Wikipedia talk:The GNG and notability for actors

Thoughts by Phantomsteve

Although I understand your points, although I think I should point out that WP:ENT is part of Wikipedia:Notability (people) (WP:BIO).

Although the WP:ENT section doesn't mention where coverage is to be found, it is part of the "Additional criteria" - but it is still covered by the basic criteria listed at the top of WP:BIO:

A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject.

• If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may not be sufficient to establish notability.
• Primary sources may be used to support content in an article, but they do not contribute toward proving the notability of a subject.

This is the basic criteria - the bits at WP:ENT are in addition to this. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 10:34, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes... and WP:BIO and its subsection WP:ENT are some of the "subject specific" criteria referred to in WP:NOTE, paragraph 2, and my conclusions are supported by the wording of Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Additional_criteria. I simply wanted to stress that per guideline, the GNG is not the be-all and end-all in determining notability. I will clarify and and stress that per WP:V reliablity of sources is mandatory, but meeting the GNG is not. Thank you very much. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 10:46, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Thoughts from User:DGG

Relationship between guidelines
There are five alternatives for any type of subject:

1. to use the GNG as the only criterion
2. to use the GNG and require additional standards as well
3. to use the alternative of the GNG or other standards
4. to not use the GNG at all but use other standards

There are different situations: for some subjects the GNG seems extremely sensible, for some it is much too broad, for others much too narrow. In many cases we deal with it by requiring the sources for notability to be of a special sort--we can for example either include or exclude local sources. We can require standards less stringent than WP:V, or more stringent than it. And we can use other criteria entirely for the actual decisions--such as ONE EVENT , or NOT NEWS. This is all up to us. Nobody prescribed the GNG to us, and attempts to erect even the general guideline of WP:N to the status of a policy rather than a guideline have always failed decisively. Even policies have exceptions, even policies can have special cases, even policies can change. And WP:N is not even a policy, but a guideline, intended to have deviations from it not just as exceptional cases, but as a routine matter. How we want to do it is up to us. Too many people speak about WP:N as if it were a foundational principle. It is not--the true related foundational principle is that WP is and encyclopedia, and not indiscriminate--which leaves a very wide range of possibilities. Too many people speak as if there were one rule to bind us in all cases. But there is not: we have no Sauron.

In practice, the problem with the GNG for actors is the different types of actors, and the different availability of sources. We ought more lenient in the nature of the sources for actors in fields where mainstream sources are not customarily available, as for other subjects where that is the case. We ought to be less so in fields where even the minor actors are fully covered by multiple widely available sources. What specifically they should be I don't think I can reasonably judge, as it is not my subject. DGG ( talk ) 15:36, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Ramblings by Ginsengbomb

As Zoe tells Mal in the marvelous sci-fi movie Serenity, after listening attentively to an explicitly agreeable but implicitly shaky rumination on space cowboy ethics: "Sir, I don't disagree on any particular point."

I find myself in a similar, cop-out-ish position with regard to this well-considered essay. There is literally nothing in it that I wholeheartedly disagree with, but the entire conclusion it seems to aim at, without explicitly doing so, is something with which I disagree. In theory, I agree that WP:GNG is only a guideline; that if an entertainer, artist, band, company, whatever, meets the relevant guidelines at their individual section on notability, they don't necessarily have to pass muster with WP:GNG. In practice, however, as is implied in the essay and discussed above by DGG, there's a judgment call to be made there, and in practice I make that judgment call via WP:GNG, which I tend to let essentially supersede guidelines such as WP:ENT in all but the most unusual of cases.

My thinking really is, in general, that someone meeting any of the criteria at WP:ENT is almost certainly going to pass muster with WP:GNG but that in cases where an entertainer appears to pass WP:ENT but doesn't pass WP:GNG, I become suspicious of the degree to which they pass WP:ENT, and my instinctive judgment call is to decline them the benefit of the doubt with regard to notability and/or inclusion, unless proven otherwise.

Everything must be verifiable, of course, but not everything verifiable is going to make it into the encyclopedia. I know neither this essay nor its author disputes this, but it's never not worth pointing that out.

I hope this made something like sense. I don't think a fine-tuned policy response is valid here because this is all pretty big picture, broad strokes stuff. Either way, it's a good essay, it's interesting, I just don't want to let respect for the "things aren't all WP:N all the time here" point of view, technically accurate that it may be, supersede apparent consensus that "things are usually WP:N here." I'm not even sure this essay does that, it's just my knee-jerk response. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 23:17, 2 May 2010 (UTC)