Off to a good start[edit]

I split off the relevant section from WP:WINEGUIDE and put it here, then rearranged expanded this article to include several sections corresponding to article topics that may have notability concerns. The eventual objective here is to promote this article to a guideline, as a child of Wikipedia:Notability.

A couple of sections are still blank, and others need further expansion. Please edit/revise/discuss as needed. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:44, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification[edit]

I changed "The following criteria confer notability on a wine of specific brand, varietal, blend, or vintage, and by association the winery or winemaker" but now not really sure what it meant, what does the "of specific brand, varietal, blend, or vintage" add?

Also need to think about the relation ship between wine, winery, vineyard and winemaker. Do not think that notability should be inherited. --Stefan talk 02:58, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't sure how to phrase that myself. It originally referred to the "notability of a wine", but "wine" is such a generic term that can mean a category of wine, a varietal wine, a specific label, or a vintage. I didn't want the reader to think it applied to "notability of Cabernet Sauvignon wine", for example, but rather "notability of Ridge Vineyards 1998 Syrah".
If a wine is notable, I think it's reasonable that by association, the entities involved in creating that wine gain notoriety as well. However, it doesn't go both ways: A notable winemaker/producer doesn't necessarily make notable wines (Gallo, Bronco Wine Co, and the like). ~Amatulić (talk) 17:26, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Think Agne did a good job of it! But I still think it is problematic to describe when the wine, winery, winemaker or vineyard is notable due to the notability in e.g. a wine event. --Stefan talk 01:36, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the Winemaker/Winery relationship is one we want to hone in on. I can see a parallel to a music band where while the band is notable, the individual members might not be notable themselves to warrant separate articles. But I think this is because anyone can be part of a band and there is generally not a rigorous application process for someone to attain their position. Conversely, there are some position where by the mere act of attaining that position confers sufficient notability. Take for instance the CEO of any Fortune 500 company, the general manager of any sports team or an elected official. Their notability is intimately tied into the mere fact that they attained those positions. Could this happen with wine? There are only so few truly prestigious winemaking positions available among the scores of winemakers in the world. Could our thinking on this eventually evolve to where someone being named head winemaker of the prestigious Penfolds Grange, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild or Screaming Eagle become notable just on merit of attaining that position? AgneCheese/Wine 03:05, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, but notability by wikipedia definition comes almost by default if you attain that position since you will have lots of press. --Stefan talk 05:45, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I want to hone in on wine/winery. Not really sure what I think yet, more than that this is complicated.
  • I do not agree with "Event → Wine → Winemaker (person) → Producer (company) → Region" statement,
  • I do agree with "Under most circumstances, details of individual wine brands and labels should be included under the umbrella of the main winery article "
  • Later is says "Participation in a significant wine event like Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 or Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855 confers notability. Significant wine events are notable enough to merit their own article, and affiliation with them adds degrees of notability to the associated wineries." says that the Wine businesses gets notable if the wine is in a significant wine event, so now both the wine and the Wine businesses gets notable by the same event?? and this is basically the same criteria that we have for specific wine above and unconsistent with "Event → Wine → Winemaker (person) → Producer (company) → Region"
This needs to be clarified, I say go with Wine in event makes winery notable, wine can only be notable if the winery is notable. But I know that someone can probably come up with an example that proves that this does not make sense all the time, say that e.g. grange was a one-hit-wonder in the 50:ish and penfolds had went under, grange should still be notable, but not the winery?? --Stefan talk 05:45, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I added the "notabilty chain" in there as an experiment to encourage discussion.
I don't see the inconsistency you think you have identified. A significant event confers notability to the wineries, because of the notability flow in the diagram. The wines entered into the event are notable by association with the event. A winery that makes a notable wine is also notable for making a notable wine. The later section focuses on wineries specifically, so the "wine" link is skipped in the description you quoted, but it is still consistent. Notability flows from a notable event.
The point of that diagram is to explain that notability is conferred by association, but the flow is one-way only.
Looked at in reverse: A notable region doesn't make a winery within that region notable. A notable winery doesn't make a winemaker employed there notable. A notable winemaker doesn't mean a specific wine he made is notable. And a notable wine entered into an event does not make the event notable.
Going with the flow: A notable wine event indicates the competing wines have notability. Notable wines confer notability on the winemaker. Employing a notable winemaker makes the employer notable. Having a notable winery within a region adds notability to the region, although recognized regions are notable on their own.
Notability need not flow the entire length of the chain, however.
Does that help? ~Amatulić (talk) 17:26, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion[edit]

I strongly suggest you drop or rework the college athletes example. There currently is no consensus that college sports players can't be notable for playing sports. What there actually is is a consensus that college players are not automatically notable, whereas pros are automatically notable. However, that doesn't mean no college players are notable unless they "go beyond being sports players." --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:33, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I reworked it a bit in light of your comments. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:14, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Redundant heading?[edit]

Isn't the recent heading change to "Wineries and wine businesses" redundant? A winery is a wine business.

All the text in that section applies to wineries, wine merchants, wine distributors, and wine producers. I attempted to ensure that the phrasing of sentences in that section was generic enough to cover any wine business, not specifically wineries. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:30, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and no. The two terms are not completely interchangeable though they are obviously related. All wineries are wine businesses but not all wine business (merchants, distributors, etc) are wineries. Considering this proposed guideline would more often be applied to wineries it is imperative that "winery" be included in the heading so that "non-wine" people in AfD discussions and what not can quickly find the pertinent information. The term "wine business" in relation to wineries is not common usage since most people simply refer to wineries as "wineries". But we can't simply leave the heading as "wineries" since we are expanding the scope to other wine business so hence the compromise. AgneCheese/Wine 22:36, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose[edit]

This page is contrary to policy: WP:BURO and WP:CREEP. It adds no value to our general notability principles and so should be deleted. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:03, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, well in all honesty, you sort of just proved this proposal's worth with your comments in the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Valhalla Vineyards. This proposal is written by people knowledge about wine and the wine industry which puts them at a favorable position in order to judge sources and topics more critically then people who are lacking that knowledge. As you demonstrated in the AfD, when people lack that knowledge they tend to fall for things like the classic marketing ploy of being fooled by the impressiveness of winning "medals". As I explained also in the AfD, advertizing is dependent on people falling for the same ploy (so don't feel embarrassed, you're in large company) which is why peers and promotional associations even do these tastings. Instead of having the "noble vision" of trying to select the categorically best wine for the sake of consumers, they instead want to ensure that their members or entrants get as many marketing tools as possible. So we have things like the Virginia Governor's Cup wine tasting where 133 out of 233 wines entered won a medal with essentially every winery that entered walking away with some shinny new toy to dangle in front of unknowing customers in their tasting rooms. If you're interested, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article recently about the "randomness" of how winners are selected and why wineries still enter these tastings because of the marketing benefit. But again, this is not common knowledge which is why proposals such as this, written by people with specialized knowledge of the subject, are indeed valuable. Thank you for helping to demonstrate that. AgneCheese/Wine 20:29, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The WSJ article is a good one in demonstrating that de gustibus non disputadem est in this matter. In other words, wines do not have objective qualities for our purposes and experts have no special talent for assessing them. Wine is thus like, modern art, say - an arbitrary matter of taste and influence which is determined by those who have control over it - dealers, curators and rich collectors. It is therefore no surprise that vested commercial interests are significant in determining what the world thinks and writes about wines; it is only to be expected. What remains is the problem of deciding which wines we include. Your putative guideline makes much use of the word significant but this adds no value because it just begs the question - what is significant? All we can go by are the extent and quality of the sources for a given vinous topic. This is the method of the general notability guide and I don't see that your guideline adds to this in any useful or sensible way. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:49, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Irrelevant point. 'Significant' is the term used in the lead sentence of the official guideline WP:CORP. If you have a problem with that word, take it up on the talk page of that guideline. There is no reason why a guideline about wine topics can't use the term in the same context. This guideline simply provides guidance of what constitutes 'significant' for wine-related topics. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:33, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
First, WP:CREEP is an essay, not policy; it's somebody's opinion. Referring to WP:BURO is a non-sequitur. Nobody is proposing more bureaucracy, just a document, like many other official notability guidelines, to clarify notability issues around a particular topic.
Second, the assertion that this proposed guideline "adds no value to our general notability principles" flies in the face of other established specific notability guidelines for criminal acts, academics, films, etc.
Rather, this Wine Topics guideline enhances the value of the general guidelines by clearly explaining how those principles apply to specific wine topics. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Editors keep trying to create specialised guidelines for notability and they tend to fail to be accepted more often than not. And is there an unsatisfied need for this? The current AFD is the first vinous topic I can recall seeing at AFD and I have been patrolling it for years now. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:49, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there is an unsatisfied need as evidenced by the wine topic articles that continually get deleted. Many of them are speedily deleted, or deleted resulting from prods, and some make it to AfD.
Evidently you haven't been patrolling AfDs carefully. Besides the speedies and prods, I can think of several vinous AfDs in the past year alone:
...and that's just what I recall from 2009. There may even be others I have missed. As Agne pointed out above, your own comments regarding sources and awards on the current AfD clearly indicate a need for an official guideline on wine topics. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • These examples do not demonstrate any need for the guideline. In the first four cases, the articles were deleted for lack of satisfactory sources and so the normal notability guideline seemed adequate and so requires no fortification. The latter case is not yet decided and the discussion indicates that the project's guideline does not command any consensus of editors other than those that created it. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ready to go live?[edit]

Comments[edit]

The "Valhalla Principle"?[edit]

I know we're trying to pair down the length of this page but I'm curious if anyone else sees any value to finding a way to link User:Agne27/WP:SIGCOV and Valhalla Vineyards as a supplemental essay? A large reason why I took the time to do this is because Valhalla presents a crystal example of some of the fallacies in the "its got sources!" claim for winery notability. On the surface, bean counting 13 potential source citation seems like a good claim for notability but when you look at each sources critically, it becomes clear how weak they really are. As evident by several AfDs, this "Valhalla Principle" (or "Valhalla Fallacy?") happens too often. While I haven't turned this page into an essay yet, it can easily be done. Just interested in other folks thoughts. AgneCheese/Wine 02:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It should definitely be used. It's a good analysis of where to draw the line, and outcome pending, exemplifies well how the POV of WP:WINE differs from that of hoi polloi. MURGH disc. 05:15, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As long as it is not part of the same page I support that page fully. It is a VERY good analysis and can be used as reference material in AFDs! Good work! --Stefan talk 10:16, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think one thing that will be needed to for the "Valhalla Principle" is 2-3 examples of wineries that do have significant coverage that a reader can review and then compare to the meager coverage that Valhalla had. This won't be as in depth as debunking Valhalla sources but would be brief notes like ...instead of just receiving casual blurbs in Wine Spectator, this winery was the subject of a full length, in depth article, etc". Possibly something crafted in a table format. Now, of course, our general slate of winery articles suck but can anyone think of 2-3 really good winery articles that have clearly established notability and WP:SIGCOV referencing already in the article? AgneCheese/Wine 17:51, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I added a link to the essay in the See Also section of this article. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:30, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject notability[edit]

Rather than trying to push this through as a WP:PROPOSAL, why don't you move it back to the WikiProject's space and tag it with ((Wikiproject notability essay))? A page like this can be adopted by a WikiProject, and such pages are often just as valuable to editors as pages that have been officially accepted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:58, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]