This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

I made this edit, it was reverted, so starting a discussion.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but my understanding of notability is that it's a test as to whether an encyclopaedic article is possible to write, not whether a topic "warrants" an article. Using the 'warrants' definition, ie saying that an article should exist, would imply for example anything that has 2 RS covering it should have a standalone article. Consider Statue of Edward Colston; there are two reliable sources for each section, but the following standalone articles should not exist: Description of Statue of Edward Colston, Background of Statue of Edward Colston, Controversy relating to the Statue of Edward Colston, Toppling of the Statue of Edward Colston, even though all of these would meet the GNG. So they're not really 'warranted', even though they're 'possible' to write. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:07, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

My understanding of 'notability', for as long as I've been editing Wikipedia, is it is a test of how well known or important a subject is - "worthy of notice", as the intro of WP:GNG says. Whether or not it's possible is dependent on other things - time, availability of source material etc. Unless maybe you're meaning to say 'possible' in the sense of being 'permissable'? Either way, I don't see why the opening sentence needs changing so radically.

BTW I'm sure one or more of those sub-topics of Statue of Edward Colston could warrant a standalone article, especially for example Toppling of the Statue of Edward Colston. There are countless things we could write, to make Wikipedia more balanced or representative or comprehensive, if life was long enough :) Sionk (talk) 18:27, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I have always taken it to mean we do not have an article unless it is notable, so yes my take would be "warrants an article" is correct.Slatersteven (talk) 18:30, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Notability is definitely not a measure of how important a subject is. For most subjects, under GNG-based notability, it is a measure of the quantity and quality of the source material we have to build an article. A subject can be unimportant, and have reams of sourcing giving an obvious pass of notability (for instance, I think many celebrities fall under that description); conversely, a subject can be important but not yet recognized as important, have very little sourcing, and not yet be notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:37, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - for what it's worth, while warrants is certainly the stable version, I have never felt it was an entirely accurate word choice. It connotes too much like "is deserving of", IMO, which is certainly not something Notability can be used to assess. In another context, I have supported language addressing "whether a policy-compliant article can and should be written", which I think might be closer to the mark. Newimpartial (talk) 18:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Notability § Whether to create standalone pages discusses the editorial considerations that come into play, so not everything that has appropriate sourcing (such as each section of the statue article to which you are referring) should have its own individual article. isaacl (talk) 20:00, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader, I mostly agree with what you wrote, but it's missing something. By my count, notability requires three things:

• what you wrote (possible to create an article that complies WP:V and WP:NPOV), and
• the article doesn't violate WP:NOT, and
• editors decide that they want the article (specifically, editors don't want to merge it into a larger subject).

If you could somehow get all three of those points into your sentence, I'd have supported the change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:11, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I usually say that this guidance establishes standards for having an article about a given topic. When it comes to actually creating a stand-alone article, the policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not must also be taken into account, as well as editorial judgement. Most topics meet the standard by themselves, but fit better within the context of a broader topic. isaacl (talk) 19:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• To iterate what others have already said, one key factor that notability emphasizes is the "presumption of notability", this perhaps is where you are coming up with the "potential" aspect. If you can show certain minimum criteria can be met (normally the SNGs, but there's also bare minimum passing of the GNG for this purpose too) then you can have a standalone article, but this presumed to be notable and more evidence (via sourcing) must be added over time to remove that presumption. So while we have reason to let articles be created due to their potential, that's not the fundamental purpose of notability. --Masem (t) 20:12, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:notability is a big fuzzy ecosystem. IMO Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works describes the end result. Its answer to the top level question is two criteria 1. Availability of sourcing from which to build a suitable article 2. A certain degree of exclusivity. And collective metrics for #2 are GNG type sourcing,degree of encyclopaedicness and prominence/scale/recognition/impact. North8000 (talk) 20:18, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• If I could go back in time, to when we were first working on this guideline, I would have suggested that we call it WP:Notedness. That is closer to what it is about. Oh well.

I explain it to newcomers along the lines of: “Notability” (as used on WP) is our test for whether Wikipedia should have a stand alone article dedicated to a subject/topic. It is determined by examining how well noted the topic/subject is in other (reliable) sources.

I also like to explain that many topics/subjects may be worthy of being mentioned in Wikipedia without having an article devoted to them (for example: they can be mentioned in an article on a related topic) - I like to explain this as being the subtle distinction between something being “Notable” and that thing being “noteworthy”. Blueboar (talk) 22:01, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I always appreciate having someone give a very clear and lucid formulation of a view with which I disagree, so thanks for that. I don't see much of WP:N as addressing in a normative way whether we should have a standalone article - really just Wikipedia:Notability § Whether to create standalone pages and a few of the SNGs have anything to say about whether or not an independent article should exist on a topic. Most of WP:N - and all of the GNG, its most visible feature - address whether or not the available sources can support a standalone article, and this is not a question of what should exist but what the interaction of sources and policy would allow to exist. My own view is that it is a misreading of the GNG to argue that the existence of multiple RS on a topic in itself supports its treatment in a separate article, and I am unsympathetic to the ratcheting up of SIGCOV requirements that might make that reading more plausible. For myself, I would much rather see NOT, and guidance that emerges from editing specific subjects, used to close off inappropriate article topics rather than trying to shoehorn those decisions into general guidelines that weren't designed to do that.

I also don't find that the "Notable"/"Noteworthy" distinction or the "degree of exclusivity" concept help me very much, but that is because I see WP:N as to an overwhelming extent describing something like "what is allowed to exist as a standalone article", with "what should have a standalone article" playing a much lesser role. Something like an 80/20 or 90/10 split dominated by "what is allowed", which is why I don't find the current topline especially helpful. Newimpartial (talk) 22:28, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree. I'd further note that I don't think the "Whether to create standalone pages" defines notability, it just gives extra advice (note its phrasing, eg Sometimes, several related topics, each of them similarly notable, can be collected into a single page, where the relationships between them can be better appreciated than if they were each a separate page -- which would cover the example in my OP, as all the components are 'notable' but split articles is poor value for the reader). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:47, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

My post and essay are not trying to create a standard, it merely seeks to describe the result of the current big fuzzy wp:notability ecosystem. Which, except for being undescribed and undescribe-able, works pretty well. It describes the result of a complex, heavily-but-not-totally sourcing-based standard that must be met to have a separate article. And, BTW one of only two standards that must be met, the other being wp:not. And the result has a selectivity component.North8000 (talk) 00:20, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Long rant from Levivich

WP:Notability is a pseudophilosophy. (That's a fancy word for "bullshit.") For twenty years, editors have tried to craft a philosophy, or cogent set of principles, that governs which topics Wikipedia should and should not have articles about. However, the approach is often backwards: we have an idea that "X should be kept, Y deleted," and then we try and work backwards from there to craft a set of principles that, when applied, would result in X being kept and Y deleted. But any set of principles inevitably leads to results that some significant number of people are unhappy with (X is deleted, Y is kept), so we try to tweak the philosophy to make it come out the way we want. Or, we carve out huge exceptions (like some SNGs do). Inevitably, no set of principles ever makes the keep/delete question come out the way everyone wants to every time. That's because a true notability philosophy is impossible so long as we have preconceived notions about what outcomes are correct (which, if we're being honest, we all have).

Everyone agrees that we should have a page about what's important, and not have a page about what's not important, but "important" is subjective. We try to pretend it's not subjective, but it is always subjective. What's important to one person, or at one time, or in one place, might not be important to another person or at another time or place. But we don't want our pages to reflect the collective sum of our subjective opinions; we want to pretend that we can somehow measure importance objectively, that "importance" is some kind of inherent quality that can be discovered, rather than "importance" being nothing more than a subjective opinion. So we try to craft measures of importance, such as WP:GNG, but that inevitably leads to the "wrong" results: inevitably, topics that everyone thinks are not important have ample GNG coverage (like pornography), and topics everyone thinks are important never meet GNG (like professors). So we tweak and we argue and we make exceptions and instead of using words like "importance" we coin new words to make it sound legit, like "notability" (or at WP:ITN it's called "significance"), and we end up with these unworkable Frankenstein pseudophilosophies like WP:N.

We gotta come to terms that we should have a page on something if enough people want us to have a page on something. Period, end of story. Writing something that nobody reads is pointless. If it's in demand, it should be covered. "Importance" is subjective, and it's the subjective opinions of our readers (not editors) that matter. So if readers want it, we should cover it. (It goes without saying that there will be RS about things people are interested in reading about, and there will not be RS about things people are not interested in reading about.) And if that means readers want to read about porn stars and pokemon instead of professors and particles, then we cover porn stars and not professors. The only alternative is that editors, instead of readers, decide what's important. But either way, it's just the sum of opinions of importance from somebody; it's not a measurement of something outside that's objective. All other attempts to craft a philosophy that will explain why we follow the independent reliable sources, except when it comes to professors or porn stars or trains or species or places or athletes or or or or ... are doomed to failure. Just admit that we should write about what matters to people.

And the kicker is, we can write about non-notable things all day long, it really won't matter, other than slowing down the overall efficiency of the project and consuming unnecessary resources. If we make web pages that people don't read, no one will care, but if we don't have pages that people do want to read, then they'll care. Radical inclusivity is the least-harmful approach to deletion. Case in point, all the AFDs in a given year will amount to something like 1% of all the articles. We could delete every AFD'd article and it wouldn't even be noticeable in article count. Unless the article is doing harm (in which case it'd be CSD-eligible), there isn't much point in deleting it, so AFD is kind of pointless.

You'd think, then, that our policies would be: let anyone create a page about anything on the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and only delete it if it's doing harm. That is, we'd have a CSD-only policy. Now, one good reason to delete a page is if it doesn't meet WP:V. So here's a real philosophy that actually makes sense: draftify every page that isn't verified (that doesn't have a source) on sight, allowing it to be moved back to mainspace once it has a source; delete on sight anything that meets a CSD criteria; all other pages should be left alone, except that they can be merged/redirected following ordinary content-consensus procedures; delete useless redirects (and discuss them at RFD if needed). This philosophy would allow us to mark AFD and WP:N historical. Levivich 16:35, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

• There IS a point to the deletion process: credibility. This is not Urban Dictionary, and we shouldn't be resigned to Wikipedia being that. Beyond that, your rant is long on apocalyptic language, and short on fact. What's your definition of "articles people want to read" -- articles YOU want to read? What do you consider "doomed to failure" -- an encyclopedia not run on the principles you prefer? This web site generates nearly two BILLION unique visitors monthly, and if that was "failure," Encarta and Britannica wouldn't have thrown in the towel. We do not have to "come to terms" with anything ... other than that different editors have very different views of what Wikipedia would be if they were crowned Emperor of the Wiki. Ravenswing 17:40, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
  • What's your definition of "articles people want to read" it's the same as everyone else's. It can be measured in the same way other websites measure reader interest. Like how does the NYTimes know what their readers are interested in? We can use those methods too. I think they're called web analytics but I'm not an expert. Levivich 18:28, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
    • Obviously it isn't: quite a lot of people here fight for articles in obscure fields, and deplore the number of articles devoted to garage bands and ephemeral athletes. I am a person, and no doubt I read articles that would bore you silly, and vice versa. Ravenswing 19:08, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
      • Yeah, web analytics, that's the ticket! Except it seems that noticeably more people are interested in minor Pokemon characters (500+ visits per day) than Donna Strickland (140 per day) - even after her Nobel Prize. And major Pokemon characters aren't even close.(2000 visits per day) [1] Whoops. And yet, I think 99% of us will agree that an encyclopedia missing an article about a Nobel Prize winner has a much larger hole in it than one missing a dedicated article about Bulbasaur. Could using web analytics be a ... pseudophilosophy? --GRuban (talk) 23:45, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
        • I would never support web analytics, but I'm also not very keen on the example - I don't really think Catch them all! necessarily applies to Nobel's Economics prize winners, for instance. Newimpartial (talk) 00:05, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
          • Pokemon is our eternal example but actually the difference between 140 views/day, 500/day, and 2k/day is nothing. Those are all articles that "no one reads" IMO. Our popular articles get tens of thousands of views per day, and very popular articles will get hundreds of thousands or millions.
            But GRuban's larger point stands: if you look at "consistently most popular articles" (those that are in the annual top 100 by page views, every year for 5+ years), they are mostly pop culture topics. Not science. Not history. Even politics is second to pop culture. It is demonstrably true that people are more interested in pop culture than things like science.
            And that's what I mean about "pseudophilosophy" v. real philosophy, about an approach that has theoretical integrity as opposed to ends-justify-the-means patchwork. I believe Pikachu is much more important than Donna Strickland. That's evidenced by measures like page views (and I bet unique visitors would also back that up tho I haven't seen them), but also in number of RSes, 10-year-test (number of RSes over time, a bit too soon for Strictland), and depth of coverage by RSes (I bet there have been more biographies written about Pikachu than Strictland). In fact, I think Pikachu is more important than almost any other Nobel Prize winner (excluding legendary figures like Einstein, Hawkings, and the like), based on these metrics. So, it's easy to assert that everyone agrees Nobel Prize winners > Pokémon, but I don't think that's true and I don't think the data in real the world (as opposed to on-wiki !votes by editors in AFDs) supports that conclusion. I think that's just the opinion of Wikipedia editors, not Wikipedia readers.
            Will anyone try to prove (rather than assert) that Nobel laureates are more important or more worthy of recording in the encyclopedia than Pokémon? :-) (Or professors > footballers, or geographic locations > TV shows, or species > porn stars, etc.?) Levivich 23:35, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

In-depth coverage in independent reliable sources, which Donna Strickland has half a dozen of, BBC, Guardian, etc, and Bulbasaur has maybe one among a hundred passing mentions among other Pokemon. --GRuban (talk) 00:36, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

• It's not really accurate to judge a topic by the state of its Wikipedia article. Bulbasaur has more RS coverage than Strickland in terms of total RS. Check out NGrams. Check out Google News search (Bulbasaur, Strickland. Even in GScholar, where Strickland has more, the numbers are telling: Bulbasaur: 381 hits, Strickland 1,210 (1,010 if you exclude the word "Wikipedia"). To me that's amazing, that Strickland would only have ~3x what a Pokemon character has in GScholar. Pikachu, BTW? 5,850 GScholar hits. Q.E.D. Pokemon > Strickland by any notability measure. Levivich 00:48, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
  • That is as may be, but I suspect that even Pikachu's scholarly impact is considerably less than Strickland's, particularly since I don't believe Pikachu's own publications have been peer-reviewed. Newimpartial (talk) 02:16, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
  • $10 says those aren't articles about Bulbasaur but just casual mentions and lists. Or, rather, I'll make my standard wager: if you'll agree that if we don't find approximately as many in depth articles in independent reliable sources about Bulbasaur as about Strickland, you will write or noticeably expand an article of my choice, and if we do, I will do so for one of yours. The Wikipedia wins either way. Deal? --GRuban (talk) 14:11, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
    • • • • • The thing is that Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia with some specialization, and that means we should be trying to serve the broadest general audience globally. While we can document pop culture readily and in depth, we need to be aware that creates a systematic bias towards Western culture. On the other hand, topics closer to core knowledge of which the Nobel Prize laurates would qualify in, are the type of information we'd want to see high quality articles about, even if they aren't visited at any high frequency by readers. We're not here to try to vie for web clicks unlike most online news sources, so we have no reason to incorporate article popularity into our decisions whether to have standalone topics. We can recognize that readers are particularly interested in pop culture topics, and while we may not have a standalone article for every search term, we can still direct readers to appropriate container topics, which if well writing will providing references for where more details can be found. That comes back that WP should not be a "first place and last stop" for researching a topic, and for topics that veer farther from the general encyclopedia concept, we generally don't want too much detail. This is the same principle that Encyclopedia Brittanica works under - they have a smattering of pop culture topics but their focus is on topics that have broad interest. --Masem (t) 00:04, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
              • More unevidenced assertions such as "topics closer to core knowledge of which the Nobel Prize laurates would qualify" and "topics that have broad interest." I'm saying Pokemon is closer to core knowledge and has broader interest than Nobel Prize laurates. Here, let's go about it this way: Pick a topic, "Foo," and then choose any measure/test for determining whether Foo meets "core knowledge" or "broad interest" criteria. I say that for any test anyone devises, that test, when applied to Pokemon and Nobel Laurates, will come out with Pokemon > Nobel Laurates. My tests are: web analytics, web analytics showing readers from non-Western countries, quantity of RS coverage, depth of RS coverage, duration of RS coverage, quantity/depth/duration of non-English coverage ... all of those metrics would evidence Pokemon being more of a core concept, and having broader interest, than just about any Nobel Laurate (other than the legends as mentioned above). Does anyone have a notability test that will put professors above footballers, etc.? Britannica has a panel of editors who decide what is important enough to write about: so does Wikipedia. The difference is that Britannica is transparent that their editors decide what goes in the encyclopedia based on what they think is important, whereas Wikipedia pretends that notability is something objective, and not the opinions of editors. But it's really just the opinions of editors, and those opinions don't match the opinions of readers. Levivich 00:18, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

                Does anyone have a notability test that will put professors above footballers, etc.?

                The most reliable notability test for NPROF (in most fields) is Scopus citation metrics, which all contemporary professors (in those fields) will handily win against football players (unless they are also academics). GS hits are discouraged for a reason: they include numerous non-RS "citations". When I look for academic articles mentioning Pikachu on Scopus I get 19 hits, some of which are things like "'Pikachu-shaped' flap for extramammary Paget's disease" and "A prospective multicenter registry of 0.010-inch guidewire and compatible system for chronic total occlusion: The PIKACHU Registry". JoelleJay (talk) 03:48, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

                Putting aside that we wouldn't apply the most reliable notability test for NPROF to Pikachu because Pikachu is not a professor :-) how many hits in Scopus for "Donna Strickland" excluding works authored by her? Levivich 04:00, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

                I'm just answering your request for a notability test that puts professors over footballers (which NPROF, especially C1, does). Academics don't need any biographical coverage at all to qualify for an article, so it doesn't matter that "Donna Strickland" only has 14 Scopus hits excluding works authored by her :P JoelleJay (talk) 04:21, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

              • Though this doesn't affect your core argument that the prevalence of sources in certain topic areas contributes to systemic bias, note Pokémon's native cultural origins aren't Western, and there are considerable non-Western influences to pop culture, particularly children pop culture. isaacl (talk) 01:42, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
• My view is that wp:Notability is a fuzzy ecosystem that works about 80% of the time, but it's messy arriving there and few know how it really works. Your idea is to nuke 95% of the whole thing which (more power to you) I think is unlikely to occur. My idea was to describe how the ecosystem actually works.....a needed starting point to changing anything, and possibly as a way to recognize the 80% that works and then bring it out into the sunshine. I attempted to do this at Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works and would like to get that linked in the guideline. It posits that the 80% that works takes multiple considerations into decision making. Two of the considerations are sourcing......material to write an article, and recognition measured by GNG type criteria. But two other considerations are degree of enclyclopedicness, and in essence real world notability/importance/impact. It also acknowledges that all of this does implement a small amount of exclusiveness. Having 10 million suitable articles is a better enclyclopedia than 10 million suitable articles lost in a sea of 1 billion unsuitable ones. If we ever wanted to evolve wp:notability IMO a good way would be to recognize and describe how the successful 80% actually works. North8000 (talk) 18:02, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Your idea is to nuke 95% of the whole thing Huh? That's not what I wrote; quite the opposite. Levivich 18:28, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
    • I think North8000 was referring to "nuking" 95% of WP:Notability, not 95% of articles. —El Millo (talk) 18:43, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
      • Ohh I thought "the whole thing" meant the encyclopedia (the ecosystem). My bad. Levivich 18:51, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
        • Sorry I wasn't clearer. North8000 (talk) 19:18, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
• If WP:V is a necessary threshold to having a standalone article on a topic (with a basis that verifyability requires reliable sourcing), notability should be seen as the sufficient condition to go along with that demonstrates that we're doing more than just being a database or the like to document something. And to that end, that's why notability exists to prevent arguments that are based on simple "importance" or "popularity" that are not backed by the existence of sourcing for those points. It is meant to keep out topics that are gamed for inclusion, particularly now that we know appearance in Wikipedia is an importance commercial play and thus we have to fight against COI, as well as against short-lived Internet trends and the like. That means we're not necessarily writing for what people want to read. Case in point: at one point in time we used to have separate articles for each individual Pokemon - all easily met WP:V via published game guides and clearly this is material we know that players of the popular game would love to see, but it didn't fit the goals of an general purpose encyclopedia. Since then, the WP:POKEMON test was developed to limit standalone articles to those specific Pokemon that have clear individual notability that we can cover as an encyclopedia (not as a game guide). This is but one example. There's a limit to what our scope of coverage is: that's what WP:NOT sets out, and that's why notability is considered an aspect of avoiding indiscriminate information. That people come to WP to expect to see coverage of something beyond what WP:NOT sets out are using WP for the wrong purpose. Of course, we should bend over backwards through the use of redirects, disambiguation, and hatnotes to try to cover all possible search terms to closely associated topics so that readers can find something and get links via references to more resources, but remember, we are not Google, we're not supposed to be the whole source of information but only a first stop if someone is researching a topic in depth as a tertiary source. We cannot help it that people have come to use Wikipedia wrong; WP:NOT hasn't changed, nor has WP:V - core policies that limit what we're going to include. --Masem (t) 18:56, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
  • To add: we are trying to serve readers, yes, but we absolutely have no interest in trying to maintain a constant hit rate or draw to the site, like the NYtimes or other websites. We do not need nor should we care about how we cater to what readers want to see, given that we serve a global audience and any such catering would introduce bias. The best we aim for here is maximum accessibility and readability via the MOS aspects. --Masem (t) 18:59, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
  • The semi-explicit standard is "does not clearly violate WP:Not" My view is that "degree of compliance" with WP:Not enters a second time (after it passes that low bar) into consideration, factoring in "how encyclopedic is it?" into later decisions. North8000 (talk) 19:26, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
• Trying to make value judgements on the importance and significance of a topic isn't well suited for consensus-based decision making in a large-group discussion. Typically, some kind of hierarchical system is designed to make decisions in order to make them more efficiently and consistently, but of course hierarchy has its own shortcomings. It comes down to which set of disadvantages is the English Wikipedia community willing to accommodate. (Most communities end up choosing some form of hierarchy or straight voting.) isaacl (talk) 21:24, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
• The rambling reactions to this guideline are pseudophilosophy. If we could do it all over again, I might advise calling it something other than "notability", because too many people refuse to read passed the headline. In reality, this guideline is a simple and pragmatic extension of our verifiability policy: we can't write an article of any value unless we have something substantial to verify in reliable independent sources. A long time ago, someone suggested that we call this minimum standard "notability", and ever since then, we've had editors take it personally when you call one of their hobbies "non-notable". But thankfully we have these discussions less and less. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:18, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

  Yes. Get rid of the misnomers notable, and notability (long-time supporter of that). Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:21, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

  I'd support that, if there was appetite for it. It could even be an opportunity: instead of poorly informed journalists saying "why do they get to decide what's important or not", we'd have journalists saying "ah, it's a good thing that they require some level of minimum coverage for verifiability sake". Shooterwalker (talk) 23:30, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

  Indeed, I suspect that even for many Wikipedians, they find it odd, or even embarrassing, to say 'Unique person is not notable' -- so they don't say that, they replace it with other words and shortcuts used in the guideline, but then are trapped because the guideline basically translates that back into the misnomer. And Wikipedia is then trapped into trying to explain that to people with no time for pettifoggery. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:03, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

  It's been discussed many times; I believe the last extensive discussion can be found at Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 56 § Renaming Notability. Basically not enough people can agree on a new name. Although I still support changing the name, I think it'll be much like bubbles under wallpaper: discussion will just pop up somewhere else. isaacl (talk) 23:44, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

  Maybe we should try again, beginning with establishing whether, in principle a different name would be preferable. Maybe run it like the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election: step one is to decide whether to oust the old name. If that's decided upon, then see which alternative is the least-disliked replacement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:16, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

  I always assumed the word notability was coarsely related to the various WP:MILL guidelines. Realistically there shouldn't be articles on every local girl scouts fundraising cookie drive, single injury cessna plane accident, Etc. Etc. There's a lot of super mundane every day occurrences that not even extremely niche blogs cover. Even if they get a minor local news byline. To me that's where notability comes in.

  On the other hand, someone could easily argue some Pokemon characters are notability because they are international, million dollar phenomena. With massive global cultural mind share. So they are notable enough to "deserve" an article. Like North8000 says "Having 10 million suitable articles is a better enclyclopedia than 10 million suitable articles lost in a sea of 1 billion unsuitable ones." No one will ever be able to find those 10 million articles if they have to also dig through the 1 billion to get there.

  Wikipedia is currently at that point with schools, sports players, and a few other subjects where verifiability alone has been the go to standard. Same goes for a ton of list articles where it takes combing through 900 red linked, un-referenced entries to find a blue link, but they can't be improved because "verifiability." Ultimately verifiability and minimum coverage doesn't stop those articles from being created or help them to be findable. Let alone informational. Notability does. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:03, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

  You assumed wrong. Notability, as defined here, is about depth of coverage, not importance. If for some reason a girl scout cookie sale were to make headlines in multiple major newspapers, it would become notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:13, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

  I've combed through thousands of news articles and books on such subjects at this point. The whole idea of in-depth coverage on a local girl scout fundraiser is a unicorn, invented by people in AfDs who say a bunch of trivial name drops are in-depth, because they can't handle articles about their favorite niche subjects getting deleted. That's if they even bother to look at the articles in the first place. Mostly they just cut and paste the same messages about how "everything related to X subject get's in-depth coverage so this must have it to" and call it good there. No professional that we are allowed to cite writes fully detailed, in-depth articles on niche subjects that aren't notable though.

  Rarely (if ever) is there enough coverage of such topics in multiple news outlets for us to combine them into in-depth coverage either. Because there's zero profit motive for them to cover such things beyond trivial mentions. Articles aren't based on local zines or personal blogs and unfortunately they are the only outlets that cover extremely niche, non-notable topics in any sort of in-depth way. I run into that issue all the time with local subjects I'd love to write articles about but can't because the only coverage on it is in some hyper local blog or college students passion project zine. So I'm stuck voting on AfDs because I can't write articles about literally anything I'm interested in, because the subjects are way to obscure. That's life though. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:36, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

  Agree with Shooterwalker's comment, particularly the verifiability portion, which is what I was getting at when I started this section. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:17, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Something is deeply and truly screwed up when WP has articles about Porn stars and Pokemon characters, and yet [User:Montanabw/Alanna_Shaikh A TED Fellow] was consigned to sandbox purgatory by AfD for insufficient notability, and a Nobel Laureate was draftified prior to her win because of, basically poor quality writing by a newbie editor. We need to figure out a better line between turning WP into someone's social media page and having the current inconsistent mess of guidelines. I think that a very strict policy enforcing WP:V is fine. I think that articles with WP:COI need to be examined with a very critical eye, though COI is not the same as paid editing, for which we have very clear —and stricter—policies that we can enforce. Basically, I think the AfD has its place, but deletion solely based on the "Notability" criterion has probably generated more wasted bandwidth than any other topic at AfD... it taps directly into social justice issues, has huge implications related to racism, sexism, colonialism, recentism, and any number of other "-isms" that really cannot be adequately addressed. Let's figure out a way to end silly arguments like whether "merely local" coverage includes the Atlanta Constitution (yes, I saw that argument once) and quit tossing articles because "just being interviewed doesn't confer notability." We do need to figure out a line that, for example, does exclude siblings who record garage band albums in their parent's house, but doesn't exclude Billie Eilish. Montanabw^(talk) 23:22, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

  The Donna Strickland case was an egg on our face issue but that not all an issue about notability - AFC and NPP plays an important role in going through the thousands of pages created and if editors fails to make the barest of sourcing cases, then they will likely be draftified, which happens when an editor doesn't know how to write well for a WP article and that also points to the volunteer aspect too - if the "wrong" editor takes first crack and doesn't do a good job , then we may have a draft article, or even worse, we don't get an article at all. As soon as her Nobel was announced, her article situation was remedied. So I would not place the Strickland article as a notability failure but multiple issues at once. As for the TED Fellow, as the AFD indicated, that's not an academic position so there's good reason not to grant immediate notability to that. --Masem (t) 01:28, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

  And that riff has been played for as long as I've been on Wikipedia: woe, woe, that WP includes articles on subjects I don't think are worthy and disses many I do. But sure, let's say we purge all those naughty, nasty porn stars you hate and include those worthy, worthy TED Fellows you want included. With what criteria do you propose to do it? Because the moment you ditch the GNG as an operating principle in favor of a vague concept of "worthiness," that's when we go completely subjective. And that's what would tear Wikipedia apart: endless debates on every notability page and in every Wikiproject around Mine Is Worthier Than Yours, Jack. Endless attempts to relitigate every decision around shifting consensuses. (Never mind the airy presumption that there are more supporters of TED Fellow articles out there than there are of porn/Pokemon, and you don't get outvoted.) XfD not only fracturing around the inclusionist/deletionist divide, but dozens of others as well. This would suck up the energies of every editor that lacked the self-preservation to run for their sanity. I agree that the GNG is an operating principle that has flaws. But the alternatives are far worse. Ravenswing 01:52, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

  So every single TED fellow and assistant professor should have an article, then, to combat the abundance of pornstars? JoelleJay (talk) 01:13, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

• Agree that there is a problem. Even if the system works 80% there is still the fact the few can understand or explain it and that 20% is a very high failure rate. But, combining the hugeness of the wp:notability ecosystem and that we can't get even a heavily discussed and supported 1 sentence implemented (see top of this talk page) such sounds like a near-impossible Herculean task. IMO Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works describes the 80% that works. It also recognizes that the first ~1/4 of the WP:Notability PAGE is Wikipedia's de facto meta-policy for the existence of articles, including encompassing the other most relevant-to-that policy, WP:Not. IMO, the only realistic way to evolve is to recognize that the first 1/4 of the WP:Notability PAGE is that and evolve it to describe the current "rules" of the wp:notability ecosystem that work 80% of the time. This could be done by a slow evolution, and IMO a small group of expert editors organizing and supporting that effort could make it happen.North8000 (talk) 01:23, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
• I strongly agree with Levivich that too much effort is put into articles that are barely read, while too little effort is put into articles that are widely read. That said, I think AfD is useful and has a purpose, for example, for unwarranted promotion of fringe theories. There is a need to seriously survey many of Wikipedia's earliest articles, which were not subject to the serious scrutiny that most new article creations are now. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:00, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

  Older articles are a big part of the problem. A lot of them were created and kept with the assumption that there would be coverage of the topics in the future, when there wasn't any at the time. Which (predictably) never materialized. So they are of extremely low, un-encyclopedic quality. It hasn't help that a lot of the time when they go to AfD some users will decry the nominations because of the age of the articles and nostalgia.

  A lot of them should really be dealt with though. That doesn't necessarily have to mean sending them all to AfD, maybe there could be something like an "old article review task force", but something needs to be done. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:14, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

  @Adamant1: re. "old article review task force": WP:SWEEP is a proposal to do something like that. – Joe (talk) 18:15, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

  • And here's my answer to the effort thing: we are all volunteers here. No one's paying us. We all work on the things we want to work on, to the degree we choose to work. Take me: I do some gnome work here and there, a little of Articles for Creation here, a little of AfDing and RfAing there, but most of my Wikieffort has been based around ice hockey articles. I will continue to put that effort where I want to put it, when I want to put it, to the degree I want to put it. I don't give the slightest, most infinitesimal damn about how many page views the articles I meddle with get, and I contemptuously reject even the implication -- never mind the suggestion -- that my efforts should be more "worthily" spent. Should the Wikimedia Foundation want to put me on salary to write articles on TED Fellows, they know where to find me. Until then, I leave those to the editors who care. And I anticipate the great majority of editors work from similar paradigms. Ravenswing 03:52, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
• My take: The minimum requirement for having an article is the existence of sufficient content about the subject in acceptable sources, because it doesn't make sense to have an article with no verifiable content even if it's on the most important subject in the world. Acceptable means reliable and generally third-party, but not always e.g. in the case of government databases (for political subdivisions like municipalities which are presumed notable with very few exceptions) and peer-reviewed papers (for writing articles about their author as long as third-party sources deem them "important enough" to meet WP:PROF, even if there is not enough material in those sources to write an article on them). For most subjects, the ability to write an article compliant with WP:V is close enough to people's subjective perception of "importance" to just leave it at that. For some subjects like current events and local businesses, a higher bar is instituted because GNG is perceived as too permissive. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:26, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
• Tend to agree with the above comment as there are a number of topics that are considered important enough to be included without immediate evidence of a WP:GNG pass provided they can be verified in one or more reliable sources. Such topics include villages and towns, national politicians, state politicians (in certain nations such as the US, India and Canada and others but not all nations), animal species, plant species, winners of Nobel prizes. It would be more honest if we detailed topics such as these that only need to pass WP:V in my view, Atlantic306 (talk) 00:26, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

The wp:notability ecosystem already sort of does that, even if it is so difficult to learn that few see it. Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works If we could just bring that into the daylight then we would be in a position to evolve it as needed; if not not. North8000 (talk) 00:41, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Please comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion/Notability guide#RFC on Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Notability guide and WP:CLERGYOUTCOMES as policy at AFD.4meter4 (talk) 15:56, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I asked this 10 years ago but the discussion didn't really go far. Our policy states that Sources should be secondary sources. I think this not enough, and we should allow WP:TERTIARY sources too. It has been my experience that, while rare, there are cases where the topic is discussed only in tertiary, not secondary, sources. Here is a specific case study: Earth in science fiction (full discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Earth in science fiction (2nd nomination)). Research by me and others into sources showed that the topic is discussed in depth in two tertiary works - specialized encyclopedias of science fiction (The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia) but not in any secondary sources. So the formal reading of GNG suggests that the topic fails GNG, even though common sense and overall community consensus is (IMHO) that it is notable. If one example is not enough, another, from a related field, is Far future in fiction as well as Near future in fiction. I have rewritten those articles, and in my review of sources I again failed to find much, if anything, outside specialized science-fiction encyclopedias. This leads me to conclude that in some fields, at least, certain topics are discussed only in tertiary sources. Said sources are reliable, academic, yet the current wording of GNG would discard them. I think we should remedy this. Therefore I suggest to add, following the sentence ""Sources"[2] should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability. ", a new sentence that reads "Tetriary sources are also acceptable". I'd be happy to see if anyone would like to propose a tweak or different formulation, but I think we should make it clear that articles sourced solely to tertiary sources can be notable as well. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:48, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

• Encyclopedias of this sort are usually secondary sources, not tertiary ones, as their entries and thematic articles are based on the original works rather than some body of secondary scholarship. It's not a big deal as the important thing is that the facts and opinions be reasonably accurate and authoritative. Fussing over the exact level of analysis seems excessive per WP:BURO, WP:CREEP and WP:IAR. As this is a loose guideline, there's no need to get into such detail. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:26, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

• I completely agree with Piotrus that the phrasing of the guideline should reflect that tertiary sources are acceptable sources for establishing notability, if not more so than secondary sources. A tertiary source suggests the existance of secondary sources, even if they may be hard to find. They also by their scope suggest that a topic appearing in a tertiary sources is encyclopedic. In the same vein as Andrew, if a source called an encyclopedia is not based on secondary sources, it is a tertiary source only by scope, but is a secondary source by the way it works. However, working out this difference just to be able to fulfill the current phrasing of the guideline in my view is a waste of time and memory space, while looking at the meaning of notability, tertiary sources are at least on par with secondary sources. Daranios (talk) 10:56, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
• For my part, I agree that there's just a point beyond which too much analysis just has us falling down rabbit holes. Yes, it's true that we don't really know the sources for the material in works like The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy (and being plugged into the SF community for many years, I know full well that the sources are often Some Fan's POV). But we don't commonly question the fact-checking of sources like the New York Times or CNN, even when it is glaringly obvious that they're getting their information from Wikipedia articles, down to mimicking the articles' phrasing and errors. At some point, we just have to accept that sources aren't always perfect, that we do the best we can manage, and the community on talk pages and deletion discussions have to gauge their reliability and accuracy on a case-by-case basis. Ravenswing 11:14, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

• For notability, the primary/secondary/tertiary nature of a source is less important than the connected/independent nature of the source. An “encyclopedia” written by someone connected to the topic would not necessarily indicate that the topic is notable. Blueboar (talk) 13:18, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Also I would add the "significant coverage" facet would also be a key distinction - in some of these tertiary sources, while there are entries in depth, some others may be more closer to a glossary/definition and on its own would not be sufficient for GNG. --Masem (t) 13:32, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

• Well, it should not be centrally what sources do the source rely on, nor on pigeonholing Tertiary/not tertiary, but rather are the mode (the type of work)/author/publisher) viz WP:V, in the manner expected of WP:SOURCE. If, for example, Greenwood is an established publisher of such work in the encyclopedic tradition, than it suggests it should count. I remember one Afd, where one of the issues was around Encyclopedia of London, and the article was kept in part I think, because the Encyclopedia of London gave some weight to a safe conclusion that it was an encyclopedic topic (it seems hard to imagine a more convincing proposition for a layperson -- as we all, in the nature of Wikipedia, must be -- to 'is it encyclopedic', than 'it's covered in encyclopedias'). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:36, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
  • I'd assume a review of the reliability of the source is implicit by the basis of the GNG, which is making assessment of reliable sources if they were secondary, independent, etc. That said, I would agree that well-recognized encyclopedia, considered an expert work in the specific field, would likely confer more weight towards meeting the GNG that a fly-by-night lesser-known author that doesn't have the same reputation. --Masem (t) 13:50, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

    So, perhaps translate the similar concept in WP:DUE re encyclopedias to directly explicate that in this guideline. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:27, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with changing the rules around tertiary sources to establish notability. Secondary sources are required for a reason. Most major topics will have secondary sources, and there's very little gained by citing a short paragraph-style entry. In practice, the topics that have tertiary sources without secondary sources are usually WP:TRIVIALMENTIONs. I could be open to changing my mind if someone showed me an example of a topic based on tertiary sources that doesn't also have secondary sources, and that could legitimately be used to write a decent article. Shooterwalker (talk) 14:38, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shooterwalker: What about the three examples provided by Piotrus above? Daranios (talk) 15:33, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I agree with this in theory. I've had the same issue with extremely niche historical topics where someone wrote about something based on a source that is now lost to history, but I couldn't use them as references because of their tertiary nature. Despite that, I see two problems with this. 1. How can the accuracy of what's being summarized by the tertiary sources be determined in cases where we can't check (or don't feel like checking) the original source to make sure they are accurate? 2. If the original sources are available somewhere, why not just use them instead? In other wards, what keeps people from mainly using tertiary sources that are easier to find and write off of (at the cost of accuracy/quality) then it would be for them to look for and read through the originals? --Adamant1 (talk) 01:46, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

  Adamant1, I think that while secondary sources are preferred, tertiary should be sufficient. Also, in my experience, many encyclopedia entries don't have footnotes and contain not just summary but also original research. It is worth remembering that while Wikipedia has a WP:NOR policy, traditional encyclopedias do not. Particularly in social sciences, some articles published in them are IMHO little different from something that is published in some academic journals. In the real-world, the border between secondary and tertiary, summarizing and OR, is not as clear. I have, in fact, written a few pieces for a specialized encyclopedia - and they contain my OR (opinions). At the same time, there are some "secondary sources", articles in academic journals, which are pure literature reviews, hence, they are in essence, a tertiary source, with no original research component. Shrug. Just as I have seen encyclopedia entris which are worse than blog posts, and/or contain just plot summaries... we need editorial judgement to see if the source is reliable and independent, and the limitation to "secondary sources only" is not helpful. I would be ok with stressing that secondary sources are preferred, but we should not preclude tertiary sources, since some of what is published in a work that calls itself encyclopedia is often quite ORish. If what I said isn't super clear, let me clarify this with this final point: sometimes, authors of encyclopedic articles will be the first to define a topic, and discuss it in a dedicated piece. I mean, seriously, think about it - when Diderot wrote the first encyclopedia, he was not citing sources, he was just summarizing what he know, pure OR. I very much doubt that the first encyclopedia could be called a "tertiary" source at all, and this is true for many other works like this. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:32, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

That makes sense and I mostly agree with it. Except it sounds like the solution would be to define specific instances where OR would be allowed. Or even something along the lines of "literature reviews and encyclopedias are acceptable as tertiary sources" instead of a blanket allowance for all tertiary sources. Since the possible damage from allowing literature reviews and encyclopedias is likely extremely low, but it could be high for others. I would like to see more of an acceptances for locally researched historical information and first hand accounts/OR of religious beliefs/important local events etc. etc. though. However that can be accomplished. Since none are likely to have usable secondary references but are still worthy of inclusion IMO. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:00, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@Adamant1 I am not sure if limiting ourselves to literature reviews and encyclopedias is sufficient. I am wondering what kind of tertiary sources should not be enough? What about handbooks or compendiums? Not to mention there are gray lines and some works that are encyclopedic are not always labeled as such. You mention "locally researched historical information and first hand accounts/OR of religious beliefs/important local events" but those do not sound like tertiary sources to me; "first hand accounts" are obviously primary? PS. Here's another example, Polish Biographical Dictionary. To me, it has always been a common-sense argument that anyone included in it is automatically notable, and an article referenced solely to it was following best practices and certainly not warranting a ((notability)) tag. But the strict interpretation of GNG as written would suggest I am wrong, which to me is simply none-sensical. Btw, since PBD authors cite sources, and I often look at that, they often cite primary sources, even things like portraits. It also often contains author's analysis of things like a person's significance, etc. It is obvious that PBD, while appearing "tertiary" (classified as biographical dictionary), contains OR. Lastly, I am pretty sure that for some obscure cases, the biographical entry in PBD is the only biographical entry some subjects have, and we won't find any other non-primary, in-depth sources. Again, this clearly shows, IMHO, that a biographical dictionary should be sufficient for showing someone's notability. Also, there's the common-sense rule-of-thumb: if something is good enough to have a dedicated entry in another encyclopedia or equivalent work, it should be good enough for us. (Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, which has lists of to-do topics based on red links from indexes of other encyclopedias and like, also comes to mind). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:58, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Piotrus: Between you and me I can't think of a tertiary source that would be problematic, but I much prefer things like Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources compared to either allowing everything or allowing nothing. True, historical accounts Etc. Etc. aren't tertiary sources, but to me this is 50% a tertiary issue and 50% an OR one. Since tertiary sources sum up primary sources. It would be weird and inconsistent if a summary of a primary source is allowed when the original source isn't. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:24, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Adamant1 As far as I understand it, or at least rationalize it for myself without rereading the policies, the logic is that a source summarizing a primary source gives us "another layer" or confirmation. Primary source is a claim by one person, but once it is repeated by another source, be it secondary or tertiary, it becomes acceptable for us. Primary sources are ORish and do not show notability (defined here as "being noticed by another person other than the one making a given claim), secondary and tertiary are not ORish and show notability (since they show that others noticed a given claim). In other words, we talk about things that have been talked by others, more than once. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:29, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

That might be true for encyclopedias written in the last 30 years, but before that there was some absolutely trash quality encyclopedias. Especially when they were being sold door to door by Tramp Printers. No to mention all the medical encyclopedias written during the 18 and early 19 hundreds that had garbage pseudoscientific ideas in them like Phrenology. I don't think Phrenology became any more confirmed of a scientific principle once it was repeated. If anything less so, because the faux legitimacy came at the cost of people reading the actual scientific literature at the time that said it was BS. what little there was and to the degree that it was ignored by the mainstream press because fairly summarizing popular ideas doesn't tend to sell encyclopedias. If we are just talking about in the last 20 years though, sure.

Also, if encyclopedias are allowed without a Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources type list being what stops people from just citing the various crowd sourced Wikipedia style clones out there? It would also be of weirdly meta and non-neutral for Wikipedia to have a policy that supports it's own legitimacy as a source. I don't see how that could be gotten around if encyclopedias are OK to use as references either. If nothing else, Wikipedia should stay neutral or completely against encyclopedias being legitimate sources for it's own sake. Or at least there should be a clear statement that it's not endorsing itself as one. I don't think just a disclaimer would be adequate though. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:50, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Adamant1 The question of reliability is not related to notability. By saying we require secondary or tertiary sources for notability, we are not opening ourselves to accepting unreliable, old sources any more than we already are. There are obsolete secondary sources, academic even, discussing Phrenology too.Just like don't accept them, we are not accepting - nor will we - old tertiary (encyclopedic) sources about it. Ditto for Wikipedia clones. They are not reliable. Notability does not override reliability, or in other words, coverage in unreliable sources does not suffice to demonstrate notability. Simply put, content sourced to unreliable tertiary sources (be them old encyclopedis or forks of Wikipedia) would see them removed, then it would be deleted as unsourced, unless reliable sources can be found. We do the same with content sourced to unreliable secondary sources (ex. predatory journals). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:52, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

One of the things I've been thinking recently is that there are to many terms involved in this stuff and the differences aren't that clear. They all pretty much come down to "don't use bad sources", but you almost have to have a Phd in library sciences to parse it all out. The guidelines could really use some simplification so that isn't the case. I doubt anyone brings along a 15 item list of terms that they check off when they look for references. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:05, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

> where someone wrote about something based on a source that is now lost to history, but I couldn't use them as references because of their tertiary nature

When someone writes something based on a source now lost to history, the result is usually a secondary source, not a tertiary one. There is no shortage of secondary sources about sources now lost to history, such as Achilleis (trilogy), almost all of the Yongle Encyclopedia, the Roman Sibylline Books, and more.

Reliable sources are not required to provide us with a list of their sources. If they do name a source, they are not required to name sources that still exist, or that we can access. They are reliable because they meet the criteria for reliability, not because we can check their footnotes.

(If you're talking about "antique" sources, you should handle them as if they were primary sources, even if they would have been considered tertiary at the time they were originally written. Don't cite the venerable Bede's De natura rerum as a source for the fact that the equinox happens twice a year; cite it instead as a source for the fact Bede said that [assuming editors had some reason to care whether Bede mentioned that subject].) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:42, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

• I strongly agree that tertiary sources like encyclopedias should be permitted as sources. Often, specialized encyclopedias are some of the best sources for our articles. Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:53, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Either, the tertiary source names multiple secondary sources, and these count as your secondary sources, or if not, your tertiary source is a secondary source and not a tertiary source. SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:07, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

• Isn't this already the policy? Secondary sources are the most useful for writing an encyclopaedia, but primary and tertiary sources can also be used within reason. I don't think there's anything stopping you writing an article based mainly on other encyclopaedia articles if that's what you think is best. – Joe (talk) 18:27, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Yeah, the policy already says, explicitly, that tertiary sources are allowed, and it spells out an important use case: Reliable tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources, and may be helpful in evaluating due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other. XOR'easter (talk) 16:48, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

• I think this is well reflected already in Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary,_secondary_and_tertiary_sources. It say that tertiary and primary sources are actually allowed, with certain limitations, and they even should be used for certain purposes, such as evaluating the relative weight of secondary sources. Unfortunately, this contradicts wording on this page, i.e. we should use secondary sources, period. Therefore, I agree with Piotrus that exact wording on this page should be corrected to make it more consistent with WP:NOR. My very best wishes (talk) 18:31, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Primary and tertiary sources are fine for WP:V, but we're talking WP:N and that's a different focus, not just that information is verifyable but that there's significant coverage of that. By our definition of secondary sources (which transform other information using analysis, commentary, and criticism), that's generally assured to give us sig. coverage assuming the work is focused on the topic at hand. This can't happen for primary sources, generally so we eliminate those for notability evaluation. Tertiary sources are a mix of primary and secondary, and so it really depends on that mix. The above example of a directory of contacts is more primary than secondary, so we're not likely going to consider it for notability evaluation. On the other hand, a tertiary work like Encyclopedia Britanica is going to be more secondary than primary on the topics it covers, so we'd likely think about that in considering notability. --Masem (t) 14:22, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

    @Masem Right, I agree, and I think we need to revise the wording to acknowledge that some tertiary works are fine and as such, sometimes - in rare cases, mind you - referencing something purely to tertiary works is enough. Per the case I cite in my op post (Earth in science fiction). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:07, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

    Enough to verify a sentence, or enough to justify an article?

    Given that the GNG was written back when editors were unclear about the fact that Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent, I'm not convinced that the GNG was meant to require secondary sources (e.g., sources providing an analysis of previously published sources). I suspect that we really just wanted to write articles from independent sources (i.e., sources without obvious conflicts of interest – this thing about rejecting major news articles because some of the information in the article could [legally and/or practically] only have come from the subject of the article is definitely new). Go back and look at what this page said in 2006: "a minimum standard for any given topic is that it has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, where the source is independent of the topic itself." Look at the "primary notability criterion" in 2007, which is an early version of the GNG. The word secondary appears only once on the page (added here), and it's used in a sentence that repeats an earlier concept – only originally saying "independent" instead of "secondary".

    Look at the discussion from 2007, where the GNG takes shape: "changing "published works" to "secondary sources" makes the part about the sources being "independent of the subject" redundant. Secondary sources are, by definition, independent of the subject." [....] "You and I know offhand that "secondary" includes by definition "independent", but some people don't." That's not exactly a sign of people asking for analytical (i.e., actually secondary) sources. They think it's just another way to say independent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:09, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

• Isn't the term "tertiary source" itself something that has simply been made up by Wikipedians? I'm sure I did not come across it before Wikipedia existed. Sources were either primary or were secondary, which meant that they were based on primary sources, however many steps there were between them. We shouldn't get hung-up on whether the author of a particular encyclopedia article based it on primary or secondary sources (it is usually a mixture) but simply accept the fact that "secondary" means "not primary". Phil Bridger (talk) 16:52, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
  • See sources at tertiary source as well as quick google search. It's not a WP-made up term. --Masem (t) 14:18, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

    @Phil Bridger, the concept of a tertiary source doesn't exist in some academic fields, particularly law. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:44, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

In Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Abe_&_Bruno, the question was presented if we should consider a reference book as an indication of notability. Is this something that already has been discussed? Specifically, using the book Hollywood Distribution Directory which is described by the official website as "the most complete distribution contact directory for the film and television industry". BOVINEBOY2008 16:06, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

This goes to the above question on tertiary sources (which most reference sources are), and that does depend on the nature of the work. I would argue that if the book here is described as "the most complete" - implying it is including every contact they could validate - then its material is routine in nature, failing significant coverage and not sufficient for notability. --Masem (t) 16:27, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, an entry in anything with "directory" in the title is unlikely to represent much of a claim to notability! Johnbod (talk) 16:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

We should beware taking titles at face value. This particular work doesn't seem to indicate notability, unless it contains quite a bit more content about the subject than a listing, but there are works with "directory" in their titles that are, in fact, much more than directories. Every source needs to be evaluated on its own merits. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:42, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Examples? Johnbod (talk) 22:47, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

• I agree with Phil Bridger, something called a directory is not necessarily a tertiary source. It needs to be evaluated in context. If there is anything in policy which deprecates “reference books” in general, can we please have a link? On the Hollywood Distribution Directory, BOVINEBOY, I see no reason to doubt that it is a reliable source, do you doubt that? In terms of WP:N, if it is reliable, the other question is whether it is independent. Moonraker (talk) 19:15, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
  • I don't doubt the reliability, I worry about the significance. BOVINEBOY2008 19:25, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
    • In the absence of a higher standard like WP:CORP or WP:NEVENT, significant coverage in independent reliable sources is prima facie evidence of notability - there is no such thing as "significance" in this context. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:28, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Anything that purports to be "the most complete distribution contact directory" should absolutely not be used as an indication of notability. They don't include things because they're important. They include things because they exist. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:29, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

The thing is, RoySmith, WP:N has nothing to do with importance, nothing at all. Moonraker (talk) 20:15, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps "important" was a poor choice of word. The point is, WP:N says, Wikipedia's concept of notability applies this basic standard to avoid indiscriminate inclusion of topics. If a source is indiscriminate about what it includes, then using that source to establish WP:N will lead to us being indiscriminate. Any publication which prides itself on being "the most complete directory" of something is going to be indiscriminate about what it includes. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:31, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Basically, if it is trying to be complete, it is not discriminating on any factor and thus not providing us with a reason for notability (namely, significant coverage). The inclusion in such a directory would be considered routine. Secondary sources are secondary because they apply some necessary transformation of otherwise primary/basic info into a manner that judges why it deserves more discussion, which could be on importance, popularity, legacy, etc - eg that it was noted by sources. --Masem (t) 20:45, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Two things to add to this: 1) Depth of coverage. A tertiary reference work that covers a subject/topic in depth would count towards notability, while a tertiary reference work that simply includes the subject/topic of similar subjects/topics in a list would not. 2) Independence. Do those listed pay to be listed? Do they submit their own information, or is it compiled by the work’s editorial staff. Blueboar (talk) 14:41, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Per this, to be notable it has to be rather more than "and Barry was a well know user to the Fractured Stoat public house". It has to be in-depth coverage, about them.Slatersteven (talk) 14:53, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

• Indiscriminate catalogs do not support Notability. The most obvious example is the phonebook. Any source which is indiscriminate, which attempts to catalog all X or substantially all X, or which fails to present significant and useful coverage of the individual topic, does not qualify for establishing core Notability criteria. However once Notability has been established, complete or indiscriminate catalogs may well be Reliable source filling in article content. I briefly looked into the "book" mentioned here, Hollywood Distribution Directory allegedly the most complete distribution contact directory for the film and television industry" - not only does it appear indiscriminate but I don't think it's Reliable. It appears to be one of those self-published print-on-demand "books". These sorts of "books" are a real nuisance for us, supposed books are generally presumed Reliable and it takes digging to spot that these are effectively selfpublish works. Alsee (talk) 02:25, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I just need a straight yes or no answer, and where it says so. Howard the Duck (talk) 14:20, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think the word "overrule" really applies. There are two ways for an article to be presumed justified in having an article, either through the GNG or the applicable SNG. In certain cases - notably NPROF and ORG - an SNG does explicitly set aside the GNG in some respects, but in other cases the two usually operate in parallel. As to "where it says so", the situation is generally set out in WP:SNG, which came out of an RfC within the last year or so. WP:NPROF and WP:NORG set out specific cases where the GNG is set aside. Newimpartial (talk) 14:44, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

"[T]he situation is generally set out in WP:SNG". I read that, and I saw "articles which pass an SNG or the GNG may still be deleted or merged into another article, especially if adequate sourcing or significant coverage cannot be found, or if the topic is not suitable for an encyclopedia". So what does that mean? You can shout WP:GNG, then at the very most, delete the Wikipedia article but merge the information into another article? I'm not really deleting information, just the actual article, then merge that information somewhere else. Howard the Duck (talk) 15:11, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

The thing is, there is no guarantee for a topic to have its own article, based on either SNG or GNG. WP:NOT is also a consideration, and lots of reliably sourced topics run afoul of NOT. Topics within the domain of an SNG that don't meet it generally should not have an article, and topics outside the SNG domains (or in weakly presumptive SNG areas, like NSPORT, that demand a GNG pass as part of th SNG) that don't meet the GNG should generally also not have an article. But topics that *do* are not guaranteed an article, and topics that are borderline may be given an extended opportunity for sourcing to be improved, depending on the situation.

And yes, the best way to deal with sourced information that doesn't seem appropriate as an encyclopedic topic is often a merge discussion, rather than AfD. If we could all learn one thing from the Notability Talk page, I would hope for that to be the thing we learn. Newimpartial (talk) 15:33, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

No, they still have to pass GNG, it is just that SNG's give them a bit more time to be worked on.Slatersteven (talk) 15:12, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

This does not reflect how the SNGs and GNG have ever worked, either in policy or practice, much as certain editors would wish it to be so. Newimpartial (talk) 15:35, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

A way to see it is that of NPROF and NORG, they still uphold the principle of the GNG - we're looking for significant coverage of the topic from multiple independent, secondary sources. NORG modifies this by demanding more specificity to the sourcing to avoid cases of weak RSes or where potential COI exists and eliminating trivial mentions that might be okay in other areas. NPROF modifies this that not only significant coverage of the the academic could be considered but also coverage of the academics' research itself, and that that can be shown through accomplishments and references/citation counts. Neither change the ultimate target of what notability is trying to achieve, in-depth coverage of a topic based on independent and secondary sources at the end of the day, just tuned slightly for their specific functions. So I wouldn't call it an overriding feature --Masem (t) 15:17, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I actually "read" WP:NPROF, and yes it does uphold GNG; if anything it clarifies what GNG means for people such as academics. I haven't read NORG, but by the way you described it, it does look like what NPROF does. For these two cases, the SNG builds upon GNG.... now, we all know which SNGs say they overrule GNG and I'd be interested if their SNG does indeed overrule GNG, and if that's allowed. Howard the Duck (talk) 15:26, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Given NORG/NCORP as the one SNG that probably implies or outright states it overrides the GNG, it only does this in the definition of what is acceptable sourcing because it imposes a tighter subset. But the goals it is still trying to achieve remain consistent with the intent of notability (in-depth coverage via ind. sec. sources), hence I don't consider it a true override. An overriding SNG hypothetically would be one that says "All X can have a standalone article without question", which no SNG actually states. Eg even WP:GEOLAND states that we presume notability for all recognized populated places but does not actually assume no-questions-asked notability. --Masem (t) 15:30, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

People who cite WP:GEOLAND push the idea though that their SNG overrules WP:GNG. User:NemesisAT is even proud of making a Wikidata entry Wikipedia article passing that SNG, while not passing GNG, recently. So what gives? Howard the Duck (talk) 15:32, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Howard the Duck, and one of the problems with this approach is that the articles are occasionally built on sourcing so flimsy and erroneous that, when you actually go and check whether the tiny village in question actually exists (on Google Maps, say), you can't find any evidence that it does. Reyk _YO! 06:57, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Masem, the reason I don't like the way of talking about the principle of the GNG, as you did here, is that it lends itself to the mischaracterization Howard just made. Call the principle of reliable, independent sourcing "Notability" and the discussion becomes much more clear. The WP:GNG adds to that the notion of multiple sources and WP:SIGCOV, but those do not apply where the GNG does not apply. So WP:NORG replaces WP:SIGCOV with WP:CORPDEPTH and "multiple" sources with WP:SIRS, both much higher standards.

So, Howard, have you read the RfC that produced the current SNG text? That was am RfC to create language to reflect the status quo of WP:N as a whole, and it was pretty clearly found in that discussion and its close that the relationships between the SNGs and the GNG differ a great deal; it was also recognized that many of them provide a presumption of notability quite separate from the GNG criteria. Newimpartial (talk) 15:48, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I mentioned "significant coverage" as part of what notability is looking for, and that while NORG may tighten or limit bounds of that, its still the same basic concept as it is all around being able to eventually write an in-depth article meeting the core content policies (NOT/V/NPOV/NOR) from independent and secondary sources. NORG just makes very specific exclusions on sourcing aspects that would otherwise be accepted elsewhere. --Masem (t) 15:55, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

But there is all the difference in the world between "significant coverage" as a concept and WP:SIGCOV as a guideline. Coverage requirements for academics in WP:NPROF and for numbers in WP:NUMBER define "significant coverage" in those domains, but their logic is even more different from WP:SIGCOV than WP:SIRS is from "multiple, reliable sources". And I also disagree with you about the purpose of NORG - it is not the additional challenges of writing verifiable ORG articles that makes it necessary to demand more and better sources up front; it is the risk of promotion and inappropriately biased sourcing that makes it necessary to create barriers against the creation of articles that are NOT encyclopaedic. Newimpartial (talk) 16:05, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Its far easier to explain the intents of the SNGs as being field-specific implementation of the GNG rather than overrides (as originally asked). I agree that NORG has many deviations from the GNG to seem vastly different, but it has the same goal at the end of the day as I said, with the added goal of what you said, to prevent the proliferation of COI-filled articles. It does that by narrowing what it defines as significant coverage and what are appropriate sources (including AUD), but all that can still be read as seeking "significant coverage from independent, secondary sources", for all purposes. This approach is a KISS-style approach to explaining the differences and keeping the idea from the previous wording issues that the SNGs and GNG tend to work hand-in-hand. --Masem (t) 16:10, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I might have believed that at one time, but I certainly don't now. The problem is this: if we use "GNG" to mean both the general principle of Notability and the specific criteria embodied in SIGCOV and "multiple, reliable sources", that only confuses people. Yes, the SNGs are based in some sense on Notability as a general criterion of sourced information on a topic, but most of them do so while superseding certain aspects of the GNG criteria. As long as people try to figure out the SNGs as if they were fiddling around with the minutiae of GNG tests, rather than (usually) establishing their own, domain-specific criteria, we are going to have more confused discussions like this one. The question of what categories of communities in the Philippines can be reliably shown to be officially recognized and populated ought to be settled in its own merits, not through a "hail Mary" attempt to separately apply the GNG in addition to GEOLAND. Newimpartial (talk) 16:24, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

• If you read the SNGs, most say that notability is “presumed” if certain conditions are met. Why do they say this? Because there is a very strong likelihood that IF those conditions are met, passing GNG will be possible. SNGs should not be seen as an alternative to GNG, but a strong indication that GNG can be met (so keep looking for sources). Blueboar (talk) 15:39, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Perhaps unfortunately, thus has never been true as a general rule. A close reading of the text of the SNGs and the GNG over time shows that both a GNG pass and a pass for most SNGs offer the presumption of meriting an article; it has only ever been a few SNGs (like NSPORT) where an SNG pass offers the presumption of a GNG pass (I have referred to those elsewhere as "weakly presumptive" SNGs). Newimpartial (talk) 15:48, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
    • And what makes it worse is that people look at the words "rebuttable presumption" that the sources necessary to meet WP:V and WP:N are going to turn up somewhere, and interpreting them as an exemption from those sourcing requirements. Reyk _YO! 15:53, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
      • I'm not sure what "rebuttable presumption" you are talking about, here. Obviously articles have to have adequate sources, but what count as adequate sources differ by domain. WP:NNUMBER, for example, specifies a sourcing requirement for numbers that would be absurdly narrow (and demanding) in any other domain. WP:GEOLAND, by contrast, does not demand such a high standard. Newimpartial (talk) 15:57, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
    • Another subject area where articles are almost always kept at AfD is railway stations, despite not always meeting WP:GNG. NemesisAT (talk) 15:58, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
      • This comes back to what the "presumed notable" and "rebuttable presumption" means. We allow SNGs to establish cases that clearly don't meet the GNG (significant coverage in independent + secondary sources) on the basis that meeting those conditions, that significant coverage can be found given time and effort. EG: GEOLAND's first point that any recognized populated place is presumed notable is that there's likely written history about that place that can be obtained from local sources at that place, and thus require the effort to physically go there and seek those out (not everything is online). Thus, when people AFD these types of articles that are presumed notable, this is where WP:BEFORE kicks in - they have to show an appropriate challenge to that presumption of notability by demonstrating, as best they can, no further sourcing likely exists. And most AFDs of SNG-meeting articles are kept due to an insufficient BEFORE approach - eg just searching online and finding nothing doesn't cut it. However, if the person did a reasonable BEFORE (had local access to a library and reporting a negative search) and found no more sources forthcoming, now the onus is on those wishing to keep to produce those sources, overcoming the presumption of notability. --Masem (t) 16:05, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
        • I'm going to say again: what you describe isn't how anything actually works. We allow SNGs to establish cases that clearly don't meet the GNG (significant coverage in independent + secondary sources) on the basis that meeting those conditions, that significant coverage can be found given time and effort. No, we don't. NPROF isn't premised on the idea that if we try hard enough we will find that profs who published frequently-cited articles will also be covered in RS human-interest pieces that would meet GNG. Rather, it has created a non-GNG Notability/sourcing standard for its domain. Newimpartial (talk) 16:15, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
          • As I said above, NPROF can be normalized in my scheme by recognizing that for an academic profession, it is not just their person but also their research that is considered part of the same topic, and it is usually that research that is going to get the secondary significant coverage rather than the person themselves. So it remains consistent with the GNG in that regards. --Masem (t) 16:41, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
            • Consistent with the principle of the GNG - in other words, source-based Notability - absolutely, yes. Consistent with the GNG as a set of criteria - not at all. I no longer see any point in trying to kludge the latter; it just confuses people IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 16:44, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
              • On the facet that SNGs are providing unique criteria towards the GNG that the GNG otherwise doesn't have, yes, I agree. but as Johnbod states below, I don't consider this "overriding" the GNG. Again, that would be completely ignoring sourced-based demonstration of significant coverage completely, which no SNG (not even NPROF) does. A criteria may seem to spell that out, but that's always tied to a presumption of notability that a sourced-based demonstration has to be met at some point. --Masem (t) 16:53, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't disagree with any of that, and I positively agree with King of Hearts' paraphrase of Johnobod below. But I just don't think using "GNG" to mean both the WP:N principle and the criteria specified in the GNG section is at all helpful. Newimpartial (talk) 17:06, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

• "straight yes or no answer": in theory no, in practice yes. It doesn't say so anywhere. Johnbod (talk) 16:05, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
  • I think WP:SNG is reasonably clear in saying "sometimes yes". Newimpartial (talk)
    • On the contrary, it is very careful to avoid any clear talk of anything like "overruling". Johnbod (talk) 16:24, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
      • That was just good policy scribing on our part. :P As I stated near the top of this discussion, I wouldn't use "overruling" in any case. But the language is closer to "sometimes yes" than "in theory no", IMO. I don't think the theory of "no" is articulated anywhere in WP:N; it seems to be an oral tradition. Newimpartial (talk) 16:29, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
  • +1 exactly as I would put it. In theory, GNG just means that articles need to be based on reliable sources, and we need enough content to write an article about something, which is just common sense. Under this view, the SNGs are just tailoring the sourcing requirements to each subject. In practice, GNG refers to a very specific type of sourcing (primarily news articles and certain types of books), and SNGs can be said to "override" GNG in that for certain subjects, either sources that are disallowed under GNG are allowed or vice versa. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:51, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

No. Or rather, as with all our myriad policies and guidelines we aim to reconcile through consensus in each specific case. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:20, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

• Why do I think, given the OP's strident language both in posts and edit summaries, that the "need" for a "straight yes or no answer" is for ammunition to beat people over the head with at AfD? Ravenswing 16:26, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Well, they wouldn't be able to beat anyone with a "yes" (which is more true than a "no", within that false dichotomy, IMO - I don't see how anyone could read NPROF or NORG and see how they are routinely used, and then conclude that the GNG is not set aside when it is supposed to be). Newimpartial (talk) 16:31, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

    I'm not sure it's a case of "when it's supposed to be", but I otherwise agree that "yes" is more true than "no", and that neither of them is entirely accurate.

    If you think about AFD, especially for borderline cases (imagine: an academic best known for marrying a celebrity; a business best known as the location of a media event), we could easily have one editor correctly argue that the GNG ought to be applied, and have another correctly argue that an SNG ought to be applied. Part of forming a consensus at AFD is forming a consensus about which set of guidelines is most appropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

    PROF is simple because it is orthogonal to GNG; it never restricts the applicability of GNG to its subject, e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Angela Zhang (scientist). So whether someone should be considered an academic or not doesn't matter. They can be treated as an academic for the purposes of PROF, and as a non-academic for the purposes of GNG. If at least one passes, then the subject is notable.

    On the other hand, for restrictive SNGs like NORG, I can envision a dispute over whether it is subject to the SNG or not. Fortunately, unlike people, usually something either is an organization or it isn't, so for NORG this issue does not really come up in practice. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:29, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

It could be from frustration that a simple categorical answer does not exist. First, by "GNG" do they mean the wp:Notability page including the meta-policy header, or just the sourcing-GNG criteria in it? Next, note that wp:Notability itself says that meeting the SNG bypasses the sourcing-GNG. But then the "principle" type wording of SNG's gives deference to the sourcing-GNG. IMHO Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works describes the overall reality. North8000 (talk) 17:02, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

• NPROF is the only SNG I'm aware that explicitly has no hierarchical relationship to GNG: a subject is considered notable through meeting the NPROF criteria or through meeting GNG, with neither guideline affecting the other (unlike NORG) or even overlapping in criteria. Other SNGs are explicitly subordinate to GNG, e.g. NSPORT (The topic-specific notability guidelines described on this page do not replace the general notability guideline. and Q2: If a sports figure meets the criteria specified in a sports-specific notability guideline, does this mean they do not have to meet the general notability guideline? A2: No, the article must still eventually provide sources indicating that the subject meets the general notability guideline. Some SNGs are hand-wavy about the relationship, but ultimately have criteria that are substantially similar to GNG anyway (like NEVENT). JoelleJay (talk) 05:06, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
  • NPROF is at one end of a continuum of relationships, NSPORT is at the other end. But the rest are not clustered at the NSPORT end of the continuum: NNUMBER and NORG set such high sourcing requirements that it seems absurd to me to regard them subordinate to the GNG, while NBIO has two kinds of criteria without a hierarchical relationship between: WP:BASIC is equivalent to GNG in its domain, but the specific criteria like WP:NAUTHOR operate separately from a GNG/BASIC-style logic. Newimpartial (talk) 12:21, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
    • Well, it rather seems a potential seriatim inquiry (sub(ordinate) in place).
    • Is the Conservative Party "generally notable"? Yes. Stop. No, can't decide? Is it notable as an organization?, etc. (if something is found in several places, like in the "Big Authoritative Book of British Politics" norg, does not matter)
    • Is Al Gore generally notable? Yes, stop. No, can't decide? Is he notable as a professor? or, Is he notable as author? or, Is he notable as a politician? or, etc. etc.
    • Is Princess Anne or Tiger Woods generally notable? Yes, stop. No, can't decide? Is she or he notable as a sports person?, etc.
    • There is no need to go further than the (blunt, general, usually obvious) GNG, unless there is something specific in the subject and in the narrow nature of the found sourcing. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:31, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
      • That proposed logic is completely incompatible with WP:N. For ORGs and NUMBERs, using the GNG as a blunt, general, usually obvious tool gives a whole lot of "false positives" for notability, while for PROFs and some other speciality BIOs it gives plenty of false negatives. So I'm afraid that doesn't work, except in cases (like SPORTS) where a well-informed person already knows it is going to work. Sigh. Newimpartial (talk) 16:19, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
        • You've, taken "blunt, general, usually obvious" out of context. So, no, not false positives, unless by that you mean, you don't agree with the outcome of any particular Afd. The Authoritative Books published on the number Pi, still make Pi presumably worthy of an article, generally so. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:11, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
          • If some fool well-intentioned admin were to close an AfD for a number as "keep" based on newspaper coverage, where peer-reviewed publications by mathematicians on that number did not exist, that would be a "false positive" for Notability and an incorrect result. That is a policy question, not a matter of personal opinion, just the same as if somebody closed an ORG AfD without considering WP:AUD requirements for sources. Newimpartial (talk) 13:31, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
            • If some well intentioned editor or admin don't know that notability is not a policy question, then they are likely not to understand PAGs. It is in no way a false positive to find notability based on numbers written as the subject of authoritative books, as GNG demonstrates. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:35, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
              • • No; if the books don't meet the requirements of WP:NNUMBER, they don't contribute to the Notability of numbers, even if they are otherwise RS. Newimpartial (talk) 21:44, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
                  • The use of RS is always a matter of suitability and context including in the GNG. "Otherwise RS" have no meaning, unless you mean irrelevant RS, but than those would not be authoritative on the topic. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:58, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

On WP, whether something counts as RS for Notability does indeed depend on context. Within the WP:GNG framework, WP:SIGCOV offers the relevant specification, but this is overruled by WP:SIRS in the case of WP:NORG and by some rather specific requirements internal to WP:NNUMBER. Any admin ignoring these more specific requirements in favor of SIGCOV, in an AfD decision where NORG or NNUMBER applies, is likely to make an error, even if the sources in question are relevant and comply with SIGCOV. :) Newimpartial (talk) 22:06, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

• No. GNG does not contain only SIGCOV, and no guideline, whether GNG or SNG, can possibly overrule the appropriateness and context requirements. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:27, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
  • • • I don't believe your Conservative Party example is correct. The GNG says nothing about WP:AUD, so if we used GNG as a first pass a lot of local businesses would be getting through without needing to pass AUD. WP:NORG is not an alternative to GNG, it is the only acceptable version of GNG for organizations. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:24, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
        • What? The GNG uses an organization, IBM, as an inarguable example of passing the GNG. That's not a false positive, it's plain as day. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:18, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
          • If you think the GNG, rather than NORG, applies to IBM, then I don't think you understand WP:N very well. Newimpartial (talk) 13:37, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
            • Parts of guidelines are not hermetically sealed from the rest of the guideline. Understanding N is understanding its introduction, as several have pointed out. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:46, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
              • • Yes, and the introduction tells us that Notability can be shown based on either the GNG or the applicable SNG. SNGs such as NNUMBER and NORG tells us that in those domains, a GNG pass on it's own is not sufficient to establish Notability. This isn't science rockets. Newimpartial (talk)\
                  • • As others have indicated, guidelines do not operate with such imagined rigidity. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:06, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I look forward, then, to your next (gelatinous?) AfD close. Newimpartial (talk) 22:08, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

One thing is certain, it won't and never has taken rocket science to do. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:36, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

• Just as an overall statement: There is a reason that notability (as well as the GNG and the SNGs) is a guideline - there is no rigor or like in its application, nor should there be. It is meant to lay out concepts to be concerned when notability comes up - primarily at AFD - so that consensus-based discussion can occur. It is important that we have a general agreement on the relationship of the GNG and the SNGs, but this all still comes up as part of guidance and not absolute "rules" like WP:NOT or WP:V. To that end, that's why its probably not as important to be precise about this relationship (particularly given how diverse it is between the various SNGs) but instead keep an overarcing concept to the relationship. --Masem (t) 16:30, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
  • I think the reason why we codify guidelines is to help us assign weight to !votes in discussions. Ultimately, there are three factors that go into a closer's decision: 1) the raw !vote count; 2) whether the arguments are compliant with policies and guidelines; 3) a subjective assessment of whether the arguments are reasonable from general principles like WP:5P. If everyone sees the same sources and the dispute is over whether the coverage is long enough to be considered "significant", then it's pretty much going to go down to a !vote count; it is not the closer's job to tell people they were wrong in their subjective evaluation of sources. If one side has put together a strong argument that the other side has failed to refute, then the strength of the argument will win out. Finally, in certain situations (very rarely in AfD), a very well-argued IAR could be accepted despite what policies and guidelines say. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:51, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
• For many years now this has been argued relentlessly. AFDs usually end with articles kept if the any of the subject specific guidelines are met, even without the general notability guidelines being met. A scientists is notable for their accomplishments, even if there never much written about them. Astrological articles, species, and various other obviously encyclopedic articles get kept as well. We are a legitimate encyclopedia not just a collection of popular culture articles that get media attention for a time. It clearly reads: A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG) listed in the box on the right. Some who wish to change it may argue otherwise, but this is just how its always been. Your accomplishments make you notable, not the coverage you get for your accomplishments. Dream Focus 16:37, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
• Every time this comes up, it seems like the entire page Wikipedia:Notability is confused with "the GNG". The latter is a section of the former. "The GNG" doesn't define what "notability" means on Wikipedia; the introduction of Wikipedia:Notability does (to the extent that such a squishy concept can be defined). That introduction also spells out that an SNG can serve as a replacement for "the GNG". XOR'easter (talk) 21:31, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
• Yes. It says so at the beginning of N: A topic is presumed to merit an article if: 1. It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG) listed in the box on the right; and 2. It is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy. That "or" in that sentence is what editors will point to when arguing that meeting either GNG or an SNG means a topic is presumed (not guaranteed) to merit an article. So it's not that either SNG or GNG "overrules" the other (or predicts the other) but rather that they are two alternative and separate pathways to the presumption of notability (which, again, is not a guarantee). I don't agree with this, but this is how it is, AFAIK. Levivich 11:54, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
  • 'Yes, it does not overrule', seems similar, to 'no, it does not overrule', with different emphasis. It does seem certain there is more than one path, there is the general path and the specific paths; on the other hand, the construction of these paths use several similar concepts to inform, so it seems rather they are intertwined paths which, in a given circumstance, come together and diverge and come together and diverge, and come together each looking for the place to arrive at the presumption. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:34, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

  On the other hand, some SNGs explicitly do defer to the GNG and state they only predict (GNG) notability. JoelleJay (talk) 17:29, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

So now what will be your position regarding barangays? Are all 42 K+ barangays – the local divisions of 1,634 municipal settlements of the Philippines (cities and municipalities or Philippine towns) – automatically notable because of WP:GEOLAND? Because for years various barangay articles have been AfD-ed or redirected due to various reasons, like lack of sources or unencyclopedic content (like directory, educational listings, or tourism-oriented listings which all violate WP:What Wikipedia is not). See Wikipedia:Tambayan Philippines/Frequent discussions/Articles on barangays for the related cases. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 13:09, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

That wasn't the question asked here, nor is this the place to ask it. If you wanted to discuss that question on a policy page, I would suggest the talk page for WP:GEOLAND. Newimpartial (talk) 13:26, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I think that the answer to "Do any of the SNGs overrule WP:GNG" is that in the context of wiki-notability, it is an ambiguous question and thus no conscientious answer can be given here. It's ambiguous because any simple answer could be interpreted / applied in many many different ways. And if that weren't an issue, trying to accede to the demand for a single word answer from a choice of two words makes it doubly impossible to conscientiously answer. North8000 (talk) 17:48, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

No guideline overrules any other guideline. Both the GNG and SNGs should be seen as providing 'rule of thumb' guidance on when a topic is likely to be considered notable (i.e. worth having an article on). --Michig (talk) 18:07, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Sure, but their scope of application is different, and they each sometimes explicitly defer to the other in certain domains (e.g., NSPORT is only weakly presumptive and requires an eventual GNG pass, deferring to the latter; NORG takes clear precedence over the GNG within its domain, and so does NNUMBER). Newimpartial (talk) 18:13, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Having an interesting discussion at this AFD (and will ping Darth Mike, with whom I am having the discussion). Curious as to whether people believe that a significant number of television appearances (over time) would be considered significant coverage for the purposes of meeting our notability requirements. We seem to agree that simply being on television isn't enough and that thousands of people are on television every day for mundane reasons. In this instance, the subject has been invited as a special guest to appear on a number of variety shows (breakfast television and whatnot) to showcase her skills and talents. She is arguably the focus of that portion of the broadcast in each instance. There is ancillary print coverage in unreliable sources. The question is, do broadcasts of that nature constitute significant coverage? St★lwart¹¹¹ 05:54, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

• When we say coverage, we mean that a source (written, video, or otherwise) is about the subject of the article. A television appearance is not coverage of the guest any more than a written publication is coverage of its author. – Joe (talk) 07:01, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

  To be clear, she's not the host (the "author"), she's the subject of the coverage. St★lwart¹¹¹ 07:07, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

  It doesn't matter what the role is. Unless it's some sort of documentary from which we could extract actual biographical information, it's not coverage. And according to the article on Lilia Stepanova she "performed" on these television shows; they weren't programmes about her. How could you possibly use a contortionist act on Jimmy Kimmel as a source for a biography? I think this is one of those common cases where people find it difficult to accept that a person who is familiar, noted, or famous, can still not be notable by our definition. – Joe (talk) 07:17, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

• Nope, this would not be sufficient for notability, though would hint that there aught to be sources that explain why this person was a frequent guest on that show, which those sources would be useful as demonstrating notability. There are, for example, lots and lots of D-list actors in television productions that have copious appearances but would not meet notability guidelines just for that. --Masem (t) 13:25, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Just FYI, there is a proposal at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(sports)#Formal_proposal:_Olympic_athletes to restrict presumptive notability to Olympians who have won a medal, instead of the current guideline which grants notability to anyone who has ever competed in one. Ravenswing 13:19, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I see all too often people confusing the significant of X with its notability which is based on the reception of X by human societies. I wonder if the tree-example would help editors catch the essense of notability guideline easier and remember it for a longer time. We would be saying notability depends on whether ppl have heard the sound, not on the falling tree(s). Cinadon36 06:55, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

In essence that is my take, notability is "does anyone give a damn about it?".Slatersteven (talk) 13:07, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

thats the shorter version! 😀Cinadon36 13:17, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

This is a notice that an RfC has been started requesting comment on if the draft of Wikipedia:Notability (television) should be implemented as a guideline and a WP:SNG. Comments are welcome at the discussion, here. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:35, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

'notability does not necessarily depend on things such as fame, importance, or popularity...'

So things can be 'important' but not 'notable'?

Okay, trying to imagine some instances. Putting a stamp on an envelope is important, but not notable.

An author who has written fiction books purchased by every school library in a certain nation is important? Or not? No-one wrote a review of those books published in a mass-consumption newspaper. Or made a movie or mini-series from them. So that author and those books are not notable?

Am I getting it right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:44B8:3102:BB00:D5A7:FF0E:9F2D:2D96 (talk) 07:11, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

You could replace Wikipedia's use of the word "notability" with "noted" or "verified notability". If reliable sources have never "noted" it, is it really notable, or is that just your opinion? If notability can't be verified in a reliable source, how are we supposed to write a reliable article, as important as you might think the subject is? Saying something is notable or non-notable isn't a value judgment. It's an answer to the practical question of "can we write a substantial article based on reliable sources, or are we gonna be stuck publishing one person's original research?" Shooterwalker (talk) 13:12, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

"If reliable sources have never noted it, how are we supposed to write a reliable article?" Just like, you know, any other encyclopedia editor writes an article.  :) Or any book author for that matter. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 21:55, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

That would be original research. – Joe (talk) 06:08, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, and that is what every proper encyclopedia in the world does. We should be proud of it, not ashamed. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 08:51, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

No, they really don't. Encyclopedias report on the original research of others, and furthermore are selective as to the expertise of who writes what. You want Wikipedia to be just like the Britannica, say? Fair enough: then you have a closely held panel of editors selecting a small number of writers, based on their proven academic credentials. I see, for instance, that you've edited a number of sports articles. What are your credentials to do so? Are you a prominent sportswriter? Ravenswing 14:21, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Well yes I am, I have academic credentials in sports history and am a prominent sportswriter in my country if you really want to know. I strongly agree we would need a panel of editors for each subject. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 16:28, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, splendid. Go ahead and submit your CV to the WMF, just in case it makes the insane decision to ditch the inclusive method of operation that for twenty years has been fundamental to making Wikipedia the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world, in favor of how all the other (mostly failed now) encyclopedias worked. Best of luck to you. Ravenswing 17:55, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Basically, "notability" as used on Wikipedia is a definite term that refers to whether a particular subject meets the "notability standards" for inclusion as an article. When we say a subject is "not notable," we're not saying that it isn't important or that it's worthless. We're saying that it does not meet those specific standards. Unfortunately, we're painfully aware that newcomers trip over the nomenclature, but efforts to change it over the years have all fallen flat. Ravenswing 19:50, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:VPP § Notability (cryptocurrencies). JBchrch talk 22:12, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

One of the tasks I check on is articles that have been PROD'd. Lately, over the past few weeks, I've noticed a lot of schools, mostly in India, being PROD'd. The standard deletion rationale has been "No sources establishing notability of the school. GNG is not met". Most are secondary schools but there have been some colleges as well. Sometimes these deletions are so complete and sweeping that entire templates of local schools have been deleted because none of the schools listed on them still have articles. So far, I'm guessing that dozens of these school articles have been PROD'd and deleted for lack of GNG notability.

I'm wondering if we should really be applying this standard of notability to schools in countries where local schools might not get as much news coverage as they do in, say, the U.S. or UK where there are usually local newspapers covering high school & college sports and achievements. Thoughts? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:11, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Secondary schools long have been accepted under an WP:OUTCOMES, that claimed that schools were likely to be notable and so couldn't be deleted. With NORG, of which schools applied to, that situation has now changed, and you're seeing basically the cleanup from that. Keep in mind: these articles can always be redirected to the local community that the school is in, as those geographic articles won't be deleted, and it is reasonably to talk about the local school system in those. --Masem (t) 02:22, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm thinking schools should perhaps not be PRODed then. Instead, anyone can redirect them immediately to the local school system, as a sort of indefinite PROD. Anyone can contest it by reverting the redirect, in which case an AfD nomination can be made to enforce the redirect. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:25, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:Inclusion criteria. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 16#Wikipedia:Inclusion criteria until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. eviolite (talk) 00:39, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect User:Inclusionist~enwiki/test5. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 16#User:Inclusionist~enwiki/test5 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Huggums537 (talk) 13:52, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

People in the Anglo-American world loved to publish biographical dictionaries in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There are zillions of them: I've seen books of (so-called) "notable men" from virtually every major US city around the turn of the 20th century. Some are Who's Who-esque, some clearly have a bit more editorial discretion. My sense is that these were compiled more as LinkedIn avant la lettre than as compilations of people who were genuinely important. How should these be treated for purposes of WP:NBIO?

My immediate question is whether entries in the Cyclopedia of American Biography, Men of Progress, and the Professional and industrial History of Suffolk County, Massachusetts (i.e. Boston and environs) justify a biography of Samuel Appleton Brown Abbott (Q109588087). But this is something I've wondered about for a while more generally. My gut sense is that these are about as good as local newspaper articles but I'd also probably !vote keep at AfD if an article based entirely on these kinds of publications got nominated. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 01:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Well the Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts is definitely too hyperlocal of a directory and the stubby listings are not significant coverage. The Men of Progress; one thousand biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the commonwealth of Massachusetts entry is 50% about his ancestors... I certainly agree with the characterization of these as a contemporaneous LinkedIn. Reading other listings, some of these people have held more significant positions, but many are entirely mundane. I mean, 1000 living people in a single state is going to have to reach down below what we'd consider notable for WP:NPOL or other NBIO, like "Brady, James, Jr, collector of customs, port and district of Fall River". If there are multiple additional significant sources I'd consider keeping, but we should honestly consider if people who held an equivalent position today would likely be notable. Reywas92^Talk 15:29, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

These kind of dictionaries tent to be unreliable. But most importantly, they are tertiary sources. GNG requires secondary sources. "Sources"[2] should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability." Also, if the person has no mentions in more recent publications, that is an indication that he fails the "over a period of time" criterion as stated in the nutshell box. I do not mean to wipe out all old dictionaries though, I suppose, even if most of them are totally unreliable, some might have good reputation. Anyway have a look at the essay WP:DICTIONARIES, I think is pretty useful on this matter. Cheers! Cinadon36 08:26, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Somewhere in NOPAGE I'd suggest adding something for Wikipedia:Semi-duplicate. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:31, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Did you deliberately create this as a semi-duplicate of Wikipedia:Content forking or is that just a coincidence? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:37, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

No the semi-duplicate page discusses on things that have the same name (or similar) that may not need to be split while the content forking page seems more to deal with things like POV forks etc but ironically while these pages overlap, Wikipedia:Semi-duplicate is probably not its self a semi-duplicate. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:43, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

A key part of defining Notablility is the term "significant coverage" WP:SIGCOV.

"Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material.

One of the discussion points raised at the mammoth ANI thread Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron is getting problematic was that this term "significant coverage" needs to be better defined. I am raising this point here so that interested editors might further develop the current definition to be more clear. William Harris (talk) 21:13, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

From my interpretation of WP:GNG if its more than a mention but doesn't have to be the main topic, a paragraph or so should be sufficient. NemesisAT (talk) 21:19, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Many years ago, I wrote an essay about WP:TRIVIALMENTIONs. The WP:GNG was clear about it, but it was buried in the guideline, so I used the essay to highlight the consensus best practice. Now I have found that there is a clear WP:CONSENSUS around what is trivial coverage. Your question is harder, and might be the next frontier. I agree, there is a lot more debate about whether we have passed the threshold of "significant" coverage. I think this kind of disagreement is somewhat unavoidable, and it's why I wrote an essay called WP:MINCOV. TLDR, significant coverage requires both quantity and quality of coverage, which is why it will need some level of discussion. But maybe this essay can guide the discussion to a more productive place. Shooterwalker (talk) 21:28, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Given that we're talking in context of the ARS and specific issues from the ANI thread, a thing to consider if we are going to change language is to be clear that lots of sources but that only have brief, name-dropping type mention is not the equivalent of significant coverage. This is often a problem when there's a source dump by an ARS member at an AFD in that they insist on quantity but not quality of sources. --Masem (t) 21:43, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

• The definition of "significant coverage" is simply that if a particular editor thinks that a topic is notable then any coverage is significant, but if that editor thinks that a topic is not notable then no coverage is significant. This principle can be seen played out on any daily log of AfD discussions. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:48, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
• Yeah, I agree with Phil Bridger. I sympathize strongly with the impulse to design idiot-proof definitions for key concepts; it's been a quagmire in which I've been swimming for over a decade. But that same experience teaches that there is nothing we can do to design definitions that will thwart Wikilawyering, bad faith, ideological crusades, IDHT, or the many editors who feel that there's some cosmic Win-Loss tally out there, and that falling on the wrong side of it is shameful and will surely result in them being reincarnated as a worm. Ravenswing 22:08, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
• I personally find the current definition one of the better that we have on Wikipedia, but ... where we could possibly tweak it is the provision of a great number of examples (as more notes so as not to crowd the section). Setting a word limit for example would be very hard, for then the argument would probably devolve into whether a table with significant details counts, or if a particular number of words addresses the topic directly. I guess it’s the art, not the science. I do however think there may be room to amend a sentence in the Sources paragraph, but multiple sources are generally expected, if only a single source provides SIGCOV of a topic it clearly is not notable enough for its own article. Cavalryman (talk) 03:48, 5 November 2021 (UTC).
  • I agree with this comment. It's not strictly a word limit, because it would be hard to set, and people would pad it out by talking on, and on, and on. It's a combination of quality and quantity. I agree with the suggestion to remove the "generally", and it would be a step in the right direction. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:02, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
    • Finding a recently-passed (post 2018 as a rough metric) FA or three, where no single source is super in-depth on the topic but where the combined effect of collective sourcing was deemed enough to be good enough for FA would be useful. Its easy to point to FA where there's at least one source that is in-depth and dedicated to the topic; its the latter which we want to show as establishing about where on the lower bound we expect when there is not such a source solely dedicated to a topic but still can consider the combination of multiple sources with sufficent coverage to be "significant". --Masem (t) 16:40, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
• Agree with previous answers. Emphasizing one item, like most policies and guidelines, "significant coverage" provides some but not complete specificity. This is how most policies and guidelines do and need to operate under the Wikipedia system, it is not a flaw. North8000 (talk) 16:57, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
• Phil Bridger nailed it: “…if a particular editor thinks that a topic is notable then any coverage is significant, but if that editor thinks that a topic is not notable then no coverage is significant.” There are a lot of nuances to “significant” — particularly with a more esoteric topic or in cases involving traditionally underrepresented groups. I agree that there isn’t a way to feed it into an algorithm that removes human judgement. Montanabw^(talk) 22:37, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
  • The thing is, no "particular editor" ends up being the sole decider of notability, that still comes to consensus, and when you do consider consensus, there are at least clear bounds on what is expected of significant coverage, of which we can enunciate into the guideline (more beyond what we have), but that still requires editors to consider for each case where notability has to be reviewed. --Masem (t) 14:04, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
• Begging your question, sorry, one way through would be more attention to adding info to one of the existing 6,000,000 articles -- a renewed emphasis on PAGEDECIDE and do we need a whole new article, which in the end is just one way to organize information. (Also, we should reword that IMO misleading sentence in the intro: "Information on Wikipedia must be verifiable; if no reliable, independent sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article." Verifiable is needed for article content but it is incorrect to suggest the invariable way forward is a whole new article). Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:48, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

  This is a very good point, all information should be cited to something reliable (with the exception of see also entires etc). Cavalryman (talk) 21:45, 6 November 2021 (UTC).

• Significant does not mean length. A paragraph about someone is fine, just mentioning them in passing in a single sentence is not. Dream Focus 18:22, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Its still possible for a paragraph that mentions a topic to not have significant coverage of a person. For example, it is frequently common to see news analysis articles that speak to experts and academics for a statement about a topic, giving their opinions on that topic a paragraph or two, but that does not lend any significance to the expert or academic. Thus, the question of significance is far more than just length. Context must be considered. --Masem (t) 18:33, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
• I agree a paragraph can be (and often is) sufficient, but not all paragraphs are created equally. Even some solely dedicated to the article’s subject are still too short to provide “significant” coverage. And I too don’t think one individual’s notion of significant makes a source SIGCOV, it is always open to discussion and consensus can land elsewhere. I think a couple more examples closer to the line may be helpful, like a dedicated multi-sentence paragraph of a topic, and a 20 word single sentence as examples either side of the line. Cavalryman (talk) 21:45, 6 November 2021 (UTC).
• I'm going to disagree that a single paragraph constitutes WP:SIGCOV (pinging NemesisAT, Masem, Cavalryman). Suppose two sources have a paragraph each on a subject and someone argues that's notable. Such an article will be two paragraphs at max. That's not a viable article. What will most likely happen is that the rest of the article will be "beefed" up with unreliable or primary sources, or the article might become a WP:COATRACK for irrelevant content. Or users might stitch together different individually notable topics to create an umbrella topic, where the umbrella topic had only a paragraph of coverage in RS.VR _talk 18:48, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • This is why we do not spell out how many sources are required. In the case where two sources are produced but they only have a paragraph each about the topic, that's not overall significant coverage. On the other hand, if ten sources each had a paragraph (covering sufficiently different material) now you may have something. SIGCOV is an evaluation of all sources and to the extent they cover, but it is clear that a source giving only one or two sentences to this can't be considered part of SIGCOV. --Masem (t) 18:53, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your response. I think "ten sources each had a paragraph (covering sufficiently different material)" works for tangible subjects whose existence is not a matter of opinion (people, places etc). But I don't think it would be sufficient for articles that seek to draw (controversial) relationships between individually notable topics (eg Animal cruelty and the Holocaust analogy, Woodrow Wilson and race, Relationship between education and HIV/AIDS, Accusations of racial bias in Grammy Awards etc). For that, I'd want much more in-depth coverage by several sources to establish notability.VR _talk 19:25, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
      • I would definitely agree that in the cases of those subtopics (in that there's likely a parent article that can be used for that content) that there needs to be clear "natural" topic in its singular form from multiple sources, even if we have to build up the content from multiple. For example List of films considered the worst is a clearly notable list as "bad films" is regularly discussed in sources, just that our list is built up from multiple different sources. Otherwise, this becomes more a matter of WP:SYNTH that goes beyond the notability issue. --Masem (t) 01:00, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

  I interpret BASIC's If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability as meaning the different independent, reliable sources should a) cover different material sufficiently to b) add up to encyclopedic SIGCOV of a topic. I do not think the mere existence of two sources each containing a paragraph's worth of info on a subject is an acceptable demonstration of notability. If the sources cover largely the same content – fail. If the coverage is unencyclopedic (trivia; gossip; and for people, descriptions of the subject that would not be expected in reference works, like physical appearance or clothing or a reporter's personal "impression" of them on a particular day, or backstory on their ancestors) – fail. If the coverage is clearly derived from an interview, even if not in direct quotes (e.g., the interviewer basically rephrasing the content of an upcoming quote (Interviewer: "He loves nature and working in the outdoors!" Interviewee: "My hobby is mosquito nets.")) – fail. JoelleJay (talk) 00:47, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

William Harris, Here's my take: more than a sentence, less than a book, so a paragraph is generally fine, with the following caveats: the paragraph should be longer than one line/sentence or so, and the discussion of the topic should be more than a mere description - some analysis or value judgement are badly needed (otherwise tiny plot summaries from borderline reliably sources would fro example result in spam of fictional topics... but thisis topic dependent, a short biography of a real person does not need analysis or value judgement, although then NBIO applies with other criteria). Oh, and per GNG in general, whicht talks about sources, plural, we always need at least two sources meeting SIGCOV to demonstrate a notability, although sometimes one can be argued to be sufficient (such as when a topic is included in another reliable encyclopedia....). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:32, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

From NLIST, the phrase "more complex and cross-categorization lists (such as "Lists of X of Y")" is unclear. Can we get some examples? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:23, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Here's some examples of multi-dimensional list titles:

1. List of castles in Cheshire
2. List of lighthouses in Connecticut
3. List of National Trust properties in Somerset
4. List of plantations in West Virginia
5. List of tallest dams in China
6. List of actors nominated for two Academy Awards in the same year
7. List of women's Test cricketers who have taken five wickets on debut
8. List of Olympic men's ice hockey players for Poland
9. List of Best in Show winners of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
10. List of inhabited islands of Croatia
11. List of memoirs by first ladies of the United States
12. List of parasites of the marsh rice rat
13. List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein
14. List of Category 3 Pacific hurricanes
15. List of London Monopoly locations
16. 2006 boys high school basketball All-Americans

There's about 7 dimensions in that last one: age, award, country, institution, sex, sport and year. Even so, it still has 47 entries which seems a sensible number for a single page.

Andrew🐉(talk) 12:28, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Wow, that rat one is comprehensive! Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 10:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Maybe it's just a wording issue, but none of those lists seem to be "Lists of X of Y" (unless we count "

List of memoirs by first ladies of the United States" which has two "of" in its name). Maybe calling them multidimensional might be clear, but can we define this topic? As in, what differentiates a normal "list of X" which needs to meet GNG from a "list of X of Y" that doesn't have to? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:58, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

They are all "List of X of Y", basically a subset of a "List of X" but with additional criteria Y (or vice verse, depending on name). Whereas List of X should be a clearly notable or obviously complete list of X (for example, List of the First Ladies of the U.S.) the creation of "X of Y" or "Y of X" should stand on clear documentation that the grouping is natural, or talked about in some way. For example, I would agree that in a list of lighthouses (assuming they are all notable), that sublist by major geographic area makes sense as most sources would naturally break such lists down that way. What we don't want editors creating are "List of X of Y" where that sublist is a novel idea that lacks any support in sources. A hypothetical would be something like "List of lighthouses by color", since that's just not a natural way they are categorized. That's why WP:N is vague on where notability stands, because some of these are utility in nature (to break down larger lists) and some are supports to other articles (like the parasite one) and thus hard to assign notability, but the key is that the subset should be natural or expected, and not a novel one. --Masem (t) 13:34, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Compound title articles (with lists being the most common) seem to be an area where there is a lack of guidance and a lot of difficulties. I think that a part of the reason is that several different policies / questions (only partially) relate to this including wp:notability, article titles/topics, wp:npov, wp:not as well as list article criteria. Another part of the complexity is that there are fundamentally different situations involved. Like maybe 6 types:

1. Where is is clearly only to narrow the scope to a suitable size. For example: North American traditional folk music. These follow (only) the common naturally assumed narrowing methods such as by a country or time period. For example, Folk music performed by bands with three members is not such a "only to narrow" situation. I think that Masem covered this distinction; unfortunately I don't think that what Masem wrote is in the guideline.
2. Where the title/article is about a possible, presumed or actual cause-effect relationship e.g Major plane crashes in unregulated airlines. This has the additional complexity in that the topic is in conflict with the literal wording. (the possible relationship vs. the crashes themselves)
3. Where the selectivity of the title/article is significantly informative or of interest to readers e.g. Albums that sold over 5 million copies
4. Where the confluence is simply interesting without a significant other purpose e.g.Beautiful actresses who were ugly when they were children
5. Where the compounding does not significantly serve any of the above purposes e.g. Baseball players who hit a home run during the third inning of their first professional game
6. Where the title/article primarily serves a purpose of making something or someone look good or bad e.g Child molesters who voted for John Smith

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:55, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (weather) has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Elijahandskip (talk) 19:49, 20 December 2021 (UTC)