-- Necrothesp (talk) 10:56, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

If there's a "very strong likelihood that sources will exist that discuss them," why do we need an exception to make them notable? If there are sources, there are sources, and the articles will survive because they can be properly cited. Plus, you don't have schools like this thoroughly non-notable one skating in on a waiver.

Exploring the meaning of "notability" relating to schools, what is it about yet another one of thousands of schools that should make it notable? Is it simply enough that it exists (and why)? Shouldn't it be distinct in some important way, like consistently high or low or suddenly different educational achievement (competition, test scores, etc.), sports achievement (record-setting, championship-winning), novel approaches to teaching, distinctive instructors, etc.?

What's the point of having articles for every cookie-cutter high-school that graduates the same crappy students in the same crappy way year after year? They seem to mostly just attract student vandalism. Even if it does get some primary-source-driven expansion by some enthusiastic students or alumni (against policy), will it ever be kept accurate as they move on? Will someone be vigilant enough to keep minor edit vandalism from turning it to mush? Who reads such articles, and do they really care that a Gym III class is offered on Tuesday? The articles can't possibly be considered current or accurate. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 13:35, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Current policy explicitly rejects deleting articles because they are subject to vandalism, and there are plenty of good reasons for this. Either a school is notable enough for an article or it isn't. Whether its a target of vandalism or not is irrelevant, as is whether people personally find its content interesting or not. There is such thing as inappropriate additions to school articles, which is what WP:WPSCH/AG, particularly WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI, exists for. If the existence of third-party sources can be shown, which is usually the case for most school of secondary level or above, the current state of the article also becomes irrelevant. CT Cooper · talk 19:10, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

• "If there's a "very strong likelihood that sources will exist that discuss them," why do we need an exception to make them notable? " While the sources will exist, not all of them will be accessible online, and that's why we have WP:SNG. --114.81.255.40 (talk) 12:39, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

But we do not require that sources be accessible online. Hard copy sources that exist in libraries and other public archives are fine. Hell, as far as Notability goes... we don't even require that the sources be cited in the article (although any halfway decent article will cite at least some of them). All we require to establish notability is that the sources exist (so that we could cite them, if needed). That is already covered in both the main part of WP:ORG and at WP:GNG... so why do we need NSCHOOLS? What makes schools, as a topic area, so different that we need a separate section of the guideline to discuss them? Blueboar (talk) 13:02, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

The requirement for sources is very well justified at WP:WHYN; it couldn't be a good article if it doesn't cite sources, anyway. Are there any reasons to tolerate bad articles about schools, if we don't for topics? -- intgr [talk] 15:54, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

It could be a good article if independent sources exist somewhere. --114.81.255.40 (talk) 05:27, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

The sad thing is, is that WP:COMMONOUTCOMES is often misused as a kind of policy to keep articles, no matter how bad the articles are. Resulting in a massive bias towards schools in the USA. The Banner talk 16:39, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

"If there's a "very strong likelihood that sources will exist that discuss them," why do we need an exception to make them notable? We don't need an exception. We aren't creating an exception. There is no exception, and there never has been.

The only value in such a paragraph about schools is the same value in the very similar paragraph about publicly traded companies: if the corporation is traded on the London Stock Exchange, then you can safely assume that it's notable—not because we have any special exceptions for publicly traded companies, but because the sort of companies that are listed there all meet the GNG (and this guideline) very easily. Listing the "non-exception exception" for major publicly traded companies in this guideline has stopped editors asking us to declare them to be inherently notable, and it might have stopped a couple of misguided deletion attempts. Listing the "non-exception exception" for bona fide secondary schools might similarly stop editors from asking us to declare all high schools to be inherently notable, and it might stop a couple of misguided deletion attempts. (I rather doubt the latter in the case of schools, because WP:Nobody reads the directions, but it's possible, even though it didn't seem to have any effect when it was present.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:34, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

The "auto-notability shortcut" (let's call it) for public companies makes sense because of the minimum listing standards of exchanges and the underwriting process which guarantees there will be analyst coverage that can be cited (though that's a can of worms on its own). I don't see how the same can be said for schools, though – especially small, private schools like this one (which was the cause for my seeking clarification here). What guarantees that such coverage will exist? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 09:42, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

There is no guarantee in either case. However, someone looked into it a while ago, and when you're talking about the main class of schools that people actually mean to cover (you'll notice that the word bona fide keeps being added by people who have been through this discussion many times before), more than 90% (was it 98%?) of high schools could be sourced enough to meet ORG. The main problem is that you have to do a lot of work, especially searching local and regional newspapers directly rather than relying on Google News, to find the sources.

If there actually are no independent sources, then we should delete the article per WP:V and WP:NOT (and also ORG). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

• In actual fact despite the years of discussion on school notability WP:COMMONOUTCOMES is never misused as a kind of policy to keep articles. Hence it can be safely understood that OUTCOMES is merely a page that accurately documents what we actually do with school articles, as evidenced elsewhere by the consensus drawn from 1,000s of school article AfD closures and redirects. It is therefore the business of Notability (organizations and companies) to reflect that consensus and not to attempt to convince the occasional visitor to the guideline of the contrary or something else. Our rules are rarely written by experts in language, and a closer examination of the semantics in the guideline will reveal that the far stronger leitmotif of the guideline indeed supports the kind of exceptions which we accord to educational establishments.

I'm happy to accept Necrothesp's final version of what I and DGG have suggested (which was quietly removed a year ago) and I think we can all live with it, including WhatamIdoing and The Banner. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:38, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

and I will accept it also, much though I would like to see it worded stronger without needing to use the presumption. I do not understand people who want to argue instead of compromise over matters like this. There's important work that needs to be done here, including deleting thousands of hopelessly inadequate articles, and trying to change a reasonable consensus of grounds of what a general guideline ought to mean (but doesn't say) detracts from this. The policy of NOT DIRECTORY is critical--where we draw the line is not, and everyone in practice has to compromise on every subject. Otherwise, we'll have AFD back at several hundred pagesd a day, with results that are more erratic, but no better. DGG ( talk ) 13:59, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

The problem with "presumption" is that while it usually matches reality, it does not always match reality... in every situation where we "presume" that sources exist, there are cases where that presumption is simply false... where sources don't actually exist.

The presumption of notability is an indication that we should be reluctant to delete... it is not a "free pass" indicating that we should never delete. Blueboar (talk) 14:20, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Just look up how many people are using Common Outcomes as an argument for keeping an article about a school, Kudpung And look up how many admins keep a school-article because of Common Outcomes. The Banner talk 15:56, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

But consensus, as illustrated and enumerated by Common Outcomes, is a very good argument for keeping articles! -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:14, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I disagree that OUTCOMES is "never" cited as if it were an absolute rule. I've seen quite a number "Keep per OUTCOMES" votes for schools. People here might have seen this exchange just last week over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Schools:

Speedy keep – Educational institutions are notable --Hackerboyas (Talk) 05:51, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Is this policy? Can you point me to it? AlanM1(talk)]— 08:12, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

The second bullet point at WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is the relevant one. AllyD (talk) 08:48, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

He asked for a policy, and he was given (only) OUTCOMES. So, sure, "never", so long as "never" means "about once a week". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

It's absurd to ask for a guideline that always matches reality. First, guidelines are intended to be flexible; Second, the precision of WP decisions does not even come close to "always matching reality." Nor should it: we trying to make a usable encyclopedia, not a perfect one--our method can not do more than that. Trying to make perfect decisions is so much effort it detracts from writing articles, except for critical issues of BLP and verifiability and copyvio--all we need is a good approximation. AfD decisions in general probably have at least a 5 or 10% error in each direction, and we will never do better without much wider participation. When we discussed individual schools at AfD, with only 2 or 3 people working on meeting the challenges to the sourcing, we kept about 80% of the high schools. Assuming that at least half of the ones not kept could have been kept if there had been time to work on them, that's as good as we do now, but it took enormously more labor. (There is an immense dissymmetry between the ease of nominating for deletion and the difficulty of finding sources to prevent it--myself, I could easily do a sufficient WP:BEFORE check to nominate 10 or 15 articles a day, but I would be hard put to successfully defend more than 2 or 3 articles. And if, like almost all people who were nominating schools for afd, I ignored WP:BEFORE, I could nominate as many as I could paste a prebuilt reason into Twinkle.) We also kept about 1/4 of the elementary schools, most of which were probably not actually notable in a realistic sense, because the result at afd reflects the energy with which something is attacked or defended, as much as the merits, Nowadays we merge almost all of these into the locality or sponsor, a much better result. That's what I mean by calling the current practice a workable compromise. DGG ( talk ) 19:29, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps in your opinion, I still call it "misusing of Common Outcomes". The sheer fact that you use terms as "defending" and "attacking", points at a less than healthy attitude towards AfDs. The Banner talk 00:29, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

"attacking" is in my opinion the best single word to describe the way in which deletion of such articles was attempted in the past. I agree AfD should take a different approach--I have several times usggested calling it "Articles for discussion". DGG ( talk ) 04:45, 30 September 2014 (UTC) 04:45, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

"attacking" is in my opinion the best single word to describe the way in which people respond to an AfD. To my opinion, in a rather aggressive way and in teams to hide the lack of real arguments. Shouting loud and many times is a rather effective method used on AfDs regarding to schools... The Banner talk 12:12, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

What people are doing by referring to Common Outcomes is merely pointing to the summarised consensus to keep articles on certain classes of institution without having to trot out the same old arguments every time. When there clearly is a consensus (and there is - when was the last time such an article was deleted?), there is very little point regurgitating the same old arguments on both sides every time an editor nominates an article in this category for deletion. This is certainly not a misuse of Common Outcomes. It is, however, a clear use of Common Sense. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:14, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Which has been pointed out to {U|TheBanner}} umpteen times. You'll never get him to understand that because, (and previously as user:Night of the Big Wind), on all these school notability discussions over the years, he apparently does not want to understand it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:55, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I have tried so many times to let you understand that Common Outcomes is absolutely misused as a guideline for keeping. Assuming that a school is notable, as you nearly always do, is also not in line with the guidelines. And the real sad thing is, is that it has lead to a massive bias towards American schools as there are far more tiny local papers that publish the press releases of the local school than let say in Africa or even Europe. The Banner talk 18:51, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

The Banner, the way you have seriously misquoted me for years and blatantly again here, leads me to abandon good faith and assume that either you do not perfectly understand English, won't take the time time to fully read a discussion, or that you have some other kind of agenda. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:57, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Don't get worried by that. Seeing your keep-a-school-no-matter-what-mentality I know that you want to circumvent the usual rules and requirements for notability by using Common Outcomes as a policy and argument for keeping school-articles. Still, despite your breaching of the real policies I still assume good faith in you. The Banner talk 10:24, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Revising WP:AUD

Moved from section above. 22:29, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

(Side note: The question of local sources has been discussed repeatedly here, and their use was limited for exactly the same reasons that EVENT is concerned about them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:34, 27 September 2014 (UTC))

Firstly, I would appreciate the courtesy of a proper reply rather than "side notes" which are anything but.

I would be interested in knowing where these discussions are exactly and would like to see evidence of wider community consensus rather than just the groupthink of a few regulars of this page. The local sources requirement was introduced after a discussion involving just two people. In any case, the provision is unforeseeable as there is no such requirement in WP:GNG and an article only needs to follow the WP:GNG or WP:ORG, not both. School articles are places, not events, so any WP:EVENT comparison needs to be explained. I would argue WP:EVENT was written more to elaborate on WP:NOTNEWS which is a policy requirement on top of notability, and so its special provisions are enforceable. WP:NOTNEWS is rarely an issue for school articles from what I've seen – those that are notable are almost always notable because of multiple issues events/issues over a significant period of time. CT Cooper · talk 14:56, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I amongst other things help train local editors in Wikipedia use and standards, and it sounds like this area has gotten into a tangled, legalistic mess. Firstly, I agree with Kudpung that "should" rather than "must" should be the way guidelines operate - indeed, the notice in the header of this very guideline asserts as much, so to have both is contradictory. Secondly, if GNG is a general guideline for all subjects that one can learn how to work with, one shouldn't have to learn all manner of exceptions and contradictory additions to it such as the "no local sources" one here just to function on WP. Such sources are perfectly fine for articles on a vast range of topics, and I don't see why this should be exceptional. Wikipedia editing shouldn't be like Islamic scholarship, *especially* with the declining editor base we should be making it as easy to edit as possible, not serving to satisfy the whims of a few obsessed with the details of notability guidelines. And thirdly, the wording of the sources part of the guideline is very US-centric ... I'm in Australia where the entire meaning of "regional" vs "local" is contested and unclear. Also, CT Cooper makes a good point regarding the fact private schools, universities and colleges are not "non-commercial" and enough of them exist to not make them a particularly rare exception. Orderinchaos 21:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

The opinion of Orderinchaos provides a quick insight of how many editors outside the bubble of WP:ORG react to the idea of blanket banning "local sources" when considering notability. There have been an number of attempts to restrict such sources before, the most notable I'm aware of being the original version of Wikipedia:Notability (local interests), which was revised (though later failed anyway) after overwhelming rejection to the idea of excluding local sources. I think Orderinchaos sums it up well when he says that this area has turned into a "tangled, legalistic mess". I see no rational basis for banning local sources for organization notability but not for other areas as well, and I have never gotten a solid or consistent argument for having such a rule at all – justifications for such a rule have included a desire to reduce the number of articles (which contradicts WP:NOTPAPER), to the presumption that all local sources are in cahoots with local interests such as schools (a sweeping and unevidenced assessment), or even that local sources should be ignored to tackle systmatic bias (I was under the impression that systematic bias was countered by adding good new content to undercovered areas, not deleting good content in well covered areas). I could write an essay on the problems with banning local sources, though Orderinchaos touches on a key one being that the word "local" on a worldwide scale and across all media is next to meaningless.

To be frank, I think this guideline needs a serious shake-up – while some of the most inapprorpriate additions have been removed, this vacuum in scrutiny has still resulted in a lot of poor quality guidance which has been allowed to stay around for far too long. The "Alternate criteria for specific types of organizations" in particular has just gotten silly. Myself and others have rasied concerns before but these have just been ignored. Clearly a more pro-active approach is needed. I have tagged two sections which are currently under discussion here, though my intention is to get them significantly revised or removed. Since we have ended with two parallel but very relevant discussions in this section, I might start a new section shortly to deal specifically with WP:AUD. CT Cooper · talk 22:13, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Thinking about the wording of the audience section, it appears that the first sentence was the starting point and the second sentence has been edited to such an extent that it contradicts the first. It currently reads: The source's audience must also be considered. Evidence of attention by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, national, or international source is necessary. My suggestion would be: The source's audience must also be considered. Evidence of attention by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, attention solely from media of limited interest and circulation may make notability harder to establish, and based on past outcomes, articles relying solely on these are less likely to survive deletion processes. This also gets rid of the "regional/local" distinction which is a very US-centric one and would cause significant confusion in many other parts of the world where they mean the same thing or pertain to something very different to what the author(s) intended. Orderinchaos 21:57, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

While I would prefer that the entire discussion of media scope be done away as the WP:GNG manages well without it, this new wording would be more reflective of actual practice and give much needed flexibility compared to the current wording. CT Cooper · talk 22:35, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

User:CT Cooper, I invite you to explore the button at the top of the page that is labeled "search archives". Finding the discussions yourself will prevent you from being able to accuse anyone of misleading you or cherry-picking discussions.

As for the other points above, in no particular order:

• There is no ban on local sources. There is a requirement that one (1) non-local source exist. It need not even be cited in the article, but editors should be satisfied that the organization received at least a tiny bit of attention from just one source, instead of only receiving attention from its local newspaper. "One" out of the "multiple" required to establish notability leaves you with the possibility of including dozens or hundreds of local sources.
• EVENT limits the value of local sources because attention from a small-town newspaper is not evidence of attention from "the world at large" (that phrase is a direct quote from WP:N). ORG identically limits the value of local sources because attention solely from a small-town newspaper is still not evidence of attention from "the world at large".
• Whether an article must conform with the GNG or one of the many SNGs is a decision made at AFD by the editors participating there. The rule is not "meet the lowest of the available standards, and we guarantee that your article won't be deleted". In the case of local organizations and businesses, the higher standard is normally applied.
• There is no rule against a guideline using (and meaning) must. See WP:PGE and WP:POLICY, which says of both policies and guidelines, "Do not be afraid to tell editors directly that they must [do whatever is required]".
• "Private" is not a synonym for "commercial". Most private schools are non-profits in the US. Thousands of others are commercial entities. The rules are fundamentally the same for both.
• "Unlikely to survive deletion processes" is synonymous with "non-notable". Therefore these two sentences say effectively the same thing: if the org has never been noticed by anyone outside its hometown, then prepare to have the article deleted.
• The concept of regional media is not "US-centric". See w:de:Liste österreichischer Zeitungen for a list of regional newspapers in Austria. List of newspapers in the United Kingdom has regional newspapers for England and Wales. There are quite a few excellent regional papers in Germany and India.
• The GNG survives quite poorly without this restriction, unless your definition of "quite well" includes unfairly surprising good-faith editors with a list of unwritten rules during AFD. These "rules" about local sources being worth less than non-local sources (i.e., not worth as much as non-local sources, not being worthless/valueless) have been used for years and years at AFD. I think it is more helpful to put everyone on the same footing by writing down what the community actually wants—which is not, as it happens, attention solely from a hometown newspaper with very limited circulation and quite possibly reviewing every single restaurant in town, in alphabetical order so that there cannot being any hard feelings among either subscribers or advertisers.

And with that, I'd like to encourage you to stop thinking about schools and train stations (two areas that we've repeatedly proven can meet this standard with a small amount of work). I want you to start thinking about restaurants and gasoline stations and car dealerships. When you're trying to decide whether a restaurant is notable, do you want a small-town weekly newspaper, with a circulation maybe 1,000 and a staff of exactly two (both of whom the restaurant owner has probably known by name since they were all kids together), to be treated the same as a restaurant review in Kronen Zeitung? And if you think it unfair to make every single small business in a small town be "notable", largely because their tiny local newspaper prints just about anything about anything that's happening in town, while only the relatively important ones in a large city get any notice, then how exactly would you describe that difference to people reading this guideline? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:01, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• I stopped reading when I got to, "In the case of local organizations and businesses, the higher standard is normally applied."  No, I don't agree, and I think that an argument like that at AfD would sound like Wikilawyering.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:49, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Well, that's fine, I guess. I hope that you noticed that I am merely stating a fact about what does happen, rather than expressing an opinion about what should happen. But if you don't want to deal with reality – if nothing else matters because all those AFD participants are saying things you don't want them to say – then maybe there's not much point in your participation here after all.  :-( WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:08, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
    • Curious to know what Lila would think of one of her staff (a community liaison, no less!) ordering someone off a guideline talk page simply because they dare to disagree. Not a good look, I have to say. Orderinchaos 22:40, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
      • It's impossible for me to be "ordering someone off" when he previously announced that s/he stopped reading solely because he didn't appreciate a plain statement of a relevant fact. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:19, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
        • Technicalities don't really excuse that you were clearly trying for a "chilling effect". I'd suggest not digging when in a hole to be a good strategy at this point. Orderinchaos 09:28, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
• WP:NSPORTS says "local sources must be clearly independent of the subject, and must provide a level of coverage beyond WP:ROUTINE" I think that's the point. Some local press coverage reads like WP:ROUTINE announcement; some is just press coverage. Certainly we can't write an encyclopedic article if they are the only sources we can find. However, some local paper articles do contain in-depth coverage, such as coverage of the organization's history, cultural importance, etc. ( In my own view, this article contributes to establishing notability of Shanghai Natural History Museum. Actually it's not a local source. I've seen much deeper coverage of other topics in some local sources though.) Whether the source is local is not that important, while its independence and depth is. --114.81.255.40 (talk) 13:28, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
  • If a tiny local newspaper decides to run restaurant reviews of all (five) of the restaurants in town, do you believe that the source is independent? If you lived there, you would know that the sports editor was a bartender at one of them—but this won't be mentioned in the story. Does that change your opinion? If you grew up there, you would know that the journalist and the restaurant's manager were high school sweethearts—but this won't be mentioned in the story. Does that change your opinion? If you follow town politics, you'll notice that the editor and the owner are on opposite sides of town politics—but this won't be mentioned in the story. Does that change your opinion? If you know the publisher, you'll know that he has an editorial policy of boosterism: the future of his business depends on promoting the town as a great place to live. All the restaurants received favorable reviews, even the one "restaurant" that is nothing more than a hot dog stand attached to a gasoline station. Does that change your opinion?
    WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
• I offer no apologies for giving these guidelines some much needed scrutiny. I have watched this page for a long time, but I have reviewed the archives anyway, and I have found no evidence of any real consensus in favour of not counting "local sources" when it comes to notability. AfD participants can say what they like, but WP:N is very clear that SNGs provide an alternative path to notability rather than imposing additional requirements. As it stands, if people at AfD are demanding otherwise, then they are acting against current policy, in the same way that those that cite WP:OUTCOMES as policy are doing so. If a ban on "local sources" counting towards notability (this is an accurate description of the current wording; local coverage alone cannot be counted towards notability) is necessary then it should be in the WP:GNG as well as or instead of being here. I've heard the argument that WP:N discreetly includes such a ban before, but such arguments don't stand up to scrutiny. "The world at large" wording does not go against local coverage, and interpreting it in that way implies that only international sources should count towards notability – as regional or national coverage isn't "the world at large" either – so I think it's fair to conclude that this interpretation is wrong. A more accurate interpretation is that this a short way of saying that third-party and independent sources are needed to count towards notability, particularly given that this language is in the nutshell rather than in the actual guideline.
• I do think using the word "must" in guidelines is problematic and inherently contradictory, but that's really for discussion elsewhere – as I've already stated, this is already common practice which is why I didn't challenge it before. On the wording of WP:AUD in general, I'm remain open minded, but as cited above, simple routine announcements or coverage is already disallowed to prevent run-of-the-mill institutions being considered notable, so a blanket ban is not necessary. There maybe isolated cases of some local publications not being truly independent but they can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and I have to say I don't think this issue is limited to just "local sources". In any case, just treating all local sources worldwide as the same makes no sense at all. On the issue of regional verses local coverage, yes that distinction might work very well in some countries such as the UK and the USA, but in other places it doesn't work well at all. Australia is a good example, and I will elaborate on this if necessary and if others don't do so. There are plenty of other problems too, and I'm really just getting warmed up here – for example, dealing with websites, which are worldwide by definition so the entire concept of scope is highly blurred in those cases.
• Overall, if it is considered necessary to retain WP:AUD, then I think the wording should be on the lines that the scope of coverage can be considered when assessing notability, but it is not a dictating factor, and the mere fact that only "local sources" are used does not disqualify an article from meeting notability requirements. CT Cooper · talk 16:30, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
  • You keep saying things like {{xt|"I have found no evidence of any real consensus in favour of not counting "local sources""), and I'm starting to wonder if I should find a translator. There is no ban on local sources. Local sources definitely count towards notability. However, there is one, rather small limitation: there must be one non-local source that at least mentions the subject. Local sources can "count" for 99% of the notability and 100% of the content. If the only source of information about your business is a tiny newspaper that only prints information about the local residents, then your business really isn't notable, no matter how many stories you convince your neighbor or friend (who runs the newspaper) to publish about your business, or how long they are. A local newspaper might decide to do an in-depth story on the church being re-painted or getting new carpet put in: the fact that it was published doesn't mean that the church deserves an article of Wikipedia.
  • SNGs provide alternatives. They do not necessarily provide easier routes. What people do at AFD is our actual policy. The guidelines exist to give people information about the consensus at AFDs.
  • The concept of a regional newspaper works just fine down under: see List of newspapers in Australia for dozens of examples of regional newspapers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
    • Here's one for you: Broome Senior High School. Biggest high school in the Kimberleys, main school in a key tourist town, but 2,240 km from the nearest regional newspaper (if one assumes WA to be the region), clearly notable on its own, but in order to meet this guideline it has to rely on a news story about a disaster. If the disaster (which only got momentary attention) hadn't occurred, as was the case for many years of its history, only local sources would be available. Not even the first time I've seen this particular problem. I suspect you're misreading the word "regional" at the Australian newspapers article to mean what you think it means - here it actually means "country". Orderinchaos 22:34, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
      • Have another source. It has nothing to do with the fire, and it's non-local coverage by regional news media. This wasn't even hard: it took me two minutes to find that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:35, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
    • Since the guideline is in English and all discussion in this talk page is in English, then I do not see why anyone would need a translator. At worst, there is a trivial disagreement over the use of a few words. It would of course help if the guideline itself was straight on the issue. The current wording of "On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, national, or international source is necessary." almost contradicts itself by saying that local media is not an indication of notability, then it says it is, except there has to be at least one "non-local source". Clearly, there is a ban, a ban on "local sources" establishing notability, which is only slightly different from a ban on local sources counting towards notability. I will make this distinction clear in future remarks.
    • Really I would say if anything, a ban on "local sources" establishing notability is even less logical than banning them from counting towards notability. Either a source is suitable to be counted towards notability or it can't, and this rule results in some absurd situations which ironically often go against the spirit of WP:EVENT, to which I note has been used repeatedly to justify this ban. For example Business A could have fifty "local sources", all independent and reliable, covering it from a long period of time which has allowed a good article to be written. Yet following this guideline, this well written article on Business A should be deleted. Then we have business B, with three "local sources" covering it, again all independent and reliable, but we also have one "national source" covering a one-off robbery – so this one incident suddenly makes this Business B notable under this guideline. Business B might be notable under the WP:GNG, but it shouldn't pass while Business A doesn't.
    • WP:N is absolutely clear on how SNGs operate. "A topic is presumed to merit an article if all of the following are true: [...] It meets either the general notability guideline below or [bold added] the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right." The meaning of "or" is that an article has to follow one or the other, not both. Some editors may choose to ignore it, but the meaning is clear. I would argue given that WP:N is one of the core guidelines of this project and any significant changes have to subject to widespread community consensus (with notifications on WP:CENT etc), its contents overrides local discussions, such as ones on this talk page and at individual AfDs in the event of a contradiction per WP:CONLIMITED. Really the whole argument "this guideline has to say local sources can't establish notability because people at AfD say so" is a self-fulfilling prophecy, since people at AfD will say that because it says so on the guideline! In any case, I'm doubtful any significant number of articles deleted on grounds of local sources not establishing notability would not have been deleted anyway on other grounds, for example, the sources provided only being routine coverage. And in practice in certain areas WP:AUD is being regularly ignored, such as with schools, which is probably why not many people have made too much of a fuss over it before now.
    • People from Australia who know the media well there seem to have a different opinion. Putting aside the fact that local third-party sources go beyond newspapers, the argument to which this rule seems to be based, that being that every "local newspaper" in the entire world is in cahoots with local business or residents, while "regional newspapers" never have this problem is just nonsense, not to mention highly insulting to local journalism. Such things have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with evidence presented in each case – it is worth bearing in mind that accusing a specific newspaper of such things may be considered libellous. In my local area the local newspapers don't even print restaurant reviews – and almost all news coverage such as restaurant opening would fall under routine coverage. CT Cooper · talk 15:08, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

actually, in each subject specific guideline this can be specified differently. The right way to do it is to make sure the guideline says what it means. (as does WP:PROF, for example which has always explicitly said it is an alternative. It can sometimes be an additional requirement beyond the GNG. 15:07, 4 October 2014 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs)

WP:N is clear on how SNGs fit in with the WP:GNG. SNGs can say what they wish but they will always be an alternative path to notability, not an additional requirement, at least not an enforceable one, as policy is clear that any article can be presumed notable if it passes the GNG. CT Cooper · talk 11:27, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

• What I see interesting is the very large bad faith blanket assumption in the honesty, integrity and reliability of local papers over that of the Regional/National brands when experience shows us they arent the pillars of honesty, integrity or reliability we pretend them to be. The "collective of information" over time is the more important aspect regardless of the size of the newspaper that printed the story, even a local newspaper cant avoid the fact false reviews wont change reality that continuation of them are more likely to quickly destroy its reader/revenue base than that of a national rag with deep pocketed owners. Gnangarra 23:33, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
  • We're not impugning their honesty, integrity, or reliability. We're impugning their selectivity: a local newspaper will frequently run stories on just about anything that happens in town: Restaurant opened? Write a story. Restaurant failed? Write another story. Every single church in a small town can count on newspaper coverage at some point; the larger and/or better connected ones can assume multiple stories each year. In a very small town, the local newspaper will run stories about the fact that someone's grandchildren visited for Christmas. Do two of those ("multiple") make the grandkids notable? No? So why should two stories in exactly the same small-town newspaper make the local restaurant notable?
    Small-town newspapers tend to be a bit indiscriminate. They're "reliable"—they get their facts straight—but they publish things that nobody outside the town would care about, and the coverage is not proportional. Treating attention in a small-town weekly as being equal to attention in a national newspaper means that we can have articles about every single restaurant in any town with a population of 5,000 or so people, but that otherwise identical restaurants (possibly even owned by the same people) that happen to be located in a large city are somehow non-notable. This is a nonsensical outcome: similar restaurants should get similar treatment on Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:29, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
    • All of which means we basically can't use regional newspapers in Australia (which you were extolling a couple of days ago) because the vast majority of them listed on the page you linked don't even serve 2,000, let alone 5,000. This is getting more confusing by the minute. Orderinchaos 09:36, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
      • A town of 5,000 does not mean a circulation of 5,000, despite managing editors fervently wishing that even the local babies would subscribe to their papers. A population of 5,000, in a perfectly average US town, likely means about 700 paid subscribers for a daily paper. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:31, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
        • Which only goes back-up the point of Orderinchaos, in which many Australian "regional papers" have a smaller circulation than "local papers" elsewhere. Also claims that "we are not insulting local journalists" would gain greater credibility if these silly slurs against local journalism came to an end. No reasonable person thinks that babies will subscribe to a newspaper. CT Cooper · talk
• Delete. I agree with comments above to the effect that WP:AUD should be deleted. James500 (talk) 21:06, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
• There seems to be an elephant in the room for Australian editors anyway - the existence of Trove, the NLA online catalogue of materials relevant to Australia, I have not seen in my limited viewing - a challenge of a source that is linked to Trove - and it contains newspaper sources for events/places that simply do not show up on the dreaded GNG and similar beasts, and it extracts items from newspapers that are regularly used to establish the legitimacy of a subject - as to whether it can be proved that a subject found in Trove sources can be denied veracity and consequently notability, hmm. I used to be an editor of a small regional newspaper in a small Australian mining town some decades ago, and I would consider that to discount subjects or sources due to lack of google hits means absolutely nothing. satusuro 11:38, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
  • It's always frustrated me that people say, "There's nothing on Google, so this obviously important organization isn't notable". A good search means figuring out what newspapers are in the area, and searching their websites directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:35, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
    • Which of course only works if the organisation is about 5 years old or less. There's a well-known problem with the "black hole of history" between the end of effective copyright in the 50s and the start of mass online archiving in the early 2000s. Even going back a few years often hits unbreachable paywalls. Orderinchaos 09:26, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
      • Hitting paywalls in a search often tells you enough about notability. You'll see how many articles, sometimes their length, and always their topics. If you see a series of headlines like "Foo Restaurant opens", "Foo Restaurant sued in wage dispute", "Foo Restaurant wins award", "Foo Restaurant burned down; owner vows to rebuild", and "Foo Restaurant owner arrested for arson", then an experienced editor can usually make a good guess about the notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:19, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
        • Assuming you can even afford the hefty amount involved to get onto the website to do the search in the first place. News Ltd which owns 70% of Australian newspapers has this specific problem - you need to be a member, and membership doesn't come cheap ($1.75 a search!). I think it's time to just concede that your US-centric view of the world isn't a global one, that this guideline is meant to be global and that its present wording isn't doing the job. You've heard from plenty of non-Americans telling you that this is so, but your responses seem to be trying to pick holes rather than be constructive. I admire your solo efforts to block change, but consensus is very much somewhere else on this page. Orderinchaos 22:51, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
          • Nobody promised that sources would be free. In fact, we say quite the opposite. In some cases, to get access to sources, you'll have to physically travel to the source, which is even more expensive that signing up for one of the many online archives. However, limited searching is free to anyone on that website: you can get search results of up to 20 articles in the last 10 years for one paper at a time, free, whenever you want. Here are three more that mention Broome Senior High School. Unlimited searching requires a subscription account but searching is free. Once you have an account, the charges are only for downloading the articles, not for searching. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

• We have tried to add something like AUD to the GNG, but found it too broad considering the scope of the GNG, thus leaving it to the SNGs to be more specific where the situation might occur. This primarily localized it to ORG and for NSPORTS. Removal of AUD from here would be a poor move as it does accurately meet the fact that coverage only from local sources does not make a business/organization notable. The language of AUD is good in that it is not specific about this, allowing edge cases where necessary. --MASEM (t) 16:56, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

• One reason such a proposal has never been implemented as there is nothing close to a wider community consensus to the idea. I have yet to come across any valid reason why a ban on local sources of any kind could not be incorporated into the GNG. As has been already explained, that is the only way such a ban could be enforceable. The proposal being made is to revise AUD, that could include complete removal or it could not. No specific plan has been formulated yet. In any case, if there is one thing this discussion has revealed is that neither a ban on local sources establishing notability or counting towards notability is not a "fact" in any sense of the word. CT Cooper · talk 18:53, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

• I agree that it should be written not to ban local sources in an article, but the contribution of local source towards notability is an issue, and while I can't put any absolute number (it will be gamed) , a local business which has roughly 50% of its notability from local sources is likely notable for WP, while if it was 90% or more, likely not notable, but it will depend, as well, on exactly those local sources. This all keeping in mind IAR.
• The prior approach at GNG was to consider that local sources are less independent when discussing local issues than regional/national ones, but it was very hard to find a way to happily codify this. --MASEM (t) 19:11, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

• I too would oppose removing WP:AUD. And we definitely should separate the issue of "venue of coverage" from the issue of "depth of coverage"

Consider the following... "Joe's Gulp & Gas", a combination restaurant and filling station, opens in a small town. The local home town newspaper (total circulation limited to the 100 residents of the town) publishes a full page review raving about how wonderful the food is. Despite the length of that review, I don't think it is enough to off set the problem with the "venue of coverage". A local small circulation paper is simply not large enough to establish that the restaurant is notable.

Now... suppose that, the next week, the New York Times publishes a guide to "The best small town eateries", and includes a short paragraph on Joe's Gulp & Gas... While the "depth of coverage" is somewhat weak, that short NYT review will be seen by millions of readers. I would say that the NYT review is an indication that the restaurant is notable (indeed it may be responsible for making the restaurant notable), despite the shallowness of coverage. Blueboar (talk) 18:38, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

• I don't think anyone is saying that one local source could establish notability. Multiple sources is almost always required. I'm also not completely against the idea that sources with a higher scope can be given a greater weight compared to local sources, not withstanding the observation that there has been a tendency to overgeneralize on this issue and each individual case should be looked at on its merits. CT Cooper · talk 18:53, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

• We appear to be edging towards an acceptable revision (not removal) of the section. Something along the lines of "In assessing notability, any given degree of coverage will be assigned greater weight if it appears in media sources with larger size and geographical distribution of readership (or audience)". This avoids drawing a hard-&-fast line between "regional" and "local" media. Total removal of the section, however, would leave us with no basis for rating three sentences in the New York Times more highly than the same text in the Noysterville News. The section may also be retitled "Readership (size and range)", as (a) most of the discussion has centred on newspapers, and (b) I don't think we are asked to consider any other imputed characteristic of the readership (or audience) beyond how many and how widespread they are: Noyster (talk), 11:04, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

• Yes I agree that the emerging consensus seems to be towards a revision of that nature, and against total removal. CT Cooper · talk 14:23, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

• I disagree. Not one of the examples given in support of WP:AUD is obviously an organization.They all appear to be buildings (or rooms in a building). Churches, schools, restauraunts, train stations and gas stations are all places. My advice would be to delete the entire section per WP:TNT. It is so muddled that it would be better to start from scratch. James500 (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

• That's just wrong (except for train stations). A restaurant is not a building; it's a business. A school is a group of people (teachers) who teach another group of people (students).
  A train station is a place. The organization is the Railway company that operates it. A church building is a place (as is a parish), but the church itself is the association of people. When someone says "that church failed to protect children from sexual predators", they're not talking about some pile of bricks and glass. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
• The Compact OED defines a restaurant as "a place" and a church as "a building". It does give an alternative definition of Church as an organization,but the example you gave (fitting a carpet) clearly refers to something being done to a building. The Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary defines a gas station as "a place" (and it is a collection of petrol pumps with a shop attached): [2]. "Dictionary of Architecture and Building Construction" defines a school as "a building or complex": [3]. Other sources do call it an institution, but this will only matter if they occupy multiple sites or have moved from one location to another (not likely). The examples offered are ones which are likely to be practically indistinguishable from the single location they occupy. James500 (talk) 01:37, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster defines a restaurant as "a business establishment where meals or refreshments may be purchased". Wiktionary says, "An eating establishment in which diners are served food at their tables." Our encyclopedia article says that a restaurant "is a business which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money".

I'm prepared to conclude either that OED was either being sloppy or that they mistakenly believed that their readers were not trying to wikilawyer businesses into geographic features. Either way, a restaurant is still not a location. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Looking at GBooks, I see quite a few dictionaries and other sources which say a restaurant is a "place" or an "eating house" (my emphasis) including Webster, Funk and Wagnell and case law: [4][5]. My idea of a restaurant is a place, that consists of a dining room and a kitchen, where a business is conducted. I would expect ORG to apply to a corporation that owned multiple restaurants. James500 (talk) 09:58, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

The answer is that a restaurant/shcool/church is both an organization and a place/location/building. Thus, both WP:ORG and WP:GEOFEAT apply. How to apply them is essentially a balancing game... Editors need to determine which is really notable (the business or the location), and focus the article based on that determination. In some cases it will be the building that is notable... in which case the business might not even be mentioned, or only mentioned in passing. (and vise versa). Blueboar (talk) 14:53, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. This guideline serves no useful purpose. The point of GNG is to ensure that we have adequate reliable sources to write a properly cited article. It shouldn't matter if the sources are read by only a few people. Many esoteric scientific topics are of interest to very few people, but we don't exclude them on the grounds that they are only discussed in academic journals of "limited circulation." It makes no sense to analogously discriminate against local media. Wikipedia ought to have a broader scope than mainstream national newspapers. --Sammy1339 (talk) 18:54, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

• I find Noyster's suggestion reasonable: "In assessing notability, any given degree of coverage will be assigned greater weight if it appears in media sources with larger size and geographical distribution of readership (or audience)", but I have a couple misgivings. One is that this language could be misinterpreted as prohibiting trade journals or academic journals from establishing notability. Another is that it is simply too vague, and is likely to result in endless AfD debates about how widely some sources are read. For these reasons, I think the "Presumed" caveat in WP:SIGCOV is sufficient to deal with cases of local newspapers reporting on the town church and the restaurant around the corner, high school papers reporting on the school band, and the like, and AUD ought to be removed. If we want to have a guideline that deals with these cases explicitly, it should be specific to avoid being misapplied elsewhere. For example, the guideline could say that individuals and local establishments, organizations, events, or landmarks such as businesses which are frequented almost exclusively by local people, require coverage by at least one non-local source in order to be notable. --Sammy1339 (talk) 19:17, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

• Individuals, events and landmarks are outside the scope of this guideline. James500 (talk) 11:51, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

"Attention"?

While we are here, let's discuss the use of the vague term "attention" in AUD. I propose we change that to a linked "significant coverage" to clarify what is meant. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:16, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I think the emerging consensus is that the whole section needs to be re-written or removed, with the nature of any changes being the natural next stage of this discussion. Though I agree with the principle that the word "attention" should be substituted for significant coverage. CT Cooper · talk 11:31, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

It's not mentioned in AUD for two reasons:

• WP:CORPDEPTH (immediately above) already covers this concept in detail. (Check both the first sentence of the entire guideline and the first sentence of this ==section== for find the exact phrase "significant coverage".) There was no perceived need to duplicate the phrase yet again.
• There was some concern that people would interpret it as a requirement that the significant coverage be in the non-local sources that AUD encourages, but reality at AFD is that a combination of significant coverage in a small-town newspaper plus almost any coverage at all (beyond a trivial namecheck) in a non-local source is usually accepted.

Given this, and the general lack of confusion on the ground, I oppose adding the phrase "significant coverage" for a third time in this guideline, and I specifically oppose shoe-horning it into a subsection that has nothing to do with the depth of coverage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Replacing one word with two is hardly introducing unnecessary repetition into the guideline. Consistent use of terminology is a good thing; using different words to mean the same thing is not. CT Cooper · talk 10:48, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm always in favor of necessary repetition; you can see evidence of that at WP:EL, which repeats "this guideline doesn't apply to reliable sources" half a dozen times now. I am, however, not in favor of unnecessary repetition. Where is your evidence that anyone reads this guideline and concludes that significant coverage is not required? I have not seen any significant confusion on this point for years (i.e., since CORPDEPTH was re-written). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with using the same word to indicate the same term consistently within a guideline, and I'm really not sure why such a big deal is being made of such a highly trivial change. Regardless, I'm sure people reach all kinds of conclusions given how poorly worded this section is as per my earlier observations. Even if the word is changed, it is akin to moving around deckchairs on the Titanic until more pressing issues are fixed. CT Cooper · talk 18:58, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree with using a less vague term. Attention is what you give a small child. Significant coverage is a defined and globally understood term. Orderinchaos 22:57, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

The word attention is used four times in the main WP:Notability guideline, including twice in the nutshell. I believe that this is a "globally understood term". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

• a minor coverage article published in a non-related topic publication can say more about that topics notability. The point which is being missed in this discussion is how to describe what aspects of a publications audience affect consideration for notability. Changing to significant coverage instead of attention is actually more restrictive and ignores the trivial "fish out of water" coverage publication which would carry weight on deciding notability. Gnangarra 12:17, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
  • That's a good example of the problem. The SIGCOV requirement is separate from the type-of-publication requirement. Combining them into one rule means that the guideline would not reflect actual practice, because "minor coverage" in some types of sources is given extra weight at AFD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
    • That's actually why I like the phrase "significant coverage"... To my thinking it is actually a very flexible concept... for one topic, having an in depth article in a specialist source can be considered "significant coverage"... while for a different topic, having a whole bunch of short mentions in multiple non-specialist sources can be considered "significant coverage". In each case, the level of coverage is "significant"... but in different ways Blueboar (talk) 02:21, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

User:Blueboar, this proposal is basically to ban that. They want to take this text:

Evidence of attention by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, national, or international source is necessary.

and make it say

Evidence of significant coverage by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, significant coverage solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, national, or international source is necessary.

So if you think that "an in-depth article in a specialist source can be considered 'significant coverage'" and good evidence of notability, then you presumably don't want to define "significant coverage solely from...media of limited interest" as being evidence of non-notability. The way it's written now, you need significant coverage from any kind of source, and any kind of attention (e.g., minor coverage) from a source that is unlikely to be indiscriminate (i.e., not a small-town newspaper or especially esoteric specialist source). The proposed re-write would significantly tighten notability requirements, and also cause it to diverge from current practice at AFD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

It is not a ban. It accords with what we need significant coverage, so as not to have original research claims of importance on things that are trivially attended to - the vague use of "attention" invites what we do not want. We could go with 'independent direct discussion of' but that is just more words. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:20, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree that you don't mean for it to be interpreted as a ban, but a ban on considering minor coverage is exactly how it will be interpreted by deletionists and spam-fighters at AFD. If we write "SIGCOV in national newspapers = notability, but SIGCOV in local newspapers = no notability"—which is, indeed, what we would be writing under this proposal—then people will start using that to say that all orgs must have SIGCOV in a major periodical. Right now, we say that any attention in a major periodical is enough, so long as you can get SIGCOV somewhere else.

If you actually wanted to change the guideline to ignore both minor coverage in major papers completely, then we could do that, but we should be intentional about that change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

No. Evidence of attention by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. Is either untrue or hopelessly vague because "evidence of attention" is meaningless or standardless. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:43, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

If you're right (that it's hopelessly vague or meaningless), then it should be easy to find diffs of people (e.g., in AFD discussions) that seem to be confused by this. Have you seen any such comments or disputes? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:35, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

OK... I think I see what the problem is... it all comes down to what we consider "significant" and what we do not. In terms of notability, I think you need to pass three basic tests to be significant... an examination of depth of coverage, width of coverage, and focus of coverage.

Depth of coverage examines how much space any given source devotes to the topic. Obviously, if a source devotes multiple paragraphs (or more) to discussing an organization, that is more significant in terms of depth of coverage than a passing mention in a source that is really talking about something else.

Width of coverage examines how many people are likely to have seen a source. A small circulation local newspaper is unlikely to have the width of coverage we are looking for. A wide circulation regional or national newspaper does.

Focus of coverage examines who the intended audience of the source is. Is the source intended for experts?... the general public?... a narrow group of investors... the alumni of the school? Focus of coverage is the trickiest to define in terms of "significance"... because the audience has to be significant in relation to the topic. It also depends on the reputation the source has among its intended audience. Is a specialist source aimed at industry experts significant in terms of focus?... that really depends on the reputation of the source among those experts. Some specialist sources can be very significant... others not at all significant. Blueboar (talk) 13:47, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

yep "significant" is as vague and can mean many things, but primarily when discussing content significant coverage is consider to mean volume. The problem is we need to define the outliners in meaning as being weighted coverage for sources subject and content ie;

• wider audience smaller coverage = significant coverage,
• narrow audience minor coverage = trivial(except in off topic coverage),
• minor audience large coverage = significant coverage Gnangarra 12:48, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Web-only news organization

I have a question that may provide a specific case for the WP:AUD discussion. Notability of WhoWhatWhy has been challenged on grounds of WP:WEBCRIT. That guideline is actually irrelevant because its two criteria apply to web content, not to the organization, and indeed the noteworthiness of the content on the website is unquestioned and I think pretty obviously unquestionable. I think the deletion challenge will die a natural death. But the noteworthiness of the organization seems to rest on WP:AUD, or at least I haven't found anything else. The results of investigation and research by their reporters are published in articles on their website which are cited, quoted, or picked up in their entirety by an international diversity of web, print, radio, and TV media. The site is called out in diverse places (it struck me that one is the the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals Library) as a go-to place for insight, and it gets close to a million unique hits per year. But it is very difficult to find any articles describing the organization itself in any extended way, beyond the mentions and brief discussions that I cited on the talk page for the article and the talk page for the deletion proposal. This seems to be in the nature of the beast. Its notability is primarily in the readership of its content, hence, WP:AUD. Is something more needed to recognize this class of organization?
Bn (talk) 21:47, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

This isn't really an AUD issue. It's a WP:WHYN issue: if you really can't find "any [independent sources] describing the organization itself in any extended way", then Wikipedia should not have an article about it, full stop. Without independent sources that describe the organization itself, then you cannot write an article about the organization that complies with WP:V and WP:NPOV. It's actually impossible to comply with these policies when the only possible sources are the subject.

That said, the media likes to write about its own industry. Before you give up, try contacting a reference librarian to see whether they have information that would be useful to you.

Finally, the AFD participants (especially the closing admin) are the ones who decide which of the potentially relevant guidelines they choose to apply. If they decide that WEBCRIT (or GNG, or ORG, or anything else) is more relevant, then it will be judged against the guideline that they choose, even if you believe that a different one is more relevant. There's nothing we can do about that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:23, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Since the issue is not the web content but the organization, WP:ORG is more apt than WP:AUD. It says "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability." That criterion is easy to meet. Whowhatwhy has international recognition, and in many places there are brief statements of what it does, how it does it, and the importance of what it does.

There are many independent sources talking briefly about the organization and what it does, but SFAIK no extended description of the organization as such in any one place, certainly nothing comparable to the 1990 book about CNN (which was published 10 years after its founding).

I'll keep looking. I have a substantial list of references to investigate, audio & video as well as print. It will take time for me to go spelunking through them.

This question was whether the properties of this sort of news organization as a class merited some specialization of the notability guideline. Maybe WP:ORG already provides the appropriate specialization. I haven't looked into the history, perhaps the reason for this provision is the difficulty getting non-publicity information about organizations because what an org does is generally more notable than what it is. This is certainly true of an org that only does investigative reporting.

Bn (talk) 17:15, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Trade journals and trade publications

Looking over WP:RSN archives, the community deems industry trade publications as reliable sources for what they report. However, there's an underlying view in those discussions that coverage in trade journals, while reliable, isn't a valid indicator of notability.

A trade publication may be reliable and independent as required by this guideline, but are they really secondary sources?

To me, they fall somewhere between primary and secondary. A trade publication may have reporting staff and editorial staff, perform fact checking, etc., but its purpose is to provide information to a specialized audience rather than to an audience of regional or national geographic scope. Also, many articles in trade journals are actually press releases rewritten but it's hard to tell when this occurs; in any case a primary source is a primary source whether it's published verbatim or rewritten.

I've come across company articles that rely heavily of industry trade publications to bulk up the sources, and I'm inclined toward deleting such articles if they come up in AFD decisions.

Perhaps I missed it but I couldn't find this point discussed here, and trade publications are not mentioned in the guideline. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:02, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

It depends (a lot) on the source. Anything along the lines of "compare and contrast" ("Which space modulator produces the most satisfying Earth-shattering kaboom?") is "analysis" and therefore secondary. I'd expect to find a fair bit of this in a trade publication.

Have you read WP:USEPRIMARY and WP:Secondary does not mean independent yet? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:18, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I have. Those essays don't address this specific issue.

Certainly, analysis qualifies as secondary. I'm referring to company news that isn't obviously a press release, for example this one. Pieces like that are common in such publications, and commonly cited in company articles.

Actually, this guideline sort of does mention trade publications, as "media of limited interest and circulation" in WP:AUD. Perhaps a short clarifying sentence with examples would help, especially because circulation is hard to judge for web-based media (some respected trade publications are not print sources; one on photovoltaics comes to mind). ~Amatulić (talk) 23:33, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, that particular source does seem to be pretty narrow in its interest, but I'm not sure that it's a "count for nothing at all" source. I wonder what other people think of it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that the particular example I chose counts for nothing. I believe it is a reliable source of information that would be useful for an article. But does such coverage, if found only in trade publications like this, confer notability on a company? In decisions regarding deletion and also AFC submissions, I have been leaning toward "no" as a general guideline. But that's just my interpretation. As a meta:Precisionism adherent, I would prefer more clarity in the official guideline. ~Amatulić (talk) 03:14, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• I am not in favour of this. Frankly, I would delete the existing reference to media of limited interest and circulation. I think "limited" is meaningless and the references to interest and circulation are likely to promote the lowest common denominator. This guideline needs to be cut back before any expansion is attempted. James500 (talk) 05:28, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
• I agree with James500: this guideline was probably never meant to say anything about trade journals and should be reworded (or eliminated) to make that clear. With the current wording, it could also be misinterpreted as applying to academic journals, which indeed are "media of limited interest and circulation." --Sammy1339 (talk) 19:23, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
• It perhaps needs clarifying (maybe in a footnote) as there's clearly some difficulty in interpretation, but to me it's clear: it's meant to apply to trade journals, to blogs, to industry catalogues and indexes, that have a limited readership. It's not because of their readership, i.e. it's not some crude numerical measure of how many people might have read it. It's the fact they focus on a particular industry, or a particular sector of it, and so cover it in far more depth than the mainstream press, reporting announcements from firms no matter how small and non-notable. The academic journal comparison is irrelevant; this is WP:ORG.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 21:04, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

• @JohnBlackburne: Academic journals can discuss organizations. They also generally satisfy the criteria you believe are the reason for these restrictions: they very likely "focus on a particular industry, or a particular sector of it, and so cover it in far more depth than the mainstream press...." Do you think that AUD should apply to academic journals? --Sammy1339 (talk) 21:39, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: It is not clear. It is meaningless gibberish nonsense. There is no point in trying to guess what it might mean because it doesn't mean anything. It should just be ripped out. Once we have done that, we can think about whether any further expansion is necessary. James500 (talk) 06:55, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

As for "trade journals", can you provide a reliable source that says they are all wholly indiscriminate in their coverage of organizations? James500 (talk) 07:16, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

What we seem to be discussing is difference between "range of audience" and "scope of audience". Range is based on geography (is the audience local, regional, national, international). Scope, on the other hand is based on expertise (is the audience specialists in a field, or the general public). A source with limited range rarely (if ever) establishes notability... but a source with limited scope can establish notability (depending on the range).

As with academic journals, trade journals usually have a limited scope (the audience is specialists and experts in the related trade)... but for notability purposes the important question is whether a given journal has a broad or narrow range. A plumbing trade journal only goes out to the 50 plumbers located in a rural county of Wyoming would not really qualify for establishing notability... On the other hand, a plumbing trade journal that goes out to the millions of plumbers around the world definitely would qualify for establishing notability. Blueboar (talk) 13:05, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

I have to object to using this criterion as well, again since many academic journals would fail it. Many research communities are highly localized, including many that may produce research relevant to organizations or companies. For example, until very recently the overwhelming majority of chemical engineering research was done in the United States, and journals that focus on specific topics within that subject might be read by only a few research groups, which could be localized in, say, Texas, or a few universities in Texas. Still, academic journal articles should always count toward establishing notability. I think we should restrict the guideline to saying exactly what we mean, not try to generalize to some fundamental principle. It should say something like: "Local organizations and establishments, including as businesses, sports organizations, and places of worship, which are frequented mainly by people from a small geographic area such as a single municipality, cannot derive notability solely from media which is not distributed to a significantly wider audience than the residents of that area." --Sammy1339 (talk) 16:11, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Places of worship are outside the scope of this guideline. James500 (talk) 11:55, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

School sports leagues

There are a lot of articles about US high school sports leagues and their subdivisions - such as Liberty League (California), with one reference and Section 8 (NYSPHSAA). The website used as a source for many of them is "MaxPreps: America's source for high school sports". Are they notable? Over at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports) I've been told that the Notability (sports) guideline defers to WP:ORG here. I don't see that these leagues satisfy WP:ORG: they are local, and don't show evidence to meet "Organizations whose activities are local in scope (e.g., a school or club) can be considered notable if there is substantial verifiable evidence of coverage by reliable independent sources outside the organization's local area." (or does coverage by Maxpreps fit this?). Any thoughts? PamD 10:51, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Very Iffy... The issue isn't really whether the league itself is local... but whether coverage of the league is local, regional or national. A quick google search on the Liberty League did not turn up much in the way of sourcing beyond Maxpreps ... and the google news hits predominantly related to a collegiate level league (in the North East) that has the same name. Indeed... I was hard pressed to find even local news coverage of the league. So, it really does seem to come down to the question: "Is the Maxpreps website, alone, enough to establish notability?" I too have to question that. Blueboar (talk) 12:07, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

For the second one and the related Section 1 (NYSPHSAA), I severely doubt notability due to lack of independent sources. The Banner talk 17:43, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Does WP:CONFLICT mean I shouldn't edit an article about an organization of which I am a member?

In general, I understand that in biographical articles, the subject of an article is discouraged from self-editing. Makes sense -- if they're notable, plenty of other interested parties will probably do it, and have a better stab at maintaining NPOV. But in the case of membership organizations, most interested parties will have themselves joined the org as members. Are they then discouraged from editing the article about the org? Or is that okay as long as they stick to the other guidelines? *Is* there a guideline on this? I couldn't find one explicitly stated, one way or the other. Thanks for whatever perspective and clarification you can offer this very-occasional wikipedian! Myself248 (talk) 18:54, 5 November 2014 (UTC)