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Defining coverage

The bit in the GNG that fails to define significant coverage has long irritated me, and I have a proposal for fixing that. The current version says:

• "Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material.

I suggest changing that to something like:

• "Coverage" is the amount of information in the source that is realistically usable in an encyclopedia article. The source must address the subject of the article directly and in detail. To qualify, the extent of the source's coverage of the article's subject must be significant; this means that the source contains more than a trivial mention of the article's subject, although the subject does not need to be the main topic of the reliable source.

(Note that I have removed the pointless "NOR" phrase as it is never an issue in determining SIGCOV, or even notability in general. NOR's banned everywhere, not just for the GNG.)

What do you think? Does this definition reflect what you are actually looking for? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:54, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I am not prepared to agree with the precise wording but I do agree that that clarification of the concept of "significant coverage" would be useful. Cullen328 (talk) 08:11, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

We need the NOR part. We don't want editors trying to scavenge claims of notability because their own synthesis of one or more sources; it needs to be reiterated even if NOR is a standard policy aspect. Same with the key focus on "significant coverage". There are lots of topics that get coverage, but that coverage is not significant enough for WP. Masem (t) 12:38, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Note, I'm not against more clarity on sigcov, just that these are necessary parts.

I would add that I think "usable in an encyclopedic article" may be better to say "usable in an encyclopedic article within Wikipedia's content policies." One could argue, for example, massive stat tables from sporting figures make them notable in an encyclopedia for that sport, NOT#STATS would make them irrelevant for us. Masem (t) 12:42, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't strongly object to leaving NOR in, but I think "within Wikipedia's content policies" is more relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

How are editors even using SYNTH/OR to assert a particular source has SIGCOV of a subject? I've never understood the reasoning behind this particular phrasing, which seems to emphasize something no one is actually doing with any single source. This results in claims that any amount of detail beyond a literal directory entry is "SIGCOV" because it's possible to restate the content without doing any OR (this will be true for literally every source). JoelleJay (talk) 00:25, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I couldn't say that this never happened (e.g., before I started editing 17 years ago), but I don't think it's happening now. The story I remember being told, when I asked about this (approximately forever ago) is that someone might try to combine two tweets about getting married today and being in a city into a (possibly false) statement that they were married in that city, but (a) those tweets would be self-published and non-independent anyway, and (b) it's still not about how much information we have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

That still requires synthesis of multiple sources, too...plus, the current wording doesn't even disallow sticking in both pieces of info somewhere in a bio, it just says not to synthesize them. JoelleJay (talk) 02:21, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Once you've got an article to stick them into. The problem of SYNTH isn't really a problem of whether to have an article in the first place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:40, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I also think retaining the link to WP:NOR is important. It's what ties the GNG (which, let's remember, is a subsection of a guideline) back to a core content policy. I've personally never had difficulty understanding the existing definition—significant coverage is something you can derive encyclopaedic material from without OR—so I'd be interested in hearing what exactly you feel is ill-defined. – Joe (talk) 13:32, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

We need a clearer definition because not everyone understands it. Consider, e.g., Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 73#Definition of "significant coverage" and the "mammoth ANI thread" that prompted that. Look at the disagreements: "a paragraph or so" vs "Significant does not mean length" vs "disagree that a single paragraph constitutes WP:SIGCOV". Note the demands for SIGCOV to encompass the "quality" of the sources, which an editor asserts must provide "analysis" of the subject (i.e., not merely coverage, or even coverage that could be useful for writing an article, but a particular type of coverage; effectively, these editors say that SIGCOV is another way to spell secondary).

Of perhaps more importance, our failure to provide a decent definition results in many editors (and not just in that discussion) saying things like "Significant coverage means whatever the median AfD discussion determines it means" or "The definition of "significant coverage" is simply that if a particular editor thinks that a topic is notable then any coverage is significant, but if that editor thinks that a topic is not notable then no coverage is significant" and similar comments. When multiple editors, over several years, are making cynical comments like that, we've failed to provide guidance in the guideline.

I suggested in 2014 that we keep the NOR line and merely change the words "extract the content" to "write an encyclopedia article on the subject", but editors seemed uncertain that the point of the GNG was to identify subjects about which encyclopedia articles could be written (and to exclude the ones that couldn't be). Another editor made a very similar proposal in 2015. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

A parenthetical note: I haven't, personally, had an opportunity to !vote on one of the proposals mentioned, but I have for long preferred the "write an encyclopedia article" based phrasings over the (to me) more obscure ways to parse "significant coverage". Newimpartial (talk) 01:21, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

@Joe Roe, what would be an example of a single source from which you couldn't derive encyclopedic material without OR? JoelleJay (talk) 02:23, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Any source, it depends on what topic you're trying to cover. I'll take the last source I cited in an article as a random example: Radner, Karen (1 January 2016). "3 Revolts in the Assyrian Empire: Succession Wars, Rebellions Against a False King and Independence Movements". Revolt and Resistance in the Ancient Classical World and the Near East. Brill. pp. 39–54. ISBN 978-90-04-33018-4.. This contains significant coverage of several Assyrian kings, and could plausibly be used to make a case for their notability, including one pretender that was flayed after his fall from power. But if I was trying to write on article on flaying in the Assyrian Empire, for example, I couldn't use this source without say synthesising the three passing mentions of it in this source with other sources to come up with some conclusion about the phenomenon in general, or interpreting one of the reliefs illustrated in a figure to conjecture how it was performed, both forms of original research. – Joe (talk) 06:27, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

@Joe Roe, I believe the question is more like "Please name a single source, that would otherwise count towards notability under the GNG, from which it is impossible for an editor to derive any encyclopedic material without violating OR".

The GNG lists several requirements:

• independent
• reliable
• published
• secondary
• significant coverage

You are saying that bad things (i.e., subjects will be deemed notable when they shouldn't) will happen if the sigcov-based NOR mention is removed. So another way to put this is: Please give an example of a source that doesn't count towards the GNG now, due to the NOR phrase, but which would count towards the GNG in the future, were that NOR phrase ever removed in the future. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:58, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

What WAID said, and also, that sounds like a source that does not contain SIGCOV of flaying since it only has three passing mentions, so it wouldn't count towards GNG regardless. JoelleJay (talk) 17:14, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I think we're talking past each other. Significant coverage = "possible to derive encyclopedic material without OR". They're the same thing; one is the definition of the other. We could remove the explicit mention of NOR and it would still function in the same way to start with, because it still means the same thing in most people's heads. But it would make it less clear what the policy basis for this guideline is, and probably lead to semantic drift over time, e.g. towards an arbitrary definition of significant coverage ("three paragraphs is sigcov"). – Joe (talk) 04:35, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm still failing to see how the depth of coverage in a source has any impact on the ability to extract info from that source without using OR? JoelleJay (talk) 04:52, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

If it's not deep enough, anything you got from the source would be OR; if you have to do OR to use a source, it's not significant coverage. It's always seemed straightforward enough to me, but if this discussion shows anything, it's that this guideline supports a wide range of readings, I suppose. – Joe (talk) 05:11, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

So ...SIGCOV is pointless? Because either the source is completely useless, or it counts towards GNG?

Consider the non-significant example given: An article about Bill Clinton says "In high school, he was part of a jazz band called Three Blind Mice". Can you extract any encyclopedic information from that source without violating WP:OR? I can. Consider these potential sentences:

• Bill Clinton played in a band when he was in high school.
• Clinton played in a jazz band.
• Clinton's high school band, called Three Blind Mice, was a jazz band.

Do you see "material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists" in any of those sentences? And since I'm sure you don't, do you think that a source containing only the single quoted sentence is actually "significant coverage"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:14, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

• I don't think you can define significant coverage in purely quantitative terms. I wrote an essay on this at Wikipedia:Minimum coverage, which is at least consistent with what I've seen for articles that are kept as separate articles. Shooterwalker (talk) 02:48, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not sure that "quality of coverage" is, technically speaking, a matter for SIGCOV. What you describe in the essay as needing to "establish the subject's significance to human knowledge" is what secondary sources provide for us.

  Consider it from the antonym: What would insignificant coverage look like? It could easily look like a source that says as little as "Experts agree that this is the most important public health discovery since the germ theory". Such a statement would "establish the subject's significance to human knowledge", and it would be a secondary source, but it's still an insignificant amount of coverage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:07, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  This prompted a thought I've struggled to articulate - one of the competing ways editors want to use "significant coverage" seems to be "coverage that shows a source attributes significance to a subject". For that purpose, the brief sentence above could be considered SIGCOV, while a long anecdote (say from an an RS gonzo journalist) that is clearly long-form description of a subject might not "attribute significance" to that subject and therefore might not be considered SIGCOV.

  Speaking for myself, I think SIGCOV is better positioned to be a requirement criterion for articles than as a means of assessing whether topics are significant/important. Instead, I would prefer to use NOT and to elevate the WP:Credible claim of significance test used in speedy deletion to be more widely deployed in article merger, scope and retention decisions. Newimpartial (talk) 12:19, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  I think that that particular speedy criteria as a stand alone criteria would be problematic outside of it's current limited context. But IMO the notability ecosystem does consider "Degree and scale of real-world scale, prominence, recognition, impact and importance, weighted towards endurance of these qualities." not as a stand alone criteria but as a consideration. GNG sourcing, aside from being the main criteria in it's own right is also an indicator for this criteria.North8000 (talk) 15:28, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  I agree that we shouldn't twist SIGCOV into requiring a claim that the subject is significant. "Significant" is about the coverage, not about the subject.

  For example, we might well have a hundred lengthy sources speculating about who's dating whom, and directly saying that this is an important subject, but that doesn't make Love life of Prince Harry (2011–2012) a suitable subject for a whole encyclopedia article. Editorial judgment still matters. WP:NOT still applies.

  Perhaps the problem is that some (most?) editors want WP:ITSIMPORTANT to be one of the criteria, and since the GNG makes no concessions to that school of thought, they latch onto the single word that sounds closest to it. Thus, in their misreading, SIGCOV doesn't "coverage that isn't insignificant"; it is "significant" and (separately) "coverage", or "coverage of a significant subject". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  IMO the problem is that wp:Notability, to a greater extent than any other major Wikipedia area, is a fuzzy ecosystem (that mostly works) where we don't acknowledge what it does or what it's actual criteria are. Without that, we have eternal unsolvable quandaries such as this thread, AFD quandaries etc. But the good news is that it mostly works.North8000 (talk) 17:27, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  The problem I'm trying to articulate is sometimes you have "quantity without quality", and other times "quality without quantity". Without quantity of coverage, there simply isn't enough there to write an article. But without quality of coverage, you have empty content that doesn't inform readers. The examples I'm thinking of come from working at WP:VG, where you can have an entire news piece that really amounts to a release date for a game, with paragraphs about how anticipated the game is, and no actual facts about the game.

  Either way, my feeling is that trying to frame this in purely quantitative terms if a fool's errand. It's very easy to game a word count by finding a search term, and padding it with enough filler. Some aspect of significant coverage comes from looking at whether the coverage actually says anything. And in my experience, reading the sources for the quality of what they say reflects actual practice at AFD. Shooterwalker (talk) 14:04, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

  When you have an entire news piece that really amounts to a release date for the game, then isn't that "low quantity"? That is, if you count only the quantity of information that it's realistically useful for an encyclopedia article, isn't that an "insignificant" amount of coverage? One encyclopedic fact wrapped in a thousand words is still just one encyclopedic fact. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:02, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

  I do see your point, but I think this is getting into semantics. A thousand words is actually a quantity of coverage, and you would only be able to parse it down to one encyclopedic fact if you were being discerning about quality. In WP:MINCOVERAGE, I'm trying to make the point that quantity-and-quality are intertwined, and both are necessary for significant coverage. A quantity of quality coverage. But if that point isn't coming through, I don't need to keep hitting it. Shooterwalker (talk) 14:14, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

  I suggested at the top that we should consider only – that we consider "coverage" to be an amount of information (which you are calling "quantity"), but that we only count the quantity "that is realistically usable in an encyclopedia article". I think it would be confusing to say that any realistically usable information is "quality" information, but it sounds like that's what you're saying? That is, your "quality" isn't about our usual measures of quality (e.g., a scholarly source is better than a magazine article), but instead is about whether the information is usable? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:35, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

  Yes. I didn't mean the quality of the source (though obviously it needs to be reliable). I meant the quality of the information, or coverage itself. Semantics are tricky, but I'm for whatever words convey the meaning we are going for. We shouldn't just have "empty quantity". We need the coverage to actually say something. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:27, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

  "The quantity of usable content", perhaps? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:05, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Leave the NOR phrase there. It is not pointless, but fundamental. No amount of data substitutes for coverage. You seem to have a long running problem with secondary source content being fundamental in meaning of Wikipedia-Notability.

On quantifying “significant”, I support Wikipedia:One hundred words, and in particular the threshold of 100 words of secondary source content being a minimum quantity for a source to meet the GNG. 100 words is not necessarily sufficient, but a minimum, and less than 100 words should see the source promptly rejected as one of the two GNG compliant sources.

I don’t like the redefining of “coverage” to suit the intent of a guideline. This is called jargon, and increases the barriers to newcomers. However, you’re on a good line of thinking. As an exercise, I suggest cutting the bolded words and trying to explain what is meant without them. SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:26, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Ideally, rather than lay out an explicit minimum that will immediately be conflated with "meet this and you always have sufficient coverage", we would instead have an example of insufficient coverage that happens to be 90 words. Editors (and admins!) regularly claim that basically anything more than a directory entry is "SIGCOV", and that two such things meets GNG, so it would be nice if our example of "trivial coverage" was a little bulkier. JoelleJay (talk) 03:27, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

If you don't like my attempt at "the redefining of “coverage” to suit the intent of a guideline", I'd be happy to hear your own definition of coverage. Undefined terms increase barriers to newcomers, especially when the lack of definition means that someone could (and, unfortunately, they do) say things like "Oh, <subject I'm not interested in> never have significant coverage, because nobody really cares about that subject." WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:26, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

On definitions, as a matter of principle, I want to use wiktionary, and for wiktionary to match m-w.com and oed.com. Wikipedia should use standard English.

I agree with you on the problems with the words “significant” and “coverage”. The first has real real-world ambiguity problems. I am still thinking about “coverage”. For both, if the word doesn’t work, don’t use the word, even if that means using more words. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:36, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe, I tried adding a link to wikt:coverage, but despite evidence in this thread that different editors have (and have also seen other editors express) different and incompatible ideas of what that word means, it's been removed as unnecessary by two editors.

The relevant Wiktionary definition of coverage is "The amount and type of attention given to an event or topic in news media or other media."

Therefore significant coverage would mean "a significant amount and type of attention...".

As the "type of attention" aspect is covered separately (i.e., we want the type of attention to be "from independent sources" and "in secondary sources"), I suspect that for SIGCOV specifically, we could simplify the definition down to the "amount" aspect (possibly "amount that's actually useful in an encyclopedia article", since I suppose ), with the key point that no amount of "but the source [or worse, the Wikipedia editor] said this is extremely significant" being relevant for the specific purpose of SIGCOV. I will be very interested hearing what your thoughts are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:39, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Can you point me to the disagreements of the meaning of “coverage”. It is used 233 times on this page. SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:39, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

These comments might be the most useful to you: a summary from me, the four comments starting here, and this one about editors understanding SIGCOV as being about importance/significance rather than coverage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:50, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure that "quality of coverage" is, technically speaking

I find it all a bit confusing, and I don’t read anyone as stating something incorrect.

I don’t see a problem with the use of the word “coverage”, but I cannot read it as anything but a simple word with no technical application. Where one digs for a hard definition, the result point to newspapers, and I already consider newspapers to be the worst acceptable sourcing, which I guess is not really surprising since the border region of acceptable articles tend to hinge on newspaper articles for sourcing. Where you have a non-borderline article, there is no issue over the meaning of coverage.

I like the term “depth of coverage”, and I read it as implying a layering of information in the source. Not four different pieces of information each capable of standing along, but one that depends on another, and so one.

I dislike the word “significant” much more than “coverage”, and more dislike the catchy shortcut SIGCOV that implies something well defined. I do not think SIGCOV is well defined. “Significant” has overlapping meanings, technical and subjective. I wish to see to tamed by quantification. Two running sentences, or 100 words, of secondary source material, speaking directly to the topic? Four different things said about the topic? 500 words of any kind? “Ability to extract encylopedic content without OR” is right, as a statement made in explanation, but is too tenuous, nebulous, circular, to be a useful instruction for the newcomer.

“Quality of coverage” is not a technical phrase. If it were technical, it would be easy to cite, and there would be citeable measures of it.

Maybe, I don’t think SIGCOV is an important question to solve, not here, where it will be used to AfD and delete articles. I think “two independent secondary sources for any two different pieces of information about the topic” is good enough. It’s good enough for me to pass it at NPR and AfC review. As long as it is not remotely promotional, such as a thing that can be sold, including a song or a book, or a company that sells, or a CEO or founder of a company. I am very generous at accepting an article on a newly discovered variant of a mountaintop algae, and loath to accept an article on a new restaurant. The SIGCOV test is wildly different across different types of articles. SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:23, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I think that it's hard to deal with the confusion over "significant" if we don't have an agreement of what "coverage" means. I agree that coverage shouldn't be confusing, but even something as simple as "you can click through to the dictionary, because it's just the plain old ordinary dictionary definition" doesn't seem to have gained consensus.

I do not mean that "quality of coverage" is a technical phrase. I mean that when you are looking at the GNG, "significant coverage" is either:

• redundant and can be safely removed with no material loss in meaning, –or–
• is not a synonym for either secondary or independent, and definitions that are based on these two 'qualities' are missing the point.

So when someone says "Oh, SIGCOV, that means they've analyzed the subject and concluded that it's important", I think "No, analysis is a quality found in secondary sources, so that's not SIGCOV". I have a similar concern about your "layered depths" idea. Would it be possible for a source to have layered depths and also be primary? If not, then "layered depths" is just another way to spell secondary source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:53, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

A source with layered depths would be a very good secondary source. A “chocolate is better than vanilla” source would be a mediocre secondary source.

I think you’re making too much of “coverage”. How about “significant information”? How can you quantify the significance of some information? I think quantification is important for a guideline for the newcomers.

How about:

A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received direct comment in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.

Do away with SIGCOV. I don’t think any beginner has better understood Wikipedia’s article inclusion criteria by reading the SIGCOV clause. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:01, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

"Direct comment" doesn't work because the standard it sets is so low; it would allow us to count sources whose sum total of coverage of a topic was "John Smith was born in New York" or "John Smith was substituted in during the third quarter". Two sources containing no more information than that would not be sufficient to write an article. BilledMammal (talk) 10:15, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

That’s not secondary source content. SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:58, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe, your proposed re-write doesn't mention secondary sources at all, though I suspect that was merely an oversight on your part.

AIUI the goal with GNG is to find sources that:

• are useful for verifying content in the article (i.e., they're reliable for the content we expect to put in the article),
• contain enough information to write more than a few sentences (this is the "SIGCOV" part),
• result in an article that doesn't have it all the subject's way (i.e., the WP:INDY part), and
• allow us to provide a suitably encyclopedic summary, including context (this is the "secondary sources" part).

Can you understand these as severable components, so that it would be possible to agree that a particular non-independent primary source (e.g., a book-length autobiography) contains "significant coverage" of the subject, even though that source wouldn't count towards notability? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

And

• demonstrate the subject has been considered noteworthy enough in the larger world that someone has published significant, direct attention toward it

JoelleJay (talk) 07:40, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

If the guideline is titled “Notability”, “noteworthy” is too close to be useful in explaining it. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:51, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

"Sources" should be secondary sources…” is enough of a pointer to secondary sources. “Comment” implies secondary source.

If SIGCOV means “contains enough information to write three sentences”, then let’s write that.

I don’t agree the components are severable. All have to apply together for the source to count as a GNG compliant source. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:49, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree, but there are a couple of editors who claim otherwise. The bigger issue, however, is that people do and will see statements like "John Smith was born in New York" or "John Smith was substituted in during the third quarter" as secondary coverage depending on the source it is in; a requirement for direct statements might work, but only if we make it much clearer what does and doesn't qualify as a secondary source. BilledMammal (talk) 10:54, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it is obvious. If it is an objective fact, is it primary source material. If it is subjective, based on the human author, it is secondary. Is it data, or is it information? Data is facts, information contextualises facts. Data is verifiable, and is primary source material, sourceable to the best primary source. Information, an author’s creative, subjective application of meaning to the facts, is secondary source material. SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:43, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

If we codified that in our notability guidelines as part of the proposal I think I could support it, but I'll have to think on it some more, consider some examples of how it would affect AfD discussions. BilledMammal (talk) 13:08, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Examples where it doesn’t work, where AfD will keep an article devoid of secondary sources, are the mountaintop algae variant, and the maternal grandmother of a Roman senator. SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:29, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the components are not completely severable in the final analysis (a source that fails any of the multiple requirements fails all of notability), but we can agree that:

• some sources are primary and independent
• other sources are primary and non-independent

so why can't we agree that:

• some sources are primary and have significant coverage
• other sources are primary and do not have significant coverage

or that:

• some sources are independent and have significant coverage
• other sources are independent and do not have significant coverage?

One of the barriers to understanding what secondary means has been editors confusing it with independence. You ask them whether the source is secondary, and they reply that they're unaware of there being any payment or other conflict of interest.

In this case, one of the barriers to understanding significant coverage is editors confusing it with other requirements for notability. If significant coverage is just an alternate spelling for secondary, then it's redundant and we should remove it. If it's not, then when I ask what SIGCOV looks like, the reply needs to sound different from the reply you'd give if I asked you want a secondary source looks like. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:32, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, since for GNG SIGCOV has to be independent and secondary anyway, and to meet WP:N it cannot fail NOT, it makes sense to also integrate such qualities into the evaluation of what is significant. This helps reinforce what we expect from a single source overall, and can help in circumstances where editors might not recognize more subtle failures in I/S but nevertheless can identify something about the source that "doesn't feel encyclopedic". So coverage that is simply an interviewer's primary observations about the interviewee's appearance during the interview shouldn't be considered "significant" because it's primary (harder to recognize, especially with complicated tenses) but also it's obviously non-encyclopedic (it's clearer to an editor that "[subject] walked in wearing a pastel A-line with paisley detail" doesn't belong in an encyclopedia biography, even if they can't pinpoint why). JoelleJay (talk) 19:21, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

This – for GNG SIGCOV has to be independent and secondary anyway – is exactly the conflation I'm trying to disentangle. I suggest to you that for GNG, the 'countable' sources must be independent, secondary, and SIGCOV, but that SIGCOV could be none of the above (and therefore not 'countable').

Consider an autobiography:

• Does it contain coverage of the subject? Yes.
• Is that coverage significant (doesn't matter whether you measure this in volume or in the subject claiming to be important)? Yes.
• Is it secondary? No.
• Is it independent? No.

Bottom line: At least one answer is 'No', so this is not evidence of notability.

I know that you agree with how this sums up; I wonder whether you could agree with my analysis of the components. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

That's what I'm saying...for SIGCOV to count towards GNG it needs to be those things. Yes things can be SIGCOV without counting toward GNG, I never argued they can't. JoelleJay (talk) 18:07, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad that we agree on this. Now: keeping in mind that my question is about SIGCOV irrespective of whether the source would count toward GNG, what is "coverage" and how do you tell whether it's "significant"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

And my answer above was that there are certain aspects of SIGCOV that happen to also imply other components of GNG. Like simple descriptions of an interviewee's appearance or routine match coverage are not encyclopedic and should not count as SIGCOV, and, separately, such items are often also primary. "Someone discussing primary facts about the subject as part of a coherent commentary" already implies secondariness, but that doesn't mean it can't also be necessary for SIGCOV. Other aspects of SIGCOV may also align with other GNG parts too. JoelleJay (talk) 00:06, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

This is heading towards the territory of warping the definition of coverage as being primary or insignificant not because it is actually primary or insignificant but because you don't like the consequences of allowing it. Match coverage, routine or not, encyclopedic or not, is generally secondary (the broadcast of the game being the primary source on which it is based). —David Eppstein (talk) 00:20, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Match coverage is generally secondary, but in time it become only primary. Live coverage during the game will likely be secondary, until it’s old. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:02, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

@David Eppstein, what makes you think that an eyewitness description of an event as it unfolds is a secondary source?

The hallmark of a secondary source is analysis, not merely a second-hand repetition of what the primary source says. Also, as a practical matter, sports writers are generally watching the game and writing their articles while it happens. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:05, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

See, this is why dogmatism about how sources must be secondary is a bad idea. Nobody can agree on what a secondary source even is.

What makes you think that sportswriters don't put any analysis into any of their articles? —David Eppstein (talk) 16:17, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I think that some news articles about sports contain analysis and are secondary, and others don't and are primary. If it is merely routine coverage ("The red team played the blue team at the red team's stadium. The final score was 3 to 2, with team captain Si Sports scoring the winning point") then I would expect no, or very little, analysis. The World Cup, or the Super Bowl, on the other hand, is not going to get routine coverage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I guess you haven't seen as many blow-by-blow match recaps proffered as SIGCOV as I have. And I didn't say all routine match coverage was primary. JoelleJay (talk) 18:09, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't know any other sports, but for association football ("soccer") the primary/secondary distinction is, or ought to be, quite straightforward. The series of tweets during the game, most of which annouce "what happened", are mostly primary sources (running parallel to the live match streaming commentary). The match-end reports, which offer commentary and analysis, are mostly secondary sources (running parallel to the commentary broadcasts). From a P&G perspective, this seems quite obvious, though I'm sure editors have pushed the line in either directions in the heat of a specific dispute. Newimpartial (talk) 20:07, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with JoelleJay that for the purposes of SIGCOV we should not count the "amount or type of attention" that is not usable in an encyclopedia article. If you have a 500-word-long news story that is mostly funny anecdotes ("A funny thing happened on my way to the awards ceremony...") that happen to contain one or two useful tidbits ("When the emcee announced that Chris Celebrity had won the Big Award..."), then I would not say that we have a 500-word-long source to use. I'd say we have one or two isolated tidbits, which would not count as "a significant amount or type of attention" in my books (though under NBASIC they could be compiled with other useful tidbits to perhaps add up to enough for a whole article). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Why does WAID assert that an autobiography is not secondary? It can be. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:59, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

An autobiography is the author's own original recollections, which is primary. It is possible for it (or some of it) to be secondary, if it is based on previously published documents, but this is not typical. As a first approximation, however, I think it's best described as a primary source. So do universities, e.g., [1] [2] [3] [4] and books, e.g., [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm actually not convinced that this source-level approach works, and that an autobiographical work can be assigned in toto as primary or secondary. I have read a number of such works as an editor, and find that most of them interleave statements for which they are a primary sources (what the person remembers) and statements for which they are secondary (recounting and analyzing what others have said). While the standards of citation within a typical autobiographical work are much lower (to nonexistent) when compared to, say, academic history, it is still generally obvious to my eye when the author (or ghostwriter) is analyzing or synthesizing discriptions made by others versus their own recollections or retrospective rationalizations of their own actions - both of which are, obviously, primary, but the weight of which varies from one autobiographical work to another.

The basic principle, which I think enwiki gets right is that primary-secondary, like bias, is an aspect to be evaluated in relation to specific claims about specific topics, rather than being a homogenous characteristic of a source regardless of the potential context for its use. Newimpartial (talk) 20:24, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

An autobiography can contain many things, and can be used in many ways. The authors own recollections are primary source material, but a source containing primary source material does not mean that the source is entirely a primary source. An autobiography may contain that author's opinions on a topic other than themself, and this material can then be independent, secondary.

An autobiography is a primary source on facts about the author. But this devolves to: Facts are primary source material.

The university sources, I characterise as lies to children.

If anyone is confused, there is an excellent article at Secondary source. If it's wrong, fix it. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:31, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

My comment was only in response to SmokeyJoe's mentioning significance quantification, which I would oppose if this only consisted of a numerical minimum (since that will be gamed).

That said, I think the current sentence on NOR doesn't make any sense both for the reasons you and I seem to agree on, and incidentally also for the same gaming issue inherent to a numerical minimum: certain editors read it as "if this singular piece of coverage is more than a directory entry, and if I can restate it without introducing any novel conclusions, then it is by definition SIGCOV". Having the NOR requirement so prominently definitional in our SIGCOV guidance implies that "the capacity to paraphrase without OR" is the only barrier (beyond "more than a name in a list") to considering a source "significant coverage". And since it is virtually always possible to summarize any singular source without committing OR on its content, the guideline wording suggests an extremely low bar for SIGCOV.

Now, if that clause is actually intended to mean "introducing content from this source into the article will not result in any novel interpretation when positioned alongside material from other sources, then I would argue that that is also not appropriate guidance as worded since a) it concerns a property of the article structure rather than the source itself; b) it requires the existence of other sources already summarized in the article (or worse, requires consideration of how the content would fit within hypothetical future text in the article) and thus is totally useless as a criterion that is supposed to be evaluated for each source individually; and c) basically the only circumstance where it would be impossible to summarize a source without synthesizing an unsupported conclusion via its juxtaposition with other sourced text would be content that is so extraordinarily out of place within the rest of the article that, regardless of where it was placed, it would modify the reader's interpretation of adjacent content. But (c) is basically a test case of our policies of DUE and BALANCE, so if this is actually defining what is significant enough coverage for a source to count towards GNG, we'd be asking for each source to be exceptionally high-quality and so detailed, broad, and even-handed as to provide all the weight necessary to contextualize any possible future article state. JoelleJay (talk) 00:17, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

JoelleJay, I completely agree with you about the problems of how "certain editors read it". In particular, if we don't give a decent definition, then people will be tempted to wikilawyer about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:33, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea. Find a couple of examples of clear consensus to delete where the point of failure was below threshold coverage. I spend some time looking through current AfDs, but didn’t find anything. Typically when the amount of secondary source material in the best sources is small, there are multiple different reasons given to delete. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:32, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

It's common for people to implicitly try to substitute large amounts of trivial or non-GNG mentions in place of GNG coverage. I'll call that "attempted notability synthesis" But that really isn't a case of wp:OR/WP:Synthesis and so the mention of no original research technically isn't relevant to that. Perhaps Masem's point is that despite that, for a typical reader, it tends to reduce "attempted notability synthesis" even if it is not what is covered by no original research. Perhaps some different wording that directly addresses that issue would be better. North8000 (talk) 14:32, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

IMO saying "more than a trivial mention of the article's subject," substantially lowers the bar (or can be used to lower the bar) for significant / GNG coverage and I don't think that that is a good idea. North8000 (talk) 14:35, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

In looking for some of the old discussions in the archives, I found several comments indicating that adding up multiple sources to achieve a total amount of coverage that is significant, even though the individual sources were not significant when considered in isolation, was generally accepted.

I'm not sure if that made sense, but imagine that a subject has to get a minimum of "10 points" in coverage to meet SIGCOV. (A "point" for this illustration is an arbitrary amount of coverage; how you would determine this is irrelevant for this discussion.) All editors would agree that a list of three sources providing 10 + 10 + 2 points is enough to meet the standard. Where they diverge is in whether a list of three sources providing 9 + 9 + 9 points is enough. Back in the day, this would have been accepted; now, I think at least some editors would reject it, even though the total "points" is higher. This latter group is excluding all sources that don't have 10 points, so they look at the first and say 10 + 10 + 2 = 20, so passing, and they look at the second and say 9 + 9 + 9 = 0, so failing. The original understanding was 10 + 10 + 2 = 22 and 9 + 9 + 9 = 27, with both passing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

That concept remains documented in WP:NBASIC "If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability ..." but immediately continues with an ambiguous backtrack ending in a remarkable footnote with a provenance at least as far back as 2006.[11] Editors claiming strict adherence to the guideline obviously ignore this aspect. Thincat (talk) 19:43, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm curious as to what the 9/9/9 AFD was or an example of such.

I do think it helps to talk about the idea of scoring sources, though absolutely would not put that in writing as part of the guideline. But on that, it should not be the total score that matters. For example, for video game characters (particularly female ones) they tend to garner a lot of mention in "list of best X", which do not given significant coverage of the character beyond the brief mention, so at best these score a 2 on this scale. Just because you can find 15 such cases, and score a 30, doesn't make the character notable, whereas three dedicated articles (8s or 9s) that score in the 24-27 range is exactly what we want to see. This relates to the NOR issue I've raised above, because those 8s and 9s are content we can extract encyclopedic information from w/o synthesis, while we're stretching to do that with the 15 2s. Masem (t) 00:08, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@Masem How would 15 2s be "stretching" NOR? Editors routinely cobble together a series of one- or two-sentence mentions in, e.g., game recaps/stats to "meet NBASIC", are you saying those might be violating NOR? And anyway at AfC and AfD SIGCOV is overwhelmingly considered a quality each individual source needs to meet to contribute to GNG, so how would NOR factor into that at all? JoelleJay (talk) 02:26, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

When SIGCOV is considered as a quality of each individual source, and no source whose depth of coverage is not deemed "significant" (according to the speaker's personal opinion, if we are to believe Phil ), then NBASIC is being disregarded (for those subjects to which NBASIC applies, which would not include video games, if those are treated as "products" and therefore fall under WP:CORP). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

With video game characters, we dismiss notability that is attempted to be justified to these types of brief 1-2 sentence mentions and no other clear sourcing under NBASIC, but that itself is tied to NOR that you can't pull notability together like that. I was using that as an example that tied well to your numerical evaluation of sources. Masem (t) 02:46, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

But again, where does NOR factor in in such cases? Do you have a concrete example of what NOR would look like when using a single source, or even multiple sources, where it would not be possible to use the source(s) without doing OR? JoelleJay (talk) 03:03, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Generally, I would expect that we can construct a good outline/plan for coverage of a topic from one, two sources with good significant coverage, with sources offering lesser coverage filling in gaps or other details. So if we're talking a video game character (or generally any fictional character) we are looking not only what can be pulled from the primary (which has zero contribution for notability) but information related to creation and development, and information related to reception as a character. For us, that means we can determine the extent of the article with no original research beyond the act of summarizing. If we only have this piddy bits and pieces, its extremely hard to know how to summarize properly without engaging in OR. Masem (t) 03:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

But how would extracting the info from a given source require OR? Like I said, wide swathes of sportsperson articles are based on a handful of sources that just say "X had this result in this event", "X had this result in this other event", "X was transferred from Y to Z", etc. It's possible to "summarize" or at least prosify these sources without introducing OR, and is thus considered by some as evidence that the coverage in each source is significant. JoelleJay (talk) 04:10, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

It is more related to what you do with material you get from the source. If I have a biographic work about a person (one of the best possible sources with significant coverage), I can flesh out a whole picture about that person from that source without engaging in OR. If all I have about that person is a bunch of mentions-in-passing from varied sources, even if many of them, while I can extract information from each case, putting them together in a cohesive way absolutely does require original research because one is guessing on how all those pieces come together to properly summarize the biography of the person.

Now, once you have the big picture from significant coverage in sources, using these other sources to fill in gaps or expand on more recent information is just fine (eg your sport examples). But otherwise those sources are just rote coverage, which is one of those things we do explicit disallow for notability support because they are rote. We want sourcing for notability to show why the topic merits more than standard reporting or recording. Masem (t) 12:29, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

So, if you have one source that says talks about Alice Expert's childhood and family life, and another that talks about her educational background, and a third that talks about her employment history, and a fourth that talks about her research, then you think that putting all of that together in the usual order becomes "material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:21, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

That's a hypothetical which I think is unusual (where's it's really in depth coverage that is divided between sources.) and maybe not a good basis for advocating that. In reality when individual GNG type sources don't exist the multiple coverages are usual blurbs about commonly covered events....upcoming appearances, books or records released etc.. North8000 (talk) 17:23, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

What difference would it make to OR whether the contributing sources are wholly disparate but also clear SIGCOV, or are what you describe (disparate non-GNG-type blurbs)? JoelleJay (talk) 18:18, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

It's not all that unusual to find a source about someone like Bill Bradley that covers only part of his career. I can't understand why it would ever be consider a NOR violation to use sources that exclusively discuss (aside from perhaps the odd passing mention) only his collegiate sports career, or only his professional sports career, or only his political career, and then to write a whole article based on that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:11, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

While I would be delighted if GNG required at least one source to have "big-picture" coverage and excluded all single-topic mentions, I suggest you check out some of the sportsperson AfDs trending keep right now and the sources being used to allege GNG. It also makes no sense that OR would be synonymous with/a given for non-SIGCOV for GNG subjects but not for biographies, where NBASIC permits "non-substantial" source-cobbling. JoelleJay (talk) 17:15, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

That's a whole 'nother lions den that is enough to make me quit NPP, or to at least leave the sports ones for another NPP victim. North8000 (talk) 17:28, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I should be clear that the situation I describe should be what the end state is for a notable topic after the article has been thoroughly developed. But under the nature if the GNG and the SNGs being rebuttable presumptions of notability, we don't require that type of sourcing for a young article, just source g that we can use to judge if better sourcing will come around. Masem (t) 17:42, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

But GNG isn't a description of the possible end-state of an article, it's the minimum coverage necessary for a standalone and sources do not have to have been incorporated into the text. GNG isn't saying "this extent and type of sourcing is only necessary for a mature article", it's saying "this extent and type of sourcing is necessary for us to even presume additional sourcing exists to establish notability". The criteria can't be used both as a holistic assessment of a mature article and as the bare minimum a subject needs to meet before an article can even be written (that would imply that "GNG predicts GNG"). The subjects of young articles are still required to meet GNG from inception, and when challenged should be able to demonstrate this with sources. JoelleJay (talk) 18:34, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Thats why its important remember that the GNG and SNGs are not the whole of what notability is on WP. The GNG and SNGs are to help judge the potential for notability and to allow creation of possibly notable topics in wikispace to get help from other editors to improve. What I am talking about is that a mature article should not be based on hodge podge sourcing that might be acceptable to pass the GNG at an early state but not sufficient if all sources for the topic have been exhausted. Masem (t) 19:44, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I mean, that would work if "mature" articles were actually held to a higher sourcing standard than new ones, but all P-compliant articles that age out of draftification need to go through AfD and it has been made abundantly clear that "meeting GNG" is always inherently sufficient and one must invoke IAR to even make a NOPAGE argument. Meeting GNG is even sufficient to override violations of NOTDIR/NEWS/INDISC in many cases, with the reasoning that "SIGCOV is SIGCOV" even when it's derived from routine news. This is how we get quote-heavy GAs created entirely from trivial news-about-town mentions, a few adulatory blurbs in one hyper-local newspaper, and a heavy dose of non-independent sources. If we can have articles that "meet GNG" with a couple announcements in the local paper, then one can just add an arbitrary amount of trivial or primary/non-independent coverage to create the appearance of a high-quality NPOV article regardless of whether the topic is actually encyclopedic. JoelleJay (talk) 20:39, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

JoelleJay is right. Notability standards don't go up the better the article quality gets. That's even in the guideline, right? We say that Wikipedia:Notability#Article content does not determine notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Nope, that's not correct, that line does not apply. Notability is a quality of a topic that can't easily be measured, and editors should demonstrate to other editors a topic's notability by using sourcing that provides significant coverage. Early, we allow weaker demonstrations via the GNG or an SNG, but over time, if no further sourcing can be found, and the notability is still in question, deletion is appropriate. That's why both the GNG and the SNGs are all rebuttable presumptions, because otherwise it would be 100% impossible to delete an article that has, perhaps, one source that mentions the topic in passing but in a manner that passes one of the SNGs. Masem (t) 02:22, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

That's not correct? Do you believe that article content does determine whether a subject is notable? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't apply to what we're talking about. As that line says, notability is a function of the topic, not the quality of our article on the topic. But that's not the issue, its about demonstrating sourcing exists for the topic. Remember that we do not require those sources to be present in the article as long as they have been identified somewhere (talk page, AFD) and apply to the topic. That's why looking at the article alone is not sufficient to judge notability. Masem (t) 02:25, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Didn't you just say that the notability standard is determined by the article? Something about "mature articles" (NB: not mature subjects) having a different standard than "new articles"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:27, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Notability for a mature article is not due to the quality of the article but the presence of sources (most likely by this point, worked into the article and not floating on talk pages or AFD). We have old articles (10+ years) that one may call mature but clearly are not demonstrating notability. Masem (t) 02:42, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Notability, according to the guideline, is about whether the sources exist in the real world. It says nothing at all like "For a mature article, it stops being notable if sources haven't been cited yet", nor does it say anything like "For a new article, it's still notable even if no sources have been cited". Notability has nothing to do with what is (or isn't) in the article (or anywhere else on wiki). Notability is about what is (or isn't) available in real-world sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:29, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

For mature articles where there is some sourcing that points to meeting notability (whether by the GNG or an SNG), but that sourcing doesn't met what we expect for notability, then the onus switches to those that want to delete those articles to prove , within reason, that no other sourcing exists as to be able to delete these. Unfortunately, unless the topic exists primarily from a western culture and post-2000 (Internet searchable), this usually means looking through print sources to determine that. This has been a standard part of understanding notability from the start.

Of course, I'm all for having stronger sourcing requirements at the time of creation, and mass creation of articles based on databases is a terrible thing, but notability purposely favors easy creation of articles over deletion because we want a collaborative environment. Masem (t) 02:16, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Where exactly do you see this written in the text of the GNG?

Note that I'm not asking whether people are gracious to new editors, or if they would recommend that Wikipedia:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built. I'm asking where in the GNG, or in any guideline about notability, it says that a new article with three sources gets a temporary pass but a "mature" article with ten sources should be (or is) held to a higher standard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

This is the whole point of the rebuttable presumption. We want articles to develop, and can be sketchy at the start when it comes to notability, but if are filing up an article with 5000+ words with no further sourcing beyond that, then that presumption is clearly going to be questioned. Remember that those articles that we allow to pass early on can be reviewed later to require a better demonstration of notability. But we nearly always edge in favoring retention, and why the onus is on those seeking deletion of articles to prove that no further sourcing exists. Masem (t) 02:45, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

The fact that an editor might be more likely to question the notability of some articles is not the same thing as claiming that notability depends on this.

You' seem to be saying:

• New article, little content in the article, few sources cited in the article – that's okay, the subject is (probably) notable!
• Mature article on the same subject, 5000+ words in the article, no further sourcing cited in the article – hey, maybe that's not notable after all!

I'm telling you: According to this guideline, notability does not depend on what's in the article. The actual rules, according to the written guideline are:

• New article, little content in the article, few sources cited in the article – maybe it's notable, and maybe it's not, but you won't find out by reading the Wikipedia article.
• Mature article on the same subject, 5000+ words in the article, no further sourcing cited in the article – maybe it's notable, and maybe it's not, but you won't find out by reading the Wikipedia article.

Cancer doesn't stop being notable even if someone blanks all the sources, and Alice Expert doesn't start being notable even if someone writes 5000+ words and adds ref tags at the end of every sentence. Notability is a property of the subject, not a property of the current version of the Wikipedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:35, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Just for the record, I don't think there is any community-wide agreement that the additive approach enshrined in NBASIC doesn't apply to other areas, and WP:SIGCOV certainly supports a reading in which the depth of coverage in independent RS can vary while contributing to a GNG "pass", similar to the provisions of NBASIC. (Indeed, in a plain reading of GNG, significance is an attribute of the sources as a whole rather than partaining to each source individually.)

The one major exception to this is NCORP, where WP:SIRS sets out a different and more restrictive principle. Newimpartial (talk) 20:23, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Despite the plain reading of SIGCOV itself unambiguously being structured around single sources. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material. "A trivial mention" can only be from a single source, and "main topic of the source material" makes no sense if it's spread across multiple sources of varying "main topics". This is then followed by an example of trivial coverage from one source and an example of non-trivial coverage from one source. There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected is the only place where meeting GNG rather than merely being able to contribute to it is brought up. Thus a given source may meet the requirements for counting toward GNG, but one or more other contributory sources may be necessary to actually establish GNG notability (e.g. two independent sources covering the subject under the same context should be accompanied by another GNG source that establishes sustained coverage). JoelleJay (talk) 21:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

For some reason, JoelleJay is leaving out the lead sentence of GNG which reads A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. This neither says nor implies that "significant coverage in each of several reliable sources" is required. Significant coverage is aggregate, on a plain reading, and is not evaluated (as it is in WP:SIRS) at the item level.

And in spite of what JoelleJay says above, there is nothing in the "significant coverage" bullet that actually mandates the item level - "the main topic of the source material" applies equally to a corpus of material as it does to a single source, and I see nothing but habit that would lead editors to read this bullet as though it instructed editors to evaluate each source, SIRS-style, in terms of a minimum level of non-trivial coverage in each case. (Yes, this bullet does say that trivial mentions can never add up to significant coverage, and it would have been more felicitous if it read "is more than trivial mentions" rather than "is more than a trivial mention", but that doesn't present more than the usual degree of confusion in P&G prose.)

Also, nothing in the "significant coverage" bullet or elsewhere contradicts in any way the clear indication in the "Sources" bullet that it is the overall qualiity and depth of coverage in independent RS that establishes Notabilty, and not the quality and depth of coverage in each RS considered individually - at least, on a plain reading of the section as a whole.

The way I read GNG as a whole - which I take to be the natural reading - there is a threshold of significance that applies "below" the source level, excluding trivial mentions: it doesn't matter how many trivial mentions a source contains, or how many sources contain only trivial mentions; those never count towards Notability. Then there is a threshold "above" the source level - there has to be significant enough coverage of the topic in independent RS to write an encyclopaedia article. What there isn't, is any specification of how many RS, at what depth of coverage, is required to make this happen - which makes sense, because in reality this judgement has to depend on the specific sources, the specific material they contain, and the nature of the topic itself. Newimpartial (talk) 01:40, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

NBASIC is part of the SNG about people, which means it covers the biggest area of any SNG. Additionally, Wikipedia:Notability (sports) incorporates NBASIC by reference. CORP rejects it entirely, and the others (nine?) don't say anything one way or the other.

If we pretended that the letter of the law is what really mattered here, then it is possible to read the GNG as permitting an NBASIC "additive" approach so long as the addends were not themselves too small. Using my "10 points" story, perhaps the GNG could be understood as permitting the "3 point" sources to count, but not the "1 pointers". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:19, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

adding up multiple sources to achieve a total amount of coverage that is significant, even though the individual sources were not significant when considered in isolation, was generally accepted. I disagree. This is a loophole for SYNTH. Summing insignificant things cannot make something significant without it being OR. SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:29, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe, do we agree that the GNG doesn't require the subject of the article to be significant?

Another way to say this is: Do you agree that the community's view of whether the subject is "important" or "significant" in the real world is not a good reason to keep (or delete) an article? I state here for the record that this principle means we will sometimes exclude articles on subjects that actually are significant to the world and include articles about subjects of no real-world significance (or at least no real-world significance in the eyes of most of the community). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

agree that the GNG doesn't require the subject of the article to be significant? Definitely. That’s a horribly unclear sentence and a misreading of the guideline.

“important” might be better in some ways, but I don’t think it is better.

Now, some subjects are “important” to the world, or to Wikipedia. I believe that coverage of scholarly journals is important enough for Wikipedia to cover them regardless of their notability. I think that’s a discussion going on elsewhere. However, this is an exception. In general, Wikipedia or Wikipedians should not be judging importance of subjects.

Wikipedia should instead reflect whether quality sources (reliable and reputable) cover the subject. What does “cover” mean? It means the authors of the published sources have each made comment about the subject, and the word count for that comment is greater than a number somewhere between 100 and 500. What does “comment” mean? It means addition of creative, subjective information. This usually means adjectives are used, and it excludes facts and results of calculations. Contextualisation is possibly the best form of comment for Wikipedia article writing purposes, but the scope of a possible comment is very large. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:50, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

To be more explicit, would you say that such commentary must be the product of someone's individualized attention to the subject; it shouldn't count if it is an autogenerated bloc of facts compiled from numerous isolated facts in a database? JoelleJay (talk) 00:29, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn’t have, but I’d agree with that.

Note that I’ve already stated that “facts” don’t count as secondary source material, not unless they are given meaning. “Autogenerated” is a reason to dismiss material for GNG purposes. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:13, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I mean, you'd think this would be evident and follow from the wording at NOR and N, but multiple people on this page and in recent discussions elsewhere have asserted autogenerated database entries contribute to GNG, so... JoelleJay (talk) 05:00, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Having limited time, I have seen that happen, and I moved on. When a statement is so terribly wrong, I don’t feel much need to be the one to say it. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:40, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Policy and guidelines are supposed to be decriptive, not prescriptive. So, following what actually happens at WP:AFD, we should replace this part of the guideline with "If an editor has decided that an article should be kept then the coverage is significant; if that editor has decided that it should be deleted then it is not." Phil Bridger (talk) 20:21, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

You forgot that it's also determined by the size of the Wikipedia fan club for the topic.  :-) North8000 (talk) 21:52, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

So "if a majority of editors have decided..."? We'd have to add something about WP:WikiSpeak#consensus, to ward off the "But consensus does not mean a majority vote!" comments. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:28, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Thanks! I never knew that that existed! North8000 (talk) 02:47, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@Phil Bridger: While your comment is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, you do bring up a good point. If the facts are not in dispute at AfD (here are the sources covering the subject, they exist), but whether the sources constitute "significant coverage" is, then ultimately it's going to come down to counting the !votes; any attempt by the closing admin to apply a particular interpretation of what is essentially a subjective guideline is going to be a supervote. So unless the rewording changes the way people !vote, it's not going to have an effect on anything. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:51, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

My comment was only tongue-in-cheek in that I don't for a moment believe that such a thing would be written in to a guideline. The thought behind the comment was totally serious. In an AfD discussion people very rarely change their minds, even if overwhelming evidence that they were wrong in their initial reactions (either extensive coverage of the subject in reliable sources or a lack of any significant coverage) is shown. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:20, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

• The changes read like extra verbiage without adding any meaning. I would oppose the specific changes requested. --Jayron32 17:33, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

While I think removing that particular NOR invocation and emphasizing encyclopedic writing is a good step, I think it's also very important that we not give the impression that "ability to write a comprehensive article" is the end-all-be-all definition of SIGCOV. We must also consider the other qualities that notability should be addressing, such as upholding NOT. The mere capacity to extract and summarize n data points from a source does not mean a subject is automatically notable. For example, numerous sports databases contain all the stats associated with a single player; one could easily prosify each of these stats and transfers to create a "biography" that is relatively comprehensive for the subject's career, and indeed these details are considered encyclopedic enough that they do appear in mature articles (usually in tables). The problem is that there are tens of millions of athletes for whom such details exist, often with no differences in the amount of info provided by, e.g., a database for English Premier League players and the MaxPreps for middle school wrestling. As I've said elsewhere, I believe the best way to address this is by making prose coverage (written or spoken) created by a human specifically for that subject a defining characteristic of SIGCOV.

Moreover, I feel concentrating solely on "number of separable facts", even when written in prose, that can be used in an article introduces issues that also conflict with INDISCRIMINATE. A small minority of editors consider SIGCOV to be strictly a description of the sourcing across an entire article, rather than a necessary quality of each source for it to contribute to GNG. If our guidelines suggest the more different facts that exist on a topic, the more notable the topic is, we run into the situation where it's possible to summarize a dozen separate one-sentence facts on the subject without any NOR-flouting connective tissue between them. That's a shitty article on its own, but you a) wouldn't know the product would be shitty before the article is written, and b) there's no prohibition on shitty articles that can factor into determining notability anyway. And even more problematic and insidious is the case where those dozen facts are incorporated into an article that actually looks presentable because a bunch of non-independent or primary coverage has been added to flesh it out. This yields a page on a subject for which no unaffiliated person has ever given it more than a sentence's worth of commentary, in only a single context (e.g. an object's use in one incident), and for which there need not be any claim to notability or encyclopedicity whatsoever, and yet it looks like a good, well-researched, well-written article and so is nearly impossible to delete. If it is expanded to such a state during an AfD, editors will point to HEY as irrebuttable proof of notability, even when the lack of source depth has been noted. JoelleJay (talk) 18:13, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Why does SIGCOV have to uphold NOT? Isn't NOT strong enough to hold itself up? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:20, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

One sidebar point that relates to several subthreads above. We never know for certain that GNG sources on a topic don't exist. There are varying degrees of uncertainty depending on how much time has been invested looking for them and I think that that variable is taken into account when assessing. For example, for a profit making business where a wiki-saavy editor has worked the article really hard to get it through, (when evaluating the included sources) it's a good guess that a more thorough search has been done. And it's a lot less likely for a topic that has no such editor or wiki fan club. For "middle of the road" articles, if the article has been around for a long time and has active editors, what's in the article is more likely to be an indicator of what's available. So such an article with no GNG sources is more likely to be evaluated on what isn't there than a brand new article, even if the standard which one is attempting to evaluate it to is the same. North8000 (talk) 15:59, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

My observation is that the Wikipedia notability ecosystem evaluates three factors (combined, with the greatest weight given to #1, and consideration for #2 and #3 being so much weaker that they are not seperate requirements):

1. Degree of availability of suitable sources and material in them from which to build an article
2. Degree of lasting importance, impact or prominence of the topic
3. Degree of enclyclopedic-ness of the topic/ degree of compliance with wp:not. This goes beyond the minimum simple pass/fail under WP:not

IMO GNG is involved on all 3. #1 is obvious. It is also one of the main measures of #2. And the amount of enclyclopedic material available in the sources is one of the measures #3. If we acknowledge this, the entire wp:notability ecosystem makes sense. Until we do we'll continue to have eternal unsolvable quandaries such as this thread. For this thread, that means that its question is unanswerable if we look at it as a stand-alone requirement. But if we view it as a contributor to all three, then

A. (a) single source(s) separately having broad in depth coverage is a big plus on all three. True broad coverage scattered amongst sources (which seldom happens in real life) would weigh in strong on #1

B. If the topic is really weak on GNG sourcing / the considerations in this thread, that's usually enough to make a typical article fail.

C. If it's edge case regarding GNG coverage/the considerations in this thread, then the other considerations will prevail.

A corollary to that is this this thread should consider the impacts on all 3. Obviously and primarily #1, which is the main one. But also on #2 and #3.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:11, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Even if we stipulate that your description is entirely true, your #2 ("Degree of lasting importance, impact or prominence of the topic"):

• does not appear anywhere in the GNG or any other part of the WP:N guideline, and
• even if it did appear in the guideline, has nothing to do with SIGCOV.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:38, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

That's because I'm attempting to summarize how the overall fuzzy wp:notability ecosystem works. The guidelines are full of things that would not exist if this were not the case. For example, thorough coverage published in a high school newspaper would count the same as thorough coverage in the New York Times. My point with respect to this discussion is that there are three cases regarding sigcov:

• A clear strong pass
• A clear strong fail
• Edge cases in which case other considerations tip the balance, whether they are acknowledged (e.g. by mentioning SNG criteria in the mix) or not acknowledged (where it's ostensibly just a sigcov decision but has actually been influenced by the other factors)

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:39, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

So, to put your words more bluntly, we have:

• situations that are obviously SIGCOV,
• situations that are obviously not SIGCOV, and
• situations for which the lack of a clear, understandable definition of SIGCOV allows editors to claim that their decision is based on a guideline instead of their own gut feelings/personal preferences/beliefs/WP:IAR.

I'd like to define SIGCOV so that editors can't credibly claim that SIGCOV has nothing to do with the amount of information and/or everything to do with whether the editors believes the subject is "significant" to the world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:11, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I think there will always be edge cases. We will always have debates and discussion of whether there exists significant coverage. Not only do all editors have their own sense of whether coverage is significant, but also because our judgement of whether the coverage is significant depends on our sense of the real world importance of the subject. - Enos733 (talk) 04:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

@Enos733, do you understand "significant coverage" to mean "coverage of an important subject"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:50, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I think that many editors (and I am guilty of it as well) evaluate the coverage of a subject based upon a sense of how deserving a subject is to have a stand-alone article. For elected officials, previous deletion discussions suggest an expectation that coverage of a local elected official should be more than "they exist" and should address the policies they championed while in office, but there is also a recognition that in order to understand the importance of their legacy in office, the coverage should come from a national or international source (and that it is easier for a local councillor from a large city to pass that bar). In sport, even after the depreciation of participation criteria, there is a recognition that an individual who plays in a top-tier professional league is more likely to be kept than someone who plays in a minor (second-tier) professional league or as an amateur (in fact WP:NSPORT explicitly has higher standards for high school athletes). There is criteria in WP:NPROF that individuals in a named chair or distinguished professorships are notable (although this is largely a secondary consideration). So, I do think that we often evaluate coverage through the lens of what we think is important and are worthy (or may be worthier) for a stand-alone article. - Enos733 (talk) 16:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

That is true, and I don't see anything wrong with it. There seem to be some rather vocal editors who worship the general notability guideline, thinking that it should be that only notability guideline. To follow that path means that topics are judged on the basis of which happens to have been covered by outlets (usually news outlets) that are available for free online in English. That just turns us into a Google mirror, rather than an encyclopedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:11, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

My opinion is that a subject ought to meet both a relevant SNG and the GNG, with the SNG providing both merit-based criteria and tighter standards on what constitutes non-routine sustained SIGCOV for the purposes of assessing GNG in that domain. JoelleJay (talk) 20:54, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

That makes zero sense. For one, there are large gaps in articles that are not covered by the SNGs, and it would take a lot of SNGs to cover all those. Masem (t) 21:02, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not saying that is my interpretation of the current guidelines. Just that this is how I think SNGs ought to work. I also didn't mean all topics would have to be covered by an SNG, I was only referring to those with existing SNGs. JoelleJay (talk) 22:00, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

As long as GNG exists, people will assert at AFD that even if a subject doesn't meet a SNG, a stand alone article could be kept if the subject meets the standards of the GNG. My sense is that of the SNGs, only WP:NCORP serves as the primary standard for evaluating coverage of the subject. Most of the biographical SNGs are written to suggest the likelihood of notability (and are in many ways similar to WP:OUTCOMES but in guideline form) or in limited circumstances the presumption of notability. Again, failing an SNG (currently) does not mean that an article must be deleted - only that the subject fails the SNG and that the subject must be evaluated using GNG (which in my experience often seems like a looser criteria). --Enos733 (talk) 22:33, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

What is key and often forgotten is that both the GNG and the SNG are presumptions of notability in favor of supporting article creation and growth in the Wiki format. Meeting the GNG or an SNG once is not necessarily a guarantee that the notability of the article will never be challenged in the future, though as I've explained before, the onus to dispute the notability (lack of additional sourcing) is on those seeking deletion, and this is a high bar to demonstration. We don't expect that an article that shows an SNG being met has to meet the GNG as well, but in the long run, if that article can't expand out beyond the SNG or the GNG, its likely bound for deletion. Masem (t) 00:22, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Masem, I consider you to be Wikipedia's #1 expert on "Explain it/ make it work as written which is / will always be a particularly Herculean quest for wp:notability if you look at only the notability guidelines as written. If you look at the whole fuzzy wp:notability ecosystem and acknowledge that it sometimes lets the balance get influenced or tipped by the above described secondary factors then that solves most of the quandaries, IMO @Enos733:'s comments allude to this. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 03:25, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I've no concern about the existence of secondary factors, and I don't even mind if editors rely very heavily on unstated things. I just want them to quit saying "significant coverage in reliable sources" when their evaluation has almost nothing to do with the actual coverage. When coverage means "The amount and type of attention given to an event or topic in news media or other media", then the GNG's requirement is to have "a significant amount and type of attention given to an event or topic in news media or other media". SIGCOV (specifically SIGCOV, explicitly excluding WP:N's statement that "Editors may use their discretion") is not to consider how deserving the subject is; it is to determine whether the subject has garnered a significant amount and type of attention in reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

@Enos733, what does it mean to evaluate the coverage of a subject based upon a sense of how deserving a subject is? Do you look at a source with 100 facts about a subject that you think is deserving, and say "Oh, that's a lot of facts", but for another subject, which you think is less deserving, you say "Pffft. It's only a hundred facts – that's hardly anything"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:41, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

The answer is yes, I think a lot of editors think this way (consciously or unconsciously). As an extreme example, an individual who happens to be featured in a local paper for winning a giant pumpkin contest is going to be more scrutinized than an individual just appointed to be CEO of a Fortune 50 company. In baseball, someone who is promoted to the Major League is going to receive less scrutiny than a starting player on a college team. What I am saying is that two marginal sources may be necessary to keep the MLB player, but the college player is likely to need more national coverage to supplement any local coverage. At the end of they day, how we feel about the real-world importance of the subject colors our sense of how much coverage is necessary to become significant - Enos733 (talk) 14:57, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Agree, it's a part of how the wp:notability system works, starting with choosing the word "notability" for wp:notability. Not a flow chart / binary decision requirement, just a factor that influences decisions a bit. North8000 (talk) 17:08, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not asking about the overall determination of notability. I'm asking specifically about the SIGCOV sub-component. SIGCOV was never meant to indicate that it's "the type and quality of attention that makes you think the subject is important". It was meant to indicate "It got a lot of attention, even if it's not important".

Imagine a conversation that amounts to this:

Alice: I have a source about a football team that provides so much depth and detail. It has a paragraph or two on every coach, every season, dozens of players. I could write a really long encyclopedia article just from this one source.

Bob: Wow, that's really SIGCOV. You'll really be able to write a good article, because it "addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content".

Chris: Bob, it looks like Alice "forgot" to tell you that the players are all seven years old.

Bob: Oh, in that case, the coverage is not significant, it doesn't address the topic either directly or in detail, and using it would be a total NOR violation.

Can you understand why Alice might be feeling like Bob was either stupid or a liar by the end of that exchange – and why she might not feel the way if he'd instead said, "Sure, that's a significant amount of media coverage, but we still don't accept articles about individual kiddie league teams, even if they otherwise meet the GNG. See that bit at the top of WP:N about editors' discretion? We use our best judgment to exclude such subjects." WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

We use our best judgment to exclude such subjects It does say that, but in practice that requires claiming WP:IAR, which is frowned upon at AfD. Actually, the "discretion" bit brings up merging as an example; but even 'merge' arguments at AfD tend to rely on GNG rather than "discretion" or any of the WP:MERGEREASONs.

If we make it clear that SIGCOV is about attention, rather than type and quality of attention, then either we'll need to add a new criteria to cover the latter, or people will lean on existing criteria (I won't call it wikilawyering) to be able to take the "type and quality of attention" into account, as is reasonable, without seeming to make an IAR argument. DFlhb (talk) 18:47, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: That's because we don't yet acknowledge how the system actually works. Which would be to say "I considered and weighted both of those factors together and this was the result". Instead, after actually doing that, the person has to pretend that it was simply a coverage evaluation. North8000 (talk) 03:19, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

So you think that if I want editors who are using their best judgment (a good thing!) to stop lying about what they're doing (e.g., by saying that a lot of media coverage isn't a lot of media coverage when they really mean that it is a lot of media coverage but they don't want an article on this subject anyway), we need to add another detail to the GNG? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

(od a little)

If we start with the relevant Wiktionary definition – "The amount and type of attention given to an event or topic in news media or other media" – then SIGCOV could be defined this way:

• "Significant coverage" means that a significant amount of attention has been given to the subject in news media or other reliable sources, and it is a type of attention that has practical value in writing an encyclopedia article (e.g., more than a passing mention, not unencyclopedic gossip, not just a plot summary). The coverage must address the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage does not need to be the main topic of the source material.

We might need to add a "please, just honestly tell us that you're using your best judgement" line, but I really think it would help if we defined this so that people would (eventually) stop claiming SIGCOV when they genuinely mean something that has nothing to do with coverage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:41, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

That sounds like a straightforward improvement to me. You'd think you wouldn't have to explain to people what an ordinary word like 'coverage' means, but if evidence suggests otherwise... – Joe (talk) 06:54, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade, please put the link to the definition back, or at least join our discussion and explain why you believe that everyone knows the same meaning of this word. We have editors here who seem to have quite a different idea than you and I. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I do not, as I said, believe that the link to the definition is necessary. "Coverage" is a common term, and I do not believe that the link to Wiktionary is substantially helpful. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:39, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we should apply a standard of "necessary". I think the appropriate standard is "helpful", and I think it will be helpful to some editors – not you personally, but of course guidelines have to be written to be understood by more than just people who have made tens of thousands of edits over the course of nearly two decades.

We have editors (including some on this page) who think, or who have seen other editors claim at AFD, that "significant coverage" has little or nothing to do with the "amount or type of attention" (=what the definition says) and everything to do with how important or "significant" the subject is. We therefore do not have a shared understanding. We therefore need to define our terms. If you happen to be familiar with the story that Richard Feynman told about the "inside of a brick", the reason why we need to have a shared understanding about what these words means should be obvious. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:15, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry I won't be able to do any in depth participation for the next two weeks.North8000 (talk) 10:58, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Proposed: If there are a hundred reliable sources, and if each of these sources has precisely one sentence on the subject, and if (with typical overlap) these one-hundred sentences add up to complete coverage of the subject, then that should be applicable towards (if not sufficient for) notability. Certainly, if there is a single reliable source with a lengthy paragraph on a subject, and 99 reliable sources each containing one additional detail, that should suffice. BD2412 T 04:40, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

That would be an extreme case, but it would be hard to argue that, but I would also be clear that the expectation is that each of those hundred sources are providing an encyclopedically-relevant fact. Most often, when I have seen the case where "Here's 10+ sources that each mention one thing about the topic!", those mentions are more of trivial or non-encyclopedic content (like what I've seen when it comes to fictional characters appears on published lists like "Top 10 hottest superhero babes") coming from mid- to low-quality RSes. Masem (t) 12:31, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

@BD2412, WP:NBASIC accepts that for biographies, and WP:SIRS rejects that for organizations and commercial products. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:55, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

None of that would matter anyway. Trivial mentions in passing don't count toward notability; they have a "zero" value toward it. 0+0+0+0+0+0...will remain at a value of zero, no matter how often you repeat it. The question is whether multiple independent and reliable sources saw fit to significantly cover the subject, not just mention it. No number of mentions add up to notability, even if there are millions. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:44, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

One sentence ≠ trivial mention in passing. Some sentences are longer than others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:03, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that it's not coverage that's hard to grasp, but significant. Significance is extremely relative and absent the wiki-jargon meaning that significant constitutes "worthy of encyclopedia coverage i.e. satisfies or demonstrates notability" - I think people roughly understand that coverage is actually the term that means "the stuff, i.e. text." Andre🚐 01:39, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

But coverage is not "the stuff, i.e., text". Coverage is "the amount of stuff", not the stuff itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

As other have said this just appears to ad verbiage. Particular the repetition of "the subject", well yes "the subject" that's the point of text. It doesn't need to be repeated or even said. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:18, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

The current version says "the topic" rather than "the subject".

How would you solve the problem of some editors thinking that SIGCOV is how much information you have, and others thinking that SIGCOV means how important ("significant") you think the topic/subject is? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:56, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Surely the correct answer involves both, a large amount of text that has nothing more than press release details is not significant, or say a large amount of text about someone's dating life is still trivial. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 23:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Also repeating "the topic" which is the topic of the text, instead of "the subject" which is the subject of the text, is no less redundant. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 23:04, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

We regularly see significant media coverage of unencyclopedic information, and even significant volumes of media coverage that claims the subject is important (that "large amount of text about someone's dating life"), which is why I originally specified "the amount of information in the source that is realistically usable in an encyclopedia article", rather than just "the amount of information". It adds 11 words, but it makes it easier to reject sources that discuss unencyclopedic matters and also to reject the idea that a simplistic word count is the only thing that matters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

It sounds an awful lot like the policy you're looking for is WP:DUE. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 10:10, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so. DUE tells you how to balance viewpoints within an existing article. The GNG is trying to find out whether there is enough suitable content to have an article at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

• One of the ways that I see notability (But not spelled out in any guideline) is that notability is demonstration that given a specific topic, there are reliable sources that explain, in a transformative matter, why that topic is more significant than any other topic from the same group. eg: why should a given athlete stands out over all other athletes in the same sport out there. We should look at it this way because we specifically do not have "inclusion" guidelines (no topic is automatically included), but instead notability as a method to justify the inclusion. Now, there are certainly some topic fields where every member is included but because each member has sources to explain why each member stands out on its own: every element on the period table is covered, for example. But that's also a limited set; this idea is more approachable when you have a set with at least 1000 members (such as athletes). To that end, that's why the GNG and the SNGs need to show support from sources in that direction, and that's what to look for when it comes to significant coverage. An athlete that just has routine coverage of their entire career (eg as from databases or individual event coverage) without any sourcing that transforms them beyond just being an athlete should mean we don't consider them notable. --Masem (t) 12:25, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Rewriting the introduction of this guideline

I've opened a discussion on idea lab. Feel free to weigh in on the discussion. Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Rewriting WP:N to reflect community consensus Ca ^{talk to me!} 13:26, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Schools notability discussion

It is currently being discussed at the companies & organization notability talk Graywalls (talk) 06:45, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Should we clarify GNG regarding compound-topic article titles/topics?

I've seen what I believe are overly lenient and overly strict interpretations of GNG on compound-topic article titles. I could cite many real examples from the last few years where it is/was contentious, but maybe it's best to use a silly hypothetical example, an article titled "Sunburn and murders"

• Of course, if there are multiple GNG sources specifically covering the relationship between sunburn and murders, that title/topic is a "pass"
• Example of IMO over-leniency: Let's say that there are no GNG sources covering the confluence of sunburn and murders. But there are plenty of GNG sources on various murders when sunburn was just mentioned. The IMO over-lenient interpretation is that those sources count toward GNG notability.
• Example of IMO over-strictness Let's say that there are plenty of GNG sources covering the relationship between skin damage from sun and murders. But somebody says "but they don't say that they are covering sunburn specifically" so those sources don't count.

(BTW we also need to say that that titles need to clearly define the topic, like "Sunburn as a contributing factor to murders", but that's work for elsewhere and we need to start somewhere)

IMO perhaps we should clarify that the GNG coverage has to be about the topic defined by the title of the article. Not just about a portion of the title. But if the GNG coverage is specifically about the defined title/topic, but uses different words instead of those in the title, it still counts. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:46, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:NOTDICT: our articles are on topics, not on their titles. If the coverage is for something the title doesn't accurately describe, it doesn't mean the topic is non-notable, it just means the title is inaccurate. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:28, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Of course that's a valid statement, (although what defines the topic of an article if not the title?) but you'd need to elaborate on how you are indicating that it affects the above. As far as I can see it is a way to derive (rather than state) what I put into my last sentence. "But if the GNG coverage is specifically about the defined title/topic, but uses different words instead of those in the title, it still counts." Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:45, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

What defines the topic of an article? The consensus of editors. The process is:

1. Figure out what subject you want to write about.
2. Pick the title.

It is important to do it in that order. See, e.g., Ketogenic diet. The subject is a medical treatment for refractory epilepsy. The subject is not whatever diet has been called by that name at some point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:09, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I think that that example illustrates the sequence that you describe (which I fully agree with). But not with the overall situation there. It did not end up with a title that unambiguously defines the topic. And moreover ended up with an article who's topic is different that the widespread common meaning of the title. North8000 (talk) 14:56, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

So what do you think about the following: Insert the following as the second sentence in the "Significant coverage" subsection in the "General notability guideline":

"For topics which are about the relationship between 2 or more items, there must be such coverage of that relationship"

As an example in the proposal record only, only to record it's intent, if the topic / title is "Sunburn and murders", there must be GNG type coverage of the combination of or relationship between sunburn and murders, Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:37, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the stronger policy here us WP:SYNTH. If there is not a reasonable mber of sources (primary or secondary) that talk about the compound topic, then we should not consider that an actual topic and instead as OR. Sure, we can to this in this guideline, but that is the core principle here. (Same would apply to list topics). --Masem (t) 17:49, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I think that that is a good ethereal interpretation/principle but does not exist explicitly and is not being followed. Partly because WP:SYNTH is written so to apply to article content, not topics/title. Have you ever seen an article get deleted n the grounds that it's title/topic is wp:synth? (rather than wp:notability) Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:49, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I cannot see how, if one takes SYNTH applying only to content, that a topic that is a synthesis of material will not be wholly dedicated to SYNTH-type content. That is, SYNTH-type topics (titles) are a simple natural extension of SYNTH--type content, and to argue that SYNTH can't apply to topics is completely nonsensical (I know you're not arguing this, just saying in general...) Masem (t) 21:10, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

You are right of course. But I'm talking about what actually happens. The more interpretation that is required to apply something, the more commonly and easily it is ignor-able. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:42, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

And I am certainly not opposed to having something in WP:N that says that like content, topics (including list topics) should not be based on synthesis of sources, but we only need maybe a sentence to that end, and deferring what is synth to SYNTH. Masem (t) 23:27, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

The wikipedia model seems to work better when we discuss real, concrete, examples, rather than silly hypothetical cases such as sunburn and murders (I'm glad that link came up in red when I clicked "show preview"). Do you have any real examples where you think that consensus has come up with the wrong decision? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:52, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Do we need "rebuttably"?

The word "rebuttably" was added on 17 September to the longstanding sentence fragment "A topic is presumed to merit an article if:", with the edit summary "fix easteregg link and remove reference to location (MOS changes)". The link was actually just a redirect to presumption. I removed it, it's been replaced by a different editor. I don't think the word adds any meaning and the result reads very poorly. The whole concept is explained in the next section in detail. Thoughts? Espresso Addict (talk) 02:00, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

We need to address that the presumption of notability is not a one-and-done deal and notability of a topic can be challenged at a later time even if it initially passes the GNG or an SNG. "Rebuttable presumption" has always been part of WP:N for that reason. Masem (t) 15:27, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

• The presumption of notability has always been understood to be rebuttable, so adding that word does not change the notability landscape. A separate issue that remains unclear is what type of effort/showing is required to rebut the presumption. Cbl62 (talk) 16:34, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

I see no reason for this, and I don't think the bold change reflects community consensus. As such, I've reverted it to before the bold edit. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:32, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

• A presumption is, by definition, rebuttable, so I don't see what is gained by adding the word. However a presumption means what it says, that we should presume something unless it is rebutted, and rebutting (can't we come up with a better word for this?) involves more than a quick Internet search that comes up with nothing. We should aspire to be better than a Google mirror. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:27, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  "Rebuttable presumption" is a legal term. Eg: [12] Masem (t) 03:24, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

  If a term requires a qualification “legal”, then it is to much for a newcomer’s guideline. SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:28, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

  It is not that we are using the term for the newcomer, we're using it because people that are versed in legal terms may assume we infer the irrebuttable presumption. Masem (t) 04:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose including "rebuttably" explicitly in the wording. I think it is implicit in the word "presumption", but adding it explicitly only makes this guideline more jargon-heavy and subject to varying interpretations, at the expense of its usability by everyday editors. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:44, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

  There are, from the legal side, "irrebuttable presumptions", see [13] for example. That's why "Rebuttable" was needed. Masem (t) 04:03, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

  The WP:GNG section includes, "Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits its own article, so maybe the word presumed either should not be wikilinked to presumption and left as plain text, or instead wikilinked to WP:PAGEDECIDE. This technically is a rebuttal to the presumption of a standalone article, but I don't necessarily think it needs to be clarified in the guideline if the presumption wikilink is removed. Beccaynr (talk) 04:26, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

  PAGEDECIDE has nothing to do with rebuttable presumptions. What we need to stress is that just meeting the GNG or SNG once is not an assurance the article will be kept forever, and that its notability can be challenged in the future (though the onus is on those doubting the notability to prove the presumption wrong). Otherwise, and I've seen this in AFDs, that we get editors saying the article met the GNG or the SNG in a prior AFD and thus should automatically be kept (eg working on the principle of an irrebuttable presumption). I appreciate that we're trying to use language that is easier for readers to understand, but rebuttable presumption does exactly what it says on the tin, and spelled out at presumption (right there in its lede), with rebuttable presumption a redirect to that page. Masem (t) 04:35, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

  I think this is important, and we could expand on the mention in WP:NTEMP, from time to time a reassessment of the evidence of notability or suitability of existing articles may be requested by any user via a deletion discussion, which seems a bit misplaced in that section - maybe we could create a new section in the guideline to help emphasize how clearing AfD is not a guarantee of an infinite standalone article (and add this to WP:AADD).

  However, the PAGEDECIDE concept seems to be part of GNG's definition of "presumed" and the intro to the notability guideline, which includes, This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page, so I think it seems helpful to separate the concepts: 1) per PAGEDECIDE, even if GNG/SNG and no policy basis to exclude a topic exists, a standalone article is not guaranteed, because it may be better as part of a larger article; and 2) just because the article was previously kept at AfD, this does not guarantee it will be kept as a standalone page (or at all) in the future. Beccaynr (talk) 05:30, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Oppose “rebuttably” as excessive jargon. SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:26, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose, because I think without "rebuttably", it more clearly relates to the WP:PAGEDECIDE section, e.g. Often, understanding is best achieved by presenting the topic on a dedicated standalone page, but it is not required that we do so; at times it is better to cover a notable topic as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context (and doing so in no way disparages the importance of the topic). Beccaynr (talk) 03:35, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Notability (academics)

Wikipedia:Notability (academics) has come up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard Eastell. Whether or not Eastell meets Notability (academics) is being considered, but I have a question about the guideline. It says notability does not require any coverage in reliable secondary sources, provided the person has held a prestigious appointment.

While other pages on notability of individuals say that holding a specific appointment makes someone "presumed" to be notable, this guideline says they are notable: "Many [academics] are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources."

Does anyone have any comments on whether this guideline complies with Wikipedia policy? TFD (talk) 15:13, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

• The named/endowed chair prong is clearly out of step. It may have made sense in academia of 30 years ago, but named/endowed chairs have proliferated at such an insane rate at certain universities that holding such a chair is in no way a proper benchmark for notability. Cbl62 (talk) 15:26, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

{{citation needed}} ElKevbo (talk) 18:08, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: Here are a few examples: USC (five pages of named chairs); UCSD (279); UCLA (too many to count). Cbl62 (talk) 01:55, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Those examples are meaningless without more context and do not support your position that this is not a benchmark. Yes, these universities have many named chairs. They are large universities with much larger numbers of faculty overall. What fraction of the full professors hold named chairs? What fraction of full professors at top research universities like these would you expect to be notable anyway without this criterion? If you expanded your sample to other classes of universities, would the same numbers generalize to them? —David Eppstein (talk) 02:25, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

There should not be any pre-set "fraction of professors" that are presumed notable. The determination should be made individually and based on the merits. The current guideline doesn't do that. Cbl62 (talk) 19:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it does. Each criterion is a way of capturing what one might mean by academic merit, and each individual is evaluated against them. There is no pre-set fraction or numerical threshold. David Eppstein's point was that a university having many named chairs doesn't make holding a named chair insignificant. If you have a big pool of professors to start with, even a high honor can be held by many people. XOR'easter (talk) 19:18, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

• And, yes, the proliferation of named chairs is not limited to the most elite research universities. E.g. University of Alabama at Birmingham (over 300); Iowa State (200); University of Kentucky (204); Michigan State University (200-plus). Cbl62 (talk) 19:40, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  The same issue of starting with a big pool applies there: UAB has 2,671 instructional faculty as of 2022, for example, and the University of Kentucky has over 2,000. XOR'easter (talk) 20:16, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Why are you asking here instead of Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics)? ElKevbo (talk) 18:08, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Notability (academics) is about notability. Should subject-specific notability guidelines be alternatives to general notability guidelines or should that merely provide greater detail for specific topic areas? That's a question I thought better discussed here, since it affects this guideline. TFD (talk) 19:03, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

You are reasoning circularly. Notability is about whether a topic is significant enough for inclusion in the encyclopedia. For many topics, the criterion we use for testing this is how much publicity the topic has. It is not necessary to do things that way, and saying "we must do things that way because we do things that way" is not in any way valid logic. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:27, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

• [edit conflict] Most of our Wikipedia notability guidelines are based on how much publicity the subject has managed to attract. This one is based on internal recognition of the accomplishments of the subject. We should have more accomplishment-based notability guidelines and fewer publicity-based notability guidelines, not the other way around. The policy is that everything in a Wikipedia article should be verifiable and neutral; it is in no way a violation of that policy to use sources from a university to verify that someone has a specific title at that university. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:09, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

The question is whether a specific title is or is not Notable. I would certainly say that some endowed positions are notable… but can this be said for all such positions (regardless of which university)? I can see the argument for narrowing this. Perhaps a list of notable endowed positions would help. Blueboar (talk) 18:32, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

The guideline as includes distinguished professors. In one discussion I was involved in, other editors argued that because a retiring professor was named as a professor emeritus, which the institution said was reserved for professors who had distinguished themselves (in practice almost all retiring professors qualified), that made them notable. Any time criteria are unspecific, AfDs will allow the widest possible interpretation. TFD (talk) 19:15, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

That is just a mistake. "Distinguished Professor" is a job title. "Professor who has distinguished herself by..." is a normal English phrase. The criterion is not unspecific.

To put it another way: proponents of keeping articles will often label press releases or bare mentions of subjects as giving significant coverage, even though experienced editors know that is a mistake. Should that frequent misunderstanding be taken as an argument that our requirement for significant coverage is bad and should be eliminated? No. It is an argument that misinformed editors should be made to understand that they are misinformed. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:28, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

In my experience, which is admittedly limited to U.S. colleges and universities, "Distinguished Professor" is a title that is not awarded often or lightly. It sometimes comes with additional pay and additional responsibilities e.g., regular advisory meetings with the president. So I don't think it's accurate to dismiss it as simply a "job title" as that implies that it has little or no meaning; "president" or "Chief Executive Officer" as just "job titles," too.

If you'd like to propose that the guideline be changed, you are welcome to do so. Such a proposal would probably be more likely to succeed if it were supported with evidence and advertised to relevant Talk pages and projects. ElKevbo (talk) 22:59, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

At my alma mater, 50% of all math professors are distinguished or hold a named/endowed professorship. Of those that are tenured, it's 60%. We have similar proportions for chemistry and philosophy. I have trouble believing that these values reflect the rest-of-the-world importance and impact of these researchers. JoelleJay (talk) 19:16, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Rutgers has ranks above "distinguished", like Board of Governors and University Professorships. The math department only has one of the latter. XOR'easter (talk) 19:31, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

But there is no requirement that "distinguished" be the highest appointment grade to pass C5. JoelleJay (talk) 19:35, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

True, but that just means that we ought to consider bringing C5 more explicitly in parallel with C6 and C8, which refer to highest-level and chief positions, i.e., ranks above which there are no others. C5 already has qualifications, like not applying to junior faculty; if an example came to AfD where the person's title sounded good on paper but less impressive upon further investigation, it would be reasonable to conclude that C5 doesn't count in that case. XOR'easter (talk) 19:41, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Rutgers is a top university, I am sure most (in not all) of these pass the notability threshold using other criteria. Ymblanter (talk) 06:58, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, some institutions in the U.S. are somewhat or very stringent in awarding faculty emeritus titles. In those cases, there should be materials that would be helpful in writing or expanding an article because materials were submitted to one or more governing bodies (e.g., faculty senate awards committee, board of trustees) to convince them to award the title. However, those materials may not always be publicly available. ElKevbo (talk) 23:02, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I assume by accomplishments you mean their contribution to academics rather than honours they have received. But how could you write a neutral article about someone's contribution to an academic discipline if you don't have any secondary sources that explain it? TFD (talk) 19:10, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

The same way you write about anything. You are confusing secondary sources with reliable sources. We need reliable sources for all content, but sources can be reliable without being secondary. If an official university document states that the subject is the J. Q. Muckymuck Professor of Social Engineering, then that document is reliable but not secondary. If the American Society of Social Engineering puts out a press release stating that they are naming the subject as a Fellow of the American Society of Social Engineering, and detailing their accomplishments in social engineering that led to this honor, then that document is reliable but not secondary. The requirement for secondary sources is needed in publicity-based notability guidelines to distinguish people whose publicity whose been taken up by the outside world from people who are generating publicity for themselves but have not been as successful at getting it taken up. When we are not using publicity as a stand-in for significance we can use other indicators of reliability of sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:35, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Consider the example of Olena Semenyaka, a far right nationlist who won a fellowship at Vienna's Institute for Human Sciences, until it came to attention and was revoked.[14] How would her article have read before she was exposed? Can we really write an article about her without stating that she was international secretary of the far right National Corps, which had yet to be reported?

Consider also your colleagues. A blameless professor who has received no news coverage is suddenly accused of some unspeakable crime by a crazed neighbour and it makes the back pages of the local news. In due time it is dismissed. But now the article is mostly about an accusation that would never have merited an article on its own and the only reason it is mentioned is that your colleague meets Notability (academics).

Notability is not a gong for a job well done. It merely means that we have sufficient reliable sources about a subject to write an objective article. If they are a notable academic, then the article should be about what they accomplished, how it was received, what influence it had on the field, what criticisms it received. Imagine Einstein's article if you could not tell us how relativity was accepted by science.

Of course lots of undeserving people achieve fame. But at least we have sources to write about them.

TFD (talk) 01:18, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Consider the example that seems to have triggered TFD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard Eastell. It does have both a pass of WP:PROF and multiple in-depth secondary sources (and somehow the existence of these secondary sources is a problem for TFD who is using their existence as a rationale for attempting to get the article deleted). Setting that aside, if we deleted the "Controversies" section of the article, we would have a bog-standard article on an academic who passes WP:PROF, adequately sourced for its start-class length but without any secondary sources. What is wrong with having articles like that? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:53, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

In the hypothetical case of A blameless professor who has received no news coverage is suddenly accused of some unspeakable crime by a crazed neighbour and it makes the back pages of the local news, WP:BLPCRIME would most likely rule out including the allegation. The right fix would be adhering to the policy for biographies of living people, not deleting the article. XOR'easter (talk) 18:52, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

All that BLP crime would do is require that we not say the person is guilty. Certainly we would cover the charges and any other information that was published in reliable secondary sources. Of course if the person was not considered automatically notable per PROF, we would not create an article.

Reporting that someone has been charged with a crime is damaging even if they are ultimately acquitted. And the fact a paper reports and arrest does not necessarily mean they will report if the charges are ultimately dismissed.

What is the value to readers to have a BIO that only restates what is available on the person's university bio? TFD (talk) 21:29, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

No, WP:BLPCRIME provides grounds to not mention the accusation in the first place, since a person known for academic work with no other media presence is a low-profile individual. It is true that reporting an accusation can be damaging even if the subject is ultimately acquitted; that's a reason not to include the accusation. It's not a reason to delete the article, or to fail to create one in the first place.

A Wikipedia article can be interlinked with the rest of the encyclopedia in ways that a university bio page never can. It can present intelligible prose rather than bullet-pointed lists. It stays in one place while universities refashion their websites. A Wikipedia bio is not redundant with a university page any more than a stub about a book is redundant with Amazon.com. XOR'easter (talk) 21:54, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia got a lot of flack for not having an article about Donna Strickland before she won the Nobel Prize. If WP:PROF had been followed in the standard way, we would have had one, because the draft that was declined spelled out her notability per WP:PROF#C3 (OSA fellow) and WP:PROF#C6 (OSA president). Erroneously declining the draft because the relevant sources were primary caused our project a lot of grief. XOR'easter (talk) 19:12, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

It's policy that non-primary sources are necessary to establish notability for all article subjects... JoelleJay (talk) 19:19, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Which policy are you referring to here? WP:N is a guideline, just as WP:PROF is a guideline. As far as I am aware, it is where the Wikipedia-jargon "notability" is defined and established. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:25, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARY

Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and avoid novel interpretations of primary sources.

Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them. JoelleJay (talk) 19:26, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Ok, now you are just wikilawyering rather than arguing seriously. That phrasing cannot be taken seriously as imposing a separate notability requirement from WP:N. It looks like it is merely referring to the use of secondary sourcing in WP:N and that promoting that language from guideline (in WP:N) to policy (as a reference to WP:N in WP:NOR) was just an editing mistake. There is no serious problem of original research in primary-sourced but verifiable academic biographies. Also, this discussion has included some significant confusion between whether a source is secondary and whether it is independent. The policy you point to makes clear that a non-independent source may still be considered to be secondary, despite its unusability in WP:GNG. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:34, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

So you are arguing that NPROF subjects are just entirely exempt from PST policy because the multiple places where that policy requires secondary sources for all articles must have been typos? Despite WP:N reiterating this requirement for all articles? We require the existence of at least one secondary source so that the article can comply with Wikipedia:No original research's requirement that all articles be based on secondary sources.

And I don't think I should have to explain to you why this section on primary and secondary sourcing that references secondary source requirements in another P/G does not have to repeat all the unrelated criteria in that P/G. JoelleJay (talk) 19:51, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Strickland was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize for research she did in the 1980s. So Notability (academic) would have prevented an article for decades after. But if the world had paid attention to it at the time, we could have had one. But what would be the point of having an article about her if it did not explain her research?

Bob Altemeyer for example has an article, although his position does not qualify him, because his work is well-regarded. TFD (talk) 22:02, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

There is no way that WP:PROF ever "prevented" our having an article about Strickland. On the contrary, it expressly permitted one in 2018 on the basis of WP:PROF#C3 and WP:PROF#C6 at the very least. The point is that her work was eminently well-regarded, and if WP:PROF had been properly followed instead of ignored, Wikipedia would have avoided a black eye. XOR'easter (talk) 22:22, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Using a primary-but-reliable source to say that a person ought to have an article isn't necessarily basing the article on a primary source, as far as content is concerned. Even a short academic bio will typically have a "Selected publications" list which will be informed by secondary sources, for example. XOR'easter (talk) 19:44, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

There are two separate policies: non-primary sources are necessary to establish notability, and all articles must contain and be based upon at least one secondary source. WP:N also lays this out explicitly for all articles. JoelleJay (talk) 19:55, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

If you're going to argue based on holy writ rather than on what we are trying to accomplish and how to accomplish it, at least try to get your holy writ straight. WP:N is not a policy and is not the controlling notability guideline for all articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:59, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

?? I did not assert WP:N was a policy. I said there is policy that in multiple places demands secondary sourcing for all articles, and that this requirement is also described at WP:N, which is still a controlling guideline of NPROF even if GNG is not. JoelleJay (talk) 20:06, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If we really want to wiki-lawyer, there's plenty of language in WP:SECONDARY that could support the conclusion that an academic prize announcement is a secondary source for a subject's career (while being a primary source for the fact that the person won that prize). XOR'easter (talk) 20:06, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

To paraphrase Phil Bridger, the record of citations that we generally are looking at with WP:NPROF C1 generally consist of hundreds or thousands of secondary sources. Since each individual source (citation) contributes only a small amount, we tend to look to a tertiary source like Google Scholar to aggregate these. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 07:41, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

• As far as I understand it, the notability guideline for academics precede the invention of the GNG requirement, which is why in this case it does replace it. It seems to work quite well in practice, in the sense that AfD consensus amongst academics & educators deletion sorting regulars is surprisingly strong. As David Eppstein writes, 'Distinguished Professor of X' is not at all the same as 'a distinguished professor', and emeritus professor is generally merely a courtesy title; what matters is what kind of professorship/chair the professor held before retirement (and where), not whether they are permitted to use the title emeritus after retirement. If people want to debate the exact details of what a named chair at a decent university should be covering then the correct place to have the debate is the notability for academics talk page, not here. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:16, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

  Can you name any academics who meet your definition of Notability (academics) but have received zero coverage in secondary sources? TFD (talk) 01:22, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  I'll demur myself. Indeed, NPROF precedes the GNG by a fair bit, and it was one of those terrible decisions in the earlies (along the line of one top-flight minute for an athlete = presumptive notability) that's caused hundreds of messes since. There shouldn't be debates over what named chair at what university in what time period equates to notability. That's not any kind of subjective measure; that's setting forth the standard that notability = which half dozen editors on a talk page are motivated to shout the loudest for the longest time. The only reason that there's a "surprisingly strong" consensus at AfD is that NPROF's been just as rigid a bright-line standard as "Played one match for Sheffield United in 1889, meets NFOOTY" has been, pulled out as a trump card to end all debate.

  Happily, we've come to a place where some of those early bad decisions have been overturned, and participation standards have been deprecated from NSPORTS. This is another aberration that should go onto the scrap heap along with that. I recognized then, and recognize now, that there is a vocal constituency on Wikipedia pissed off that academics get short shrift over performers in our culture. I just have never seen how the answer is to come up with utterly subjective "standards" in response. Ravenswing 01:44, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  Content-free rhetoric is not a constructive contribution to this conversation. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:54, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  To be frank, applying the GNG boils down to which half dozen editors on a talk page are motivated to shout the loudest for the longest time. Having to do a little work to decide whether or not a particular position at a particular university makes a person encyclopedia-worthy is no different from evaluating whether a news item provides "SIGCOV". XOR'easter (talk) 18:46, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  I regularly base my !vote at academic AfDs on whether the subject meets one of the NPROF criteria, but that doesn't mean I agree that those criteria should exist. I do think that, at least for STEM, it is usually possible to source secondary coverage of an NPROF-meeting professor's research that both directly attributes the research to them and contains significant detail. It's not biographical coverage, but it at least means we can probably source their research section to secondary descriptions of their work rather than just their university homepage. I try to find evidence of such coverage whenever I !vote keep at these AfDs. JoelleJay (talk) 19:32, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  I tend to treat guidelines with common sense, realizing that occasional exceptions may apply, which is what a guideline is. When guidelines conflict with policy, I follow policy. One of the policies of course is Primary, secondary and tertiary sources, which says, "Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability." TFD (talk) 22:34, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  It also says, "Appropriate sourcing can be a complicated issue, and these are general rules. Deciding whether primary, secondary, or tertiary sources are appropriate in any given instance is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense, and should be discussed on article talk pages. A source may be considered primary for one statement but secondary for a different one. Even a given source can contain both primary and secondary source material for one particular statement." And, "Whether a source is primary or secondary depends on context." The policy acknowledges complications and ambiguities that the guideline clarifies. XOR'easter (talk) 22:38, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  If the only sources are the person's university biography page and their own articles, I consider that to be unreliable secondary and primary sources. Do you disagree? How would you write a neutral and informative article about someone based on these sources alone? TFD (talk) 01:42, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  You are again confusing three different things, reliability, independence, and primary/secondary. The person's university biography page is usually reliable (it has the imprimatur of the university), secondary (it is an overview of the subject's education and employment history, not the underlying primary documents such as diplomas, offer letters, employment contracts and records, and the like), but non-independent. As a non-independent source it is still fine for uncontroversial factual claims but probably should not be used for evaluative purposes.

  The subject's own articles can't be used for much, but one can at least use them to identify the basic subfield of research in which the subject works. And the university biography page often has enough uncontroversial factual biographical material to fill out a start-class article. This is not like the situation with database-sourced one-line sub-stubs. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:23, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi everyone, I would like to invite your comments on my proposal at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(academics)#proposal_for_modification_of_guidelines. I link to this discussion in my post, but, at 104 comments, it seemed best to start a new thread at the article specific to academic notability. Please, though, don't hesitate to repost there any relevant comments made here!

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 17:33, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Something in between

Since you're all here, I wonder if some of you could help me think through a kind of middle-ground idea for academics. What if the goal wasn't a separate, stand-alone article? What if we made better lists?

I imagine that a worldwide List of professors of literature would be awkwardly long, but most professors spend most of their careers at a single institution. Could we have a List of professors of Subject at Old School or Subject faculty of Old School (or, for smaller institutions, just a List of faculty at Old School) that contains more than a tiny bit of content, maybe amounting to a table like this?

Professors of Something

Name	Title	Since	Until	Description
Alice Expert	The Alice and Bob Professor of Expertise	1990	present	Expert was an expert who expertly excelled in expertise. Known primarily for publishing The Sun is Very Big, she did some other things, too.
Bob Business	Professor of Business Administration	2000	2020	Business was known worldwide for his research on the blue-green widget industry. He retired from academia in 2020, after being offering a job in Big business.
Chris Cadaver	Professor of Funeral Services	1900	1940	Cadaver suddenly died during a lab exercise. His death sparked the creation of the school's largest scholarship fund.

And so forth, so that people can be "in Wikipedia" without always having a separate article? I think that something like this could allow more inclusion while having fewer BLP risks. Also, by creating a list with fairly simple inclusion requirements (think "anyone with the title of full professor and who taught there for more than five years"), I think we might have less imbalance. Ten years ago, we knew that some profs were hiring PR hacks to get their names in the news as part of their effort to chase promotions and grants (and probably Wikipedia articles, too). From our POV, that results in more articles about self-promoting faculty and fewer articles about self-effacing ones. A list might balance that a bit by not requiring complete, stand-alone levels of notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:26, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

This proposal does not feel like it is in keeping with the spirit of WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 07:29, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

@Russ Woodroofe, does it feel like it is more in keeping with the spirit of NOTDIRECTORY than having separate articles for each of these people? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:56, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, yes, I most certainly think the separate articles for notable academics (per NPROF, or some evolved version of it) is more in keeping with the spirit of the NOTDIRECTORY policy. I don't really understand the argument as to why a list or directory of academics would be more of a NOTDIRECTORY than a series of articles? And while academic biographies vary in quality, I think that they are generally of a higher quality and better sourcing than our typical lists articles. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 15:43, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

@Russ Woodroofe, I wonder if you've read NOTDIRECTORY any time recently? We get in the habit of slinging around WP:UPPERCASE shortcuts without actually remembering the details. That section of the policy explicitly says that "Merged groups of small articles based on a core topic are permitted", which is what this is. If a given article happened to be longer than suitable, then editors would naturally follow Wikipedia:Summary style by providing a short summary in the list and a link to the longer article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:44, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying the case that you are making (and I did reread the policy before discussing it). I still think that NPROF as it stands is easier to manage than what you propose. For one thing, AfD keeps our stable of articles under control; we don't have anything nearly so robust for entries in list articles. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 03:13, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Re "most professors spend most of their careers at a single institution": [citation needed]. I checked the last ten articles I created on academics: four had one institution (not even counting postdoctoral researcher positions), three had two, and three had three, for a median of two and an average slightly under two.

Also, this "let's just make a list" attitude is a cop-out from editors who just want to delete them all without quite so much squawking. It is not a serious way to build an encyclopedia. Lists are mostly cruft-magnets. And it does not provide any of the actual benefits to readers of full articles (for instance, providing link targets for reference authors so readers can see what kind of expert wrote the sources we are using, or providing material for other academics who want to look up what to say when introducing a speaker). "So that people can be in Wikipedia" is the wrong reason for creating an article, and preventing self-promoters with that motivation from causing those articles to be made about themselves is a big part of the reason we have standards for academic notability that require some level of accomplishment rather than merely self-promotion. Switching to a standard (GNG) that is based primarily on how successful self-promoters are at self-promotion would be an enormous step in the wrong direction. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:30, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

@David Eppstein, I don't think I understand what you mean about "link targets for reference authors". Presumably "readers can see what kind of expert wrote the sources we are using" by clicking on the little blue clicky numbers, as usual. Or were you concerned about the readers of other articles, trying to find out who this "Expert, Alice" is that wrote The Sun is Very Big? If so, you would just create a redirect and an anchor to the specific line in the table.

I am concerned about self-promotion by academics, not because I think it's somehow worse than normal, everyday marketing efforts by CEOs at various companies, but because some years ago, I talked to a woman in academia (outside the US) who said that in her experience, the men she was familiar with who had Wikipedia articles were often men whom she knew were hiring publicity consultants. I think it could be driving part of our academic gender gap. I suppose it might also give us the occasional badly written or UPE-non-compliant article, but the point was that they're creating "media buzz", which results in sources for us to cite (rather than specifically paying to have a Wikipedia article created). It's not wrong to encourage the independent media to write about you, no matter who you are or what you do, but if one group is motivated to seek publicity, it could have a disproportionate effect on who appears in Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:07, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I mean authorlinks in references. Users can see the metadata for a reference for clicking on the little blue clicky numbers. If that reference has an open-access link they can see the text of the reference by following that link. But it is also common to add wikilinks on the authors of a reference, to articles about those authors, when those articles exist. In such cases the content of those articles can provide more information about who wrote the reference and what their expertise is.

And if you're worried about the creation of Wikipedia articles in response to artificial "media buzz", then you should not be enthusiastic about GNG, because it is entirely based on media buzz, whereas NPROF is not. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:21, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

GNG is only based on media buzz when editors use news, interview, and tabloid sources to demonstrate notability. Enforcing existing requirements for sustained, significant, non-routine coverage in secondary, independent, high-quality sources would alleviate a lot of your concerns over "hype". JoelleJay (talk) 17:58, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

No. The mainstream media coverage of academics stems almost entirely from mainstream media picking up press releases from those academics' employers. Using it as a notability criterion is using hype. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:14, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

If all articles had to meet JoelleJay's standards, we'd get rid of half of the articles, and probably much more than half the articles on BLPs. It'll never happen, but it would solve the "hype" problems, or at least require the would-be subject to engage in many years of effort to get a Wikipedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:46, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Where did I say anything about NPROF? This was a comment on GNG, where coverage of announcements should not count towards notability per NOTNEWS. And you already know my stance on how academics can receive sufficient secondary discussion of their scholarly output to support a research section, which could arguably satisfy GNG without using any mainstream media. JoelleJay (talk) 03:24, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Strictly following GNG would only leave those who got major prizes (and thus had the citations reposted by the media) or those (mainly in humanities) who are used as regular media experts. I am not sure this is what we want. Ymblanter (talk) 07:13, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Again, I was not commenting on GNG coverage of academics, only on the characterization of GNG coverage overall. JoelleJay (talk) 07:50, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't get this enthusiasm for lists rather than separate articles that we see here and on another open discussion about WP:GEOLAND that is on one of the village pumps. Content is verifiable or not, and damaging or not, whether it is presented as a separate article or as a list entry. As a reader I much prefer, when I ask for information about Joe Bloggs, to get taken straight to an article, which may only be a sentence or two, specifically about Joe Bloggs, rather than have to go through the other professors at Anytown University to find what I'm looking for. If I want a list of professors then I will ask for a list of professors. Surely only including content in such lists is only something that paper encyclopedias need to do? Phil Bridger (talk) 15:33, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't get it either. It reads more like a "directory" or a dump from a "database", things which we are repeatedly told that Wikipedia is not. It gets in the way of including valuable information (for example, there's no room in a table like that above for educational history or 3–4 selected publications apiece). It imposes a grouping that doesn't really make sense. XOR'easter (talk) 19:10, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Table cells can hold multiple paragraphs, so it would be possible to say something about which schools the person attended or which papers they wrote. But perhaps by being a little less free-form, it might encourage people to follow independent sources and comply with WP:NOTCV. (You know what you find on a CV for an academic? Their educational history and a list of selected publications.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:49, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

The idea that we should forbid listing career milestones because NOTCV is wrongheaded and bad. Of course an article on someone should list the major milestones of their career. An article on a politician should list their elected offices. An article on a musician should list their discography. And an article on a professor should list the professorships they have held.

NOTCV does have value: It tells us not to be linkedin (an indiscriminate collection of people's resumes, without anything else to explain why we should care to look at this resume), it tells us to cull all of the picayune minutiae that one should list on an academic cv (courses taught and committee service, for instance) in favor of only the significant points, and (with WP:USEPROSE) it suggests that formatting the milestones in a paragraph of text may sometimes be better than making a bulleted list. But using it to forbid any article that describes the "educational history and a list of selected publications" of an academic? You have lost sight of what we are trying to accomplish with the encyclopedia, have lost sight of how to interpret our rules in light of what we are trying to accomplish, and have turned to blindly following misguided interpretations of rules merely because they are rules. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:10, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Or I'm telling you what I usually see in NPROF-based articles: He's a professor of Something, he graduated from Big University with a dissertation on Tedious Minutiae, he got a job at Medium University, he joined a club and/or won an award, and here's a list of publications selected according to no discernible criteria (except when it's "all of them").

If that's what you're trying to accomplish, then you've succeeded. If you're trying to accomplish something like "helping me understand why anyone (not being paid or coerced into it) would bother writing about this person", then we're mostly failing, at least where the typical BLP subject is concerned. For long-dead profs, it's usually easier to find information explaining why someone should care, since obituaries often explain that better than we do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I always like this idea for various topics because it gives the reader context that I feel is excellent for an encyclopaedia. Maybe they would work best in combination with articles, as an at-a-glance summary. Increase the bar for academic article notability and decrease the bar for coverage of an academic, in my opinion. J947 † ^edits 02:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I think that there is little support for decreasing the bar for coverage, neither among proponents nor opponents of NPROF. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:54, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Your suggestion delegates to Wikipedia editors the determination of which people belong. That's something we rely on external sources for. Otherwise we have a list of people that Wikipedia editors consider important. TFD (talk) 01:46, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Editors still have to make that determination, even if they use reliable sources as their excuse. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:12, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

In relation to the GNG

I've always been of the opinion that academics do have to have properly sourced coverage to showcase notability, however, that coverage can be of their research and publications. Because that's where the main coverage of an academic is going to come from, the work that they do. It is similar to how notability is shown for authors by having multiple pieces of reliable source review coverage of their books. It is coverage of their work that presents their notability.

So I argue that it is this aspect that should be more strongly exemplified in the notability guideline for academics. And it can also help for those wanting secondary sourced coverage in general. What do y'all think? Silverseren^C 06:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

So every academic whose research has been covered in multiple survey papers is notable? I think that would be too indiscriminate. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:32, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

A few years ago I tried to come up with a reconfigured version of PROF that was based on that principle at Wikipedia:Notability (scholars). I haven't quite given up on it, but there's no real momentum. One major obstacle to making substantial changes to PROF (and most SNGs) is that those that see the current guideline as too inclusive will oppose any change that incidentally makes it more exclusive, and those that see the current guideline as too exclusive will oppose any change that incidentally makes it more inclusive. We're basically stuck with a classic compromise: the version everybody dislikes. – Joe (talk) 06:35, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

A lot of the repeated discussion seems to come from people who are philosophically opposed to anything that is not GNG and do not care what affect that would have on our inclusivity. Others may be motivated by the idea that using GNG-based criteria could be a tool for what they see as a needed culling of articles (the same way eliminating accomplishment-based criteria has already decimated our coverage of Olympians), and have not considered the possibility that WP:PROF is the dam that holds back a flood of notability arguments treating citations or survey papers as SIGCOV. But beyond being more inclusive or exclusive, another direction we should consider is whether any change in notability criteria would change the balance of our coverage between academics successful in academia and academics successful in public life and whether a change in that balance one way or another would be an improvement. (My personal opinion is that both types of academic are necessary to include because Wikipedia needs to be useful both to the public and as a tool within academia.) —David Eppstein (talk) 06:42, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

True. As I see it, there are three main "camps" of people opposed to PROF in its current form:

1. People who think all notability guidelines should be grounded in the GNG
2. People who think PROF is too inclusive
3. People who think PROF is too exclusive (especially from a systemic bias perspective)

Personally I disagree with the first two camps and strongly agree with the third. But I also think that a compromise between the first and third camps is possible, and could be an improvement over the status quo. The second camp intersects with a wider deletionist bloc that has scored some major victories recently (WP:NSPORT, WP:NROAD, currently going after WP:GEOLAND) so my worry is that, if we do nothing, PROF could be the next target. – Joe (talk) 07:16, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

My understanding is that Camp 1 and Camp 2 are the same people. They think that GNG must be interpreted literally and whatever article does not currently conform with their interpretation of GNG must be deleted. This interpretation leaves no room to the concept of presumed notability. They are also, according to my observation, not interested in finding any compromise, they just arrive en masse and hope to get every discussion closed according to the number of votes. Ymblanter (talk) 07:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm more optimistic. There's substantial overlap, in that camp 2 often find the GNG to be a useful starting argument. However, I think their primary motivation is not enforcing the GNG, but literally reducing the number of articles (out of a concern for quality over quantity, scepticism about mass creation, dislike of stubs, etc). The distinction emerges when there is shown to be significant coverage: camp 1 will move on, but camp 2 will start reaching for other policies (WP:NOTNEWS, WP:NOTDIRECTORY, etc) which could provide a basis for exclusion. But I do think there's a lot of editors (maybe it's the biggest camp), especially newer editors who don't really specialise in one topic and/or are put off by the complexity of the SNGs, who genuinely just believe that the GNG is a sufficient and objective standard, and will apply it regardless of the result. It's with those that I see the possibility for compromise: basically accepting that the GNG is the ultimate standard, but allowing some room for editorial judgement in what we presume to be notable before applying it. – Joe (talk) 07:46, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with Ymblanter's "They think that GNG must be interpreted literally". The literal meaning of GNG is that anyone with two in-depth profiles in two different small-town newspapers is notable. The same people would vigorously dispute that. But this is a quibble; Ymblanter's general point is valid. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:18, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@Silver seren, I've put forth similar arguments in many discussions here and elsewhere. It gets shot down every time before any sincere discussion can occur, because "GNG==hype from celebrity publicists". JoelleJay (talk) 07:30, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

That reads as a fairly standard interpretation of underlying logic of PROF to me. I first heard it articulated by DGG many years ago. What is it that people shoot down? – Joe (talk) 07:52, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

What is so broken about WP:PROF that it needs fixing? Out of all of our notability guidelines it seems to work the best, keeping out non-encyclopedic content and including encyclopedic content. That some editors have problems interpreting the guideline is a problem with those editors, not with the guideline. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:03, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, to name only one of my concerns, there is a criteria that says "The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions", and no requirement that this 'significant impact' be verifiable in any independent reliable source. Or, indeed, any sources whatsoever. According to the way this is written (which I'm sure is different from how it's intended), any editor is entitled to say that almost anyone is notable. Perhaps someone will decide that creepy old Prof. Predator has "made a significant impact in the area of higher education" by being terminated for cause from "a substantial number of academic institutions". I'm sure the organizers of any education-related conference would claim to have "made a significant impact" on "a substantial number of academic institutions". They might even say that in a post-event press release, which NPROF would expect editors to swallow, because there's no requirement in this particular criteria for those claims of "significant impact" or even "a substantial number of academic institutions" to be views held by any independent source whatsoever. This criteria really ought to have the same line about "as demonstrated in independent reliable sources" as NPROF #1 does. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:21, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Made-up fake problems with your philosophy of the guideline that do not ever actually arise in testing the notability of actual articles are not problems in need of fixing. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:07, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

"The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions" is typically satisfied by having somewhat widely-used textbooks, as discussed later in the guideline. What kind of independent reliable sources are you suggesting for textbook adoption? I do not believe that I've seen anyone making an argument that being terminated for cause from several institutions would be a pass of Criteria 4, nor do I think that argument would be successful. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 08:12, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to see a source that actually says this person had a substantial effect on higher education, instead of expecting editors to decide what that means. Of course, if the real rule is "Wrote a textbook that is at least somewhat widely used", then the criterion should just say that, and IMO it should be followed by a requirement to provide an independent source claiming that the textbook is relatively popular. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:26, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Next you'll be asking for independent sources with the exact words "this person meets Wikipedia's notability standards for academics by having had a substantial effect on higher education". If they miss out any single word you'll state that the evidence is insufficient for you to conclude that they pass.

Wikipedia editors are not string-matching automata. They should be expected to use some thought in determining notability. This goes for GNG as well as for PROF. It is not the sort of thing that can be treated as a mechanical decision with no thought required. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:12, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't ask for that, but there are a lot of editors here, so I imagine that it's possible that someone might eventually ask for something similar. See also Infinite monkey theorem and all that.

But seriously: if "significant impact" means "wrote a textbook", it should actually say that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors are not string-matching automata. Yeah, wouldn't want to reduce editors to finite automata, otherwise they might pump out arbitrarily many boilerplate articles... JoelleJay (talk) 17:12, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

It's not always textbooks. See the citations for the winners of APS Excellence in Physics Education Award. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 03:49, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Every one of these discussion points has been made many times at WP:PROF's talk page. People against it continually fail to bring up examples of professors being retained at AfD because of WP:PROF whom they feel should have been deleted by GNG or profs being deleted at AfD who should have been retained if the guideline didn't exist. And for the umpteenth time, several contributors continually forget that there are non-scientist academics, which WP:PROF has done a good job of acknowledging the contributions of. I fail to see consensus changing here, and certainly not among people who contribute to academic AfDs. -- Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert (talk) 21:06, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Amen to the above comment. Again and again we get proposals from people who want to raise standards of WP:Prof to stratospheric levels so that only Nobel prizewinners qualify. They are opposed by others who want to dumb standards down to basement level so that all their favorite sons or daughters can pass. They balance each other out. Give it a rest please. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:53, 11 October 2023 (UTC).

I third these sentiments. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 19:04, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Under Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works these get a bit of extra consideration because they are more enclyclopedic. I think that that is a good thing, although I can't speak for the specific current system....it may need tweaking. Also, unlike other areas like sports (which is at the other extreme where the coverage itself is a form of entertainment and so is more voluminous and less indicative) GNG coverage of academics is less so and so I think that a bit of extra consideration for the the types of things targeted by the SNG is a good thing. One a side note, the current system requires acquiring some specialized expertise to do NPP making it hard to get that handled properly. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:52, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I never understand why NPPers don't just pass by articles where they don't understand the notability criteria. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:05, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Where did you read otherwise in my post or elsewhere? North8000 (talk) 15:08, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

BTW, it's not a matter of "understand", in this case it's also fluency in doing the specialized searches. North8000 (talk) 15:16, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Regarding List of programmes broadcast by CITV notability

I provided third person sources to prove shows like Chris Cross and Your Mother Wouldn't Like It were broadcast on CITV. BBC - Comedy Guide - Chris Cross (archive.org) and BBC - Comedy - Guide - Your Mother Wouldn't Like It (archive.org) in order to create List of programmes broadcast by CITV. Why was the article deleted then? Dwanyewest (talk) 12:39, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Dwanyewest. To pass the relevant standard (WP:LISTN) you need sources showing the subjects to be notable as a group. Looking at the AFD discussion, I see it was essentially a WP:TNT decision (that is, the article wasn't unsaveable per se, just that the article was in such a bad state that the best option was to blow it up and start again). Try recreating the article using different sourcing and in a different format - see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works for advice on how to create the article. Good examples of this kind of article are hard to come by, but List of Walt Disney Pictures films is not the worst one. FOARP (talk) 15:12, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

PS - also feel free to ping me on my talk page if you want more advice on this or you have problems recreating the article. It is possible that some people on here may be less familiar with what CITV actually is/was (i.e., one of the two main childrens entertainment broadcasts that was watched by all British children during the 1980's/90's). FOARP (talk) 15:14, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

CITV celebrates 30th anniversary with a weekend of classic children's programmes - Radio Times (archive.org) , BBC - Comedy Guide - Show A-Z (archive.org) has a good comprehensive list which would be useful which lists the date of broadcasts of the CITV programmes surely this would be useful? Dwanyewest (talk) 23:18, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Go ahead and try recreating it based on these sources. FOARP (talk) 06:17, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I did and it was deleted on 27th November 2023. It was still deleted. Dwanyewest (talk) 22:31, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Was it recreated exactly as it was before? Such an article can be speedy deleted. You need to re-write it to address the issues raised in the deletion discussion. Which briefly were:

• Poor formatting
• Inclusion of films, which obviously aren't regular programming on CITV.
• Detours on unrelated stuff.
  

If it had already been re-written to address these issues then it shouldn't have been speedy deleted, and you should raise that with the person who did it. FOARP (talk) 15:37, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

• No, speedy deletion criterion WP:G4 "excludes pages that are not substantially identical". To have been validly deleted under G4 it must have been found to be substantially idential. The wider criteria suggested here are contrary to policy. In addition, "pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies" are also excluded from G4. Thincat (talk) 15:59, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  We're essentially saying the same thing here, just with different emphasis: if the article was re-written to address the DELREASONs, it shouldn't have been speedied. If it was recreated exactly as before, it could be speedied. If re-written, it should be re-written to address the DELREASONs. FOARP (talk) 20:35, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think we are saying the same thing:

  1. not substantially identical - no G4
  2. changed to address DELREASON - no G4
  3. unchanged or substantially identical - G4

  It is a good idea to address DELREASON but this is not a requirement to avoid WP:G4. Thincat (talk) 22:19, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not saying the DELREASONs have to be addressed to avoid G4 though, just that the DELREASONs should be addressed, and if they have, there should be no G4 because it won't be identical.
  

  Anyway, the article-subject appears to be a WP:GNG pass based on BBC/Radio Times coverage (pace the comments at the AFD, coverage from a commercial rival is hardly excluded from contributing towards GNG, otherwise there could be no GNG-contributing coverage of any media outlet). FOARP (talk) 08:11, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

  We are now agreed! Thincat (talk) 09:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

What does "presumed notable" actually mean?

At AFD this often comes up but as far as I am aware there is no actual definition of this term, which is unfortunate.

I've seen a number of potential interpretations, including (but not limited to) the following:

1) A presumption of notability rebuttable by, for example, a full WP:BEFORE search for instances of significant coverage returning no results.

2) Essentially automatic notability, rebuttable only by raising doubts about the accuracy of the sources that verify the existence of the subject.

Is anyone aware of any actual guidance on here as to how presumed notability should actually be interpreted? Is there a third interpretation that should be mentioned here? Anyone have any thoughts about this? This isn't a formal RFC - just trying to sound people out. FOARP (talk) 12:28, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

A good question, I think it is "Do to CSD this article", but it more often seems to end up as "It does not have to pass GNG ever". Slatersteven (talk) 12:34, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

My understanding is that it's technically #1 but in practice can be varying degrees of #2 depending on how realistic it is to do a comprehensive search for sources. So if you've presumed a living American musician is notable based on album sales but can't find enough sources to write a policy-compliant article, you can consider yourself rebutted. But if you're trying to get an article on a 15th century Mongolian monk deleted because your Google search turned up nothing, you're not going to get very far. Basically the underlying logic is that notability is an objective characteristic of a topic but one that's hard to conclusively determine. Hence the reliance on presumptions (the SNGs) and rules of thumb (the GNG). – Joe (talk) 13:16, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

It has always been the presumption of notability (eg your #1). The key is that the onus is on those seeking deletion to show a strong argument that there is a lack of sources for the topic (which is what #2 seems to be getting). A nominator failing to do a proper thorough BEFORE search doesn't make the topic notable, just that the challenge of presumed notability at that time has failed and someone else may challenge it later. Masem (t) 13:37, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

IMO it has a couple of different fuzzy meanings. In SNG's it's the basis for all SNG's. Rather than saying that the SNG criteria is an outright bypass/circumvention of GNG, they use terms (such as "presumed") that say that they are a mere predictor of GNG compliance. The second is that all of the notability guidelines avoid explicitly defining wp:notability. This is a necessity unless we acknowledge how it actually works (when it works) (IMHO Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works) and then rework guidelines to match that. So anything that would otherwise be an explicit definition gets softened up with "presumed" wording. So in the second context, it means "appears to satisfy wp:notability". Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:28, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the more pertinent question is when does "presumed notability" stop being presumed? Slatersteven (talk) 13:32, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Arguably all topics still remain of "presumed" but the more and more secondary, independent sources that discuss the topic at depth you can show about the topic, the probability that there will be a challenge to the presumption goes down greatly. Its sort of a logarithmic scale - the fewer sources you have, the chance for a presumption challenge is high, but as you start getting past dozens of sources, that probability drops quickly to practically zero. Masem (t) 13:40, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Let's remember that the general notability guideline also contains the word "presumed". Passing it is not more a guarantee of notability than any of the other notability guidelines. Real notability is decided by consensus, just as everything else is. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Which is why we have so many one-line stubs on Olympic gold medalists, who won one medal, in one event, one year, and never did anything else, and whose sole source is the IOCC. This (not this exactly, but something similar) may well be the germ of this, another stub source to one or two sources that only mention the barest of details, a list entry, not an encyclopedia entry. Slatersteven (talk) 13:50, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

The real reason why we have those articles is because people did not stop Lugnuts making them until he had gone through several tens of thousands of them. FOARP (talk) 07:00, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is that a few weeks ago, @Espresso Addict decided to bypass a redirect in this edit. We have said for years that this is a rebuttable presumption; now we leave editors wondering whether the presumption is irrebuttable.

As for the question, it's mostly #1, but it's not just doing your own BEFORE search; rebutting the presumption requires getting folks at AFD to agree with you that the article either doesn't qualify (e.g., not enough sources to write a policy-compliant article) or that it violates WP:NOT or that they don't want to handle the subject that way (e.g., they'd rather merge it up). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:01, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

"Rebuttable" was added on 17 September 2023 to a long-established formulation before I removed it on 13 October 2023‎. Rebuttable presumption has always just been is now just a redirect to presumption. There was some discussion on the talk ('Do we need "rebuttably"?' a few sections up) that appeared to generate consensus that "rebuttable" was not useful in context. Espresso Addict (talk) 19:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

That sentence has linked to Rebuttable presumption since I added the link in 2010, which I think makes that the "long-established formulation". (I dislike the "A topic is rebuttably presumed..." wording, too, but I think that having the link helped people who were unsure whether the presumption was irrebuttable.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Genuinely puzzled as to how a hidden word is useful: presumption renders the same as presumption and has the same target. Espresso Addict (talk) 19:33, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

ETA. Ah, I see, rebuttable presumption used to exist, but was redirected into presumption in May. Perhaps the answer is to undo the redirection? Espresso Addict (talk) 19:46, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I think it's right to avoid anchoring our policies in legalistic jargon. The former article on rebuttable presumption defined it as "an assumption made by a court", giving the examples of "innocent until proven guilty", consent to sexual activity, and the division of property and custody rights after divorce. Insiders might be able to track the analogy, but a lot of people are going to be wondering who the court is and how the hell it all relates to AfD. The plain English meaning of "presume" should cover what we mean here. – Joe (talk) 06:43, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Which is "to accept that something is true until it is shown not to be true, especially in court", which pretty much brings us back to a legal context.

I'm not sure "rebuttable" helped, but some kind of practical advice about what we're talking about would help, especially when "presumed notable" so often gets interpreted as "is automatically notable". FOARP (talk) 09:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

This discussion is why I fought to try to keep "rebuttable presumption" of some form. It was a necessary term to avoid problems like this at AFD. Masem (t) 13:23, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

• I think of it like this. The presumption of notability gives a baseline threshold of certain topics that are extremely likely to pass GNG (legislators, cities, etc.), saving time for reviewers and creators, as well as indicating when offline sources are likely to exist. This presumption can be rebutted, primarily through WP:NOPAGE, if sources are found to not exist. Curbon7 (talk) 20:45, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

  Gotta ask: is this the way it works right now? FOARP (talk) 18:12, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

  Yes. In the past year, one article on an WP:NPOL-passing politician (a 13th-century English MP) was deleted on NOPAGE grounds because there was simply nothing in the way of sourcing to sustain an article; his last name wasn't even known if I recall correctly. Curbon7 (talk) 20:34, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

  I'm thinking about GEOSTUBS where a GEOLAND pass is treated as basically a pass on ever having to show GNG. You have to basically cast doubt on the place existing as described in the sources - just showing a complete lack of any coverage never seems to be enough. FOARP (talk) 21:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

  It sounds like your concern is less about what the words mean ("assume it's true until proven otherwise") and more about not getting to delete articles that AFD decides to keep. The legal analogy feels especially relevant: in the legal context, the presumption has to be disproven to the satisfaction of the judge, not just one party's; on wiki, the presumption has to be disproven to AFD's satisfaction, not your own. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:03, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  A judge doesn't just decide themselves what the law is - they have some basis for making their decisions. Particularly, they can't just invent a completely different standard about the evidence needed to show something than the one generally understood. AFD being off the rails is also a very old topic of discussion here.

  But sure, I'm just an evil deletionist who is angry because they can't delete the entire encyclopaedia, which is obviously what I am planning to do. FOARP (talk) 08:48, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  The prosecutor doesn't have to convince himself; he has to convince the judge and/or jury. In the English common law system, the jury, as triers of fact, get to set whatever standard they want for the evidence that convinces them.

  You might be interested in reading about Jury nullification and comparing it to Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. The English Wikipedia is based on what editors agree to do ("consensus"), not on following pre-determined rules (per WP:NOTSTATUTE). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  Once someone was done a good faith before check then those editors wishing to keep the article need to show that sources exactly exist. The rest can be sorted out at AfD. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:39, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  @ActivelyDisinterested - Quite. We should not be giving weight to arguments that amount, essentially, to "Keep, it exists".

  But hey, I should just go and read some articles about common law practise to see if there's something I missed in my (getting-on) couple of decades working in the law. That will definitely explain to me why an article about a 19th century Olympian or minor geological feature in Antarctica should be kept even though no-one ever wrote anything substantial about them. FOARP (talk) 09:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

  Reflecting on the similarities between our policy and jury nullification might help you understand why "But it doesn't comply with the law (as I understand them)!" isn't a compelling argument when AFD goes the other way.

  @ActivelyDisinterested, it turns out that it's the other way around. The rules for keeping content in an article are not the rules for keeping an article. Keeping a sentence in an article requires the editors who want to keep that sentence to demonstrate not only that there is a (exactly one) source that they (NB: not you) believe is reliable for it ("BURDEN") and also to demonstrate that there is a consensus for keeping that sentence in that article ("ONUS").

  But keeping an article goes the other way: the editor who wants to delete the page has to demonstrate a consensus to delete it, not a consensus to keep it. See the first item in Wikipedia:Consensus#No consensus and the Wikipedia:Deletion policy, which has required articles to be kept unless a consensus forms to delete them since at least 2003 (when we required a two-thirds majority to delete articles). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

  If it's the other way round and someone has done a good faith before search, your saying they have to prove that sources don't exist. They have to prove a negative? If it's that way round then something has gone very wrong. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

  Long established by BEFORE, if you are the nom seeking to delete something via a challenge to an established presumed notability, you have to demonstrate a good faith effort to find that no additional sources exist where we would expect to find sources. Which usually means that you probably have to dig into print sources of the locality that the topic is from. We know you can't show 100% no sources exist, but you show the effort made to find sources where they would be expected and came out dry. Masem (t) 13:05, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

  So as I said a good faith before search, you're just repeating what I said with addition words. Once that's done anyone wanting to keep the article needs to show actual sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

  I was more replying to the question that you raised, that if we are trying to prove a negative, and my answer is basically, "as best as one can, even if proving a negative is impossible". Masem (t) 15:34, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

  Sorry I mistakenly took you comment as disagreeing with my comment. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:01, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

  The rules for deleting an article don't technically require anyone to prove anything. They require a consensus to be formed in favor of deletion, else it will be kept. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:30, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

  That consensus comes from the balance of policy arguments, not numbers. If a side has arguments that don't take policy into account, then the consensus should be against them. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:24, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  Maybe a better reply to this would be to say that arguments at AfDs of the nature "passes SNG" have no basis in policy. As the presumption that sources exist has been shown as faulty. If a good faith before search that doesn't find sources then those wishing to keep the article need to show sources exist. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

  Why would you want to say that? Anything that can genuinely be said to "pass Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)" has been proven to have sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:29, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

  Because many, if not most, SNGs are not as comprehensive as NCORP. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  This situation was exactly the same problem with NSPORT before the removal of the "participation" criteria, where it had been that we had presumed notability if a player played one game at a pro level. It made it literally impossible to delete athletes where it was shown next to no other sourcing beyond the presence in statbooks was available. Masem (t) 13:18, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  I remember many articles on such players being deleted. For example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ádám Hamar. Curbon7 (talk) 21:13, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  Examples of keep outcomes based on pure participation-based notability criteria exist in abundance, though. E.g.,

  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sabuhi Huseynov
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Birahim Gaye
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vadim Zubavlenko

  I don't think any of those would have closed as keep under the present standard. None of the keep !voters in those discussions thought anything more was needed that just pointing to the SNG.
  

  The rule change to NSPORTS stopped this in the sports biography field, but GEO is basically still like this a lot of the time - the topic is assumed notable, not just presumed. FOARP (talk) 14:23, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

  I'm inclined to dispute that this is actually what the NSPORTS restrictions did. What I think they did is replace a direct presumption of Notability - rebuttable only by NOPAGE-type considerations, essentially - to an indirect presumption. The current version of NSPORTS seems to mean that achievement-based criteria only offer a presumption that "GNG" coverage exists (and I still think that it was a misinterpretation that made this "GNG" rather than the stricter standard of NBASIC, but I digress). In turn, GNG itself only offers a presumption, not a guarantee, of meriting an article. So to me, the idea that "presumptive Notability" ever meant "presumed to have GNG coverage" - except where this was the explicit intent of a group of (presumably well-intentioned) editors, is simply a misunderstanding. Newimpartial (talk) 15:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

  Ironically, one of the AfDs you cite that was kept (Vadim Zubavlenko) was deleted months later for the same rationale as the Hamar example (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vadim Zubavlenko (2nd nomination)). I suppose we can both agree that the application was inconsistent. Curbon7 (talk) 18:30, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

• It means only one thing... That the presumption can be made that sufficient significant coverage in exists to establish notability (within policy and guideline there is no other way to read it). What you seem to be asking is when that presumption reasonable ends, which there is disagreement on. The particular sticking point has repeatedly been whether the presumption can be rebutted without any native speakers of the context language(s) joining the search for sources (for example deciding that a business in Indonesia doesn't have sign-cov by looking at English language sources alone). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:56, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
• Comment. The GEO STUB can be viewed as falling under WP:BONSAI also Wikipedia:Gazetteer. Encyclopedia is also full of computing concepts like https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/System.map which don't meet GNG but meet Verifiable and also meet the purpose of Wikipedia. Even obscure species of birds would not pass deletion if everything would be reduced to only WP:GNG and not the more important WP:V. बिनोद थारू (talk) 14:23, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

  Just to point this out: WP:Bonzai and WP:GAZETTEER are both essays, and particularly in the case of WP:GAZETTEER, disputed and not generally accepted. FOARP (talk) 08:27, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Notability, it means it meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) or a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG). However, it says this is not a guarantee of notability and discretion should be used.

Unfortunately, many editors miss the second part. Furthermore, many editors apply the guidelines too broadly. For example a film is presumed notable if it has received a major award. Some editors read "major" to mean "any."

The guideline makes sense. A U.S. Congressman probably has sufficient reliable sources to write an article. We expect that local papers at least would have covered their campaigns and community involvement and they probably had some new coverage before they ran. However, for someone who served one term in the early 19th century, there may be insufficient reliable sources to write an informative article.

Another problem is that some subject specific guidelines define notability as "influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources." (Wikipedia:Notability (academics).) So basically any professor can have an article, even if the only source is their bio on their employer's website.

TFD (talk) 17:20, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

So basically any professor can have an article, even if the only source is their bio on their employer's website.

The source is not independent so doesn't count for GNG, so it should be deleted in an AFD right (if it meets SNG and found to not meet GNG)? बिनोद थारू (talk) 17:24, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I believe that non-independent sources are still counted for Wikipedia:Notability (academics), but I believe that all the other SNGs (finally) require independent sources. (NB: what's required is the existence of sources in the real world, even if none are cited in the article at the present time.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, non-independent sources can still be considered reliable in terms of academics. Curbon7 (talk) 23:53, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, academic notability allows certain non-independent sources to count as reliable. Reliability and independence are two different things. No, it is not true that "basically any professor can have an article". The standards for WP:PROF are quite high; most assistant professors, associate professors, and non-research-university professors (together the vast majority of professors) do not pass. The difference between academic and other notability is not that the bar is higher or lower; the difference is that academic notability is based on academic recognition of scholarly achievement and not on the ability to get puff pieces published in magazines. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:16, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I've always thought of notability as a reasonable expectation that a person reading Wikipedia will want to find an article on the person, place, thing, or concept. Or what I believe "presumption of notability" should mean. I've never proposed this definition as a formal definition because it can easily be abused, but if WP:GNG is interpreted in this spirit, one should not go wrong. Doing this allows us to exclude subjects that we reasonably should not have an article about. Allow me to provide a few examples.
  • In the past I created a number of articles on individual Roman consuls. Because these men held one of the highest offices of the Roman Republic/Empire, there is an expectation these men should have articles. However, many of these people are only names to history. So if I could not find enough information about one of these, I did not create an article about him. (And to pre-empt the efforts of a well-meaning but uninformed contributor to creating an article that would never amount to more than two sentences, where possible I would create a redirect to an article about the gens he belonged to.) In other words, some people hold an office of significance but we shouldn't have an article about them because there is nothing more we can report about them.
  • There was a European settler in Ethiopia who ran a general store back in the 1920s/1930s, who is mentioned in a number of books, both of the time & later. So reliable sources exist... but who would be expected to want an article about a guy who is only known for running a general store? (And no, these accounts fail to confirm he did anything more significant than run a store.)

I could provide examples in other areas, but these 2 come immediately to mind. So there are three principles to notability for subjects on Wikipedia: is the subject significant enough for inclusion; do we have enough reliable information about the subject; & can we reasonably expect our readers to want to know about the subject. I admit "reasonably expect" will smell to some as weasel words -- & lead people pushing an agenda to abuse it (e.g. "Of course people want to know about my garage band" -- "No one cares about this political activist who has been fighting for civil rights"), it is something we need to take into consideration. It would confirm a presumption of notability. -- llywrch (talk) 08:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Very few of our notability criteria (in their literal wording) actually address your first point, "is the subject significant enough for inclusion". We used to do that for athletes by considering Olympians and first-division players significant enough, but that has fallen by the wayside in favor of a more strict adherence to GNG and only GNG. We still sort of do it for politicians and academics.

And of course we still do it in many individual AfDs, where participants will ignore the literal wording of GNG, opine that there is depth of coverage in reliable sources for people who they think are significant enough, and opine that there is not enough depth of coverage for people who they think are insignificant, even though the actual difference in depth of coverage may be difficult to discern. But we shouldn't do that. If it's important to have a significance threshold in our notability criteria, it's important for it to be explicit in the wording of those criteria. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Academics

Suggestion that topics for lining persons be evaluated by examining only the parts not pertaining to birth and education. There are many modern academic person topics which have no significant content. Those topics should be moved to a wikiacademia.org and out of Wikipedia. Too many of them are CV without significant data.

listing each dean of minor colleges at a large university only on the basis of holding a dean position is not noteworthy. 2600:1700:D591:5F10:CEC:909D:8E64:56F (talk) 19:31, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion that you write more clearly. Suggestion that you read WP:PROF again and this time pay attention to the fact that it does not actually confer notability on deans. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Is there a notability standard for legislation?

Was curious about this. Couldn't find it at a glance. Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 18:09, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that there is one, so it would fall under WP:GNG. Much legislation is covered by law books; have you looked there for sources? Phil Bridger (talk) 18:51, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Notability reform

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Notability reform. Ca ^{talk to me!} 03:39, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

GNG and sources relation to claims of notability

This is something I've seen come up a few times and I'm not sure it's explained in WP:GNG. This is specifically about stand alone articles or lists. In the simple form do the references have to relate to the claim of notability?
As an example an author published an otherwise unnotable a work. It causes an independent reliable source to publish an article about the author. The author also appears in two other articles related to being the chess champion of their university. Does this then meet the requirements for GNG, or must the sources be about the claim of notability (being an author).
I would have thought that the latter is true, but I don't see it addressed under the GNG guidance.
Addendum for clarity (@20:05 UTC). This is specifically about the existence of a stand alone page, whether that be an article or a list. It's not specifically in regard to articles about people, that is just the example. To try and restate the example do the sources for the author have to be about them being an author, or are sources for any activity acceptable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:40, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

The claim to notability is: Do you have enough stuff to write a real article without violating things like V and RS? GMG^talk 19:51, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Things can be factually reliable and verifiable while miserably failing noteworthiness to be featured in a world class online encyclopedia. Graywalls (talk) 22:00, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@Graywalls: Notability isn't a measure of importance. I think Electrical disruptions caused by squirrels is kindof a silly subject, but it's gotten sustained in-depth coverage in reliable sources. I once wrote an article about a gay rabbit and got it to GA. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia and we don't have to be super picky with what's "important enough" for inclusion based on length requirements or the publishing cost at the printer. "Noteworthiness" is not a community endorsed standard and if anyone suggested it I would be strongly opposed, as any measure based on perceived importance would be subject to capricious whims and cultural bias, even more than we already are. That's why I'm morally opposed to SNGs pretty much in their entirety. It's us as editors deciding what's important rather than the sources.

One of the core strengths of the project is not that we're an exclusive club, but rather that if you can write an actual encyclopedia article then it should be written. That expansiveness and diversity of subjects is what makes us the premiere source for access to free knowledge. GMG^talk 13:12, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

(EC) Not sure exactly what you are asking about. If you are talking about individual entries on the list, there is no general requirement that they be notable. Some lists have a requirement or defacto that the entries have a wikipedia article or are wp:notable or have real world notability regarding the list criteria. This relates more to local list criteria than any general guideline. I think that you would need to be more specific. GNG is a requirement for existence of a separate article on the person. North8000 (talk) 19:52, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes my question is about stand alone articles or lists, not about entries on a list. I did state this is in the question. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:57, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

OK, to make sure I understand, so that would mean criteria for allowing that list article to exist. North8000 (talk) 20:11, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

List article, or just normal article, but yes it's about the criteria for existence. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:21, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

List article existence is sort of in the wiki twilight zone. Regarding wp:notability, the guideline says little and kind of throws up it's hands. Regarding other criteria for existence, guidance is sort of scattered and almost non-existent. So I don't think that policies/guidelines provide much guidance. But I don't understand how your post regarding individual people relates to existence/non-existence of the overall list article. North8000 (talk) 22:38, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

List article or not list article, I'm asking the question in general. I don't know why you've latched onto the idea of list articles .The example is about a person, but it's only an example of the issue.
Subject (person, company, building, etc) has three references:
Reference 1 relates to their claim to notablility.
References 2-3 do not relate to their claim to notability.
To meet the requirements of GNG do all three references have to relate to the claim of notability?
As examples:
If a building's claim to notability is that its the tallest building, do all three references have to be about it being the tallest building?
If a company's claim to notability is that it's the oldest shoe manufacturer, do all three references have to be about it being the oldest shoe manufacturer?
If the subject's claim to notability is being an author, do all three references have to be about them being an author? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:50, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

The GNG specifically (not the SNGs) does not consider any type of singular "claim to notability". We are looking for depth of coverage in independent and secondary sources. So if you have a handful of sources that discuss a topic but somehow all manage to coverage different parts of that topic, and they are all in-depth, that's fine.

As an example, from the area I generally focus on, video games generally have two phases of coverage, pre-release where a lot of details about the development of the game arise, and the post-release coverage which primarily will be reviews. Rarely is any single factor about a game arise to the point to be the "claim to notability", but combined, the development and reception parts all come from in-depth coverage to satisfy the GNG and have a decent encyclopedic article about the game. Masem (t) 14:07, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah we run into this issue every now and then with non-notable athletes who later got a smattering of coverage for other unrelated things. I think it comes down to whether the topic of DUE coverage is encyclopedic, since that's what the article must be based off of. So for a college swimmer with routine match coverage and stats who then opens a business in their 40s that gets them marginal coverage, we would have to assess whether we really need an article centered (potentially exclusively) around that person in the business context, not their swimming career. JoelleJay (talk) 21:09, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the challenge with athletes (and to certain degree with elected officials) is that there is a fair amount of verifiable information about the athlete's accomplishments (but those accomplishments may be routine or stats). So, there is a body of information that can be used to develop a (a portion of an) article that does not contribute to the notability of the subject. That same information may suggest that a stand-alone article could be developed without violating WP:V. But, all this gets back to the observation from North8000 that our system of notability is (and will always be) "fuzzy" - Enos733 (talk) 23:42, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

DUE deals with relative coverage within an article. It's not to do with notability. GMG^talk 13:15, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't say it was... But coverage that is not DUE should not be in an article, and if the coverage that is DUE is judged to be unencyclopedic that should factor into PAGEDECIDE. JoelleJay (talk) 18:34, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

If we are talking the GNG, the sources supporting notabability do not have to be all related to one area where the person is notable. So we could have an article on an author where there are a couple of in depth sources about his writing, and a couple about his chess championsion. But I would expect that thise sources are all faurly indepth. If you had only one indepth source about the author aspect, and the other sources were just routine or in passing mention of the chess stuff, thats likely going to fail GNG Masem (t) 23:06, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

• Take as an example a person who is elected to political office. The person had no prior political experience and was previously a secondary school science teacher and mother. If a reliable source publishes an in-depth biographical piece focusing on her teaching career and family life (all events prior to political office), we would not say that doesn't count toward GNG just because it doesn't deal with her political career. To the contrary, that is precisely the sort of in-depth coverage we want in order to write a well-rounded biography. Cbl62 (talk) 14:27, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
• Thanks Masem and Cbl62. You comments have corrected my confusion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:45, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I think others have answered this well. Answering your other question, the reason I answered on list articles is because wp:notability is a requirement for existence of a separate article on the topic. So mentioning a list article as an example in the OP inherently makes it about the article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:57, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Politician Notability

I understand this likely will not be changed, but I believe that it should be easily to create articles about local politicians. I created an article on a local politician named Christopher Del Borrello, yet people keep trying to delete it for “not being notable”. They say most of the sources are just “basic campaign coverage”, even if they are reliable and verifiable. “Campaign coverage” is still a source and should be treated as such. Many local residents may want to know about who they are voting for, and this is where they need to find the information about them. It is stupid to not be able to include local politicians on Wikipedia, the ENCYCLOPEDIA of INFORMATION. Antny08 (talk) 16:55, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Local politicians that are only known for running for office and nothing else basically fall into WP:BLP1E, as well as the fact that WP does not exist to provide free coverage of such candidates. WP does not cover everything. Masem (t) 17:04, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, he also is a CCO of a banking institute, and he is also known for some issues with one his businesses. Antny08 (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

In other words, he has a job. People aren't usually known outside their companies for being CCO. Unless there's applicable coverage of his position as CCO, it isn't notable it's just a job. And if there was an encyclopedia article for every person who had "some issues" with one of their businesses .... Largoplazo (talk) 17:14, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

lol true but still, I think he should have enough notability to be included. Antny08 (talk) 17:48, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Verifiable doesn't equate to notable. I appreciate your points, but "ENCYCLOPEDIA of INFORMATION" are your words. Wikipedia policy says explicitly "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information." Every local pizzeria that gets a review, like every other local restaurant in the community, in the community weekly; every locally produced play that's written up by a local critic who writes up every play at the same theater; every kid whose name appears in the local paper for having made the high school honor role every quarter for four years: Wikipedia shouldn't be filled up with articles like these. Nor should it have articles on every member of every local planning commission, nor every person who gets 100 signatures on a petition to qualify for inclusion on a ballet for some local office. Largoplazo (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

But he is more than somebody who made honor role in school, he is a politician who was a council member and ran in one of the most contested elections in New Jersey. Antny08 (talk) 17:14, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

If this has all made him worthy of note, where are the sources that have accorded him that note by according him special (not routine) attention? Largoplazo (talk) 17:18, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

[[15]]

This is an article having to do with one of Del Borrello’s businesses. It is written by Politico, a large and trusted source. He is the main talk of the article. Antny08 (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

[[16]]

Another major article, also proof it was a very contested district. Antny08 (talk) 17:54, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

There are thousands and thousands of highly contested provincial and state legislative elections in many countries worldwide every year. Each of these elections has one or more losers. There is nothing special about Del Barrello, and I oppose any change to our normal practice regarding unelected candidates. Cullen328 (talk) 22:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Then why aren't you raising these sources to support a finding of notability at the deletion discussion? The disposition of that article is being decided there, not here. Largoplazo (talk) 23:13, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Essay on SIGCOV

I just wrote an essay on SIGCOV, here. If anyone has any feedback, I'd appreciate it on the essay talk page. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I've drafted another on the presumption of notability. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:56, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I disagree with bullet 3 of the nutshell, on who has the burden to prove something. In my opinion, it is 180° the other way round: the burden is on the person who wishes to retain an article on a topic for which they assert notability. It happens all the time that editors disagree whether that threshold is met or not for article X, and in that case, it is discussed at Talk, and if that doesn't work, at Afd until a consensus is reached. Point 3 seems to run counter to that, putting a finger on the scales to tilt the weight of discussion towards a default position of X being notable if anyone claims it is, with the onus on those who disagree to prove it isn't. Newbies, garage band members, RGWers and other POV-pushers will love it, and good-faith discussants will be tied up in endless discussions at Afd forever. Mathglot (talk) 01:06, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I can clarify. That point is not about the burden in discussion, it's the burden prior to opening an AfD or PRODing. I don't think it's controversial to say that BEFORE is a thing that people are required to follow. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:14, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Hopefully with that clarification my intention is clearer. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:08, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

(Forgot to note that I actually clarified the text of the essay as well). voorts (talk/contributions) 03:17, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is, and I certainly agree with you about BEFORE. There isn't an analogous WP:CREATEBEFORE shortcut for required steps before creating an article as there is for deleting one, but perhaps there ought to be. The "before" steps for creation and deletion mirror each other from opposite ends of the process, so to speak, since they are practically the same, just located on different pages. Mathglot (talk) 08:31, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Upward heritability of notability

 Courtesy link: Talk:Lines of amity § The path forward

I have a question about what I'm calling "upward heritability of notability", which arose out of a discussion about the article Lines of amity. The point I want to discuss here, is whether we can have a standlone article for a topic A, with iffy notability in its own right, but which stands in a parent-child relationship with a couple of other child articles B and C with of unquestioned notability. But first, a real-world case, to take this out of the realm of pure theory:

At Talk:Lines of amity#Overlap with Line of Demarcation, we are trying to figure out whether the topic "Lines of amity" is notable or not. Imho, it's on the cusp of WP:PAGEDECIDE, and could fall either way. Into that mix, SMcCandlish raised another possibility (diff), namely to keep the article based on the notability of child articles such as Demarcation line; I've summarized his view as point #3 here.

In my view, that is an example of using upward heritability, and as I mentioned at the discussion, other than list articles and basic concept articles where it seems to kind of apply, I can't find any support for this principle for a parent article inheriting from notable child articles, and that is the point I would like to hear opinions about here. (By all means, opine at the article Talk if interested, but here at WT:N I'm looking for feedback on the general pointy.) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:17, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

A tidbit is that the Line of Demarcation of the Treaty of Tordesillas seems to be both a demarcation line (the broadest topic for this) as well as a line of amity more narrowly; so, material on that specific Line of Demarcation could at least in theory merge with sources into (or be summarized with sources in) Lines of amity. PS: the redlink Line of amity should go to the same place as Lines of amity, whether that be the current article or an eventual redirect target.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:04, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I guess that in order to consider this to be a notability question we need to acknowledge that wp:notability is often influenced by other considerations. I haven't made the deep dive to acquire the necessary knowledge on the topics to give a full answer. But a few comments. If a subset is wp:notable, the superset is usually wp:notable if the superset is the natural and obvious "next level up". So if the town of abc is wp:notable, the state that it is within will be wp:notable. But an article about "towns that begin with the letter "a"" may not. But more importantly, Wikipedia articles are sometimes about a term and a term that really should have an article or at least coverage. It might also be a topic that should have an article or needs covering. I took a quick look of the article and even in just the titles of the references the term is mentioned in the titles of multiple references. Whereas in the redirect/article where there is concern about possible forking/overlap, the term is not mentioned even once in the article or reference title. So the article definitely adds needed coverage of the term and possibly of the topic somewhere. North8000 (talk) 18:52, 29 January 2024 (UTC)