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What is ((Notability progress)) describing? --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 03:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It looks like the total number of articles in Category:Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance at the bottom, and the number from each month above. —Centrx→talk • 09:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Could you make it clear that deletion should only be attempted if merging or rewriting won't work? At least, that's what I think. Try to fix it before you delete it. There is too many people who delete 'cruft' without ever considering other options. If this project makes an organized effort to save such articles (within policy) I'd be happy to see it grow. - 131.211.210.10 09:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I fixed the How to Help section in order to make sure deletion is used as a last resort. Thanks for the suggestion. Diez2 18:22, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It may be good to put something in about always looking for a WikiProject that covers the article in question. Putting a note on that project's talk page will many times get multiple interested people to start helping. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 21:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I think this project could be a positive force. I used to tackle the unclear importance category more often a few months ago (but I can't promise I'll be that active) and it was often difficult to maintain standards that I felt were supported by the community. In any case, I don't know how much publicity the project has been given but it should be announced at least on the talk pages of all the notability guidelines and probably at various places of the Village Pump. This project cannot succeed if it is not open to criticism and remains a small group of deletion-friendly editors. I tend to be fairly deletion oriented and supportive of notability as a content filter but everyone knows that the consensus on that idea is a bit shaky. Pascal.Tesson 06:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

But note that "unclear importance" or "does not assert importance" isn't the same thing as "notability" as defined by WP:N; they're not even related. I'm not sure you were saying otherwise; you may have just been saying "I used to do similar cleanup work on another type of common article problem." — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:12, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

But they are related de facto since all notability tags place articles in this cleanup category. If you have ever worked on clean up of those categories, you know that you get a whole bunch of articles which should have been speedy-deleted from the get-go and many articles which are clear prod candidates. Of course you also get things that were tagged incorrectly by people who think "I never heard of that guy, must not be notable" but all in all they are not the majority. Interestingly, the more difficult articles to handle are often those that were really tagged with ((importance)). In any case, the notability guidelines are definitely relevant when you work on this backlog. Pascal.Tesson 01:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Then the tags need to be fixed (which was one of the suggested tasks of the broader WikiProject Notability I discussed below, I would note. :-) I agree with your assessment of the tagged articles; my point was that the template situation is a mess. It looks to me like they have not been updated since a very long time back in the notability debate/process, and do not reflect current ideas and consensus about notability (and definitely will not reflect the even more clear notability consensus that emerges over probably the coming month or three.) I.e., there's plenty more work to do than fixing articles flagged with this template! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd already proposed WikiProject Notability about two weeks ago (see Wikipedia talk:Notability archives) and was actually going to go through the WikiProject Council "official" proposal process in a few days, with a much broader mandate (basically, all things notability, from archiving and indexing the internal debates and proposal ideas with regard to the topic, to bringing the subject-specific NN guidelines into WP:N, to cleanup work like the present WP:WPNN proposes, to patrolling AfD for bogus "NN - I haven't heard of this before" arguments, to creating new cleanup tags and other templates relating to NN, etc., etc., etc.) So now what? Do we broaden this WikiProject and make its cleanup activities a Task Force, or make it separate and more specifically named, like "WikiProject Notability cleanup"? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:12, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but your original idea for that project was mostly designed to work on the guidelines and to limiting what you feel is the abuse of notability. In fact, am I misrepresenting your position if I say that you believe that notability should not be used at all? It's sort of an akward combination to have one half of the project doing cleanup based on guidelines that the other half of the project is trying to delete (and I say that with the utmost respect for your opinion). Pascal.Tesson 01:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you would be misinterpreting me, sorely. I think you have been only half-following the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability. Short synopsis: I was opposed to WP:N's wording and to it conflicting with WP:DEL-"blessed" subject-specific notability guidelines; I proposed a WikiProject to attempt to work on establishing consensus on what "notability" really means and how it should operate, because no progress was then being made at Wikipedia talk:Notability; I later re-proposed the idea of WikiProject Notability, twice (with increasingly broad ideas for it); and since the debate began have rescinded my opposition to WP:N (as opposed to WP:DEL, which I've supported all along) because consensus looks like it may actually be reachable in Wikipedia talk:Notability after all and problems with WP:N's wording are being addressed. To get back to the point, I think WikiProject Notability is too broad a name for a one-purpose WikiProject devoted to cleanup work on articles flagged with a particular template, is all. I have never once in the entire debate suggested that WP:N should be deleted, and have defended it at least three times from that suggestion by others, over the last few weeks. I've already outlined above a few of the things I think should be under the rubric of a broader WikiProject Notability. And yes, abuse of WP:N in AfD is one them; even WP:N's probably second-strongest supporter, GTBacchus, has been posting examples of such abuse, and the most current topic of debate on the talk page relates to this problem (more specifically to specious arguments of the form "this subject was notable last week but isn't any more", as if multiple, independent, reliable sources just "go away"). Just an example. Educating wikipedians about the proper use of WP:N in AfD, and even what "NN" really means, is going to take coordinated, committed effort, which is why I bring it up again as an example of WikiProject multi-focus. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

PS: Just to be really clear: I'm not opposing in any way the purpose of this group; I'm simply suggesting either: a) that WP:WPNN be broadened and its present work become a Task Force (or at least a subproject area and major to-do list item), or b) That it be renamed to something more specific (WikiProject Notability cleanup?) so that a more general WikiProject Notabililty parent project can use this "spot" in the namespace. I think the former is vastly preferable, obviously. That is, I see the purpose of the current project being a task or activity or area of focus of a much broader collection of notability to-do's. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I stand corrected, apologies. I have indeed only been half-following (more like not following actually) the debate at WP:N since it has started producing a 100kb of discussions every day. I just don't have the energy to get into these endless debates and frankly, I think you should propose a one-week moratorium on that talk page until everyone just chills and starts listening again. But I digress... In any case, I think you do have a point that the name of this project might suggest it has other ambitions than taking care of this backlog but I don't think that redefining its mission is the way to go. Pascal.Tesson 04:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

As you wish. PS, re: the debate: I think it was ultimately productive. WP:N isn't WP:OWNed any longer, and more than basically the two people over and over again get to have their input on its text, so progress was made. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Sooooooooo, what is your proposal? Is it to change the focus of the project? Or just to widen the focus by also adding a force to get consensus on proper notability guidelines? Diez2 01:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I do see, that there are many articles that have either an ((importance)) or ((notability)) tag. In my feeling, there is a small, though distinct difference between the feeling that these two tags convey:

• the importance tag is for articles, that are probably important enough, but do not state why they are important. They may indeed be non-notable, and hence are in the non-notability category
• the notability tag is for articles where people have serious questions whether or not articles are notable, and these probably should be deleted, if noone has added importance within some time.

Now lately there is a lot of work removing the articles that have been tagged since June 2006 (people removing them, people changing them, people suggesting to delete). I can fully understand that for the notability tags, I do have some trouble with the removal of the articles in the importance tags. In my opinion, that should be done by people who are working in a project affiliated to that article. Only they are able to assess whether a certain article is important enough.

I have earlier suggested (not in this project, but to someone changing/removing importance tags) to create importance tags per discipline (I believe there is a music-importance-tag?), but another solution was adopted, tagging them per period (which is already a big step forward). Now I am going to resuggest the other suggestion, is it a good plan to tag articles with the importance tag per project, or are there other solutions for this problem? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Importance and notability generally mean the same thing (pertaining to Wikipedia). Also, the individual projects do not set their own guidelines in deciding importance. You can find those guidelines at WP:NN. Diez2 20:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The two tags certainly have a different text in the tag, and I indeed concur that they should both result in categorisation in NN. Also, I am not suggesting that there should be different guidelines per project, they should be the same all over, I am saying that the right people should be consulted before deciding on notability. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Something tagged with ((importance)) may very well be notable enough for Wikipedia, and there may be no doubt about it, but nevertheless an article might need information about importance. Is "Mozart" "among the most enduringly popular of European composers" or is he some obscure eighteenth century composer no one really ever listens to any more, even though he might be notable enough for an article and there might be substantial reliable sources, etc. In that sense, ((importance)) is like ((context)) or other cleanup tags, whereas ((notability)) specifically refers to Wikipedia guidelines on "notability". —Centrx→talk • 22:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I will try and clarify my point here. In my opinion a ((importance)) is not the same as a ((notability)). The former states:

This article lacks information on the notability (importance) of the subject matter.

The latter:

An editor has expressed a concern that the subject of the article does not satisfy the notability guideline or one of the following guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia.

Note that the first template addresses the lack of information, while the latter is concerning the subject. I know that many people are treating these as the same, but they simply are not. They both should be categorising in the same category, because a lack of information may mean that the subject is not suitable for inclusion. Whereas articles carrying the notability template may simply be deleted, I again stress, before considering removing the importance template, or considering removing an article carrying the importance tag, please consider contacting an appropriate wikiproject (see e.g. stub-sort or other tagging on the article), if that assessment fails, indeed, consider changing importance into notability, and consider deletion when noone contests after a couple of weeks.

I know there is a backlog, but removing templates does not remove a backlog of articles which may not be notable, or lack the information that tells why they are notable, they only hide that fact, and readers who stumble onto that article will ask questions why wikipedia has that article, now people know that that concern has been addressed, and that work is (hopefully) being done on that (I have removed four importance tags of articles in the last month that did gain importance information after tagging, three (?) articles have been improved and have had their templates removed as well. But unfortunately, there is a lot of work to be done, and there is only so much certain wikiprojects can handle in a certain amount of time. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

There seem to be some problems with ((importance)) and ((notability)). Wikipedia:Notability explains that the two terms are different. Subjects must have some sort of importance and notability to be included. The distinction is usually blurred, but not always. A failure to assert importance is a criterion for speedy deletion. A failure to assert notability is not.

I'm a little concerned about the use of ((importance)) — in nearly all cases, this template is being used in situations where notability is being questioned, not importance. Unimportant subjects don't last too long on Wikipedia — these are the types of things that make you say "wtf is this crap? who cares!" when browsing the new pages. Anything that is even somewhat significant/important (these are near synonyms) should be tagged with ((notability)).

Sometime in the future, I'll probably bring this up on the Village Pump while proposing a new Wikipedia:Importance page. For now, I'm proposing that ((importance)) be redirected to ((notability)). --- RockMFR 01:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Upon further reading, it seems this is a fairly historical point of contention... hmmm... well, maybe I'll finally get around to doing something important in policy matters, heh heh. --- RockMFR 01:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I am a confused that the ((importance-s)) warning and Template:Importance-s#See also both refer to WP:N which states WP:N#Notability_guidelines_do_not_directly_limit_article-content. Isn't importance of sections an issue of original research, sources, and undue weight? --Ronz 22:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The sections still have to be somewhat important, and should generally contain information about why they are important. Wikipedia:Notability is referring to the specific sourcing criteria it has, i.e. every single bit of article content does need to be supported by multiple independent non-trivial sources. —Centrx→talk • 21:22, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I note that the stats on top of Category:Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance are supposed to be updated roughly once a day, but were last updated March 7. Has some cron job stalled? --Alvestrand 08:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I came across a little controversy while maintaining articles within our project. Both merging or deletion procedures take some time (up to 10 days I guess), and the outcome of these isn't always clear. But the item 4.5 of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability#How to Help section says "After you have finished, remove the notability or importance tag on the article". If this means "after you changed the article by inserting a tag" than it might be impractical. What if I suggested to merge or delete but met no consensus? But already have our tag removed? In that case, the article may be tagged with "notability" tag again within 10 days by some other user, and undergo our procedure once again. That's why I suggest to expand the instruction on tag removing. Something like "After you finished with all improving/merger/deletion procedures regarding the article's notability, remove the tag". --Futurano 13:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure there is a need for that much bureaucracy. —Centrx→talk • 16:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I was hoping it's about consistency of sorting. Anyway, may I follow the method that I desribed above? I mean can I leave the tag on the pages undergoing some discussion (regarding merger or deletion)? --Futurano 21:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think that would be good. If the tag is removed too early, the article goes off the list and hence out of sight. I always leave it on until the matter is resolved. --B. Wolterding 21:32, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with this, I think that we should remove the tag as soon as we have applied a ((db)) or ((prod)) tag. Adding these tags make these articles part of another process that is monitored by a different project. Also, this removes it from our to-do list so other project members don't think it still needs sorting. I believe it is our function to arbitrate articles whose notability has been questioned and shepherd them on to the next step in the process, not necessarily see them all the way through to deletion. If any of us want to keep a finger on an article to defend our nomination for deletion, we should add it to our personal watchlist. Steve Carlson^Talk 21:03, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I decided to be bold and to change instructions my way. Some recent events convinced me. Feel free to revert. You know, Wikipedia is not a bureacracy, but tagging procedure certainly is, so it needs to be effective. Anyway, getting rid of the tag at any cost, not having "killed" the article proper, is really bureacratic and formal. --Futurano 09:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Occassionaly one meets articles the subject of which is a surname, and which are extremely short. (See for example Hultgren.) Are these articles notable? In the example, there is no reference to notability or importance whatsoever, nor are there any third-party references. So, in a way, one might say: "Tagged for since more than XY months, does not even claim notability" and add a prod-nn template right away. Would this be the preferred procedure? Or what should one do instead? What should be added to an article on a surname to establish its notability? --B. Wolterding 16:23, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary for how to handle surnames. Very brief précis: name disambiguation article on Wikipedia; proper noun article on Wiktionary; interwiki links. Uncle G 18:42, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I have sorted Hultgren accordingly. --B. Wolterding 19:11, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The surname stubs with the short definitions should be used on the top the disambiguations page with the same name. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 20:06, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Someone remarked above that clearer indtructions for checking articles would be helpful. Actually, I cleaned up a number of articles during the last days. Below I post the checklist I was trying to follow, or, in some cases, that I would like to follow for future cleanups, based on experience. Take this as a suggestion, not as a guideline. Any comments are appreciated.

There is one general point that should be observed: Given the current backlog, we need to be efficient. The average quality of articles in the queue is rather low (that's why they are there, in the end). In fact, many of these articles are rather short, not more than one paragraph in length. We should not spend hours on them going through processes if creating them might take five minutes.

So here's the list of questions I follow, top to bottom, until one of the criteria fits.

• Is it blatant advertising? Advertisement is easily identified by its grandiloquent tone: "Westside Lawyers is the pre-eminent community legal centre in South Australia." Surprisingly, a number of these articles stay in Wikipedia unnoticed for months. Some even undergo the usual editing process: Someone corrects the spelling, someone else improves the typesetting, again someone else adds a warning tag... Still the articles stay adverts, unless they have been rewritten considerably. In obvious cases, tag them as ((db:spam)). If less obvious, send them to the AfD.

• Has notability been established in the meantime? Sometimes an editor has reacted to the notability warning, e.g. added references to the article, but forgot to remove the notability tag. Sometimes the talk page contains relevant arguments, or a reference to a prior AfD discussion where the article was considered to be notable. Also check the edit history. If notability is established by now, remove the notability tag. You may consider adding other tags as needed, such as ((unreferenced)), ((cleanup)) or similar, or ((expand)). In other cases, there were arguments in favour of notability, but these are not sufficient; for example, sources were added, but too few or of the wrong kind. If an editor tried to establish notability, but did not succeed, remove the date from the notability tag. This will move the article to the start of our queue again, giving the author more time to improve the article. Be sure to add a comment to the talk page, stating your concerns, and mentioning that the article might be deleted if it is not improved. This comment will also prevent "endless loops" in the process.

• Is there an obvious merge option? This applies in particular to short articles. Sometimes these have an obvious "parent" article: "Church Street, Liverpool" can be merged into "Liverpool". If the article is short, be bold and merge it. You may introduce a new section in the target article; leave it to others to clean up. Post a note on the talk page of the target article. If the article is longer, propose a merger. Keep the article on your watchlist. Leave the notability tag intact until the merger has been performed.

• Is it marked with the "importance" tag? The "importance" tag asks editors to describe why the article is important. More often than not, these articles actually do not establish notability, or do not even assert it. If notability is not established by independent sources, replace the "importance" tag with "notability", removing the date. This does not really solve the problem, but moves the article to the start of the queue. Since the notability template contains a reference to "possible deletion", editors might now give attention to the article. If not, it will reappear later. If notability is undoubtably established, remove the "importance" tag and replace it with others. If the article is notable, it might just be lacking a good introduction that shows why the subject is important in its context. Consider adding ((context)), ((cleanup)), or ((expand)) as needed.

• Is it notable? This is the stage where to consider the guidelines and policies in detail. Check whether the article is notable by WP:NN, WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, or others as applicable. In general, these say that the article must not only assert notability, but also establish it through independent reliable sources. If you find that the article is notable, remove the notability tag. Add other tags as needed. Leave a short note on the talk page, stating why the subject is notable. In some cases, you might be able to establish notability on your own. You might e.g. ask the Google oracle in order to find sources; but interpret the results with care. You might have a look at "what links here" and at the foreign language versions, if any. But it is not required that you carry on looking for sources indefinitely. You are not a subject-matter expert, in general, and the experts have had their time to clear things up.

• If you proceeded to here, send it to the wastebin. The subject might still be notable, who knows? But obviously no one is willing to establish notability for the article. Check the edit history and the talk page once again. Verify that the "notability" warning has been on for an extended time. Be sure what criteria the article should have fulfilled. For short articles, or longer ones which are obviously non-notable, propose them for deletion. Add the ((subst:prod-nn)) tag. In the edit summary, use: "Proposed for deletion - lacks notability, see talk page. Sorted as part of the [[WP:WPNN|Notability Wikiproject]]." Leave an explanation (one or two sentences) on the article's talk page, citing the applicable guidelines, and mentioning that it had been tagged for an extended time. If the article is longer, and you are expecting controversy, send the article to the AfD process. The rationale behind this is that very short articles, which have not been given attention for a long time, can probably be deleted uncontroversially. In any case, keep the article or the AfD discussion on your watchlist.

As I said, I am eagerly awaiting your comments. --B. Wolterding 18:48, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Looks reasonable. Indeed I was thinking if I spend too much time for each article in the project. However, I'm not sure about removing the dates from the tag. Is that a widely-accepted tag procedure? I thought non-dated tags are a kind of inaccuracy undesirable to a thorough editor. --Futurano 08:02, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, as far as I know, the dates are automatically inserted by a robot at regular intervals. So if you remove the date, the next run of the robot will automatically move it to "May 2007", i.e. to the start of the queue. --B. Wolterding 14:22, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Read User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage and User:Uncle G/On notability#Dealing with non-notable things. Uncle G 14:27, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. In particular, "Copyright Judo" might in fact be really helpful in some cases. --B. Wolterding 20:20, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Would somebody please weed out the 200+ cruft articles in Category:Elementary schools in British Columbia? Most high schools are notable in some way. Below that, very few are, maybe a dozen per province or state, certainly not over 200 in BC. Chris 05:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

The comment above discusses notability of schools. In fact, this seems to be a more general problem. A considerable number of pages in our backlog are about schools of various sorts. Given that the specific guideline WP:SCHOOLS is no longer in effect, I assume that schools go under the more general guideline for organizations, WP:ORG. So the main criterion is that secondary sources must be cited in order to establish notability.

However, there seem to be different opinions on this matter. One school article that I sent to the AfD (since notability was neither asserted nor established) seems to pass without any controversy, see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Midway_Middle_School. On the other hand, I spent quite a bit of time on requesting sources for an elementary school in Australia; this just resulted in somebody from WikiProject Schools removing the notability tag (see the talk page).

I agree with the poster above that certainly not all schools are notable. The criterion for me, at the moment, would be WP:ORG. But does that meet the general consensus? Could someone clarify?

--B. Wolterding 16:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Aaargh. Basically, there is no consensus at all on the notability of schools. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Education discusses the frequent AFD outcomes on schools - fewer than 15% actually get deleted. Basically, most people consider secondary and tertiary level schools to me more notable to primary/elementary schools, but beyond that the chances of getting any agreement over this endless and thorny debate are minimal :) Cheers, DWaterson 20:05, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey get back to the primary inclusion criteria: every public school gets written about by people it has no control over. That includes - local newspapers and the relevent Education department.

What we need is a deletion criteria that says "nobody has provided references to a reliable source for over (insert suitable timeframe)".Garrie 01:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

This proposal was in fact suggested about six months ago, in a policy proposal called WP:Speedy Deletion Criterion for Unsourced Articles. It would have required that articles be sourced within two weeks of notice or they would be deleted. The proposal was soundly rejected by the community, and is so marked. The primary reason among the many reasons for rejecting it was the general consensus that it would destroy the encyclopedia. DGG 18:36, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be speedy deletion. One proposal is to replace long-unsourced articles with a more alarming template that specifically warns that the page will be deleted, and then after another suitable period of time, to automatically prod it. —Centrx→talk • 18:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

• Just to add a note to this old debate: I became aware that, once again, there is a proposal for notability criteria specific to schools: see Wikipedia:Notability (schools). You may want to join the discussion. --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I am a bit puzzled about the notability of County Road 702 (Palm Beach County, Florida) which is currently on the September 2006 backlog. Since this might apply to more articles, I thought I'd better ask.

I read the article and found nothing particularly notable about this road. No secondary sources are cited either; just Microsoft MapPoint as a source (and that is trivial coverage, since the software would list every single street on this planet). Also, the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (highways) says:

Some states or counties have no signed county highways, but do have county-maintained roads – some which have no other name than County Road 1723. These should not be confused with county highways, and are almost always not notable, even for inclusion in a list.

And in the end, applying common sense: Would you like to see those other 701+ Floridian county roads on Wikipedia too? So it seemed an uncontroversial case. I was about to add a PROD tag to the article, when I noticed that quite a number of the other roads are in fact there, with usually not much more quality: See Category:County routes in Florida and Category:County Roads in Volusia County, Florida.

Of course, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not an argument for notability; but am I missing something fundamental here? --B. Wolterding 11:03, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I have tagged that for speedy deletion (sorry, I didn't come to this talk page first). Some roads are notable - that one did not establish it. At best this road should be covered in a list of roads, until someone can show that it has been the subject of multiple independent sources. Hey, even planning and funding submissions get a road over the line for that one - and any public road has those things going on in droves!Garrie 01:38, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I've added a ((prod2)) as well (the speedy having been changed to prod). I don't see any assertion of notability here! Cheers, DWaterson 11:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Somebody contested the PROD, but I stil don't know why it should be notable... --B. Wolterding 08:48, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Well I think it's like this... currently there is a (proposed) notability criteria at Wikipedia:Notability (highways). County Road 702 (Palm Beach County, Florida) meets that criteria so currently it is a notable road.

Following a speedy / prod contest, notability has been well and truely argued, and I have removed the notability tag because the article meets a current proposed guideline. The question is, does WikiProject Notability agree with the notablity threshold at Wikipedia:Notability (highways) which seems way too low in my opinion. If the threshold is too low then it should be reviewed and articles identified for review.

In my opinion, most subjects are notable because secondary sources exist. Generally, any road will have been the basis of tender documents, funding submissions, and press following significant accidents so showing secondary sources exist should not be a problem.Garrie 00:37, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

County Road 702 (Palm Beach County, Florida) was speedied and recreated. I was suprised to see it had been deleted, as it seemed that it was established that it met notability criteria at WikiProject Highways (however arbitary / disputed / established those criteria are) and the prod tag had been removed.

I think we have come the full circle: this article met established notability criteria so it was kept. BUT are those notability criteria setting the encyclopedia up to have an entry for every road that shows up in a street directory?Garrie 23:31, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I think that the scope of simply deleting everything non-notable is too wide to efficiently carry out. As such, I think we should have departments, or categories of non-notable articles, so that users with knowledge in a specific subject can better gauge notability. In accordance with this plan, I would like to create a department of the Wikiproject aimed specifically at removing or improving Wikipedia articles on non-notable internet personalities. What are everybody's opinions on this? cacophony ◄► 19:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Personally I would think there is a fair bit of cross-project involvement. I would not hesitate to look for input from Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography for any article about a person which I thought may be border-line. I think that participants in other projects are realistic about getting rid of non-notable articles already - what is really needed is some projects aren't specific enough about establishing a notability threshold, for example it is a bit difficult to get out of Wikipedia:WikiProject Rugby league weather they consider certain competitions to be equivalent to help work out weather seemingly minor players may be more notable than a stub makes them seem.Garrie 21:47, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure regarding the proposal, and whether a splitting into "departments" will actually increase productivity. Of course, if you feel that you are specifically knowledgable in a certain area, and you want to review articles related to that, you can always browse the backlog and sort exactly these. (By the way, Popups is a great tool for that.) Or, if you don't have an opinion on an article, you can leave it aside, or seek expert advice. (Some Wikiprojects do respond promptly, some don't, unfortunately.) But adding more buerocracy to the process is unlikely to help, I think. --B. Wolterding 16:49, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with GarrieIrons and even more agree with B. Wolterding. Let me rephrase and supplement them with following:

• All topical Wikiprojects should be aiming at extinguishing non-notable articles within their scope. Let us don't hesitate simply reminding them about it.

I think you have it slightly wrong. Topical wikiprojects, and this one too, are and should be devoted to improving the articles within their scope, which means both improving the notable ones, seeing if notability can be demonstrated for the borderline, and as a last resort, nominating for deletion some particular articles where it is concluded that they are not notable. DGG 03:24, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) The problem with this is that at the rate we're going, the number in the backlog will hit 10,000 in no time. Our job in this project is to sort the articles into "notable" and "non-notable" bins. The WikiProjects can worry about improving the articles. I mean, if you feel like it, go ahead and improve the article. However, this is largely a maintainence project that is trying to deal with an enormous backlog. Diez2 04:36, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

• No need for extra bureaucracy and duplication of other projects' tasks within our project. This also means that everyone is encouraged to create a notability taskforce within any topical project instead.
• I believe no special expertise is typically needed for establishing article's notability of topic. BTW, that's what our project page says. If you feel a real need for experts then you probably feel article's marginal notability. Let us keep in mind that proving of notability is the burden of expert authors who present their articles for us laypersons (armed only with logic and common knowledge). BTW, this is a typical AfD phrase. -- Futurano 11:02, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there also a way we can go yell at WikiProject Chemistry for stubbornly keeping their completely non-notable chemistry articles? 68.217.210.88 04:32, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Such as article...? AFAIK they have a notability guideline and follow it fairly well - they acknowledge that some chemistry topics aren't particularly notable. Others are (and have been the subject of texbooks etc).Garrie 06:34, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I would cite them as perhaps the best WP project in terms of having a consistent standard for articles--there are good reasons for it, including the lesser degree of factual disagreement than in some other fields, and the ability to give indisputably authentic information about almost all individual chemical substances. They've been able to keep it due to the general agreement of almost all WPedians having a knowledge of chemistry, and that is what I consider consensus. If I were to work on porn bios, I'd accept the standards there; when I work on shopping malls, I follow the specialized criteria that are the consensus on that project. Certainly there's room for disagreement & change in individual cases, and there are places to discuss that--this is one of the reasons we have projects.. DGG 17:35, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I proposed to create a special merger warning for user talk pages, using my experience of merging pages within our project. A proposed template, or its modification, might also include our promotional text "as part of the Notability wikiproject". Please cast your opinions at respective talk section: Help talk:Merging and moving pages#On merger warning again. Thanks, -- Futurano 11:10, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I found these guys in our October backlog. They're members of a borderline notable band (1 album, 2 EPs), and by my interpretation of WP:MUSIC, this does not make the individual members notable.

But I was in fact a bit astonished by the template on the bottom of the page (a whole series on this band). Also, it seems that one of the band member's article was deleted before, and I was even more astonished by this related comment.

In short, I thought I'd better ask if someone knows comparable cases. --B. Wolterding 17:27, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

People whine about deletions. This shouldn't be taken as an indication of whether or not the deletion was a good idea. If all we have is "So-and-so plays drums for the band whatever-they're-called", these should be turned into redirects to the band article. Friday (talk) 17:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Friday. Beau and Chris are perfect candidates for merge / redirect. And guess what? Everything is already at the Saosin article anyway. It's not like EVEL have an article.Garrie 20:55, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, I have entered the lion's den and formally proposed a merger. If you like, you can participate in the discussion. --B. Wolterding 12:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Articles have been merged in the meantime. --B. Wolterding 16:08, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello,

putting the ((expert-subject|Notability)) tag on an article will move it to the category Notability articles needing expert attention. (OK, that's automatic and not too surprising.) I noticed that, while that category has one entry, the category page has not been created, and probably no one is monitoring it. Is that intended? --B. Wolterding 12:05, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it is intentional - if there is only the one entry now, then before this edit the category was probably empty. Empty categories get speedy deleted.Garrie 22:43, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

(Moved this to a separate section. --B. Wolterding 17:03, 16 July 2007 (UTC))

• Am I asking in the right place? Question: I am editing an article in a field where I can reasonably be considered an expert. In an existing list of technologies/products, I see the appropriate vendor-independent items that are open standards, but I also see some vendor-specific technologies that are unfamiliar and perhaps not significant. How should I tag these list items as questionable? Howard C. Berkowitz 17:06, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Maybe it's best if you tag the list with ((cleanup-laundry)), and explain related details on the talk page. --B. Wolterding 17:03, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I have requested a bot to generate lists of pages created by single-purpose accounts. The reason for the request is that I expect that many pages created by SPAs will be tests, vanity pages, advertising, and pages that otherwise do not meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. The bot-generated list may make it easier to identify and correct or delete such pages.

Given the effort required to create the bot, it is important to know beforehand whether enough people would be willing to work on the bot-generated list. For more details and to share your thoughts, please see the thread at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Identifying SPA contributions. Thank you, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:30, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I have noticed the following a number of times: I had opened a discussion on an article in the backlog (merger or expert review) and intended to let it run for some time; however, a few days later, someone else from the project picked the article and sorted it, e.g. listed it for deletion or removed the maintenance tags.

First of all, this is a good sign, since it shows that the project is active. However, we might want to avoid such interference between editors. On the other hand, it is of course reasonable to sort an article if another project member has worked on it, but lost track. (I sometimes forget to hit the "watch" button, for example.) For better project-internal coordination, I would like to propose the following simple rule:

Project members should not sort an article they have not worked on before if there is an active discussion on its talk page. A discussion should be considered active if

• it is not closed, and
• there has been an addition to it within the last two weeks.

I do not insist on the two weeks, it might be any other reasonable time, but I think it would be best if we can agree on a definite number here. That's not intended as instruction creep, but serves for better coordination.

Any opinions? --B. Wolterding 10:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, I faced the some problem. B. Wolterding seems to be one of the very few people who do obey the "discuss before merging" rule. I suggest that we all respect that rule at least within our project. A discussion should be not only considered active, but also respected during a set time period, as an evident implementation of the WP:Consensus rule. An exact time of discussion or improvement may be as short as week, or as long as month. The only important thing is that we all understand the timing the same. -- Futurano 10:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I would go with "the same period of time as applies to a ((prod))", as that is another common approach to dealing with ((nn)) articles. Yes, I know that's not much time, but it's how long they'd have if I looked at the article and put a prod on it. Could be worse, I still speedy quite a few articles if there doesnt even seem to be an assertion of notability. Sorry if I am one of the offenders, btw...Garrie 02:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Coming at this from perhaps the exact opposite approach to the above editor, I's argue that if there is an ongoing discussion the discussion must be continued untill it is resolved. There is no time limit on a talk page discussion, and there should not be. The point of prod is that it works only if the articles is already abandoned or if the author abandons the article rather than improve or defend it. DGG (talk) 04:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Dear colleagues

This is a reminder that voting is open until 23:59 UTC next Monday 14 December to elect new members of the Arbitration Committee. It is an opportunity for all editors with at least 150 mainspace edits on or before 1 November 2009 to shape the composition of the peak judicial body on the English Wikipedia.

On behalf of the election coordinators. Tony (talk) 09:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

All of the articles that start with E from the 10/2007 backlog are Middle-earth related. Does anyone have time to reach out to that WikiProject and ask them to do something with those articles (likely merging)? --Darkwind (talk) 16:09, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, this page is getting quite long, as some of the threads are pretty big. Anyone object to setting up an automated archival; say, automatically moving any threads not updated in the last 6 months to an archive page? --Darkwind (talk) 16:12, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. If no one objects for a while I'll set it up. --Explodicle (T/C) 20:15, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I took care of it. It should trigger sometime in the next 24 hours. --Darkwind (talk) 03:17, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I can be a member of this project as long as it has this "The aim is to reduce the number of non-notable articles" as a goal. I think a lot of people delete pages if they aren't immediately, obviously, notable to that user, at that moment. Mathiastck (talk) 16:35, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

SUGGESTION/local RFC:

Revise the Project Page to read as follows:

The Notability Project is a WikiProject based on Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability. The aim is to get more editors involved and to support those currently involved in fixing, merging, or deleting (as a last resort) apparently non-notable articles with the ultimate aim to correctly place all articles based on their verifiable notability. The project also aims to simplify the filtration process and explain it more clearly so as not to confuse newcomers and to encourage participation.

Would this wording be acceptable by consensus (and if not, why not?) to help to eliminate any potential perception that this project has a "Pure Deletionist's Agenda"? COMMENTS? 66.102.205.233 (talk) 03:27, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

• It's more then acceptable to me. I would gladly call myself a member of a project with that goal :-) Mathiastck (talk) 18:03, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
• I agree with the wording. I usually just merge or redirect the non-notable subjects I find, and think others should do the same if possible. However, this shouldn't link to an archived discussion. It should either link to a project namespace page or have no link at all. --Explodicle (T/C) 18:31, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Thare has been no opposition after 10 days so I have changed the wording to the above exactly as shown based on silent consensus A-in-GF. 66.102.204.109 (talk) 08:12, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello - just wondering if this wikiproject is still active? Kelly Marie 0812 (talk) 16:05, 20 October 2012 (UTC)