Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)/Archive 2021

2. Has a large fan base or a significant "cult" following. Seems a bit vague. Is there any way we can elaborate on this, either by expanding the above, or adding a sentence after the bulleted list? Who is this designed to target/include? Certainly not YouTubers with lots of subscribers, as I've seen them fail AFD before. WP:YTN. Thanks for your help. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:43, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the language here is vague, even problematic. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the original intention here was to allow for "bottom-up" rather than "top-down" notability, so that performers who are not "mainstream" or beloved of critics could become notable as a result of attention from reliable sources in reaction to their respective fandoms.

What I think this formulation did not forsee was the rise of "influencers", etc., who would generate a "fan base or significant 'cult' following" without generating any cultural products (music, drama, etc.) outside of their own personal brand. My own feeling is that WP:ENTERTAINER should not include "celebrities" that are only notable because they have generated a fan base - without any credible claim to significance, otherwise - but that isn't the way the guideline now reads. Newimpartial (talk) 14:53, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

That makes sense. If that's the essence of it, maybe we could re-word it to something like The entertainer's "large fan base" or significant "cult" following has been discussed in reliable sources. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:21, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

This criteria has always been understood in deletion discussions to need evidence from reliable sources; the more mainstream news and scholarly the better rather than the more tabloid puffery coverage. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:57, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello I wondered what opinions re notability were on the homophobic Murder of Terry Sweet in 1995. Recently in the news again due to memorial plans.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/stigma-creates-fear-of-reporting-attacks-1581020.html https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/brutal-murder-gay-man-central-467665 https://medium.com/@safe_rose_duck_606/revis-it-ing-gay-history-the-murder-of-terry-sweet-23ab750503a2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-56105507 DoctorAB (talk) 13:11, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Is the second-level official generally notable? There are many articles as such in this Category:Regents of places in Indonesia for example. --Tensa Februari (talk) 02:03, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

@Tensa Februari: Under WP:NPOLITICIAN, Politicians and judges who have held... (for countries with federal or similar systems of government) state/province–wide office are presumed to be notable, so it would appear regents are not (regents are actually third-level authorities as they are below national government and provincial government). Number 57 21:58, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@Number 57:, So should we do mass-AFDed those articles? (especially stub-level articles). --Tensa Februari (talk) 02:29, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

You could simply WP:PROD them, but you'd need to check they didn't fail WP:GNG. Number 57 09:18, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I'll leave it to other editor to WP:PROD them, because some of those articles are my creation. For now, I will avoid creating such articles again. Thank you for your explanation. --Tensa Februari (talk) 18:02, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I believe that the presidential and vice-presidential nominees of notable parties should be assumed notable. It seems off to me that a state legislator, who may only receive a few thousand votes in some states like New Hampshire is presumed notable but not the nominee of a national political party like Darrell Castle, who received over 200,000 votes for President as the nominee of the Constitution Party. Nominees like Castle appear on national television (in his case, 3 times). If hundreds of thousands of voters support a candidate, it seems counter to Wikipedia's purpose as an encyclopedia to delete information about the candidate / ticket.--User:Namiba 15:17, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Winners of major elections are presumed to be notable because we presume that they have (or soon will) received significant coverage in reliable sources because of their office. Unsuccessful candidates are more likely to fade away, and the coverage they receive during the election is simply news. If the candidate does, in fact, receive significant coverage in reliable sources then they pass WP:GNG and you don't need WP:NPOL. If you're looking for a wiki to host information about US elections, Ballotpedia already exists. pburka (talk) 15:45, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Most candidates only make news around election time, win or lose. The nominee of a national political party, even if they do not win, has far more impact through the media than the winner of a state legislative election who usually receives little significant coverage except from sources covering their district.--User:Namiba 15:55, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree that we should be more restrictive about which winners of local races get Wikipedia pages, too. pburka (talk) 16:22, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

That's not what I am arguing. I have no problem with articles for state legislators. I have a problem with presidential nominees being deleted.--User:Namiba 17:30, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

He can have an article if you can show that he's been the subject of significant coverage in reliable sources, and that it's not just for one event. As it is, I'm not convinced that even his campaign was notable. The sources in the campaign article are very weak: mostly primary, passing mentions, or fringe news sites. pburka (talk) 20:05, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

A campaign is not an event. Presidential campaigns generally last from 6 to 18 months, involve a massive investment of human energy, and often hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenditures. Because of this, these candidates should be presumed notable as is the case for elected officials in much smaller, lower-profile elections. Size and scale should matter for an encyclopedia.--User:Namiba 20:25, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Unless something out of the ordinary happened (like an investigation for corruption), I don't see the point. Even if it does last 6 to 18 months it's just someone saying "pick me! pick me! please pick me!" It's just applying for a job. --Khajidha (talk) 20:35, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps you don't see the point, but it seems obvious that students of political history benefit from having all of the significant presidential campaigns and candidates covered to the greatest depth possible on Wikipedia. Campaigns and candidates influence dialogue. They are involved in debates which shape or reflect the way the public views the central issues of the moment. A candidate who receives 203,000 votes and appears on the ballot in many states has influenced political discourse and history.--User:Namiba 12:12, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

This campaign did not have any meaningful impact on political discourse in the United States. It got 0.15% of the popular vote and was largely ignored by the media. I'd be amazed if historians take an interest in it. Unless he has some sort of notability outside of the presidential campaign then any article on him would have to be largely about his involvement in the presidential campaign anyway, and apart from the campaign he hasn't done anything noteworthy - military service, running a law firm, and holding positions in a minor political party. There's definitely scope in the article about the presidential campaign for a few sentences of biographical detail. Hut 8.5 12:55, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Darrell Castle 2016 presidential campaign has an article; it seems very strange to me that the person himself does not. -- MelanieN (talk) 15:51, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

MelanieN, his article was just deleted. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Darrell Castle.--User:Namiba 15:55, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Neither the man nor the campaign needs an article. All of this could be covered in the article for the election itself. --Khajidha (talk) 19:55, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that holds up - if it was being included in the election article DUE considerations would limit how much could go in, even if it was being well sourced. Normally it would be contentforked, but you'd be against that occurring. I wouldn't mind there being a campaign article, or even split the difference and have something one article for all of the party's presidential campaigns Nosebagbear (talk) 00:20, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Lucas Silverio Mendoza is proposed to be deleted per WP:BIO1E but a street name is named after him. He saved a human life and he deserves to remain in the collective memory and not be forgotten. If such persons do not belong in a Wikipedia article, my question is:

Isn't it appropriate to make a list for such people? Something like List of people with streets named after them.

They deserve to be remembered, in my view. Barecode (talk) 13:31, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't think such a list would be appropriate. There are numerous streets even in small towns named after people, such as people who served on the local council. The list would be almost endless. Number 57 14:33, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Definitely not appropriate. I grew up on a road that was named after my grandmother. It was not named that because she had done anything notable, but simply because (at the time) all of the people on that road were her family. This road connected to a larger road named for a dairy farm located on it, which was named after the owner of the farm. Just a little ways down that road was another side road named after another of my ancestors. Again, not because he was notable in any way (not even to the level of local councils) but just because he was associated with that area. LOTS of roads around my area are named after people. Mostly just people who lived on them years ago. --Khajidha (talk) 19:49, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree. LS Mendoza might or might not be notable in his own right but there are an almost uncountable number of streets and as other editors have said most of those people are not notable enough for an article or even of being put on a list which would probably be the longest list on Wikipedia. I would not want anyone to be forgotten from history but remembering everyone is not Wikipedia's role.Jtrrs0 (talk) 19:18, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Mendoza may deserve to be remembered, but Wikipedia is not the place for that unless he has been remembered by independent reliable sources with significant coverage. You can create a memorial for him on your own web site, or on a service such as Facebook, but this is an encyclopedia. I would add my own reminiscence that I once lived on a street which has three neighbouring streets, and they were named after the four sons of the farmer on whose land the streets were built. As far as I know they were all just as unnotable as me, but just happened to have streets named after them. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:28, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Does a person have to meet all three criteria for WP:ENT, or just one of them? Paul Vaurie (talk) 21:41, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

• The general understanding for secondary notability guidelines is that meeting one or more criteria satisfies the guideline. There are no guaranties, and meeting a WP:ENT criterion like large fan base or "cult" following needs good quality references. • Gene93k (talk) 23:07, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

The creative professionals section includes the text ""WP:Notability (artists)" redirects here. For the failed proposal, see Wikipedia:Notability (artists) (failed proposal)."

The failed proposal is from 2007. Is it still necessary to include it in the Creative professionals section?--- Possibly (talk) 02:27, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I would like to suggest a change to the "judges" guideline - because of the way it's worded, most trial judges in Canada are presumed notable, but most trial judges in the US are not presumed notable, based solely on the respective court structures. In my opinion, the presumption of notability criterion should work in a consistent fashion in the two federations. I suggest changing it to exclude trial judges from presumed notability in all cases.

The catch in the current wording is the term "state/province wide office". As I understand it, that automatically excludes most trial judges and appellate judges in the US, because federal and state judges sit in districts in their state. However, in Canada, trial judges have jurisdiction throughout their province, so they hold a "province-wide" office" and would be presumed notable. The Federal Court trial judges hold a nation-wide office, so they too are presumed notable under this criterion.

Why should a trial judge in Canada always be presumed notable, but a trial judge in the States, carrying out pretty much the same function, is not presumed notable? That seems an odd result. There was a discussion a couple of years ago on this issue at WikiProject Canadian Law. To the extent there was a consensus, it was that the Notability guideline itself is drawn too broadly, and couldn't be tweaked by a "made-in-Canada" guideline. Instead, it should be changed to give consistent results in the two federations, Canada and the US.

There was also a discussion of the issue on this Talk page some years ago, although that one focussed on the US courts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people)/Archive_2012#Proposed_change:_judges

I propose keeping the "politician" part exactly as it is, and narrowing the "judges" part to judges of international courts, highest national courts, and highest state/provincial appellate courts, and possibly include the Chief Justices of trial courts. That would exclude all the trial judges from presumed notability, but of course individual judges could still meet the primary notability criterion.

The existing wording is as follows:

"The following are presumed to be notable:

• Politicians and judges who have held international, national, or (for countries with federal or similar systems of government) state/province–wide office, or have been members of legislative bodies at those levels."

The proposed wording is as follows:

"The following are presumed to be notable:

• Politicians who have held international, national, or (for countries with federal or similar systems of government) state/province–wide office, or have been members of legislative bodies at those levels.

• Judges who have held positions in international courts, the highest court in a country, state or province, and chief judges of trial courts."

This option would still allow for a trial judge to be notable under the primary criterion, if that judge met the general rules. For example, Judge Lance Ito would qualify, even though he was a trial judge, given the nature of the OJ Simpson trial.

Since this issue came up on the Canadian Law Project, I will post a message about it on the Canadian wiki project. Are there any other projects which should be notified? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 02:49, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Serjeant Buzfuz:I disagree with the basis of your argument. Surely the common sense interpretation of the guideline does not stop US trial judges from being within it? Districts are higher up from states as I understand it and so a judge that holds an office that covers various states would be more notable than one that merely covers a state and so would be within the guidelines, no? Happy to be corrected if I am wrong.Jtrrs0 (talk) 19:10, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

@Jtrrs0:Thanks for the comment! I was starting to think no-one was interested in this issue.

I'm not an American, so I'm certainly open to correction here, but my understanding is that federal District courts never cross state boundaries. They are almost always sub-divisions within a state (e.g. Southern District Court of New York: https://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/). There are a few courts where the federal district and the state are co-terminous, because the state is sparsely populated (eg Montana is one federal District: https://www.mtd.uscourts.gov/district-montana-profile ). However that is an exception.

None of the federal District Judges in the Southern District of New York would qualify under this definition, since they do not hold state-wide offices, but the district judges of Montana Federal District court would meet the definition. Why should notability be defined by the territorial jurisdiction of each court, rather than be based on a straightforward criterion like "trial judge", which is easily understood and does not require analysis of the jurisdictional structure of a court?

Why should some US federal District judges be presumed notable, simply because they are in a low-population state, while others are not, simply because they are in a medium or high population state, but they're all doing the same job under US federal laws?

State courts by definition do not state boundaries; state district courts are always sub-divisions of a state, so they would never be notable under this definition. (I don't know if there are any states where state trial judges hold state-wide positions and thus would qualify under this definition?)

That's why the current definition, tied to state-wide or province-wide jurisdiction, is arbitrary. It's arbitrary in comparing Canadian trial judges (Federal and provincial) to US trial judges (federal and state). A provincial court judge in a small province in Canada is presumed notable, but a Federal court judge in the Southern District of New York is not. All Federal Court judges in Canada would be presumed notable, but most US Federal District court judges would not.

It's also arbitrary in comparing federal District trial judges in a high-population state to federal District judges in a low-population state.Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 20:04, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Serjeant Buzfuz: (Love the username btw) I am also not American so I would not want to stress my knowledge of the US court system too thinly. You are right it seems that most US districts are narrower than than state-boundaries while I was thinking of Circuits which being national offices and with jurisdictions broader than state-wide would clearly fall within.

I still think the guideline as written covers federal trial judges, since their office is national in that they are US judges -albeit that happen to be appointed to try cases in a particular part of a state. They are covered under "judges who have held (...) national (...) office". I interpret the state-wide part of the guideline to mean that only state-appointed judges that have state-wide jurisdiction are notable enough. Thus, a State Supreme Court Justice would qualify but a County judge with jurisdiction over just a given county in a given state would not.

I think this interpretation seems to be the one that the community has used because to take eg. the Southern District of NY all of its current judges have articles written about them. Jtrrs0 (talk) 20:29, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

@Jtrrs0: Thanks for the comments. I appreciate your thoughts. I don't think I would agree with the idea that being appointed by the federal government automatically equates to "national office". If the person has limited territorial jurisdiction, is it truly a national office? If that is the test, then all provincial superior court trial judges in Canada hold national offices, since they are appointed by the federal government. They have no jurisdiction outside their home province. Is that a national office? And would a provincially appointed trial judge, with jurisdiction for the entire province, just like the superior court trial judge, be automatically not notable? I still think the functional test, that trial judges should not be automatically notable, makes sense.

With respect to the wiki articles for all the judges of the SDNY, I would think that is explainable by the fact that the SDNY is one of the most significant Districts in the US federal court system. I would think that every one of those judges would meet the general notability criterion. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 02:06, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Serjeant Buzfuz:I think that having limited jurisdiction in terms of territorial extent does not stop the office from being national. A congressman or senator. has a territorially limited office (they only represent a given district or state) but they are evidently national offices.

After some thinking, however, I do think that the guidelines for judges need rethinking. They are too centred on federal states. In the UK for example, where I am most familiar with, the guideline doesn't really work because a local magistrate, who deals with petty crime is appointed nationally as much as a Supreme Court Justice. I am not sure that this problem can be solved with reframing the guidelines in terms of a functional test, though. As always I keenly await your thoughts. Jtrrs0 (talk) 10:22, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• No, the proposed wording doesn't work. It would mean, for instance, that English High Court Judges would no longer be notable, as they sit in the third tier of courts (after the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal), although they are the highest tier of court of first instance judges. It's fine as it is. In any case, I don't think we have generally held all Canadian judges to be notable just because they hold national office, any more than we have held English judges (below High Court level) to be notable just because they do. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:21, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject United States courts and judges/Notability, which provides very detailed guidelines and rationales for evaluating all levels of judges in the United States. Something similar could undoubtedly be done for Canada. BD2412 T 15:47, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• I'd imagine we'd be fine if we just required all judges to pass WP:GNG, but that's just me. SportingFlyer T·C 17:00, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• As someone who lives in a country where judges are supposed to be apolitical it always struck me as odd that judges are subject to the same criteria as politicians. In much of the world that makes as little sense as combining criteria for academics and entertainers. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:07, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Can aristocratic genealogy books like Le Petit Gotha, Almanach de Gotha, Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Burke's Peerage, etc. be used to establish notability? The only requirement for inclusion is having been born to a family that claims royal/noble ancestry. Most of the contemporary people included in them are private citizens (including many minors) who otherwise meet zero GNG criteria, but since their names are listed in some combination of three or more of these books they appear to pass GNG. It's not clear to what extent a particular person is profiled beyond dates and locations of birth, death, and marriage; editors introducing these sources often just cite all the pages that might be applicable to a particular person (e.g. in Simeon von Habsburg, where there are 6 citations to Almanach de Gotha (2018), 'Austria,' Pages 42-86 -- so, 45 pages discussing Simeon and his children being used to support a 3.5 kb article...), because no one seems to actually have access to many of these books, because libraries just aren't interested in them. But from the books that are accessible, biographical info appears to be exceedingly trivial (see Pavlos of Greece's entry in Debrett's). There are loads of articles sourced to the books, which is fine for confirming basic info if there are other appropriate RS, but there are also many articles where they are the only secondary independent sources. I'm also not convinced these are truly independent: the de article on GHdA says The publication of the individual family articles was the responsibility of the aristocratic families themselves. The supervision of the correctness of all published information and data was ultimately the responsibility of the German Nobility Law Committee. I can't find info on how Almanach etc. are maintained/updated (I sent an enquiry to Burke's today), but would be very surprised if there wasn't extensive back-and-forth between the publications and the families.

Deletion discussions do seem to (tacitly) ignore these books, focusing instead on other sources; however, it would be very helpful if this practice was explicitly discussed in a notability guideline somewhere. Pages that list like 5 genealogy books definitely give the appearance of significant and sustained coverage (especially when dozens of pages are cited across books published in different years), which is bolstered by the presence of one or two nobility infoboxes/navboxes, so it's very easy for them to escape notice and languish as <4 kb articles indefinitely. This is especially an issue in the cases where minor grandchildren's full names, birthdates, and locations are listed (and cited to multiple books). JoelleJay (talk) 17:10, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

While I definitely understand the concern I am not sure I would agree that a total exclusion of such sources to establish notability. I think the analysis should be based more on the details of each source. For example if someone appears as someone's child as a single entry on a family tree or their parents' entry that is analogous to a birth certificate and would fail GNG's non-triviality requirement. Likewise if some publication relies entirely or mainly on material that is self-submitted then the source is arguably not independent and thus it falls at that hurdle. Similarly, I would agree that simply using the next year's almanac to pad the apparent notability is not really a different source unless it is saying something different. Though inclusion in different almanacs altogether might in my view be enough.

I don't think we should make a blanket policy saying Burke's or Gotha are not valuable to establish notability. We should look at the details of each publication and the specific facts of each case and methodology of each source. Likewise I don't think that the fact that the books are not easily accessible is really relevant. Realistically most people do not have access to most books published and at least where I am Burke's and Debrett's are still stocked in many libraries. Jtrrs0 (talk) 17:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I received an email from Burke's (my question was whether families contacted them to maintain records, or does Burke's do its own research by reading through the families' websites etc.). This was their answer: Mostly on the families to update the records, but also researchers to fill in the gaps in information. Kind regards, Burke’s Peerage. (If an admin wants to validate this email I can forward it.) So there actually should be a blanket policy for at least Burke's and GHdA since they are not independent. My feeling is if there is a significant biographical profile on a contemporary person in a genealogy book, then there must be other GNG-relevant sources available where that info is truly independent and secondary -- thus the genealogy book wouldn't even be needed to establish notability. If there aren't other sources for that info, then it was probably provided by the subject directly and it's likely UNDUE in an encyclopedia anyway. The vast, vast majority of entries in these books are in the form of pedigrees; it should therefore be on the editor arguing for notability to prove a particular source provides SIGCOV, rather than the challenging editor to demonstrate coverage is trivial. JoelleJay (talk) 01:27, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

There is editorial oversight of Burke's so it is an independent RS. In addition, peerages themselves are recorded in UK government sources which are thoroughly reliable and will be corrected if in error. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:58, 25 March 2021 (UTC).

Xxanthippe, the issue isn't whether Burke's (and GHdA) is reliable, it's whether the info supplied by them automatically contributes to notability (unless explicitly called into question as being trivial) and is DUE. That the families themselves largely determine who and what appears in Burke's and GHdA is at odds with full independence -- the books apparently rely on submissions of new marriages (and the details of the new spouse's family history), births, etc. as reported by their family contacts. Burke's also is much more than just UK peerage; some publications encompasses the genealogies of nobility and royalty of Europe (and some releases cover the world), but apparently only if family members contact them with updates. See for example how far down the Antrim family goes here (pinging Jtrrs0 since this is the extent of how "deep" a profile is in typical genealogy books). FYI, the 107th edition of Burke's Peerage is 4500 pages and calls itself "An index of over 120,000 living people" -- and this is just for descendants of British families! JoelleJay (talk) 04:12, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

@JoelleJay:I would agree with you that all of the 120,000 people in Burke's probably aren't notable. The problem I have with a specific rule excluding Burke's/Debrett's/Gotha/Hidalguia Genealogy Almanacs etc. from establishing notability is that I do not see what purpose it would serve that current policies do not already cover; it might bee too restrictive.

It is perfectly possible that someone might be notable because of things recorded in such an almanac and to have a restrictive rule that would prevent such a source from being considered outright would be unhelpful in borderline cases where an extra appointment or event might make someone notable and there might not be another readily available source. I fully accept this would happen rarely but my point is that it is unnecessary to preclude them because all of your concerns are already addressed and there might be a situation in the future or now where we do need them to establish notability. Eg. The 8th Earl seems to have been Chairman of the National Trust for NI. This might be enough notability to warrant an article, I don't know I haven't thought about it in enough depth, but if for the sake of argument we assume it's enough, to then have a strict rule that Burke's could not be used to establish that would be too narrow and pointless. I agree that the independence of these sources is open to question and should be questioned, but to simply exclude them altogether for establishing notability would be to overdo it when other policies are already in place (eg. WP:UNDUE, WP:WWIN, etc.). In fact, WP:NOTGENEALOGY already exists and thus any entry on the Genealogical Almancs that is merely genealogical would already fall foul of that policy, so that, for example, the granddaughter of the 8th Earl above (ie. Rose Natalie McDonnell b. Garrison, NY) is not notable merely for being mentioned there. In essence the policy already exists. Wikipedia is not a genealogical almanac and we should not just copy Burke's out by rote, but I do not see why we should totally exclude them altogether when they might potentially be useful. It would be like excluding the Daily Telegraph from notability discussions because they also have a section dedicated to announcing society marriages, births and deaths. True, Burke's et al. do mostly stuff that is closer to marriages and births but to exclude them altogether when they also do substantial work is unduly restrictive.

I would welcome an essay detailing the failings of these sources and cautioning against their use in certain circumstances, such as just copying them out without trying to establish notability further, or to use them as padding for pseudo-biographies. Jtrrs0 (talk) 13:17, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree that other policies address the triviality issues. My contention is that an editor using these sources as evidence of notability should have to prove the coverage is non-trivial, rather than a challenging editor having to bring it into question first; and this convention should be explicitly noted in a notability guideline. Also, I don't know if Burke's actually does do any SIGCOV work. And if the modern Almanach is anything like its namesake, it too only covers genealogical info. Nothing would be lost by requiring editors to show these sources are applicable to notability if an article rests on them. JoelleJay (talk) 18:20, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

To address the original question, I don't think Burke's should add any weight to notability discussions. It originally called itself a Heraldic and Genealogical Dictionary of the British peerage, which is not a bad description of what it was and still is -- essentially a directory. That doesn't make it useless; I've used it a lot to cite core biographical facts, like parentage, marriages, education, etc., but I don't think it has anything to do with notability. The families and titles are often notable though -- in the UK, peers were members of the House of Lords, so most of them have articles under NPOL. We have articles for every baronetcy (though rightly not every baronet), which I think is justified, especially as G. E. Cokayne's Complete Baronetage went a lot further than Burke's and included short biographies for every baronet -- these constituted much more than non-trivial/genealogical coverage. Generally that series and the second edition of Cokayne's Complete Peerage should be the go-to sources for British baronets and peers; they are, incidentally, much more reliable and scholar. The baronetage is available freely online, though not all of the CP is. As for cadet members of titled families, if Burke's is the only source you can find about them, then they probably shouldn't have their own article. —Noswall59 (talk) 14:57, 25 March 2021 (UTC).

• I've taken a cursory look. I would not challenge Burke's if it were cited within an article in terms of providing a reliable reference, but I would not support keeping an article if it hinges on whether Burke's passes GNG on the grounds it is not discriminate. There may be exceptions. SportingFlyer T·C 15:52, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

• Nobody is notable because they are a member of the nobility alone. Royalty are notable as heads of state. Spouse of royalty are usually considered notable as spouses of head of state. Noblemen who are rulers of independent or quasi-independent dukedoms or principalitisare notable as heasds of state. Members of the house of Lords duringthe period when this was the case are notable . Other `noblemen are notable only because of what they might do politically or professionally (or, in exceptional cases, as famous society figures). The existence of the title can be shown to our satisfaction by Gotha or Burke, which, though they contain errors, and edited works usually accepted by historians as well a genealogists. Sometimes a nobleman can be notable as the founder of a house, but that generally implies political or military power. As for reliability, the coverage in these works needed to establish the facts stated in them is just their inclusion, which is enough for uncontested routine facts in generally accepted tertiary source. . As an example, inclsion of someone in a college's commencement program is sufficient proof of the degree (and for many older universities, such lists were printed), but the degree by itself normally doesn't show someone notable Frankly, I don't see the problem. Inclusion in these works has never been accepted as a RS showing notability , because nobility does not itself imply notability except in special cases, and more than being born in a wealthy family does. But it's enough evidence to be mentioned in an apppropriate article. (and of course a way to deal with semi-notable people , especially if needed to establish a chain of succession, is inclsuion in an article on th family). (I should mention, in terms of iven inclusion in an article, that remote descent is not usually accepted as significant, though there's no clear definition of "remote". DGG ( talk ) 11:05, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
• I concur with several of the above opinions that reliable directories such as these can be used to verify simple factual genealogical information, but as such directories do not contain meaningful text about a person's life history other than banal demographic and genealogical information, it does not qualify as satisfying the "significant coverage" portion of WP:GNG. --Jayron32 18:16, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
• I would say that being listed in one of these sources contributes to notability, but is not (on its own) enough to establish notability. Blueboar (talk) 19:14, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
• These are, in the end, directories. While there are those who argue that being included in the "International Foo Database" is compelling and no-rebuttable evidence of notability, the Wikipedia trifecta is: reliable, independent, secondary. Much of the information in these sources is provided by the subjects or their representatives. Additionally, GNG calls for "non-trivial". Inclusion in a directory is trivial. Burke's, Gotha and others are undoubtedly considered reliable, but I don't think they can be considered to confer notability - though in the GNG calculation on multiple sources, inclusion in a genealogy or directory that has its own article would likely be seen as counting towards the "multiple" test. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:33, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Guy, I'd even say the edition and/or volume of the genealogy book would needs its own WP article for us to consider the contents within as partially counting toward GNG. There are dozens of these kinds of books, so being namedropped in 5 should not satisfy GNG; if someone is covered significantly outside of their lineage (even if coverage is ultimately inspired by it), they shouldn't need directories to demonstrate their notability. JoelleJay (talk) 02:35, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

JoelleJay, I would largely agree, and fall back to GNG. These sources are generally not truly independent for living individuals, so are OK for noncontroversial facts only. For historical figures, Burke's or Gotha are much more likely to indicate actual notability - it's only in the 20th Century that the cottage industry of write-only vanity directories of "famous" people became huge.

But you'll never persuade royalcrufters that being 1,795th in line to the defunct Duchy of Grand Fenwick is anything other than a compelling claim to notability. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:16, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether or not someone being Grand Master of Grand Lodge of Texas would count as notable enough to be listed in Notable Alumni of the college he attended or fraternity he was a member of, comments?Naraht (talk) 15:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Evening

A query, which has been piqued by an AfD discussion (I won't link to it, in case that falls foul of canvassing regulations.)

With regards to this criterion : Has a large fan base or a significant "cult" following. What safeguards are in place to avoid people using subscriber numbers and "likes" as proof of "large fan base", with all the inherent dangers we know around bought followers and bots etc. YouTube and TikTok "personalities" are not going away, and their moment in the sun can become a cult moment (think memes and viral videos). Are follower numbers an unwitting Trojan horse through the notability guidelines, is my point.

Thanks doktorb _words^deeds 22:19, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

There was a related discussion on this page a few weeks ago. You might find the "Refine Entertainers section" section, above, interesting. pburka (talk) 23:09, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

WP:ARCHITECT redirects to the section governing notability standards for creatives. Should this standard extend to collaborations, partnerships and/or architecture firms, where the work that would qualify an individual for notability is shared by multiple people? My thinking is that an architecture collaboration is something like a music group, to which WP:BAND would apply. BD2412 T 01:56, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I noticed that WP:ECONOMIST redirects to § Creative professionals. I am not sure why that's the case? I would argue that academics are generally considered academics, or scholars (even when they are not employed by universities) to the extent that their work is academic in nature and generally published in academic journals. JBchrch (talk) 12:50, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Should we refine some of the Entertainer's notability section criteria to be less ambiguous?

• Removal of RfC Link
• Should some of the definitions for the criteria be further refined?

--Cs california (talk) 08:59, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I want to propose to simplify the Entertainers sections:

• Removal of RfC Link: If this is being treated as a guide it is pretty bad to have users read through a whole RFC in for the porn actors. Either include it in the top line as: "Actors, voice actors, comedians, opinion makers, pornographic actors, models, and celebrities:" or add a simple statement summarizing the new guidelines from the RFC.
• Refine the definitions of the criteria Refine some of the criteria to be less ambiguous. One of the 3 criteria are pretty straight forward linking to Wikipedia:Notability (media) and Wikipedia:Notability (films) which are pretty clear examples. As for the other two they are pretty ambiguous large fan base or a significant "cult" following and unique, prolific or innovative contributions to a field of entertainment. Maybe add some links for further definitions or context, such as how large is considered large? or what counts as unique or innovative? The other option is to add examples of what counts and what does not, like they do in template boxes. There were lots of AfD where articles are created in good faith, where users do not know that using awards as innovative contributions which is not a considered a proper for this criteria. But you only find out by previous RfC and is not updated in to reflect the findings here.
• Add Wikipedia Project pages Wikipedia project usually have further details or better guides on standards and formatting for articles. Maybe include them so they are easier to find to address some of the criteria for niche subjects. Withdrawn because some projects are higher quality than others.

The reason this should be done is to centralize some of the core criteria and guidelines so makes it easier for users to create proper articles without digging for RfC that were decided but is known to few people and deters users with good faith from creating less non-notable articles --Cs california (talk) 08:59, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• Preface this by saying I am categorically against SNGs in their entirety. I understand the community doesn't totally agree. That's fine. Reasonable people can disagree reasonably. If anything, a book load of sometimes mutually contradictory SNGs is among the biggest barriers to entry for new users. WP:GNG is concise and not overly prescriptive. Even then, it's often difficult for new users to understand, even as our most simple formulation of notability.

Beyond that, the reason we link to RfCs is because that's the effective "legislative process" that governs community consensus on policy. Even that comparatively minor change was like pulling teeth verses a very niche group of hardcore fans that want to write fairly poorly sourced articles on living people, which should probably more properly be on Fandom and not Wikipedia.

My personal recommendation is to do what I've long done: ascend beyond SNGs, and don't write articles that you can't defend on their face by meeting the general notability guideline. GMG^talk 11:37, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo:I generally don't deal with editing WP:Bio pages and if a SNG is there I will use it or I will use the GNG. As an editor I am not interested in reviewing several RfC processes or the history of people's arguments before editing an article on what is needed and I don't think other people are either. But if a consensus was established by the RfC process it should be summarized and not be on the guide, this is like putting the links to the talk page on the wikipedia article. Having "Previous criteria for pornographic actors and models were superseded by the above and the basic guidelines" is redundant as it is in the "Additional criteria" section after the Basic Critera. I know you are against it but my main point is to clean it up if it is already there. --Cs california (talk) 21:38, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@Cs california: Well...people aren't really expected to read the whole RfC, that is, unless I suppose you want to open another one on the same subject. Most read the guideline. Some read the closing statement. I would be fine moving the link to a footnote. It does effectively serve as a reference for the text of the guideline for anyone who really wants to get to the original source of the current standard, and not necessarily recommended reading for everybody. GMG^talk 12:04, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

As someone with precisely the opposite position on SNGs from GMG, I see the issues here differently. For the bullet concerning "innovative contribution", this is similar to one of the WP:NAUTHOR criteria and strikes me as very important and not especially subjective or hard to define. Lots of performers - think the early performance artists or the pioneer modern drag performers - set out to do something in live performance that had not been done before. That gives them encyclopaedic interest in a way that a person's life would not have if they had received exactly the same amount of RS coverage for doing something entirely routine and unexceptional.

The "cult following or fan base" criterion poses more serious problems. I think I grok why it is there: a person can be of greater encyclopaedic interest because of the obsessive adulation of a small number of people than if they have an ill-defined degree of recognition and respect from a much larger public. WP sourcing expectations, including our RS requirements and our tendency to see large-market media as establishing Notability more clearly than niche media, make it harder to recognize less mainstream genres and performers, and I believe this criterion was intended to compensate for a real bias.

However, my sense is that a couple of things have happened to make this criterion harder to apply. For one thing, in the real world, social media have produced ways of being "famous for being famous" that seem to make the "fan base" criteria seem to apply to certain figures for whom it was perhaps not originally intended. Some editors (me) feel that a claim to notability should involve actually doing something of interest, so there is a tension between acknowledging people who have become well-known and the prior expection that a BLP represents a person who has actually done something (at least the narrative of engineering their own personal brand, if nothing else).

Meanwhile, other editors at WP have become jaded at the proliferation of niche media out in the world and react by raising Notability standards - citing GARAGE and PROMO concerns - in ways that serve de facto to restrict and mainstream our coverage of arts and entertainment in particular. I understand that people (especially publicity people) try to pull the levers of WP to help build various brands, including those of entertainers and artists, and that this creates problems. However, the community sentiment against this sometimes seems to me to harden into hierarchies based on "broad public=encyclopaedic" that were precisely what the "cult following" criterion was intended to compensate for, quite appropriately in my view.

I don't know that it's possible to fix this, at this point, but I did want to draw attention to what I think are real issues surrounding NENT. The problem with GNG fundamentalism as I see it is that some things that are reliably verifiable are not encyclopaedic, while other topics that are harder to source actually are of encyclopaedic interest. The GNG makes no real attempt to define notability apart from reliable sourcing (and neither does NBIO), while many SNGs at least attempt to wrestle with what should be included in an encyclopaedia and what should NOT. Newimpartial (talk) 14:23, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@Newimpartial: I agree with your assessment, it might be useful to look at some of the persistent AfD points or RfC and add some more points to the "Invalid criteria" section. This might tighten up some of the criteria and make it more clear on what likely going to be acceptable and what is not.--Cs california (talk) 22:41, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@Cs california: what is your brief and neutral statement? At over 2,000 bytes, the statement above (from the {{rfc}} tag to the next timestamp) is far too long for Legobot (talk · contribs) to handle, and so it is not being shown correctly at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines. The RfC may also not be publicised through WP:FRS until a shorter statement is provided. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:10, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Ok I just added it --Cs california (talk) 20:52, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

These edits just made it worse - the statement is longer by almost 300 bytes, not shorter. Also, there's now a subheading in the statement, which is not a good idea. I guess I'll have to fix it myself. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:44, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• I was notified of this, but , although I have no interest in this spcific field, I want to point out that many of the existing and proposed criteria have a large number of ambiguous words: the GNG's " substantial coverage", "independent source"  ; ENT's "significant roles" , "large fan base" "significant 'cult' following" , "innovative contributions" . Every one of these can be interpreted either narrowly or widely, depending upon whether we want to include the article. It doesn't matter what the guideline says. If I would wish to include someone I would consider their roles" significant " and their fan base "large"; if I didn't, I would take exactly the same information and say it proved the opposite. Any of our coverage rules discriminate the really important from the utterly trivial, but they don't help in the middle, & it's the middle that come to AfD. DGG ( talk ) 19:36, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

  DGG, True enough - and the SNGs are often interpreted as conferring "inherent" notability in the absence of any credible inbependent sources, which further complicates it. I say burn them all to the ground, go back to GNG and refine it to be less ambiguous. It is not so much to ask that a subject has been the primary focus of non-trivial coverage in multiple reliable independent sources, but I do appreciate that this may make it harder to include someone's favourite porn star. I consider that a feature, not a bug. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:12, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Whatever we do will favor some field or other. My ultimate position is that what anyone should care about is that the important people in the fields that interest them get covered, and let the people who are interested in other things deal with the people there. I care very much that all notable scientists have articles. Why should it concern me how many or how few porn actors or football players get included? This isn't print, so they don't interfere. But we also should care that we maintain our basic standards, of which the most important are WP:V and WP:NPOV. DGG ( talk ) 23:31, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

• Terms like "large fan base" will vary heavily depending on context. A band which has sold 100,000 copies of an album is probably a lot more notable than a YouTuber with 100,000 subscribers, for example. If we just give an example number then that will be applied to situations where it isn't appropriate. This is even more true for concepts like "unique" and "innovative", which are inherently very subjective. Hut 8.5 18:13, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Under the section Basic Criteria, the article says:

People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published[4] secondary sources ...

I'd like to restate it as notable people are interviewed by citable sources just to simplify it a bit. I also recognize not all notable people are interviewed because some notable people may refuse interviews.

I believe wikipedia's logic is a fallacy arguing the converse. Given the conditional statement if P then Q, the only truthful statement that can be derived is if not Q then not P. The converse, if Q then P is not a truthful statement. To summarize:

• if P then Q -> true, statement
• if not Q then not P -> true, contrapositive
• if Q then P -> false, converse

When wikipedia asserts Notable people are interviewed by citable sources, then the only truthful statement is not interviewed by citable sources implies not notable person. However, wikipedia is making the [incorrect] leap interviewed by citable sources implies notable person, which is patently false.

As a concrete proof by counterexample, I recall seeing a lady I worked with on TV. TV crews were in her neighborhood because there was a murder on the street she lived on. She told me three different TV stations interviewed her that day. The rub is, even though she was interviewed by multiple citable sources, there's nothing notable about her.

Notability has to be its own emergent property.

The implications of the way wikipedia is presenting the criteria is, some questionable YouTubers and TikTok people have wikipages because they've been mentioned in an article from a citable source. The problem is, they are mostly non-notable and unremarkable people. Wikipedia is being used for self promotion and increasing a feedback loop.

(A second associated problem is, we can't seem to get rid of some of these articles. Some of these people have a strong social media following, so their supporters disagree with the deletion citing the article meets Notability because they have appeared in a citable source).

I really loathe seeing some of these articles and I question how much lower wikipedia's bar will drop.

Jeffrey Walton (talk) 10:02, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

• Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are not an exercise in formal logic but rather a ragtag jumble of heuristics. EEng 11:02, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
• There's no need to go through exercises in logic to see that that statement is not about interviews. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:03, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

  I thought that mentioning the interview thing as well would be twisting the knife. EEng 14:11, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

  Well, at least I held back from mentioning the spelling error in the title of this section (which I have now fixed). Phil Bridger (talk) 17:40, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

  You're a veritable saint. EEng 18:50, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

• Generally we consider interviews to be primary sources and don't count them towards notability. As Phil says above, this sentence is not about interviews. pburka (talk) 12:55, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
• Can you point to any deletion discussions where such arguments have "won"? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:43, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
• "I really loathe seeing some of these articles" well but wait is somebody forcing you to read them? How -- at gunpoint? That would be a felony and you should deal with that first I would think. In the meantime, it's not our fault if people want to watch TikTok and YouTube rather than listening to Benjamin Britton or reading Boethius. If you don't like that disagreeable and low-class people have "a strong social media following" and are therefore notable, complain to the Ministry of Social Media, not us. Relax. Herostratus (talk) 20:51, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
• No, this doesn't make any sense. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:13, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Hello all,

We have had several articles in the AfC backlog relating to both art museum curators and archivists. For curators, I would try to judge that by WP:NARTIST, but it doesn't seem to effectively fit that box. I'm stuck on determining notability for archivists (perhaps WP:NPROF, but that's a massive stretch). Bkissin (talk) 14:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

As a professional archivist myself, I would say that the national archivists of countries (major countries, at least) should generally be seen as notable, but others would have to meet WP:GNG or WP:ANYBIO. WP:NPROF would only apply if they were indeed also academics (which some are, but most are not). -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:12, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Editors may wish to comment at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)#RFC on Notability (sports) policy and reliability issues#Proposal to update sports SNGs to be in congruence with WP:BIO1E. All opinions welcome.4meter4 (talk) 17:08, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

There's currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/India Walton which is, I think, raising interesting questions about WP:NPOL. Yesterday, Walton won the Democratic primary to become a candidate to be the next mayor of Buffalo, New York. Since Republicans have not nominated a candidate, and since they haven't been competitive in the city since the 1960s, news organizations are treating her as the presumptive next mayor (e.g. India Walton is the City of Buffalo’s new presumptive mayor..."). Our notability guideline says that, for certain offices, anyone who has held them is notable, and that "This also applies to people who have been elected to such offices but have not yet assumed them."

What precisely do we mean by "elected"? Joe Biden won the U.S. popular vote in November, but wasn't elected to the presidency until the Electoral College met in December (or perhaps when the Electoral College votes were officially counted in January). Presumably (if major party presidential candidates weren't all notable anyway), we intended for him to qualify for NPOL sometime in early November, and news organizations certainly were treating him as president-elect, and the presumptive next president, in November.

Additionally, the media frequently calls elections before all votes have been counted and certified (there are still absentee votes to count in Buffalo). I imagine that we don't need to wait for the votes to be certified before this sentence applies. Multiple reliable sources calling the election for the candidate ought to be sufficient.

I propose, therefore, that what we actually mean is that "this also applies to presumptive office holders who have not yet assumed the office." Note that this would technically broaden the scope to unelected offices (but only those already covered by the first part of NPOL; e.g. a confirmed but unsworn judge), which I think is reasonable. However I'm worried that this phrasing could be confusing or ambiguous. Before officially proposing a change, I'm interested in feedback from the community. pburka (talk) 22:44, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

@Bearcat: Courtesy notification as the AfD nominator. pburka (talk) 22:44, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Disagree. She doesn't qualify until the actual election is completed. While projections at that time would be appropriate, projections about the outcome before the election itself are not. And this is not a parallel case to the presidential election via the electoral college. The voting of the EC and the certification of those votes is almost entirely a formality, the winner of the EC vote is known with almost absolute certainty as soon as the winner in a sufficient number of states is known. While it would be quite rare (and that's an understatement) for enough votes to be made by faithless electors to change the outcome in the EC, unexpected turnouts in actual elections are fairly common. --Khajidha (talk) 01:18, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

It's often a bit daft to make a big point of deleting an article in these situations (candidate wins primary in race that means basically certain of election, very significant press coverage) - you're effectively making a big show of a deletion that you also know is extremely likely to have to be undone almost as soon as it has been effected, which is a bit of a WP:POINT situation. A better outcome would be to recognise that sufficient coverage exists to pass the WP:GNG regardless rather than making or getting caught in an argument about how far the inherent notability under NPOL extends. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:57, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• The relevant point of NPOL doesn't actually apply in this situation, it only applies to people who have held national, statewide or international offices. Being a city mayor doesn't qualify. But yes there is very little point in deleting an article on something who is essentially guaranteed to become notable in the near future. Hut 8.5 11:18, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
• If there is any doubt, we can always draftify the article, and while notability is not temporary the odds someone will win an election and not take up the seat are small enough that whatever event happens may be notable enough for a stand-alone article. SportingFlyer T·C 12:23, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• My position (which I probably didn't explain very clearly above) is that Wikipedia shouldn't be in the business of calling elections or worrying about the technical minutiae of how notable positions are filled. For example, by the current guideline, we should technically wait until the final election has been certified, but nobody actually does that. Instead, I'm proposing that we should delegate the decision about when an election is "final enough" to independent, reliable sources. That is, we should consider an individual notable once multiple reliable sources have declared that they are the presumptive successor to the office. Precisely how reliable sources make such a determination isn't our concern. pburka (talk) 23:44, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage. Thoughts on removing this? This seems to me to boil down to "local political figures need GNG", which is stated in the next sentence Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline. Therefore it seems redundant. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:19, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Without this, it risks being read as that they're not notable, not that they need GNG. Does no harm, limits the need for stupid arguments down the line. The Drover's Wife (talk) 22:57, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

The line is valuable for the reasons that the Drover's Wife mentions. --Enos733 (talk) 02:47, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Enos733 The Drover's Wife. We could possibly delete both of those lines. Not sure why this SNG needs to do verbal gymnastics just to say "local politicians need to meet GNG like everyone else". Having a bullet in particular makes it look like it's an auto pass SNG, like the rest of the bulleted SNGs on the page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:34, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

The line doesn't hurt and helps clarify the standard for when an elected official is notable. Also, there is more discussion at WP:POLOUTCOMES. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Enos733 (talk • contribs)

The SNG is there to provide guidance, and I absolutely guarantee from long experience if this is removed the amount of nominations (and time wasted) of notable local public figures because "doesn't meet NPOL" is going to go through the roof. Many, many Wikipedians read "relevant to an SNG, not mentioned in SNG" as equivalent to non-notability, whether or not they should do so. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:26, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

• I would not recommend any changes. Local politicians with significant coverage are covered under WP:BASIC; they don't need WP:NPOL. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:46, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

  K.e.coffman, I agree. That's why removing this NPOL SNG bullet that says Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage., while leaving the part below it that says Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline., makes sense to me. It's what I am proposing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:32, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: -- you are right; I was confused. I support your proposal, as per the substance of my post. --K.e.coffman (talk) 04:20, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Please comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion/Notability guide#RFC on Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Notability guide and WP:CLERGYOUTCOMES as policy at AFD.4meter4 (talk) 15:55, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Should the portion of WP:BASIC currently reading If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability be:

• Option A. Retained as is.
• Option B. Deleted altogether.
• Option C. Modified to: If no multiple independent sources providing substantial coverage are available, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability. At least one independent source providing substantial in-depth coverage of the subject is still required in this case.
• Option D. Modified to: If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability. In this case the overall amount of information about the subject provided by independent reliable sources should be at least as great as when substantial in-depth coverage by multiple such sources were available.
• Option E. Modified to: If no multiple independent sources providing substantial coverage are available, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability. The overall amount of information about the subject provided by independent reliable sources should be at least as great as when substantial in-depth coverage by multiple such sources were available. At least one independent source providing substantial in-depth coverage of the subject is still required in this case.

Nsk92 (talk) 15:41, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Option B as first choice, and Option E as second choice. The current wording of WP:BASIC is too weak and in effect allows for an end-run around WP:GNG, which requires that independent WP:RS address the subject "directly and in detail." The current text can be interpreted as allowing an article to be kept even if not a single independent source provides in-depth coverage of the subject, and even if the total number of sources providing fairly brief mentions of the subject is rather small. I have seen WP:BASIC invoked at AfD in exactly this way, successfully, e.g., fairly recently, here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fernanda Staniscuaski. Option B is the cleanest solution here, IMO. Nsk92 (talk) 15:41, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
• Option A. I'm not sure what perceived problem this RFC is trying to address. BASIC clearly implies that the combined coverage must be substantial, so no additional, convoluted text is required. If a person has been the subject of coverage in reliable sources over an extended period of time, and there's enough information to write a basic biography, then they're notable enough for me. pburka (talk) 16:55, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support option A. No problem apparent. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:26, 29 May 2021 (UTC).
• Option B or E. I've long wondered what purpose that sentence served in the first place. If the ultimate intent of GNG is to facilitate biographies of notable people, then the sentence only makes sense if used when different significant details on a person's life are scattered across multiple RS. But how often does this occur? And if no sources have taken the effort to curate that information themselves, wouldn't that indicate lack of sufficient interest in the subject to claim notability? However, the main issue I've encountered is editors asserting a few RS with shallow coverage make up for the lack of anything in-depth even when the RS all provide the same stub's worth of information. When someone quotes that sentence, the only rebuttal is to argue coverage in those sources is trivial -- which is a highly-subjective evaluation itself. JoelleJay (talk) 23:02, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
• Option A (strongly) per Pburka and Xxanthippe. Let's not make things difficult for a large number of people by complicating things further with additional (possibly confusing) language and verbosity. I also disagree with "if no sources have taken the effort to curate that information themselves, wouldn't that indicate lack of sufficient interest in the subject to claim notability" — there's people who are notable without press coverage (I'm not asking to have the requirement for secondary sources taken out, but I'm saying that a lot of very notable people will fall short of the criteria for notability because of it, and what all other options are trying to do is to make that even worse). Dr. Universe (talk) 00:43, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

  there's people who are notable without press coverage (I'm not asking to have the requirement for secondary sources taken out, but I'm saying that a lot of very notable people will fall short of the criteria for notability because of it

  Can you link some examples of very notable people who got enough additive coverage to create a biography without any RS ever synthesizing info enough to meet SIGCOV? JoelleJay (talk) 04:31, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't want to get into a long back-and-forth with you again but I think some of the academics without Wiki articles, in the table on your User Page, are notable but not all of them have a lot of press coverage. Dr. Universe (talk) 05:43, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Dr. Universe, academics are specifically exempt from needing to meet GNG/be covered in secondary sources, so this discussion doesn't apply to them. I agree many/most of the people on my user page don't have SIGCOV in IRS and would unfortunately have a fairly sparse biography. JoelleJay (talk) 06:23, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

• Option A keep things simple, it is up to editors' discretion to determine what constitutes significant coverage, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 00:55, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
• Option A (keep as is). Appears to be a solution in search of a problem. --K.e.coffman (talk) 16:17, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
• Option A I see no compelling need for a change. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 16:23, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
• Option B I don't understand the rationale for the RfC either, but the text does conflict with what we usually think of as being required to be notable as it does imply no single source needs to be significant, and therefore should be removed. SportingFlyer T·C 16:42, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

  Significant and substantial are subtly different, as I understand them. "Significant" is defined in WP:GNG, whereas "substantial" is poorly defined. I interpret "substantial" as "sufficient to write a biography". Perhaps a more productive discussion could be had around the minimum content requirements for a biography on Wikipedia. pburka (talk) 17:47, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

  I'd agree with you if the second half of the sentence doesn't clearly veer into a discussion on notability. Granted there's some rare cases, generally with poorly documented historical figures, when none of the coverage is truly significant, but the AfD trends to keep because the sources can combine to give us enough to write a biography on, and the encyclopaedia would be better off documenting that person. However, this clearly wouldn't work for any BLP, which should require significant coverage in order to demonstrate notability. Apart from the use case I just described, the statement's really incompatible with how notability works in practice. SportingFlyer T·C 22:03, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

• Option A Option D Yes, there are cases where a person is notable and significant, and they are discussed in many sources but there may not be any that cover them in detail. For example, this bio I wrote a few years ago. I think such cases should be kept as long as, adding everything together, there is sufficient coverage in independent RS. (t · c) buidhe 19:15, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

  Buidhe, isn't as long as, adding everything together, there is sufficient coverage in independent RS actually Option D? We've agreed on a lot of the NSPORT notability tightening discussions so I'm surprised to see opposition to something that in my opinion would help reduce permastubs a great deal especially for athletes (it would discourage editors from arguing notability based on adding up mentions in dozens of match reports, for example). Also please keep in mind that this sentence is only invoked when it's clear none of the sources could possibly be argued as being SIGCOV. After all, if an editor thought there was any chance a ref could be considered SIGCOV they would be arguing that angle since it's a much more direct path to notability. Regarding your Hochberg bio, the Bauer 1994 reference is clearly very strong SIGCOV (lengthy discussion of him on each of dozens of pages -- although it also spells his name "Karel"?), and that's just the first ref I looked at; when the sentence in question is cited in AfDs it is almost always to support adding together brief mentions or quotations from the subject, each comprising maybe 5% of what you have in just that Bauer ref. In Nsk92's Staniscuaski example, this is the entirety of the 4 sources editors were claiming could be combined into "substantial biographical coverage" to demonstrate notability:

• JoelleJay (talk) 20:59, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, after reading the options again I do think Option D captures my views more precisely. If we're combining multiple sources it still has to be substantial overall. (t · c) buidhe 21:15, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

• Option A The first sentence of Option D already establishes that notability is required so the second sentence unnecessarily introduces a redundant hypothetical. Thincat (talk) 22:25, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

  Thincat (and @SusunW:), the issue is that editors are reading the sentence as if multiple non-SIGCOV sources being combined automatically = notability, not that multiple non-SIGCOV sources being combined can be used to demonstrate notability if they add up to SIGCOV. In the examples given by Nsk92 people are arguing additivity of non-SIGCOV sources that provide basically the same amount of information, so the article doesn't actually gain any information it just gains a lot of citations for a particular statement. JoelleJay (talk) 21:40, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

  JoelleJay The issue with the proposed additional verbiage is that it make things far more complex than they need to be. In the guideline, the sentence for which this topic appears as an explanatory bullet point already says that the subject must have received significant coverage in multiple curated RS. No need to be redundant. SusunW (talk) 22:27, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

  SusunW, I think a lot of people interpret the bullet point as "here is one way to gain significant coverage", not "multiple non-SIGCOV sources may be combined if they sum to SIGCOV". I searched that phrase in the biography AfD archives and it is invoked a lot, often in the first sense.

  JoelleJay I am a bit confused by what you are saying. If multiple sources provide sufficient information to write a detailed and comprehensive biography, but one single source does not, you have met significant coverage. Significant coverage is not about a word count, it is about the depth of the information in the source, so that you can write comprehensively, covering all aspects of a subject. If what you are saying is that multiple sources, while they may be independent of each other, are giving the same information, then clearly the sum total is not significant enough to establish notability or produce a comprehensive article. If that is the case, none of the language proposed above addresses that problem. Something more along the lines of "If the depth of coverage in any given source is inadequate to meet significant coverage requirements, multiple independent sources providing varied details may be combined to demonstrate notability" would be far simpler than what is proposed. SusunW (talk) 20:27, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

  SusunW, yes, editors are using the current phrasing as if it provides an alternative pathway to notability such that the presence of multiple non-SIGCOV sources alone, regardless of whether they provide varied encyclopedic information, is sufficient. Option D attempts to convey the subject still needs SIGCOV even if no single source provides it, although your wording is more succinct. I do think such a clarification, especially if it emphasizes varied encyclopedic information, would be useful. I see this most with sports bios, where the subject being non-trivially (but still not significantly) covered in the context of dozens of routine match reports (so, technically "varied") is proffered as "adding up to SIGCOV", even though of course an encyclopedia article shouldn't contain any play-by-play commentary on an athlete. This was part of why I chose B or E instead of D; the other part is that from my experience in NSPORT AfDs even a 40-word overview of an athlete's transfer history will be argued as "SIGCOV", so in my opinion there's so little that falls between SIGCOV and trivial anyway that this protection for "in-between" coverage is unnecessary. Thank you for your considerate responses! JoelleJay (talk) 23:23, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

  JoelleJay Neither of those options are workable for historic figures. For the most part, academic study of culture, ethnicity, women/gender, indigenous society, social history and social movements didn't exist before the 1970s, so we have thousands of years of written history with significant gaps in our knowledge. (In answer to your earlier question about why information hasn't been curated, 50 years of academic focus is insufficient for those un- and under-represented topics to be filled in, but our knowledge of these types of topics has grown exponentially since the advent of the internet.) If we are truly trying to include notable encyclopedic topics over time, rather than just focus on current events and popular culture, the guidelines must be flexible enough to recognize that sourcing has changed over time. It has shifted from expensive and limited print media to vast amounts of on-line coverage; and shifted from broad topics giving general knowledge to more specialized focus giving more depth to the diversity of our world. In truth, I rarely write about living people or visit AfD, I focus on notable historic people and events. In my experience, the only way to cover these types of topics in-depth is to combine information from multiple sources. SusunW (talk) 04:43, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

  SusunW, Option D isn't forbidding combining sources, it's just clarifying what you and others already assumed, which is that the subject must have sufficient coverage to meet notability. And the "curation" I am referring to should maybe be rephrased as "non-contemporaneous reporting", as in information on a subject that someone has found notable enough to discuss in more than one context. I am thinking here of the distinction between an athlete whose performance in one game is discussed in contemporaneous routine match reports, and one whose performance in multiple games is described or whose performance in a single game is revisited later on. Are there notable historical figures you believe still wouldn't pass those criteria? JoelleJay (talk) 23:47, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

  JoelleJay We aren't assuming — the guideline says: People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage.... The basic criteria guideline also says See also GNG, which requires not only notability, but that a topic has generated attention over "a significant period" of time, which I interpret to be what you have asked. By definition then, topics failing to have garnered coverage over time are not Wiki-notable. We don't need to confuse the instruction by adding redundancy to points that are already stated in the guideline. Guidelines need to be clear, concise, and easily understandable to a wide group of people. None of the proposals above except A and B are that, but I have explained why B is not feasible. SusunW (talk) 05:10, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

  SusunW, I understand what the guideline says and wish that could be the end of it, however because of the wording in BASIC people think "multiple non-SIGCOV, non-trivial sources" either achieves SIGCOV for the subject additively (regardless of whether the sources provide varied info) or overrides the necessity for SIGCOV of the subject. I think many editors see If the depth of coverage... sentence and consider it to be on *equal standing* to the People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage... line, not subordinate to it. There are at least two reasonable ways of reading People are presumed to be notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources: 1. "Significant coverage" applies to the individual sources, therefore you need at least two SIGCOV sources (I think this is the usual interpretation). 2. "Significant coverage" applies to the subject, not to any single source, therefore no single source has to provide SIGCOV. With the first reading, since the If the depth of coverage... bullet seemingly directly contradicts what is said in the lead to BASIC, it can justifiably be interpreted as an alternative to the SIGCOV requirement itself. I don't think it would do any harm at all to clarify in that bullet point that the sources must still add up to SIGCOV of the subject. JoelleJay (talk) 20:48, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

• JoelleJay (talk) 19:45, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

• Option A There shouldn't be any change. Sea Ane (talk) 20:33, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option A. I don't see a need to change it. Herostratus (talk) 00:43, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option A. Not problematic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:51, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option A Don't see an issue here. ~ HAL333 17:26, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option A Keep things simple and don't need to change anything here. Just my two cents. ---CranberryMuffin (talk) 00:00, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option A The farther back in history one goes, the less likely one is to find substantial coverage in one source on topics that are notable but under-represented in the encyclopedic record. Furthermore, rather than book-length biographies, for many people, you find brief articles dealing with a specific aspect of their life, rather its entirety. Combining sources is absolutely necessary to write a detailed and comprehensive article about these types of notable subjects, using RS. No need to complicate things for all the reasons pburka said. SusunW (talk) 13:56, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option A Keep as it is.BristolTreeHouse (talk) 19:39, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option A Solution is search of a problem. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:14, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option A not competely sure what problem we are trying to solve to removing/altering this. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 13:15, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option B. The underlying rationale for our notability guidelines is to ensure that we have sufficient sources to write a proper article. I don't believe we can write a proper article using solely passing mentions and other non-substantial coverage. Many people above they they want to keep things simple - but requiring two substantial sources is simpler than allowing editors to try and cobble together an article out of passing mentions; it makes for a much more straightforward and unambiguous red line that determines whether we have enough to write a balanced and reasonably comprehensive article or not. --Aquillion (talk) 00:33, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option A The present qualification goes someway to dealing with systemic bias, especially when considering the non-English, non-Latin script worlds (ie the majority of humanity!). Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 23:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
• Option B. Per SportingFlyer. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:17, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
• Option A - any other option moves away from the central purpose of Notability on WP, namely to answer the question, is enough reliably-sourced information available to write an encyclopaedic article? For this purpose, features of the "containers" of this information are irrelevant. We already have sourcing and Notability restrictions specific to BLPs and ORGanizations, which should be sufficient to deal with any urgent problems this proposal might be expected to address. Newimpartial (talk) 19:17, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
  • By the way, I have always read WP:BASIC as essentially reiterating that the WP:GNG is one path to Notability for biographical articles, while the subject-specific guidelines are another. While various restrictions on BLP sourcing are scattered throughout the policies and guidelines - which is fine - it would be very strange to me for a major departure to be made between the vanilla GNG/SIGCOV framework and BASIC for BLPs, which would be the result of most of the options proposed here. Newimpartial (talk) 19:26, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

• Options C and E are self-contradictory. They say sources can be combined if no single source is substantial, but require that at least one source be substantial. pburka (talk) 16:44, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

You are correct, and I have reworded options C and E. Nsk92 (talk) 17:05, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Maybe the wording is just confusing, but I don't understand either of these. C still says that you need a single source with substantial coverage, and E now asks us to evaluate against an imaginary substantial source. C is impossible and E is even more open to interpretation than the status quo. pburka (talk) 23:34, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Regarding "BASIC clearly implies that the combined coverage must be substantial, so no additional, convoluted text is required". Unfortunately, that's not the case, as actual AfD experience shows. Moreover, even if combined coverage, taken together from all sources, can be viewed as substantial, IMO a person should not be regarded as notable if no single source provides substantial coverage. It's just not consistent with GNG to allow notability to be inferred from a bunch of small pieces of coverage. Nsk92 (talk) 17:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

  If actual AfD experience shows something then that should surely be reflected in our guidelines, which are supposed to be descriptive, not prescriptive. As always, it would be helpful if you could provide some examples of where any options other than the status quo might lead to a different result from the current one. One example, which resulted in a "no consensus" outcome, is not enough for us to change a guideline. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:28, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Here is another example of a recent AfD where exactly the same issue arose, with the "keep" result: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Divya S. Iyer. Nsk92 (talk) 17:48, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Here is another recent relevant example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert Davenport (actor). This one was closed as 'delete', but one of the AfD participants was making an argument that the subject was meeting WP:BASIC with reference to the provision we are discussing, in the absence of any single source providing in-depth coverage of the subject. Nsk92 (talk) 17:57, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

And yet one more, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peppi Borza, closed as 'keep', with the appeal to the same provision of WP:BASIC, by bringing up a number of sources with brief mentions. Nsk92 (talk) 18:03, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Those seem to show the current guideline working well. Which would you change and why? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:37, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me fundamentally incorrect and incompatible with GNG to allow an argument that someone is biographically notable if not a single independent source provides substantial coverage of the subject. 50 or 100 brief mentions still don't amount to biographical notability. I think that in all of the AfDs mentioned above the 'keep' proponents appealing to WP:BIO should have been required to demonstrate multiple independent sources providing substantial coverage. It's not just about these specific AfDs. The current wording of WP:BASIC provides for an end run around WP:GNG requiring coverage by multiple independent WP:RS that addresses the subject directly and in detail. It's a loophole that needs to be closed. Nsk92 (talk) 21:04, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

It's not a loophole. It's the explicit intent of the guideline. pburka (talk) 23:14, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Based on the Peppi Borza AfD, it certainly doesn't seem to be working as intended. (The other AfDs appear to have been correctly decided.) I don't close AfDs, but I certainly wouldn't give a "meets WP:BASIC" argument much weight. SportingFlyer T·C 22:08, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Huh, yeah. I'm still sticking with A, but Peppi Borza etc. does give pause. Yeah, that's not so great. Also, since BASIC applies only to persons, and is less strict than the GNG, then marginal biographies are supported while an equally marginal article about a battle, toy, cartoon, etc is not? Who decided that, and why?

Still, all these are guidelines and a "vote" of "Getting back to reality, the person's a nonentity as a fact on the ground, delete" would be called for I guess. I dunno... I hadn't even heard of BASIC til now, and I find my self finding more cases of good articles being deleted than the opposite, so I'm not generally a fan making it easier to delete stuff. Herostratus (talk) 00:56, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

It seems like a lot of the Option A votes are operating under the assumption that there would still be depth of coverage of the subject, just across multiple sources. AFAICT such coverage is not what is being addressed in this RfC; rather, it is editors claiming notability using multiple non-SIGCOV sources saying essentially the same thing and using the current phrasing as justification. Therefore, Option D would be the most appropriate choice since it clarifies there needs to be significant coverage of the subject overall. JoelleJay (talk) 21:31, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

• I think the problem is that WP:BASIC is a good rule, but only in very rare situations. Generally, anyone claiming a biography meets WP:BASIC without providing any more reason as to why would be making a very weak !vote at AfD, since you could just say it passes GNG with articles X, Y, and Z. However, especially when we're talking about historical figures from at least a century ago, WP:BASIC could come into play very easy and be a compelling argument. The fact it clearly contradicts our other guidelines matters less for those sorts of topics, but that's not the issue we're solving here, which is its use on contentious recent biographies. Probably just another RfC without any significant change due to a lack of a clearly defined problem. SportingFlyer T·C 21:37, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I noticed that WP:AUTHOR is listed as a shortcut, but not WP:NAUTHOR. I thought about adding it, but I first wonder if there's a reason for not including it (or at least saying somewhere that N can be added before more or all of these shortcuts). Without saying that NAUTHOR is a shortcut, I got worried for a second that NAUTHOR doesn't work anymore, but it does. Dr. Universe (talk) 00:09, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

It's common for sections to have lots of shortcuts to them, but only the most popular one or two listed. I've made maybe 5 similar shortcuts myself, ones I find more intuitive than the defaults, but that I chose not to add to the shortcut boxes to keep down clutter. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:38, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Let me know if you have any objection to adding this:

Unless specified otherwise, the enumerated lists in this section are lists where at least one criteria needs to be met. For example, in the "Any biography" subsection, a person who "has received a well-known and significant award or honor" does not need to have "an entry in a country's standard national biographical dictionary".

Dr. Universe (talk) 20:09, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

• I agree with the sentiment of this suggestion, but I think it would be clearer to modify each of the specific lists to be more precise. Specifically, each list item except the last should end with ", or" rather than a full stop. This will provide the same information, but in a form that's also visible to editors who jump straight to a subsection without reading the introduction. pburka (talk) 21:33, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

• Thanks Pburka! I was thinking of doing that too, but was too lazy. However, it is the better thing to do. Without doing that, one would have to hope that the reader has read the top, and people don't always do that. Dr. Universe (talk) 19:08, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
• I've now done it for "Any Bio" and "Creative professionals". How does it look? Dr. Universe (talk) 19:12, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
• @Pbruka: my edit (adding the OR statements) was reverted by an admin with a comment saying it must be discussed first, can you take a look at the version I had with the OR statements and let me know what you think?
• @Cassiopeia: the change was discussed here. There wasn't much participation, but there was ample opportunity. pburka (talk) 19:56, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
• @Pburka: Then we should wait for more editors to participate and have a consensus first prior changing the content as Notability page is a very important page in Wikipedia. Cassiopeia^(talk) 20:08, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

• @Cassiopeia: do you have any opinion about the adding of the "OR" statement for the list in the "Any Bio" and "Creative Professionals" sections? Not having those OR statements right now seems to be causing more harm than good, because the page (which you say is very important) is not clear otherwise (inexperienced editors will not know if its supposed to be OR or AND). Dr. Universe (talk) 00:06, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
• Dr. Universe, Let the discussion run at least a week to see any other editors would join the discussion. Cassiopeia^(talk) 00:10, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

It's been a week since the suggestion to let this run at least a week. Any objections to this change? pburka (talk) 14:26, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - "criteria" is plural; the proposal should read "one criterion". Narky Blert (talk) 12:59, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I'm a little confused by the wording on WP:Notability and this page. Is WP:AUTHOR a full-fledged WP:SNG meaning that meeting its criteria warrants inclusion per the general WP:Notability (quote: "A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG) listed in the box on the right"), OR... is it the case that since WP:AUTHOR is not actually listed in said "box on the right", unlike for example WP:POLITICIAN, it's merely an "additional detail" in the SNG "person"? My understanding is that it must reasonably be an SNG just like WP:POLICITICAN as their presentation on this page is identical, but a differing opinion appeared in a deletion discussion. I would appreciate a clarification and I also think that the wording on WP:Notability should be made less ambiguous to avoid misunderstandings in the future.Thisisarealusername (talk) 04:09, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:AUTHOR is part of the WP:BIO SNG, which is listed in the box on the right. If you pass AUTHOR then you pass BIO, which means you meet a subject-specific notability guideline. Hut 8.5 07:16, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

However, meeting a subject specific notabilty guideline is just a presumption of inclusion, not a guarantee of inclusion. It still comes down to the quality of the coverage of the topic in significant, reliable sources. I happen to believe that WP:NAUTHOR is usually applied correctly, but let's face it, The person is regarded as an important figure is a loose standard that should probably be clarified and tightened. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:30, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

To be fair, nothing is a guarantee of inclusion, not even a GNG (or NORG) pass. Newimpartial (talk) 16:41, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I think if #3 or 4 is met, then it is a valid defense to WP:NOTINHERITED. So coverage of the author's works would count towards coverage of the author for GNG. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:57, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

NOTINHERITED is supposed to work in one direction only. So coverage of works can make an author presumptively notable, but coverage of an author never makes their works presumptively notable. Newimpartial (talk) 17:01, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't know -- is that really true? I mean, does an invention being notable make the inventor notable? Does a child being notable make the parents notable? EEng 13:12, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm just telling y'all how the guideline is supposed to work: the inventor/invention case (or author/work) are not the same in policy as literal parents and children. That said, an article is never guaranteed just because an SNG (or the GNG) is passed. Newimpartial (talk) 13:22, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I raised this point at WP:Outcomes but am wondering is this might be the better spot: Should a sachem have presumed notability? It seems to me that as the paramount chief of their people, they should be at the same level as a colonial governor. The problem, however, is that as native peoples did not leave behind extensive written records there are not going to be as many sources about them as there are about their European counterparts. Presumed notability would solve this problem. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 16:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

When I was putting up a music band bio up for AfD, after a speedy delete was contested, I tried to originally see if I could do a PROD delete on the article first. When I did so, I used "Show Preview" to see if any warning came up saying the article had been nominated for deletion in the past. There was, but the bizarre thing I found was that the AfD the warning linked to was not related to the subject of the article - in fact, it was for an article about a band with the same name (which has since been deleted). If you check this AfD - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Clairvoyants - you will notice that the links seem to go to the article with that name, but not concerning a band, but rather magicians.

Does anyone think when an article is deleted, the name should be tagged and used as a notification mechanism to say something like: "The article's title that you have tried to submit has already been used in an article that has since been deleted. Please use a different name or modify the existing one to highlight what the subject concerns."? GUtt01 (talk) 09:02, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

No. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:17, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Why not? If someone creates an article with the same name as another article that was deleted, and they put it up for AfD, wouldn't that cause an issue? They might find they can't do so, and would need to 2nd nominate it as a result, which seems bizarre, since they are nominating the article for the first time, despite it baring the name of an article about a different subject. I mean, when we make articles about someone, and that person's name is already the subject of another article, we tend to differentiate between the two by highlighting the second by what the subject is. For example, if we already have a subject on a person who was a composer, and then create an article concerning someone of the same name but who was a footballer, naturally we highlight the second's title with "#Name# (footballer)". GUtt01 (talk) 09:21, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

I would have thought that is was pretty obvious why not, and the terseness of my reply was intended to prompt you to think about it for a bit more than four minutes. Phil Bridger (talk)

Wikipedia's policies and guidelines shouldn't be tailored around making it easier to delete content at the expense of creating content. pburka (talk) 13:14, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

No, I'm not saying to make it easier, I just think that creating a new article with the same name as one that had been deleted, on a different subject, should clarify the subject of the new article under that name. It is rather bizarre to have to 2nd nominate an article for deletion, when it was nominated for deletion before but under a different subject to the name, than to the one that the second nomination concerns. GUtt01 (talk) 14:25, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

The fact that someone's created an article under the same name before doesn't mean a new article is more or less entitled to use that name. The possibility of tracking these is technically challenging, because there's no a priori way for the software to tell if a recreation using a previously deleted name reflects an identical subject or a different one. In other words, the large difficulties and small benefits make Phil Bridger's simple "no" an entirely sensible answer. Jclemens (talk) 15:54, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@Jclemens: Thanks for the explanation. So what we can gather from this is that while the matter is certainly bizarre, there is a large, technical difficulty in tracking and keeping record of names used for another subject that was deleted. Ok, fair enough. Just wanted to ask about this at all - I think your explanation makes it clear to me about this now. Guess I should just contend with this as best as I can. GUtt01 (talk) 16:00, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

I have a little more time on my hands now, so I will offer an example of one of the several problems with this. Someone could write an article about me under the title Phil Bridger today, and it would be deleted because I am not notable. Then a namesake could be elected US president in 2036, and he would obviously be notable, but the article about him wouldn't be able to have his name as the title because the article about me was once deleted. That is surely not what we want to happen. The situation that you describe in your original post happens occasionally but is easily dealt with by simply pointing out in the WP:PROD rationale that the article is about a different subject. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:11, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Could another solution be to find a way to code the PROD to recognise that an article that previously held the same name, was already deleted in its AfD? GUtt01 (talk) 09:05, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

But that still wouldn't tell us whether an article is about the same subject or an accidental namesake. This only happens occasionally, so surely rather than have people spend many hours developing and testing something that tries to automate this it's better for the nominator in each case to spend a couple of seconds checking whether the subject is the same, something that's easy for a human to do but very difficult to automate to any acceptable degree of accuracy. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:19, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Okay, fair point. GUtt01 (talk) 09:39, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi - Help desk volunteer here. I noticed a series of articles about video game developers and animators that seem to have been created by the same editor and have been nominated for deletion. One is Harry Partridge. The article has been repeatedly redirected and recreated. An IP editor arguing for the article's notability makes the argument that point 3 of WP:AUTHOR says the person is notable if they created a notable work. In Partridge's case, the work is the short cartoon Saturday Morning Watchmen. It appears barely notable itself, yet it has an article, so theoretically point 3 is met. There is virtually no coverage of Mr. Partridge, so short of point 3 of WP:AUTHOR, it's an easy redirect vote if we just apply WP:GNG. Is the only path to AfD the cartoon, and then return to the Partridge AfD? Has this seeming exception to NOTABILITY IS NOT INHERITED come up before? Another similar article is Justin Stander. His bio info is also sparse, but in his case, he created two video games that have articles, so a redirect is harder. They also seem to be more notable. His article is being nominated for deletion and defended using the same WP:AUTHOR vs. WP:GNG argument. I don't know how to vote to clear the logjam. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 06:39, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

• Bear in mind that meeting WP:AUTHOR is not a guarantee that the subject is notable, but merely an indicator that the subject is likely to be notable. If a subject passes WP:AUTHOR but fails the basic criteria then the article can still be deleted or redirected somewhere else. In any case WP:AUTHOR point 3 asks for "significant or well-known work or collective body of work", not merely creating a single notable work. Hut 8.5 07:23, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
  • @Hut 8.5: Thanks - that helps clarify. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 03:23, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

I recently came across a question regarding the draft of an elected corporator in the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, and was a little stumped that NPOL would not apply to the elected officials of one of the most populous cities in the world. The MCGM, in fact, has a greater budget than some of India's smaller states, and we have articles for the legislators of the states as well. So, I'd like to ask if NPOL should apply to the major cities of the world. JavaHurricane 03:14, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

JavaHurricane, if the MCGM is effectively the city council or municipal political body for Mumbai and the larger area, then I would say it falls under the better explained concept in WP:POLOUTCOMES:

City councillors and other major municipal officers are not automatically notable. But precedent has tended to favor keeping members of the main citywide government of internationally famous metropolitan areas such as Toronto, Chicago, Tokyo, or London.

In this case I would include Mumbai among these famous metropolitan areas. Bkissin (talk) 21:17, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

I think we should look into whether the English language Wikipedia's criteria for BLPs in regards to people in this industry are too strict in so far as deleting pages. In the English-speaking world pornography is largely quite a taboo topic so it’s expected that pornographic actors generally get little coverage in reliable mainstream publications. However, I don't think this justifies their pages being deleted. We must look at the person in the context of the industry. The industry is a major one and I think if there is good coverage of the person from large and reliable pornographic publications like AVN (which is listed on WP:RSP as an agreed generally reliable source), but little to none in mainstream publications, that shouldn't necessarily mean their page is deleted. I have noticed there are many major performers in the industry that have multiple Wikipedia pages in a variety of languages but many miss out on English pages. Take ES:Madison Ivy or ES:Sophie Dee for example who have a page on 12 and 17 different Wikipedia language pages respectively but are deemed not notable enough/not meeting criteria on the English language Wikipedia. Why have all these languages deemed the person notable, yet the English Wikipedia seems to stand as an outlier denying them a page? The industry is a legitimate profession and I think that its taboo in the English speaking language is causing bias in regards to people asking too much of performers in terms of sources and criteria for them to have a page on the English language Wikipedia. I think we should look into the rules of other language Wikipedia's and see how they differ and what we can learn from them. Editor’s feedback would be much appreciated, especially those that edit other language Wikipedia pages. If you think this discussion should take place elsewhere, please direct me to the right place to post this message for the most feedback possible from other editors. Thanks. Helper201 (talk) 18:51, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to volunteer to research this issue. EEng 19:05, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

• Notability here is generally determined by whether the subject has substantial coverage in independent reliable sources. The secondary standards we have are generally indicators that such coverage is likely to exist. There are good reasons for this, if there isn't much coverage of the subject of this type then the article will have to be either very short or poor quality. This page used to have an standard that people who had won some types of porn awards were presumed to be notable, but there were too many cases where people who had won those awards had little source coverage. The different language Wikipedias are independent and they can have very different inclusion criteria, particularly if you compare large wikis to small ones. The fact a version of Wikipedia has an article on someone doesn't even mean the article meets their inclusion standards. Hut 8.5 19:38, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
• If anything, there is a belief that we are a little too lenient on porn-star articles here. Wikipedia is not a directory service, and we are under no obligation to enshrine everybody who ever won a Porny for Best Three-Way Girl-on-Girl Action, or whatever. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:57, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
• A tricky topic to be sure. Put the notability bar too high? it may invite censorship. Put the notability bar too low? it may invite trouble. GoodDay (talk) 20:03, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I think part of the issue is dedicated pornographic sources are often dismissed out of hand as being unreliable or not enough justification for the retention of the page. Sophie Dee as seen on the linked page above has won multiple awards, as have others without English pages such as ES:Dani Daniels. It’s just that most of the sources that discuss them are dedicated pornographic news sources, but as seen with the example of AVN these can be reliable. Perhaps there should be an effort to discuss more sources dedicated to the pornographic industry and have their individual reliability status listed among the sources on WP:RSP? I understand that just because an article exists on another language Wikipedia doesn't necessarily mean it meets its inclusion criteria. However, a lot of these pages have existed for many years and had many editors editing them (Sophie Dee's page has existed since 2009 on the Spanish Wiki, Madison Ivy's on the Spanish Wiki since 2012, and Dani Daniels on the Spanish Wiki since 2014). So going by the fact they have existed for that many years and not been deleted likely indicates they meet inclusion criteria. Part of my point is that so many actors routinely meet a range of individual criteria for a large range of Wikipedia languages but English is one that seems to consistently an outlier among them all. The pages I have linked all have pages on large language Wikipedia's such as Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and others. Helper201 (talk) 20:14, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

• It should be pointed out that there used to be a part of WP:NBIO for pornographic actors at WP:PORNBIO, but this was removed via RFC in 2019 at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)/Archive 2019#PORNBIO. The language before removal can be seen here [2]. The reason, as it appears, is because like some other areas (mixed-martial arts also comes to mind) there is a lot of self-serving media that creates a false sense of notability from the industry itself but very little from outside it, and because of that, it was decided that there should be no "porn" specific allowances. They can still meet SNGs for any creative person or the GNG. I suspect that because we used to have this langauge on en.wiki that other wikis had followed suit and hence why some porn actors have articles at multiple other wikis. --Masem (t) 20:13, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

The thing is regardless of people's views on it pornography has existed in some form or another for thousands of years and is one of the highest grossing industries in existence. Dedicated sources to smaller mediums can be justified in inflating their sense of notability by the use of self-serving media but this industry stands apart regardless of this in terms of its extensive history, popularity and business/profitability. Helper201 (talk) 20:22, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Sure, it's a big industry, but so is concrete manufacturing. We don't have a lot of coverage on people in that industry either.

So, as noted above, there is a history about this. And (for reasons I'll leave as an exercise for the reader), we had a guideline, WP:PORNBIO, which was really inclusive, in the sense that we had articles on actors who had only appeared in ensemble scenes and of whom we didn't know their real names or anything else, but which came under under PORNBIO, which people would stand on in fair numbers at WP:AFD and it was annoying to deal with this. NPORN was paaaainfully chipped away at and eventually thrown off the sleigh. So, there might be a little bit of a backlash situation here.

So porn actors now come under WP:NACTOR which basically mean they have to qualify under WP:BIO/WP:GNG and we're kind of leery to going backwards again.

The actors get little mainstream coverage. You vouchsafe that it's due to squeamishness, but I think it's because porn is different from mainstream film and theater, in that people just don't much care about the actors. I would suppose that for all except real enthusiasts, the productions are interchangeable in a way that mainstream entertainment productions aren't.

As to say ES:Madison Ivy... a lot of her material and refs is for things like being nominated for (not even winning) AVN Awards for being in Best Group Lesbian Sex Scene" and "Best Tease Performance" and "Best Boobs" and XBIZ Awards "Best Sex Scene". Even the Academy Awards doesn't give awards for individual scenes, let alone being in a group scene. I mean so the industry gives out awards like candy, but so what? Anybody can give out awards. I give out awards. Heck I have an IFPA Cindy Award myself.

A lot of industries have awards. The American Pyrotechnics Association has the Milton Dropo award, etc etc etc. Milton Dropo himself doesn't have an article nor any other fireworks people I think. Should we have articles for all the winners of the Milton Dropo award. We don't have articles for winners of Miss Montana and yadda yadda.

The refs for Madison Ivy are almost all listing of awards at "adultfilmdatabase", which is [here [NSFW!]. Picking a ref at random, here [NSFW!] we have Ivy with a bare listing among nine other players in "Porn Stars Love Facials", the description being "These nasty little minxes can't get enough of that sweet, sweet love juice! Who doesn't like a happy ending? These professional fuck starlets love them especially all over the face! Lots of pretty faces all slathered in cum butter!" and that's it, except for a couple production details like "Director: Unknown".

All righty-roo then. Is this "encyclopedic"? Matter of opinion I guess.

So anyway, one problem with that site (which is used for 19 of her 28 refs) is, how reliable is it? No way to know, but the vibe I get from going to the main page... I'm happy that these people want to fuck their stepdad and all, but I'm not sure that that indicates a rigorous independent fact-checking operation there. There's nothing whatsoever about who is the publisher, what kind of staff they have, location, or any other single thing about the site. It's a blank.

Another is, I mean, a lot of people can't access the ref, without risking real-world consequences. I mean beside the extremely graphic hardcore sex pix and all, right there above the fold we get racist stuff ("Blacked Raw") and (at least simulated) possible statutory rape stuff ("Cheeky Teens") and just so much more. For my part, it's a factor as to whether its an acceptable ref.

I'm super happy for the Spanish and all, but this is our Wikipedia, Madison Ivy does not appear to meet WP:BIO (I can't read Spanish) and so no, I'd be against carving out a special exemption for her. We do have special exemptions -- populated places, individual species, and some other -- but I'm not on board for this one, sorry. Herostratus (talk) 22:10, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That doesn't mean the sources are good indicators of notability. Wikipedia should not be used for promotion, which is basically why porn industry news sources exist. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:12, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

This is why I compared it to the same situation around MMA circa 2015-ish. Nothing perverted about MMA, just that too many sources from MMA are overly self-promotional. And I would also compare this to the same situation around cryptocurrency (though that's less about bios) - too many sources dealing exclusively with that are all about self-promotion, and hence why we don't allow them to be used for notability. We're not censored, so if a porn actor met NACTOR, GNG or another other SNG, we'll gladly have an article on them. --Masem (t) 22:21, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

• My feeling is just that the pornographic industry is not really treat as an encyclopaedic topic, and is somewhat prejudiced against by some editors. A DRV I started not long ago, following the AVN RfC that found it to be generally reliable, found that at least one editor argued that the deprecation discussion for WP:PORNBIO ([3]) meant porn industry sources aren't acceptable for notability, although the rationale used in that RfC seems to have been PORNBIO's redundancy to NBIO/GNG. The goalposts are kinda being moved when it comes to this particular industry. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:19, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Herostratus in regards to Madison Ivy that's why I selectively didn't mention her in regards to awards and instead stated ES:Dani Daniels and ES:Sophie Dee, as like you said with Madison Ivy the vast majority is nominations over awards, whereas both these people have won quite a few awards, especially the former. These are just examples I've plucked at random though, feel free to look yourself into other language pages of people in the industry. Helper201 (talk) 22:35, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you ProcrastinatingReader. Helper201 (talk) 22:37, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Thought I'd highlight this proposal I made above encase it gets buried to see what others also think about this specifically - "Perhaps there should be an effort to discuss more sources dedicated to the pornographic industry and have their individual reliability status listed among the sources on WP:RSP?". Helper201 (talk) 22:39, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I would like more participation at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2021 November 6 - Wikipedia. Not sure if people can still see the version before deletion. Thanks. Supermann (talk) 16:42, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

We can, once an article goes to deletion review it is temporarily restored for the duration. I'll take a look at it. Herostratus (talk) 08:16, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

If someone has not found a person to be sufficiently notable to get eir own article, but there is external information about the person, is it acceptable to make references to the person in articles be external links? E.g. an actor in a show or film may have an IMDB listing that shows a filmography, but no one in the Wikipedia community feels motivated to make an article. Is it acceptable to use an IMDB link in the cast list of a film or show that does have an article? Morfusmax (talk) 01:33, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

No. See WP:External links. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:40, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

This edit request to Wikipedia:BIO has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please change
{{R from shortcut}}
in the redirect into
{{rcat shell
|R from shortcut
|R fully protected}} —twotwofourtysix^{(My talk page and contributions)} 00:24, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

  Done — xaosflux ^Talk 04:19, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Apparently, I have messed up. Please change it into

{{rcat shell|
{{R from shortcut}}
{{R fully protected}}
}} —twotwofourtysix^{(My talk page and contributions)} 08:22, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

  Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:48, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi, page watchers might be interested in the discussion taking place at WP:VPP § Notability guidelines for Influencers?. JBchrch talk 17:52, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

This edit request to Wikipedia:BIO has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Remove {{R fully protected}} from WP:BIO as Rcat shell automatically adds protection rcats to protected pages. dudhhr_Contribs 19:21, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

  Done — xaosflux ^Talk 19:50, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I've come across an article for someone who does not appear to meet GNG but who has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. I see in various places that it's considered a significant honor to become a fellow of a national academy and that only very successful people tend to be elected. Does anyone have thoughts? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:42, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

It satisfies WP:NPROF#3. pburka (talk) 05:19, 5 December 2021 (UTC).

Academics are the only group of people who are enirely exempt from the GNG. They are evaluated based on the impact of their research rather than the presence of bio-type write-ups in reliable sources. Of course, the best known academics meet the GNG too, but that is optional and not required to establish the notability of an a academic who meets one or more of the other criteria. Cullen328 (talk) 05:40, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:08, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

To be clear, academics are far from the only group of people who are exempt from GNG. Some examples of people exempt from GNG include: anyone who played in a single game in the short-lived American Football League, anyone who received an Academy Award or Victoria Cross, and anyone who was elected to the Bundestag. pburka (talk) 22:46, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

In practice (i.e. what really happens at AfD based on my observations), players who have played at least once professionally in any sport are exempt from GNG about 80% of the time, depending in large part on who the closing admin is. (This is something we need to fix!) Academy Award winners and members of Western national top-level parliaments are pretty much never nominated for AfD in the first place since there is a plethora of coverage, so it is a moot point whether they are exempt from GNG. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:19, 6 December 2021 (UTC)