Wikipedia talk:Notability/Historical/Notability changes

Why this proposal?

I proposed this because some editors, noting that the word "notability" does not explicitly appear in the deletion policy, feel that any argument against the inclusion of an article that cites the concept or uses the word notability, is therefore invalid. Some of these editors explicitly believe that any verifiable topic can and should have an article in Wikipedia. I disagree.

I believe that this proposal is really only formalizing existing practice that amounts to an informal consensus. I hope that the formal discussion proves that i am correct on this point. DES ^(talk) 22:51, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

You read my mind with the above statement. I don't really see how formalizing this would impact anything, although I doubt it would hurt. -Haon 03:34, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion policy currently does not define many of the reasons why articles should be deleted. Instead it points to WP:NOT, and says that anything "not suitable for Wikipedia" according to WP:NOT should be listed on WP:AFD. WP:NOT in turn, does not explicitly use the word notability at all. But it does refer to the concept where it says: "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of items of information. That something is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia." and "Subjects of encyclopedia articles must have a claim to fame besides being fondly remembered by their friends and relatives." and "Biography articles should only be for people with some sort of fame, achievement, or perhaps notoriety." and "Individual scheduled or expected future events, should only be included if the event is notable and almost certain to take place." These phrases seem to me to implicitly accept a requirement of notability for inclusion. This proposal merely makes that requirement explicit. DES ^(talk) 22:52, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Encyclopedic implies notable

It is my view that one of the requirements of an encyclopedic article is that it be about a subject that is in some way notable. Some people have argued that a truly trivial subject will not be verifiable anyway, and so there is no need for a notability criterion. I disagree. There are many minor events and objects which can easily be documented, but which i think are clearly improper subjects for articles. Consider an unsuccessful candidate for local elected office in a small to medium sized town. There will no doubt have been newspaper coverage, so the existence and actions of the person are completely verifiable. But is such a person notable? Or consider an intense regional thunderstorm that did little or no lasting damage. Again there will be verifiable newspaper coverage. But do we really want separate articles about any and every such story that anyone can document? If not, why not? I submit that we don't want them because they are not notable. Or consider a particular automobile accident. Many such events receive more or less brief media coverage, and so are clearly verifiable. Police reports are public documents, and so could also be cited as a source for such an article. But is such an article relevant to an encyclopedia? I submit that it is not. Such examples could be multiplied almost endlessly. DES ^(talk) 23:03, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

You say that to be "encyclopedic" something has to be "notable". While I would agree that there exist a nearly endless array of non-notable things that are also not encyclopedic, I would invite you consider whether there may be some non-notable things that are in fact encyclopedic. One definition of an encyclopedia is "A comprehensive reference work containing articles on a wide range of subjects or on numerous aspects of a particular field, usually arranged alphabetically." (American Heritage Dictionary). The goal of being comprehensive presents a problem for notability criteria. Many encyclopedias, in the interest of being comprehensive reference works, will include topics that are not otherwise notable just for the sake of completeness. For example, if I were writing a comprehensive medical encyclopedia, I might include information on every nerve, tendon, ligament, and muscle, and yet most of these have very little significance. Or consider Rambot stubs? Many, many small towns exist of no particular significance and yet we tolerate them for the sake of completeness. Or characters in Harry Potter? Or from Final Fantasy games? Much information is included in our encyclopedia that is not really important, significant or noteworthy. Some of this is compiled into lists or stitched into larger documents, but doing so doesn't make it any more notable than adding Bush's breakfast order to his article would make that fact notable.

Because we do desire to be comprehensive across a wide variety of subjects, there is an inherent tension that a comprehensive work will at times include material that is otherwise non-notable. As such, I am opposed to any proposal that makes non-notability, by itself, a sufficient cause for deletion. It can work in some categories, like biographies, because we know we will never be a comprehensive work covering all people that ever lived. Though we might some day be a comprehensive guide to many other things. In other words, while I am happy to delete non-notable people, bands and neologisms. I would be opposed to deleting any species of tree, town, or college, regardless of how trivial and insignificant some members of these classes might be. Oh, and before you respond that being a member of class X makes something inherently notable, I would ask you to consider whether you regard the phrase "notable town" as being necessarily redundant? It is my contention that all members of some classes can be inherently encyclopedic, i.e. suitable to a comprehensive reference work, even though membership in the class does not make the object inherently notable. Dragons flight 02:11, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I see your point, and notability under this proposal would essentially become a term of art. Personaly i would favor deleting/merging things like articles on minor characters in Harry Potter, adn i wish that WP:FICT was cited on AFD as often as WP:MUSIC is. I wuld argue that for our purposes individual organs and species are ntoable, but indiviadual trees (the tree on the corner of X street and Y street) generally are not, nor are examples of the class of organs (Jon Doe's liver). I don't really like the ram-bot articels, but there seems to be consensus in favor of them, so be it. I also am opposed to the "every school is notable" arguement. Obviously when someone urges that soemthign be delted as "non-notable " it is really a shorthand for "lacks the kind of notability need for an encyclopedic article". At least that is how I see it. DES ^(talk) 02:24, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I think we really do need something like this; my only qualm is that some topics may be so inherently intriguing to a large number of people as to provide a separate grounds for inclusion. An example would be List of songs containing covert reference to real musicians: I think almost no one would want to lose that, but it might be hard to make a case for notability. If we are going to actually propose this, and I think we should, we should first think long and hard about how we make an appropriate loophole for these. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:46, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

How about something riffing off of Dragons flight's point -- that subjects should be inherently notable to be inherently encyclopedic, unless by their exclusion a reference work would reasonably be considered incomplete -- and then give some examples, such as towns, or muscles, or some of the items Dragons flight mentioned. The examples would establish precedent for the types of "exclusions" that might not be inherently notable per se but whose absence would diminish a reference work like an encyclopedia. · Katefan0^(scribble) 15:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

The point of a class of items being encylopedic and the individual items still needing to be encylopedic should be a given. Maybe one position could be that if the class is covered in an encylopedia, then we need to include it. An item in that class still needs to meet a standard infered by being listed in the encylopedia (notability?). For everything else we need to apply a measure like notability. Vegaswikian 02:21, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I think we must consider the concept of all items of a class being notable. If the class is of reasonable size, then allowing notability as a properity of that class could be reasonable. On the other hand, granting blanket notability to a class of items that would number 500,000 would seem to be in conflict with the notion of notabality. Vegaswikian 02:21, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

can't tell if this debate is still open, but i'd say this should be left as is. it cals for too much subjectivity with too little gain. if an article is verifiable, not based on original reseach, NPOV, has its maintainerbase, let it live. delete it and you just piss people off by implying their work and interests are insignificant. there are better issues to deal with. -71.112.11.220 02:35, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

So we can delete all of those school stubs that no one is maintaining? Vegaswikian 05:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Fame and importance

We did already have a poll on this issue, and while it was sometime ago, I don't really see what has changed since then. - SimonP 23:29, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for thst pointer, and those discussion are worth reveiwing. But I think that in the last year and a half the project has grown significantly, which will have exposed more reasons why notability is important. I also suspect that the previous discussion was somewhat influenced by the term "fame". Also, of course, new people (such as myself) have joined the project, and their views may not be reflected in this old discussion. DES ^(talk) 23:39, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with DES. Alot has changed in the last year and a half. Notability is regularly used as a reason to VFD and should be formalized.Gateman1997 23:41, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course, the question of "what is notable" looms over the head of this discussion like a Sword of Damocles. And while I agree that vanity and trivia are potentially problematic for Wikipedia (if for no other reason than the number of trivial subjects in the world dwarfs the number of "interesting" ones), there are several aspects of the notability proposal that I find troubling.

• A bias against regional concerns. A common example--United States Senators are listed (typically) on Wikipedia; state legislators are not. While folks like Karen Minnis (a legislative leader here in Oregon and a controversial one at that) may be of little interest to folks outside this state, rest assured her impact is felt far and wide within the state's borders. an article on her would be far removed from a hypothetical article on a school board member in Smalltown, USA--but were someone to write one, I wouldn't be surprised were it to get AfD'd (on the grounds that she doesn't have coverage at a national level). Likewise, WP:MUSIC (which I assume would continue to be in force, defining "notability" for musical acts) is highly biased against prominent musical acts of regional scope.
• The attempt to use "importance" (as determined by some set of elites/experts/authorities) as a proxy for "notability" (as determined by popular opinion). Either should be grounds for article inclusion; much discussion on Wikipedia treats the two as synonyms (and there is a proposal to merge the pages). Both can be observed and documented.
• A lack of a clear standard to demonstrate notability, in most cases. When such a standard exists, as in WP:MUSIC, I think it should always be open to expansion as cases warrant. At a minimum, the authors of an article should always have the opportunity to argue for notability even if published standards for such are not met--the standards should exist to list criteria that are sufficient to demonstrate notability; not criteria which are necessary.

--EngineerScotty 00:01, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Executive summary of rambling stuff below: I think notability is part of being "encyclopedic," but I don't think everyone thinks so, and I don't think trying to codify notability will help. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:40, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I think there is a true and unbridgeable divide between some of us, who believe that part of the value an encyclopedia provides is selectivity and a sense of proportion. and that an encyclopedia is supposed to be a learning resource (-pedia) and hence is supposed to integrate, interpret and synthesize; and those who really believe that Wikipedia should be something quite different from an encyclopedia, and that it should, in fact, be an "indiscriminate collection of information." It will be obvious which side I lean toward, and people who do not agree with me will probably say I'm not adequately representing their position. No matter.

This divide has existed for the time I've partipating on Wikipedia, a couple of years. It has waxed and waned in intensity. I can't tell whether it's getting worse or not. I think it is, a bit, because there are now so many articles that if your motivation is the desire to create a new article, i.e. to find a topic that has not been covered yet, you have to reach farther and farther out for narrow and narrower topics. And I think we are getting more people who come to Wikipedia for the purpose of promoting their interests. But maybe not. But as I say, I can't really tell.

The point is that there are some things which are worth codifying as policy, because they do reflect a true consensus, and do help integrate newcomers into the community, and do influence e.g. AfD discussions.

The problem is that one can codify a true consensus, but one cannot create or influence consensus by trying to wedge policy statements into articles. If they don't truly reflect consensus, you may be able to get the statement in, but people will de facto ignore it.

For as long as I've been here, people have been trying to set up criteria and policies regarding notability. So far, nobody's gotten anywhere. WP:NOT has always been useful policy. WP:WIWO has never been anything but a place for people to air their opinions and have them disregarded. Proposals to codify "notability" and/or "importance" have gotten nowhere.

For as long as I've been here, some people have been saying "Notability is not a criterion for deletion," and other people have been citing it as a criterion, and other people have been voting on that basis.

General statements about "notability" don't carry much weight in AfD. Everyone's heard it all already.

On the other hand, specific statements about specific articles consistently do carry weight, regardless of "the principle of the thing." Presenting convincing evidence for or against the notability of an [insert topic here] does sway votes and influence outcomes.

I don't think this is going to get anywhere until someone manages to come up with surprising and brilliant new formulation of how to decide what's included and what isn't.

I'm not sure it matters. It may be possible for everyone to more or less work together while continuing to yell at each other. I hope so, because I don't think the two camps are going to be united. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Importance

How is this proposal different from the existing proposal at Wikipedia:Importance? Shouldn't we have this discussion all in one place?

Anyway, I think one major stumbling block is going to be different people's opinions about what things are "inherently notable" and what aren't. I know there are many people who think schools are inherently notable. I don't agree with them, but I happen to think that languages are inherently notable. There are probably people who disagree with me, and indeed I have seen {{importance}} on language articles. So what happens? Do we take a poll on every subject like this to see if we have consensus that certain things are inherently notable and other things aren't? And what happens in the extremely likely event that we don't get even broad consensus on the question? And aren't polls evil, anyway? --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 00:08, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem that people won't agree on what notability is is not relevant to the fact that it would be a policy. If we examine NPOV, we see that there are scads of arguments passionate discussions around if a statement is POV or not. What happens is we start with the assumptions that something should be notable and work from there. Case by case if need by, or by making guidelines (like WP:MUSIC) when required. - brenneman^(t)(c) 01:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

That is exactly what I had in mind. I want to settel the arguement over whether notability matters or not, (it does, IMO) and go on to debating what makes particular articels or kinds of subjects notable. DES ^(talk) 01:15, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

This proposal is different from Wikipedia:Importance in that thsi proposal doesn't attempt to lay down any criteria for notability in different fields, leavign that for field by field or article by articel discussion -- it merely tries to establish the priciple that some level of notability is required. DES ^(talk) 02:26, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Nor does Wikipedia:Importance. So they cover the same ground :/ ··gracefool |☺ 08:22, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Existing poll

I started this some time ago to try to gauge the status quo: Wikipedia:Non-notability and deletion poll. Suggest people check it out. ~~ N (t/c) 00:12, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

We should also be aware of User:Neutrality/Survey, which also was to ask this issue, but never advanced to the voting stage. - SimonP 00:36, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Augment WP:NOT instead

Rather than attempt to define what should be included ("only notable things"), would it work just as well to expand WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information in more precise ways? To do this, it might be useful if someone classified the articles in AFD with non-notability votes into 7-10 sub-categories of non-notable things. Patterns may emerge that could lead to useful extensions of WP:NOT. For example (making this up, not based on any analysis)

1. Biographies of people briefly mentioned in news reports. Similar to Wikipedia not being a place for first hand new reports about breaking topics, just because someone's name is associated with a briefly news worthy event does not mean an article about this person should be included in an encyclopedia.

The point being that it is perhaps easier to define non-notability than notability. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:19, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Such a discussion would probably be quite useful, but I feel that there is little point in debating what is or isn't notable until we have a general agreement that some definition of notabilty will matter. discussions about what is notable or non-notable in a particualr area, or evidence of what actually happens on AfD don't matter much to those who say "Notablity is irrelevant" and "if it isn't listed explicitly in the Deletion policy, you shouldn't cite it on AfD anyway". So I think doing the sort of thing you describe ought to be the second step. DES ^(talk) 14:44, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

But if notability is not defined before the vote, might it cause an otherwise acceptable proposal to not gain consensus? Vegaswikian 02:26, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

In contrast to DES, I would be happier to see notability criteria being applied to specific classes of things (e.g. biographies), and not try to impose a blanket criteria that everything appearing in an encyclopedia need be inherently notable. Dragons flight 18:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Pre-existing discussion

It looks like people are having this conversation in many different places. See Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Brainstorming#Remove notable requirement. -- Reinyday, 14:39, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes I had commetned ther, and perhaps i should have linked to that page. But that is an integral part of an attempt to totally reqork the deltion process, which opens up several different cans of worms, and I wanted to stick to only this can for the moment. DES ^(talk) 14:46, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Definition

Could we have a definition for the word notable? Different people seem to have very different views of exactly what the term means. Is it even possible to have a meaningful definition, one that doesn't rely on near synonyms such as importance, fame, significance, or interest? - SimonP 15:24, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm certianly not prepared to offer an operational definition of "notable", that is one that could be used to more or less mechanically determine how notable something is. I would say that notability, in the wikipedia context, is a combination of fame/noteriety, importance/significance, and relative uniqueness. Soemthing that significant numbers of people have taken note of is surely notable. Something that is important withing its own field is generally notable, depending on how important within the field, and how narrow that field is. Soemthing that is unique or unusual, in some significant way different from others of its kind, is notable. None of that helps too much. But I think most people have a rough idea of a dimension of notability so that some subjects are more notable, and some are less so. I even suspect that many (albiet far from all) people here would rank most topics in roughtly the smae order on a notability scale. Where there is signifiicant disagreement is on where to draw the line -- on just how notable is notable enough for wikipedia; and on whether the degree of notability matters at all. I am hoping to get agreement that it does matter, that a measure along the notability dimension is one appropriate factor to consider in whether an article belongs here. With that settled we can IMO go on to discuss where the line should be set, either case by case, or (I would prefer) category by category (these are standards for biographies, these for bands, these for fictional characters, these for game elements, these for roads and streets, etc, etc.) DES ^(talk) 17:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I see it more as a two tiered system. There are those things of global interest that are universally acknowledged to be notable, but once you get down to items of interest only to a limited community, notably varies greatly to how close one is to that community. For instance we have nearly as many articles on wikis as we do blogs. Blogs are routinely deleted via AfD, wikis hardly ever are. Another example is that Wikipedia demographics mean that we have a lot of Star Trek fans, so we have articles on each Star_Trek:_Enterprise_episode without question, while episodes of Frasier, which got a vastly larger number of viewers, barely survive VfD. Having a notability standard reinforces all of our systemic biases, because perceptions of notability are so closely linked to one's own interests. - SimonP 17:53, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, the size of the class may matter. If the class contains a large number of items, say 500,000 then granting every item in the class notability seems to be self defeating. Vegaswikian 02:29, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

"There are those things of global interest that are universally acknowledged to be notable" - I think that nothing in and of itself is probably inheritly notable (someone raised cities/towns, but then a town of one of two people would likely get merged/deleted). "but once you get down to items of interest only to a limited community, notably varies greatly to how close one is to that community" - well, the wiki vs. blog thing is a good one, but it really represents the bias against blogs and towards wikis, and would probably happen despite pretty much any guideline etc.. As for the episode of frasier... well... again that's obviously a bias thing - I really wouldn't think it would be that bad if it got merged etc. for the time, but its not really very good either. Fact is, I believe if the community wants to produce a quality encyclopedia they should judge the subject of each and every article on its own merits rather then a broad brush of a subject. The point about notibility highlighting systemic biases is a good one, but the problem is that happens already without a notability proposal - so having a good one here could actually help this part. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 10:14, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Levels of notability

This discussion seems to assume that something either is notable or is not, but in reality there are many levels of notability. The least notable articles would be of interest to only 1 person, while the most notable might be of interest to the entire human population. Where should we draw the line at inclusion in Wikipedia ? Should it be of interest to 10 or 100 or 1000 people to be sufficiently notable for inclusion ? StuRat 12:50, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that notability is a thing a subject can have more of, or less of. A suibjecrt can be notable to more or viewer people, as you mention. It can also be highly notable or slightly notable to each of thsoe people. Since we cant at all accurately estimate how many people a given subject is notable to anyway, i think that providing numbers (for example "Must be notable to at least a thousand people") would be false precision.

I think there are cases where such an argument could be made based on numbers. If there is some video game character which some people want removed, but there are 10,000 registered players of that game, they presumably all would have an interest in said article, and a justification could be made for it's inclusion. Admittedly, there are also other cases where no such numerical value can be found. StuRat

What I do think is that an arguemnt "this subject is not notable enough for a wikipedia article" is legitimate. Whether it is true in a given cas can be discussed, but the line of argument should not IMO be ruled out a priori. DES ^(talk) 14:48, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

We should apply a cost/benefit analysis here. I think most would agree that an article of interest only to the person who wrote it is of little benefit to the community, but we must also demonstrate that such articles represent a high cost to Wiki to justify their removal. I don't think we have made that case yet. The next section attempts to find such a justification. StuRat 15:30, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Reasons why "unnotable" articles are bad

I think we need to explicitly list why such articles are a problem. I'm not saying I agree, but here are some possible reasons I can think of:

• System load: The disk space for storage and memory/CPU time needed to include such pages in searches, for example. This is ultimately a financial concern, as more disk space and memory/CPU time are available, if Wiki has the money to buy them. The problem this presents is likely to decrease over time, as I predict that, in the long run, the cost of computer resources will decrease faster than articles will be added. Still, we must deal with the immediate problem. It would be good to have a study on this, to see what portion of system resources are taken up by articles which are questionable for their notability. If it's 50%, that would call for action, if it's 1%, why bother ?

• Reader distraction: Finding such articles when searching for "notable" articles with similar names would be an example. For instance, there are many people named "George Bush" in the world, and if we include them all in Wikipedia, that would make it difficult to find the two US Presidents by that name amongst the "clutter". Note however, that just listing them in order of notability would fix this problem. It isn't actually necessary to remove the less notable people with that name, just to move them farther down the list on the disambiguation page. Similarly, searches should list results in order of notability, perhaps based on number of hits to each article.

• Editor distraction: If editors must devote some of their time to patrolling such pages for vandalism, that would presumably leave less time for such duties on more notable pages. However, I suspect that few editors would bother with pages of low notability, so this may not be much of an issue.

• Admin distraction: Admins and others might occasionally be called in to deal with disputes on less notable pages, which would distract them form their duties on more notable pages.

StuRat 12:50, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I personally don't think hardware issues are a concern. All articles take about the same amount of space relative to their notability. George W. Bush is hugely notable, but because he is so notable and draws so much attention we not only have a huge article, but have some 10,000 copies of the article saved in the page history. Bas Balkissoon is not very notable, but we only have a fairly short article and only a dozen or so saved copies. The same goes for bandwidth, non notable items get very little traffic and thus are a minimal burden to servers.

We also have to remember that the funding largely comes from readers and editors. For non-notable articles to be a burden to the foundation it would have to be demonstrated that the average reader or editor of the George W. Bush article is more likely to donate then the average reader of the Bas Balkissoon article. The same goes for number of editors. Allowing people to write about what they are interested in is far more likely to encourage someone to be a valuable editor than is repeatedly listing their work on AfD. From my experience a lot of our most valuable admins get their large edit counts by working in more obscure areas. I have never seen any evidence that the people who work in less notable fields are less likely to become the sort of editor that fends off vandalism project wide.

I do think reader distraction is important. For instance, I would find Category:1967 albums far more useful if it only had the dozen or so truly seminal albums from that year. However, simply deleting all the minor albums would be a horrible idea. In my view this issue would be best resolved by new software features. I would love it if categories had the same abilities as the IMDb filmographies, where one can, at a click of a button, sort the items by popularity or by rating. - SimonP 14:05, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I generally agree with your statement, but would add a comment to this line:

"For non-notable articles to be a burden to the foundation it would have to be demonstrated that the average reader or editor of the George W. Bush article is more likely to donate (than) the average reader of the Bas Balkissoon article."

You must not forget that many more people read the George W. Bush article, and are likely to contribute either financially or otherwise as a result, even if the individual contributions of each reader are comparable. StuRat 15:21, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

System load -- I don't think this is an argument. An article that isn't notable enough to be served up often, it's using almost no resources.

Reader distraction -- I've yet to be unable to find a notable subject due to the existance of a non-notable subject. Your argument seems to be a "what if?" What if we had bios on every George Bush? Well, we don't -- so let's cross that bridge when we get there.

Editor distraction -- People that vandalize non-notable pages are really wasting their time -- because nobody will ever see their vandalism. If a tree falls in the forest with nobody around, does it make a sound? If a page on wikipedia is vadalized and nobody ever sees it, is it really vandalism?  ;-) I see your point, but I don't think this is a big enough worry to create yet another wikipedia policy.

Admin distraction -- See Editor distraction.

For these reasons, I'm opposed to the idea of this new policy. --Quasipalm 16:06, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think any of the arguments are very strong myself, but think they are at least worthy of a discussion, hence they are "arguments". As for the reader distraction argument, it's not that people will be unable to find what they want, just that it will make it less convenient for them, which in turn will make them less happy with Wiki and less likely to contribute as a result. As for the idea that we should wait until problems occur instead of trying to prevent them, I disagree. If I wrote one article on a subject that was immediately removed because it wasn't notable, I would understand, but if I wrote 100 such articles over the course of a year, and then Wiki decided to implement a new policy after it became a problem, and removed them all, I would be outraged, having invested all that time. StuRat 16:43, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

• I think Reader, Editor, and Admin distractions are all very real. Having a flood of articles on minor topics makes it very difficult to ensure the overall quality of our work. The more readers who stumble upon a article written on an extremely non-notable subject, the more readers who will not take Wikipedia seriously as a source. Johntex\^talk 02:13, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Not really - this is the whole crux of the reason why 'notablity' is such a bad criteria. To the people who edit and create these articles, they are notable. It's just that they are not notable to you. The same people who create them will maintain them. It just won't be the same people who created GWB. Trollderella 00:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Merging non-notable articles with others

The deletion policy already covers non-notable articles under "problems that do not require deletion", recommending that they be merged into larger articles. Merging unnotable articles into larger ones would resolve all of these problems; we don't need to delete them. JYolkowski // talk 21:13, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't like that idea. If it's not important to enough people to have it's own article, then appending it to another article that is important is just likely to annoy readers of that article who don't care about it at all. Leaving such items as their own articles means nobody has to read the article who isn't interested. For example, if I am reading about eggplants, and I find a section there about somebody's pet, named Eggplant, I would be annoyed. If it was under an article named Eggplant (pet dog), then I would never be bothered by it. This would also be a good candidate for deletion, IMO, but as long as it's not in the main article it wouldn't affect me much. StuRat 21:24, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good example. If Bas Balkissoon gets a dog named Eggplant you are correct that adding that information to the eggplant article would be silly, but the problem there is with merging it into a wholly unrelated article. It would be perfectly reasonable to merge the information into the Bas Balkissoon article. - SimonP 22:23, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

So are you saying unnotable articles should be merged with each other, as opposed to with notable articles ? I don't object to that, but don't really see what it helps, either. StuRat 22:46, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a red herring I think. People clearly vote discretely merge or delete in a myriad of circumstances. Clearly many people, in many instances, think certain information simply has no place anywhere in the encyclopedia, hence they vote delete. Following the "if you don't like it, merge elsewhere" logic to its final conclusion, why not disallow delete votes period? · Katefan0^(scribble) 21:21, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

You know what, that might not be an entirely bad idea. Turning VfD into a place where people attempt to constructively reach consensus on where certain material should end up, instead of the battlefield it is now, might be really productive. Having said that, I think we should still allow delete votes on articles that have no redeemable (verifiable and NPOV) content at all. JYolkowski // talk 15:51, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Agree with Kate, and also point out that WP:DP says articles "not appropriate for Wikipedia (see WP:NOT)" can be deleted. WP:NOT mentions "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information". Clearly, if someone thinks an article is non-notable, they also think it's not appropriate for Wikipedia. ~~ N (t/c) 22:51, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a common misunderstanding. "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" is not some policy that was introduced after a community discussion. It is merely a section header, written by myself, that was intended to be a title for the assorted rules that follow. - SimonP 23:00, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

If it's a common misunderstanding, perhaps a clarification on the main page would be in order. StuRat 23:16, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, but the page still contains these statements:

• "Biography articles should only be for people with some sort of fame, achievement, or perhaps notoriety."

• "Individual scheduled or expected future events, should only be included if the event is notable and almost certain to take place." (emphasis mine)

So a non-notable biography is explicitly something Wikipedia is not, and so is not appropriate for Wikipedia, and so can be deleted. ~~ N (t/c) 23:13, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premises. A non-notable biography may be something that Wikipedia is not (I disagree but am not going to argue that point), but it doesn't follow that it should be deleted. It would be more constructive to merge it with another article. JYolkowski // talk 15:48, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

If you can get verifiable information about someone, it's probably okay to write about him on Wikipedia. If you think the chap's story is a little trivial, merge his article into another. If you can't think of a merge target, ask around. There are people about whom the amount of information available is trivial: Fred Blogs, bank manager at HSBC in Lincoln. Well it's verifiable and arguably encyclopedic, but not particularly useful. But you can leave it there until Fred Bloggs, government minister comes along, then you relegate the original Fred Bloggs to Fred Bloggs, Bank Manager.

Why is this a big deal? Brief, uninteresting articles about uninteresting people occupy about 1kb each and aren't edited much. If we have space problems then we can prune such new articles semi-automatically by producing, every morning, a list of new articles that haven't been edited much after six months. Editors can look at the list and salvage those articles that they want to, the rest can be zapped after being listed for a month.

Wouldn't that be a lot better than this frantic, ant-like, patrolling of the borders of wikidom? I'm pretty sure that it would be far more effective. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 00:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

You shouldn't conclude an article is useless if it hasn't been edited recently, it may just have been well written to begin with and be about a topic which has no need of updates. Now, if nobody has viewed the page in a long time, that either means it is of little value or it can't be found, perhaps the name of the article should be changed. StuRat 00:17, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

discussion moved from project page

Uh, we should keep discussion here, eh? Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 02:31, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

• A policy of "delete if and only if the article is not verifiable in a reliable source" would make it far easier to decide borderline cases and would turn AfD into a constructive process which would make articles Wikipedia more reliable by adding references where possible, and due to the high standards required of a reliable source, the vast majority of articles which proponents of a notability criterion would like to be deleted would in fact be deleted. On the other hand, making notability an official requirement would be a retrograde step away from this policy and would ensure that AfD continues to degenerate. (this "con" added by Lupin|talk|popups)
  • Perhaps Wikipedia:Reliable sources should have an additional requirement that "dictionary/directory" sources (like DMV databases, dictionaries, almanacs, telephone directories, the Minot, North Dakota department of Public Works' database of city manholes and locations) may be used to establish facts about a topic; but a topic may not consist entirely of such sources? This might be an effective way of keeping pages of garage bands and other Wikipedia:vanity out, without appealing to a nebulous notability criteria that might exclude some topics that are verifiable, but some might not consider sufficiently important/excellent to merit inclusion? (My bias is to have a low threshold of notability--to keep out vanity and such, but to include topics which may be only of regional interest). --EngineerScotty 18:35, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Of course, if this were policy, anything reported on by a reputable newspaper would be a proper subject for an artilcle. Auto accidents, rain storms, minor losing political candidates, meetings of local clubs, all are reported on by newspapers, and we must consider newspapers reliable sources in general. DES ^(talk) 18:50, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
      • Not every newspaper article need be treated the same. For instance, the weather section (as well as listings of sports scores, stock prices, and etc.) should be treated similarily to the telephone book--it can establish facts but not notability. To deal with the truly minor stuff; perhaps an additional rule can be proposed when questions arise--multiple sources, separated by time and/or distance. Even if a particularly grisly auto wreck gets front page coverage in a major metro newspaper on a slow news day, the time/distance rule might apply: was the wreck (and its aftermath) covered on multiple days? Did it receive attention elsewhere? Or was it a Tuesday-morning headline, forgotten on Wednesday? Likewise with the losing political candidate. Did the newspaper simply publish election results and candidate profiles? Or did the race receive significant and in-depth coverage, with the loser having an affect on public policy (despite losing)? In short, what do the sources say about the subject? I would be happy with a notability rule if: 1) it is made clear that notability may be documented--for any proposed article, regardless of subject; such documentation should be sufficient to reject an AfD on notability grounds; 2) the criteria for acceptable documentation of notability are made clear (which I have attempted to do in this thread), and 3) outside of such things as vanity articles and mere trivia, there are no categorical bars to articles on notability. Here, I'm referring to standards like "subjects in category X must meet standard Y to be considered notable". However, I'm OK with "if a subject in category X meets standard Y, then X is considered notable; otherwise notability must be demonstrated in some other fashion". I hope the difference between the two positions is clear. Often times, standards such as WP:MUSIC seem to be interpreted in the former fashion rather than the latter. --EngineerScotty 19:30, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
        • I really hope we don't consider local papers to be reliable sources. I've been written about in my local paper and those articles have contained several blatant errors and a lot of minor inaccuracies. The same is true for almost any story where I have been close to the subject. The front page of the New York Times is dependable, and a story covered by multiple papers or by multiple reporters at the same paper is likely to be accurate, but one off stories about car crashes or profiles of local notables are far from reliable. - SimonP 19:50, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
          • What size coverage do you mean by a "local" paper? Anything smaller than the NYT? Is the leading daily in a medium-to-large sized city "reliable"--i.e. the Seattle Times or the Minneapolis Star-Tribune? What about a smaller city's paper--the Eugene Register-Guard, for instance? I agree that small-town newspapers can often have low-quality journalism... but what size and scale do you consider acceptable? --EngineerScotty 20:49, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
            • To me verifiable means peer reviewed or reported by multiple sources. No newspaper, to my knowledge, does any sort of systematic fact checking. For a high profile story in the NYT or Washington Post you can be quite certain it will have been double checked, but most of what they publish, and pretty much everything published by other papers, isn't. - SimonP 22:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Let's consider a specific, if rather personal example on the losing political candidate. Earlier this myear I was a candidate for local elective office (township council). There were multiple stories in each of three different papers, one of them a "reginal" paper by any reasonable standard (the Trenton Times). The local legal of Woman voters publsihed candidate questionaires on the web, and i think they are still up. Video of public debates was on the web. Would these facts justify a wikipedia articel about me? DES ^(talk) 02:51, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
    • The amount of fact checking doen by newpapers veries widely. But we frewuently cite suh publication as an adaqete source for specific fcts in articles. If newspapers are reliable enough for that purpose, why aren't they for measuring inclusion? DES ^(talk) 02:51, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
      • If you look at Results of the Canadian federal election, 2004 you will see several hundred articles on failed candidates, and several thousand more red links awaiting articles. For the next election our goal is to have an article on every candidate, and work is already well underway. These articles have existed for more than a year, and the wiki has yet to implode. That said I do think those articles are pushing things. The John Ford page, for example, could certainly not be seen as a useful biography of that person. To me verifiability also means accuracy in the long term. It is doubtful whether any newspaper will note this fellow's later career, and in 2105 the article will likely still state that "he runs an energy audit business and serves on the board of directors for the Ottawa Bicycle Club." In the long run it is unlikely that we can maintain this articles accuracy, because he will rapidly become unverifiable. - SimonP 03:50, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

• • Likewise, we can add a similar rule stating that a work of fiction may be used as a source when documenting elements (characters, locales) within the work of fiction, or a fictional universe, but works of fiction may not be the only source. (A similar rule would apply to published works whose primary purpose is to document fictional universes and describe fictional works, such as the Star Trek Encyclopedia, Cliff Notes, etc.). This would keep out most fancruft, but still allow fictional elements (like an article on the characters of Hamlet or Darth Vader) which have broad appeal beyond fans of the work in question. --EngineerScotty 18:35, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Long tail vs collaboration

The long tail article specifically gives Wikipedia as an example of an internet phenemona that aggregates peripheral markets to add value. If our notability criteria is too stringent, we lose the effectiveness of the long tail. It was the "long tail" concept (that I learned about through Wikipedia), that convinced me to be more "inclusionist". So long as the facts are verifiable, notability should not be a criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia. If it's verifiable, it is notable to someone.

That said, the downside of that logic is that Wikipedia isn't a traditional encyclopedia: it's strength is it's collaborative nature. If the topic is so esoteric that there's no-one to collaborate with, then what's the point? Even if verifiable, there's no point in putting it in this forum where a random vandal can harm it.

Thus I'd like to suggest the AFD process shouldn't be a simply majority rules. If there is a group of people who wish to collaborate on that article/topic, no matter how small the group and no matter how obscure the topic, notability of the topic shouldn't be an issue of and in itself. The fact that a group wants to collaborate on that topic means it is notable (assuming it's verifiable, etc.)

How any society, and Wikipedia is a society, treats its minorities is a measure of that society's civility. Notability is in many ways simply the tyranny of the majority. Samw 03:31, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Assuming you mean a "group" of at least 2 people, you really are saying the same thing, just that your threshhold for "notability" is 2, instead of, say 100 people who have an interest in the topic. StuRat 03:37, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I would also modify one of your assertions:

"If it's verifiable, it is notable to someone."

I would say it was notable at the time the records were created. However, there may very well be records of how many bags of grain were stored in a warehouse 600 years ago, but that would hardly make this fact notable today, unless the bags contained plague rats or somehow were significant. StuRat 03:42, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Then again any good economic historian would kill for six hundred year old warehouse records. - SimonP 03:55, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

LOL, probably so, but that doesn't mean we need to include them here. StuRat 13:37, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The question is how long the tail needs to be. Just look at the front page - so many articles that are more plentiful and detailed than the competition. However the tail doesn't need to carry everything in the world. The Land 18:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

It won't, because not everything is verifiable. Trollderella 00:06, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

General Idea

The fact is that by CSD A7 notability is already a requirement here - just for some articles. I don't really have an opinion either way (in the broad scheme of things, I give opinions in AfD based on notability of course due to current status) but I wish people would make up their minds whether they wan't to keep everything that's remotely verifiable, or get rid of stuff that's not notable. However, since both Jimbo and the community seem to agree that people require notability to be included it only makes sense to have a formal requirement for notability for all articles. After all, at least according to jimbo while this is a wiki the wiki serves as a means only to make the encyclopedia. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 17:29, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

While I'm at it I'll mention that this proposal as an actual proposal is pretty decent. Also, really, what we're talking about here is not notability per se - what we're talking about is importance - we need to restrict wikipedia to "important" topics. Even the most obscure topics can be important, but they need to state (thus a speedy if not for people) why they are important and provide some evidence to back it up. However, we don't call it "importance" because that's much harsher than notability (imagine something like "Delete not important" on AfD) and notability is more specific anyway. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 18:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with this statement. The Land 18:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe some wordings around notability concept ?

IMO there is indeed a need of expressing "officially" a notability requirement. But I can't think of a way to define it nice and crisp. It will be subjective on a case by case. My concern for near future is that WP can become very "noisy": lots of signal but poor articles. That is why I agree on the statement "non-notable articles are bad". I feel WP need a way to slow down over-enthusiastic users. It's a bit overwhelming to realize that one can, apparently, write about any-thing, now and here. IMO it is misunderstood into creating non notable articles. Such a user can generate a surprisingly important amount of stress and rubbish. It's not good for WP neither for the community. I like the proposal.

Maybe there should be a few suggestions added with "notability" definition on the project page? Don't get me wrong, I have no solution either for defining the comming "significant" word. Not a simple problem:

• To be passionate about a subject is not a sufficient reason for creating an article.
• To have a true verifiable fact is not an acceptable single reason for writing an article.
• To know something about a subject do not constitute in itself a reason why to write a new article.
• Wanting to create a new article is nice, but not acceptable on it's own for a new article to be created.
• An article must contain at least one line of "significant" information. Even a sub-sub-stub must have some "significance".

To whom? How can you tell whether it does? Who get's to decide whether something is significant to me? Trollderella

Bad examples:

• [Grand-Prés is a huge shopping center next to my city named BlaBla.] True and verifiable. Non notable. Of interest only to very limited number of people. Geographically limited scope. No "interesting" bit.

If it is of interest to very limited number of people, that means that it is significant to some people, and so we should keep it. It seems perverse to delete something simply because only a few people want it. Trollderella

• [My house has a door.] True and verifiable. But no significance.

Not really verifiable except by original research. There's no third party documentation of it, and anyway, nothing can be written about your door (well maybe, if it's a really unusual door) that isn't true of the general class of doors. This is a strawman. Trollderella

• [My primary school named BlaBla has 200 pupils and offers 4 disciplines.] True, verifiable, but offers now valuable informations. Any primary school on the planet would be similar. The fact that math teacher is named "Higgins" do not add anything worthy.

Erm, many people disagree, and think that this is worth recording. Trollderella

Good examples:

• [e=mc2] Very Obscure. Too short an article. Very limited number of people able to understand. Bad writing. But universally valid, crucial step in sciences, verifiable, true. Shortly: very high significance.

Only really of interest to a very small number of people. It should be deleted... ;) Trollderella

• [The supermarket next to my house is huge. It was the first time the concrete type AB45 was used in a building. It gave the proof that AB45 is 20 times stronger than any other one.] Let's say it is true and verifiable. Limited geographical scope. But high significance for "concrete" business. Could be a line in "concrete" article. But NOT an article about my nearby Supermarket.

If the sumpermarket has some feature which breaks it out from the general class of supermarkets, like unique archetecture, then why not keep it? Trollderella 00:04, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Gtabary 21:00, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Encyclopedic implies knowledge

The encyclopedia is a comprehensive compilation of knowledge for learning and understanding. This seems good enough; and it explains what aspect of "notability" and "importance" we should consider. --Vsion 09:01, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Arguing semantics

I think we're mainly arguing semantics here. An article is usually considered "non-notable" if its subject falls foul of such consensual guidelines as WP:MUSIC, WP:BIO or WP:VAIN, or if it is not verifiable. It is important to note that "verifiable" has a different meaning on Wikipedia than in the outside world, and that most people are unaware of that (specifically, something is only WikiVerifiable if it can be verified from a reputable source). It is partially because of this dichotomy that people use the term 'notable' rather than 'Verifiable by the definition in Wikipedia policy'.

We do delete some articles that are called non-notable. Whether that is because they are non-notable or because of some other guideline such as WP:WEB is irrelevant, as long as it is done through consensual discussion. Calling an AFD nomination invalid because of the way it is worded is nothing but rules lawyering, and WP:NOT a bureaucracy. Referring to a poll that was held over a year ago does not say anything about the current situation, as issues are frequently changed or established without resorting to polls, and WP:NOT a democracy.

Before I was even aware of this proposal I was writing an essay on the topic, which I have now put at Wikipedia:Notability. Just an essay, no policy or guideline or anything. FYI and thoughts welcome. Radiant_>|< 10:19, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Implications at AfD

It should come as a surprise to no one that I feverently oppose this proposal, even though it is well-written and well-conceived. I oppose this proposal on a number of grounds:

1. This will only serve to make the AfD process even more cumbersome and acrimonious, in special reference to the AfD debates over schools. A proposal of this nature, will simply be a tool for "those who routinely nominate and vote to delete school articles" to try to shoehorn deletions where there is otherwise no concensus to delete. The concept that somehow making it policy that something has to be "notable" (with all of the subjective baggage that carries) in order to merit an article, is only going to deepen the divide over certain types of AfD nominations (particularly school articles). I oppose any policy that is either a tool to overturn existing standards, practices or concenses on WP. I also oppose any proposal that will so clearly build up further acrimony and number of articles in the AfD pipeline.

2. As alluded to in my point 1 above, "notability" is far, far, far too subjective to allow it be written into policy in this way. The exisiting policies on vanity articles and notablity of persons make sense, because there is a general concensus about how we determine the notablity of persons (even this has been violently debated in some quarters, however). But with other things, such as schools and train stations and other buildings/institutions of this nature, achieving a working concensus is much, much more difficult. This is in large measure because people disagree on what subjective standard for notability ought to be used. I think that leaving verifiability as the standard for things other than people is a workable, established and reasonable approach which the notabilists do not like because permits the existence of articles about things which they do not personally, subjectively consider notable (ie. my elementary school).

3. Any proposal of this sort, which does not address the problem of subjectivity of "notability" or "importance" or whatever is a doomed policy, in practice, if not in discussion. Witness the argument about "inherent notability" in the ongoing schools debate. Will such a policy help or hinder determining whether or not schools are inherently notable? Obviously it will be a hindrance as editors continue to scream "it's not notable" and "yes it's inherently notable" at each other at AfD. Now they would have another policy to fight with.

In summary, I think the omnibus approach to treat all articles with a notability litmus-test is a mistake. Concensus must be reached on classes or groups of articles in the same way that concensus was eventually reached on biographies and on people. --Nicodemus75 21:38, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

If we must have a notability criteria, it should be done as a class as Nicodemus75 suggests. A blanket "notability" criteria is far too subjective. Devil's in the details, general policies don't always help. Samw 23:35, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if I can address the concerns of Nicodemus75.

1. This seems to be purely on the grounds that it might permit more school articles to be deleted. In fact (assuming no class of articles in inherently notable), this would actually allow articles that deserved a place in Wikipedia to be kept, by providing flexibility in the arguments. I don't think it can possibly cause any more acrimony than already exists, in fact, it should reduce it. It will be like moving from the deadlock of trench warfare (which we have now in inherent notability vs nothing is inherently notable), to mechanised warfare without static defenses.

2. Subjectivity is thus desireable, not problematic. It gives us the flexibility to include, say, a bus stop where JFK was shot and killed, while excluding all other bus stops. Or we can include a band, with no sales, comprising ex-Presidents of the USA, while excluding other non-notable bands.

3. Do a "Find and replace" on any daily AfD page, and see how many times that notability criteria are used.As such, notability is already the unwritten standard by which just about every AfD article is evaluated. Might as well put it in writing.--inks^T 00:59, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

• • Your responses are exactly why I oppose this proposal. 1)Unlike you and others who "routinely nominate and vote to delete school articles", I do not wish to move to a situation of "mechanised warfare without static defenses". This is in fact an admission on your part that AfD will become more bloody. Some sort of mechanised warfare is obviously more bloody than the trench positions that currently exist. Having a "policy" in the arsenal is only going to increase the screaming by attempt to use and interpret the new policy in a new way, that will support respective positions. Your statement that: "this would actually allow articles that deserved a place in Wikipedia to be kept" is already a clear example that you will try to use any such policy as a justification for deleting school articles that a current plurality of voting editors believe to be inherently notable. 2) I am not talking about subjectivity on an article-by-article basis, but on an editor-by-editor basis. Your "flexibility" is merely a code-word for deletionism - it means that if some pre-requisite of "notability" can be laid upon the AfD process, that you and others can now try to browbeat neutral or moderate AfD voters into an article-by-article consideration, instead of leaving them the freedom to determine for themselves if they view an entire class of articles (ie. schools or battleships) as being notable in their own right. 3)False analogy (once again). Persons and biographies have a concensus driven standard of notability, other things to do not. Your point is totally, utterly false when it comes to schools. You (and others) label nearly every school which is nominated for AfD as "non-notable" - that is your opinion - it is not an "unwritten standard". The fact of the matter is, that 85%-90% of all schools nominated for AfD are not deleted, even though you and others label them as non-notable. The opposite of your assertion is actually true.--Nicodemus75 02:52, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Inks, it's true that the word "notable" is used heavily in AFD. But not with an agreed meaning. Many use it to mean what *should* be notable. Others use it to mean what has been found to be notable. The recently speedily-kept Jack Tripper could be re-AFD'd on the grounds it's "completely trivial" according to many. Many unnoticed horrible tragedies in the world are worthy of notice. Now, if you define notability based on what is "significant" and "important" and the opposite of "trivial", such tragedies are "notable". However, we (properly) don't make articles for such tragedies because they haven't been noticed by others. Wikipedia should have good articles, with every article being of value to some. But, there is no need for every article to be "important" to everybody. A good article can be "completely trivial" to some, and hugely helpful to others. Notability is a means to the end of determining what's a good article, however, it is not an end unto itself. To much time is wasted in AFD now, and we shouldn't give an excuse to create more AFDs on articles, that have been widely accepted. Rather than vague new proposals like this, we need more specific criteria like WP:MUSIC, which has been highly useful, and avoids the random voting patterns we see in some areas. The only good part of the proposal, is that since schools are by nature "significant, important, or notable" this proposal would more easily justify keeping all real ones, while deleting "completely trivial" stuff like pokemon. But, I wouldn't support a proposal just for one category of articles. --rob 06:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

The status quo whereby the definition of "notability" is amorphous is a reason for, not against, creation of policy that defines its meaning and use in Wikipedia. An argument to include articles that are important to some of the people, some of the time could justify including hoaxes and vandalism for the entertainment value they provide to the vandals, for example. Similarly, we can be specific to the point of absurdity - having criteria for secondary schools with between 1000 and 2000 students, primary schools established for less than 22.5 years, bus stops in third world countries that are democracies...the examples are absurd, but hopefully illustrative.--inks^T 10:07, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I really like your example of WP:MUSIC. I don't care for most music articles but am glad there are specific criteria in this specific category. A general "notability" critieria doesn't achieve anything. For those that are advocating that, I challenge you to come up with specific criteria on specific categories. I am sure we can come to agreement as to what is notable for schools, for example. If we can't come to agreement on what constitutes a notable school, why do we think we can come to an agreement on a general notability criteria? Samw 21:32, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Consensus can be achived. The fact that there is a problem in one area or subsector does not mean that prevents consensus from being formed in other areas. One could argue that any topic that by its notability definition includes over 500,000 building does not belong in wikipedia. It belongs in a new wiki for that vast array of data. Vegaswikian 21:39, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

But why?? There is no need to delete anything simply because you don't think it's worth noting and someone else does. If someone else does, and it is verifiable, then let it stand. And please, please, no strawman about your dog. When you really think about it, it isn't verifiable. Southern Local Supervoid though, is almost certainly not notable to most people. Are you going to want to delete it? Trollderella 23:58, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Adds nothing but vagueness

This proposal adds nothing but a repetition of vague deletionist criteria. We have more detailed criteria already, and this proposal adds nothing to them. It won't actually work as intended since no one who isn't preinclined to agree with a deletion will accept that it covers an article under consideration. All it will do is create another source of acrimony. CalJW 21:30, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely. The word means nothing but 'What I like'. Verifiablity is concrete, objective, and already policy. Plus, it works. No one has yet explained to me what is wrong with it, except by the strawman of 'well, if you want that, then you have to have the chipped paint on the fire hydrant outside my friend's house'. Notability doesn't help us, because there's no definition of what is worth noting, or who thinks so - it is inherrently POV. Let's stick with verifiable. It works. Trollderella 23:56, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo says that verifiability isn't enough in some cases. [1] --Interiot 18:39, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think you understand what strawman actually means. You can verify something unencyclopedic. I could, for example, provide verifiable information on random, non-notable people, bands or random landmarks like that. I could even provide official government records, a book and a tv show on myself, does that make me encyclopedic? Also, I think it's pretty much widely accept, for example, that we CAN verify that little bands exist, but that being little means they shouldn't be included, and that is, by definition a notability criterion. There are already several working definitions of notability (such as the music one), so you can't claim there aren't any. Just because you can't come up with a valid counter-argument for unencyclopedic things being verifiable doesn't mean you can blindly dismiss them.

Oh and incidentally, both NPOV and verifiability policies include notability criteria. NPOV explicitly states that extremely small minority views on Wikipedia need not be represented at all and that bigger minority views get just minor represntation. That's notability. And even verfiability says "just because some information is verifiable, doesn't mean that Wikipedia is the right place to publish it." So unless you're suggesting verifiability is automatic grounds for inclusion, then you need notability. Nathan J. Yoder 17:48, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

• I'm honestly not sure how to bridge the gap between those who really do advocate that Wikipedia should include anything that's true, verifiable, and not a copyright violation, and those who do not. There really seem to be two factions with differing visions of what Wikipedia should be. I find this disheartening. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
  • The discussion has been going on for 2+ years. Statistically, there's a good chance it won't be over for a while longer.

Definition of the Voting Process should not be on the project page

The voting process should not be included in the proposal in this half-baked state. They require a separate consensus; for example, who gets to decide that 75% is the magic threshold support number and has the community granted consensus to this person to make this critical decision? Wikipedia is about consensus, and that includes consensus about what terms we make new policy under. Unfocused 14:51, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Major policy change MUST have greater consensus than Adminship

More about the 75%: it is far too low. If we're looking for 80% for adminship, and adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", then how can we possibly accept changing something that IS a big deal, official policy with less support than a promotion to administrator, which is "no big deal"? The answer is that we should not accept such a weak vision of consensus for such a major policy change. Unfocused 14:54, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Cute. For how many other potential policies that you voted on have you brought this up? So what now, we raise it to 80%, get 80% votes, you complain, then what? We have to raise it to 85%? Then we get that and then we have to raise it to 90%? How many policies were actually enacted with a requirement >80% support? IF what you're saying is true, we better go back and revisit all other policies as well, because they immediatly become invalidated if they don't meet the same criteria you're setting for this one. Nathan J. Yoder 17:24, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

There is no need to be snide.

I brought this same concern up on the expansion of Categories for Speedy Deletion, however, I brought it up after the voting had already begun, so the response I got was "good point, but it's too late because we've already started." Here, the vote hasn't been started, so I'm seeking a discussion of my concern. You can put your strawman down, I haven't said a word about going back and changing existing policy, primarily because all major policy changes I've seen shows consensus greater than 80%, direct support or decree from Jimbo, or both.

Now go take a look at the items that were passed in the discussion to expand CSD. Support levels for actual changes to policy were between 74% and 96%, and in the case of the two where support was 74% and 78%, the oppose votes included statements expressing redundancy with already existing policies, and conditional statements of support based on some other proposals failing. Obvious expressions of consent were included in many of the oppose votes, so making the call at a little lower level was not a big deal, and in the end, I'm pretty sure >80% consented and Wikipedia is about consensus, not vote counting.

Although I'm unable to research them all, it appears to me that all major changes to official policy have had 80% support or greater. I am not counting the recent minor change to the naming policy. Two fifths of the passed expanding CSD line items were the only notable exception I'm aware of, and even those, if you examined the conditionals included in the comments, found significant consensus but not support in the oppose votes. Creation of the ArbCom had a vote of 80% support, but again, even then, there were conditionals in the oppose that indicated much greater consent among the oppose voters than strict percentages would indicate.

It's very clear to me that if there is a good proposal made, it will get 80% or better support. Anything that gathers less will draw unfavorable comparisons to "Requests for Adminships" so I'm firmly opposed to setting an arbitrary threshold of anything less. After all, Adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", this proposal is a major policy change so it certainly is a big deal. More of a big deal = more consent required. Unfocused 20:02, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

• Surely you mean to say that you first need a near unanimous decision to set a threshold of X% for all policy changes. As in, not only do you need a threshold to define concensus, you also need to get concensus for having the threshold at that level. Good luck getting 80% to agree to an 80% threshold. :)--inks^T 20:37, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
  • We have an example of a "no big deal" policy that has a certain threshold for its polls, subject to bureaucrat interpretation. Since RFA already has community consensus for that threshold, it is the logical starting point from which all other poll thresholds should proceed. Unfocused 21:35, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
• Two things that must be balanced are (1) the ability for policy to keep progressing for the better (2) changing policy by so thin a margin that a small change in voter sampling or current opinion allows the policy to yo-yo back again. When you are comparing two options, it is useful to consider the null hypothesis. In this case, I mean "Are we better off with the old policy than the new policy?". If the poll indicates 80% for the new policy and 20% for the old. That means only 20% of people want to keep the old proposal. That is clearly not consensus for the old policy I think the bar to change policy needs to be in the range of 70-80%, certainly no higher. Johntex\^talk 20:47, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Policy should only "progress" where we have consensus for it to progress. It's very clear that excessive policies are bad for the wiki and in fact, strongly discouraged. When there is need for additional policy, there will be clear consensus for additional policy and not prior. That has been proven repeatedly since Wikipedia's founding. Unfocused 21:35, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm not asking for an additioanl policy, I'm trying to help us make the existing policy better. We shouldn't need a near-unanimous vote to improve a policy we already have. Johntex\^talk 22:34, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
• It's not a strawman argument to suggest that you hold consistent standards. If you think that this policy be held to the 80% standard, then all other policies must be held to it too (including those already enacted), lest it be a double standard. Nathan J. Yoder 20:52, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Your idea of what is and what is not a straw man is inconsistent with the very definition of straw man. Please learn your terms of rhetoric and debate before attempting to refute others' use of them in public. I never proposed we revisit old policy; you did so in order to set up your attack on the idea of revisiting old policy, which is the classic definition of straw man. Unfocused 21:35, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
    • The irony of this statement is that you are engaging in a strawman argument against me. False accusations of strawmen arguments are, in fact, strawmen arguments in themselves. I never suggested that you stated that we should revisit old policy, which negates the possibility of this being a strawman argument. Quite the contrary, I am suggesting that you are doing the opposite and that by doing so, you are holding a double standard. By explicitly suggesting that you are inconsistent/holding a double standard, I am implicitly stating that you are NOT suggesting that we actually revisit old policies, so it couldn't actually be a strawman. That said, why should we hold a double standard? Why NOT revisit the old policies/guidelines under this new criteria? Nathan J. Yoder 21:45, 27 October 2005 (UTC)