Wikipedia:Notability

[[Category:Wikipedia wp:n
wp:nns|Notability]]

For an essay on evaluating notability, see Wikipedia:Notability/Arguments.

Topics in most areas must meet a minimum threshold of notability in order for an article on that topic to remain on Wikipedia. This is a necessary result of Wikipedia being a neutral, verifiable encyclopedia: a subject needs to be of sufficient importance that there are multiple reliable secondary sources, independent of the subject, on which we can base a verifiably neutral article without straying into original research. The terms "importance" and "significance" are also in use, and for practical purposes on Wikipedia they are similar.

The guidelines shown in the table on the right have been created, or are under discussion, to set out more precisely what these thresholds should be. They generally assert that a minimum standard for any given topic is that it has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, where the source is independent of the topic itself.

Articles on subjects with borderline notability are frequently merged into list articles (e.g. List of esoteric programming languages), or into an article on a related subject (e.g. articles about not-well-known relatives of a famous person tend to be merged into the article on the person itself).

Articles on non-notable subjects are nominated for Proposed Deletion and Articles for Deletion, and the article's merits are discussed, as can be seen through precedents. An article on the topic of a person, a group of people, a band, or a club that does not even assert the notability of that topic can be deleted without argument. If you are unsure a topic is notable, but do not wish to nominate it for deletion, you can tag it with {{Notability}} or one of the more specific notability templates to request that its notability be clarified.

Rationale

• In order to have a verifiable article, a topic must be notable enough that it will be described by multiple independent sources.
• In order to have a neutral article with minimal errors, a topic must be notable enough that there will be independent, neutral sources for the article and non-partisan editors interested in editing it.
• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. As such, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate directory of businesses, websites, persons, etc.

See also

The use of notability in the deletion process is one of the more contentious issues on Wikipedia. This page documents the current way in which notability is used, particularly in the deletion process, but does not aim to define what that use should be. There are (and have been) several proposals to alter the status quo, or essays discussing various points of view on the issue such as:

• Wikipedia:Non-notability, an active proposal to use only verifiability in regard to whether "non-notable" subjects should be included in Wikipedia.
• User:Uncle G/On notability An essay on the necessity of considering notability to determine inclusion or exclusion of articles.
• Wikipedia:Notability/Arguments A list of arguments for both application and non-application of notability.