Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)/Archive 6

Clarifying "fully professional league" and "highest level"

It seems like this argument is simply a matter of clarifying a couple of terms.

• Highest level

I don't think there's any doubt that any of the below is considered the "highest level"

FIFA World Cup finals

Continental Tournaments

Olympic football tournament

UEFA Champions League group stage and beyond

UEFA Cup final 32

I don't think the below constitutes "highest level", but I can see opposing arguments:

FIFA World Cup qualifiers - while it's one step away from the really, really highest level, most confederations allow all member tournaments to enter the final round. That means part timers from San Marino and Luxembourg are at the same level as World Cup finalists.

Champions League and UEFA Cup qualifiers - Like WC qualifiers, these tournaments generally involve notable clubs, but also includes champions from lesser leagues.

I'm not sure about the qualification process for the below:

Libertadores Cup

I'd argue that any player who hasn't appeared in any of the above events would have to be considered under the "fully professional" criteria, which gets a little tricky...

• Fully professional

I've discussed this in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ludovic Quistin, and my basic point there was that a league not only has to have all professional clubs, but a league has to require professionalism. With the Conference in England, it will most likely be an all-professional league next season. However, that can change from season to season, and as long as it allows for semi-professionalism, it's not really a fully professional league. And this criteria is reasonable enough to apply to other countries, I think.

Basically, I'd clarify the WP:BIO for footballers as follows.

1a. The player has to have competed at the highest level as defined here

or

1b. The player has to have played in a fully professional (as opposed to simply all-pro) league

and

2. The player's accomplishments have to be noted in multiple non-trivial independent publications.

Anyhow, that's my attempt at simplification. -- Ytny (talk) 05:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

On Swedish wikipedia, we are into a great fight. I want to delete/merge some of the leagues on level 12 and below in the English system. Also some of the clubs, mostly younger, and a bunch of players on that level. The only defense the "keepers" have "en has it so we must too". So now they are trying to delete a friend of mine, pro player on Norwegian 2'nd level, former Allsvenskan player just because I question the existance of non pro level 14! Professionalism or at least clubs based on it are noteable. Players in these clubs are too if they have significant time on field. 100% benched players, or players in 100% amateur clubs not on the national team should be doomed to exclusion unless they have any kind of extraordinary reason to be included. --Boongoman 16:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Youth players

I disagree with the current criteria of notability of youth footballers, since it seem to stipulate first team appearences.

I would suggest that:

1. Being a member of a youth international team (such as Gavin Hoyte, Fran Mérida and Nacer Barazite of Arsenal) merits notability in it's own right, or at least under under the criteria of athlete notability p2: "Competitors who have played or competed at the highest level in amateur sports" (or in analogy thereof).

2. Prominent members of important youth academies merits notability in the same way as above.

3. Very promising players can be notable because of their talent, regardless of if their talent has been realised or not. Even if their talent isn´t realised they still can be notable as "the talent that never delivered". Using a simple linguistic definition of "notability" would mean the more well known the player is, the more notable he is. And there surely are youth players that are better known than lower level players, even if the latter has played for the first team.

It can´t seriously be argued that a player who has made a couple of appearences for a League 2 team is more notable than a player such as Bojan Krkic, Giovani dos Santos, Fran Mérida etc wich most probably will be playing first team football (if not already be big stars) within the next years. Look at the attention G. dos Santos' selection of national team or proposed transfer has attracted in the football community. Or look at Theo Walcott who was included in the english WC squad without having played for the Arsenal first team. He never played during the WC, so before his first team debut at Arsenal, was it only his appearences for Southampton in the Championship that merited an article about him? Surely not!

My point isn't that membership of a u17 national squad automatically constitutes notability. My point is that there are youth players that may haven't yet broken in to the first team at a big club such as Arsenal or Barcelona, but nevertheless still are more notable than a player that may have appeared for a low-level first team such as Accrington. The requirement of first team football shouldn't be carved in stone. Sebisthlm 16:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC) P.S. ""fran merida" arsenal" generated 26,400 hits on Google, ""robert grant" accrington" generated 306!

Notable Former Players

Reading the above makes a lot of sense, and I'd like to add my spin on things. Like many articles, my club has a section on Notable Former Players. I can see why a list of players might be considered interesting, and have no issue with it being there, but some of the players in the list are questionable, not because they aren't notable, but because they didn't contribute a huge amount to the club. So the issue is - is it a notable player who has played for your club, or a player who has made a notable contribution to your club? Andymarczak 07:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you make a valid point here - looking at the list in question, there's a few red links, and not all these players have a claim to notability other than playing for the club. In response to your last question, I would argue that it is neither; an individual player's notability should not be evaluated in relation to the club, but in relation to the guidelines of WP:BIO as a whole. In the context of "notable former players", "notable" does not refer to "significant within the context of the club", it refers to "notable enough in themselves to merit a Wikipedia article, regardless of their relationship to the club". Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 12:02, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. I think the semantics of this make it worse than it is. Granted, some of these links are red, which is no good. This seems to me to be too big a can of worms to manage, but I'm curious as to what people think about having this list of "notable former players". Take it as read that these articles have a legitimate place in Wikipedia (for the purposes of this), look at the "List of Former Liverpool players" link from the Liverpool FC page. What's the criteria here? This is surely not every player who has played for Liverpool. It's subjectivity on a grand scale. Andymarczak 06:40, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Playing for a national team Just thought I'd add my view, I would suggest playing for a Fifa recognised national team should in itself not be notable, I would think a player would have had to have played for such a team in the finals of a major tournament ie World Cup, European Championships, African Cup of Nations or the equivalent tournaments for other parts of the world, not merely the qualifying stages. This would then exclude non-professional players whose only notability is playing for very lowly ranked teams such as Andorra or San Marino.
  
  There will be many players who play international football regularly who never play finals (e.g. Ryan Giggs) but the vast majority of these will be notable for their club football careers as well. Jules 13:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I must say, I strongly disagree with Jules on this. Let me try and illustrate why. Take York City FC as an example, a team that participates in the English Conference National League. It is a team that turned professional in 1922, and as such all its players under point 1 of the guideline, are automatically notable. In fact 80% of York City’s players have their own articles (the majority of which are very nice).

If we are prepared to accept any professional footballer as notable (even if those players have never made it out of the lower leagues) but not caps at international level for competitive FIFA competitions (yes even for minor footballing nations such as Malta, New Zealand, India and China) then we are in danger of blatantly disregarding WP:CSB. Also, it has to be obvious to all that wealthier nations can afford to have extensive professional leagues which artificially make more players qualify for point 1 of the guidelines. StephP 14:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I would say this is an argument to amend point 1 of the guidelines so that players from FA Conference clubs are excluded as well as excluding players that have not played in an international tournament.

Could we not say that point 1 could be limited two professional leagues and where there are more than two professional divisions in any country to the top two divisions? Possibly also alow players who have played in lower professional leagues and played non-tournament international football as well?Jules 15:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I doubt f that is a way forward for 2 main reasons: Firstly there is no way you will convince users to delete the 100’s maybe 1000’s of articles on players in teams below the level you suggest. Secondly and more importantly you will encounter problems when comparing leagues. Take for example the Chinese premier division. China (#75) as a national team ranks lower than Mali (#35) in FIFA rankings, but China runs a fully professional premier league whilst Mali runs an semi-pro/amateur league. Neither team has made it to a recent world cup. Do you therefore advocate the inclusion of every player in the Chinese league whilst exclusion of every Mali national player (that has not played for a foreign professional club)? On this basis I still think that fine tuning the definition of the highest possible level is a more reasonable approach than redefining point 1. StephP 16:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

We can't put a clear standard StephP, by saying professional leagues but at least, it is really an advantage for a league to be professional. Also don't forget English footbal is considered notable and people, especially in bookmakers, it has a lot of interest. However, I would agree that having league such as conference notable players is not good and proffessionalism could be limited. The example of Mali and China is not good. Mali may be better in FIFA rankings but don't forget that clubs and national teams is different (example Ireland). China played in the last Asia Cup final and participated recently in WC. Writing articles about Maltese and Andorran internationals, we are making the phrase notability with no sense. By the way I think, despite my disagreement about the rule, the phrase "international" must be written in WP:BIO, since articles about Etienne Barbara and Constantinos Makrides were decided kept. user:KRBN 23:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Through my example i was trying to illustrate that you could have a country like China that runs a pro league and as such over 15 teams x 11 players = over 150 Chinese football players automatically gain notability by current guidelines. Then you have a country such as Mali which has produced the likes of Frédéric Kanouté and Mohamed Sissoko and ranks considerably higher than China according to FIFA, where other national team members may not be considered notable. Do you think that is fair? To further illustrate my point, Constandinos Makrides plays for Cyprus, a team that ranks higher than China in FIFA rankings, so why was he ever nominated for deletion? The answer is simple, the current framework is too vague and as you suggest the simplest solution i see would be to include internationals StephP 10:05, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Summary on the footballers discussion and a proposal and SURVEY

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

As has been the case before, there has been a healthy discussion and several issues have been touched, some of which are less relevant to the original purpose I intended. So to avoid condemning this discussion to just another one of those that end up archived and achieving no ultimate goal, I am going back to the grass roots of my pitch which was on a single point, and I propose:

An addition in the form of a footnote with reference to the highest level (point 2):

Any football (soccer) player who is a current member of a national team of a FIFA member country satisfies the criterion of competing at the highest level.

I would suggest that users vote to either support or reject this in point form below. I would also suggest that any addition to the discussion above could be entered there and not amongst the votes. I will try and let everyone who has taken part in this discussion know about this, and would suggest you spread the word amongst interested parties StephP 10:16, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support StephP 10:16, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support, though not sure about "current" - see my comment in section below. Note: as drafted, this would apply to women players also. Johnbod 10:40, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support That's a useful clarification, although it's still a little wooly - how is current defined, for instance? StuartDouglas 11:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject - narrowing to just football is not useful, and current is problematic. -- Whpq 11:43, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject - I would support the proposal of User:Ytny, which include only big competitions, like World Cup, Continental Championships e.t.c. -- KRBN 15:46, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject - Scope is too narrow. As I said earlier, this problem could be solved for all sports by revising the language of WP:BIO.Caknuck 20:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject - Unsure about current. What about players who are notable but have yet to play for their national team, eg. Kevin Davies?Kurt000 13:35, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject I'm sorry, but there are concerns like why "current" or relative strengths that need to be resolved. Just brainstorming here: perhaps WikiProject Football could somehow help out with determining notability? The problem is that no matter how you define it, someone'll always get nominated for deletion incorrectly. Xiner (talk, email) 14:23, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Support although I think it should apply to former members of national teams as well. Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 14:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Strongly reject, we have enough sports permastubs. We shouldn't even have the "pro players automatically get articles" criterion, let alone expand it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 14:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject I would support a brief set of bullet points that is applicable to a broad range of professional sports, with some more specific clarifications in a footnote. I can see reasoning for splitting the athletes section into "Amateur Athletes" and "Professional Athletes." But I have to agree with Seaphim, that such criteria will likely not support much more than development on weakly sourced stubs. --Kevin Murray 14:57, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Weak support. It needs to be revised before it has my full support - we can't just write the policy for footballers, people will come in with backyard-league softball in Orange County, and next thing you know I have family members who are getting their own AfDs. (Yes, I know....) Most importantly: it needs to reflect for sports at large, and it needs to point out that notability is weakly inherent if they are part of a team that is part of a (semi-)professional league. --Dennisthe2 15:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject: this makes the backup keeper for Montserrat, who will never have a cap and who belongs to a team that will never do anything except take its obligatory shellacking once or twice a quadrennium, article-worthy. RGTraynor 16:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject While some FIFA member national teams are notable, the vast majority are not. This proposal would allow every carpenter, plumber and accountant who have suited up for San Marino or Turks & Caicos Island to have a Wikipedia article. "Highest level" should be exactly that (World Cup finals, Continental tournament finals, Champions League qualifying stage and knockout round, and the Olympics), not "reasonably high level". Ytny (talk) 16:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject - per RGTraynor. - Kittybrewster (talk) 20:40, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Reject, not all national team players are notable. Punkmorten 10:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Reject, due to wording, as indicated. "Being a member" doesn't necessarily achieve notability, and "current" excludes former internationals. It needs to be more specific, something like "A footballer who has played for a national team at the full international, Olympic (including qual.?), or Youth World Cup (finals tournament, U-20 or U-17) level satisfies the criterion of competing at the highest level." --ChaChaFut 21:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Reject per Seraphimblade and Kevin Murray. Too easy a route to automatic notability. Edison 21:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• reject They need secondary sources, content, and information about who they are to be notable.--Sefringle 21:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Reject Firstly, "current" is problematical. Would we then have to start deleting articles about players once they have retired? My main objection however, s I have set out in the debate above, is that merely being an international player does not automatically make a player notable. There would be many players for very lowly ranked teams, Andorra, San Marino etc who are not at all notable in terms of their football ability or achievements but by accident of nationality get to play international football. I would suggest the minimum standard be that a player has played international football (possibly a non-playing squad member might suffice) at a major tournament i.e. the World Cup or the various continental tournamemts (European Championships etc). Of course a player who has not played in such tournaments could still be considered notable by virtue of his club career (Ryan Giggs being the best example of that I can think of).Jules 07:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
• Reject Current is a nasty word wich will force us to revise all players from week to week. We also have some less notable player on a nonprofeesional level wich are members in the team but gets very little time on field and therefore is non-notable. Some youth player may be notable too but mostly not. As for national low ranked teams, a minority of players are noteable. If any extraordinary acheivement is done during tournament, they may get an article. --Boongoman 15:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
• Reject, strongly opposed to basing notability on "current" anything. Notability is a permanent condition. Dubious about having special conditions just for footballers. Sure it's the #1 sport in the world, but that's a matter of degree, not a fundamental distinction. Let's stick to general, broadly-applicable criteria, please. Xtifr _tälk 20:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
• Reject Current should not be used used in an encylopedia like Wikipedia Kingjamie 21:01, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
• Reject I agree that not every player in a national team squad is notable, but I also worry about limiting the definition of "at the highest level" to World Cup and Continental National Team Cup and Continental Club Championship finals. There are many nations like Jamaica that have notable players who play for the national team but would never play at the highest level simply because they miss out on the WC finals. Perhaps there is an option of including players that play for a national team which reaches the final qualifying rounds of those competitions? Jogurney 02:01, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
• Reject the world is full of microstates where national team players make football in a freetime basis. --Angelo 02:11, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• Consensus from the above is clearly opposed to the football-related proposal. >Radiant< 11:40, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

"Current" in Survey above

Since "current" has already been commented on in several comments in the survey, & the main discussion is so long, I think it's useful to discuss this here.

My concerns are that:

• a) You never know who is a current team player until just before any match. Say you have a second goalkeeper who played 3 years ago, but not since (for the national team), but is still in the squad. Is he current?
• b) Other notability criteria that I am aware of are all permanent; once notable, always notable. I think this should be the same.

So I would just change "is a current" to "has been a" in the proposal. If we then get lots of articles on Andorran players of the 1980's (which I rather doubt we will) then so be it. Re Kevin Davies point above, this proposal operates alongside normal notability; no notable Club player who has not played nationally is affected. Johnbod 14:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Current is a problem, because that is opposed to the definition of N we use for everybody else. In its literal sense, it would mean only while a member of the team, with the article to be removed afterwards--which is not what WP should be doing in any case for anything--at least before we get a much broader community consensus on this, and I think the community would very strongly oppose such a rule in general. More realistically, it would mean 2007+, grandfathered for existing articles, and again I think the community would oppose. So I think in whatever we do we must change to the usual , "has been or is".

All we need is one Andorran fan, equipped with a cache on old clippings, for the articles mentioned--and they might be written game by game (This sort of thing is already with us in US local history, and its going to pose a real problem. There is a editor currently turning his masters thesis about Louisiana politicians into a series of very detailed (and very good) articles, and there has in recent months been someone doing similarly with a Master's thesis on Ohio schools, and another with a book on of the 18th century planters in Virginia and Maryland. There are thousands of such books and theses. But this is going to be a widespread general problem, and current N rules may need to be rethought in terms of appropriate length. Just thought I'd mention it.)DGG 21:26, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

ANYONE who has been in a notable film, etc.?

With this edit, Kevin Murray seems to have changed part of the definition of an entertainer into a definition of notability. I don't think that someone whose entire acting career (for example) consists of nothing but a brief non-speaking role would be notable no matter how notable the movie. But that seems to be what this guideline now states. It seems to me that this one small change has completely changed the meaning of the section. Merely having an entry in IMDB should not, alone, justify having an entry in Wikipedia, IMO. But maybe I missed some discussion, so I thought I'd toss this out before reverting. Xtifr _tälk 12:59, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Your understanding is correct. I think the rest of us missed the implication of the wording. Please go ahead and fix it. Rossami (talk) 14:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Please consider this as a better expression of the standard for entertainers:
  • With significant roles in notable films, stage plays, television, and other productions. --Kevin Murray 15:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Better, but I had a significant role (Prospero) in a notable stage play (The Tempest). I changed it to "stage performances" because I can't claim my high school performance of a notable play was a notable performance. Xtifr _tälk 15:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Yes, this is better! --Kevin Murray 15:26, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Special Case for Religious Figures

There should be a special case section created for religious figures. Some criteria could be:

Has a body of followers that number greater than 1000

Comment: I find the 'number greater than 1,000' far too low. How about 'greater than 50,000'.Ryoung122 10:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Has significant media exposure

Runs an organization with an annual budget exceeding $10,000,000

Regularly influences other notable people

Unsigned by: user:68.13.250.103 notation by --Kevin Murray 22:43, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest criteria that have a greater relationship either to general notability (coverage by reliable sources) or some concept of contribution to knowledge. The criteria proposed would appear to eliminate virtually all religious figures that have historically been regarded as great. Francis of Assisi and the Buddha had no budget. Moses got virtually no media coverage, so little that he is regarded as having a self-published work as his principle source. These examples ought to be enough to suggest that criteria like budget and the like don't capture what it is that make religious figures significant contributers to religious knowledge. --Shirahadasha 06:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

":I'd agree with the objection. I think that the considerations are a gross violations of NPOV. We have no possible way of judging what religious figures are truly notable. We can not distinguish between genuine religions and pretended ones, between basic doctrinal differences and minutely separated splinter groups. Any attempt to do so would involve us in the most bitter discussions possible--and the discussions on these subject today are but a small indication of what would be involved. The only possible criterion is whether they are an organized body with a definite name, and that there is at least one reasonable source that they actually exist.

By this argument it could be said that there is no way of determining if anyone is notable and that the concept should be abandoned completely. Just because there can be fear of bitter discussions, does not mean that those discussions should not happen. This is not an attempt to distinguish between real and pretend religions (because there is no such thing as a pretend religion, except perhaps pastafarianism which is a parody of a religion), this is criteria to distinguish notable religious figures, which we can distinguish if one is notable or not. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.13.250.103 (talk) 07:14, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

This applies to religions--it does not necessarily apply to individual congregations. The role of the congregation in the life of the religion and of the community is relevant,and the extent to which it is discussed in publications other than that congregation's newsletter is reasonable. But even here the figures suggested are totally unrealistic. In many important american congregations from a religious and public standpoint, they will never have anywhere n=more the a few hundred members and budget enough to keep their congregation going. Their notice by the relevant public is what counts--as in the general rules. However, I have no objection to monetary qualifications being used for commercial media evangelists. DGG 07:58, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Add me to the list opposing this suggestion. As DGG points out, some very small congregations turn out to be highly notable. The corrolary is also true - some very large congregations are utterly non-notable. The metrics proposed above do not appear to be very helpful in deciding whether or not we can reasonably expect to find the necessary critical mass of informed editors and sources to write a neutral, verifiable article on the subject. Rossami (talk) 17:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

This is not a call for a vote on these specific criteria, it is a call for the community to create criteria, for religious figures. The criteria listed are only there as a starting point for a special cases section. St Francis of Assisi and Moses obviously meet the current general notability standards and already have articles. While notability is not a very high standard, with the current standards having no special cases for religious figures makes it difficult for notability to be established for some truly notable contemporary religious figures. The criteria are not solely based on a body of followers and media coverage, those are only two of the standards. I'm aware there are other ways to establish notability and i invite discussion on changing these criteria. Religion is a very important subject in our world today and so it is vital that wikipedia have good information about contemporary religious figures for which wikipedia has no written standards. We have the poorly defined criteria of "cult following" for musicians, but absolutely not standards for religious figures. Once again I invite these criteria to be debated and change, even completely changed as long as we discuss and create the needed standards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.13.250.103 (talk • contribs)

Before we start debating specific criteria, you need to convince us that Wikipedia needs special criteria for religious issues. Over the course of several years, we fragmented many of our inclusion criteria, attempting greater specificity. As a community, we are now realizing that was a mistake (see instruction creep for why) and have been working for the past 6 months or so to merge many of them back together. Why are religious persons different? Why should they have separate criteria? What examples do you have where the current criteria have failed to allow for the inclusion of a notable religious person? Rossami (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Do the current criteria hinder the creation of articles for notable religious people? If so, which ones. 01:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC) Vegaswikian

The primary criterion should remain for all articles. What I'm calling for is a special case section for religious figure, which does not fit into any of special case categories. As stated in the special case listing "The following criteria make it likely that sufficient reliable information is available about a given person. People who satisfy at least one of these criteria may merit their own Wikipedia articles, as there is likely to be a good deal of verifiable information available about them and a good deal of public interest in them." These are simply guidelines to make it easier to evaluate which people are likely to have enough sources on them. There are a number of notable religious figures that do not have articles such as John Holland, the former president of the Four Square denomination. Another is Jim Stoval founder and president of Narrative Telivision Network, who received and Emmy in 1990. There are aslo a number of notable religious figures who's articles have been marked for deletion such as Kenneth Copeland and Ron Luce, I realize all of these people are affiliated with the charismatic movement but that is my area of experties. Since religion is an important subject there should be a special cases section that includes religious figures so that people can more easily identify what would definitely be notable. As said in the WP:bio each article should be evaluated on a case by case basis, and the special cases section enables simple criteria to be created. The ones I created above I created because I wanted to create some verifiable criteria of people who are influential in the religious world. These criteria will add to the wikipedia experience and make creating articles easier.

Those last two appear likely to be kept after the AfD despite the fact that they are not referenced and may not meet the requirements for bios on living people. So the current criteria seems to cover your examples. Creating criteria to avoid AfD is not needed and is instruction creep. If people are notable, the community will generally see that and not delete the articles. There is no need for special guidance, at least that's the way I see it. There are many missing articles all over wikipedia. So religious figures are no different in that regard. Vegaswikian 07:38, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the few deleted are deleted because there is no independent sourcing, although the criteria are usually interpreted very liberally. There is a difference between the founder of a religious movement and a minister in it . Religions are notable, individual churches are not necessarily. Charismatic leaders with a documented following are notable, those who do not have enough of a following to get documented are not. The only real problem comes with religious traditions that do not have the western european pattern and sources. DGG 08:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I will concede that my criteria are similar to the ones for entertainer and that religious figures could fit into the category of opinion maker. However, opinion maker is a vague term, perhaps an article could be created to help explain the concept better.

General notability guideline template

Since the general notability guideline is central to most sub-pages, someone came up with the idea of creating a centralized template which will be consistent among the permutations from WP:N. Please see whether we can make this work here. The text is meant to be fairly generic, but it may make sense to add text following the template for fine tuning, or help us to make the template more applicable if it is not reflecting the consensus for notability. I certainly didn't get everything that I wanted, but I'm very happy to see the compromises that make this a fairly representive of the attitude of the project. --Kevin Murray 01:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Using this is disputed, and I can't tell why. There is next to no difference between the templated version and the one already in the page. -Amarkov moo! 01:47, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Then let's demonstrate that there is just as much consensus here as other places. I support the transclusion of the template. Rossami (talk) 01:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Just because there was a discussion in the writing of that template, that has nothing to do with replacing what has already been agreed upon here with it. I don't see consensus in "other places" for this template. --Oakshade 02:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Rather than opposing a template which brings continuity to the various sections of the notability infrastructure, why not help to develop language at the template which more clearly relfects the consensus. How can we make the template better? --Kevin Murray 16:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

There's no consensus for a template here. There's no such thing as continuity, and we don't need it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

If you don't like the template, you should have put the previous primary criterion section back, which I just did. We need one in some form after all.--Dycedarg ж 00:44, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

That was an error on my part. I didn't mean to remove that completely, it got lost in the crossfire. whether we actually need it is a separate discussion, but that removal wasn't intentional. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:56, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Does KIA give notability?

There are two AfDs right now that deal with whether a member of the armed forces is killed in action - without any other substantial claims for notability - gives enough material for the subject to be notable. I am torn on the issue and maybe others, more familiar with the concept of Notability, could provide some input.

Links are: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Matthew_Fenton and Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Aaron_Weaver

Thanks -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 01:00, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The answer is absolutely and unequivocally no. Wikipedia is not a memorial is well established as both policy and long-standing precedent. Rossami (talk) 04:32, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

KIA doesn't establish notability, but the presence of multiple reliable sources does prove notability. For me, the Matthew Fenton article is an obvious "keep" and the Aaron Weaver article an equally unambiguous "delete". -- Black Falcon 17:46, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Black Falcon - a follow-up question if you don't mind. So if I understand what you are saying, coverage of a KIA in multiple reliable sources establishes Notability? Remember, we are talking about someone whose life was otherwise quite normal - thousands serve their country in the armed forces. Because if I understand what you are saying, it sounds like you feel that KIA, as long as it's covered, IS a valid criterion for Notability. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 11:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Regardless of whether you consider it a valid criterion for notability or not, it is still policy that Wikipedia is not a memorial. >Radiant< 11:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No, I do not feel that KIA is a valid criterion for notability. Then again, I do not feel that being General Secretary of the UN is a valid criterion. I feel that we, as editors, should not try to judge what does or does not constitute a "valid" criterion. Quite simply, a topic is notable if others outside of Wikipedia have found it worthy of note. We shouldn't argue about whether a topic is inherently notable or not, or whether a person has achievements that make him/her notable, as that's a hopelessly subjective exercise. Instead, we should try to prove that a topic is notable per the definition at WP:N or WP:BIO. If we cannot, then we shouldn't have an article on that subject. A head of government who has not been the subject of multiple sources cannot be proven to be notable (he may be notable or he may not be, but it's pointless for us to speculate in the absence of actual facts). Regarding the article on Mr. Fenton, I feel that it was rightly deleted, but do not think the reason of "not notable" was appropriate. I hope this clarifies my position. -- Black Falcon 16:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Att no longer policy

{{editprotected}}

Can someone change the line:

"Ultimately, and most importantly, all content must be attributable."

to

"Ultimately, and most importantly, all content must be verifiable." ???

ATT is not currently policy but proposed policy. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   06:06, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Y Done Harryboyles 12:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:pnc nominated for deletion

See Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Template:pnc for the debate. --Kevin Murray 18:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested edit

An admin should add Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) to the dab note at the beginning of the article. --zenohockey 21:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Edit made. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

More precise discussion of "multiple nontrivial works" needed

A recent AfD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jocelyne Couture-Nowak) proved that currently, the guideline does not cover for some cases where a person might appear to be notable due to extensive media coverage, but still is not strictly notable. I believe the guideline should be amended to state that the coverage cannot be used as an argument for a person's notability if it is only a strict result of the person's involvement in an event that does not provide for the person's notability in itself.

To make myself more clear - if a person would, e.g., win a Nobel Prize or a medal in the Olympics, and only then would incidental coverage crop out, the person would still be notable, as the event would make him or her notable in itself. But if the event would not make one notable, such as in the above example of being one of several victims of a mass killing in the USA, and attracting the interest of Canadian media due to one's origins, I believe it cannot be treated as a reason for notability. PrinceGloria 22:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

If we start judging whether people are notable within, between, inside, or outside of certain events or contexts, we'll throw ourselves into a hopeless pit of subjective shouting matches filled with original research and non-neutral assessments of the "notability" or "importance" of certain events or contexts. It's better to just stick to relying on what other people have written. It's served us well enough so far and we can make particular exceptions when necessary ... there's no need to undermine the whole guideline. To be more specific, whether you or I believe that Canadian media coverage can or cannot be treated as a reason for notability should be entirely irrelevant. We're editors, not producers of published works. To try to integrate our personal judgments of what qualifies one for notability is the very thing excluded by WP:NOR. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

This is not a personal judgement. The inclusion of this person violates WP:MEMORIAL and it is only due to WP:BIO not providing for some cases that there was any discussion. We need to take into account that sometimes media coverage is strictly news-induced, and therefore pretty random. Actually including a person that was the subject of such incidental coverage in an encyclopedia would make her attain notability, which is exactly what an encyclopedia should not do. I believe that the spirit of the guideline is not fully expressed in its letter, and therefore the latter should be amended. PrinceGloria 00:11, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The inclusion of this person cannot violate WP:MEMORIAL because that policy specifically exempts people that meet WP:BIO, which this person did. Just because we don't like the reasons a person meets the notability guideline does not make them any more or less notable. Also, we already do take into account the fact of random coverage ... sources are required to be "intellectually independent" (i.e., they must not be exact duplicates or strict derivates of each other). What you're proposing really does come down to a personal judgment of what is "incidental coverage". Where necessary or desired, we can invoke WP:IAR to justify the deletion of articles that technically meet WP:BIO. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Again, I am referring to the spirit, not the letter of the law. It is fairly obvious that including a person who has been a subject of media coverage only due to their non-active participation in a media-covered event is rather "unencyclopedic" and a matter of exploiting a loophole existing in WP policies. Therefore, I believe that this loophole should be patched to prevent incidental disputes based on WP:IAR that would be pretty similar in nature. PrinceGloria 00:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

It may not be as obvious as you assume, considering that over half of participants in a poll held about a month ago thought that the notability guideline was too strict (I can direct you to the poll if you like, I'm just too lazy to dig through the archives right now). I think any patch will create more problems than it would solve. IAR can be applied on an individual basis; guidelines should, for the most part, be consistent across cases. That's why I think it's better to handle these kinds of admittedly rare cases on a case-by-case basis, rather than trying to implement a major change in an already contentious guideline. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:59, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

First I hear that a guideline or policy too strict would cause more problems - it might greatly discontent people trying to infuse unencyclopedic content into Wikipedia, but cause problems? If anything, the relative, and, I believe, unintended "laxness" of this guideline (which is only due to it being imprecise rather than intentionally leaving out a loophole as outlined above) provides for "problems" in the form of unnecessary AfD disputes where it should be clear that a topic is unencyclopedic. Do also note that the above case is very much a repeatable one - unfortunately, events involving the killing of several human beings are happening all the time, and people will be creating articles for individual, non-notable victims.

I also find it hard to revere a decision taken by vote o poll - fortunately, Wikipedia is not a democracy but a meritocracy. I guess the above AfD would be a tie or even "won" by "keepers" if it were treated as a vote, but fortunately the closing admins are requested not to abide by "popular vote" but rather by the arguments raised basing on WP policies and guidelines. In this very case, the guideline leaves out a loophole that would seemingly allow to overrule an important Wikipedia policy, as well as actually contradicts its own spirit and the nature of Wikipedia. Therefore, I believe there is a very good reason for it to be amended. Again, I would hate to refer to a "vote" - there are enough fledgeling Wikipedia users trying to realize their particular interests, especially concerning the inclusion of various unencyclopedic content, to win ANY vote, I believe. PrinceGloria 06:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

To avoid any confusion, let me first state that I don't think the guidelines should be loosened. However, I believe your accusations that the only people who voted to make the guideline less strict are those "trying to infuse unencyclopedic content into Wikipedia" or "fledgling ... users trying to realise their particular interests" are inappropriate. Those phrases lump dozens of editors in good standing together with the likes of trolls, spammers, and POV pushers. Whether a topic is encyclopedic or not is an extremely subjective judgment when considered outside of the simple framework of "are there multiple reliable sources about it?" You are basing your arguments on personal judgments of encyclopedicity which other people may not share (and not necessarily because they want to see articles on every group of teenagers with a garage and some metal to bang). Regarding WP:NOT#DEMOCRACY: I brought in the example of the "vote on notability" just to illustrate that there a lot of people (not trolls or vandals, but good editors) who disagree with you. It was in no way an endorsement of opposition to notability nor an endorsement of voting.

There are two reasons why I oppose your suggestion to implement a change to WP:BIO. First, as this AfD showed, such a change would obviously be quite contentious and probably not supported by consensus. Second, you're suggesting what amounts to a rather dramatic change in a fundamental guideline to address the existence of only a couple dozen articles. The absolute majority of "memorial" articles to which you refer fail WP:BIO, WP:NPOV, and/or WP:NOR. There are only a few articles that meet all three but could still be construed as memorials. I maintain that such articles are best considered on an individual basis and included or excluded as the community sees fit. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 07:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

But you've just nailed on the head why we need to rid ourselves of these sub-guidelines, or make absolutely and unambiguously clear that all subjects must pass the PNC. Outside of asking an objective question ("How much source material is available on the topic?"), any judgment we make as to a "notability cutoff" is subjective. We don't do subjective judgments that aren't supported by sources. Ever. The amount of sourcing available should choose if we mention a subject and if so how (separate article, brief mention in a related one, etc.), just like the content of those sources should strictly and unambiguously dictate what we say about it. We mirror sources and never give them undue weight. We are giving undue weight when there is a small amount of sourcing available, but we devote a full article to a person because they technically pass this. We are similarly failing to give due weight when a person has tons of sources available, but we fail to have an article. (Though as mentioned above, "independent from each other" is important too, to weed out purely "news" or "15 minutes of fame" coverage that properly belongs on Wikinews.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

What sub-guidelines? I agree with you that all subjects must meet the PNC. And, as I've written above, that any judgment about the "inherent" notability or non-notability of a topic is utterly useless. Instead of claiming notability, we should prove it (if we can). In this case, the subject of the article did meet the PNC. I believe that should have been reason enough not to delete the article without invoking IAR (note that I'm not saying it should be enough to have a separate article ... WP:BIO is a guideline and should have exceptions). Issues of merging are a content organisation issue dependent on the amount and quality of available sourcing and should not be conflated with deletion and AfD. In this case, the sources were also independent (not all of them, of course, but some of them were) in that they did not largely replicate the same information. Some sources discussed her in the context of the massacre; others covered her life. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 09:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

reset indent - OK now, I am not an overly intellectual person, to say the least, so I didn't quite get what Seraphimblade wanted to say, and neither I have a clue what PNC is, HOWEVER:

1. I did not say that the ONLY people that would "vote" are fledgeling editors trying to protect their personal interests of inclusion of particular unencyclopedic content into WP. I just said that this group is likely to support any "vote" in favor of relaxing WP criteria, and therefore referring to "votes" and "polls" is not the best idea. Please do not try to impute that I said things I did not.
2. Concerning the actual issue - well, the arguments against keeping the article on Mme Couture-Nowak were found valid by the closing admin, and I am convinced the deletion review will end up in sustaining this verdict. If so, the argumentation against the inclusion is thus found valid in view od WP rules, if more their spirit than letter. Moreover, similar cases have been quite often in the past and are bound to be frequently surfacing in the future. This means that we are bound to have very similar AfDs and debates in the future, and if the arguments for deletion were found valid in that case, they will be in all cases like that (please note that by "similar" I understand cases where a person became subject of media coverage only due to their non-active participation in an event covered by the media - so, e.g. the cases of other Virginia Tech massacre victims which meet WP:PROF requirements are not "similar" in this understanding)
   So, it would only serve a good purpose of limiting unnecessary debates, stress and kerfuffle by clearly stating that such persons do not automatically gain "notability" in the sense of fulfilling the requirements to be featured in Wikipedia.

Kind regards, PrinceGloria 10:40, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The PNC refers to the primary notability criterion ... that starts with "A topic is notable if ...". I suggest a compromise: if this DRV closes as "endorse", I (and I'm sure others will as well) will dig through AfD archives to confirm whether there is any kind of precedent on articles of this nature ... if there is, it would be only fair to suggest discussion. However, I think we ought to hold off on such a discussion for a brief time until other disputes/disagreements regarding WP:N and WP:BIO are resolved. The most recent spate of edit warring took place when people added, removed, reinserted, re-removed, etc. a now-deleted template, Template:pnc, into notability guideline pages. I think that once we reach agreement on an exact wording for the PNC, we can start discussing additional modifications. To do the latter in advance would only complicate efforts to reach consensus by tying together two separate issues. Can we accept that as a reasonable compromise for now? -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:04, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Mkay now - please make allowances for my limited intellectual capabilities. I understand that currently the PNC reads:

A topic is generally notable if it has been the subject of coverage that is independent of the subject, reliable, and attributable. The depth of coverage and quality of sources must be considered in determining the number of sources required and whether the coverage establishes notability.

I find it very appropriate, but I guess this is not the issue here. I am not aware of any ongoing issues concerning WP:N and WP:BIO, I just want to make sure that it would be made clear that incidental media coverage due to somebody's non-active participation in a media-covered event is not a reason to assume the person's notability in the sense of "being elligible to a Wikipedia article". Whatever brings us closer to that, gets my full support. Regards, PrinceGloria 17:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

How do sources indicate notabiltiy in a way activity doesn't? --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:01, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Re: PrinceGloria. In a way, it already is. WP:BIO, for instance, notes that "Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability". In addition, following discussion on the talk page, I added the following footnote to the guideline about 1-2 months ago: "Sources that are pure derivatives of an original source can be used as references, but do not contribute toward establishing the notability of a subject." I don't think we should tie notability to judgments about "active" or "non-active" involvement in events; the requirements of "intellectual independence" and exclusion of "trivial or incidental coverage" seem more objective. Regarding the version of the PNC you copied above, I actually favour a more demanding version that states:

A topic is notable if it has been the subject of non-trivial coverage in multiple reliable published works that are independent of the subject.

The difference between that and the version above is in requiring that coverage be non-trivial (in quantity and/or quality). -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I may support you if you please (and show me where it should be done), but I believe that both versions contain an inherent fault in that "trivial" and "incidental" might be understood differently. ANYWAY, we have got a case currently running that shows that the current WP:BIO is not easy to understand and can lead to confusion. What I am calling for is a specific mention of this particular case of "incidental coverage", as it is occuring pretty often and it would be beneficial to explain that it is not a reason to assert somebody's notability. PrinceGloria 16:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

How can we write articles where there is no reasonable source material without doing primary research, which is forbidden? These ongoing attempts to codify what type and quantity of source materials are sufficient are an ever increasing failure. I am beginning to think that AfD has to rely upon the good judgment and experience of the participants, and that a complicated infrastructure of rules only confuses the task, and creates fertile ground for more lawyering. A simple statement to guide the arbiters at AfD, and a collection of precedents to follow might be sufficient. I thought that the language which had evolved at the PNC template was good basic guidance, even if it was not specifically actionable. --Kevin Murray 19:11, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

"Notability" is not about how but about if. Notability tells us, using various parameters, if an article's subject is worthy of inclusion. Verifiability is what deals with your question (and no, primary research is not forbidden). The two concepts, while working hand in hand, are entirely separate. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed policy change at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons

A modification to the deletion policy regarding biographies of living persons has been proposed. The proposal seeks to reverse the default retention of biographical articles that attain "no consensus" results at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. That is, it seeks to make deletion the default action for AfD discussions of biographical articles that do not reach consensus. Comments regarding the proposal are welcome and may be made here. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

New attempt with protection lifted

The version I've added as of 9:30a EST on 29 April, I think, incorporates many of the issues we've been dealing with since December. Hopefully we can hash it out further if need be. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:26, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Rather than rewritting it completely, why don't you discuss the objectives and make small changes? This has evoloved with much cooperation over several months. If you don't like the PNC version, why don't you try to suggest something else. --Kevin Murray 20:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, seeing as the version I created was at least close to a consensus version (there was no evolution), I didn't think it was that major. Can you point out the problems with the version that you saw? --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Please look through the edit history to see the development by many contributors, along with discussion. The problems are numerous and typical of the author’s POV, not to mention removing sections and a confusing format. This needs much work, and I would probably agree with some more inclusionary language, but let’s work as a team. --Kevin Murray 06:23, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

But that doesn't answer my question. What problems were with the version you saw, considering its reflection of the most recent consensus version with some of those same additions you believe have support? --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:30, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Jeff, I suggest that we develop some discussion from the status quo rather than throw up radical changes which are hard for participants to follow. I propose that we first work on the PNC message which no longer reflects that which is at WP:N and has been demonstrated to have flaws when it was proposed as text for the now defunct PNC template.--Kevin Murray 16:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the first answer is to get rid of the PNC message entirely - it never had consensus here, and doesn't exist anywhere else with the exception of WP:CORP. Is there a reason it should stay here as opposed to having the consensus form that I brought it to? --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:56, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Jeff, it would be less frustrating for your peers if you stopped interjecting rhetoric in support of your position (e.g., claiming consensus, consensus, consensus). This moves the thought process from discussing the issue to disputing your evaluation of consensus. You asked me to work with you in a less combative format. Can I ask for a less inflammatory method? --Kevin Murray 17:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Honesty isn't inflammatory, Kevin. The issue really begins with the evaluation of consensus - if there's no consensus for a PNC style wording, there's no sense in using it as a starting point. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:11, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Jeff, this is not always true. Ideally we would all perceive the truth in the same way, but someone can be wrong and honest at the same time. Especially with something as elusive as consensus at WP. I've in the past misperceived your position as being dishonest, and I was wrong. I understand that you see things very differently than I do and from your vantage you are being honest. Which comes first the idea or the consensus? How do we evaluate consensus? Is it consensus now or then? Is it consensus here or in the greater notability discussion, or at AfD? This is a multi edged weapon that seems to cut into all arguments, which is better sheathed here. --Kevin Murray 17:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The idea comes first, but doesn't become implemented long-term without consensus. The discussion on consensus is from here in the archives, combined with how it was attempted to be implemented. If you want to discuss the idea, please do so, but not while assuming that your version is the consensus one. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I won't claim any consensus one way or the other. However, the term "your" implies that others were not involved. Let's consider what is there now as an evolution which represents the status quo. Admittedly, I have been among the most active of recent editors and structured much of the format; however, the "primacy" of the PNC predated my involvement. Please look below to the new section discussing the PNC. --Kevin Murray 17:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I regret the implication, then, that was not the intent. What is there now, however, is not an evolution, but rather the result of what occurs when people strongarm things against consensus and is never resolved (thus the consistent warring back and forth and the persistence of the tag). --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:56, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Victims of crimes

We have some articles, like Lucie Blackman, that are "biographies" of people who only got media coverage because they were the victims of high-profile crimes. But the article turns out to be a detailed report of the circumstances surrounding her death. It seems to me that if this information is encyclopedic (and I'm not sure about that) it probably belongs in a different article. Do we have any policy/guidelines/essays for situations like this? I've seen the phrase "single incident biography" somewhere, but haven't been able to track it down. --Akhilleus (talk) 14:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Cosby's kid, Michael Jordan's dad, and now Jessie Davis. These biographies beg for better guidance. To wit: is it the person or the event that is notable? And if it's the event, shouldn't we then just create an article about the event (this would also spare us having to write an article about the defendant(s), too). And then, what events satisfy notability? Is it the event itself or is it the media coverage of the event? If it's an event then how is one murder more notable than another? If it's media coverage, than do we simply write articles about everything covered by the media, or do we just transwiki it over to Wikinews? Ideas? Rklawton 18:00, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Biography-related notability and sourcing discussion going on at WT:N

I just thought I should alert editors interested in this policy that there's a biography-related discussion on members of the British nobility going on at the notability talk page; see WT:N#Independent.2Bnon_trivial.3F_Debretts.2C_Whos_Who_etc. JavaTenor 18:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Should a version of the PNC be included here?

As it is written: Primary criterion for Notability of people A person is notable if he or she has been the subject of secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent,⁶ and independent of the subject. The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability. Once notability is established, primary sources may be used to add content. Ultimately, and most importantly, all content must be verifiable.

I see multiple problems with this version which I have bolded: (1) the references to secondary and primary sources are overly restrictive and I think somewhat confused with primary and secondary research, (2) the intellectually independent is (a) impossible to determine, and (b) invalid to assert that multiple sources sharing intellectual aspects are not otherwise independent and valid. And (3) this has evolved far away from the PNC at WP:N. On a separate issue should BIO be subordinate to WP:N, and if so do we need to restate the PNC here. The premise of the next section is that the special conditions indicate a likelihood of meeting the PNC; or should they just be presented as exceptions to it? --Kevin Murray 17:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind, as well, this version lacks consensus anywhere. It was included based on a misstatement of a discussion in December, and has persisted in direct contravention with discussions here, both in long-term discussion and recent Template:PNC flareup. The problem with this continues to be that somehow sources indicate notability of people more than something else - a patently false claim that is not backed up by reality. A version of the "PNC" should not be included here because such a PNC does not exist consensually or historically. I have no clue why this discussion has been moved down here from above, but it's worth reiterating. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The move was in hopes of moving beyond logistics and into action. So you've brought out the first issue and its related concerns: (1) does a version of the PNC belong here? (2) Is there any validity to a PNC which measures notability through sources, and (3) is there a primacy of WP:N over subject specific guidelines. Within the various opinions in the above is also the consideration that there may be no need for subject specific guidelines, and if there is a need, how specific is adequate, comprehensible, and practical. --Kevin Murray 17:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The answers are no to all three, detailed a bit below. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I propose that we remove the PNC based section and replace it with a statment that suggests that "If a person is not clearly notable under the conditions of WP:N, then consider the following special cases." Could this work? I don't think that it imples a primacy or potential conflict, and it removes the need to always keep this PNC in sync with WP:N. --Kevin Murray 18:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

At no point should this assert being secondary to WP:N. That was never the intent of WP:N, and should not occur considering the wide support WP:BIO has without WP:N being in the equation. To call a guideline's meat "special cases" diminishes them in practice, and implies the worst. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

"If a person is not clearly notable under the conditions of WP:N, then consider the following criteria which may establish notability." Could this work? --Kevin Murray 18:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Why even reference WP:N? --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

(1) Because these criteria here are not the only way to establish the notability of people and (2) since WP:N is applicable to people it would be helpful to editors who come here first to be made aware of WP:N. As long as both WP:N and subject specific pages exist, each should acknowledge the other. --Kevin Murray 19:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

1) What other ways are there? Why shouldn't we simply note them here? 2) WP:N does not have primacy over WP:BIO. When discussing biographies, which is where people go. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm trying to avoid restating the source based notability standard, while avoiding the implication of a primacy in either direction, without having a competing or contraditory source-based-standard at each subject specific page. Is that possible, practical, or desirable? --Kevin Murray 20:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that there are two basic approaches to defining notability: (1) a broadly applied criterion based on a surrogate for notability such as evaluating sources, and (2) specific tests as we generally use at the subject specific pages. --Kevin Murray 20:06, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing to restate, as there is no overriding source-based standard, so that concern is unnecessary. If there was an overriding one, you may have a point I'd agree with, though. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:09, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

My "vote" is to leave sourced-based standards to WP:N and keep this page related to specific circumstances which include greater and less inclusion on a case by case basis. Where this page is not specific, then rely on WP:N, but where this page is specific its primacy should be acknowledged. --Kevin Murray 20:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Here is an example of an amended preface to the specific guidelines. The PNC section could then be deleted. Can we try this to see what people think? Then maybe fine tune based on comments. --Kevin Murray 20:31, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Specific criteria for notability of people

People who satisfy at least one of these criteria probably merit their own Wikipedia articles, as there is likely to be a good deal of verifiable information available about them and a good deal of public interest in them. Editors evaluating an article should assume that adequate research will support notability.

Failure to meet these criteria does not mean that a subject should not be included; a biography can be otherwise notable if it meets the Wikipedia's general standards of notability.

No, because WP:N does not command what happens here, WP:N does not have stable language, and WP:N does not have primacy over the other subject-specific guidelines. We're best leaving it alone in order to reduce (eliminate?) confusion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:35, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

No guidlines have stable language. I'm not saying that WP:N "commands what happens here" I'm saying that in the absense of clear guidance here WP:N is an option for establishing a person's notability. However, would you agree with the other language? --Kevin Murray 20:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Traditionally, the subject-specific guidelines have had stable language - the versions that exist in most places are the versions that have existed long-term. As for the "other language," what part? "probably merit?" Too wishy-washy. And it still harkens too much toward the sourcing spectrum, which is irrelevant to notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

How about the following:

Specific criteria for notability of people

People who satisfy at least one of these criteria merit their own Wikipedia articles. Editors evaluating an article should assume that adequate research will support notability. --Kevin Murray 20:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Again, how does this improve things and reduce confusion? --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Removing the PNC Etc.

I support Jeff's removal of the PNC section and its mention from the footnotes. I objected to the reformatting of the other aspects of the page. However, I think that there could be some fine tuning as some problems have been pointed out in the specific criteria. If a criterion is applicable to all people I think it should not be repeated in the "special cases" by profession. I would support a continued attempt to keep the source based criterion in agreement with the standards that develop at WP:N, but for now not asserting or implying a primacy. --Kevin Murray 03:07, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that we should look at these sentences and consider how we could improve them to better express our intent: " A person is notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria does not mean that a subject should not be included; meeting one or more does not mean that a subject should be included." --Kevin Murray 03:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Playboy centerfolds

Posted this a couple of weeks back. Anybody really care? Is it best to just put a couple of these up for deletion and see what happens?

Regards from under the radar, --Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 03:19, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

academics

The following section was apparently omitted in a rearrangement on Feb. 17; I do not think it was deliberate.

Wikipedia:Notability (academics) -- Specifically for professors and academics, if the individual is more well known and more published than an average college professor (based on the U.S. practice of calling all full-time academics professors), they can and should be included."

should it be restored? it is very widely used in discussion. DGG 07:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The side bar has a link. There are also some other "people kinds" on the side bar. :) Shyamal 10:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Collaborations

In many fields (eg science) collaborations are the norm and I think we need something here to reflect this. The fact that Crick & Watson co-discovered does not detract from their notability, on the other hand not all the co-authors of the papers on discovery of the W and Z particles should get the same "credit", but they should all get some. What do people think? NBeale 06:51, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

If they are notable they will have established this in their own right by being first author on important papers. You are right that collaborations are the norm but author order is important so establishing notability will have to be done on a case by case basis as it currently is. Sophia 08:27, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Though note that author order conventions vary with subject. In some fields (medicine?) the last-named is generally the head of the lab and presumably the most notable. 86.137.38.79 17:37, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Curiously Crick & Watson seems to have been Watson's first published paper, although Crick did one before. I think then situation is that if X is done by "A&B" then we should treat it essentially as if either A or B had done it. However if A&B&C&D&E&F&G&H do X then there would need to be evidence that E (say) played a major role in X: or alternatively that E played a similar role in Y and Z (as is often the case with the head of a lab). So I guess my suggestion would be that we say The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work,... NBeale 18:07, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Being head of the lab doesn't necessarily mean they had much to do with that actual research at all other than probably checking it over. And number of authors again doesn't give you much of a clue as to how much of the work was done by whom - you just know from the order who did the most etc. In astronomy it's common to co-author someone just because it's their data without them having done any of the analysis at all. You certainly can't assume that because there are two authors they did 50% each. Sophia 18:36, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes I agree with all this - but I think the suggested wording is fine in the light of all these comments. Let's be bold and try it? NBeale 14:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

In some fields (particularly in the humanities and other places where large collaborative projects are rare), the order of names is often alphabetical and no hierarchy of contribution is implied. Figuring out these norms across fields is a big problem that can only be solved by expert knowledge. This is why the gold standard of notability is independent description of the academic's contributions. Best -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 03:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC) (...who likes to publish with Agostino Ziino just in case people don't know this norm).

Surely not just ANYONE who has played in a fully professional league

The current guidline for atheletes sugegest that anyone "who has played in a fully professional league" is Notable. This can't be right. in UK football alone there are 92 such clubs, each with a squad of maybe 20 players, some of whom may be in the squad for only 1-2 years. The result would be that professional, or indeed former professional footballers were more notable than any other class of profession. Surely this isn't right? NBeale 06:28, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

is that standard significantly different than accepting an article for anyone who is or was a national, state or provincial member of parliament, even if only for a short period? --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:14, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Surely it is right. That's notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:28, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Well in the UK there are 650 MPs, and the average tenure of a seat must be well over 8 years, the minimum term is 4 years (although a very few people are elected in by-elections and then loose their seats at the General Election) and some people serve for over 50 years. Furthermore people tend to leave the house of Commons in their 50s or 60s, with a life expectancy of say 25 years. The average time a player spends playing in a fully professional league is probably under 4 years and they tend to leave around 30 with a life expectancy of say 50 years. With c. 3x as many footballers who currently meet the criterion as MPs, and having more than twice the turnover and twice the life expectancy there will be at least 12x as many "notable" current/ex footballers as notable current/ex-MPs. NBeale 13:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you have a point, but at least the current guideline gives clear criteria to argue individual players. You seem to have counted rather low for the politicians though:

• British House of Commons - 646
• House of Lords - 731
• Scottish Parliament - 129
• National Assembly for Wales - 60
• Northern Ireland Assembly - 108
• London Assembly - 25
• European Parliament - 78

So it should compare around 1777 current MPs to your estimate of 1840 footballers, the numbers aren't quite so disproportionate. I haven't tried to count up all the former members of the English/British parliament, but I doubt there were 92 paid football teams when it was founded. --Scott Davis ^Talk 15:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Scott. Essentially all members of the House of Lords are either genuinely notable or former MPs when they are appointed, and they are appointed for life (except for a few Bishops) so they don't really add to the count. I don't think London Assembley members count under the guideline, so we're left with a further 375, and a disparity that is still about 7:1. Not to mention the myriad of other sporting professionals. NBeale 23:06, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Or, to take a different statistic, there are currently 246 minor league teams in the Major League Baseball farm system, each of which is "fully professional." Conservatively estimating an average of 25 players per team would yield 6150 notable athletes. My recollection was that formerly the guidelines provided that you had to play at the top level of professional competition to be notable. Am I right and when did this change? ObiterDicta ( pleadings • errata • appeals ) 23:25, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

As far back as I can remember, it's never meant only top-level. If we really wanted to drill down, though, every pro player within the major league system is in tons of national publications anyway. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course notability is not the only criterion--try writing an article based on reliable, verifiable sources on each of the 6150 current minor league American baseball players and I think that the effort will be futile, and that the deletions will flow. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 03:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

• I also think this should be set back to highest level of professional sports. MLB drafts in 50 rounds each year, with 30 teams picking in each round (Plus all the sandwich picks etc). That's more than 1500 new players each year, who will displace 1500 existing players in the farm system. Just based on the sheer number, I dont think these players are notable. Corpx 19:00, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• • • Why not? If someone really wants to go ahead and research all those players and write the articles.. then let them.. It doesn't harm anyone nor is Wiki running out of server space so that it couldn't accomidate these articles. Spanneraol 21:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Balancing artists and other creative professionals

At present we say "The person's work either (a) has been displayed in a significant exhibition or as a monument (b) has won significant critical attention, or (c) is represented within the permanent collection of a significant gallery or museum of more than local significance." This would seem to mean that an artist or photographer who had one work that was once displayed was notable. Now maybe we want to consider any professional with any success in any field as notable, but if we are trying to be selective it seems wrong to have a much laxer criterion for artists/photographers than others. Maybe we need to say something like: "(a) has been displayed as a significant monument or in several significant exhibitions or (b) has won significant critical attention, or (c) is represented within the permanent collections of several galleries, museums or libraries of international significance". What do people think? NBeale 22:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

How about: The person's work either (a) has been displayed in a significant exhibition or monument (b) has won significant critical attention, or (c) is represented within the permanent collection of a significant gallery or museum of more than local significance. --Kevin Murray 09:12, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't see how that helps, if anything it makes it marginally worse. We'd then have a situation whereby someone whose photograph was once displayed at a monument was notable, but someone whose work was published in the top-ranking journal in a major field wasn't. NBeale 17:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Then how about: The person's work either (a) has been displayed in a significant exhibition or as a significant monument (b) has won significant critical attention, or (c) is represented within the permanent collection of a significant gallery or museum of more than local significance. --Kevin Murray 17:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Well I think the "as a significant monument (b) has won significant critical attention" part is fine. But:

1. Is simply having one work displayed in one significant exhibition or collected in one significant gallery or museum enough?
2. Shouldn't we have something that works for authors as well as artists and photographers? And ideally perhaps inventors, though I'm not sure how best to handle this.

Great to get some wider input on this! NBeale 21:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Collaborating on solving the problem(s)

I think there are 2 related issues with this definition:

1. It seems to give a criterion for artists/photographers/sculptors which is significanty different from that for other creative professionals
2. The notability requirements are much weaker.

Let's take an example: The V&A decides to have a 1-day display of socks decorated by schoolchildren. Emily (aged 9) has a sock so displayed. She is now notable in WikiPedia (for ever). Jemima (8) , whose sock was not quite so well done, donates it to a regional museum of childhood of which her aunt happens to be a Trustee, and they keep it (undisplayed) in their collection. She is also Notable. So maybe what we really mean in (a) is "work has been a significant monument or the subject of a significant exhibition", and (c) should then perhaps read "represented within the permanent collections of several galleries, museums or libraries of international significance"? NBeale 15:35, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Sure enough a major museum has now announced a photogrpahy competition which will make thousands of otherwise unknown photographers "notable". Shall we try this amendment and see if anyone else can comment on it? NBeale 05:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion: several works, several shows; to say has been itself the subject of a major exhibition is probably setting too high a bar. DGG 06:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I basically agree though if they have been the subject of a major exhibtion this would be notability as well. So how about: "The person's work either (a) has been a significant monument or the subject of a significant exhibition or (b) has won significant critical attention, or (c) is represented within the permanent collections of a several significant galleries, museums or internationally significant libraries." NBeale 20:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

How about working from NB's proposal as suggested here with adds in bold and deletes in strikeout (where practical):

"The person's work meets one of the following conditions: (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a prominent feature the subject of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collection of a several significant notable: gallery, museum or internationally library." Note: changes from plural in section d. --Kevin Murray 22:40, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Exisiting:

"The person's work either (a) has been displayed in a significant exhibition or as a monument (b) has won significant critical attention, or (c) is represented within the permanent collection of a significant gallery or museum of more than local significance.

I think we're making progress but not there yet. (b) seems to me to be too weak: the exhibition of vox. pop. photos planned for the Tate might well have one photo that became a prominent feature for reasons completely unconnected with the quality or notability of the photographer (eg notable subject, egregiously bad photo...) How about "a substantial fraction of a significant exhibition". (d) also is too weak: if Jemima's sock stays in the V&A she becomes notable. I think, along the lines DGG suggests, we need several notable galleries, museums or libraries, not just one (or even two). NBeale 06:26, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I wish we had something more exact than "significant" -- this can be either much too weak or much too strong or anywhere in between, & itneeded mean the same thing in all 4 uses. Signif. critical attention can go by the usual WP definition of 2 or more nontrivial RSs, except that then the question become the meaning of "nontrivial" because there are many mentions of artists included as paragraphs in a list, which is probably too weak, but the "articles primarily devoted to the person" criterion is probably too high a bar. DGG 01:34, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of socks, there's a a boot of Peter the Great's that has been making the rounds of costume collections for many years. DGG 01:36, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The issue is that while the sock example sets far too low a bar, normally getting a single work of art into a major museum's permanent collection is an exceptional event. Increasing (d) to "several" or even "multiple" will eliminate many major artists whose work is discussed in major art journals and even mainstream press's art pages. These artists would still qualify under (c), which I think is right, but even as it is (d) is as high or higher a barrier than (a-c). -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 03:39, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I've been away from this page. How about: (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries, museums or internationally significant libraries." NBeale 05:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

"The person has received...honors"

• The person has received significant recognized awards or honors.

Does this clause apply to those who have inherited titles? There's an ongoing debate over whether baronets, the lowest rung of inherited titles in the United Kingdom, are notable by virtue of their title alone. Is the term "received" intended to include honors received by virtue of inheritance and primogentiure? Or does it only apply to those who've received honors due to their own activities? There's a concern that interpreting this to include inherited titles would result in systemic bias because most nations don't have them. ·:·Will Beback ·:· 20:50, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Probably not, because Wikipedia is not a genealogy database; as I recall certain proposed guidelines on the topic were deliberately skewed in favor of a British nobility. Feel free to drop some examples on AFD. >Radiant< 14:25, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Personally I don't think baronets (after the first) are automatically notable. However, peers all were until recently, as they were all Members of Parliament and therefore meet other notability criteria. -- Necrothesp 15:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

If you inherit a title you are not receiving an award or honor. The title is only awarded to the first holder. NBeale 07:54, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Is notability inherited?

Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Jr. was notable only by birth, but his death was page 1 in the New York Times. Notable or not notable? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 03:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

If a substantial article can be written on someone using reliable sources, they're probably notable, even if they only get attention because they are related to someone else. If such an article can't be written, they're probably not notable. I don't think that there's any special "inherited notability" case that must be considered seperately. -Amarkov moo! 03:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, one would assume that the amount of coverage he got was in relation to his fame. It's sorta like Paris Hilton before all her stuff went down - famous for being famous. Yes, it is inherited in some circumstances, and no, we don't handle those cases well. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:40, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The criterion is used more for people who can be assumed to be notable because the children of exceptionally notable parents even though sources are not there yet--in that sense it applies to children of royalty, and heads of state. Whether it applies to anyone else in the same way is debatable; I think for children of wealthy people and movie stars and the like we would do best to wait for references, in which case its no longer inherited. In the Dodge case, there were the accounts, so it has nothing to do with inherited. I think we must still stick to the principle that any person with 2 RSs is notable. I find it highly counterintuitive-I think it leads to peculiar results-I think the community ignores it when it applies to news figures and crime victims and the like. But the more I see of AfD the more I think that firmly maintaining this as sufficient in absolutely all cases and sticking to it would eliminate about half the unnecessary wikidrama--it would have completely eliminated all of the very time consuming repeated afds of the last few weeks. DGG 06:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

If there was a page 1 story, I'd consider that substantial non-trivial coverage, so he gets in on that. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Another example for discussion: this 3-year-old. The title confers notability based on our guidelines, but I'm still not certain it makes a ton of sense to have an article about him - what exactly could it say, beyond the current content? JavaTenor 04:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest merging such articles to a larger article on parent or family, on grounds that there isn't all that much information available on most of such subjects. >Radiant< 11:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

City councillors

An attempt to extend inherent notability to the councillors of large cites was smartly reverted. This arose because a group of editors wish the councillors of large Canadian cities to be notable. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eli El-Chantiry for example. Large is defined by them at 100,000 which is small even in UK terms - even little old England would consider large as 750,000 up! I see no reason to extend notability to city councillors since if they have any sort of profile they should be able to establish notability through WP:RS. Bridgeplayer 21:45, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• I reverted this since there should be consensus. I don't oppose articles on city leaders, but like so many attempts to offer special criteria, I don't see how this can work. I would prefer to defer to WP:N's criteria. --Kevin Murray 21:50, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Regarding Athletes

I believe that the notability guidelines for athletes is too broad and should be more strict. Thousands and thousands of people have played sports around the world professionally, and many are not truly notable. Often articles are created about an obscure footballer or cricketeer, yet he didn't play many games, has little sourcing and few google hits, and the article is only one sentence long. Everyone who has a job does it professionally; why is someone notable just because the job was a sport? Simply playing a sport professionally in a league or equivalent doesn't really make him notable; he may have been only a backup. I'm not exactly sure what the rule should be, but I can help. Any comments are appreciated. Thank you Reywas92^Talk 20:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

• This is too funny, I just suggested to a few other users that this topic be revisited. I too believe we need to address athletes notability in a stricter, yet constructive fashion. I edit a number of articles related to baseball. That being said, the same rational stated above applies perfectly to professional baseball players. //Tecmobowl 00:39, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
• It makes sense to have some broad guidelines which will serve all sports. Can this be done for atheletes here and teams at ORG? --Kevin Murray 15:04, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
• I'm not really sure that WP:ORG comes into play here. A Guidelines page can be established for all sports. //15:16, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

We tried, but it failed a while back, especially with argruements between a few users, me included. It can always be revived, in fact I'm going to look for it right now and try to make it an active proposal. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 19:46, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• Reywas, do you have people turning up, paying money, just to see you work? Sports people are people of interest, even the backups! I'm not sure about common guidelines for all sports, however... other than the overriding need for WP:RS. Professionalism shouldn't always be the guide, especially where sports have transitioned from amatuer to professional fairly recently, or if there is limited scope for professionalism in some sports (ie restricted entry (drafts)/rosters etc). The-Pope 04:50, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Only the best actually get paid to play a game, so the fact that someone is a professional is a handy way to determine who is worthy of note in the field of sports. Similarly, peer recognition or winning an award is a way to determine who is "the best" or worthy of note in other fields. However, these are still just guidelines, so there are certainly professional benchwarmers who may not be notable.--Kubigula (talk) 22:07, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I do agree with raywas, right now the policy we have on athelete is fairly dumb, and everyone who ever played a "professional" game can have articles. The comment I really want to remove is "Competitors who have played or competed at the highest level in amateur sports." Seriously with this crtiria, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of college or former college athetles can get articles. That rule is commonly broken in AFD, but still. There is no point in having it. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 19:46, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, what criteria do you suggest then? The issue, IMO, is especially complicated in football (soccer), where there are tens of thousands of notable footballers. Obviously there are certain things a footballer can do that definitely makes him/her notable (for example making an appearance in the English Premier League or FIFA World Cup), but the issue seems to be a bit more difficult further down the tree (for example, League Two, which consists of some professional and some semi-professional teams, consisting of professional and amateur players, some of whom participating in definitely notable competitions like the FA Cup). ugen64 06:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I suggest at the minimum to remove the highest level of amatur sports sentence as it will make wikipedia like a sports amlamac, having thousands of articles of people who never played proffesional. As for soccer, I don't know much about the subject for that, but if they played fully proffessional, or if they were a amateur player who had some gametime in the FA Cup and other competitions, we could keep them. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 06:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me, but at the same time there are some college basketball players (and college football players, etc.) that are much more notable than even some professionals (for example players who were in an NCAA Tournament winning team, nearly all regular players in big conferences like Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and Big 10...). However I agree, that criterion in its current wording is too inclusive and should probably be removed. ugen64 06:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I would tend to suggest, on this subject, that we go back to "How much source material exists?" If the athlete him/herself is the subject of significant coverage, we ought to have a biography of that athlete. If the athlete has no source coverage, or only trivial mentions in context of sources about the team, probably better to cover on a "List of players on the 20XX Somewhere Someteam", and split out as appropriate. Otherwise, we run the risk of pseudo-biographies, and especially now that's a big no-no. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• I think the part about amateur athletes should read : "Competitors who have contributed significantly at the highest level in amateur sports". The way it reads now, I think it maybe leaves the door open for walkons and the mostly bench players. Corpx 16:21, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to remove it as subjective, any college athelete who ever played could be listed, but one thing I agree is that current starters of major Top 25 Division-A teams in basketball and football should have articles, but not like the punter or the backups or very weak teams starters like Temple University or FIU football players, but with one thing, if they fail to reach the top leagues in pros like the NBA, NFL, or starter in the CFL or AFL, they can always be discussed in AFD, or just prodding them. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 20:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't need to be blindly deleted without a replacement. I think verifiability cleans up a lot of the lesser athletes, since their university's media guide isn't an independent source. (Though yes, there's still a hole you could drive a truck through for getting amateur athletes in, or at least as far as AfD.) A criterion for amateur athletes needs to be in there, so I'm reverting. —C.Fred (talk) 18:03, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Another issue is about players who are "fully proffesional" and related wikiprojects guidelines. Minor league baseball players for example, WP:BASEBALL consider them non-notable, while it meets the fully proffesional part, same with youth soccer players and WP:SOCCER consider them mainly nn. Maybe a mention of that should be appropiate, as they are the experts in the subject. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 19:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I restarted discussion on Wikipedia:Notability (athletes). Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 01:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm cautioning people not to be too fast to resurrect old pages....people need to agree and know about it first. Anyway, I don't see why athletes need their own guideline. It's the same issue as with members of any notable group whether that's a corporation's executives, members of an art movement, political party, or a musical group, etc. They must have their own notability. If each of these groups had their own notability guideline we would have rule WP:CREEP on a large scale. If there's anything special that makes things different with athletes you could just include a few words or a section in the overall notability of people article. Wikidemo 23:34, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Baby actors

I'll admit I don't follow this page hugely, so apologies if this has already been discussed. I spotted recently - although I can't remember where! - an article for a set of twin babies who'd "played" characters in various shows. In my view they're non-notable, seeing as they nothing more than living props. I feel they fail the significant part of "With significant roles in notable films, television, stage performances, and other productions" the notability criteria for actors. They even fall below something like Moose (dog actor) because at least Moose "acts". But yeah, in my view, if they're just there as babies they should be deleted, if they grow up to do some kind of acting in a notable show, they can be kept. Thoughts? HornetMike 16:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete all. It is unlikely that a baby has played a significant role in anything. Can you give us links to some examples? Reywas92^Talk 16:59, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

A quick glance around the soaps provides us with: Isabelle Earnshaw, Niamh Earnshaw, Kevin Curran (actor), Matthew Silver and maybe Morgan Whittle and Alex Stevens. HornetMike 17:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Dear god, AFD them all. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 19:47, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Inherently notable

I started Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John T. Walker and from the feedback it appears I have missed reading Wikipedia:Inherently notable. I am unable to locate this Wikipedia policy does anyone know where it is, or what it is called? Jeepday (talk) 18:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

this was about an Episcopal Church Bishop. Bishops of organized religious denomination are in general written about fairly extensively in reliable sources, so it can be reasonably assumed that such sources exist. That they may be difficult to find if they involved the pre-web era is not a reason to conclude they do not exist. The standard for inclusion in WP is verifiability, not verified. DGG (talk) 01:14, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

On Notability

What is the significance of this guideline? Why is wikipedia concerned with excluding articles about non-notable people? What harm would be done if we included baby actors and mechanics and housewives? In my opinion wikipedia can only benefit from more information. The concern should be with verify-ability and not notability. Notability itself implies a philosophical bias. Does anyone agree? -ShadowyCabal 07:46, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Many people agree. If you read through the archives at WT:N and other places, you will find the similar points being raised. However, the current consensus is that we need a notability threshold. Verifiablity is not enough - I could write a detailed and verifiable article on the history of my car, but that would do little to further the encyclopedia.--Kubigula (talk) 22:14, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

The articles about important people are harmed by the others: it implies that we will accept an article about anything at all, that we are merely a non-critical directory or blog, and that nothing here can be trusted.We are trying to be an encyclopedia--a reasonably reliable source of information about things that people will want to use an encyclopedia for. There is a place for MyPages, and there is a place for an encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 01:11, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Ditto on DGG, wikipedia in my opinion will benfit from less or the equal amount of information. Remember we are trying to build an encyclopedia, not a people directory. If we add info on everything, then wikipedia will be a utter joke, and no one will go there unless they want to add the history of themselves. Most admins, including me will leave the project if that ever happens, and wikipedia will likely decay until evenually it shuts down. A notabilty guideline is one of the most important things we need. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 19:54, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Agreed as well, with all of the above. There's already Myspace, blogs, forums, free-hosting services, hell even Usenet, if you want to just go write about anything that catches your fancy. Wikipedia is deliberately not like any of those things, and has a narrower scope. That's a strength, not a weakness. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:05, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The Military Cross

Does winning the Military Cross confer notability? (It's the third highest medal of the British Army; before the introduction of the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross in 1993 I believe it was the second.) I ask because my grandfather won it in the war serving with the Royal Engineers near Bologna, and someone said there should be an article about him. (He later went on to work as an architect building municipal swimming pools and things, and served as a district councillor.) If it does confer notability, though, it would probably be a WP:COI for me to write it. Marnanel 19:52, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the Military Cross would confer notability and I beleive you are correct about the WP:COI. Jeepday (talk) 13:39, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Notability of "significant recognized awards or honors"

I having a discussion with the creator of Michael Pelster, an article which has been tagged for speedy deletion under WP:CSD#A7 (no assertion of notability), and the discussion has brought up a point which I was hoping to clarify. Apologies if I'm asking in the wrong place, or if this has been asked previously.

The creator asserts that the subject is notable because he has received a scholarship from his university. However, lots of students receive scholarships and most universities hand them out. Does an undergraduate scholarship scheme fit the definition of "significant recognized awards or honors"? I'd be inclined to say no, simply because of the sheer number of university scholarships, but I'd appreciate it if someone more knowledgeable than me had an answer! --kateshortforbob 21:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I would say that is absolutely not the type of "significant" award that is contemplated here. An appropriate award would be some type of peer recognition that would almost certainly guarantee that a person would be the subject of substantive coverage in reliable sources - and thus that an encyclopedic article could be written. An academic or athletic scholorship does not do it.--Kubigula (talk) 22:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your quick response. As I mentioned, I sort of expected that would be the case. It seems like the deletion of this article may be being contested, but hopefully this information will make the situation clearer. --kateshortforbob 23:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I want to confirm this. National Merit scholarships, however honorable--and they are certainly highly honorable since they saw fit to award me one--are not sufficient for notability, nor are almost any undergraduate awards. Undergraduates have on rare occasions been notable for their undergraduate careers, if they have done something to warrant widespread media recognition, but there is nothing in that article to so indicate. Nor could anyone familiar with the contents of Wikipedia have reasonably thought that there was.DGG (talk) 07:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I would go even further than that. I have several friends who received very notable scholarships (such as the Rhodes Scholarship, clearly among the most "significant recognized awards or honors" a young person can have). Today, some of them are notable and some are not, but I don't think that any of them would claim that their notability (at least in the sense that it is used in Wikipedia) is based upon their having received that honor. Receiving a scholarship is often more a recognition of the person's potential than of the person's accomplishments. Notability should be based on the latter, not the former. Hopefully, many of today's scholarship recipients will go on to do great things and become notability for their contributions to society, but merely receiving the scholarship doesn't make them notable. -- DS1953 ^talk 14:32, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

News sources which publish obituaries

Newspapers of an area usually print short obituaries about people who died recently. That includes every Tom, Dick and Harry who died in that town on that day - we've all seen those (example). This doesnt establish notabilty, right? Are there any policies for this? Or can we use the biographical info mentioned in these obituaries as valid references? --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:34, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

• No, it doesn't. The relevant policy is that Wikipedia is not a memorial. >Radiant< 15:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks, thats what I was looking for. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:48, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Since the PDF that Matt linked is about my great-grandfather Edward Werner, the vice-Minister of Finance of Poland, I would point out that this particular source is not your standard family-written death notice (those are listed on the righthand side of that particular page), but an actual New York Times staff-written obituary.(pdf) As such, it is my opinion that this particular one is a valid reference. I would appreciate other opinions on the matter. --Elonka 16:41, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that obituaries can be reliable sources in unusual situations such as this one: staff written articles that establish notability in a respected publication will be fact-checked and vetted by the editorial staff. Note also that Matt57, Elonka, and (to a lesser extent myself) all have some prior interactions on this subject that deserve to be taken into account. Durova^Charge! 16:57, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I didnt mention which article it was so we can get some unbiased nuetral opinions. That looks fine to me too, if its a staff written obituary, it could be included. I didnt realize it was. I thought its a regular obituary. Looks like its not. This is information that we can use in the article. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 18:15, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

even within staff written obits, there are some of particular importance and authority: the NYTimes and the London Times come to mind. These are deliberately prepared and intended to be summaries of record and can always be used, and always show notability.

obituary notices in professional publications too are usually a reliable indication of notability--indeed, they are often the only truly reliable source for those in a special subject. DGG (talk) 03:32, 16 August 2007 (UTC).

Well, yeah. He is not notable because he has an NYT obituary; rather, he got an NYT obituary because he was notable. >Radiant< 09:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Most major city daily newspapers do not publish staff-written obituaries on "very Tom, Dick and Harry who died in that town on that day". They have a section of paid obituary notices for memorials. The staff-written obituaries typically meet the journalistic standards of the newspaper, including fact checking. Newspapers in smaller towns often simply print the obituary notice prepared by the funeral home and family. If you are looking to evaluate the value of the obituary as a source, you need to distinguish between the two, which may be difficult in some cases. And even a staff-written obituary may use family members as sources for at least some of the information. -- DS1953 ^talk 14:16, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

On the subject of Edward Werner specifically, I agree with Elonka and Radient here, he received an NYT obituary because he was notable, and it is an excellent 3rd party source for the article. •CHILLDOUBT• 10:59, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I see no problem with using that obituary where it is relevant, for example, on Edward Werner, who was clearly notable. What it's doing on Stanley Dunin, I've no idea.Proabivouac 01:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC).

It's on the Dunin article as a ref to support that Dunin's grandfather was Vice-Finance Minister, so I guess its appropriate. Dunin's notability doesnt depend on this -- it obviously wouldnt be nearly enough. He's a noted applied mathematician. DGG (talk) 19:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Minor Leaguers

The way it is worded now, it means all minor leaguers who ever played a game meets WP:BIO as the minor leagues are a proffesional league. There are tens of thousands of former and current minor leaguers who meets that criteria, the guidelines for WP:BASEBALL which are the experts of the subject says that they aren't notable unless they are a top prospect or broke minor league records, etc and tons of them have been deleted before in AFD.

Can this be edited to include minor leaguers from all sports, or that some wikiprojects has their own guidelines to certain articles that are borderline here, as some people consider the minor leagues not to be fully proffesional. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 17:55, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, I think so. AFD precedent is very much relevant here. >Radiant< 08:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

No, it's WP:BIO that matters. There should not be different rules for baseball than other sports. The major/minor league issue is an anomaly that only applies to a handful of sports, and only in North America. The long-established criteria for sportspeople on WP:BIO correctly applies similar standards of notability to those applied to people across the board: individuals are legitimate article topics if people not personally connected with them are likely to want to look them up from time to time. This is clearly true of minor league baseball players, indeed it is more true for them than for categories of sportspeople whose eligibility for articles is not disputed, such as lesser-known Olympic competitors. Brandon97 13:42, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• BIO is based upon precedent. If this page says one thing, but the common outcome on AFD says another, that's the time to fix this page for stating wishful thinking rather than fact. >Radiant< 08:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

If this were the case we'd have no special rules. WP:N is clear that the special rules prevail, and this has always been held at AfD not just about baseball players but everything. If you want to challenge the workgroup's authority to make the rules, I think that would be for WP:VP. If you think thy should change the rules, discuss it at the workgroup. What rules they ought to have is a matter of informed opinion, unless WPedians in general think their rules incorrect. DGG (talk) 17:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yea I'll likely mention this in WP:VP. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 19:45, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Minor League Baseball players meet the long-established notability criteria for athletes. If the members of the baseball project don't want to write about them, they are under no obligation to do so, but others may do so if they wish. A series of discussions that have been effected by mass participation by a self-selecting group of users who have agreed a common position in advance are not valid as precedents, when they go against Wikipedia's usual standards, as it is impossible to have any confidence that they reflect the will of the community as a whole. Golfcam 00:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

User been blocked indef for disruptive sockpuppetry Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 19:45, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Longevity.

Greetings, I added a longevity section.

I deleted it as 'too specific' for the 'general guidelines' page. But we can discuss this here.Ryoung122 10:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

In the oldest people article, we been having problems with keeping/deleted deceased people by longevity. There is a Wikipedia article for every oldest person in the world, as well as the top 10 living. But what about when the 10th oldest person in the world is deceased. Should their article remain?

Yes, unless there is simply no media coverage or material about them. Also, I find it a bit disturbing to see the 'pro-living' bias. Wikipedia is not a newspaper; it is not a current event. If someone is notable in life, they should also be notable in death...and vice versa.Ryoung122 10:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

It's already decided that every oldest person in the world has their own article, but we need to draw a minmum rank for a landmark decision. Down to the 5th oldest person in the world?

Here's what I nominate:

Strong views:

By rank: Oldest man/woman in the world.

Agree When a person becomes the world's oldest, no matter what country they are from, they are often the subject of enough media coverage that sufficient biographical information can be found for a full article. Cheers, CP 16:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

By geography: Is the oldest man/woman by country (regardless of living rank).

Agree For the same line of reasoning as above. Cheers, CP 16:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Agree for the world...disagree for the nation. See discussion part II after this one. "Oldest in France" is significant; 'oldest in Monaco' is not.Ryoung122 10:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Somewhat strong views:

By rank: 5th oldest man/woman in the world.
By geograhy: Is the oldest man/woman by region of country (such as U.S. state or province of Canada, etc.).

Agree to first, but not the second. We don't even have a current list of 'oldest by state' for every state. However, if the person becomes a state 'recordholder' (not just the 'oldest living person' in that state) then they should be listed.Ryoung122 10:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Weak views:

By rank: 10th oldest man/woman in the world.
By geography: Is the oldest man/woman in a city..

In my opinion these two are NOT equal in any way. 10th-oldest in the world=1 in 700 million people. Yet how many cities are there? a LOT more than 10 major cities in the world. If we divide the world population by the top 1,000 cities, that would be 'one in six million' people'. So, 'oldest by city' is NOT appropriate. Top-10 should be included unless the person has no media coverage.Ryoung122 10:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Neal 16:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC).

As for the others, I'm not sure yet. If the Gladys Swetland AfD were to be successful, I prepared and delivered a list of similar articles that I would propose for deletion, and I specifically left out any that were state/province recordholders - although I left the possibility open for future proposed deletion. As for living people, it's a bit tougher since Edna Parker was nominated for deletion when she was #7, then she moved up to #1. Then again, Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. My hope was that with the AfD. we could have a discussion and set precedents instead of just complaining back and forth on each other's talk pages. So far it seems to be somewhat working. Cheers, CP 16:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Really, I fail to see a need for people other than the oldest man/woman Corpx 18:25, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

By your logic, I fail to see the importance of Sammy Sosa's 66 home runs in 1998. Or Mickey Mantle's 54 in 1961. In fact, Lou Gehrig didn't have as many homers as teammate Babe Ruth, so off he goes, too. Rafael Nadal is just #2 in tennis, so he's not significant, either. Let's also abolish the silver and bronze medals at the Olympics (not first=not notable, remember)?Ryoung122 10:42, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

• Arbitrary cutoff points aren't practical, and tend to be instruction creep. >Radiant< 09:42, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Longevity II

I disagree with the qualitative approach of the above assessment, and offer my own.

1. WP: BIO is a 'guideline', not a rule. Ultimately, 'consensus' of the Wiki community determines notability.

2.Criteria for notability of people A person is generally notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included.

Assessment of notability should not be a technical decision. Instead, it's like trying to choose which baseball players belong in the 'Hall of Fame'. Certain minimum standards are considered 'automatic' inclusion (barring scandal): 300 wins, 3,000 hits, 500 home runs.

In addition, other players who do not meet these standards but nonetheless demonstrated 'peak' talent (such as Sandy Koufax) are also voted in.

I note that standards 'do' change over time. Bruce Sutter was, in my opinion, dubiously elected based on a mere 300 saves, a standard which is less impressive now that Trevor Hoffman has over 500.

However, this is not (yet) the case with this article. If we check the List of living supercentenarians we find that, were Gladys alive today, she would rank fourth-oldest in the world (instead of ninth). At the time of Glady's death, several unusually long-lived persons were alive at the same time. Hence, standards are 'fuzzy', not concrete; a ranking alone should only be one variable. Other variables to consider include actual age and news coverage. If a person remained anonymous and was only known through a statistical records search and their age was not a recordbreaker, then perhaps they should not be included. This is not the case here.

Also, I disagree that the 'oldest person in a country' should automatically be included. Some nations are micro-states; others have huge populations. Being the oldest person in France means a lot more than being the oldest person in Monaco. Even in Belgium, the current oldest person is a mere 108 years old. Although first in the nation, I don't think Marcelle Droogmans yet warrants an article. If she is alive three years from now, her case may be on the cusp.

In the big picture of things,

Therefore, I propose the following general policy guidelines, not rules:

--the person's age should be accepted as validated by an established authority (i.e. Guinness, GRG, IDL) (and not a newspaper or nationalist source) and should be at least 110 years old (supercentenarian status). This would exclude the 'oldest living person' for places like Norway or Belgium in an 'off' year (i.e. age 107 or 108 isn't enough to establish worldwide notability). Exceptions could be made, however, to early historical age cases.

For those that meet the first condition (age 110), I note the raw numbers I have (for data through March 25, 2007):

age 117 and above:5 age 116 and above:10 age 115 and above:23 age 114 and above:63 age 113 and above:132 age 112 and above: 278 age 111 and above (subset of below): 550 age 110 and above: 1054 Before I go further, I might ask: how much coverage is too much? True, just about every major league baseball player ever counts as a 'notable' biography to some. However, this might be a case where I agree with the 'other crap exists' argument. The fact is, for better or worse our society as a whole values sports figures far more than elderly icons. Perhaps 'supercentenarians' are better to compare to a lesser-known sport (perhaps tennis). We know the top-10 players, maybe top 20 but that's about it.

Basically, we can say that age 110 'alone' is not enough to establish notability. However, a line at age '114' (just 63) is too small (not even a top-100). Therefore, I propose that anyone who has reached the verified age of 113 should be considered notable and warrant an article, UNLESS that person's age came only from official statistics and their identity remained anonymous to the public (i.e. Adelheid Kirschbaum) and they did not attain a first-position rank (i.e. Matthew Beard). Dropping these cases would reduce our tally from '132' to perhaps 100.

However, if we set the bar that high, it would exclude many cases that received extensive media coverage (such as Antonio Todde). Germany's national record is under 113. Sweden's national record is more than a year below Ms. Swetland's age (113 years 240 days vs. 112 years 150 days). Also, since only 10% of supercentenarians tend to be male, we could perhaps lower the bar to age '111' for males.

Also, I don't like to make 'strong delineations' based on numbers alone. I feel that age "113" should be automatic inclusion. However, we see that often there aren't even ten living 113-year-olds in the entire world (currently we have seven). Thus I would prefer an age-merit cutoff of about 112.5 years. Why? This is halfway between age 110 (lots of cases) and 115 (extremely rare). Age '112.5' or 112 years 180 days would be enough to assure that anyone in the 'top 10' would be included.

Ok, but what about persons such as Irmgard von Stephani? She is just 111 currently, but Germany's oldest person, and a strong personality with lots of media coverage. Germany (with 80+ million people) is an important nation. Thus, I suggest being the oldest person in nations with 50 million or more persons (and remember, since cases must be validated, this basically means the USA, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, and Italy). But then what about Spain? Australia? Is Portugal enough? Is Switzerland too small? Where do we draw the line? Why do we have an article on Rosa Rhein...Switzerland's oldest person?

To me, there are simply too many intuitive calculations to simply make arbitrary checklists. However, to review, a general guideline for inclusion:

--the case must be validated by a reputable, independent authority --the person's age --the person's national ranking status --the person's world ranking status --whether the person received significant media attention outside their local area

In summation, I consider age 112.5+ to be a 'definite' for an article, unless there simply is no material available. For those aged 110-112.49, I suggest inclusion of those that were the 'oldest living man'; the oldest person in a major nation; and those that were vaguely famous for something other than age.

Always keep

• World's oldest person titleholders
• World's oldest man titleholders
• Persons 113 and over whose life garnered significant national media coverage
• Those in the 'top 100' all-time (and if they drop out, nominate them for deletion to see what the consensus is then)
• Those who attained a top-5 world ranking

May Keep

• Oldest person in a major nation
• Anyone 112.50 to 112.99 whose life garnered significant national media coverage
• Those notable for other reasons (i.e. WWI veteran, painter, etc).
• Those who attained a 6-10 world ranking

Might or Might Not Keep

• Those aged 112.00 to 112.49
• Oldest in a U.S. state (major states yes; minor state no)
• Those who attained an 11-25 world ranking
• males aged 111

Might not Keep

• Females aged 110 and 111 not known for something else (i.e. 'Canada's oldest person)
• Those not national recordholders and not known for something else (i.e. Ida Fraboni-Saletta is Italy's second-oldest person and aged 110)
• Those for whom no biographical material is available (i.e. Yasu Nishiyama other than what would appear in a list or chart
• Those whose top ranking is less than the top-25 (my GRG list gives the ranking for EVERY supercentenarian at death)

So, with Gladys Swetland, we have a top-10 living, top-100 all-time, aged 113+ with significant media coverage. Hence, I say keep...and I've suggested where the bar should be set for other cases.

Sincerely, Robert Young Ryoung122 10:21, 24 August 2007 (UTC Ryoung122 10:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you know why I said oldest woman/man by country and not a specific age to live to be? Saying "one must live to be 112.50 in order to get a Wikipedia article" is somewhat ludicrous. Because you're thinking about how many articles there will be in the future, in persay, 10, 20, 50 years from now. It's like as if we will have to raise the bar every decade. If this were 100 years ago, we would probably be setting the bar at 105 instead. Now you probably meant to set a timeframe. Perhaps any 108 year-old in the 1800s is eligible for a Wikipedia article?

Whereas... the oldest woman/man by country will always be 1 person (regardless of age). And I guess I should have been more specific than to say, medium-sized country or larger. True enough, the oldest woman/man in Vatican City is likely not so significant. And not all countries will have kept records like that to begin with, so obviously it will be the more powerful countries. Neal 11:35, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

The whole problem with that argument is, how big does a country have to be to be 'significant'? I note that Gladys was the oldest person in the state of Pennsylvania...a state of some 12+ million people (or more than Belgium). Note also that a 'top-10' ranking is 'self-limiting.' It doesn't matter if it were 'top 10' in 1890, 2000, or 2090...whatever the standards are then, the case would be judged in the context of its time. Thus, age '105' in 1837 might be significant but age '105' in 2005 is not. Ryoung122 05:32, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, the countries where we know the oldest man/woman is just a percent of all the countries in the world. However, I did not say all countries have to have an oldest man/woman, as that would be quite a lot. I just meant an oldest woman/man of a country is eligible for an article. However, I believe countries should be based on Wikipedia editors and readers. If there are no people on a micro-state island that use or contribute to Wikipedia, then no one else should feel obligated to make an oldest man/woman article for their country. So... for a small country like Switzerland, if the Wikipedia contributors of Switzerland wanted to make their own oldest man/woman articles for their country, I'd let them do so. Basically I'm putting it up as a Wikipedia population as well, since Internet is not brought up equally in all parts of the world.

As per listing all top 10 living, the problem witht that is, the sizeable amount of articles within the next 50 years. The 10th oldest person in the world cannot hold their title than the 9th oldest person in the world, etc. So when the oldest person in the world had her title for only 4 days in January 2007, the 10th oldest person in the world could not have been that rank any longer. Even when the oldest person in the world was oldest for 2 years and 90 days from May 29, 2005, to August 27, 2007, at 1 point, 2 3rd oldest person in the world, both 115, died within 3 days of each other, so everyone below them moved up ranks. While having an article for all 10th oldest person in the world and above is fine for now, I'm a bit worried about the future. Over time, the length of oldest person in the world is shortening; same with the 10th. I just can't imagine how many articles will be created within the next half of the century or so. Neal 19:07, 25 August 2007 (UTC).

Reality TV star noteability guidelines

Hello, I've just created a seperate page proposing guidlines for noteability of Reality TV contestants and if they should have their own articles. I did this due to the mass number of articles being created and deleted on these subjects in recent months, and confusion among editors if they are in fact noteable or not. You can read this here. All edits and comments on the talk page are welcome. Thanks, Dalejenkins | 18:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC).

Is it really needed? I think pretty much anyone who has attained notability outside the appearance on a show should be notable Corpx 18:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, as many are confused about the noteability of contestants, as all pass certain elements of WP:BIO but may not essentially deserve and individual article. Dalejenkins | 18:32, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

It was rejected, I was one of the few who supported it though. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 14:42, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (Reality Television participants)

Wikipedia:Notability (Reality Television participants) has been proposed as a new guideline. Are these people significantly different enough to merit a new guideline? Or is this rule creep --Kevin Murray 18:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)