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Specific question re: trivial mention and self-published sources

Hi. I have a question regarding trivial mentions and a self-published source on an article I am considering nominating for deletion. I don't want to waste other users' time nominating unless I am certain my interpretations are right. Would I be ok to post specific information here with a view to getting feedback, or is this noticeboard only for general discussion? Boynamedsue (talk) 07:09, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Great, thanks. The article in question is William Dickson (Falklands), it is the biography of an early settler of the Falkland Islands, who was present at the British takeover of the islands in 1833. Boynamedsue (talk) 13:54, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Trivial mentions?

There are probably at least 10 valid sources which mention him similarly to the following example (taken from The Falklands Story 1592-1982, by Mary Cawkill):

Mention 1 

"A flagstaff was put up at the house of Vernet's storekeeper, William Dickson, who in the absence of Brisbane was the senior British resident on the islands, and the Union Jack hoisted." p.36

Mention 2 

"It was this [limiting of the gaucho's freedom to catch wild cattle], not the payment by Brisbane to them in paper money instead of silver, as the British government was to allege [...] that sparked off the gaucho eruption which, on 26th August 1833, resulted in the deaths of Brisbane, the storekeeper Dickson, the capataz of gauchos, an Argentinean and a German trader in a massacre which would become known as the Port Louis murders." p.39

There are slight variations in the sources, some mention his Irish birthplace or nationality, some specify that he was instructed to raise the Union Jack when boats arrived, and some call him a leading citizen. None are more than 2 sentences.

Is this type of mention "trivial" and therefore no good for establishing notability? Does the volume of sources make any difference (like I say, I reckon I could put nearly 10 similarly worded texts as references)? Boynamedsue (talk) 13:54, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Self-published source for establishing notability

There is one source that gives a much bigger mention of Dickson. The Dictionary of Falkland Biography article on him, written by David Tatham, a diplomat and former governor of the Falklands. It does not mention anything we could really call notable, beyond what is mentioned above, but there are more details of his life spread over 2 paragraphs, so I think it is fair to say he has significant coverage in this source.

The source concerns me because it is self-published, and as I understand it, self-published sources are not ideal for establishing notability. Tatham is not a historian and it appears to be his only published work, furthermore, a significant number of the entries are of people who would not meet the criteria for notability in wikipedia.

Should this source count for establishing notability? Boynamedsue (talk) 13:54, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

This is somewhat disingenuous, there is more to establishing the reason for Dickson being a notable individual albeit minor in the History of the Falkland Islands. Dickson was entrusted with raising the British flag by Captain Onslow during the British return of 1833. He also precipitated a major event in Falklands History by devaluing promissory notes issued by Luis Vernet leading to an event known as the Gaucho murders of August 1833. The Gaucho murders resulted in the deaths of the 5 senior employees of Vernet (including Dixon), largely ending the relationship with Argentina and resulting in the installation of the first British resident in 1834.
The statement is also misrepresentative of The Dictionary of Falkland Biography, which was a project led by David Tatham to assemble a definitive history of notable individuals in Falklands history. The vast majority of papers are by respected academics and whilst David Tatham himself had a noted career as a diplomat and served as a governor, he is also well known in the Falkland Islands Association as an expert on Falklands history and regularly contributes historical papers to the FIA magazine.
Further, this is not the only known source for establishing notability, it is however one of the few that have details about this individuals life beyond the events he is notable for other than the Vernet papers held in the Argentine national archive. I have access to some of these primary sources, which verify the details in Tatham.
I fear this is an example of forum shopping [1],[2] after trying and failing to get support on other notice boards his position and finding opposition to the edits he has tried to edit war into wikipedia. WCMemail 14:28, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
I certainly am forum shopping, I've failed to find any comment from anybody so far! That's why I am grateful to anybody who wants to give their opinion, whether it supports my interpretation or not. Boynamedsue (talk) 14:32, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
Just regarding the promissory notes, I have seen no sources that mention Dickson devaluing them, and there are none linked on the article. Boynamedsue (talk) 14:50, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
As I pointed out to you I can provide a source for that statement, your problem is you are relying on limited sourcing. WCMemail 14:56, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
I'm sorry but if you don't mention your sources, they don't count. I put a section on the talk page for people to add sources that might prove notability. Do you want to add it now so that if anybody here wants to comment they can? Boynamedsue (talk) 16:51, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Part of the problem we have here is that we have Boynamedsue continually insisting that unless we all do exactly what he says, when he says it, he will try to get the article deleted. This is distinctly unhelpful, particularly when coupled with the forum shopping, with non-neutral or inaccurate comments.

As I noted at one of the other places where this has been raised, I do not accept that Tatham is a self-published source within the spirit of WP:SPS. Kahastok talk 16:11, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

ok, I really wish we could avoid another bunfight. I neutrally requested contribution on the merger thread from two relevant wikiprojects, (as per the merger/AfD guidelines) history and biography. I offered you the opportunity to rewrite the question but you declined. The merger argument is reaching a consensus for no merger. The AfD guidelines would then suggest going for AfD, but I don't want to unless I am right about the sources, which is why I'm asking here. Boynamedsue (talk) 16:34, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
Boynamedsue, based on the comments here, I think you have little chance of getting the article deleted. If you think that it's not suitable – that is, that it would not be possible for an interested editor to produce a reasonably complete and neutral article, of more than a few sentences in length – then you might consider whether it could be WP:MERGEDUP to another page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to comment at the article, which I think is what this is really about. North8000 (talk) 17:19, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Is WP:SUSTAINED for websites as well?

WP:SUSTAINED is a bit vague. If a website gets a lot of sudden coverage mentioning it was shut down, and the only other mention it ever got was when they tried in the past to shut it down for piracy, is that notable? Wikipedia:Notability (web) also mentions Wikipedia:PERMASTUB. If the article will never have anything possible written in it other than something brief, since there is nothing to expand it with, should it exist? Dream Focus 00:37, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Probably not. Two brief flurries of coverage isn’t much better than one brief flurry of coverage. Blueboar (talk) 01:30, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Sustained would apply to all topics but as I note below, how long we expect varies by topic. For a website, if it has been up for years, I'd expect "sustained" coverage to coverage a good fraction of that period (~25%???) - doesn't have to be coverage every day but there should be recognition of the site peroidicly during that time. If its all bunched at launch or at the closure, that's a sign its likely not notable. --Masem (t) 03:30, 19 August 2020 (UTC)


WP:SUSTAINED seems to be a bit rough.

Section ""Notable topics have attracted attention over a sufficiently significant period of time", aka WP:SUSTAINED
Sentence text comment
1 Wikipedia is a lagging indicator of notability. Nonsense? What is it supposed to mean? Just cut it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
2 Just as a lagging economic indicator indicates what the economy was doing in the past, a topic is "notable" in Wikipedia terms only if the outside world has already "taken notice of it". Belongs in an essay? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
3 Brief bursts of news coverage may not sufficiently demonstrate notability. True, tending to a truism. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
4 However, sustained coverage is an indicator of notability, as described by notability of events. Finally, the meat! What is "sustained"? Fresh coverage at 1 month? 6 months? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
5 New companies and future events might pass WP:GNG, but lack sufficient coverage to satisfy WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, and these must still also satisfy WP:NOTPROMOTION. Comment on "new companies" belongs in WP:CORP. Comment on "future events" belongs at WP:Notability (events)#Future events, or the essay WP:Future event. This sentence is a random digression when the text is still begging: What is "sustained"? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
6 If reliable sources cover a person only in the context of a single event, and if that person otherwise remains, or is likely to remain, a low-profile individual, we should generally avoid having a biographical article on that individual. A brief summary of WP:BIO1E and WP:Biographies of living persons#People who are relatively unknown. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

I call the section mostly bloat, and think it should be refocused to say what "sustained" means. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

These are very key terms and the analysis above misses the point. This is saying is that far too often editors rush to create an article on a burst of coverage (like an announcement or a news report) and presume that burst of news makes it notable, when instead, we should wait, and as the first sentence, lag behind to see if there's actually longer-term coverage of a topic than just the first burst, and the key point in the second sentence. Again, how long we should wait we can't say because that's gamed. While the specific expands of companies, news events, and people are called out, this can apply across the board to a whole host of other topics, so this is trivializing it.
Now, the argument that we should say what "sustained" means is the problem because we cannot spell out how long we're talking about in hard numbers without creating something that will be gamed (just as we don't hard-code how many sources we expect for the GNG). Further, that length varies for different topics - a weather incident may be only sustained coverage for a few days, but a new business would be expected to see several months of such coverage. What is key is to get editors to recognize that a brief burst of coverage at the start, and then no additional afterwards is generally a strong sign the topic isn't really notable (that's why we are a lagging indicator of notability -we should be waiting to see what happens). --Masem (t) 03:20, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Wiktionary has a concept known as hot words, where neologisms which are likely to garner sustained use are kept provisionally even though they don't formally meet the inclusion requirements (3 durably archived attestations spanning a period of at least a year). We apply the same WP:CRYSTALBALL to event notability; if an event gets AfD'd immediately after its occurrence, then speculation about future coverage is ultimately unavoidable, unless you want to ban all breaking news, period. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:54, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is a lagging indicator of notability" means "You might be notable today, but you're not getting an article until tomorrow at the earliest." WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:18, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
  • KissAnime was the article I was thinking of. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/KissAnime ended in KEEP. It has nothing on it but pirated videos, no articles or anything, just that. Only coverage was from lawsuits and the shutdown. So many websites exactly like that with the same content, but because it got coverage when it got shut down, it was deemed notable enough to have an article. Dream Focus 22:31, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
    And that was a terribly closed AFD, because none of the keep votes addressed the lack of coverage. We need better definition of what coverage is, it is not just name dropped or brief mention. And this is where the idea of BLP1E/BIO1E needs to almost extend to any non-news topic - a thing that is only notable because of a singular event for the most part fails this idea of enduring coverage. --Masem (t) 22:58, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Daniela Tablante

Daniela Tablante; born 12 December 1995 is a Venezuelan and Spanish television host, producer, and actress who currently works in the media in the United States of America.

Tablante started her career as a news reporter in Univision Orlando, where she delivered daily news, politics and stories that impacted the hispanic community . Afterwards she hosted the morning show, Despierta Orlando, where she spoke about Central Florida public events, weather and highlights of the main news shows of the day. Also, she broadcasted daily news stories in one of the main Spanish radio stations in the Orlando area, Salsa 98.1.

Daniela got her first degree in Mass Communications in Lindenwood University in St Charles, Missouri before working in Orlando's television and radio station. Right after she graduated, she was selected to work on an internship in NBC-affiliated television station KSDK in the city of St. Louis.

After graduating from college and working for Univision Orlando for a year, Tablante decided to pursue her graduate education in the city of Miami where she graduated for the second time with a masters degree in Mass Communications and Media Business with a mention in Hispanic media from Florida International University. While she was studying her masters, Tablante worked in the scientific and media research department of the university and also she was simultaneously studying acting in Miami Dade College.

On Tablante’s last semester of graduate school, she started to film an independent documentary which is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

In the last years, Daniela Tablante has worked as a freelance reporter for Univision and Azteca of SouthWest Florida. Also, she has been involved in the production of several film and documentary projects in the United States and Mexico.

In 2018, she registered her company in the state of Florida, Daniela Tablante Communications LLC where she serves as CEO and Creative Director. Also that year, she participated on her first runway as a model of Miami Swim Week fashion show Descalzos. Next year, she walked the runway of Miami Swim Week for Art Hearts Fashion, a fashion production company that owns some of the biggest shows of Miami Swim Week. In 2019, Tablante walked the runway for brands like Carmen Steffens. Also she participated in her first New York Fashion Week later that year where she walked the runway for Carmen Steffens for the second time and other fashion brands. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Latinogang (talk • contribs) 07:29, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

We need sources, to establish notability.Slatersteven (talk) 07:52, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Software notability guidelines

Please weigh in: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Software#Software_notability_guidelines. fgnievinski (talk) 02:01, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Sources that cover a topic in its entirety

Would I be correct in assuming that in order for a topic to be notable, reliable sources need to cover the topic in its entirety? For example, at Talk:Superstitions_in_Muslim_societies#RfC_Superstitions_in_Muslim_societies_related_questions I argued that while topics like "Superstition in Iran" and "Superstition in Pakistan" were clearly notable in their own right, we could not use sources for those topics to establish the notability of "Superstition in Muslim societies". For that we'd actually need a source that ties in superstitions in various Muslim countries together. Is my understanding correct? VR talk 04:06, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Not necessarily, we don't need the whole breadth of a topic to be covered wholly by one or more sources, but we don't want a topic so segmented across multiple sources that it appears that its coverage on WP looks like synthesis. Where this line is drawn is hard to tell. So yes, if you had topics about Pakistan or Iran superstitions and had some that pointed to other superstititions in other Muslim societies, a "Superstitutions in Muslin societies" would be a possible fair topic to cover them all, but you still want to be careful and ideally look for sourced that discuss the larger concept even if not in depth to any particular society. --Masem (t) 04:22, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
If there isn't even a single source that covers the topic in its entirety, won't the article always suffer from WP:SYNTH? In this particular case, one could stitch together superstitions in Iran and Pakistan into a "Superstitions in Muslim societies" article, or into "Superstitions in Asia" or "Superstitions in the developing world" or an even more arbitrary combination. If we restricted it to topics covered by reliable sources in their entirety we wouldn't have such an issue.VR talk 04:28, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
Not necessarily, but the grouping has to make logical sense. As you say, there's ways you could "group" just those two topics into a possible synth and that would be something to watch for. But we are talking about grouping by faith related to a topic closely related by faith, so this isn't that much of a stretch, and a 2-minute Google search show the idea is possibly there to at least write a lead paragraph about before going into the individual divisions. --Masem (t) 04:53, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
Masem Is it not WP:SYNTH to say "Pakistan is Muslim-majority" and "Pakistanis believe black cat is bad luck", therefore "unluckiness of bad cats is related to Islam". The superstitions in Pakistan could be due to many factors, including folk culture and pseudoscience. So which superstitions are "closely related by faith" and which are not? If we had reliable sources that covered the topic in its entirety it would be easier to tell.VR talk 09:03, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
The various notability criteria relating to notability-establishing sources have the baggage that these sources need to be substantial and independent of the subject, a criterion that goes beyond verifiability and is really to do with ensuring that we can have balanced coverage. To avoid SYNTH, we don't need this safeguard: if we have reliable sources that are not notability-establishing that fill out the claim that the topic is coherent, that is enough. I guess this is clear enough to you, but sometimes in AfDs we see people defending delete arguments saying: "I'll change my vote if you can find two sources each satisfying {long list of requirements}" - I'd rather avoid that these lists become longer. — Charles Stewart (talk) 07:37, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
Chalst So in the example that I gave what kind of sources would establish that the topic is coherent? And how would we limit the article to only coherent topics? VR talk 09:06, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Notability of Referees

Please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)#Notability Agenda for Football (Soccer) Match Official (Referees) where this subject is now being discussed. A formal RfC has been suggested, but not yet drafted much less opened. Input from interested editors would be welcome. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 16:51, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Notability is Wikipedia's Achilles heel.

There are so many double standards, contradictions, loopholes and gaming that being "notable" can either be p-easy to gain in the case of sports or Iranian villages or almost impossible when it comes to cryptocurrencies or fictional characters. I have had so many "last straws" for Wikipedia so often that I don't bother in most cases, but AFD has p-ed me off more than usual. Wikipedia's 20 year test is coming up soon, and people and donators will soon write more about the big gaps of knowledge deleted by Wikipedia. Second generation wikis that are more inclusionist will soon overtake Wikipedia (even Wikimedia's own Wikidata has more coverage), and Wikipedia will be considered non notable by future encyclopedists. 94.175.6.205 (talk) 14:58, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Or they become by words for inanity. And today on EvertyhingPedia our featured article is "Lord of the rings characters featured in discussions down the Stoat and whilst, Waterford".Slatersteven (talk) 15:01, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
It's a confusing kludge that has problems but mostly works. Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works right now. Someday we could create a grand unified guideline which would simplify and fix. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:53, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Riiiight, because the world measures encyclopedias by the number of comprehensive articles about ephemeral soap opera characters, one-shot obscure mangas, rural elementary schools, and bands of which no one besides their 50-person fan base have heard. Seems like a classic example of Ravenswing's Law in action. In any event, what makes you think that your "second generation wikis" will make you any happier? As with Wikipedia, they would certainly operate under rules and guidelines that would majorly piss you off in one way or another ... or if one conforms to your prejudices in every particular, you'd be the one writing a heated defense against the naysayers loudly proclaiming that YourFavoriteWiki has garbage standards and rules. Ravenswing 19:06, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
:-)  :-) North8000 (talk) 20:18, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
(The non-sardonic answer I have is this: Wikipedia operates on consensus. That consensus is imperfectly wrought over the better part of two decades, and is heavily influenced by precedent. In effect, a handful of loudmouths 15 or more years ago set in stone a bunch of shibboleths that will never be overturned. Significant institutional change is extremely difficult, because there's always (a) a large claque who like the status quo just fine, and (b) an equally large claque certain that such change will open the floodgates to all manner of craziness.)

(But what other system could succeed? A professionally-run online outfit like Encarta or Britannica? With a fiftieth of Wikipedia's content, they're all in the dustbin. A strictly moderated site with editorial oversight curated by "experts," as with Citizendium? That effort's been moribund for a decade, with less than a ten-thousandth Wikipedia's content. Wikipedia probably won't be any more eternal than Britannica was, but what's going to replace it isn't going to be Same-As-WP-Only-With-Rules-I-Like.) Ravenswing 05:33, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

One of the beauties of Wikipedia is that the people who create and own the content are not the people who own the web site, so if you want to create an encyclopedia about cryptocurrencies and fictional characters you are welcome to do so, and you can use the content that has been created on Wikipedia as long as you acknowledge the writers. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:50, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Generally, notability's larger problem right now is how we deal with "modern" topics that haven't had the nature of academic analysis, which is basically most any contemporary topic. It's still something we're learning how to do. We found people and companies tried to play the allowances for businesses and organizations, so we had to tighten down the notability guidelines for businesses. We had to significantly tighten those down for cybercurrency when we found there was very little "independent" coverage of that field. We also know that we probably have excessive coverage of sports that could probably be trimmed, but again, that's a learning process. We know its not perfect and that there's no universal rule here. --Masem (t) 20:25, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
IP, I for one am thrilled that we have so many articles about sports and villages and relatively fewer articles about scam cryptocurrencies and fictional characters usually better covered in articles about the works of fiction. It is exactly as it should be. As for your predictions about the future, let me remind you that you do not own a magic crytal ball, and that false predictions of Wikipedia's demise are almost as old as the project. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 20:30, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Are there any non-scam cryptocurrencies? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:48, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
I would think the original Bitcoin is one of the few legit ones, but it is itself one foot in a pile of self-promotional manure of other crypto that taints its reputation. We'd still want more non-crypto-related third-party coverage of Bitcoin to talk about it. --Masem (t) 20:56, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
The excessive number of articles we have in certain areas don't bother our readers because they never see them (except on disam pages). Readers only see what they click on a link for. Something those who obsess about gender %s etc should remember. Equally, given how low the views are for the bottom, say, 15% of articles we do have, it's hard to argue there's a widespread unmet need. Johnbod (talk) 23:44, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Original poster here, I think my ideas are right. Cryptocurrencies are one of the most controversial topics in the field of finance and have been linked to many crimes and scams even threating to destroy twitter. But they also changed peoples riches and many people have become millionaires and many countries like Venezuela have been improved by having cryptocurrency. The topic deserves to be notable and documented. Fictional characters also influence our lives by giving people common stories and references to share, so should be notable through that way. The notability debate has gone on for too long, too many Wikipedians have left the project after having all their articles destroyed by deletionism. I am an ex Wikipedian my self who left years ago but still sometimes makes a few edits. But no matter what happens to Wikipedia, inclusionism will always win in the end because people want to know and if Wikipedia won't provide it, somewhere else will. 94.175.6.205 (talk) 12:02, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

We do cover Cryptocurrency. We do cover Petro (cryptocurrency). So what is it you think we are missing?Slatersteven (talk) 12:10, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
And come now. Every subject and topic has a constituency whose lives they can claim are thereby enlivened, and have common stories and references to share. The most obscure athletes played for teams that had fans who cared. The most obscure porn actresses had fans who were, well, "enlivened." But ... there are reasons we have notability standards. Include every athlete and every porn performer and every thing that claims to be a cryptocurrency, and we not only have no idea whether the information presented is accurate, but it's impossible to police. Wikipedia seeks to be accurate, so that we're not a joke like Urban Dictionary and the like. So ... unless the situation is that it's not really that you disagree that there should be standards, or that articles need to be cited to reliable sources, then what your real beef is -- because you've been very vague on details -- is that the standards are tighter in your pet topic than you'd like. That's the price of doing business in a consensus-driven environment.

I'd certainly make a bunch of changes if I were appointed Dictator of Wikipedia. But I'm not, nor going to be. Not even Jimbo's that, these days. I put in my two cents' worth, and there are notability guidelines out there I'm proud to have created. And beyond that, I live with the compromises, and accept that a lot of editors don't agree with me on this or that. If I couldn't accept that, I'd walk. But beyond that? I figure on taking the chance that there are only a handful of people butthurt enough to flip Wikipedia the bird because their pet obscure athlete or ephemeral minor porn star or -- say -- fly-by-night cryptocurrency that no one ever wrote a news piece about don't have an article. Ravenswing 05:54, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I am not really interested in cryptocurrencies and fictional characters, but I must say, that I understand the IP and I agree that the Notability policy is the Achilles hell of Wikipedia. I mean for instance my favourite football club is deemed not notable, my favourite band is deemed not notable etc. (I have no personal connection to the any of them of course) and many local topics I would be interested in to read also. I find it very sad that a huge part of human knowledge is not available to the users. I do not want to sound pathetic but I believe, that most posters here do not have a slightest clue, how it is, when the topics you are most interested in are not allowed to be included in the encyclopedia. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 09:27, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

And I would say you are wrong, I have even had articles deleted as not notable (such as my local games club). Hell I have even voted delete on things I own, because they did not meet any reasonable notability requirement.Slatersteven (talk) 09:30, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
And I'll play devil's advocate. It's more than likely that I don't give a damn about your favorite football club, nor about your favorite band, nor about topics local to you. Nor would I wager that you care much about mine. I've had an article in my user space about a man I revere, a professor of music at my university for nearly half a century. Even with my intense personal bias I can't shake the fact that he just falls short of the relevant notability standards, and he's running out of time to pass them. And likely no one in your country has ever heard of him. So where do we draw the line? Unless you believe that there should be NO standards, and that everyone should have an article, and that reliable sourcing should not be required, then you believe there should be some standards. And what would those standards be? Ravenswing 06:45, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
If he was professor at YOUR university there could be problems with COI and PROMO. Otherwise I would have no problems with it. You are aksing abour standards? As long as editors aren't personally involved or paid and information is true and verifiable and no personal data regulation is violated then I see no problem if there is an article about something. Yeah, I don't give a damn about your favourite band but I allow an article about it. Your favourite band has an article and mine does not, that is the main point here. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 10:57, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
My favorite band is an internationally celebrated group with a couple dozen Grammy awards, nine Top Ten hits, and are in the top twenty best selling musicians of all time. Its Wikipedia article has over four hundred cites. If the article on your favorite band had only two reliable cites providing significant coverage, it would be up here. If it isn't popular enough to have passed that rather pathetically low bar of coverage, and/or neither you nor any other of its fans are motivated enough to find such coverage, well. That is the main point here. Ravenswing 20:20, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes, it is a shame that encyclopedic standards are overshadoved by the popularity contest. The whole point of Wikipedia in the last years is just who has the most hits, fans, awards, supporters etc. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 10:42, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Where is your evidence for that? If you read deletion discussions you will see that "who has the most hits, fans, awards, supporters" is not the point, but it is who has independent reliable sources writing about them on which we can base an article. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:51, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
In this commercialised world those so called independent reliable sources are mostly writing exactly about those "who have the most hits, fans, awards, supporters". Ludost Mlačani (talk) 10:55, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I have said it before and will say it again, if RS are not giving your favoured subject enough coverage to generate an article, contact them and complain. They are the ones at fault.Slatersteven (talk) 10:08, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Can anyone show me an article of any substance in any other mainstream general-purpose encyclopedia that has been deemed not notable for coverage in Wikipedia? I don't see how our notability standards present a problem if we are covering vastly more than everyone else covers. BD2412 T 15:17, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
There are numerous such articles just in other language Wikipedias with looser rules that are deemed not notable for the English Wikipedia. And of course you see no problem, you are an admin, so you have an access also to deleted articles so to the full knowledge. If WIkiepdia do not want to cover all topics it should at least be fair enough to change its motto. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 16:38, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
I think you know that I was referring to non-Wikimedia collections. In any case, if there were no standards of notability, I could theoretically write an article on my toes, Toes of BD2412, detailing their length in millimeters, circumference, and relative sensitivity to various stimuli. Does the fact that our current standards prohibit that deprive the world of "full knowledge"? If I wrote such an article and it was deleted, would my ability to see it mean I have greater access to knowledge than others? I don't think so. I think there is a difference between information and knowledge, and that our lines usefully draw that distinction. BD2412 T 16:59, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
Well wikipedia is still subjected to laws and there is General Data Protection Regulation, so the article might be deleted for that. But if you are okay with that information to be public, I certainly would not nominate it for deletion. So in one language something is knowledge and in the other the same thing is only worthless information, interesting... Ludost Mlačani (talk) 17:36, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
Nonsense. What that is is one group of editors who have stricter standards, and one group of editors who have looser standards. Honestly, you and the IP are doing the same thing: complaining about the way things are without telling us what you would do differently, and how you would do it. 06:45, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
I would not delete other people's work, if it is at least somewhat verifiable. I do not care if there is information I do not read. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 10:59, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Just to let you know i’m setting up my own wiki to cover encyclopedic topics discriminated against by the notability policy. Deletionists will be treated the same as vandals on this wiki. I’ve noticed other wikis do the same. Eventually the inclusionist wikis will win out in terms of coverage and deletionist wikis will be forgotten about. People have been arguing about notability for over 15 years, admit it is a failed and discriminatory policy. 94.175.6.205 (talk) 10:33, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Your choice.Slatersteven (talk) 10:42, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Meh, whatever. Are we supposed to feel bothered or threatened? Wikipedia has something like fifty times the traffic and content of all those "other wikis" combined. Anyway, you do you. I'm sure you'll feel comforted by the fact that no one here will lose sleep over it. Ravenswing 12:06, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
The hard part of starting your own wiki is coming up with a good name for it. There have been so many attempts that all the really clever names are already taken. Blueboar (talk) 12:16, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Not sure this is a subject fit for us to discuss.Slatersteven (talk) 12:17, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
94.175.6.205 The "no inclusion rules" entity that you describe already exists; it's called the internet. North8000 (talk) 14:25, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
It's really my ultimate answer to the people who whine about how Wikipedia c!e!n!s!o!r!s stuff, how horrible, we're suppressing information!!!! No, nitwits, we're not eliminating all mention of those things everywhere. They just don't have Wikipedia articles. Ravenswing 21:55, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Notability optimization

Basically COI editing combined with notable sources ala SEO but for notability. This will happen as new generations of notability policy aware COI editors work in conjunction with the media to get get their articles notability optimized on Wikipedia to avoid deletion. I could easily become "notable" enough with a few thousand dollars and do multiple events to get round the ONEEVENT policy. 77.96.44.212 (talk) 15:18, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

sadly yes, what do you suggest?Slatersteven (talk) 15:21, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
If some organization spends that much money to find a way to make themselves appear notable that NORG's restrictions on sourcing does not catch (that is, getting coverage beyond trade magazines and over a length of time) just so they have a Wikipedia article, well, congratulations to money well spent. There's a limit to what we can practically catch if an organization is this intent on "defeating" our notability requirements. We're trying to catch the cheap and easy SEO attempts that we can readily judge by the sourcing. --Masem (t) 15:24, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
Well, yes: people have been famous for being famous, and paid large sums to gain the notice of the public, pretty much for the entirety of recorded history. They will continue to do so. I think we all have much better uses of our time than worrying over the bare handful of people who thirst so badly to have Wikipedia articles that they'll go that route ... never mind that there is nothing that would be more fatal to Wikipedia's principles and collegiality than to replace WP:V and WP:N with some amorphous concept to only give articles to the "deserving." Ravenswing 06:52, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
People hire public relations firms for a reason. You might be disappointed to find out how many truly notable things do have massive amounts of money to market them. That's capitalism for you. But the most brazen self-promotion doesn't usually get you more than a single news spike, and WP:ONEEVENT helps weed that out. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:31, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
I've been hoping, for a very long time now, that more editors would see the importance of historical significance. While historical significance is well-respected for POV issues, it gets sidelined due to WP:NOTTEMPORARY. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 22:17, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I think that the far more common way to buy their way into Wikipedia is to hire a wiki-savvy undeclared paid editor. Our badly written guidelines that define pretty much every editor as a wp:COI prevent the focus that it will take to fix that, and making life hell for the rare ones who declare makes the undeclared problem much worse. North8000 (talk) 01:08, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

There are a lot of topics that are popular with kids but do not have articles as the systemic bias of adults not writing as many sources about them (apart from marketing of course) and that the target audience is not yet old enough to edit Wikipedia competently. Draft:Gacha Life seems to be stuck in this limbo as it really is a phenomenon popular with younger audiences. I'm out of the target demographic but I can see the problems that Wikipedia has in this area. The only way out seems to be if such subjects get an unexpected adult following (My Little Pony and Thomas the Tank Engine being the well known examples), or waiting until the target audience grows up and write about them from a nostalgia perspective. Baby Shark only became notable because it got 7 billion views from repeated watching on apps, it would be just another kids song otherwise. 2A01:4C8:72:A70B:24E0:199A:3079:4118 (talk) 18:57, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

We have to wait for reliable sources to cover these areas, and there are cases where they just don't get the coverage. I will note that when it comes to mobile gaming that itself already tends to have a mark against it: there are some but not a lot of reliable sources that cover that area, as many of the sources that do are just overtly highly promotional materials. (We have the same problem when it comes to cybercurrency). Add that when we are talking children's apps, as Gacha Life seems to be, that's even yet another strike because there's little money in that. And judging what I can on Google News hits, it does appear to be a fad, maybe in passing but I can't for sure yet. Basically, in these situations, we're handling notability correctly. --Masem (t) 19:07, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
  • WP:GNG isn't intended to be a notability 'bias creator'. But if we cannot actually satisfy GNG for a topic, especially a toy company or something, it's pretty much impossible to write an encyclopaedic article that meets WP:V, WP:NOR. What do you base the article's content from? The company's website / promo material? Therein lies the issue. Reliable sources for notability could maybe be loosened a bit, as eg Techcrunch covers a lot of apps in this area, but often Techcrunch isn't considered an indicator of notability so that may well be something to look into. But Techcrunch also discusses a lot of startups; it may well quickly turn into excessive promo. So there's two sides to this. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:38, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
(after edit conflict) I don't believe that there are notable topics that don't get coverage. I have an 18-month-old grandson, and his favourite computer games are based on Numberblocks and Peppa Pig, his favourite TV programmes are Hey Duggee and Bing and his favourite film is Frozen (despite his great-grandmother saying that it's for girls), recently taken over from Toy Story. All of these have copious coverage in reliable sources, as I'm sure Gacha Life will get if it's really as influential as you say. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:47, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
  • ”Notability” and “Popularity” are not the same metric. While there is overlap, there are notable things that are not popular, and popular things that are not notable. Blueboar (talk) 21:46, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
It has always seemed to me that some things are very notable to a small number of people, like most science articles. Some are slightly notable to a very large number of people, so the ones that might be popular. Both are useful and important. As for kids, until they are old enough to read the article, it would be the notability to older kids and adults. Ones like Phil Bridger indicated are likely notable to older (than four) kids, and to adults wanting to know why the kids are interested in them. In addition, sometimes adults like them, too. Gah4 (talk) 22:52, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:FAILN is IMO the best response to these situations. If you don't have enough independent sources to write an encyclopedia article (that why we need those sources), then mention the subject somewhere else. Add a section to Short film that talks about DIY and app-based options, and namecheck this app. Write about the company, and name and briefly describe all of their apps in that article. You can put content in Wikipedia without putting it on a separate page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Need clearer consensus interpretation of significant coverage and audience.

Companies and organizations; and biography articles are especially subject to notability argument. Although WP:NCORP currently places stronger emphasis on quality of sources, the guidelines only define the two extremes of "a passing mention" as trivial; and and a reliably published book written entirely on the history of IBM on the very extreme end of "significant coverage". To better resist gaming of the rules by marketing and public relations professionals; and connected contributors, it would be very useful to have the shades in between better defined.

Presently, NORG requires multiple significant, independent, reliable, secondary coverage with one of the sources passing broad circulation, and at the absolute minimum, one of it must be national, regional or international. This is often read as a page or two in daily regional paper, plus a cluster of local alternative weekly coverage. This had lead to proliferation of articles about neighborhood restaurants, event venues, book stores and such being ruled "notable", because of a one page coverage in the regional daily paper about something that happened at the place at one point, plus a cluster of local press. How do we interpret notability building effect of "a page or two about the article subject person/organization/company" in a highly specialized books about the discipline (i.e. graffiti art) as opposed to the same amount of coverage in People's Magazine, or Reader's Digest?

WP:AUD could benefit from building consensus on what's considered "limited interest" coverage; as well as "regional coverage".

This AfD failed.

These were the sources used to argue SIRS and AUD requirements:

One of them was a book specializing in graffiti. I personally define things like this as relatively trivial coverage and "limited interest" because it is something you would only see if you specifically go looking for a book on the subject; and a specialized book that is dedicated to a narrowly defined book is bound to have more details about obscure subjects and organizations. Currently, WP:AUD offers no guidance on how to apply "broad audience" vs "limited audience" on highly specialized academic journals or books.

Graywalls (talk) 10:15, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Books that narrowly cover a specific topic are still acceptable sources (so the "limited interest" is not a valid argument - they are still available to anyone to access, while local sources are only to a local geographic area), like that graffiti book, but it still required the topic to be covered in depth in that, and that's where there's debate that's hard to define , as any definition will lead to gaming the rules. A brief mention in passing is not sufficient, clearly, but do we need a paragraph? a page? a chapter? It's the combination of what all sources give about the topic, in essence. Unfortunately the book preview does not show me what the text is so I can't judge that here. --Masem (t) 13:35, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
Masem, I don't view the WP:AUD thing as "who it's available to", but more from a Conditional probability point of view: Given that the source covers X, what is the probability that it will include coverage of Y? So, let's say you've got four books: one about visual arts, one about painting, one about graffiti, and one about New York graffiti of the 1980's. Each one is covering a progressively narrower topic, and is thus more likely a-priori, to include any specific topic that fall under its umbrella, and thus a weaker signal that the topic is notable. A similar thing happens with geographic audience. The NY Times is, in general, a good source. But, its coverage of local NY topics is not as strong a signal of their notability as coverage by a similar stature newspaper in Chicago, or London, or Beijing. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:29, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
I understand the concern that you can slice a topic area into more narrow and narrow segments to a point where you have an extremely narrow segment that might have a very limited audience, which IS a fair concern. But, at the same time, some subjects do have a reasonable degree where there is finer and finer level of coverage that we would not question a reasonably narrow-focused book. For example, there are plenty of texts in math that are on extremely limited interest subjects, but if you look at the material as you step up from that into broader fields, you'll field works that segment the field like an inverted pyramid, lots and lots of broad math books, and fewer on more narrower subjects. Whereas I can see the problem that if you have broad coverage at one level, and then the next level down, there's nearly next to nothing but one or two books at that fine resolution, so that inverted pyramid concept is gone and its just a spike, that's more like a AUD problem. But that's really really hard to prove. The other factor to make judgement calls on this is how many times other fields look into this; math here is a good example since many other scientific fields typically hang on complex math problems so their results are important even if they aren't worried about how the narrowest problems are solved, they will still talk about them. But in the case where a really narrow area gets coverage but no other field reaches into that, that might be a problem - that was the case a few years back with professional mixed-martial arts which was found to be a walled-garden type thing. I have no idea if graffiti art is similar but knowing the little of the art world I do, I suspect its not that closed. --Masem (t) 02:49, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I doubt this is something that can get to hard black-letter standards. Take the "significant coverage" element of the GNG to which Masem alludes. My own take is that we're talking at least 250 words to satisfy: about a page. But ask ten editors and I wager you get at least five different answers. Heck, I've seen certain editors advocate that a sentence is enough, despite the explicit guidance in WP:N that it is not. A consensus on what these things exactly mean just will not happen. Ravenswing 18:52, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I would agree with Ravenswing that it's too difficult, if not impossible, to get any bright-line consensus on this. Wikipedia works reasonably well when people concentrate on the specific rather than the general. There are too many "ifs" and "buts" about specific cases for us to come to any general agreement. My own preference is to concentrate on academic books and papers when it comes to sourcing, rather than news reports or popular "broad audience" web sites, because I believe that they are more reliable, but others seem to disagree. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:08, 20 September 2020 (UTC) And I would say that it's more like fifteen different answers from ten editors. Very few people are consistent about such things.
  • While the previous statement of the gudieline was not clear, the current practical consensus at AfD over the interpretation of the present version of NCORP seems clear enough. There will always be isolated disagreements and erratic decisions. Myself I do not look at thephysical extent of the coverage, but what is actually written. promotionalism extended to book length is still promotionalism . DGG ( talk ) 21:59, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
  • The difficulty interpreting WP:SIRS is kind of unsurprising that is so if you reflect on how the criterion came about: it is essentially the treaty that brought peace to the great inclusio-deletionist war and it describes one of the borders of the territory that the inclusionists were able to defend. I don't like the criterion - not so much because it is not a bright line but because it allows problematic content to stay and excludes some reference-quality material - but the fact that we can work with it is a huge point in its favour. — Charles Stewart (talk) 05:35, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
  • The OP has got it backwards. Our policy WP:NOTLAW explains that "the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice. Rather, they document already existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected." If an AfD establishes that a topic such as United_Graffiti_Artists is ok, as it did, then our guideline should reflect this rather than being altered in opposition to the established consensus. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:16, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Guidelines and policies, and the outcome of their discussions over the course of time represent community consensus on a wider scale which shouldn't be overridden by local consensus. In AfD's, decisions are rendered all the time based on local consensus that goes against wider consensus, for example series of coverage by the same publication or same journalists getting counted as "multiple sources", even though they're supposed to be counted as one, and hit counts from Newspapers.com and Google search being used as reason for "keep". Graywalls (talk) 06:55, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

So, the topic is borderline on GNG (does not meet it rigorously, but is borderline on the "common practice" GNG standard) and fails Ncorp. Structurally this makes Ncorp irrelevant in this case. Plus nobody argued that it met Ncorp so it's not pointing to needing a change in ncorp. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:24, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Graywalls, the last time I was involved in AUD, the canonical example of "limited interest" was a trade magazine dedicated to a very narrow group – a sort of fan rag for professionals. Imagine a "Blue-green Widgets Weekly" periodical that included everything about the world of blue-green widgets, because all 100 of the blue-green widget engineers in the world really wanted that to know absolutely everything, but which might be rather indiscriminate in their coverage ("Feature: Widgets, Inc. Now Selling Blue-Green Widgets in Boxes of 250! Chart: Size difference between 3mm blue-green widgets and 5mm blue-green widgets. Also, readers weigh in on whether teal widgets are blue-green widgets"). We thought this restriction was worthwhile because when you are looking at sufficiently "niche" sources, you can find sources about individual products that editors realistically do not want to have separate pages ("Widgets" are notable; "3 mm blue-green widgets" are not) and because many of these are about products from single vendors, which means that they can have dubious independence. The sources you're looking at are not even remotely comparable to this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:01, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
Separately, I've got my doubts about WP:SIRS. So for those who haven't been watching, in every area except NCORP, we generally say that a subject is notable when there are multiple (aka "at least two") sources that have certain qualities that mean they will be handy for creating an NPOV-compliant encyclopedia article. (We additionally require that the subject be acceptable under WP:NOT and that editors agree that it's okay to handle the subject separately, rather than merging it to a larger topic.) Easy, right?
Now about those qualities. They are:
  1. significant coverage
  2. independent reliable sources
  3. secondary reliable sources
(also Wikipedia:Published, extant, and accessible, because sources that nobody can look at don't count at all, and we probably meant to say non-self-published as well, only we forgot to write that down.)
When I ask on this page (as I have, multiple times) it is generally agreed that you need:
  1. A minimum of one source that contains significant coverage (think "300 words directly about the subject", only we are absolutely never going to tell you exactly how many words are necessary, because you might believe us, and then we might be unhappy that your article subject qualified as notable, and besides, 300 words that say next to nothing isn't actually as useful as 250 words that contain a lot of facts).
    1. Alternatively, some editors accept a combination of smaller sources that provides the same effect as one source containing a lot of information. So if we take SIGCOV as meaning 10 facts, and you can find six facts in smaller source A and six different(!) facts in smaller source B, then some editors will accept that as being equivalent to a single source that contains 12 facts.
  2. A minimum of two independent sources, each of which may or may not actually have significant coverage but which do contain more than a passing sentence about the subject (or a quotation from the subject, if the subject is a BLP). In the "strict" reading, these two sources need to be independent of the subject and from each other, so two nice articles about Widgets, Inc. from the same journalist is counted as just one independent source. Two different journalists = "attention from the world at large". One journalist: Not "attention from the world at large".
  3. A minimum of one secondary source, if we feel like it, except that when you get down to brass tacks, aka "actually read the definitions" (or at least WP:PRIMARYNEWS), you discover that secondary sources are less common than is convenient, especially for current events, so this turns out not to actually be a requirement after all, and to the extent that people insist on it, it usually means that they didn't understand what a secondary source is and how it differs from being independent or having significant coverage.
    1. Unless we're talking about medical subjects, in which case we do know what a secondary source is, and we are overly strict on that point. In that area, we are occasionally unable to find truly independent sources, because of the unfortunate fact that it's basically illegal to do anything with an experimental drug without the would-be manufacturer's permission, which kind of kills off the possibility of truly independent biomedical research right there.
The key point is that the SIGCOV source (minimum of one) and the INDY sources (always plural) and the SECONDARY source (if technically any) could be different sources. But if you go over to NCORP's new-ish SIRS section, you have to put forward at least two sources that meet all of these requirements. A non-self-published, INDY primary book (e.g., almost everything published by O'Reilly Media about computers) means nothing; a tall stack of short, non-self-published INDY secondary articles means nothing; a lengthy secondary analysis by someone with a COI means nothing; etc. You could use all of these sources to build the article, and you could end up with a Featured Article this way, but you couldn't use any of them to justify notability under the unique "each separate source must have all of the following qualities" rules that SIRS set up.
I don't know whether this is something that we should try to fix, but I suspect that the reason that AFD returns such 'surprising' results is that SIRS is out of step with the community's real views about what kinds of sources indicate notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:41, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
A strong analysis (and I'm grinning at your blue-green widget hypothetical), but I think you're overthinking it. From way too many years and way too many edits at AfD, my takeaway is that controversial votes come less from a general community disconnect about the rules than that individual editors strongly push their own hobby horses. People come charging in from various WikiProjects to "defend" "their" articles (or, conversely, come charging in to reflexively reject articles of the type they believe in their souls must be purged for Wikipedia to be truly pure), some of the ARS fanatics are quite happy to disavow or reject any notability criterion/guideline as long as they can count coup against Those Evil Deletionists, a number of folks are deeply reluctant to advocate deleting an article that has well-written prose and (to a superficial, three-second glance) many "sources," and once people get their asses into it, they'll defend their positions to the death, subsequent evidence be damned.

I'd assert that there are many fewer "surprising" results over any dislike of SIRS than from these other factors. Ravenswing 06:15, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@Ravenswing, I submit to you that there is no practical difference here. One of my core beliefs is that Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions, which means that most the editors who participate in an AFD don't actually know whether their response conforms with this or that rule. The votes from established editors at AFD (in aggregate) actually are the community's views, and when their views don't line up with the written rules, then it is the rules, and not the community's views, that are wrong.
Additionally, in the SIRS case, we have one SNG that its authors wish to interpret as requiring something different from how the community interprets the same words when they appear in the GNG and in other SNGs. That will always lead to confusion, especially among people who are trying to follow the written rules more than their best judgment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:59, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
NORG/SIRS is absolutely needed due to the abuse of commercial entities trying to use WP as a promotional outlet; its not as much a problem elsewhere (like BLPs), and that's why it needs its own departure from the GNG. --Masem (t) 16:03, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
Please pardon my confusion, but I have never been clear what the SIRS requirement contributes to the project, for practical purposes, that could not have been accomplished by a very, very stern injunction that the content of press releases never contribute to Notability no matter how widely they are paraphrased or reproduced. Newimpartial (talk) 18:21, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
I think that banning any fact mentioned in a press release would create more problems than it solves. (And, yes, if we wrote such a rule, then there definitely would be someone saying that just because Big Corp mentioned _____ in a press release once, that any and all subsequent news articles about _____ were mere "paraphrases" of the press release.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:37, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
I wasn't talking about "banning any fact mentioned in a press release", I was talking about banning regurgitated press releases (and yes, I think the difference is obvious, whatever the wikilawyers would say). IME at least 90-95% of the positive effect of SIRS at deletion discussions, compared to SIGCOV, consists in clearly disqualifying press releases and regurgitated press releases. I have trouble identifying the other 5-10%, to be honest, if it actually exists. Newimpartial (talk) 19:41, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
You didn't mean to talk about banning any fact mentioned in a press release, but that is how it would be wikilawyered. One of my touchstones for this type of editing is this 2011 conversation. Some of the editors (none active these days) tried to remove any positive statement and to discredit any source that didn't talk about lawsuits against the company. There were regular warnings about Churnalism side-by-side with recommendations to accept press releases from a student group as being equivalent to newspaper articles.
WP:ORG mentions the unacceptability of press releases three times, and WP:N mentions it twice. If that's not enough, then I doubt that SIRS, which does not mention press releases at all, is having any effect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:16, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

What WP:N is missing though is some equivalent to NORG's clarificarion that any material that is substantially based on such press releases even if published by independent sources. Honestly, from my perspective the rest of NORG is only useful where it is restating what constitutes independent coverage, while the explanation of WP:NOTINHERITED that it offers does more harm than good IMO. SIRS really just provides a thoroughly spelled out, objective-sounding set of criteria that won't under any circumstances allow regurgitated press releases to count, while the requirement that each source capture all of the relevant criteria at once seems basically feckless in my view. Newimpartial (talk) 23:37, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

@Masem, it's been a while since I looked in on the NPPers, but the last time I looked, they said that they had more problems with pop culture than anything else. Indian actors and musicians were their main sore spot. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
That's unfortunately problem that we have a weak CSD towards these groups (show the tiniest shred of notability, and you can't be speedily deleted/you will pass an AFC/NPP check), but at the end of the day, much of these are WP:AUD-type problems with first-party, promotional sources, which is out of the prevue of NPP to really evaluate. I'm all in favor of AUD being a part of WP:N but this has been balked at because it would impact some topics over others, or lead to local sources being stripped/disallowed even though that's not what AUD says (local sources can't just be used as the only sources for an article). It's a difficult issue to work around. --Masem (t) 20:12, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
Neither SIRS nor AUD applies to the main problem areas, then. I agree that we are unlikely to expand AUD's reach until we can get people to actually read the directions, which is probably impossible. (Maybe some sort of test... "AUD says that local sources are okay, but you need to have ONE that isn't completely local. Do you (a) agree that local sources are okay, so long as there's ONE that isn't completely local, or (b) will we ban you from participating in AFD?") WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
@Newimpartial, "the requirement that each source capture all the relevant criteria at once" is AFAICT the main point of SIRS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:29, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Logically, yes it is, but in practice, I don't think it accomplishes much, because (1) editors don't actually apply it and (2) it runs smack up against the spirit and the letter of the GNG and the rest of the WP:N-related guidelines outside of NCORP, so it just doesn't generate much traction even when applied. (This is why I referred to it as "feckless", above.) Newimpartial (talk) 18:19, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Er, SIRS is repeating exactly what the GNG states, only that I would argue in the context of NCORP, it puts much more weight on should be clear independent and secondary sourcing (due to the potential for ease of promotional sourcing). We're more relaxed on those for other topics outside NCORP but there's still part of the evaluation of sources and the absence of those five is still failing the GNG. --Masem (t) 18:27, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
But there remains the key difference that SIGCOV says they must be met, while SIRS states that they must be met by each source that counts for Notability. That is a distinction with a difference, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 18:36, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes, that's the key difference. SIRS requires that you produce a minimum of two sources, each of which contains all of these qualities. But if you look back at conversations such as Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 69#SIGCOV is badly explained (just a few months ago), there was no agreement that the necessary level of SIGCOV needed to be contained in a single source. SIRS disagrees and says that SIGCOV must be present in a single source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't necessary read it that way, though do I think outside NCORP its more relaxed in terms in how each is applied to each source. That is, I agree NCORP wants each source that is being consider under "multiple" to have "significant coverage" and be "reliable", "secondary" and "independent". In a general topic that's not CORP, I would still expect multiple sources, and in each source that is being called part of the test for notability, that we're looking for significant coverage, the sources are reliable, secondary, and independent. But for example, whereas the "significant coverage" may be a full article about a company in NCORP, we would accept a two-to-four paragraph section of a larger article for other topics, as long as its better than "in passing" and the other qualities are met. Or, in terms of "secondary", we are generally more tolerant of interviews done with creators and the like about their creative works as being secondary, whereas I know interviews with businesspeople under NCORP are almost always flagged as primary and/or dependent due to possible corporate inference. The categories of criteria and application to each source is the same, but the baseline of what applies is far lower for non-NCORP topics (NCORP setting a higher bar for good reasons). --Masem (t) 19:43, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
@Masem, is it fair to summarize your view here as "the written standards aren't applied consistently"? An interview with the subject (e.g., "interviews done with creators and the like about their creative works") is a primary source. So are nearly all the sources about current events when we create the articles. Articles such as 2017 London Bridge attack get created within an hour, when only primary sources are available.
Maybe if we don't actually require (real) secondary sources, then we should just stop saying that we do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:09, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Hmm, that's raising a different issue, as I don't think we universally discount interviews as primary sources as context very much matters. WP determines secondary sources if they are transforming information from primary and other secondary sources. An eyewitness report reiterating a recent event is clearly not transformation and thus primary. But a creator talking about their work - say 5-10 years after its published so that there's a time factor involved - now that's different. They may be providing insights and the like about the work that in context of the work would be secondary. If the interview was being used for their bio page, it may be primary or secondary, it would be very much context dependent. This is the same way we have to look at things like autobiographies, DVD commentaries, and other good sources of information. I would note these are very-much dependent sources, so no way alone could satisfy notability.
Keeping that in mind, the difference still becomes that a quality bar is set higher at NCORP, not that there is an inconsistent application elsewhere. NCORP I know has discussed extensively the caution about interviews in business trade magazines that these are something you can buy and load up with one's own questions for self-promotion (in contrast with typical interviews done for actors, producers in Hollywood, etc.) But if its WSG or Businessweek conducting the interview as part of a feature story, that's probably reasonable. (see footnote #3 there). In contrast, other places outside NCORP will probably not worry too much about the use of interviews with the same concern as long as an RS is conducting them, because they aren't used in the same promotional manner as the business world does. (eg in business, businesses seek the press to get interviews; in most other fields, the press seek people to get their interviews). But the same end issue is that interviews are dependent sources and an article built up only on interview pieces in non-NCORP areas will still not pass notability. --Masem (t) 01:39, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Context of "Primary" sources

Some sources are primary for certain kinds of information but independent for other kinds of information. This distinction should be highlighted somewhere.

e.g. YouTube and Twitter and Medium and Patreon are obviously self-published media, and can not be relied on for factual information. I mean, obviously.

However, from these same sources, statistical information such as number of channel/profile subscribers, video views, tweet likes etc are clearly reliable pieces of information coming from independent sources.

This has multiple use-cases, including citation of this information in general, and e.g. WP:ENTERTAINER lists "cult following" as one of the criteria. If an entertainer has an inordinate number of followers/subscribers, that may or may not be considered cult following, but it should be legitimate to use social media stats to make that argument. Remember, the whole notion of "cult" following is that it's not mainstream, and therefore unlikely to be covered in traditional RS. — Ad Meliora Talk∕Contribs 11:29, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Actually they may not be as they can be manipulated to increase numbers.Slatersteven (talk) 11:31, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Exactly: social media numbers like follows are too easy to game so we don't use that for notability indicators. (I think they pass enough of a CSD test to be kept based on a discussion there, but that's it). --Masem (t) 15:00, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes, follower counts and the like can be gamed, and moreover, their meaning is context-dependent. What counts as a "viral video" now might not be the same as what "viral" meant ten years ago (see the AfD for Al Gore's Penguin Army). Also, having a "cult following" is compatible with getting RS coverage. There are whole scholarly books on "cult classics of cinema", for example. XOR'easter (talk) 20:35, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Follower counts, video views and subscriber numbers can be manipulated for sure, but not nearly as easily as journalists at "reliable" media outlets (the whole job of PR departments and agencies is to wine and dine journalists and get them to publish press releases in their own words). But quite aside from that, if there is in-depth RS/IS coverage, then the subject would qualify for GNG. The whole purpose of SNG is to address specialist areas, in which subjects can be considered notable without meeting GNG. So, what exactly does "cult following" mean? If it has been put in the SNG, there must have been some thought given to it. — Ad Meliora Talk∕Contribs 14:41, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with the assertion that figures such as follower counts are more reliable than journalists writing for reliable sources. Lightly edited press releases are neither reliable nor independent, and do not count toward the general notability guideline. For example, TechCrunch (RSP entry) is not considered generally reliable because some of its content is too promotional. If you ever notice a source uncritically republishing press releases, please bring it to the attention of the reliable sources noticeboard and it will be assessed accordingly. — Newslinger talk 13:27, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
There are problems with WP:ENT, mostly arising from the inclusion of the term "celebrities", but I don't think the notion of "cult following" was ever intended to be measured using "follower" statistics. In context, the point seems to be that either a broad fanbase or a narrower but "deeper" fanbase can count for E.2. I don't really see how a "number of followers" measure would represent either one, TBH. Newimpartial (talk) 15:16, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
@Ad Meliora, please read Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources and Wikipedia:Independent does not mean secondary. All sources are primary for something. That is a completely separate question from whether they're independent for anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
YouTube and Twitter and Medium are media platforms, not sources. They do not provide any significant editorial direction themselves, as a whole; they merely make it possible to connect content-providers to viewers. The source is whoever published the YouTube or Twitter or Medium content. If it's an individual person or fly-by-night group, it's probably not reliable. If it's an established organization that provides the sort of fact-checking and editorial control that we expect of reliable sources, it's probably reliable. So blanket statements that YouTube and Twitter and Medium are unreliable completely miss the point. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:09, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
You might have missed reading the OP. YouTube and Twitter and Medium are for sure sources of the statistical information associated with the accounts. — Ad Meliora Talk∕Contribs 14:41, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
The argument you're making in the OP is WP:OR. You're wanting to take one piece of information, the subscriber count, and use that to draw a conclusion not mentioned at all in the source, that they have a cult following. No. Say what the source says, xyz has abc followers on YouTube. And that's it. Nothing more. Saying xyz has a cult following MUST be done EXPLICITLY by a source, NOT by you interpreting numbers. Ravensfire (talk) 16:38, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
Though, once we have established from secondary sources that they have a cult following - say, from articles in 2017 that say this person has over 25 million followers associated with that, it is not inappropriate to use the social media sites to update the estimate of subscriber count for 2020 as a primary source. But this is after notability has been proven, not before, as it is definitely OR to suggest subscriber numbers equate to cult following without a source. --Masem (t) 18:26, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
How does one establish cult following, then? Because if the subject has SIGCOV already, the subject passes GNG and the SNG reference to cult following is moot. Would a passing mention in secondary/RS/IS referring to the cult following suffice? If so, does the word "cult" need to be in the reference, or are there other acceptable substitute words? Would words like (YouTube/Twitter/follower group name) idol, star, popular, prominent etc be useful in this regard? — Ad Meliora Talk∕Contribs 11:13, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
And beyond Ad Meliora's comments, I'm sorry: there may be an article in the New York Times claiming that Soandso is said to have a "cult following," and that still doesn't make it so ... it might make it the speculative opinion of a particular entertainment columnist with a particularly florid style. Ravenswing 14:39, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
We would be extremely hardpressed to not accept a non-op-ed NYTimes piece that says a person has a cult following as a fact to support that point; that's the whole point on reliability. It would be different it was from a sub-tier RS like, say, People magazine. Ideally we'd want a handful of sources to make that identification, and ideally with some time to evaluate that (a YouTuber around for less than 3 months having a cult following would be rather weird). But if we have multiple RSes calling out this cult following as fact, we're likely going to use that. (Op-eds, on the other hand, are only opinions). --Masem (t) 15:48, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Okay, so if I hear you correctly, multiple WP:RS/WP:IS (let's say 5+ passing mentions) referring to a subject's cult following would establish cult following and WP:ENTERTAINER. So, let me ask again: does the word "cult" need to be in the reference, or are there other acceptable substitute words? Would words like (YouTube/Twitter/follower group name) idol, star, popular, prominent etc be useful or acceptable in this regard? — Ad Meliora Talk∕Contribs 15:11, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
I can't think of many other synonymous phrases with "cult following" (and all the subtle implications it brings), so yes, it would almost require that wording. Even if these sources say "The influencer had 5 million passionate followers" would not be sufficient. "Cult following" is almost a term of art, and thus needs to be used by the sources to be considered as such in WP in the same way. --Masem (t) 15:27, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

RfC: For biography leads, do we prefer recent images or images from when the subject was most notable?

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#Request for Comment. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 07:05, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Aligning WP:Notability (periodicals), WP:Notability (media), and WP:Notability (academic journals)

As the title says, we have three separate pages with substantial overlap. The periodicals page has the WP:NNEWSPAPER shortcut but otherwise seems more focused on academic journals, which has its own page. The media page has more useful content for a newspaper, but also covers things like books (which have their own guideline). The periodicals page and academic journals page are both classified as essays, and the media page as an explanatory supplement, and the three have significant differences in their standards. I think that a substantial restructuring is likely called for, as it's confusing and detrimental to have forks like this. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:18, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Notified: WP:WikiProject Journalism, the three essay talk pages. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:18, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
  • It's important to note that NJOURNALS, at least, is an essay. There is considerable discussion in its talk page archives from 2018 about trying to either turn it into a guideline or get rid of it but nothing came of that in either direction. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:13, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
    Another factor to consider when looking at those pages is whether we're writing about publications because they're notable (i.e., we can write a decent, unbiased, policy-compliant article), or because we want to be able to look up the source when it appears in a dispute, and our brief notes might as well be in the mainspace as not. For our own internal processes, a page containing the single sentence "Journal of Important Stuff is published by Bentham" is informative to editors who know that publisher's reputation, "The News is a daily newspaper in Capital City" is helpful to editors who were assuming that the source couldn't be reliable because WP:IDONTKNOWIT, and primary-sourced, non-independent infobox contents such as an ISSN are handy to editors who are trying to find more information at external sites. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:15, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
    WhatamIdoing, I think there's a case to be made for having a low bar for notability for newspapers/journalists that applies to readers, not just editors. Wikipedia's mission in a very broad sense is to improve the world's information landscape, and on that basis, it makes sense for them to be able to look up here any media source that might reasonably be used as a reference. Looking at Twitter, which has their own notability system of sorts with their blue checks, they're planning on making it easier for journalists to get verified when they relaunch the system, and we might want to do the same for a similar reason. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
    You may be right. I expect that there will be more pressure on these notability guidelines to ignore whether it's possible to write an encyclopedia article, and just have "something". Most academic journals could be merged into a table by publisher (when there's only been one publisher in the journal's history) or sponsoring organizing (if any), but I'm not sure I'd recommend that approach for journalists, who tend to work for multiple publishers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Tidying up redundant language in WP:GNG

The GNG currently contains some redundant language in these two bullet points:

  1. ^ Including but not limited to newspapers, books and e-books, magazines, television and radio documentaries, reports by government agencies, and academic journals. In the absence of multiple sources, it must be possible to verify that the source reflects a neutral point of view, is credible and provides sufficient detail for a comprehensive article.
  2. ^ Lack of multiple sources suggests that the topic may be more suitable for inclusion in an article on a broader topic. It is common for multiple newspapers or journals to publish the same story, sometimes with minor alterations or different headlines, but one story does not constitute multiple works. Several journals simultaneously publishing different articles does not always constitute multiple works, especially when the authors are relying on the same sources, and merely restating the same information. Similarly, a series of publications by the same author or in the same periodical is normally counted as one source.

The point that sources can be in any language or medium is repeated, as well as the point that multiple publications from one author/organization count as one source (which is in both the footnote and the main text). The quality of prose here really needs to be higher, given that this is the central element of one of our core policies. Can we please rewrite it to remove the repetition? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:25, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

We usually start off with a link or footnote, and expand it and repeat it until it's finally enough that people get the message. This may be the amount of repetition that is necessary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, sorry for the delayed reply. I generally find this approach to be unproductive, and what leads to pages becoming way too long. The number one thing that'll get people to read pages like this is to keep them as concise as possible. Reiterating ourselves to try to drive home a message just produces a wall of text that people ignore, which then makes us frustrated enough to add additional emphasis, which makes the page even longer, and the cycle repeats. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:26, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure that experienced editors actually read the policies and guidelines. Maybe we did when we were new, but to sit down and read it right through, from the beginning to the end? I doubt it. I think we mostly just search for the key phrase that we want to quote at someone. In that scenario, it doesn't matter how long the page is, as long as the "right" quotation is somewhere in there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:40, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
I disagree with an approach that tries to stuff key phrases into adjacent bullet points. We should be encouraging text to be read in small sections, at least. I don't see an advantage in describing sources in a bullet point about what is meant by reliable, nor in duplicating information in the footnote (if editors are just searching for keywords, then why isolate some of the text into a footnote?). I suggest flipping the order of the bullet points and merging the content on secondary sources. For example:
  • "Sources" encompass published works in all forms and media, and in any language, including but not limited to newspapers, books and e-books, magazines, television and radio documentaries, reports by government agencies, and academic journals. Sources do not have to be available online. They should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability.
    There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected. Lack of multiple sources suggests that the topic may be more suitable for inclusion in an article on a broader topic. Note multiple newspapers or journals can publish the same article, sometimes with minor alterations or different headlines. Additionally, different published articles might not constitute multiple sources for the purpose of establishing notability when the authors are relying on the same underlying source material and are merely restating the same information. Similarly, a series of publications by the same author or in the same periodical is normally counted as one source.
    In the absence of multiple sources, it must be possible to verify that the source reflects a neutral point of view, is credible and provides sufficient detail for a comprehensive article.
  • "Reliable" means that sources need editorial integrity to allow verifiable evaluation of notability, per the reliable source guideline.
isaacl (talk) 06:07, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
...except that the last time I checked, RS did not actually say that "editorial integrity" was what made a source reliable, and that its absence made a source unreliable. If it did, then we'd have to ban nearly every source posted to social media. That would mean no more citing the politician's tweets, the celebrity's announcements, etc., because there's no "editorial integrity" there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:34, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
Also, I don't agree that secondary sources (i.e., analytical sources, including analytical sources written by the subject) actually provide more objective evidence of notability than independent sources (i.e., sources not written by the subject's self/family/employer/etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
I didn't make any of those sentences up; I just rearranged the existing text to avoid repetition and incorporate the footnotes into the main text. So any disagreement you have with these aspects applies to the current text. Regarding reliable sources, note the context is expanding on the first sentence in the section on the general notability guideline. Citing politician tweets, celebrity announcements, and so forth is fine for lots of other purposes in writing an article. isaacl (talk) 01:46, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

RfC on NCRIC started

I've started Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)#RfC on NCRIC, feel free to join the discussion. Fram (talk) 09:33, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Statutes

Are there any special notability requirements for statutes (or laws)? I don't recall seeing them. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:27, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

There's no special subject-specific notability guideline for laws or the equivalent; they would be expected to have to meet the WP:GNG. A caution here is that this means the governmental documentation of such laws or statutes do not count for coverage here as they are primary sources. --Masem (t) 15:05, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

How to resolve a notability dispute if those arguing against notability won't open an AfD

The article Adam Leszczyński has had a {{notability}} tag applied to it by two editors, who dispute that the multiple sources and reviews cited in the article establish notability, but neither of them will open an AfD for it (see Talk:Adam Leszczyński). I would like to resolve the dispute so that the tag can be removed. I would open an AfD myself, but that would be closed as speedy keep since I would not be arguing for deletion. How to resolve this? Does the cleanup tag just stay up forever? (t · c) buidhe 17:32, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Given the talk page discussion, and the fact the article was created in the last 48hrs, I think the tag adder (User:Volunteer Marek) appears to be willing to give other users time to see if the article can be improved before taking it to AFD. It is actually poor procedure to take a fresh article to AFD unless it clearly has no chance to survive, and my read is that there is a potential for more sources and Marek is suggesting other readers (or you) may be able to offer them so there's no immediate need to rush off. But as Marek also points out, that tag needs to stay to caution both readers and editors that improvements are required, and the fact we're still in the first few days of article creation, its silly to be asking for it to be removed. --Masem (t) 17:38, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
The talk page discussion is also less than a day old and has only involved two editors so far. So on top of what Masem noted above about how new the article is, it’s also way too early to consider that discussion finished or deadlocked. Expecting immediate results or decisions doesn’t serve us well here. postdlf (talk) 17:42, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
Masem, Wouldn't you say that four full-length book reviews, plus a bunch of other sources that discuss his work, are sufficient to meet GNG? (t · c) buidhe 17:50, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
This is basically just a form of a content dispute so I would expect to use our normal content dispute mechanisms to resolve. AfD is one way to resolve the notability tag specifically but other methods, such as DRN, could also be employed. However, I don't think we're at that stage yet in this instance owing, as Masem pointed out, to the newness of the article. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:00, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
This. The only thing I'd caution is that simple name drops without much additional context are not part of significant coverage for our purpose. If you actually have reviews of the person's work, you'll need to convince the editors on the talk page of that, but that looks like its requires translation and the like. But that's an issue beyond this page. --Masem (t) 18:05, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

First, I would like to remind User:Buidhe one more time that if they bring a dispute to a notice board, they need to ping other users involved. I would not have been aware of this discussion if User:Masem hadn’t pinged me. This is like fifth or sixth time that Buidhe has done this. This practice is discourteous.

Second, yes, Masem and User:Postdlf have it exactly right. Tag is there to alert editors to needed improvements. Personally, I’d prefer if the article continued to exist on Wikipedia, but right now I simply don’t see notability established.

Third, Buidhe, you say there are “four full length book reviews”? What are they? In what outlet? Links please. Pretty much every academic historian publishes a book. It’s more or less a requirement for tenure. When the book is published, the book is reviewed in dedicated journals. Again, this happens with almost every academic historian. But having tenure is not sufficient for notability. Volunteer Marek 18:11, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

There's no requirement to ping you when I mention an issue somewhere else.
The book reviews are cited in the article. (t · c) buidhe 18:19, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
There’s no such technical requirement, but your repeated failure to do so, even after being reminded and asked, is simply rude and bad etiquette.
Can you link these reviews here so that everyone can see? Volunteer Marek 18:35, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

The notability tag that this dispute concerns was the wrong notability tag. As Leszczyński is described as being a professor, it should have been tagged {{notability|academics}}, not {{notability}}. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:22, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Elephant in the room

The elephant in the room for a big or big issue with a question or controversy on an issue that is obvious or that we all know about,[[3]], but no one mentions or wants to discuss to resolve a notability dispute is "authority control." Sometimes we forget something very important. Wikipedia has no firm rules. Wikipedia has policies and guidelines, but they are not set in stone and their content and interpretation have to evolve over time. In my humble opinion we would have to stop acting like robots robots with the rules of Wikipedia and use more common sense. If we act like robots, we better replace all Wikipedia administrators with bots that strictly enforce the rules and regulations. That if, without common sense. Lately I see a lot of notability disputes about authors where it is perfectly clear that their notability is obvious. Where it is clear and "there should be no question" is authority control. An authority check of an author with innumerable bibliographic IDs in a VIAF of the best National Libraries and International Universities in the world would have to be valid and be sufficient to demonstrate and resolve a dispute of notability. Many people, most of whom I include myself, where else we look to see the notoriety of an author is precisely in the control of authority. It is the place where, without a doubt, the notableness of an author is verified and verified and not in the sources. References and sources are very good at demonstrating the notability of an author when they do not have bibliographic IDs in an authority check or VIAF. That said, when ever, we see an author article with a wide authority ID control and we see the label on the article, that it is possible that the subject of the article does not meet the general guidelines of Wikipedia notability, it turns out ridiculous and we see that many times we act like headless chickens without any common sense. I think it is urgently necessary to include the "exception" in the notability policies and guidelines the "authority control".--Sorginak (talk) 14:42, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

The question of using authority control as a sign that an author is notable is better left to either WP:NBIO or WP:NPROF, though I note both of those have criteria that recognize an author is notable for having a large recognized body of works. The problem with just basing it on authority control is that an author can be prolific with lots of works, but none of the works have wide importance (the author just publishes a lot), and thus that would fail notability on that facet alone. --Masem (t) 15:00, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
"Lately I see a lot of notability disputes about authors where it is perfectly clear that their notability is obvious." Well, that's your opinion, anyway. Such disputes don't happen because a vast amount of trolls gum up the works for No Good Reason. They happen because editors disagree on evidence, standards and interpretations. One of my catchphrases is "It's not that we don't understand what you're saying; it's that we don't agree with what you're saying." Ravenswing 17:39, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Over-reliance on secondary sources

I see this policy come up a lot in the context of requests for pages to be deleted. Perhaps it's time to specify what qualifies as a valid secondary source, since people seem to have different opinions about this. Or maybe relax the policy and allow certain kinds of primary sources. There really should be some ratio allowed (70/30?). It seems clear to me that simply relying on secondary sources results in failure to classify information correctly. This is especially the case with technology, where the best source of information is often the documentation which is written by the authors/programmers themselves. Avindratalk / contribs 21:23, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

We need secondary sources to show that people outside those that developed the technology (in that topic area) have interest in the topic, otherwise it becomes self promotional. Now once you show significant coverage does exist, you can turn to primary to document further, but keep in mind that we are an encyclopedia which is to summary information and not to detail it. For example we do not have full change logs for software products that are notable, but just document major feature updates at a high level, even though these can be documented to primary sources. --Masem (t) 21:40, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
Masem, please read Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent. "People outside those that developed the technology" == Independent source. An example of a secondary source is "people who analyzed the technology and compared it against other technologies" – even if those people are the sales team for the technology being analyzed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:30, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
What I meant by secondary was both sources that are generally independent and that are transformative of the original material. Dependent secondary sources are possible, but GNG rejects those as significant coverage since it is not independent. --Masem (t) 16:58, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Beyond Masem's comments, one of the points behind the requirement for secondary sources is to ensure that the world has heard of a thing. There's always been this curious school of thought that if there is some putative reason why a subject lacks secondary sources -- out of the public eye, niche subject, prejudice whatever -- then the requirements of WP:V and WP:N should be suspended in its favor. Nothing could be further from the truth: the reality is that a a subject that lacks adequate secondary sourcing does not qualify for an article on Wikipedia, its partisans notwithstanding. Ravenswing 12:08, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
Fully concur with the points raised by User:Masem and User:Ravenswing. The latter also raises points that go to WP:NOT, especially the part about how WP "is not a soapbox or means of promotion." If an obscure technology that holds great promise hasn't been covered enough by secondary sources, that's not WP's problem. It is the problem of whomever cares about that technology to develop it to the point where secondary sources do get interested and begin to cover that technology in detail. Then a WP article about that technology can cite those sources. WP always follows, it does not lead.
As historians of technology are generally aware, all important technologies have precursors that were discussed for many years or decades in advance in private writings or obscure publications, and took many years to come together as workable solutions that suddenly emerged into the public limelight. The most recent example of this is RNA vaccine technology, whose precursors date back to 1989 but which was quite obscure until the problem of immune system reactions was solved in 2005. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:35, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
Hi Aavindraa. Forgive me if I am misconstruing your post, but you seem to be referring to a strawman – your post is directed at notability but seems to actually regard matters that don't interface with it, but that are actually about verifiability of information and our policies on the limitations of use of primary sources for certain types of information.

For instance, a subject that uses 50 primary sources, and only 5 secondary sources is not subject to deletion because any percentage or ratio of its content is not supported by secondary sources. The only issue, from the perspective of assessing notability, is whether the five secondary sources treat the topic in substantive detail, and are reliable and independent (I am not saying that that ratio or percentage is ideal, just providing a weighted example to make a point; some content should not be supported by primary sources, e.g., self-serving claims, but that is not a notability concern).

For this example, the topic is notable because (as both Ravenswing and Masem talk about above) the five substantive, secondary, reliable and independent sources demonstrate that the world has taken note of the topic—and that's the end of the inquiry as far as notability (and deletion based on that doctrine's principles) is concerned. I do acknowledge, however, that at times an article may have so many citations to primary sources that it becomes difficult mechanically to find the (reliable, independent, substantively-treating) secondary sources in the mix, in order to properly make a notability assessment, but that still does not change the fact that such assessment of notability does not properly turn on how many primary sources are being cited in relation to secondary sources.

So, can you point to any examples of a topic not being allowed, deleted, or requested to be deleted, for notability reasons based upon the use of primary sources for its information, rather than based upon the presence, or not, of the rights types of secondary sources that, by their breadth of treatment, demonstrate the topic's recognition by the world? --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:15, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

P.S. the reason we can't "relax the policy and allow certain kinds of primary sources" is because we don't turn to the existence of secondary sources, and exclude primary sources, as evidence of notability, as some sort of arbitrary cutoff. Rather, the nature of what a primary source is excludes it by logical necessity; a person/entity's writing about themselves, for example, is simply not evidence of the world taking note of a subject, and yet that precept is what notability runs on.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:05, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
I will point out that while it is entirely possible to have an article pass the principles of notability with 50 primary and 5 secondary sources as explains, WP:V and other policies strongly urge editors to avoid overreliance on primary sources in general. An analogy I use is that secondary sources are the bricks that make up our articles, primary sources should be seen as the mortar to help keep those bricks together as needed, using just enough but not in excess. We don't define an exact ratio in terms of sources, but if we look at readable prose and find more than 50% is sourced to primary material , that's going to raise some flags. --Masem (t) 18:16, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. And indeed, as I wrote above as a nod to exactly this point: "(I am not saying that that ratio or percentage is ideal, just providing a weighted example to make a point; some content should not be supported by primary sources, e.g., self-serving claims, but that is not a notability concern).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:38, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
User:Aavindraa, the relevant section of this guideline is Wikipedia:Notability#Notability guidelines do not apply to content within articles or lists. How could we change this somewhat cryptic section to make it r-e-a-l-l-y clear that once you're sure that you've got a notable subject in hand, WP:N simply does not care what content you put in the article? WP:V, WP:NOT, WP:NPOV, WP:BLP, and WP:NOR all care what you put in the page, but WP:N doesn't. For all WP:N cares, the entirety of Donald Trump could be sourced to his own tweets. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:37, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
This is a very handy link. Thanks for sharing. It seems there is coverage for these concerns, I am just having a hard time navigating some of them. Avindratalk / contribs 10:08, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

We have to "over-rely" on secondary sources, as we are all notable to people we know or employ us (and certainly ourselves). Note that it is notability we are talking about, bit facts about a notable person.Slatersteven (talk) 17:04, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

"MOS:N" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect MOS:N. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 2#MOS:N until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. GMXping! 23:55, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Awards?

Informal poll: would it be valuable to establish specific criteria for award entities? While I know that they're presently covered by NCORP, I'm thinking that it might be rare for an award entity to be written about, but there might be other reasons why one could be notable. For example, if an award ceremony were regularly televised somewhere and watched by N million people, or if entertainment news reported on that year's winners. On the other hand I could see that opening the door to a lot of fluffy award entities that wiggle their way onto some niche market's airwaves or some lesser entertainment site that is starved for content, but that could be a good reason to be specific about what qualifies. Anyhow, it's informal. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 22:19, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Both of the cases you describe immediately suggest problems with notability - that notability is not about popularity nor is notability inherited. Further, we still have a pending Wikipedia:Notability (awards and medals) (not yet achieved guideline consensus) that has been proposed to prevent fluffy awards from being considered important. --Masem (t) 23:02, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
Points noted. I think, perhaps, that we need beefier guidelines in general about awards, since they are such a pain in the arse. A topic for another day, I suppose. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:43, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

So we are deciding on a new name for "God" I'm assuming because the name has been used for many different reasons? That question is just as silly as thinking or assuming any human would be so stupid to even think about changing the name of God. Let the Potsherds stride with the Potsherds of the earth CloverWhite (talk) 10:04, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

  • Erm ... (a) what in the blazes are you talking about? and (b) Humans have had so very many names for "god" over the millennia that there are hundreds of articles on Wikipedia discussing the same. Ravenswing 04:56, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Are "first person of X race/gender to do Y" statements notable?

Example from Eboni K. Williams: "It was announced in October 2020 that she would become the first African-American cast member of The Real Housewives of New York City."

I see these peppered in articles from time to time. Sometimes they seem like WP:PUFF. Sometimes they seem like trivia. Do we have any policies concerning statements like these? Should they be included? Deleted? Is being the first of minority group X to do Y thing notable? In theory, every single topic article could have like 10 or 20 of these, if they were to list every race and gender, so I wonder. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:27, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

This would fall under both WP:NOR and WP:TRIVIA. If reliable sources have noted this factor, its fair to include, but when it is something determined by editors, even if it is obvious and would not fall under OR, it still can be trivia as you state, and should be omitted. --Masem (t) 10:03, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: Notability doesn't apply to article content. What you're asking about is a question of due weight, not notability, and I think you'll find the answer there. The excellent essay writing about women also has some advice on how statements like this should be weighted in text. – Joe (talk) 10:20, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
  • It depends on the sources - If there are sources that highlight the fact that someone is/was the first X to do Y (beyond a one line passing mention) then it is appropriate for WP to note that fact in our article. If not, then it would be undue for us to highlight it. Blueboar (talk) 13:35, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Changes in demographics are often historic and should be included. But Blueboar is right that it depends on how it's covered. I don't think that sources that cover it as news would reach that standard, because it's probably just tied up with press releases and promotional material. But sources that cover it as history almost certainly would. If sources were recalling years later that "this person became the first X to do Y", it would almost definitely be historic context and not trivia. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:30, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
  • No, as they are (in effect) self-serving. We would need third parties saying it.Slatersteven (talk) 18:40, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Beyond the above objections -- which I share -- a few too many of these are almost surely self-referential. "X was the first Y to be an operating room surgeon in New York?" Says who? Upon what evidence, and with what fact-checking research? Frankly, I'm not going to take the word of the hospital's human resources flak who spoke to the one reporter, and I'm just not going to credulously swallow the newspaper repeating that. This might seem a relatively trivial thing on which to hang "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," but this sort of assertion is too often botched (or just plain invented) to rely on the one thin media source usually submitted to back it up. Ravenswing 21:07, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Several of the above arguments make assumptions about sourcing and whether the information is self serving without actually addressing the question. As with everything on WP, if it is appropriately sourced and balanced then it is fair to include. There are plenty of policies about what can be included and how. Should we ask if it is appropriate to include that a runner ran faster than anyone else this year? Or that a specific European was the first person from that continent to see another? These questions are meaningless - if a person is known for this, then mentioning it in their biography likely has relevance. They don't even have to actually be the first to be known for it - it wouldn't be the first time history remembered the wrong name or event. It would still be relevant to mention in their biography. ☕ Antiqueight chatter 00:13, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
  • No, not everything is appropriate to include, however thoroughly sourced or balanced, which is the entire point of the OP's question. Biographies of famous people can be indepth enough, and numerous enough, to provide perfectly adequate sourcing on the girl Bill Clinton took to the junior prom, or on the ice cream that was Dolly Parton's favorite when she was growing up, or that Lloyd Price was the first artist in the Billboard Hot 100 era born in Jefferson Parish to have a number one single, and so on and so forth. We don't flood articles with these tidbits because of WP:UNDUE, WP:NOT and WP:TRIVIA. Ravenswing 00:46, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
    Ravenswing, that's true that we don't want trivia, but being the first person in a certain demographic is considered important, so it's not UNDUE. It's often the reason that people get coverage: because they were the first to do something. And through GNG, we can see that they are notable because they received significant coverage. I think that each article should be taken on a case-by-case basis, but largely I'd say demographic firsts, seconds and thirds are important milestones and not trivial. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 01:03, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
    "being the first person in a certain demographic is considered important" may be true for certain areas like in politics (first female VP for example) or other places where underrepresented minorities have traditionally been overlooked, but in the original example, the casting of a modern TV reality show, this is far from where there has been underrepresented minorities. That's why its better to let sources judge that rather than editors decide. --Masem (t) 01:09, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
    If it's an article about a 'reality TV star' just what is 'important' may be relative, but if rs say this, than it seems like they think it important. Also the information is not 'all-reality-TV-series' -- it's, this reality series, which if the sources say that, it suggests it was rather monochromatic, which may be 'important' to someone. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:27, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
    Certainly if the sources make this note of this, that's great, that's worthwhile to include. I've just found at least in contemporary media that editors insert these without sources because they find them interesting. --Masem (t) 18:33, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
    Well, heck, I'm the first person born in my hometown to have over a dozen RPG publication credits. (I may well be the first person to have any.) Were I to have a Wikipedia article, that would be a trivial factoid at best, be it ever so demographic. Like Masem, I want something of more noteworthy significance than that, and I don't consider each and every demographic "milestone" to be noteworthy. Ravenswing 05:07, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
Well, the point of the WP is that what you personally consider important is not exactly the point; what the sources consider important is more relevant. However, the original post, while referencing a specific article, asks a general question. And the answer has been discussed in detail in most of the policies about what should and should not be included in a biography. If the multiple (appropriate) sources referenced you being the first person from your hometown to have over a dozen RPG publication credits then perhaps for whatever reason, it would be worth mentioning, though that is not guaranteed. If no one talks about it at all then however true it may be, it is not WP material. ☕ Antiqueight chatter 09:24, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Unreliable sources for notability

According to this suggestion, I wanted to bring this discussion to the right place.

WP:GNG requires WP:SIGCOV in WP:RS/WP:IS. This is a clearcut policy, esp. if unreliable sources refers to sources based on user-generated content, paid content, press releases, etc.

However, the way WP:RSP has gone, it appears that many partisan sources or other major media sources that have in the past pushed particular agendas or even conspiracy theories have been listed as unreliable.

My contention is that there needs to be some sort of a differentiation between what's considered a reliable source for factual citation, and what's considered a reliable source for notability-related significant coverage. e.g. while Bild, Daily Kos, The Electronic Intifada, Fox news talk shows, Metro, Telesur, The Onion etc have been deemed unreliable for factual coverage, in my view, a profile in any one of these should count towards WP:SIGCOV (I mean, if The Onion is lampooning you, you are probably notable.). On the other hand, any amount of coverage in unreliable sources such as Blogger, Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter, Patheos, PR Newswire etc should not. Perhaps instead of RS/IS, we should require SIGCOV in noteworthy sources/ independent sources, even if the noteworthy sources are unreliable for factual information.

Any thoughts? — Ad Meliora Talk∕Contribs 09:55, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

It appears you are trying to interpret notability guidelines. What I am saying is that coverage can be in sources that are noteworthy but not reliable. And that the policy should be modified to differentiate between reliable sources for the purpose of citing facts and noteworthy sources for the purpose of establishing notability. — Ad Meliora Talk∕Contribs 14:44, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Generally, the point of our notability guidelines is to supplement our verifiability guidelines, i.e. an article on a subject can only be verifiable if it has been covered in reliable sources. Anything which has received significant coverage in multiple reliable sources is automatically considered worthy of inclusion, unless it violates WP:NOT (e.g. a minor Trump briefing might be covered in 10+ major outlets but fall short of WP:NOTNEWS if the coverage dies down in 1-2 days). So "proving its importance" is IMO not a useful metric, as anything which can be written about in a reliable manner is automatically important enough for Wikipedia. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:44, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
    I'm not sure I buy this. There are lots of subjects that I could provide plenty of verifiable information about using high-quality primary sources but that would never fly for GNG. I think it's more about preventing WP from growing too large to maintain. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:56, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
  • This has occurred to me before. I'm hesitant to embrace it, since it'd mean opening up a whole new can of worms—if we adopted it, instead of just having the WP:RSN, we'd potentially have some other forum for debating whether or not an unreliable source still counts toward notability. I think it's also worth considering that some unreliable sources, e.g. right-wing American outlets like Breitbart, are unreliable not just in the sense that they cover important things in an unreliable way, but that they choose to cover unimportant things, e.g. "Foobar University Asian Students Union Refuses to Admit White Students!!!". That such coverage doesn't count toward notability is a feature, not a bug. Now, I agree there are other examples (like your Onion one) where that doesn't apply, but I don't think it's worth the WP:CREEP to carve out an exception for them. Let's just hope that AfDers don't get overzealous and remember that WP:IAR is policy. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:56, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Notability is just an extension of our regular requirement for reliable, independent source material. In the case of notability, it is asking "Have reliable, independent references written reasonably extensively about this to start with?". If the answer is "no", we do not have sufficient reference material available for an article on that subject, so we should refrain from having one altogether. Unreliable or non-independent references should not count toward that requirement, since the article should be primarily based upon reliable, independent sources, with unreliable or non-independent references being used only in a supplementary way (if at all) and with great caution. Basically, notability is an extension of our policy of following the consensus of the best available references rather than the opinions of Wikipedia editors. If that consensus among sources is "This isn't worth writing much if anything about at all" (as evidenced by the fact that they, well, haven't done so), then we follow their lead on that as well. Seraphimblade Talk to me 12:40, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
  • I strongly disagree with the original premise; I would not put it past a humor outlet like The Onion to write an indepth piece about a completely random or even nonexistent person just to see whether that would make Wikipedia write an article about it. There is a reason why use reliable sources, because they won't alter their standards just to mess with us. If we allow unreliable but notable sources, we leave ourselves open to them basically vandalizing us. The number of comedian celebrities who have asked their followers to vandalize Wikipedia for a joke is not negligible. --GRuban (talk) 03:17, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Notable town of residence?

Apologies if this is the wrong place for this query, but suppose a notable person (i.e., meriting own Wiki biographical page) lived as an adult in some town for a relatively short time during which they were "famous" for reasons other than having lived in that town. Does this fact entitle mention as a "Notable Person" in that town's Wiki page? (I thought such listings were of people born or at least growing up there, or later achieving notability while living there.) Specifically, I'm thinking of Andre Previn's mention in Wiki's article on the Pittsburgh suburb of Beaver. Previn presumably lived in Beaver some or all of his mid-career 10-year stint as conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, but his Wiki article doesn't mention this. And Google Search on [Previn +Beaver] yields zero hits! Casey (talk) 15:36, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

If it's verifiable, then yes, it can be mentioned in the article on the place, which should then annotate and source what the connection is. There's always a threshold question as far as how much of a connection is worth mentioning, but it doesn't require that they are famous "because of" that place or what they did there. postdlf (talk) 16:47, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
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