Wikipedia:Training/For students/General notability guideline
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Beyond the Five Pillars…
Notability
The basic requirement for a topic to have its own article is: significant coverage in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject.
- significant coverage means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material.
- Published means "made available to the public in some form".
- reliable sources, for the sake of establishing notability, generally means at least two independent source from reputable publishers. For example, mainstream newspaper articles, non-vanity books, established magazines, scholarly journals, television and radio documentaries – sources with editorial oversight and a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.
This means generally not random personal websites, blogs, forum posts, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, self-published sources like open wikis (including other Wikipedia articles), etc. (These need not necessarily be in English or be available for free or online.) Multiple sources from the same author or organization are considered a single source for establishing notability.
- independent and secondary excludes works produced by those affiliated with the subject or its creator. While primary and other connected sources may be useful to verify certain facts, they must be used with caution and do nothing to establish notability. In short, we are looking for secondary sources written by third parties to a topic that have no vested interest in the subject of their writing or coverage.
This means generally not anything written by or on behalf of the subject or anyone connected with the person or organization in any way; not the subject's own website, not the subject's social media, not interviews (with the person, or of an organization's employees, officers or other insiders), and not press releases, regardless of where they are republished. An unconnected source is, for example, a newspaper reporter covering a story that they are not involved in except in their capacity as a reporter.
Verifiable information on topics that do not meet the notability guideline may still be included within articles on broader topics.
