Steve Quinn (talk | contribs) →"Likely" revisited: Reply to Francis |
Huggums537 (talk | contribs) →RfC on small (but important) change to LISTN: Addendum to arguments for my proposal. |
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**[[User:DGG]], I see that you did in fact take the opportunity to [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Notability&diff=819230890&oldid=819199151 express your ideas] in a more advantageous setting. In light of this, I wonder if I could persuade you to change the status of your !vote to a "'''Comment'''" or "'''Neutral'''" position? [[User:Huggums537|Huggums537]] ([[User talk:Huggums537|talk]]) 19:47, 8 January 2018 (UTC) |
**[[User:DGG]], I see that you did in fact take the opportunity to [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Notability&diff=819230890&oldid=819199151 express your ideas] in a more advantageous setting. In light of this, I wonder if I could persuade you to change the status of your !vote to a "'''Comment'''" or "'''Neutral'''" position? [[User:Huggums537|Huggums537]] ([[User talk:Huggums537|talk]]) 19:47, 8 January 2018 (UTC) |
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:::I did mean oppose. I oppose this change in particular, even with the existing general view of notability guidelines. It's excessive specificity as regards lists. '''[[User:DGG| DGG]]''' ([[User talk:DGG| talk ]]) 21:46, 8 January 2018 (UTC) |
:::I did mean oppose. I oppose this change in particular, even with the existing general view of notability guidelines. It's excessive specificity as regards lists. '''[[User:DGG| DGG]]''' ([[User talk:DGG| talk ]]) 21:46, 8 January 2018 (UTC) |
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::::To be fair, the existing wording, "inclusion" |
::::To be fair, the existing wording, "inclusion" was extremely excessive vagueness regarding lists that leads to unnecessarily excessive confusion in that it has been wrongfully misinterpreted as meaning "adding new entries to the list" when in fact it actually means "adding a new list to Wikipedia". The "excessive specificity" of my proposal was needed to correct the extremely excessive vagueness of the existing wording. Perhaps you would consider this viewpoint and find it worthy of a '''Neutral''' change since you can easily see that the "excessiveness" of both versions do kind of "neutralize" each another. Thanks. [[User:Huggums537|Huggums537]] ([[User talk:Huggums537|talk]]) 02:22, 9 January 2018 (UTC) |
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::::Also, we find that there could be as many as 20-22 instances of various forms of the word "create" used throughout the project page in a very similar fashion of specificity. So it does become evident that this amount of specificity is actually normal for the page when we view it from a broader perspective outside the narrow scope of my singular edit. To be even more specific, the most relevant example of these variations of the word "create" can be found right within the closing sentence of the very section we are discussing. From [[WP:LISTN]]: "''Editors are still urged to demonstrate list notability via the grouping itself before '''creating''' stand-alone lists.''". [Emphasis added]. We see that with my edit the opening and closing sentence now match in this section (as they match the many other examples throughout the page). This actually does promote conformity and consistency (within this section and throughout the project page) in addition to the benefit that does also avoid the excessive confusion of the old wording. This should be more than enough to convince anyone willing to be just a little bit reasonable. [[User:Huggums537|Huggums537]] ([[User talk:Huggums537|talk]]) 23:40, 10 January 2018 (UTC) |
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===Another minor (but related) change=== |
===Another minor (but related) change=== |
Revision as of 23:41, 10 January 2018
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AfD request
Quick question - where can I request an AfD? I don't want to create an account. I'd like to nominate List of cities and counties in North Alabama because it essentially duplicates List of cities and towns in Alabama and List of counties in Alabama and also the material should be included in North Alabama. Also, it was created more than ten years ago when there weren't as many guidelines for these lists. Thanks 146.229.240.200 (talk) 07:44, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
- Usually WT:AFD is used to request AFDs, however, in this case, I don't really understand the argument. Do you think merging the list back to North Alabama is the correct way to handle it (despite WP:SPINOUT)? Then why not just do that yourself? Starting a deletion discussion when you actually want to keep the material will likely result in a speedy keep. Regards SoWhy 08:11, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
- If someone disagrees with your edits, try to discuss it with them on their talk page or the article's talk page. You can find a lot of information on resolving such disputes at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Regards SoWhy 15:01, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
RfC on journalistic independence
See Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies) for an RfC on notability's independence concept. Unscintillating (talk) 03:31, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
Please clarify confusing notability issue for AfD purposes
Hi. I am involved in two AfD discussions Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/C. Sandanayake and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CE Holkar concerning notability of articles about sports players which seem to meet the subject-specific conditions of Wikipedia:Notability (sports) but, it is argued, do not meet the bigger picture conditions of the Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline.
One editor has argued that the articles must be kept because, per this Wikipedia:Notability guideline,
- A topic is presumed to merit an article if:
- It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right; and
- It is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy.
One of the guidelines in the box on the right is sports. He concludes that whether or not the articles meet GNG is irrelevant, as they meet the SSG, as specified by our overarching notability guideline (in the introduction of this project page).
Another editor, who wants the articles deleted because he thinks they fail the GNG, has answered by saying that there was a village pump policy debate surrounding this issue and consensus was clear that GNG overrules any SSG, not the other way around.
It would seem to me that there is a serious inconsistency here because, if the "village pump policy debate" outcome is correct, the notability guideline introduction is out of date and should be amended to say that GNG overrules SSG. If the debate outcome has no effect on the guideline and the current notability wording is still effective, something needs to be done to ensure that it is consistently followed at AfD discussions. My understanding, having read comments by other editors, is that some articles have already been deleted because they did not meet the wider GNG even though they did meet the specific SSG.
This is an unsatisfactory situation. Please can you provide a solution? Regards, Waj (talk) 16:49, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Waj: The guideline page itself clarifies it. Under "Applicable Policies and Guidelines:" "All information included in Wikipedia, including articles about sports, must be verifiable. In addition, standalone articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline." (emphasis added) So the very page you're citing makes crystal clear that articles must meet the GNG. While meeting one of the "sports" criteria creates a presumption that it will, that is a rebuttable presumption if it turns out sufficient references don't in fact exist. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:11, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- Notability by either the GNG or the SNGs are a presumption that we can expand the article to meet all content policies (V, NOR, NPOV, NOT) and thus allow the standalone article. That is, while we do allow the NSPORTS criteria to assert presumption for a standalone, we need more coverage ultimately to validate that presumption. However, to challenge that presumption, one is required to follow the steps of WP:BEFORE to demonstrate that there are actually no further sources coming (which includes looking to print sources which might be local). That's the only way to properly challenge the presumption at AFD. --Masem (t) 17:19, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The issue is a very large number of boilerplate articles sourced, if you want to call it that, to a single scorecard entry each. That is, a handful of statistics amounting to at most a few cells in a spreadsheet and no actual prose. It's frequently not even possible to discern the subject's full name. Ambiguities about similarly name people are among the problems that arise from that kind of less-than-minimal information. Since these are biographies of (mostly) living people, more substantial sourcing is necessary and almost invariably nothing more ever turns up. As for WP:NCRIC itself, I think it's clear from the RfC and the outcome of the majority of these AfDs that this SSG no longer enjoys community support (if it ever did). It's therefore no longer possible to blithely wave a hand and yawn "speedy keep- passes NCRIC" and expect that to count for anything. Reyk YO! 17:57, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- It likely comes back to the "played one game" element of the NSPORT (which affects NCRIC), which I know why its there, why its argued, but totally agree that it is far too loose a critical to show that the GNG can be met. Right now, it exists by apparent community consensus, but I would expect that could be challenged in a new global RFC, particularly if you can show cases like this for cricket. (Maybe it needs to be restricted to certain spots). --Masem (t) 18:13, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The sports specific guideline does require meeting the GNG and always has. Other SNGs are presumed independent of the GNG by WP:N, unless explicitly stated otherwise. WP:PROF in particular is specifically independent from the GNG, and this has been confirmed by a recent RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:05, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- That "RFC" (it never was called out an RFC nor appeared to have been advertised) is problematic given that we already established no SNG can override the GNG. That's going to need to be revisited for community consensus (as the other SNGs have generally been in regards to the relationship with WP:N and the GNG). --Masem (t) 18:10, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- Wrong on all counts: if you want to change the unamibgious text of this guideline, you need to start an RfC on or about this guideline:
It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right
. The PROF RfC was called an RfC, was advertised on CENT and at the village pump, and closed with overwhelming support in rejecting the view that the GNG trumps all. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:17, 19 December 2017 (UTC)- Okay, yes, it was called all that, I'm just surprised headers / info about that were not present. I still think it's wrong to consider NPROF overriding the GNG, but this does require reworking how notability should be perceived to better establish the relationship between the core content policies, the GNG, and the SNGs. (See my comment in that discussion, that's basically where we need to go) - basically keeping in mind that the GNG is nothing if consensus still believes that no sources exist to meet V/NOR/NPOV. --Masem (t) 18:30, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The problem is that the GNG has nothing to do with notability at all, it has to do with verifiability. Arguments phrased as not meeting the GNG are better phrased as WP:DEL7 arguments. The best thing that we could do for notability reform on en.wiki is to move the GNG out of WP:N and to WP:V. It would end all of this confusion, and would be much easier to act consistently on inclusion decisions. I know this isn't likely to happen anytime soon, but long-term I see it as the only solution to deal with our evolving standards as we become more relied upon by the public. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:38, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The GNG is all about notability, as it requires secondary sources - those that transform rote facts into something novel and different, things we can't do without violating OR. If we just had WP:V-meeting facts and used that as the minimum requirement, that doesn't help - it would allow a whole mess of things, and we're not supposed to be a collection of indiscriminate info. WP:N is meant to distill to when third-parties have given some degree of evaluation to a topic to judge it to be more notable than just facts. Meeting the GNG - showing that there seem to be a couple of these types of sources available, is a presumption of notability being met. (However, I will point out I don't think that is clear in the current languages of N and the SNGs.) --Masem (t) 20:45, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- WP:N combines verifiability with other core policies such as NOT and is designed to tell us what is important enough that we would expect to find it in a general purpose encyclopedia. It was also written a decade ago when the media was significantly different than it is now: any one on this talk page could meet the GNG as written within a month or two if they tried hard enough. It is utterly useless at telling us if something is important enough to be in an encyclopedia, as demonstrated by the existence of guidelines such as CORP, which are basically lists of how to pay lip service to the GNG while ignoring it in AfDs. It doesn't work, and we need to stop pretending that it does. What we do need to do, however, is more stringently enforce V, which really is what most people who oppose SNGs from a deletionist perspective are arguing. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- I'm going to work out an essay, because I do think the language in WP:N is outdated to reflect the way we should be handling things. But I will point out that that there are plenty of issues with COI (and thus factoring into NCORP), there are problems with inconsistently handling of AFD closures, and there are problems throughout most of the SNGs in that people do want to have their pet projects included if they can (not to blame them, that's natural instinct). Notability is still important, but how it is handled and treated is too widely varied between all parts of the project and it needs to be fixed. --Masem (t) 21:11, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- Yes: we agree on most of that. I just think the best thing we could do to make the notability system salvageable is scrap the GNG or change it to be very different than it is written today. The SNGs provide a way forward here, and it's easier to fix them than it is to fix the GNG, IMO. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:17, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The way I have kept in mind is that there's a point that a well-developed article never will be presumed notable, because there is a large swath of secondary, third-party sources to prove it notable beyond a doubt. We aren't ever going to delete World War II for example. Where that threshold exists is impossible to quantify, but we do know the more secondary, third-party, independent sources covering the topic in depth you can add to an article, the less likely it will be ever be challenged at AFD. Note to stress here that except for the articles that suit our purpose as a gazetteer (geographic places), we are not using "inclusion" guidelines, which would that that a topic must have an article because it belongs in a certain class. It is about the quantity and nature of the sources and how that lets us meet the content policies.
- Because we don't know where that line sits, we rely on the presumption of notability to allow the article to develop until it reaches that line. This presumption must be based on verified sources and making sure all content policies are still satisfied. To that end, we have the non-specific GNG, that says if you can pull a couple of such sources that may be representative of a larger number out there, then you can presume the topic is notable. That works for most broad topics, but when you get to the subject areas, it may be more difficult to find those sources immediately. So the SNGs exist to be based on a type of merit or accomplishment that, for most cases where that had happened, a large number of sources have been found or will emerge. This emphasizes the "GNG or SNG" approach, but still makes both guidelines that are meant to help guide articles towards meeting the threshold discussed above, while giving these articles the time and space to grow in an open wiki.
- The problem right now is that WP:N as read and sometimes used, suggests that the GNG is the notability guideline (it's not), and that the SNGs are to approach that (they're not). We need to make this distinction much clearer. I have been giving a lot of thought to this and making this clarification keeps everything in line, doesn't break SNGs, AFD or other processes, it just strengthens how all these guidelines should come together to support crafting new articles without fear of deletion, while avoiding IINFO and issues relating to COIs and the like. But I need to draft this all out as an essay first --Masem (t) 21:40, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The key sticking point is that in the real world, a topic is deemed to be notable based on some criteria, such as impact of subject X on domain Y. But for many domains, this determination can only be made by those with specialized domain knowledge. English Wikipedia's current decision-making tradition isn't very well suited to delegating decisions to a smaller subset of persons (and there is a reasonable concern that domain specialists might draw the line of inclusion more broadly than can be managed by the available volunteer editors). So instead the community has, at present, chosen to evaluate real-world significance through the proxy of how independent, non-promotional, reliable third-party sources cover a subject. While using domain-specific guidance for determining if a subject should have an article could in theory be more effective, it would require the community to agree to cede its veto power over article creation, and to trust domain-area specialists. isaacl (talk) 22:14, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The bigger issue is that, although the community says it's deciding these things through the existence of multiple in-depth published independent reliable sources, it actually has lots of unclearly-documented and unclearly-motivated exceptions (e.g. same-city newspapers don't count even if they would be reliable for subjects from somewhere else) that have nothing to do with verifiability and instead are aimed at some subjective notion of significance. And significance through media coverage is too easily gamed to be a good proxy for subject-specific expertise. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
- I was commenting specifically on Tony's idea of scrapping the general notability guideline in favour of topic-specific notability guidelines, which would at least in some domains move away from a coverage-based standard to an achievement-based one. (With regards to the issue you raise, "non-promotional" is one of the tricky aspects with media coverage. Particularly when covering matters of local interest, newspapers will typically provide some degree of promotion. This is especially true for sports journalism.) isaacl (talk) 07:50, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- The bigger issue is that, although the community says it's deciding these things through the existence of multiple in-depth published independent reliable sources, it actually has lots of unclearly-documented and unclearly-motivated exceptions (e.g. same-city newspapers don't count even if they would be reliable for subjects from somewhere else) that have nothing to do with verifiability and instead are aimed at some subjective notion of significance. And significance through media coverage is too easily gamed to be a good proxy for subject-specific expertise. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
- Yes: we agree on most of that. I just think the best thing we could do to make the notability system salvageable is scrap the GNG or change it to be very different than it is written today. The SNGs provide a way forward here, and it's easier to fix them than it is to fix the GNG, IMO. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:17, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- I'm going to work out an essay, because I do think the language in WP:N is outdated to reflect the way we should be handling things. But I will point out that that there are plenty of issues with COI (and thus factoring into NCORP), there are problems with inconsistently handling of AFD closures, and there are problems throughout most of the SNGs in that people do want to have their pet projects included if they can (not to blame them, that's natural instinct). Notability is still important, but how it is handled and treated is too widely varied between all parts of the project and it needs to be fixed. --Masem (t) 21:11, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- WP:N combines verifiability with other core policies such as NOT and is designed to tell us what is important enough that we would expect to find it in a general purpose encyclopedia. It was also written a decade ago when the media was significantly different than it is now: any one on this talk page could meet the GNG as written within a month or two if they tried hard enough. It is utterly useless at telling us if something is important enough to be in an encyclopedia, as demonstrated by the existence of guidelines such as CORP, which are basically lists of how to pay lip service to the GNG while ignoring it in AfDs. It doesn't work, and we need to stop pretending that it does. What we do need to do, however, is more stringently enforce V, which really is what most people who oppose SNGs from a deletionist perspective are arguing. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The GNG is all about notability, as it requires secondary sources - those that transform rote facts into something novel and different, things we can't do without violating OR. If we just had WP:V-meeting facts and used that as the minimum requirement, that doesn't help - it would allow a whole mess of things, and we're not supposed to be a collection of indiscriminate info. WP:N is meant to distill to when third-parties have given some degree of evaluation to a topic to judge it to be more notable than just facts. Meeting the GNG - showing that there seem to be a couple of these types of sources available, is a presumption of notability being met. (However, I will point out I don't think that is clear in the current languages of N and the SNGs.) --Masem (t) 20:45, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The problem is that the GNG has nothing to do with notability at all, it has to do with verifiability. Arguments phrased as not meeting the GNG are better phrased as WP:DEL7 arguments. The best thing that we could do for notability reform on en.wiki is to move the GNG out of WP:N and to WP:V. It would end all of this confusion, and would be much easier to act consistently on inclusion decisions. I know this isn't likely to happen anytime soon, but long-term I see it as the only solution to deal with our evolving standards as we become more relied upon by the public. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:38, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- Okay, yes, it was called all that, I'm just surprised headers / info about that were not present. I still think it's wrong to consider NPROF overriding the GNG, but this does require reworking how notability should be perceived to better establish the relationship between the core content policies, the GNG, and the SNGs. (See my comment in that discussion, that's basically where we need to go) - basically keeping in mind that the GNG is nothing if consensus still believes that no sources exist to meet V/NOR/NPOV. --Masem (t) 18:30, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- Wrong on all counts: if you want to change the unamibgious text of this guideline, you need to start an RfC on or about this guideline:
- That "RFC" (it never was called out an RFC nor appeared to have been advertised) is problematic given that we already established no SNG can override the GNG. That's going to need to be revisited for community consensus (as the other SNGs have generally been in regards to the relationship with WP:N and the GNG). --Masem (t) 18:10, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Well, I'm grateful to TonyBallioni, Masem, Reyk and Seraphimblade. I'm afraid I still have difficulty with this because Wikipedia:Notability says an article is merited if it meets either the general notability guideline or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline. This, to me, says the two are equal (either one or the other). That is contradicted by Wikipedia:Notability (sports) which says, as Seraphimblade quoted, that (sports) articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline in addition to being verified. What makes it worse is that, in the introduction to NSPORT, it repeats WP:N by saying in bold that "The article must provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below". I'm afraid it doesn't help and this to me is a very unsatisfactory situation because it is ambiguous and contradictory. I think that Tony's solution would help and really it needs to be done as soon as possible. As you say, Tony, because the site is "relied upon by the public". Regards, Waj (talk) 20:51, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The line " In addition, standalone articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline." contradicts what NSport already establishes. I'm going to address that on that page, but that line needs to go because it is flatout wrong. --Masem (t) 21:13, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- Ultimately, a subject is eligible for a standalone article if there is consensus for that subject to have an article. GNG and the SNGs are useful proxies for how consensus has developed over time, so that we don’t have to constantly flood AFD with articles and waste a lot of editors’ time. As Seraphimblade and Masem properly note, both the GNG and SNGs are rebuttable presumptions, and no guideline is ultimately dispositive – AFD is dispositive. However, The more we can build broad consensus in SNGs, the less time we have to waste on AFDs and/or risk inconsistent results due to lack of AFD participation.--Mojo Hand (talk) 21:46, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- As described in Wikipedia:Notability (sports)/FAQ, the sports-related notability guidelines were explicitly created to provide a guideline to avoid rapid deletion of articles if the written text in the article did not immediately provide sources indicating that the general notability guideline is met by the subject. Meeting the sports-specific notability guidelines is considered to be an excellent indicator that sources meeting the general notability guideline can be found, given some time to uncover them. The article should always have some sources indicating that either the appropriate sports-related notability guideline or GNG is met, so anyone reviewing the article will have a way to verify the basis for the presumption of notability, and that is what the quoted sentence in Wikipedia:Notability (sports) is referring to. If after due diligence, it is determined that in spite of the sports-related notability guideline being met, the general notability guideline is highly unlikely to be met, then the article fails Wikipedia's standards of having an article. isaacl (talk) 21:50, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The quoted sentence is inconsistent with the key point expressed in both guidelines and it must be changed to correct the ambiguity. An FAQ cannot have any official status, but if it repeats inconsistency then it too needs to be amended or it confuses editors and readers alike and is not fit for purpose as an FAQ. I as a new member am confused, hence this discussion. If an article can pass either the GNG or the SSG then there can be no problem with it having presumed notability, subject to verification and other policies. To assert that it must pass both is ridiculous because then it would be illogical to have both; one would suffice. Regards, Waj (talk) 22:18, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The quoted sentence says
The article must provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below.
It doesn't say that the article must pass both sets of criteria. Getting the wording of the guidance changed has, unfortunately, not received consensus approval so far. The FAQ provides context to understand the motivation of the first three paragraphs of Wikipedia:Notability (sports). In an ideal world, a new article would immediately identify appropriate sources to illustrate that the general notability guideline has been met. The real-world compromise we have to avoid wasting time deleting and recreating articles is a set of rules of thumb that help us identify subjects that are highly likely to already have appropriate coverage that meets the general notability guideline, even if the current article text does not list them. isaacl (talk) 22:33, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
- The quoted sentence says
- The quoted sentence is inconsistent with the key point expressed in both guidelines and it must be changed to correct the ambiguity. An FAQ cannot have any official status, but if it repeats inconsistency then it too needs to be amended or it confuses editors and readers alike and is not fit for purpose as an FAQ. I as a new member am confused, hence this discussion. If an article can pass either the GNG or the SSG then there can be no problem with it having presumed notability, subject to verification and other policies. To assert that it must pass both is ridiculous because then it would be illogical to have both; one would suffice. Regards, Waj (talk) 22:18, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
This situation is easily sortable. The two basic general notability guidelines contradict each other rendering each of them completely and utterly null and void, meaning the only, completely fair, NPOV way of sorting this out is going by subject-specific notability guidelines. Frankly anyone who doesn't do so is in breach of NPOV and has no interest working on an NPOV project. Bobo. 17:00, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
- This is the type of manipulation of rules to favor their position that makes it so hard to work with the die-hard advocates of unreasonable coverage of minor sports figures on Wikipedia.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:26, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- GNG prevails with sports that is the takeaway. Sports fuidelines sepcifically say GNG must be met, which means we must have multiple sources that are more than just stat listings. On the other hand, if a person is only noted in sports and does not pass the sports guidelines, they are not notable. The cricket guidelines almost certainly have to be tightened. I think football and gridiron football rules both need to be tightened. Presumed notability for playing one game in the National Football League, the gridiron football league in the US, makes sense. Presumed notability for all players of at least one game in the totally marginal arena football league makes no sense at all. The sports rules clearly state that GNG prevails, so articles scrapped to stats which are not in any way indepth coverage, need to be deleted. If they are articles on living people, and living is assumed positively unless proved that they were born before 1907 or we have actual evidence of their death, than we should delete expeditiously and only allow recreation if people actually identify good sourcing.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:23, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- How about we delete bad sourcing instead of using notability as a middle man? Unscintillating (talk) 03:33, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- WP:N is the controlling authority. If a WP:N sub-guideline is contrary to WP:N, WP:N prevails. If an RfC is contrary to WP:N, WP:N prevails. Unscintillating (talk) 03:41, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- The notability guidelines are guidelines not policies. Having studied them deeply you may form your own opinion about what is it is best to do. You may find your opinion happens to conflict with something contained in the guideline documentation and if so you may have to give a strong rationale to persuade other people to agree with you. Guidelines are to be treated with common sense and they have exceptions. Some people refute this and say they are rules – these people are, of course, entitled to make such claims but you need not believe them. Thincat (talk) 10:19, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
Further insights
Over the holiday, I had a bit of inspiration of how better to see notability, the GNG, and the SNG, that might require a significant change in this guideline that doesn't affect the practice of notability but provides the clarity we currently lack.
First, we have to understand that notability is one possible measure of showing the "encyclopedicness" of a topic. That of course brings up what is "encyclopedicness" and that is best thought of as the balance between WP:V - that we can validate a fact to a reliable source - and WP:NOT - that not every published fact is necessarily appropriate for inclusion. There are a lot of other things that feed this notion of "encyclopedicness", such as that since we consider ourselves a gazetter, we include every recognized place name regardless of any other aspects. Or because we are a reference work, we include core data tables like the Periodic Table of Elements without comment. (In other words, notability is not applicable 100% of the time)
However, the bulk of the topics on WP are shown their "encyclopedicness" through the concept of notability, which we have used as a topic receiving significant coverage by multiple reliable sources independent of the topic. This measure or notability, where an article's "encyclopedicness" will not be questioned, is very subjective, but as I described above, it increases in an exponential fashion with the more reliable, in-depth coverage of a topic that you can obtain, and the more long-tail, retrospective aspects that come to light (not a burst of coverage). What that level is, is hard to say, but I would say that if you take the GNG's metrics, that's not even the bare minimum where "notability" is assured. Yes, you might find two or three sources to show the GNG but if that's all that can ever be found, and there's no other means for the topic to have "encyclopedicness" met, then we'd still likely delete it. We can't expect all topics to have the extensive amount of coverage of major topics like World War II, The Bible, Albert Einstein, etc. but we do expect in the long term something more substance than two or three sources. Unfortunately, where notability is met is very subjective, and very much "I'll know it when I see it".
This is where the GNG/SNG come in. Whereas notability is meant to help balance WP:V and WP:NOT, the GNG/SNG are meant to balance those that judge the instantaneous state of an article, and the fact that we have no deadline to get these articles right. These NGs exist to prevent sticklers on quality from immediately seeking deletion for articles they don't like because they don't feel the current state shows notability, and give time to the article creators and editors to find more sources or wait for more sources to come around. They still represent the presumption of notability, that if no further sourcing can be found through a reasonable conclusive search, then deletion of a topic that will never reach notability is well in line.
This thus establishes what should be the clear distinction between the GNG (which, as I said, if just met is not sufficient to met notability), and the SNG. The GNG is a source-based measure for presumption (if some secondary sources exist, then likely additional secondary sources can be found). The SNGs are a merit-based measure (if a topic has received a merit of a type in its field, then based on past examples it will likely receive additional secondary sources). This makes it clear that we should be treating the presumption of notability as "GNG or SNG" , not "and", nor "SNG to meet the GNG". Both are still presumptions, and thus editors are still encouraged to expand with sourcing as they continue to develop it; each source they can add will help to satisfy more and more people as to the topic showing true notability and having its "encyclopedicness" satisfied, so that no one will question why we have an article on it.
So what does this mean in terms of this page? The core thing I would do is move GNG and listing the SNGs to a separate page, and possibly bring in the stuff from WP:BEFORE into that, since these explain how the presumption of notability works, what the end goals for editors should be, and how the presumption should be challenged at AFD. The current WP:N page I would leave to explain the ideas of "encyclopedicness" (a term I would love to find a better version of), how that is a balance between all published facts and what we are not, how notability is used to measure that for most topics (but where there are exceptions), and then reference to the GNG/SNG page (to make is clear the GNG is not the same as notability) and explain what purpose they serve. We also may need to remain the GNG and SNG to "General Notability Presumption Guideline" and "Subject-specific Notability Presumption Guidelines", to make it clear neither the GNG and the SNGs equate to notability, only that the trend to reach notability appears to be met.
I'm pretty confident that taken all this as a whole, it still represents practice (I'm not redefining how we do things) but it better explains the roles of WP:N, the GNG and the SNGs in a manner to make it clear how they all apply, better than our current page does and avoids issues on the SNGs pages like in the above section. --Masem (t) 15:01, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- The practice for many SNGs, despite what is written is GNG and SNG (I'm thinking NFOOTY) or simply SNG or bust (PROF is de facto this way). This practice should be extended universally when an SNG exists. The GNG simply exists to tell us if something can be independently verified. It is not useful in determining whether or not something is important enough to be in an encyclopedia and is by far the most confusing guideline we have on this entire site. Reliance on the GNG alone is meaningless as I could meet it within a month or two if I tried as could anyone on this page. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:08, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Your third sentence onwards are nonsense. It is extremely easy to show examples of independent verification of non-notable topics. WP:V must never be read independently of WP:NOR. The failure of Wikipedia:Attribution remains regrettable. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:12, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- There is an aspect here that I was thinking related to the NPROF issue, in that if the site-wide community decides that the "encyclopedicness" of academics is measured in a different way than by notability, we can account for that as being the parts of WP that are encyclopedic but not covered by notability. We do have to be careful that these exceptions are agreed by a wide number of editors (eg the issue with schools is an example where schools do not have that wide consesnsu to be outside notability). --Masem (t) 15:36, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- I suppose my biggest issue is that I reject your presumption that the community actually supports the GNG in practice. Yes, we all argue based on it. Hell, even I do that and I think it is useless. At the same time, we have extremely different standards for what it means based on the category (a school by consensus basically only needs one local offline newspaper blurb, while a for-profit company needs articles in the newspaper of record in a country in practice.) This is very confusing to new users, who get mad when we (usually correctly) delete their articles by changing the goal posts on them after the articles have been created. Scraping the concept of notability and replacing it with verifiability+importance=encylopedicness is what we need to do. I'm not particularly hopeful it will happen this year or even in the next five, but we do need to take steps in that direction, even if they are small. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:02, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- This is why I think it is important to stress that notability is not equal to the GNG, nor vice versa. The GNG is a minimum quality of sourcing to allow for a standalone article to be created on the likeliness/presumption it can get to notability.
- This distinction also gives us the ability to add a bit more teeth into the GNG, one I would specifically add being that local, "micro" sources do not count in coverage if trying to judge the GNG for a topic. Local sources can support an article, and once you've shown some wider ranging coverage, the local sources to do help towards notability and encyclopedicness.
- The idea that "encyclopedicness" is the balance between verifiability and important/what is not appropriate still works, and recognizes that secondary sourcing (the core of notability) is not always the only measure of importance that we can use. But we should be very careful in the ares where that encyclopedicness is not necessarily met by notability and make sure those types of exceptions have strong consensus for them. Notability, while overall widely subjective of when it is satisified, is still based on objective definitions (many many secondary sources giving in-depth coverage, which either exist or don't exist). When you get away from that and try to claim importance on any other type of measure, that needs community consensus, otherwise you'd have arguments over "importance" on measures that are entirely subjective. --Masem (t) 16:33, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- User:Masem, "secondary sourcing (the core of notability) is not always the only measure of importance"? This is true, but it represents the dynamic boundary regions of accepted stand alone articles. Geographical features, asteroids, plant species, and historic sportspeople come to mind. In my opinion, all of these that cannot support sourced prose, should be merged, and in many cases the merging has already occurred. Where there are no secondary sources, how are you going to write a paragraph of prose? WP:OR? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:18, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- I suppose my biggest issue is that I reject your presumption that the community actually supports the GNG in practice. Yes, we all argue based on it. Hell, even I do that and I think it is useless. At the same time, we have extremely different standards for what it means based on the category (a school by consensus basically only needs one local offline newspaper blurb, while a for-profit company needs articles in the newspaper of record in a country in practice.) This is very confusing to new users, who get mad when we (usually correctly) delete their articles by changing the goal posts on them after the articles have been created. Scraping the concept of notability and replacing it with verifiability+importance=encylopedicness is what we need to do. I'm not particularly hopeful it will happen this year or even in the next five, but we do need to take steps in that direction, even if they are small. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:02, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- As long as we are clarifying how this all fits together... And discussing potential changes (or at least musing about them)... I have never liked the word “presumption” in these discussions. A better word would be “likelihood”... ie if X criteria is met (be it sourcing or some other metric) then there is a LIKELIHOOD that the subject will be deemed notable. Using “likelihood” makes it clearer that it isn’t a guarantee of notability. Blueboar (talk) 15:19, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- I think we could boldly make that change now without an RfC if there are no objections. The historical agreement on this page is that notability is a rebuttable presumption of inclusion. Changing it to likely to be included would not change the meaning and would make it clearer. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:22, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- The only reason presumption has worked is that links to the term rebuttable presumption, but I think that can be changed as long as we footnote the use of "presumption" as historical usage and still keep the link. (ETA: This was me, I forgot when I added this ) --Masem (t) 18:38, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Its not the only reason it works. "Rebuttable" carries the implication that the premise holds until someone actively rebuts it. Likelihood is a terrible alternative for the purpose of guiding decision making. "Likelihood" is a theoretical concept dependent on statistical analysis. It is very hard to evaluate for a new topic. It is also confusing as to who is required to evaluate the likelihood, it kind of implies that the article writer is, and I think that is very unreasonable to any reasonable newcomer. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:23, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- Agree with SmokeyJoe here. Huggums537 (talk) 05:53, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Its not the only reason it works. "Rebuttable" carries the implication that the premise holds until someone actively rebuts it. Likelihood is a terrible alternative for the purpose of guiding decision making. "Likelihood" is a theoretical concept dependent on statistical analysis. It is very hard to evaluate for a new topic. It is also confusing as to who is required to evaluate the likelihood, it kind of implies that the article writer is, and I think that is very unreasonable to any reasonable newcomer. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:23, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
Masem, I like that you are doing such a much-needed analysis. And I agree with much of what you wrote. Also you attempt to tackle the fuzzy chaos between GNG and SNG's. But I think that your attempt to solve that chaos by defining SNG's as simply a temporary way in for non-mature articles misses the mark. Enclyclopicness is also very useful word for Wikipedia, but I think it logically relates more to wp:not than to notability. I also think that your analysis has yet to include two big factors. One is the GNG is missing a needed guiding light as to what it supposed to do. As a result a portion of it is rudderless and becomes circular / self-referential in the missing areas. (I.E. the goal of the guideline is to do whatever the guideline says) Most other policies get by without this as it's pretty clear. For GNG, the obvious only partially covers it. The guiding light that most people have in their heads could be described as: "Apply an additional criteria of real-world notability where the main metric is coverage in wp:RS suitable sources, and which sets a level of real-world notability suitable for an encyclopedia that is only going to have 10 or 20 million articles." Second, I think that an underlying impetus for the existence of SNGs is that the ratio of suitable coverage in sources to actual notability varies dramatically between fields. My grand-nephew's pewee league baseball team gets plenty of RS coverage to meet wp:GNG, but should fail the wp:notability test. Conversely, every species of animal should probably meet wp:notability, but most don't have in-depthe coverage in a secondary (not tertiary) source. In short, by failing to acknowledge and handle this disparity, GNG is too ham-handed. IMO the solution would be to have GNG acknowledge this and calibrate itself to that, and then eliminate the SNG's. Finally, an observation that if the logical "OR" (or the alternative logical "AND") between having to meet GNG and/or the SNG were strictly implemented, we would have a mess. In each case, the small group that runs the SNG could override the GNG towards inclusion or exclusion. As long as we have the bad situation of conflicting guidelines existing, I think that the current relationship is best. Which is basically a logical "OR", but with the GNG or the SNG having some influence when the other is applied, and the GNG having significant influence on the design of SNG's. Sincerely. North8000 (talk) 17:05, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- I would like to stress the one observation that I came to, that notability is not equal to the GNG, or vice versa. In light of what I talk about above, just meeting the current GNG should not be seen as a minimum to meet notability, it is only a likeliness for notability to be met to allow for a standalone article. Making this distinction alleviates your concerns about the logcal "or" in "GNG or SNG", because as before, with many taking the GNG to be equal to notability, you run into the problems you describe. Instead, by distinguishing the GNG from notability, you can now classify the GNG and the SNG as both equivalent (logical "or") in how they are indicators of likelihood towards notability. Pulling the GNG out of WP:N would go a long way to making clear the historical and present distinction of the relationship between N, GNG and SNGs. --Masem (t) 18:50, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes, as I've discussed above, the subject-area specific notability guidelines are typically achievement-based standards for having an article, rather than coverage-based. The key issue that I raised above is that domain expertise is required to establish these standards, and so the community must be willing to cede its veto power over article creation to a smaller subset of editors, managing the potential risk of the standard being set at a level where it is difficult for the volunteer community to maintain the resulting qualifying articles. isaacl (talk) 17:10, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- See, my impression is that WP:GNG has always been a list of criteria that say "if the topic meets this guidance, it means there is enough material that a policy compliant article can be written about it", following the arguments laid out in WP:WHYN. And that SNGs exist at least in part (but not exclusively) as a simplified "if the item meets the SNG that implies that it also meets GNG" proxy. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:04, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- The general notability guideline describes the type of coverage required to indicate that a subject meets English Wikipedia's standards of having an article. Many of the subject-specific notability guidelines provide specific achievement criteria that, if met, indicate a high probability of the general notability guideline being met, as you state. At present, the ultimate test falls back on the quality and nature of independent, neutral, non-promotional, third-party coverage, because the community as a whole has not agreed upon achievement-based criteria. (The community has generally not liked open-ended "encyclopedic" criteria for having an article, because different people have different sets of values regarding what is encyclopedic. For example, some people think only the very elite sportspersons have any lasting impact on society and so are the only ones that should be covered.) isaacl (talk) 20:36, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) We already have that WP:OUTCOMES (not SCHOOLOUTCOMES, but the rest of it), while only an essay, is much closer to actually being policy than the GNG is. Try to include an elderly Catholic priest who isn’t a bishop or academic but meets the GNG and see how far you get. Same with trying to delete any working train station no matter how non-notable it really is. In OUTCOMES and the existing SNGs we’ve already created a merit-based system, and they haven’t prevented us from vetoing articles. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:08, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Even without my scheme above, I think we should have separate RFCs for each bullet point at OUTCOMES to determine now and by wide editor participation if it is the case that a) the OUTCOME reflects a case of where certain classification of topics is considered to have "encyclopedicness" but as an exception to secondary-source-drive notability, b) the OUTCOME is more appropriate as a merit-based SNG (existing or new) due to the classification, or c) the OUTCOME has fallen out of favor, not fitting either a) or b) and thus should be scrapped, though implementing grandfather clause to prevent a mass AFD rush. OUTCOMES is basically making the case for these articles someone else's problem, which is really bad. If there are any of these OUTCOMES that meet a) then we need create a page for the limited set of inclusion criteria that we have, which presenting only is properly defined for geographic places. I suspect that things like train stations are widely kept because we're using topic-biased !votes at AFD (eg members of the respective wikiprojets are more likely going to participate , which swings the trend in what's kept by AFD). And of course, keep in mind OUTCOMES should not be used as a AFD argument, it's self-fulfulling that way. --Masem (t) 19:18, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Pardon my French, but that would be a clusterfuck that would be closed by a super voter with a closing statement that has no basis in the RfC (likely a non-admin partially because no admin would touch it because there would be no close that wouldn’t cause a mob.) Local consensus in AfDs is perfectly fine and the recent obsession with RfCs to challenge established consensus is a negative for the community in my opinion. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:23, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- We have to bite that bullet at some point. OUTCOMES is a proverbial landmine. But among all this is being very clear how AFDs should be handled under this scheme, for both !voters and admin. I'm not saying lets rush and do this now, but keep this in mind as part of this spring cleaning of notability that we're discussion. --Masem (t) 19:29, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Pardon my French, but that would be a clusterfuck that would be closed by a super voter with a closing statement that has no basis in the RfC (likely a non-admin partially because no admin would touch it because there would be no close that wouldn’t cause a mob.) Local consensus in AfDs is perfectly fine and the recent obsession with RfCs to challenge established consensus is a negative for the community in my opinion. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:23, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Based on one of the previous analyses, nearly all of the subject-specific notability guidelines explicitly defer to the general notability guideline, which avoids a lot of arguing over them. If they were elevated to being the actual standards for having an article, there would be a lot more wrangling over every single word. People still keep referring to the "one professional game" criterion as an overly-loose standard, even though last I checked, every sport qualifies this by narrowing down the parameters of "professional". isaacl (talk) 20:46, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Even without my scheme above, I think we should have separate RFCs for each bullet point at OUTCOMES to determine now and by wide editor participation if it is the case that a) the OUTCOME reflects a case of where certain classification of topics is considered to have "encyclopedicness" but as an exception to secondary-source-drive notability, b) the OUTCOME is more appropriate as a merit-based SNG (existing or new) due to the classification, or c) the OUTCOME has fallen out of favor, not fitting either a) or b) and thus should be scrapped, though implementing grandfather clause to prevent a mass AFD rush. OUTCOMES is basically making the case for these articles someone else's problem, which is really bad. If there are any of these OUTCOMES that meet a) then we need create a page for the limited set of inclusion criteria that we have, which presenting only is properly defined for geographic places. I suspect that things like train stations are widely kept because we're using topic-biased !votes at AFD (eg members of the respective wikiprojets are more likely going to participate , which swings the trend in what's kept by AFD). And of course, keep in mind OUTCOMES should not be used as a AFD argument, it's self-fulfulling that way. --Masem (t) 19:18, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- I do like the importance of establishing domain expertise within the SNGs, as long as it is kept in mind the SNGs are indicating likeliness of notability (as long as "notability != GNG" is kept in play). When there are problems, like with the MMA area a few years back, we deal with poor selection of merit as determined by the local consensus, but I think most editors involved in making SNGs that I have seen recognize the "merit" factor that is in play here and are trying to avoid overly broad or weak types of merit, and there are then normal ways to challenge the likeliness of notability for a topic kept due to an SNG. It's when we talk the classification of topics that we say have "encyclopedicness" but not for their notability, is where we need global consensus and cannot rely on domain expertise, though such wikiprojects/groups of editors can present proposals for "encyclopedic but not notable" inclusion guidelines based on their domain expertise. (This is effectively where the current direction of NPROF would best head towards, should this process exist). --Masem (t) 19:29, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- For example, the only people who are going to know who the significant figures in various scientific fields are others who are in the same fields. Only those actively working in the oil refinery trade will know what the significant trade journals are, and so which articles represent true independent coverage and what are PR-based pieces. To determine if a new telecommunications development is truly innovative and worth encyclopedic coverage, even if independent, third-party, non-promotional, non-routine coverage does not yet exist, someone who is familiar with the latest inventions and products is needed. Global consensus will (not always, but) often lack sufficient context to set achievement-based standards, or even to determine if something is significant enough to warrant an article in absence of meeting the standards. Accordingly, the community must be willing to delegate its decision-making to an appropriate subgroup, which somehow has to be identified without any way to verify the credentials of its members. As I said, it can in theory be a more effective approach, but whether it can attain agreement to proceed and how to put it into practice is still a large unknown. isaacl (talk) 20:17, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Absolutely, domain expertise is critical at AFD for those reasons, but domain expertise can also cause blindness in those areas, which is what the MMA situation. I think editors can distinguish using their domain knowledge to help other editors judge encyclopedicness/notability backed by sourcing evidence without pleading towards evidence-less importance. --Masem (t) 20:48, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- There's enough mainstream knowledge of MMA that the general community was able to evaluate the proposed criteria. But science-domain specific criteria for professors, for example, have never arisen because the community isn't willing to delegate the decision of inclusion to those who have the appropriate context. Because of fear of blind spots, I am doubtful that the community will shift its position on subject-specific standards for having an article. isaacl (talk) 21:06, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Absolutely, domain expertise is critical at AFD for those reasons, but domain expertise can also cause blindness in those areas, which is what the MMA situation. I think editors can distinguish using their domain knowledge to help other editors judge encyclopedicness/notability backed by sourcing evidence without pleading towards evidence-less importance. --Masem (t) 20:48, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Masem, what is Wikipedia notability if not wp:Notability / GNG? I'm asking this because you seem to imply that there already is a wiki-definition outside of this. Or are you referring to a real-world meaning? My answer is that it is missing and should be something like the one sentence missing "guiding light" that I proposed above, and then that the guidelines implement that. On another note, I think that we subconciously we skew notability based on enclyclopedicness rather than wp:not being totally separate. For example, I think that intuitively the bar is set lower for an animal species or a town, and rightly so. North8000 (talk) 20:27, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- How I see it in the context here is that notability is a measure of how well-covered a topic is in secondary sources (effectively our current wiki-meaning). There is a point where notability reaches a certain threshold that nobody would question about why we have an article about this in WP, because its clearly covered to a great degree in sources. What that threshold is impossible to define since it will vary for all, but ideally it should be a case where the article has enough sourcing to be as equivocally comprehensive and meeting all content policies (NOR/NPOV) as other articles from the same topic field that are already considered notable.
- Then with that, the GNG represents one threshold along this notability metric. It is not the same as the above threshold where no one would question the retention of a standalone, and is in fact far below that, but it is meant to allow for the likeliness that given time, we can increase the sourcing on the topic to reach the higher metric. Theoretical example, I write an article on a film based on three sources, one being a long-form interview with the director shortly after production started, and two others that talk about early casting calls. That's clearly a GNG threshold, but not a notability threshold. Should that film end up being cancelled with little said of its cancellation beyond "studio said it cost too much", and there's no other proven sources out there, then while the GNG has been met, its very unlikely that we'll ever get to the higher notability threshold (which for a film would include it actually being released, critical reception, box office performance, etc.) so deletion or merge would then be the appropriate action. Hopefully this is clearer. (I think part of this is having editors trying to pick my brain to understand my thoughts here better - see it but can make the explanations too confusing :P) --Masem (t) 20:46, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- OK, so you are saying that all wikipedia notability revolves around sourcing, and the GNG sets only one level/threshold of that. But then do you say hat that concept can be completely dropped if SNG's (with their often non-sourcing criteria) are being used, or does it go back to your initial post where you said that SNG's are used only temporarily to let an article develop?North8000 (talk) 21:19, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Part of the problem here is that too many of our editors have come to see our notability guidelines (both GNG and SNGs) as “rules”... if X then Y (with no grey zones allowed)... if a criteria (be it sourcing or something else) is “passed” then the subject IS notable.
- However, our notability guidelines were written back in the days when we thought more in terms of giving “guidance”, not writing “rules”... X is an indication that Y is likely (with lots of grey zones understood to exist)... if a criteria (sourcing or otherwise) is met, then the subject MIGHT BE notable:
- The only “rule” regarding notability is this: “an article topic or subject is deemed notable by consensus.” The SNGs and even GNG are guidance... advice to help us reach consensus. Blueboar (talk) 21:59, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Yes. Agreed 100%. I like DGG's previous comments on this that we have turned the GNG into a religion, when it was never intended that way. The guideline itself is explicit on two points: being notable (i.e. passing the totality of WP:N) is not a guarantee of inclusion and that a failure of the NOT policy and a passage of the GNG is not a passage of WP:N. I agree with your above wording that we need to change it from presumed to be likely, and unless we hear objections to that in the next few days, I think we can do it boldly with a footnote as Masem has mentioned. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:17, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- The standard of notability that can be claimed for WP:GNG can be seen in this Afd. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:28, 28 December 2017 (UTC).
- Using that as an example, that is clearly an article that allowed per the GNG (you have at least a few in-depth sources), but the article's present state would not meet what most people would consider a definitively notable article. By meeting the GNG the likelihood to get there is granted to keep the standalone. --Masem (t) 01:34, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
- I’ve watched this discussion with interest, as for the most part, SNGs are irrelevant to the work that I do—increasing the visibility on minorities, women and people from developing or non-English speaking countries. I rarely comment on policy discussions, as I find the process intimidating and non-productive for the most part. The problem with SNGs is that, while they may be merit-based, they tend to be overly biased toward linear hierarchical accomplishments which may not be universal. For example, while PROF might be valid in a first world country, in a developing nation in which up until five years ago graduating from elementary school was adequate prerequisite to become a teacher, the SNG is unrealistic as a universal measure of accomplishment. Likewise as has been pointed out multiple times in AFDs, the guidelines contain unintentional bias, as they do not take into account systemic biases which effect gender in both media coverage and hiring/publishing practices. For creative people the guidelines are also biased toward the developed world, i.e. phrases such as “national awards/music charts”, “international acclaim”, “featured on national radio or television”, “critical acclaim”, “represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums”, or “appears in standard reference books”. (I could list others, but these two SNG illustrate the point). These are standards that may not be applicable in a country where one is lucky to be published in a small run by a publisher with limited resources and little likelihood of funds to publish later editions, has not developed such things as national charts or art galleries, or is not likely to catch the attention of international audiences. If adequate sourcing exists, to confirm that the topic is unique, relevant, or worthy of an encyclopedia article weighing the time and place, historical context and impact, notability is met. For articles on historic women and minorities, or events which concerned them, if sufficient RS material exists to develop a comprehensive article, there is an “almost inherent indication” of notability, as they were routinely excluded from standard reference books and media in general. Guidelines are simply that, tools. By making them rules, we create a rigid exclusionary path that I am not sure we want to foster. Thank you Masem for opening a discussion on the guidelines, as they could use improvement and clarification, though I am skeptical of whether there is a means or the will to overcome the inherent problems. SusunW (talk) 16:55, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Only to comment that there is the inherent bias that WP:V creates - we are always going to be biased to Western/first-world topics because these places have massive amounts of printing and sources to pull from ,while more desolate areas and third-world countries barely have functioning press. We do alleviate some of this bias by allowing foreign-language sources to meet WP:V, but still doesn't change the fact that WP:V (and all subsequent policy and guidelines dependent on it, including WP:N) favors topics where there large numbers of sources. This is why we can't really use inclusion guidelines, because if we include broad swaths of topics based on some factual element (eg high/secondary schools), there is not always going to be a way for WP:V to be met, unless there is global consensus that including that broad swath of topic meet our purpose, as would absolutely be the case for geographic locations. --Masem (t) 17:02, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- IMO, SNGs actually very strongly favour underrepresented groups and help to decrease systemic bias. That's part of the reason deletionists hate them: the Cricketer from a developing country is included, the minor politician from a subnational legislature in Asia gets in, etc. The GNG is actually *much* more difficult for them to meet. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:07, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Though we still need to remember that SNGs are "likelihood to be notable", they are not absolute allowances. And thus in these less-developed countries, those people may never ever have sourcing come about. But we do have to consider time as well and the "no deadline" factor. Let's take a country like India which has made great economic strides in the last several decades improving the sources available, but, say, 50 years ago, would have been considered third-world. Cricket players from the last two decades will probably have a good chance of getting more sources with India's growing economy, but not those from the 1950s. However, that's why its critical to remember that the onus is on the AFD nom to show sources don't exist, we're going to give the benefit of the doubt particularly for both the place and the time period that notability is likely until one can show that through a search of local papers from that time period that there very much likely no other sourcing. (This is why I stress that moving the GNG/SNG notions out of this page and bringing those with elements of BEFORE, to explain how we practice identifying likely notability and how to challenge that, would help a lot without actually changing the practice).
- If we want to include a class of topics without regards to even the third-party sourcing requirement of WP:V, that's going to be an inclusion guideline and that would need global consensus to include. (Not saying that can't be done in any of these cases, just that it does need to be a community agreed decision) --Masem (t) 17:19, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Again, I think you place too much emphasis on large RfCs and not enough on individual AfDs, which is where the policies are actually decided as practice is policy (many local consensuses are the only way to form a site-wide consensus. Otherwise you get an RfC with no answer because no one can agree). In the case f PROF, in practice we are much more lenient on the 3rd party sourcing at almost all AfDs. Same with elected officials at the sub-national level. We don't need an RfC to codify this. The information must be verifiable, but what we require for verification shifts according to the subject. If the community decides it wants to strictly enforce a written policy more strongly than it currently does, we can do it simply by voting to delete at AfDs. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:24, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Yep. In fact, we are now in the completely perverse situation that AfDs that have clearly reached a consensus can be nullified because of discussions like this one, and discussion like this one grind to a halt because those AfDs are being closed as no consensus. Reyk YO! 17:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- This goes back to what I said about OUTCOMES. OUTCOMES is a catch-22 all around, and we need to dismantle that somehow (and very slowly and carefully). AFDs while not "closed" to the community rarely attract wide attention outside of anyone interested in the topic area due to how we advertise these via deletion sorting. If all such interested people acted rationally and put aside their love of the topic to evaluate why the article is at AFD, rather than "this is important, it must be kept!", then we'd not be in this situation. But instead, when AFDs are piled on by interested editors that say articles of a topic type should be kept, and claiming that that numerous AFDs that close this way demonstrate consensus for that topic area, that's not global consensus that we should be having. (Again, the MMA situation from a few years back) There should be no problem with these interested groups wanting to keep classes of articles to suggest an SNG to be accepted by the community as a whole (which should be a relatively easy barrier), or to propose to the community as a whole as written automatic inclusion standards that leaves no doubt to their importance (avoiding the dubious nature of OUTCOMES), but we also have to recognize the community may reject those, as happened at WP:NSCHOOLS or WP:NFICT. AFDs should help inform the formation of SNG or an automatic inclusion standard for a class of articles, but they should not override the core issues of WP:V and by extension WP:N. --Masem (t) 17:52, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- We need a balance because it's inefficient to require all interested parties to show up to AfD after AfD indefinitely in order to maintain an outcome. There is a place for group conversation to establish a consensus that can be used to validate decisions made in AfD discussions. isaacl (talk) 21:54, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- And they don't work. As we saw with the schools and NSPORTS RfC, they only muddy the waters and invite supervoting, often by non-admin closers, because of the desire to provide sweeping answers. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:01, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Lots of topic-specific notability guidelines have worked well in practice. And the sports-related ones continue to be effective at lots of discussions. It's wasteful to ask all interested parties to show up to every AfD so they can outvote the other side. We may as well not have guidelines if they can't be used to guide decisions. isaacl (talk) 22:24, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Yes. SNGs work wonderfully well. The issue comes when we have broad reform attempts that put questions that have not already achieved consensus to the community. RfCs only work when we need to formalize a pre-existing consensus where questions have been raised. Otherwise they muddy the waters and create more questions than they provide answers. Until we are reasonably certain on what the outcome would be, it is much better to let consensus develop organically and tweak any proposals to accommodate what the community does, rather than have guidelines dictate what it should do. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, I agree that guidelines are best established based on what the community has historically done. Ultimately, it will require a group discussion to determine the guideline and enact it. After that, this guidance should be given the weight of the establishing consensus. It should not be necessary to reaffirm the consensus repeatedly at AfD. isaacl (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Yes. SNGs work wonderfully well. The issue comes when we have broad reform attempts that put questions that have not already achieved consensus to the community. RfCs only work when we need to formalize a pre-existing consensus where questions have been raised. Otherwise they muddy the waters and create more questions than they provide answers. Until we are reasonably certain on what the outcome would be, it is much better to let consensus develop organically and tweak any proposals to accommodate what the community does, rather than have guidelines dictate what it should do. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- I strongly disagree. The failure to get NSCHOOLS as a guideline shows the community rejected the opinion of a small group of editors claiming every school was important. NSPORTS got passed with global input, defering to sports projects to proper SNG guideance. That's how things should work. --Masem (t) 22:06, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- The NSPORTS close directly contradicted WP:N and answered a question never asked without being advertised as an RfC to change N. It might be the worst RfC close I have ever seen on Wikipedia. The schools RfC close also was pontificating on questions never asked and never put to the community, and the actual close, as expressed by the closers when asked for clarification, wasno consensus to the question asked, which had nothing to do with OUTCOMES at all, but was about whether school notability should be raised to the guideline level. Both were textbook examples of how RfCs should not be run or closed (and I was the one who formulated the flawed question to the schools RfC.) Both closes have made it impossible to predict the outcome of any AfD in the topic areas and an admin can essentially close any AfD in either area however they want now and it won't be overturned at DRV. That is a firm negative for the project. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:14, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- The RfC on the sports-specific notability guidelines affirmed the consensus that has been agreed upon for years now. The sports-specific notability guidelines, by consensus agreement at their creation and ever since, provide guidance on when the general notability guideline is likely to be met. But upon being challenged, editors must determine if there are appropriate sources meeting the general notability guideline for the articles in question. Closers (admin or not) of discussions at AfD or deletion review who ignore this consensus are
replacingsubstituting their own judgment for that of the community. isaacl (talk) 22:31, 29 December 2017 (UTC)- That is not the super vote: you are correct on the SSG. The super vote was that it claimed that no SNG can override the GNG, which directly contradicts WP:N:
It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right;
. That was entirely inappropriate, and is the type of speculation that broad RfCs invite. There have been RfCs since then that have contradicted this result. The firm guideline of the community is that all SNGs are equal to the GNG. Any individual SNG may subjugate itself to the GNG if it wants, but they start out on equal footing. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2017 (UTC)- We're talking about different matters: I was referring to your statement that closers can close an AfD discussion in the sports area however they want. Sure, they can, but only by ignoring the established consensus. I agree that the close of the discussion should not have claimed that no subject-specific notability guideline can override the general notability guideline. Not because of the statement at Wikipedia:Notability, but because the establishing consensus for any guideline can choose for itself what relationship it should have with the general notability guideline. isaacl (talk) 22:41, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) The relationship between the GNG and SNG and notability needs to be fixed, that's what this thought analysis is all about. It absolutely should be "GNG or SNG", but that is based on the assumption that all SNG are merit-based criteria that are likely to prove the topic to be covered in depth with enough time, making them notable. Unfortunately the conflation of the GNG being equivalent to "notability" makes people think that the SNGs can't override the GNG, when in actuality they mean the SNGs cannot override notability (in that they can't define criteria based solely on importance without thought towards sourcing). Hence my suggestion that we need to separate the concept of notability from the GNG.
- As to RFCs, there is no problem with a Wikiproject or otherwise small group of editors working to develop a new SNG with their domain knowledge expertise. But we can't have walled gardens, so the global RFC is needed to evaluate that SNG, or at least make sure it was developed based on the principle of "likely to be notable". That may very well raise questions that the crafters did not think about, or make sure there's proper alignment with related SNGs and guidelines. They have to checked though for community consensus. When you don't do that, you create the MMA situation all over again. --Masem (t) 22:47, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- That is not the super vote: you are correct on the SSG. The super vote was that it claimed that no SNG can override the GNG, which directly contradicts WP:N:
- The RfC on the sports-specific notability guidelines affirmed the consensus that has been agreed upon for years now. The sports-specific notability guidelines, by consensus agreement at their creation and ever since, provide guidance on when the general notability guideline is likely to be met. But upon being challenged, editors must determine if there are appropriate sources meeting the general notability guideline for the articles in question. Closers (admin or not) of discussions at AfD or deletion review who ignore this consensus are
- The NSPORTS close directly contradicted WP:N and answered a question never asked without being advertised as an RfC to change N. It might be the worst RfC close I have ever seen on Wikipedia. The schools RfC close also was pontificating on questions never asked and never put to the community, and the actual close, as expressed by the closers when asked for clarification, wasno consensus to the question asked, which had nothing to do with OUTCOMES at all, but was about whether school notability should be raised to the guideline level. Both were textbook examples of how RfCs should not be run or closed (and I was the one who formulated the flawed question to the schools RfC.) Both closes have made it impossible to predict the outcome of any AfD in the topic areas and an admin can essentially close any AfD in either area however they want now and it won't be overturned at DRV. That is a firm negative for the project. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:14, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Lots of topic-specific notability guidelines have worked well in practice. And the sports-related ones continue to be effective at lots of discussions. It's wasteful to ask all interested parties to show up to every AfD so they can outvote the other side. We may as well not have guidelines if they can't be used to guide decisions. isaacl (talk) 22:24, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- And they don't work. As we saw with the schools and NSPORTS RfC, they only muddy the waters and invite supervoting, often by non-admin closers, because of the desire to provide sweeping answers. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:01, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Yep. In fact, we are now in the completely perverse situation that AfDs that have clearly reached a consensus can be nullified because of discussions like this one, and discussion like this one grind to a halt because those AfDs are being closed as no consensus. Reyk YO! 17:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Again, I think you place too much emphasis on large RfCs and not enough on individual AfDs, which is where the policies are actually decided as practice is policy (many local consensuses are the only way to form a site-wide consensus. Otherwise you get an RfC with no answer because no one can agree). In the case f PROF, in practice we are much more lenient on the 3rd party sourcing at almost all AfDs. Same with elected officials at the sub-national level. We don't need an RfC to codify this. The information must be verifiable, but what we require for verification shifts according to the subject. If the community decides it wants to strictly enforce a written policy more strongly than it currently does, we can do it simply by voting to delete at AfDs. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:24, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- "Encyclopedicness" is not an English word, is not a recognised concept and so is not an improvement on "notability". Trying to develop the concept of importance seems to violate our core principles of WP:OR and WP:NPOV. But, of course, you'll find it's been done already at WP:VITAL. See also WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Andrew D. (talk) 19:44, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- I know "encyclopedicness" is a sucky word, I'd love something better. WP:VITAL is not the same thing, it identifies specific topics, not broad classes of topics, which "should have corresponding high-quality articles." Some of the classes of topics that we do include will never have high-quality articles but are included as they are deemed to help "complete" comprehensive coverage of our reference work (eg recognized geographic places). This is the type of importance I mean, how important are these classes of topics as to present an complete reference work, rather than importance judged by others. --Masem (t) 21:15, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Masem and Blueboar: per this discussion, I have updated the guideline to removed presumption and change it to likely. I have included a footnote of the historical usage of the term. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:42, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- You made too much of a change, we're still saying "likely to merit an article", but changing it "likely to be included" very much changes the entire approach of notability. Remember we are not an inclusion guideline here. --Masem (t) 18:48, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- I reverted to my revision: the Wikilink adds too much confusion as no one knows what a rebuttable presumption is. Also, how is this not an inclusion guideline? My phrasing just takes what we were discussing above and makes it readable to people who aren't versed in WikiSpeak. I'm open to tweaks, but likely to merit an article with a wikilink to rebuttable presumption is not helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:50, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- Inclusion guidelines makes it sound like an automatic thing, and notability has never been automatic. It is always about how to merit if we allow a standalone article, not whether at the end of the day (per DEADLINE) if it should be included or not in the final product. And the concept of using a rebuttable presumption is still the practice defined at WP:BEFORE (the onus on those seeking to delete). The term from "presumed" to "likely" may be appropriate to be better understood, but the meaning is still that the merit for a standalone can be rebutted. --Masem (t) 18:54, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- Masem, my objections to likely to merit an article vs. likely to be included is the exact same as your objection to my phrasing: it makes it seem much more automatic, which is why I hate the current wording. Likely to be included is far from a guarentee while likely to merit an article is a much stronger promise of inclusion, even though the word is not used. I'd be fine with reverting to your tweak to my version so long as we add something to the footnote making it clear that notability is not a guarantee of an article. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:59, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- "merit an article" vs "to be included" is very different. The former suggests (properly) that editors still need to work above and beyond the GNG/SNG to avoid an AFD challenge, where "to be included" suggests that there is no other work to be done once you hit the bare minimum needed by the GNG or SNG. You can't bury that concept in a footnote (what I had suggested was only to make sure editors knew we historically used the word "presumed" instead, not to displace the entire idea of a rebuttable presumption to a footnote). I know the rest of this guideline still didn't change and still covers this, but new editors are very much influence by what is put into lede guidelines, and we have to make sure those retain what the guideline has said. The wording change from "presumed" to "likely" is fine , but that's the only change that I think can be done without contest. --Masem (t) 19:10, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- I think you're arguing for language that to the average reader will sound like the exact opposite of the point you are trying to make, and that my wording makes your point clearer, but I've gone ahead and restored it because I think anything is better than the stable version. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:15, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- The whole debate above (not just about "presumed" vs "likely" is pointing out the various subtleties that are needed to understand how notability is practiced on WP, and why the current approach in the guideline (specifically, conflating "notability" and "GNG" specifically) is not helping new editors to understand those. The wording change is just a tiny step to what I believe we need to do, which is to make it clear the GNG is not equivalent to what we mean by notability. --Masem (t) 19:24, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- I think you're arguing for language that to the average reader will sound like the exact opposite of the point you are trying to make, and that my wording makes your point clearer, but I've gone ahead and restored it because I think anything is better than the stable version. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:15, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- "merit an article" vs "to be included" is very different. The former suggests (properly) that editors still need to work above and beyond the GNG/SNG to avoid an AFD challenge, where "to be included" suggests that there is no other work to be done once you hit the bare minimum needed by the GNG or SNG. You can't bury that concept in a footnote (what I had suggested was only to make sure editors knew we historically used the word "presumed" instead, not to displace the entire idea of a rebuttable presumption to a footnote). I know the rest of this guideline still didn't change and still covers this, but new editors are very much influence by what is put into lede guidelines, and we have to make sure those retain what the guideline has said. The wording change from "presumed" to "likely" is fine , but that's the only change that I think can be done without contest. --Masem (t) 19:10, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- Masem, my objections to likely to merit an article vs. likely to be included is the exact same as your objection to my phrasing: it makes it seem much more automatic, which is why I hate the current wording. Likely to be included is far from a guarentee while likely to merit an article is a much stronger promise of inclusion, even though the word is not used. I'd be fine with reverting to your tweak to my version so long as we add something to the footnote making it clear that notability is not a guarantee of an article. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:59, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- Inclusion guidelines makes it sound like an automatic thing, and notability has never been automatic. It is always about how to merit if we allow a standalone article, not whether at the end of the day (per DEADLINE) if it should be included or not in the final product. And the concept of using a rebuttable presumption is still the practice defined at WP:BEFORE (the onus on those seeking to delete). The term from "presumed" to "likely" may be appropriate to be better understood, but the meaning is still that the merit for a standalone can be rebutted. --Masem (t) 18:54, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- I reverted to my revision: the Wikilink adds too much confusion as no one knows what a rebuttable presumption is. Also, how is this not an inclusion guideline? My phrasing just takes what we were discussing above and makes it readable to people who aren't versed in WikiSpeak. I'm open to tweaks, but likely to merit an article with a wikilink to rebuttable presumption is not helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:50, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- You made too much of a change, we're still saying "likely to merit an article", but changing it "likely to be included" very much changes the entire approach of notability. Remember we are not an inclusion guideline here. --Masem (t) 18:48, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes. Agreed on that. I obviously want to move away from the concept as we know it now entirely and focus on importance plus verifiability, but until we can do that, I think we need to make it as clear as possible that the GNG is not a guarantee of inclusion. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:27, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- The problem with changing to "likely" is that it is a political word to wake people up to the way that WP:N works, not the technically (more) valid word "presumed" with which we are entirely comfortable. Worse, "likely" implies that there is yet a decision to be made, but this is incorrect--a decision has been made once WP:N is presumed. (And if I had said "a decision has been made once WP:N is likely", that would be internally contradictory wording.) Unscintillating (talk) 23:54, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- Agree with Unscintillating here. Huggums537 (talk) 05:53, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Note that I support the split of GNG from N. Unscintillating (talk) 23:57, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- I disagree with User:Masem's premise that WP:N is meant to balance WP:V and WP:NOT. No, WP:V is much lower a bar for the smallest of statements, and WP:NOT is not a base for anything, but is a collection of stronger statements for recourse against persistent people who don't get it. No, WP:N is an extreme case of WP:PSTS. Can the whole topic can be sourced at all to secondary sources? The GNG is basically a restatement of this, in detail, and is the irremovable core of WP:N. The SNGs are mostly easier to evaluate predictors of whether the GNG can be met, as informed by experience at AfD. Two SNGs are different, WP:PROF and WP:CORP, which held consensus before WP:N. WP:PROF provides an independent justification for inclusion, and WP:CORP provides a stronger restriction than the GNG to keep out commercial promotion. The others are just predictors. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:06, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- Maybe it's better to say its a balance between WP:V (that we can include it because it can be verified via sources), WP:NOR (that we can say why it is important for inclusion without engaging in OR), and WP:NOT (that it is appropriate material for an encyclopedia). But key to keep in mind is that WP:N remains a guideline, as it does support the content policies. Keeping in mind that WP:N bore out from WP:NOT (eta), and is most closely related with WP:IINFO, I really do thing it is best to think of it as a means to balance verifyability and encyclopedic value. --Masem (t) 01:54, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- There is no balancing of WP:V. WP:V is absolute, it is not compromised. The balance comes from WP:PSTS. There must be a balance between primary and secondary sources. WP:N speaks to the special case of no secondary sources, if that is the case, WP:PSTS is not met, core policy WP:NOR is not met, the entire article is not OK, verifiable or not. I think you are trying to impose a flawed underlying theory. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:05, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- V may be absolute, but we also know we don't include everything that can be met by V. Also, PSTS is not about balance - we prefer principally articles on secondary sources. (For example, far too many pages on fictional works try to get away with one or two secondary source and then overload on primary-source content - that's not good). The balance I speak of is determining topics that otherwise could be met by WP:V, and that we are not to include indiscriminate information, that's how WP:N should work, putting weight on what is sourced to secondary sources. --Masem (t) 04:26, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- WP:V is an absolute minimum standard. It is so low, the newbie claim “but it’s verifiable” is a joke. WP:PSTS is not about balance?? Are you the same Masem if old? Of course it is, and explicitly so. Your fiction example goes directly to balance. (and the answer to fiction is WP:WAF). WP:PSTS is about balance and applies down to the level of sentences. When applied to the whole topic, WP:PSTS meets WP:N. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:23, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- PSTS is not so much about balance but more towards the fact we want articles that use secondary sources. Once you have a good number of secondary sources, you can include any number of primary ones, but the balance with primary sources comes more from WP:NOT at that point. That said, if we do consider PSTS one type of balance, it is only how to balance the types of sources within an article, and not a balance directly towards actual content, which is where notability is meant to come in. --Masem (t) 14:39, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- User:Masem, PSTS is absolutely about balance. Content must be based on secondary sources, with facts nailed to reliable primary sources. The balance may not be best expressed by source counting, as two thorough secondary source can balance many more very narrow primary sources for finely sliced facts. You seem to be suggesting a number of secondary sources as a threshold, and then cart blanch from then on, and that is certainly not right. PSTS is one very important kind of balance, balancing sourced opinion versus sourced facts. The other very important balance is WP:DUE. WP:N is not balance, it is yes/no. For most topics, if there are independent reputable secondary sources, it is a yes, the topic is suitable. To quote from the first line, "notability is a test". Read on to find "these guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article or list. They do not limit the content of an article or list". WP:N is not about balance. WP:N does not speak to the content of an article, or source use within the article. Similarly, WP:NOT is not about balance, it also is yes/no. WP:NOT is a collection of prominently posted boundaries that must not be crossed. All derive from the content policies WP:V, NOR and NPOV, but they are written to be used as sticks, for remedial action against determined recalcitrant editors. WP:NOT is not about balance. If the question comes down to WP:NOT policy, you are far outside the region of what is included, you are well beyond the boundary regions of what may be included. The part where the boundary of inclusivity approaches the boundary of absolute exclusion would be WP:PLOT. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:00, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Given that it is entirely possible to write an article using only secondary sources (which can include factual information alongside the transformative material), WP:PSTS not a balance issue, its about the essentialness of secondary material. We give much more weight to secondary reliable sources than primary. Of course WP:NOT is not a balance issue, it is extremes where both topic and content about that topic are inappropriate. Notability is a test of the balance between what can be sources that meets WP:V, and where the content doesn't exceed what NOT delineates, using the sources available (not how the article presently looks). It is why WP:N is a guideline - its not meant to be hard and fast rules like the content policies of V, NOR, NPOV, or NOT. --Masem (t) 01:02, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- It is
entirelyNOT possible to write an article using only secondary sources. Show me one where you think it is true, and I'll explain to you how for some purposes, the secondary sources are either the primary source, or are reproducing primary source material, thus behaving like a primary source. Primary source material (facts) and secondary source material (context, analysis, meaning) have to be in balance, never all of one and none of the other. Neither is it a matter of weight. Primary sources do not compete or clash with secondary sources.
Notability does not care about WP:V. WP:V cares about WP:V. Notability cares about whether independent others have already written about the topic. Others writing about a topic and giving it significant coverage necessarily means they are generating secondary source material. The definitions of these things are well defined in the real world, reflected well at the mainspace article Secondary source, and the policy basis of requiring a balance of secondary sources is at WP:PSTS, not WP:V. I do very much regret the implementation stuff up of Wikipedia:Attribution. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:45, 3 January 2018 (UTC)- Nearly any topic written before the recording of human history is going to be based on secondary sources because no primary sources exist. Yes, I fully agree that secondary sources can and will include primary information without transformation, but they are secondary, with or without those primary sources. And notability, being a source-based means to judge if a topic should have an article, is all about V, at least the part about reliable sources. It also depends on NOR (read PSTS) to make sure those are secondary, and NPOV to make sure there's some degree of independence of those sources. --Masem (t) 05:32, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Secondary sources don't really work with the word "reliable". A secondary source is a secondary source for the opinion of the author, and that opinion is the words as written. Primary sources are measured by reliability. A better word for secondary sources is "reputability". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:54, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Is it really true that secondary sources are strictly limited to only opinions and not reliable facts? I find this difficult to believe. I can imagine scenarios where a secondary source could be of factual use and that a summary could consist of reliable facts rather than just opinions. What manual or guideline suggests that a summary must always=opinion or summary never=facts/reliability? I only ask because I honestly don't know. Huggums537 (talk) 09:56, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Huggums537, no, it is definitely not true that they are strictly limited. Any contextualising, comparison, comment, ridicule, satire, anything that the author does with pre-existing facts makes secondary source material, and it depends on how it is being used. Have you read secondary source and historiography? There are also some excellent essays on source typing and terminology, starting with Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources. A summary is usually an opinion, but an exception is a computer, such as a Microsoft Word autosummary, which is formulaic (and awful). Facts a primary source material, I think that one is a matter of definition. A useful dividing line I believe in, as a good rule of thumb, is that a news "report" is a primary source, and a news "story" is a secondary source, but with a string of caveats, and then finally noting that news sources are poor sources for anything. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:24, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah, I was pretty sure it wasn't true even though I said I didn't know. Thanks for the links. I read all of secondary source and Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources some time ago, but still have yet to read all of historiography. Huggums537 (talk) 13:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Huggums537, historiography is the field that provides the academic intellectual basis for theories on information management in an encyclopedia. I think it is very useful to explicitly recognise Wikipedia as belonging to historiography. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:20, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- I agree with you here. Huggums537 (talk) 11:09, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
- Huggums537, historiography is the field that provides the academic intellectual basis for theories on information management in an encyclopedia. I think it is very useful to explicitly recognise Wikipedia as belonging to historiography. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:20, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah, I was pretty sure it wasn't true even though I said I didn't know. Thanks for the links. I read all of secondary source and Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources some time ago, but still have yet to read all of historiography. Huggums537 (talk) 13:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Huggums537, no, it is definitely not true that they are strictly limited. Any contextualising, comparison, comment, ridicule, satire, anything that the author does with pre-existing facts makes secondary source material, and it depends on how it is being used. Have you read secondary source and historiography? There are also some excellent essays on source typing and terminology, starting with Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources. A summary is usually an opinion, but an exception is a computer, such as a Microsoft Word autosummary, which is formulaic (and awful). Facts a primary source material, I think that one is a matter of definition. A useful dividing line I believe in, as a good rule of thumb, is that a news "report" is a primary source, and a news "story" is a secondary source, but with a string of caveats, and then finally noting that news sources are poor sources for anything. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:24, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- "Secondary sources don't really work with the word "reliable"." I disagree, at least as an all-encompassing statement. There are definitely secondary sources that are opining and speculating from a personal view (read: most movie reviews), and in such cases, we consider the secondary sources from affirmed experts in the field to determine what is considered reliable towards notability and sourcing in general. But there are secondary sources that are doing more of the stuff we can't do by WP:CALC, for example, market research firms, that aren't opining (at least when presenting market figures). All that matters for notability (and back to PSTS in general) is that we are aware what a "reliable source" means in the context of specific secondary source and for the topic itself. --Masem (t) 14:33, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- I think the confusion possibly arises out of not properly distinguishing between "secondary" and "3rd party". In the case of a secondary source functioning with WP:CALC characteristics, there is really no question about the reliability of the source itself since the source itself could be fact checked for accuracy, but the question of reliability comes in with regard to whether the 3rd party representing that source is reputable or not (at least for Wikipedia inclusion-thus notability purposes anyway). So, I think "reliable" is still a good word for secondary sources and "reputable" is a better word for the 3rd parties that represent those sources. But, the two are not one and the same. Does that sound like a fair assessment or make any sense? Huggums537 (talk) 16:27, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Huggums537, here is another excellent essay: Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent sources (aka third-party sources). "Third-party source" has nothing to do with "secondary source" or even "tertiary source". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:20, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, that is exactly my whole point. Reliable sources (primary/secondary/tertiary) have nothing to do with the 3rd parties who provide them (independent 3rd parties). There is a clear distinction between the sources themselves and the independent 3rd parties who provide them. I have also read Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent sources some time ago and personally think it isn't titled correctly since it causes this confusion and should be moved to something more accurate such as: "Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent source providers". The essay also needs to be rewritten from a perspective that STOPS describing independent 3rd party providers as "sources" and simply refers to them as what they actually are (independent providers). We often incorrectly say that DailyMail and IMDB are unreliable sources, but this isn't really true at all. They are 3rd party PROVIDERS of sources that have been known to be of bad reputation for providing some unreliable sources. A source provided by them may or may not be reliable, but we reject the entire 3rd party providers because of their reputation for some portion of their sources not being reliable. So, it's not the sources themselves that are unreliable, but the independent 3rd party who provides them. It's utterly senseless to say that ALL DailyMail and IMDB sources are unreliable. I'll bet a bunch of them are perfectly reliable. It makes way more sense to say that the independent 3rd parties are non reputable therefore it's encouraged to find better sources. What if someone wanted to use DailyMail or IMDB as a reference for a WP:CALC statement? I'm sure it could easily pass the reliability test if it can simply be verified with a calculator and it would have nothing to do with the reputation of the independent 3rd party providing it. Huggums537 (talk) 11:09, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
- Huggums537, here is another excellent essay: Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent sources (aka third-party sources). "Third-party source" has nothing to do with "secondary source" or even "tertiary source". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:20, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- I think the confusion possibly arises out of not properly distinguishing between "secondary" and "3rd party". In the case of a secondary source functioning with WP:CALC characteristics, there is really no question about the reliability of the source itself since the source itself could be fact checked for accuracy, but the question of reliability comes in with regard to whether the 3rd party representing that source is reputable or not (at least for Wikipedia inclusion-thus notability purposes anyway). So, I think "reliable" is still a good word for secondary sources and "reputable" is a better word for the 3rd parties that represent those sources. But, the two are not one and the same. Does that sound like a fair assessment or make any sense? Huggums537 (talk) 16:27, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Is it really true that secondary sources are strictly limited to only opinions and not reliable facts? I find this difficult to believe. I can imagine scenarios where a secondary source could be of factual use and that a summary could consist of reliable facts rather than just opinions. What manual or guideline suggests that a summary must always=opinion or summary never=facts/reliability? I only ask because I honestly don't know. Huggums537 (talk) 09:56, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Secondary sources don't really work with the word "reliable". A secondary source is a secondary source for the opinion of the author, and that opinion is the words as written. Primary sources are measured by reliability. A better word for secondary sources is "reputability". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:54, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- WP:ALLPRIMARY shows us that "all sources are primary for something". This means that it's possible for a source to be BOTH primary AND secondary simultaneously. Just because we have the ability to prove a secondary source is primary for something doesn't mean the source doesn't still retain it's secondary characteristics. Therefore, it IS entirely possible to create an article based solely upon secondary sources (which might also coincidentally be primary sources as well). Many editors are mistakenly categorizing sources as either/or secondary/primary when it's possible to be both according to ALLPRIMARY. Huggums537 (talk) 05:44, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Nearly any topic written before the recording of human history is going to be based on secondary sources because no primary sources exist. Yes, I fully agree that secondary sources can and will include primary information without transformation, but they are secondary, with or without those primary sources. And notability, being a source-based means to judge if a topic should have an article, is all about V, at least the part about reliable sources. It also depends on NOR (read PSTS) to make sure those are secondary, and NPOV to make sure there's some degree of independence of those sources. --Masem (t) 05:32, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- It is
- Given that it is entirely possible to write an article using only secondary sources (which can include factual information alongside the transformative material), WP:PSTS not a balance issue, its about the essentialness of secondary material. We give much more weight to secondary reliable sources than primary. Of course WP:NOT is not a balance issue, it is extremes where both topic and content about that topic are inappropriate. Notability is a test of the balance between what can be sources that meets WP:V, and where the content doesn't exceed what NOT delineates, using the sources available (not how the article presently looks). It is why WP:N is a guideline - its not meant to be hard and fast rules like the content policies of V, NOR, NPOV, or NOT. --Masem (t) 01:02, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- User:Masem, PSTS is absolutely about balance. Content must be based on secondary sources, with facts nailed to reliable primary sources. The balance may not be best expressed by source counting, as two thorough secondary source can balance many more very narrow primary sources for finely sliced facts. You seem to be suggesting a number of secondary sources as a threshold, and then cart blanch from then on, and that is certainly not right. PSTS is one very important kind of balance, balancing sourced opinion versus sourced facts. The other very important balance is WP:DUE. WP:N is not balance, it is yes/no. For most topics, if there are independent reputable secondary sources, it is a yes, the topic is suitable. To quote from the first line, "notability is a test". Read on to find "these guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article or list. They do not limit the content of an article or list". WP:N is not about balance. WP:N does not speak to the content of an article, or source use within the article. Similarly, WP:NOT is not about balance, it also is yes/no. WP:NOT is a collection of prominently posted boundaries that must not be crossed. All derive from the content policies WP:V, NOR and NPOV, but they are written to be used as sticks, for remedial action against determined recalcitrant editors. WP:NOT is not about balance. If the question comes down to WP:NOT policy, you are far outside the region of what is included, you are well beyond the boundary regions of what may be included. The part where the boundary of inclusivity approaches the boundary of absolute exclusion would be WP:PLOT. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:00, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- PSTS is not so much about balance but more towards the fact we want articles that use secondary sources. Once you have a good number of secondary sources, you can include any number of primary ones, but the balance with primary sources comes more from WP:NOT at that point. That said, if we do consider PSTS one type of balance, it is only how to balance the types of sources within an article, and not a balance directly towards actual content, which is where notability is meant to come in. --Masem (t) 14:39, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- WP:V is an absolute minimum standard. It is so low, the newbie claim “but it’s verifiable” is a joke. WP:PSTS is not about balance?? Are you the same Masem if old? Of course it is, and explicitly so. Your fiction example goes directly to balance. (and the answer to fiction is WP:WAF). WP:PSTS is about balance and applies down to the level of sentences. When applied to the whole topic, WP:PSTS meets WP:N. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:23, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- V may be absolute, but we also know we don't include everything that can be met by V. Also, PSTS is not about balance - we prefer principally articles on secondary sources. (For example, far too many pages on fictional works try to get away with one or two secondary source and then overload on primary-source content - that's not good). The balance I speak of is determining topics that otherwise could be met by WP:V, and that we are not to include indiscriminate information, that's how WP:N should work, putting weight on what is sourced to secondary sources. --Masem (t) 04:26, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- There is no balancing of WP:V. WP:V is absolute, it is not compromised. The balance comes from WP:PSTS. There must be a balance between primary and secondary sources. WP:N speaks to the special case of no secondary sources, if that is the case, WP:PSTS is not met, core policy WP:NOR is not met, the entire article is not OK, verifiable or not. I think you are trying to impose a flawed underlying theory. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:05, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- Maybe it's better to say its a balance between WP:V (that we can include it because it can be verified via sources), WP:NOR (that we can say why it is important for inclusion without engaging in OR), and WP:NOT (that it is appropriate material for an encyclopedia). But key to keep in mind is that WP:N remains a guideline, as it does support the content policies. Keeping in mind that WP:N bore out from WP:NOT (eta), and is most closely related with WP:IINFO, I really do thing it is best to think of it as a means to balance verifyability and encyclopedic value. --Masem (t) 01:54, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
Comment: While I don't oppose this particular change since it has little impact right now, it should be noted again that "presumed" is the word used across most other guideline pages AND it even goes so far as to actually define the Wikipedia meaning of "presumed" in the final paragraph of WP:GNG. To replace any more "presumed" with "likely" would require the removal of the word across multiple pages and the removal of the Wikipedia definition from the current version. Not exactly a change worthy of pursuing... Huggums537 (talk) 02:31, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- So, the issue I see is that we've made any exceptions to notability in the interest of "completeness", as mentioned as above. Notability, as has been said many times, is not an inclusion guideline. It is a measure of whether something should be represented as a full standalone article, not a measure of whether it should be included in the encyclopedia at all. It is entirely fine to represent things in other ways. If there isn't enough material to write a reasonable length, complete article about something, it shouldn't be on a separate page. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be anywhere. For example, the right way to handle non-notable populated places would be to include them on a "List of populated places in (administrative division)", with only the notable places being blue links. If all we know about a place is its geographic coordinates and population, that's a list entry, not article material. That doesn't mean we wouldn't include the information in the encyclopedia at all, it just means we should do it in the most appropriate manner for each individual subject. There should never be a case where we have an article on something "because it's a...", it should be because we actually have enough high-quality, reliable, independent sourcing to write a substantial article about that subject. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:45, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- Agree 100% with Seraphimblade. Finally, someone who understands... Huggums537 (talk) 13:46, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- Not disagreeing, but pointing out with the statement "If there isn't enough material to write a reasonable length, complete article about something, it shouldn't be on a separate page.", this is the ultimate goal, and it is important to stress that we are not supposed to judge articles in their present, immediate state, but their potential to get to the quoted statement. That's why we have the GNG and SNGs, that's the side necessitate by an open wiki to give articles time to develop to that state, and the presumed/likeliness aspect the means to demonstrate the cases where the GNG/SNGs assumptions are proven wrong towards the quoted standard. --Masem (t) 17:03, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- Masem, the way I'd like to see it done is add a corollary to WP:BEFORE: "BEFORE you start a mainspace article on a subject, ensure that you have appropriate reference material in hand and that you cite it. If you haven't found the references, you're not ready to start the article yet, but could start it as a draft." Especially with draftspace now available, the expectation should be that sufficient references be present in every mainspace article from the time it's first in mainspace. Articles lacking these, but with some potential hope, should be moved to draft. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:22, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- I have to disagree, to a point. Drafts are great if you know there may be difficulty in setting up an article, including references, before you want others to have wide access to it. But a draft by no means needs to be perfect to move to mainspace, and we have zero expectations that a draft should clearly be well beyond the minimum requirement by the GNG or SNG. Right now, there's nothing even close to mandatory with draft space, and we'd need a massive community shift to change that. (I agree that if this was how draft space was to be used as determined by the community, this would be something to consider). --Masem (t) 18:11, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- User:Seraphimblade, I also have to disagree about drafts. Your notion, that draftspace enables triaging of non-notable topics, and thus is good for notability-challenging issues in mainspace, is common, but shallow and flawed. DraftSpace does draw witless spammers, promoters, WP:YAMB-writers away from mainspace to a place where they can be ignored, but the collateral damage is all the other newcomers similarly drawn to that place. Moving pages with some potential hope to draft is just a backdoor unregulated deletion process. The genuine promotion can be G11-ed. The clumsy articles draftified will never be looked at again. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:17, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- I strongly disagree with you about drafts being worthless. I do AfC reviews myself sometimes, and while the majority of the drafts I review aren't suitable for mainspace (ranging from "obvious spamvertisement" to "just needs a bit of work"), several have been. If even 5% of drafts turn out to be worth moving into the encyclopedia, that's an awful lot of new articles. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:43, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- Drafts being worthless? I think you are disagreeing with something I didn't say.
If 5% of drafts are worth moving to mainspace? How many of these 5% were not appropriate to write into mainspace on their first day?
My considered opinion is that draftspace is a net-negative, not that everything there is worthless.
The benefit of draftspace and AfC reviewing is that it supports the meta:Immediatism philosophy. It helps keep witless spamming out of mainspace. The costs include:
- Drafts being worthless? I think you are disagreeing with something I didn't say.
- I strongly disagree with you about drafts being worthless. I do AfC reviews myself sometimes, and while the majority of the drafts I review aren't suitable for mainspace (ranging from "obvious spamvertisement" to "just needs a bit of work"), several have been. If even 5% of drafts turn out to be worth moving into the encyclopedia, that's an awful lot of new articles. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:43, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- Masem, the way I'd like to see it done is add a corollary to WP:BEFORE: "BEFORE you start a mainspace article on a subject, ensure that you have appropriate reference material in hand and that you cite it. If you haven't found the references, you're not ready to start the article yet, but could start it as a draft." Especially with draftspace now available, the expectation should be that sufficient references be present in every mainspace article from the time it's first in mainspace. Articles lacking these, but with some potential hope, should be moved to draft. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:22, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- (1) Separating newcomers from ordinary editors; Newcomers in Draftspace, pre-submission, receive no assistance;
- (2) Cursory, templated, nonhuman correspondence post-submission
- (3) Establishing a pedagogical framework by implying to newcomers that there exist Wikipedia experts that the newcomers have to satisfy
- (4) Inability to create incoming links from mainspace, or use of fair-use images.
- (5) Departure of the newcomer following the unwelcoming atmosphere of AfC.
- But my real point was that using DraftSpace to dodge difficult notability questions is a de facto permanent dodge that will see the page pseudo-deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:08, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- SmokeyJoe, some people view "the meta:Immediatism philosophy" as a negative, not a benefit. So, if drafts support this philosophy, then it's reasonable to assume that some people might misinterpret your comments as saying drafts are worthless even if that wasn't your intention. I too took your comments as saying drafts are worthless, and it was only after you had to explain it that I realized that was not what you were saying. Surely you can see how someone might misinterpret that after all the negative things you have to say about drafts? Anyway, some of your estimates of the associated costs of drafts may not be entirely accurate. For example:
- (1) Newcomers also just so happen to be ordinary editors themselves who actually do have some access to assistance.
- (2) If drafts go through a review process just the same, then that would require some "human correspondence".
- (3) The article creation process itself already establishes "a pedagogical framework" to some degree so this point is kinda moot.
- (4) The inability to create links or use images is not so much a "cost" as it is an ordinary technical bug that probably has a workaround. It sounds more like an annoying nuisance than it does a "cost".
- (5) Departure of the newcomer is a result of their experience at AfC. This is the "cost" of whoever is providing the experience at AfC, not the "cost" of newcomers using draftspace.
- Drafts get looked at (reviewed) and "permanently" deleted all the time. So, it's inaccurate to say, "...draftified will never be looked at again." or "...that will see the page pseudo-deleted." Huggums537 (talk) 20:24, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- Huggums537, I am not a fan of meta:Immediatism, I think it is a barrier to newcomers. It implies that existing editors know the standards, it discourages newcomers from making a mess, and it also discourages other newcomers from doing some fixing. DraftSpace, like the AfC WikiProject subpages, like the Article Incubator, I say are and always have been of net negative value. That means that one could say DraftSpace is worthless. That is not to say that everything in it is worthless. If not carefully stated, yes, this can easily be misstated.
- The costs of the AfC system are an interesting topic (probably better for WT:AfC). To your comments:
- (1) Newcomers do have easy access to help, but they will find help easier and better in mainspace than in draftspace, therefore, there is a cost to them if they find themselves in drafspace.
- (2) Go have a look at some rejected reviews, and come back and tell me how human you think it is. No use of a talk page. No addressing the author by name. A huge amount of templated message. What message there is is inside a WP:template, and these do not invite responses or encourage conversation, and definitely not a third party comment.
- (3) Not sure what you mean. Compare with editing in mainspace, even administrators behave like just an ordinary editor. When you have the technical ability to write an article, you just do it, the NPPatrolling happens in the background.
- (4) These are not bugs, but clear decisions of the community. WP:CNR, linking from mainspace to draftspace is not allowed. Fair use policy, fair use images are only allowed in mainspace. These two things prevent a draft from being a proper article. No incoming links means mainspace readers and editors will not be led to the new draft article. No fair use images means the draft may not be able to look like an equivalent mainspace article.
- (5) Somewhere, there are stats on editor retention of newcomers to draftspace compared to newcomers to mainspace, and they are not good. The loss of newcomers is a cost to Wikipedia.
- Submitted drafts get reviewed after a long delay. AfC would like more help, but given the density of good stuff, it is not fun. Drafts get deleted, mostly through WP:CSD#G13. There is barely a single glance before most get deleted. My friend, User:Legacypac, does a lot of good work here, I think he is basically the only Wikipedian reviewing old unsubmitted drafts, and finding the occasional rough gem. There was a backlog of tens of thousands. The delay is untimely compared to the hangaround time of a draftspace newcomer, it may as well be forever from that perspective. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:28, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Those are some very reasonable points. I stand corrected on point #4 as I obviously misunderstood the issue as being of a technical nature when it actually is not. However, my point stays a valid one even in light of my error since there is still a "workaround" by the fact that if those limitations were put in place by the community, then it's possible for the community to change that. Thus, my point that it can be seen more as an annoying nuisance than a "cost" still remains sensible regardless of my mistake. Huggums537 (talk) 05:01, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- In case we have lost my point after following these tangents, my point is that sending articles of difficult-to-assess notability to draftspace is not a good idea. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:58, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- I think your point still gets through pretty well. I just wanted to make sure that my one particular (rather insignificant) point was not lost just because you were able to demonstrate my error in misunderstanding the issue. Huggums537 (talk) 09:36, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- I'll challenge one point here - Drafts that get CSD G13 do get a proper review (at least every one I touch) but in the vast majority of cases it tales seconds to figure out they are hopeless efforts that will never become articles or are worth additn to articles. If the material was added to a mainspace article or started in mainspace it would be removed by the first competent editor that saw it.
- I'm not convinced that Draft space or AfC are good ideas. AfC is just too slow. It is a barrier to good topics going forward to mainspace where many editors can participate in building out a good topic. AfC does keep useless topics out of maknspace, but I'd rather see these useless pages deleted quickly than see the creators encouraged to "fix" the unfixable (no N for example). The allowances and leeway given to Draft space allow useless material to hang around for months and years burning human resources managing it that would be better used in mainspace. Legacypac (talk) 19:49, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
- AfC may be slow, but it's essential for keeping promotional material out of mainspace.--unless you can propose some other way of doing that, some better place for COI editors to place their material. It's considerably better than it used to be--the least qualified editors have been removed, the erratic ones are gradually getting instructed, and most items are reviewed fairly quickly. The long delays are for only a part of the material, the drafts that nobody wants to deal with. I and a few other editors check preferentially the most recent few days, trying to accept the obviously acceptable. What we need is better ways of removing the repeatedly resubmitted junk and promotional material, and the simplest way without major revisions to the present system is greater use of G11 and MfD. DGG ( talk ) 17:38, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- I strongly agree with Legacypac here. It's funny, I used to consider Legacypac reckless in his rapid clearing for old drafts (term "draft" used loosely), but now he appears the exemplar in their processing. He is doing a good job in rescuing a horrible situation, but it doesn't justify the mistake of Draftspace/AfC/Article incubator. The mistake is in encouraging the newcomers to focus on their unlikely topics instead of engaging in mainspace content work and becoming part of the community of editors.
- DGG, throwing the unsuspecting good faith newcomers in with COI-editors and spammers in the detention processes of AfC, separating them from the real parts of the project, only catches the witless abusers and damages the recruitment of new editors. Yes, it used to be worse, with worse reviewing, but reviewing still is not good. A proposal for a better way is to extend WP:ACTRIAL to all namespaces, to actively discourage newcomers from attempting new pages in their first 4 days. Wikipedia does not need new orphan pages from newcomers, and preventing this will not discourage, but encourage, new mainspace content from these newcomers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:08, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- But about the basic question: requiring both GMG and the special guidelines is a way of making the situation worse. For something clearly encyclopedia - worthy, one good source to establish WP:V for both existence and importance is enough. The true minimum requirement is WP:V. Everything beyond that should have a specific guideline. DGG ( talk ) 17:38, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
More further insights
I'm 99% certain that we can improve how WP:N is seen by making it very clear that the GNG is not the standard for notability, only a minimum amount of sourcing that presumes that a topic is notable. To that end, I think the following logical narrative needs to be established at WP:N
The Measure
- Notability is a sourcing-based measure of how appropriate a topic is for WP which applies to most topics, with common sense exceptions. It is only a guideline, and not a policy, so notability is not mandatory, but if a topic does not show notability, it should be expected to demonstrate otherwise why it is appropriate for inclusion in WP.
- The existing LISTN advice would fall under here.
- Notability is measured based on the real-world definition of "notable", "worthy of attention or notice", translated into what sources there are available for a topic that show it notable.
- For WP, we are most interested in sourcing that has in-depth and enduring coverage from a broad range of independent, third-party, secondary reliable sources that can include general coverage (like newspapers) and field-specific sources (like scientific journals). Additional forms of sourcing from primary or tertiary sources can be used but they are not considered part of measuring how notable a topic is.
- In this, we should include discussion of the meaning and importance of enduring coverage, and stress the need to find non-local sources over local sources in some topic areas.
- The more sources that you can produce for a topic that help demonstrate its notability, the less likely your topic's notability will be challenged at AFD.
The Process
- Articles showing a high degree of notability for their topic is an end-goal, but not an intermediate requirement. We do not expect new standalone articles on topics to show strong notability at creation: we want to encourage collaborative development and there is not deadline to get to a high level of notability.
- However, topics must indicate some reasonable amount of sourcing to show why the topic is presumed notable (the topic is likely to be notable).
- Article topics that outright fail any type of importance through sources may be speedily-deleted or boldly merged/redirected to other articles.
- To show that a topic can be presumed notable (likely to be notable) and thus allow for a stand-alone article that can be developed over time, as well as to have compliance with core content policies, we have developed notability guidelines.
- The GNG is a sourced-based notability guideline, showing that as long as there is amount of in-depth coverage in independent, secondary sources, then we will allow the stand-alone article. The bare minimum requirements of sourcing given by the GNG should not be taken to be equivalent to the high degree of notability we expect from articles.
- The SNGs are merit-based notability guidelines delineated by topic subject area. These define merits that should be shown for a topic through at least one WP:V-meeting source that, from past consensus, is sufficient to assure that additional sources can be located and included, or that new sources will come about to be included, so that in time, the article can be built out as a highly notable topic. SNG criteria are expected to be demonstrated with appropriate sourcing.
- In general, we allow a standalone article on a topic if either the GNG or the appropriate SNG can be met.
- SNGs in certain topic areas may have additional requirements above and beyond the GNG due to the potential systematic bias in that area, such as limiting what sources can be used. (These should be listed next to the def of the GNG so that editors know where the GNG does not apply).
- In either case, articles must still meet or comply with core content policies (WP:NOT, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV) and may be unallowed should the topic conflict with these areas.
- Article creators are encouraged to make sure that new articles meet the bare minimum of sourcing set by the GNG or appropriate SNG at the point of creation.
- If you are unsure you can start your article to show how the GNG or SNG are met, you are encouraged to use Draft space first to set up your article, and seek input when it is appropriate to move into mainspace.
- Both the GNG and SNGs are rebuttable presumptions: they do not guarantee that an article will be kept just because it meets the GNG or SNG, and only are meant to show that a topic is likely notable. We allow for these articles because, by virtue of meeting the GNG or SNG, they should be expandable to show a high level of notability. If only a few secondary sources exist such that the article cannot be built out past a certain point (generally, compared to other articles in the same topic field), then they may be deleted, merged, or redirected.
- This challenge, however, must follow the principles of WP:BEFORE; those wishing to delete an article on notability grounds that otherwise meets the GNG or an SNG have the onus of showing that expansion of the article towards a high level of notability is likely impossible. This means, in general, that they have to complete a reasonably in-depth search of sources for that article, which may require searching paper sources or traveling to local libraries to find sources. Outside some contemporary topics, this type of analysis cannot be done just through a Google search.
I know most of these points is what WP:N already says in different ways, but in the scheme I'm thinking of, we want to pull the GNG as far away from WP:N to avoid the conflation that "GNG = WP:N" that causes many problems. I'm also addressing a few points made above related to more-strict SNGs, and to draft space. This exercise here is mainly to lay out points and try to figure out how to write WP:N (and potentially a second guideline on the "Process" ) to avoid the confusion from past discussions. --Masem (t) 16:54, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- Wow, Masem. You said a mouthful. I don't even know where to begin on all the areas I agree/disagree with, or how I even feel about yet another guideline about sourcing and notability. Perhaps small (but very strategic) changes to the existing structure could be just as effective if leveraged enough to be impactful while still being practical. Huggums537 (talk) 18:50, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- I disagree with Masem. I think we can improve it by making clear that GNG (remember, its redirect is also "WP:N" and its title is "Wikipedia:Notability", for good reason), is the gold standard for notability. The primary question to "Should we have a separate article on this subject?" should be "Do we have enough reference material from multiple good quality sources to write a neutral, balanced, and reasonably comprehensive article?" If the answer is "no", that doesn't mean we shouldn't mention it at all, just not have a standalone page created for it. This guideline has been clear that subjects that don't pass it are not necessarily unsuitable to include information about at all, just not in the form of an actual full page about them. Subjects that don't yet demonstrate notability can be merged back to an appropriate place, with an appropriate redirect, and once it develops enough there to be split out, we can go ahead and do that. SNGs should be a guide to when, in almost all cases, GNG will be passed, so we presume that's possible, but we still eventually do require that to be shown, not just handwaved at. SNGs cannot and do not override GNG ("PROF" claims to, but I give that little credence). There is no reason we should encourage, for example, the practice of creating permastub "articles" about athletes for whom there's little more information about than a directory entry. That should go on a list, which would be better watched and less susceptible to BLP issues. Same with professors or anything else, who, if their work is notable but they personally are not, could be mentioned in an article about that work. This guideline is the right one, and should be the chief one, to determine whether or not something needs to be represented with a full article, or not. It is not any consideration to whether something should be represented in the encyclopedia at all. Notability is about a certain way to represent information in the encyclopedia, as a standalone article, but the debate seems to proceed as though if we don't write a standalone article about something, we could never include anything about it at all. There are other and better ways to present things that there just isn't enough material to write a complete article about. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:49, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Except long-standing language on this page has been that the GNG is a presumption of notability, meaning its not the standard for notability. If I can pull 2-3 somewhat detailed sources about a topic to write, say, 1.5k of prose about it, that's sufficient to pass the GNG, allowing for a standalone article to be started, but if I can't ever get past that, notability is not met, and can be fairly challenged at AFD or merged (as long as one has shown an exhaustive search for more sources). The GNG and SNGs are factors needed to account for this being an open wiki edited by many without any deadline to get to a quality article. It is the need for the exhaustive search which few editors want to spend the time doing that ends up with the GNG seemingly acting as the de facto standard because it takes a lot of excess time and effort to prove the lack of sources if a print search has to be done, but this still doesn't make the GNG sufficient for what notability for an article should be. We just don't demand that due to DEADLINE. --Masem (t) 17:38, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- I will add that we do need to stress is that notability only is about the ability to have a stand-alone article, and does not affect article content otherwise (we don't exclude non-notable content from topics that are otherwise presumed notable just because the content fails notability. There's many other reasons to exclude that content, but notability can't be used for this, unless set out as an inclusion format for a list.) --Masem (t) 17:40, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- No, notability is a minor guideline that identifies evidence of attention to the topic over a period of time to separate standalone material from merged/unmergable material. Positing that notability is prose-based evidence is neither based on core-content policies nor an extension of core-content policies. Unscintillating (talk) 16:55, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- I never said it was prose-based (and fully agree it can't be). It's a sourcing-based measure that determine how well of an article we can write, but it is 100% determined by available sources, not how those sources are incorporated (AFD is not cleanup). The more sources there are, the better that article can be. The GNG is a sourced-based minimum for presumption of that, whereas SNGs are merit-based that suggest leading towards more sourcing. --Masem (t) 17:38, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- Sure, "the more sources there are, the better the article will be". But notability is free from proving that we can write an article, it just shows that we'd like an article if we can do so. Writing articles is the job of core content policies.Nor should notability be used as a firewall to reduce poor compliance with our core-content policies. Unscintillating (talk) 18:24, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- That's why the GNG is at least written as it is: it requires independent coverage from reliable secondary sources. "Reliable" = WP:V, Secondary to avoid the OR claim of why the topic is important, and independent coverage to remove some possible COI /POV with conflicted sources. It's not perfect, and doesn't specifically address NOT, nor covers all case of NPOV, but it's a step. SNGs are a bit more tricky, because the only requirement they have to show is a WP:V-meeting source that proves out the merit. The NOR/NPOV is presumed to have been considered when those crafting the SNG realize what type of sources are expected to come from the merit. (For example, I would never expect to see a movie that wins a Razzie to be considered a merit, since this is implicitly a negative award, affecting NPOV). And the GNG/SNGs are not guarantees that the core content nature of these articles can't be challenged. For example, I could imagine there are a lot of "Criticism of X" articles that could be written that meet the GNG, but because most such sources are offering criticism without offering counterpoints, we'd never be able to write an objectively neutral article on that, so we shouldn't have the standalone (just not due to notability). The GNG/SNGs are only one test, a necessary but not sufficient condition to grant/allow for a standalone article on a topic. --Masem (t) 18:36, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- Sure, "the more sources there are, the better the article will be". But notability is free from proving that we can write an article, it just shows that we'd like an article if we can do so. Writing articles is the job of core content policies.Nor should notability be used as a firewall to reduce poor compliance with our core-content policies. Unscintillating (talk) 18:24, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- I never said it was prose-based (and fully agree it can't be). It's a sourcing-based measure that determine how well of an article we can write, but it is 100% determined by available sources, not how those sources are incorporated (AFD is not cleanup). The more sources there are, the better that article can be. The GNG is a sourced-based minimum for presumption of that, whereas SNGs are merit-based that suggest leading towards more sourcing. --Masem (t) 17:38, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Two examples:
-
- Skipping a lot of detail and opinion, the deleted article satisfied core content policies on an attractive/popular topic, but was deleted for lacking prose-based evidence in reliable sources.
- I've cited this example on several occasions on policy pages, without attracting an AfD because it lacks prose-based evidence in reliable sources.
- Unscintillating (talk) 18:02, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- Unscintillating, I have noticed you dropping Barber Island into conversations recently and I'm embarrassed to tell you that I don't get it. What point do you think the Barber Island article proves, exactly? From where I sit, a BLP about an actress and an article about an island seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison. Geographic features are (unlike bios and especially unlike BLPs) presumed to be notable. So can you break that one down for me? A Traintalk 18:18, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- The other post regarding Barber Island is off-topic here, and I've posted there. Here, the issue had been prose-based evidence, which maps are not, and Barber Island is an article sourced with maps. It was posted before Masem stated that non-prose evidence counted, but he has yet to elaborate with examples, so I'm not sure where this stands. Unscintillating (talk) 20:02, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- And as for WP:NGEO, it doesn't say what you think it says. It might be an example of where Masem's logic is leading, though, since it first requires WP:GNG, and then disallows maps for notability but not for WP:V. And then for islands, lakes, and mountains states, "the number of known sources should be considered to ensure there is enough verifiable content for an encyclopedic article." We know from WP:NNC and WP:NEXIST that that requirement holds no standing currently. Unscintillating (talk) 20:02, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- Okay, I'm going to attempt to regurgitate your argument back to you. I really am trying to understand where you are coming from on this.
- You're saying that NGEO starts with a presumption of notability for geographic features, but later the guideline stipulates that articles about natural features (such as Barber Island) should have enough verifiable content for an encyclopedic article. You contend that because Barber Island is sourced to maps (as opposed to prose sources), a sourced encyclopedic article can't be written, and the article should be deleted the same way that Kyoko Ayana was. Have I got it right? A Traintalk 20:51, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- A common reason we regularly keep geographic features is that we presume there are local sources that will talk about those features, at minimum (in addition to being recognized by government maps). To show those local sources do no exist (per AFD nom) requires effort. If that effort isn't done, but otherwise the SNG is met, we by default keep the article, barring other potenital issues. --Masem (t) 22:33, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Sorry, I didn't state an opinion about a presumed notability of geographic features. You had opined,
"Geographic features are...presumed to be notable
", in which the Wikilink cites WP:NGEO. I replied to that, "WP:NGEO...doesn't say what you think it says." Then I continued by discussing what WP:NGEO does say. The lede of WP:NGEO states, "geographical features meeting Wikipedia's General notability guideline (GNG) are presumed, but not guaranteed, to be notable." That gets me as far as the first comma in your question. Although I could say more, any relevance of continuing this part of the discussion needs to be tied back to Masem's proposal. Unscintillating (talk) 23:07, 5 January 2018 (UTC) - (edit conflict) The big picture of my position is that notability doesn't define article content, and that our failure to effect our core content policies (to define article content) isn't addressed by altering notability. Unscintillating (talk) 23:07, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- Unscintillating, I was trying in good faith to try and unpack your argument in order to understand if, and you're just slapping me away. Below, you've laid down an arbitrary rhetorical line beyond which you refuse to engage with Masem any further.
- Talk pages exist so that people can make arguments and convince other editors to their side, in order to form the consensus that the project operates on. You are rejecting opportunities to convince people that your view is correct in favor of gnomic dismissals and high-fiving yourself. Your idiosyncratic style of argument has never (that I have seen) convinced anyone of anything. That's why some experienced editors have given up trying to engage with you, and I'm starting to get why.
- I am genuinely trying to understand your argument, because I would like to help you make it, even if I don't agree with it. So please, read my previous post and tell me where it does or does not reflect your argument. Or if you want to keep tilting at windmills alone and getting dunked on in every policy discussion you get into, I guess that's fine, too. A Traintalk 11:14, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
- No, you and I recently reached agreement that "Bloomberg endeavour[s] to ensure that the listing in their database are correct", which is a wise thing for a fiduciary to say, diff. Unscintillating (talk) 12:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
- Um, no. You cherry-picked that phrase out of something I wrote to illustrate an irrelevant point whilst completely ignoring the thrust of my argument. I cannot imagine a more perfect illustration of what makes you so frustrating to interact with and with that, I think, I'm giving up on you. A Traintalk 15:54, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- I'd like to pick one specific to confirm we are moving forward here. You had opined,
"Geographic features are...presumed to be notable
", in which the Wikilink cites WP:NGEO. I replied to that, "WP:NGEO...doesn't say what you think it says." The lede of WP:NGEO states, "geographical features meeting Wikipedia's General notability guideline (GNG) are presumed, but not guaranteed, to be notable." Do you agree that the Wikilink conflicts with the stated quote? Unscintillating (talk) 12:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)- @Unscintillating:--The interpretation of a policy/guideline is often-determined by it's current practice rather than it's wording.The community has historically accepted, litigating through numerous AFDs, that features meeting NGEO are not just presumed to be notable but is by-default notable.I know that it feels like a violation of the policy/guideline but that's how we are doing the things and will (probably) do the things.DGG may be able to provide some interesting views over the point.Winged BladesGodric 14:08, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- Note that the practice of a low notability bar (or a path outside of notability via the word "gazetteer") for geographic features predates WP:NGEO. How does this comment relate to Masem's proposal? Unscintillating (talk) 15:31, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- @Unscintillating:--The interpretation of a policy/guideline is often-determined by it's current practice rather than it's wording.The community has historically accepted, litigating through numerous AFDs, that features meeting NGEO are not just presumed to be notable but is by-default notable.I know that it feels like a violation of the policy/guideline but that's how we are doing the things and will (probably) do the things.DGG may be able to provide some interesting views over the point.Winged BladesGodric 14:08, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- No, you and I recently reached agreement that "Bloomberg endeavour[s] to ensure that the listing in their database are correct", which is a wise thing for a fiduciary to say, diff. Unscintillating (talk) 12:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
- Unscintillating, I have noticed you dropping Barber Island into conversations recently and I'm embarrassed to tell you that I don't get it. What point do you think the Barber Island article proves, exactly? From where I sit, a BLP about an actress and an article about an island seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison. Geographic features are (unlike bios and especially unlike BLPs) presumed to be notable. So can you break that one down for me? A Traintalk 18:18, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- The Kyoko Ayana example appears to follow how N is supposed to work. There were no sources to show notability. There were sources in the article at one point but a 10k removal removed those, and commentators at the AFD pointed out that the removed sources failed RS, thus did not contribute to notability. And they argued there was no other apparent sign of RSes out there. Thus deletion was sourced-based, not prose-based.
- And for Barber Island, I've said it above: because we have determined we are a gazetteer, any government-recognized geographic feature has an automatic article; this is WP's only automatic inclusion guideline. It falls outside notability. --Masem (t) 18:23, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- That's a lot of ideas in one post. But to your first paragraph, deletion was not based on core-content policies, and unless and until you agree that this was the case, I won't be able to advance the discussion. Unscintillating (talk) 18:43, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- The reason I think GNG is a poor idea is that it can be used equally well to make either a keep or delete argument for any reasonably contestable article. For most of the article which have a non-COI divided opinion at AfD, it is equally possible to say the sources are or are not substantial, are or are not independent, are or or not sufficient in humber. There's no general standard for any of these, and I have learned by experience I can go in either direction depending on whether I think the article should be kept or deleted, and so can anyone else who pays attention at AfD long enough. In practice I choose depending on the degree to which it is promotional, or non-encyclopedic in any of a number of other dimensions. And I think almost everyone else does just the same, whether or not they realize it.
- It's not really just GNG--I think the entire concept of notability is an error, as is the very concept of keeping or deleting separate articles. We should rather say that the importance of the subject affects the degree to which we cover it--it's a continuum, not a yes/no argument. (the reason we're stuck with it is that people want separate articles because of Google--they give prominence only to separate articles. It's almost reached the point where it's safe to assume anyone arguing persistently to keep an article in some areas does so because of a strong coi.).
- The other problem word in our standards is "presume" If it means what it does in English, it means that if something is presumed notable, it is notable unless actually proven otherwise--which for the GNG means an exhaustive search of all possible sources comes out negative, which in most cases is an impossible criterion--one can only prove a negative within a finite set.of sources.
- The question is better stated as , What do we want to include in different areas, and once we decide it, how can we make guidelines that can decide on a practical basis with minimum argument. We will not agree completely on what we want, but in most areas we will reach a tolerable consensus if people compromise. Consensus does not mean everyone has to agree, but just that everyone has to agree to live with it.
- There's a sense in which my opposition to the use of the GNG is against my interests--I would be much more able to make the contents of WP fit my own preference if we used it, because I've learned to have considerable skill at the sort of artificial arguments that can be made on that basis. Additionally, I rather enjoy the contest at AfD against opponents of equal skill. But those are rules for a debating club, not for doing something practical like making an encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 05:59, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- There are two things here that I have said before that are important. First is key to understanding that we need to distinguish the GNG from equating to notability. Finding 2 or 3 sources may be the right argument to keep an article in development, but if I can prove that those are only the 2-3 sources that readily exist about that topic, then we shouldn't have that standalone for the article. The GNG establishes a source-driven presumption of notability so that we know we have an article that at the bare minimum meets V, NOR, and NPOV, but doesn't establish what we expect a good article at the end of day should be.
- That brings up the second point is that what we expect notability to look like for a topic will vary by topic area; different topic areas are going to have different type of sourcing, expected structure, etc. EG I would use routine newspaper reporting to document a current conflict in a country, but I wouldn't use the as signs of notability for a medical procedure. What notability can be defined as will vary by topic, but we do set a topic-neutral minimum bar with allowing topics that met the GNG to have a working standalone. Keeping in mind that I'm stressing that the GNG must be considered not equivalent to notability, and this readily works, and follows current practice (it only spells it out better to avoid all conflicts we have been having). --Masem (t) 06:20, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- Masem, would you mind surmising the above bullet points in 1-2 sentences? While I greatly respect you and your thoughts here, part of the reason I've been disengaged from this conversation is that there are so many walls of text (and I recognize I am a part of that reason). A quick and dirty of your current thinking would be appreciated. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:29, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- The two key points I think we should be considering:
- We need to distinguish the notion that GNG is equivalent to what we would consider to be threshold for notability that we want to see eventually. The GNG is a sourced-based means to show that notability can likely be met, thus allowing for the standalone. This helps to make it clear that for the merit-based SNGs, they should be considered equivalent to the GNG in whether we have a standalone article on a topic because we presume it can be notable (read : "GNG or SNG", not "GNG and SNG").
- Ideally we should have a more explicit guideline page that discusses the processes around notability, the GNG and SNGs, and AFD, emphasizing how the presumption works, how BEFORE fits into play, etc., separating this from what we are ultimately looking for that shows a topic is unquestionably notable. --Masem (t) 14:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. Any clarifying that the GNG is not notability is welcome. I oppose GNG or SNGs, and think once an SNG has been established it must be treated as exclusionary as well as inclusionary to have any value (and we already follow this unless someone pitches a fit and WikiLawyers an XfD to no consensus.) TonyBallioni (talk) 14:26, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- Which is a detail I couldn't summarize easily.... Another subtler point is that establishing that a topic should have an SNG should be a community-based decision, but once established the SNG's individual criteria can be managed by the domain-knowledge experts of that topic area without need to seek consensus, unless they are seeking a merit based criteria that may not drive towards what we normally expect for notability (read: NPROF). Those need to have global consensus to include.
- A subsequent point is that "GNG or SNG" is somewhat overly broad in that there may be some exceptional cases where the SNG should be stronger than the GNG and/or the GNG is too weak a metric to avoid problems in a topic area, in which case the SNG should outline how it is stronger than the GNG (NCORP). Ideally we don't want to exclude the GNG from applying everywhere but there are definitely push-come-to-shove cases now with COI an issue. When an SNG is stronger than the GNG, this needs to be documented right next to where we define the GNG so it is clear where the exceptions exist. --Masem (t) 14:33, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. Any clarifying that the GNG is not notability is welcome. I oppose GNG or SNGs, and think once an SNG has been established it must be treated as exclusionary as well as inclusionary to have any value (and we already follow this unless someone pitches a fit and WikiLawyers an XfD to no consensus.) TonyBallioni (talk) 14:26, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- The two key points I think we should be considering:
Masem, I applaud your analysis and efforts. But GNG's and SNG's are a fuzzy Gordian knot that sort of works knitted to implement a non-existent definition/ objective, which is "what is this notability thing that we require?." Trying to clean them up without creating the "guiding light" definition is IMHO an impossible task.North8000 (talk) 17:18, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- There's a lot of steps involved, I don't think it wise to change it all at once. The key step that seems like there is agreement is that we recognize that the GNG should not be treated as equivalent to notability. Making that distinction clear (I don't know how yet) can go a long way to resolving some of the above points without impacting practice. It's only a start, and all the other points I make are things that can come later. --Masem (t) 17:31, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- I'm asking this question to explore this, not to disagree. So, there is a notability requirement for a topic having its own article in Wikipedia. Where is this even vaguely defined? You just said that it is not in GNG or SNG's. North8000 (talk) 17:44, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- It's vaguely defined right in the WP:GNG: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." and ""Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included [have it's own article]. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article—...". I think the wording in brackets should replace the old wording to avoid confusion and I'll be opening another section about this minor change soon. Huggums537 (talk) 20:25, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- OK, so then GNG is at least to some extent the authority on it. Although, even that in essence says sourcing (merely) creates a presumption of notability but does not define notability, and then says that the ensuing (AFD) discussion determines notability. And what rulebook does that discussion use as a framework?. North8000 (talk) 20:47, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- There's a couple points to be clear: there is no requirement for a topic to be notable to have an article, as we discount things like lists, Summary-style split articles, etc. There are a small but significant number of topics on WP that most agree never have to meet notability. Even excluding those, notability remains a guideline , meaning there are common sense exceptions. It should never be considered a policy.
- That said, for most topics, at the infinite deadline, we want a article on a topic to clearly show that it is notable (covered in depth by many sources, and, in how I see it, comparable in terms of article content to other topics in the same field that are deemed already notable by editors). The more sources you give for a topic, the more likely that no one will dispute why the topic should be part of WP. If we can't get an article to that point, and it will remain weak in sources or otherwise stubby, we should seek some other action like merge or deletion. The problem is to show that an topic/article can or can't get to notability levels like this is a considerable time investment by editors to either find sources or prove those sources reasonably don't exist. Because WP is all about collaboration, we don't want to require articles to show this notability at creation, but we do want newly created articles to at least demonstrate they have the likelihood to get there. This is where we would like editors to show how their topic meets the sourcing-based GNG or the merit-based SNGs at article creation (with the necessary minimum sources to show that). GNG and SNGs give the presumption that a topic is notable to give the time and capability for editors to develop articles without fear of being rushed to deletion.
- The problem right now is the distinction of what notability is and what the GNG is, in terms of current practice, is not well-differentiated. The idea of presumed notability and the fact that it is attached to the GNG (which has traditionally been "2 or 3 sources") implies there's a higher level of notability that the GNG does necessarily met, but that is not well spelled out in this guideline. --Masem (t) 20:59, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- Well said. Also, your focus here on SNG's has been as a role in new articles. Another role is that in a fuzzy way they have a bit of influence to help calibrate GNG. IMO two things would help. One is a 1-2 sentence statement of what the guideline is trying to implement. In essence notable enough for an enclyclopedia of en Wikipedia's approx size. Second, slowly improve GNG and improve it's calibration. North8000 (talk) 21:52, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- It's vaguely defined right in the WP:GNG: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." and ""Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included [have it's own article]. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article—...". I think the wording in brackets should replace the old wording to avoid confusion and I'll be opening another section about this minor change soon. Huggums537 (talk) 20:25, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- I'm asking this question to explore this, not to disagree. So, there is a notability requirement for a topic having its own article in Wikipedia. Where is this even vaguely defined? You just said that it is not in GNG or SNG's. North8000 (talk) 17:44, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
I don't think the GNG can be improved. It was designed when we were in much different shape than we are today, and honestly it has outlived it's usefulness: a 6 million article encyclopedia that has articles on most of the major topics can afford to shift to a subject-specific importance-based inclusion system. I don't expect to get rid of the GNG tomorrow, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that wasn't my longterm goal. Notability is a merger of three things: verifiability, importance, and scope. The GNG tells us if something meets the verifiability, it (very poorly) attempts to approximate importance, and tells us nothing about scope (that is why NOT is an equal requirement to the GNG and SNGs).
Regardless of disagreements on this, I do think we can all agree that the way this guideline is currently interpreted is out of scope with what the historical consensus on this page and other policy discussions has been. I would suggest a few sentences like:
Our guideline on encyclopedic notability attempts to assess whether something is verifiable, important, and within the scope of Wikipedia. While the general notability guideline and subject specific guidelines are useful at approximating notability, common sense should be used, and the likelihood of notability that each provides is not a guarantee of inclusion in Wikipedia.
I hope this has been somewhat helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:05, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- I do agree that the idea of putting more weight on SNG in certain fields is fine, but I also feel that there's a large number of topics that don't and/or shouldn't need anything more than the GNG as the point to have a standalone article. For example, I'll speak for the Video Games project that the bulk of our articles are quite happy with the GNG, as with an industry producing 1000s of titles a year, this keeps out the noise quite well to only those games covered in our sources, and gives us the ability to remove an article if that game ends up going nowhere (cancelled, no critical coverage, etc.). But I can understand the difference for academics, corporations, and others. I'll say again that if AFD practice shows topics in some areas being kept and there's no SNG yet for it, then maybe that's a reasonable step for domain-knowledge experts to step in and suggest a new SNG to present for global consensus. It might not pass (NSCHOOLS) but that's a perfect way that notability should follow practice.
- But yes, the minimum step I think we need to do is make sure we have a bright, defining line between what notability is, and what purpose the GNG serves towards that. Anything else takes a bit more thought, but this separations seems to have some agreement. --Masem (t) 00:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Arbitrary break
Masem, what about something such as
A subject is said to be notable if it demonstrates importance, can be verified, and is within the scope of Wikipedia. The general notability guideline and the subject notability guidelines attempt to approximate importance and verifiability, using independent sources, but not scope. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what is outside the scope of Wikipedia. An article may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them.
I'm trying to pull together consensus wording that can be added to this page that is in line with the thinking that we've been having. I distilling it down to a few sentences and updating the guideline is important for any further efforts in notability reform, and I think there is a consensus that some sort of notability reform is needed. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:01, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- "demonstrates importance" is the tricky line, I think we'd need to add something like "as judged by independent sources", as to make it clear that for notability it should be reflecting sources, not personal opinion. There are things we as editors judge important enough to include regardless of sourcing, but those would fall outside of what notability would cover. --Masem (t) 01:06, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- What about updating the second sentence to include
to approximate importance and verifiability, using reliable sourcing, but not scope.
Importance is approximated by sources, but is not determined by them. I also prefer reliable to independent here: for some fields where notability is largely merit based rather than coverage based (politicians and academics stick out), non-independent RS will be what gets them over the "keep" threshold. The GNG and other guidelines can set their criteria for relative independence of sourcing. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:14, 9 January 2018 (UTC)- I think "independent" still works even for those areas, recognizing that, for example, the Science Citation Index is an independent work compared to any academic listed in it, but still providing the merit-based idea for academics. This also partially hits on the issue of local sources verses regional/national/global. The New York Times is clearly reliable and independent for things on a global scale, but they also have metro stories which would not to be independent for local businesses like restaurant reviews. Now the nitty gritty of all that can be filtered to the SNGs or the like, but "independent" covers that broadly. "Reliable" is just as important too but that is more "can be verified by reliable sources" which keeps that idea with WP:V, where RS is the core principle there. (Basically, I know NCORP is very much fearing COI issues so want to cut those off at the pass). --Masem (t) 01:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I'll bite. It's not something I care enough about to quibble over, and I see your point. I think it could be better described at the guideline level, but I think it is also reasonable to include. I've updated it above in red. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:35, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I have a problem with "Something may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them." since it could be misinterpreted to be guidance for content within articles. "Something" is far too vague. I think "An article may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them." would be better. Huggums537 (talk) 02:41, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Done TonyBallioni (talk) 03:18, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Something that came to be later is that there is a degree of importance that we make as editors, but that is part of the implicit nature of how the SNGs are crafted. We do assign importance that way in that those merit-based criteria are things that are important in that field as we , WP editors, know. The importance set by sources is best when that's covering topics that do not have an associated SNG. So we're not fully setting importance from sources here, so there might be a way to reword that more. --Masem (t) 03:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, that was my concern with your original suggestion, and preferred reliable sources. The merit-based criteria still require RS to indicate importance, but the importance doesn't come from being noticed in independent sources, but from the acts themselves. Perhaps changing it to
as demonstrated by reliable sourcing
: that way it shows that the sources demonstrate the importance, but are not always the source of it. The individual guidelines (including the GNG) can pick up the rest of the slack from there in explaining how they handle it. TonyBallioni (ta:::lk) 03:18, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, that was my concern with your original suggestion, and preferred reliable sources. The merit-based criteria still require RS to indicate importance, but the importance doesn't come from being noticed in independent sources, but from the acts themselves. Perhaps changing it to
- I have a problem with "Something may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them." since it could be misinterpreted to be guidance for content within articles. "Something" is far too vague. I think "An article may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them." would be better. Huggums537 (talk) 02:41, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I'll bite. It's not something I care enough about to quibble over, and I see your point. I think it could be better described at the guideline level, but I think it is also reasonable to include. I've updated it above in red. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:35, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I think "independent" still works even for those areas, recognizing that, for example, the Science Citation Index is an independent work compared to any academic listed in it, but still providing the merit-based idea for academics. This also partially hits on the issue of local sources verses regional/national/global. The New York Times is clearly reliable and independent for things on a global scale, but they also have metro stories which would not to be independent for local businesses like restaurant reviews. Now the nitty gritty of all that can be filtered to the SNGs or the like, but "independent" covers that broadly. "Reliable" is just as important too but that is more "can be verified by reliable sources" which keeps that idea with WP:V, where RS is the core principle there. (Basically, I know NCORP is very much fearing COI issues so want to cut those off at the pass). --Masem (t) 01:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- What about updating the second sentence to include
- Without commenting on the substance of the proposed changes, the wording ought to be clarified a bit. Importance isn't demonstrated by the subject; editors can demonstrate importance through an evaluation of the subject by some criteria, typically its effect on related domains. Generally speaking, verifying the subject isn't at issue (although I suppose it is when screening out hoaxes); it's the subject's characteristics that need verification. The guidelines provide approximate measures of importance and verifiability. isaacl (talk) 03:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Isaacl: I'm sorry, but I honestly don't see any changes that should be made based on your statements. The above phrasing when read naturally indicates all of what you said, and further specificity would likely be a net negative. I particularly am opposed to changing the language around demonstrates: the subject demonstrates itself to be important, not editors. If you have other specific changes, I'd be interested in hearing them, though. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Importance is not inherent; it is based on a value judgment. "Home run", for example, doesn't demonstrate its own importance. Saying the GNG, for example, approximates importance isn't quite correct as this means the GNG itself approaches importance, rather than saying meeting the GNG provides an approximate demonstration of importance for the subject in question. isaacl (talk) 04:11, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I think you're counting angels on the head of a pin here. The language around demonstrates is about the subject, not the guidelines, and a subject can demonstrate qualitative value judgement (ex. my grandmother demonstrates the quality of kindness). I also think you are missing the point of the suggested text: the GNG doesn't demonstrate importance, it approximates it. A subject is notable if it demonstrates that it is important, and the GNG is one way of helping to judge that, but it is not sufficient to prove it. I'm open to different wording, but I think the way you seem to be suggesting would defeat the point of having an additional passage, which is to make an abstract concept easier to understand. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:24, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Given that a lot of this discussion has been about precision of language, I do feel it is important to make these distinctions. Yes, subjects can demonstrate particular qualities, but importance is a quality that only makes sense based on some standards, and the whole point of your suggesting a move to subject-matter specific standards is to recognize this. Again, when you write that GNG approximates importance, it implies the opposite of what you said regarding GNG not being importance in itself but being a way to judge importance. I suggest something like the following:
isaacl (talk) 04:38, 9 January 2018 (UTC)A subject merits an article if it is important, can be verified, and is within the scope of Wikipedia. The general notability guideline and subject-specific notability guidelines provide an approximate indication of importance and verifiability using independent sources. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what is outside the scope of Wikipedia.
- I'd strongly oppose this as a step backwards that would make the GNG even more prominent than it already is, and would be implying the exact opposite of the above. I also think that you are drawing distinctions where drawing them isn't helpful, since the purpose is to explain a difficult concept to people in terms they will understand. A subject is notable if it demonstrates those qualities, and the GNG and SNGs approximate two of them. Your wording seems to imply a guarantee of inclusion, which is the exact opposite of what we want. Again, I think what you are suggesting would make the guideline harder to understand. We are not trying to define what get's an article, that will come much later down the road, but to explain that notability is not equal to either the GNG or the SNGs, but a broader concept that the guidelines help us judge. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:05, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I omitted the last sentence from your wording only because I wasn't making any proposal to reword it; otherwise everything I wrote is a direct analog of your text. Thus, I do not believe this approach gives the general notability guideline any more prominence than your proposal does, and I did not intend it to define what gets an article and what does not to any degree greater than your proposal. "Notability" in the conventional sense does not include scope, and so I don't believe English Wikipedia should include scope under the concept of notability. My suggestion explicitly does not equate notability to the GNG or SNGs, but uses your concept that they provide an approximate way to judge importance. I think it is clearer to be more direct: the goal is to have articles for important topics that have adequate sources to verify the contents of the articles. So I prefer to say that an article is notable if it is important and can be verified, rather than saying it is notable if it can be demonstrated to be important and verified. Then as in your proposal, two examples of guidelines that help judge importance and verifiability are listed. The sentence on scope is the same as in your proposal. Then lastly there could be something like
The general notability guideline and the subject-specific notability guidelines are not the only ways to evaluate importance and verifiability.
isaacl (talk) 05:40, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I omitted the last sentence from your wording only because I wasn't making any proposal to reword it; otherwise everything I wrote is a direct analog of your text. Thus, I do not believe this approach gives the general notability guideline any more prominence than your proposal does, and I did not intend it to define what gets an article and what does not to any degree greater than your proposal. "Notability" in the conventional sense does not include scope, and so I don't believe English Wikipedia should include scope under the concept of notability. My suggestion explicitly does not equate notability to the GNG or SNGs, but uses your concept that they provide an approximate way to judge importance. I think it is clearer to be more direct: the goal is to have articles for important topics that have adequate sources to verify the contents of the articles. So I prefer to say that an article is notable if it is important and can be verified, rather than saying it is notable if it can be demonstrated to be important and verified. Then as in your proposal, two examples of guidelines that help judge importance and verifiability are listed. The sentence on scope is the same as in your proposal. Then lastly there could be something like
- I'd strongly oppose this as a step backwards that would make the GNG even more prominent than it already is, and would be implying the exact opposite of the above. I also think that you are drawing distinctions where drawing them isn't helpful, since the purpose is to explain a difficult concept to people in terms they will understand. A subject is notable if it demonstrates those qualities, and the GNG and SNGs approximate two of them. Your wording seems to imply a guarantee of inclusion, which is the exact opposite of what we want. Again, I think what you are suggesting would make the guideline harder to understand. We are not trying to define what get's an article, that will come much later down the road, but to explain that notability is not equal to either the GNG or the SNGs, but a broader concept that the guidelines help us judge. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:05, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Given that a lot of this discussion has been about precision of language, I do feel it is important to make these distinctions. Yes, subjects can demonstrate particular qualities, but importance is a quality that only makes sense based on some standards, and the whole point of your suggesting a move to subject-matter specific standards is to recognize this. Again, when you write that GNG approximates importance, it implies the opposite of what you said regarding GNG not being importance in itself but being a way to judge importance. I suggest something like the following:
- I think you're counting angels on the head of a pin here. The language around demonstrates is about the subject, not the guidelines, and a subject can demonstrate qualitative value judgement (ex. my grandmother demonstrates the quality of kindness). I also think you are missing the point of the suggested text: the GNG doesn't demonstrate importance, it approximates it. A subject is notable if it demonstrates that it is important, and the GNG is one way of helping to judge that, but it is not sufficient to prove it. I'm open to different wording, but I think the way you seem to be suggesting would defeat the point of having an additional passage, which is to make an abstract concept easier to understand. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:24, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Importance is not inherent; it is based on a value judgment. "Home run", for example, doesn't demonstrate its own importance. Saying the GNG, for example, approximates importance isn't quite correct as this means the GNG itself approaches importance, rather than saying meeting the GNG provides an approximate demonstration of importance for the subject in question. isaacl (talk) 04:11, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Isaacl: I'm sorry, but I honestly don't see any changes that should be made based on your statements. The above phrasing when read naturally indicates all of what you said, and further specificity would likely be a net negative. I particularly am opposed to changing the language around demonstrates: the subject demonstrates itself to be important, not editors. If you have other specific changes, I'd be interested in hearing them, though. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Scope is in WP:N currently: it is the second point of a two-prong test: passing a guideline, and not being excluded by NOT. My proposal defines what notability is, whereas your wording defines what merits an article, and doesn't include any qualifiers on that point. I'm generally opposed to the word merits, as I've discussed in the past, but it certainly shouldn't be included without a qualifier. I also think it is better to define the concept of notability, and not go further, since the guideline already explains that passing the two-pronged test makes something likely to merit an article: no need to repeat. Trying to merge our two wordings, what about:
A subject is said to be notable if it is sufficiently important, can be verified, and is within the scope of Wikipedia. The general notability guideline and subject-specific notability guidelines provide an approximate indication of importance and verifiability using independent sources, but do not address scope. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what is outside the scope of Wikipedia. An article may be excluded even if it passes the general or subject guidelines, and may be included even if it appears to fail them.
Let me know what you think. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:05, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Actually the page says that a subject is presumed to merit an article if the two conditions are met. I disagree with making scope part of the concept of notability, as this conflates two independent concepts. What about this:
isaacl (talk) 06:55, 9 January 2018 (UTC)A subject is notable if it is sufficiently important and can be verified. The general notability guideline and subject-specific notability guidelines provide an approximate indication of importance and verifiability using independent sources. These guidelines are not the only way to evaluate these characteristics, and so a subject may be deemed notable through other means. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what articles are outside the scope of Wikipedia, even if the associated subject is notable.
- Isaacl, I think scope is inherently part of notability, and is included in the current guideline: WP:NOT defines what is our scope (by nullification), and is included as a part of notability. There is confusion as to whether our scope is anything that passes the GNG, which it is not. This is why I'd prefer scope be included with importance and verifiability (as it already is in the guideline). I think the text also needs to make clear that passing one of the guidelines is not a guarantee of notability, which you removed.I'd accept as a compromise on the scope point adding at the end,
and any article must not be excluded by that policy in addition to being notable.
TonyBallioni (talk) 07:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC) - isaacl, fix ping. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:25, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- With the goal of helping people understand abstract concepts, I think combining scope under notability just leads to confusion. In the real world, notability tests do not include scope, and something can be notable and yet out of scope for a particular publication. As you said, the need to meet both conditions is already described in the numbered list, so does it need to be covered again with your proposed clause? (Plus it is essentially re-describing what "out of scope" means.) How about:
A subject is notable if it is sufficiently important and can be verified. The general notability guideline and subject-specific notability guidelines provide an approximate indication of importance and verifiability using independent sources. As these guidelines are not the only way to evaluate these characteristics, a subject can be judged to be notable or lack notability based on other criteria, whether or not these guidelines are met. The policy What Wikipedia is not defines what articles are outside the scope of Wikipedia, even if the associated subject is notable.
- I'm having a bit of concern of how the second sentence comes off (about GNG/SNG) as it reads to me, in the eyes of a new editor, that the GNG and SNG are sufficient for notability, and one doesn't have to show any more work at that point, which is not what we want. I'm not sure what the right language to add to keep this terse. Maybe a question to ask is where are you proposing to put this statement, to see the context for it. --Masem (t) 14:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- With the goal of helping people understand abstract concepts, I think combining scope under notability just leads to confusion. In the real world, notability tests do not include scope, and something can be notable and yet out of scope for a particular publication. As you said, the need to meet both conditions is already described in the numbered list, so does it need to be covered again with your proposed clause? (Plus it is essentially re-describing what "out of scope" means.) How about:
- Isaacl, I think scope is inherently part of notability, and is included in the current guideline: WP:NOT defines what is our scope (by nullification), and is included as a part of notability. There is confusion as to whether our scope is anything that passes the GNG, which it is not. This is why I'd prefer scope be included with importance and verifiability (as it already is in the guideline). I think the text also needs to make clear that passing one of the guidelines is not a guarantee of notability, which you removed.I'd accept as a compromise on the scope point adding at the end,
- Just another spanner into the works: one of the goals by issuing a bright line between what notability is and that the GNG is not equivalent to that, is that we can actually use the proper English definition of notability as the guiding principle: topics that are notable for WP are those that have been noted by sources. We evaluate notability by using importance, verifyability, etc... (Tony's def) Now, at this point, that might be too much of a change without the other facets of discussion, but something to keep in mind. --Masem (t) 14:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I think saying that Wikipedia seeks to have articles on notable topics, where notability is based on the importance of the topic in its domain, lines up with the English definition of notability (from the American Heritage dictionary, "the state or quality of being eminent or worthy of notice"). Evaluating notability is, as you said before, a continuum; the current consensus supports using the GNG and SNGs as a first cut for determining the likelihood of notability. Accordingly the proposed statement refers to these guidelines, but also says they aren't definitive. isaacl (talk) 15:46, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- "Importance" is rather vague and is problematic, as it has different meanings to different people. To hierarchical thinkers, it means one thing to circular thinkers, it means quite another. Things that might be important at one time, are unimportant in others. If the point is to clarify the guidelines it would make more sense to say something along the lines of "A subject is notable if it achieved a sufficient impact within its historical context and can be verified". SusunW (talk) 16:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I think it's close too, I just would want to be clear that we include topics that are notable (English def), but to avoid a fully subjective assessment of notability, we seek to show a topic is notable as demonstrated with some objectivity through either coverage from independent sources or pre-determined domain-specific merits. I don't know if we need this right now, but I would keep it in mind. Why WP:N is named "notability" when its practical definition has always significantly varied fro the English meaning has been a thorn in our side, but we've got a way to get past that with this approach. --Masem (t) 16:16, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Which is exactly why I proposed removing importance, it is subjective and fails to take into account things which may have impact on an era, but are clearly not relevant on a hierarchical measure—discarded theories that were at one time significant, personalities, i.e. Paris Hilton, Lawn Chair Larry, etc., former countries, ad infinitum. Stating instead that it impacted an era is not placing a hierarchical measure or recentism upon the evaluation process, allowing for a much more objective analysis. SusunW (talk) 16:29, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- In my view, importance is typically determined by criteria evaluating the effect of a topic on its related domains. Thus impact on an era would fall under this. isaacl (talk) 17:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- SusunW, I consider impact in an era as falling under importance, like isaacl. I think importance is better though because it is broader: things such as roads, unincorporated places, every train station in the UK, random animals discovered and documented in one academic paper, etc. don't meet the GNG as it is written, but consensus has deemed them important enough for an article if they can be verified. They also likely wouldn't fit under the impact on an era wording. If you could think of a way to phrase this, I'd be very happy to hear it (or to convince me on the impact of an era wording: I'm definitely open to it as it is a step in the right direction, IMO). TonyBallioni (talk) 17:51, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I did not get a ping...there is no "a" in my name. I am not a black and white thinker, nor a hierarchical one. Importance requires some sort of subjective criteria whereas impact does not. Unincorporated places, train stations, random animals, from your example, could well have impact, but be totally unimportant. For the first two, they were founded for some reason and impacted the inhabitants around them, who utilize them, and may well have changed the demographics of a place. For the second, things like the polar-griz definitely impacted our knowledge of species, so while in and of itself is a minor hybrid and certainly not an important species, it definitely changed our understanding of biology. None of your examples indicates importance, but they all fit in an impact evaluation. SusunW (talk) 18:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Impact also requires criteria that are based on a value system, and the value system is subjective. I see impact as the same as having an effect on related domains, just using a word with slightly different connotations. If a topic affecting our understanding of biology, for example, then it has made a clear and noticeable effect, and so is important to biology; I can't see how it would be considered unimportant. isaacl (talk) 19:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I would agree that there is a judgment either way on values. But, "importance" in and of itself is a loaded word, easily misconstrued to discount things that are not in agreement with one's own view. I am not married to "impact", but it has a broader applicability to my mind. Whether it impacted something does not limit the topic to something that is in and of itself significant. Semantics do matter when one is trying to define concepts. SusunW (talk) 19:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- This is why I think if we talk importance in relationship to notability, then we have to identify by what metrics we are using to avoid the outright subjective assessment. Hence why importance relating to notability is what can be demonstrated through coverage of independent sources, or through reasonably-selected figures of merit that can be verified. But one could argue that "impact" is yet a different measurement than importance , and should be included as well.
- And maybe "importance" and "impact" are not the complete extent of what "notability" covers either. Take an average , non-Oscar winning film but one that had wide release. It doesn't break any cultural ground, it's not a major success nor failure, it doesn't change anyone's opinions of the actors or directors involved; it just cost millions to make, brought millions in gross, and has the usual extensive reviews and production information. That's notable by both english and WP's definition, but it's not showing "importance" or "impact". It's just been "noted" through thorough discussion of its production and its critical reviews. We can fit it into WP because it has verifyability, and coverage from independent sources. I wouldn't use "interesting" as the word alongside "importance" or "impact" (that's a worse word than "importance"), but its related to how much interest the sources show towards a topic as yet another facet of notability. --Masem (t) 20:45, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Exactly Masem. At Women in Red we typically utilize the theory that an article is typically notable if one can define the scope (who, what) in context (where, when) to weigh its significance (how, why) with sufficient RS to write a comprehensive article without doing original research. SusunW (talk) 21:01, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- A film that gained a significant viewership does have an effect on the film-making domain for its year of release, and possibly its year(s) of production, and so I do believe it fits the standard of importance. Important does not mean it was a landmark, innovative, or creatively distinct. Important topics are just things that should be covered when discussing related domains, such as cinema in year X, because of the effect they've had. A film that hardly anyone watched won't be important by viewership standards, and so would have to meet a different standard of importance to have an article, such as critical acclaim. isaacl (talk) 21:10, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Then that may mean, reasonably, that "importance" or "impact" should be "within their field", which stresses a point Tony's making about domain-expertise playing a role here. Whether that is by appropriate selection of domain sources, or by merit-based criteria, either is fine. We just do need to make sure that no domain -expert area is given too much leeway to make too many broad assumptions of what they believe is notable - the MMA problem from years back. --Masem (t) 21:55, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I would agree that there is a judgment either way on values. But, "importance" in and of itself is a loaded word, easily misconstrued to discount things that are not in agreement with one's own view. I am not married to "impact", but it has a broader applicability to my mind. Whether it impacted something does not limit the topic to something that is in and of itself significant. Semantics do matter when one is trying to define concepts. SusunW (talk) 19:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Impact also requires criteria that are based on a value system, and the value system is subjective. I see impact as the same as having an effect on related domains, just using a word with slightly different connotations. If a topic affecting our understanding of biology, for example, then it has made a clear and noticeable effect, and so is important to biology; I can't see how it would be considered unimportant. isaacl (talk) 19:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I did not get a ping...there is no "a" in my name. I am not a black and white thinker, nor a hierarchical one. Importance requires some sort of subjective criteria whereas impact does not. Unincorporated places, train stations, random animals, from your example, could well have impact, but be totally unimportant. For the first two, they were founded for some reason and impacted the inhabitants around them, who utilize them, and may well have changed the demographics of a place. For the second, things like the polar-griz definitely impacted our knowledge of species, so while in and of itself is a minor hybrid and certainly not an important species, it definitely changed our understanding of biology. None of your examples indicates importance, but they all fit in an impact evaluation. SusunW (talk) 18:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Which is exactly why I proposed removing importance, it is subjective and fails to take into account things which may have impact on an era, but are clearly not relevant on a hierarchical measure—discarded theories that were at one time significant, personalities, i.e. Paris Hilton, Lawn Chair Larry, etc., former countries, ad infinitum. Stating instead that it impacted an era is not placing a hierarchical measure or recentism upon the evaluation process, allowing for a much more objective analysis. SusunW (talk) 16:29, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I think saying that Wikipedia seeks to have articles on notable topics, where notability is based on the importance of the topic in its domain, lines up with the English definition of notability (from the American Heritage dictionary, "the state or quality of being eminent or worthy of notice"). Evaluating notability is, as you said before, a continuum; the current consensus supports using the GNG and SNGs as a first cut for determining the likelihood of notability. Accordingly the proposed statement refers to these guidelines, but also says they aren't definitive. isaacl (talk) 15:46, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- It is definitely better to *avoid* using the term "notability" in a general everyday IRL meaning: Wikipedians do *not* determine whether a person, company, or whatever is "notable" in this sense. That would, for instance, make determinations on whether a living one-hit-wonder is notable into a BLP issue, e.g. "yeah, sure, you're a 'non-notable' IRL, Wikipedia has said so..." – this would, for instance, make necessary to close AfDs down before they really get started while saying "non-notable" about an article topic may be a BLP policy infringement.
- Of course not, notability is a convention depending on context: in this case that context is Wikipedia. Honorary members may be "notable" for an organisation (which uses its own criteria to bestow such qualification on certain persons), so why shouldn't Wikipedia use its own criteria regarding what it considers "notable" for its own purposes? It should, after all, not be a judgement on how important a person, organisation, etc., is according to other criteria. Buying a V.I.P. ticket to an event would make you "notable" in Wikipedia, while it says so on your (verifiable) ticket, you're not only an important person: you're a Very Important Person. It would make impossible to refuse such person an entry to Wikipedia, while the person is "notable" while they are "verifiably important" (according to someone else's criteria).
- I never got why using "notability" in a well-defined context would be in whatever sense problematic for Wikipedia. Everyone does it. Using "notability" in a general ill-defined (e.g. by making it dependent on the even vaguer "importance" concept) sense is much more problematic. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Importance is approximated by either merit-based criteria, or looking at the sources in context, and judging whether they demonstrate it in their coverage. Notability as we use it on Wikipedia is a made up term, and it while DGG has said in the past that we have started to have religious faith in the GNG, I think some people take it to the level of a cult: there is nothing special about having one or two newspaper write-ups. I can do that for myself within the next three months if I wanted. That doesn't make me notable. That means I can pick up my cell phone and call a reporter. We need to move away from this concept that notability is king: it isn't. Consensus is. Notability is just shorthand for "what we have determined through consensus to be important enough to have an article on Wikipedia and is not outside of our scope." We can determine in any XfD that something is notable or not regardless of what the guidelines say. They are clear that they are not a guarantee of inclusion, and they are not a policy. The GNG allows us to approximate subject importance based on what has been noted when we have not determined a subject-specific criteria, but we can, and should, use common sense and throw it out the window when it gets in the way of improving Wikipedia. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Disagree with almost all of that, including what you say about DGG's approach. Oppose changes to the guidance based on such reasoning which would, evidently, make notability-related issues only more, not less, problematic. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:09, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I've made it clear I want to get rid of the GNG, so does DGG. It's worthless, and I encourage people to ignore it in favour of using the SNGs as exclusionary guidelines all the time, because building up a consensus at AfDs is the only way we will ever be able to fix our massive problem of overincluding spam while chasing off topics that actually should be covered in an encyclopedia (AfC and the -help IRC channel do this all the time). My porposed changes above, however, are not aimed at that, but at clarifying this document, which no one seems to be able to understand. It's undertaken in good faith, and includes the GNG despite my distaste for it, because I recognize that consensus currently accepts it. At the same time, while I appreciate all the work Masem has done, I'm beginning to despair that nothing will come out of all of these conversations, because people are too focused on the particulars rather than willing to compromise on wording to clarify what the consensus on this document actually is. If we can't do that, we might as well mark it as historical and not even pay lipservice to it. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Re. "...this document, which no one seems to be able to understand..." – offence taken. Please speak for yourself. I'd be happy to try explain what you don't understand. The "likely" proposal discussed below added another layer of (unnecessary) complexity, and so was unsuccessful in clarifying anything. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:26, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I've made it clear I want to get rid of the GNG, so does DGG. It's worthless, and I encourage people to ignore it in favour of using the SNGs as exclusionary guidelines all the time, because building up a consensus at AfDs is the only way we will ever be able to fix our massive problem of overincluding spam while chasing off topics that actually should be covered in an encyclopedia (AfC and the -help IRC channel do this all the time). My porposed changes above, however, are not aimed at that, but at clarifying this document, which no one seems to be able to understand. It's undertaken in good faith, and includes the GNG despite my distaste for it, because I recognize that consensus currently accepts it. At the same time, while I appreciate all the work Masem has done, I'm beginning to despair that nothing will come out of all of these conversations, because people are too focused on the particulars rather than willing to compromise on wording to clarify what the consensus on this document actually is. If we can't do that, we might as well mark it as historical and not even pay lipservice to it. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Disagree with almost all of that, including what you say about DGG's approach. Oppose changes to the guidance based on such reasoning which would, evidently, make notability-related issues only more, not less, problematic. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:09, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Importance is approximated by either merit-based criteria, or looking at the sources in context, and judging whether they demonstrate it in their coverage. Notability as we use it on Wikipedia is a made up term, and it while DGG has said in the past that we have started to have religious faith in the GNG, I think some people take it to the level of a cult: there is nothing special about having one or two newspaper write-ups. I can do that for myself within the next three months if I wanted. That doesn't make me notable. That means I can pick up my cell phone and call a reporter. We need to move away from this concept that notability is king: it isn't. Consensus is. Notability is just shorthand for "what we have determined through consensus to be important enough to have an article on Wikipedia and is not outside of our scope." We can determine in any XfD that something is notable or not regardless of what the guidelines say. They are clear that they are not a guarantee of inclusion, and they are not a policy. The GNG allows us to approximate subject importance based on what has been noted when we have not determined a subject-specific criteria, but we can, and should, use common sense and throw it out the window when it gets in the way of improving Wikipedia. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I wasn't discussing you or people on this page who are attempting to help move forward the discussion. The conversation was started when Masem pointed out that we need to better explain the concept of encyclopedic notability: it is currently ambiguous and difficult for people to understand, and critiquing the document as such is not an insult. Many people currently conflate it with the GNG. That has never been the consensus, and we need to find a way to explain it better.
Right now, we have a document that no one reads because they only link to one section of it. Changing the text to make it clear that notability is much more than passing that one section needs to happen. If it doesn't happen, then we are just going to continue to have meaningless fights in XfDs with one side advancing policy based arguments, and the other saying "But the GNG!" (and this goes in both directions, keep and delete).
That isn't good for the encyclopedia: at the same time, I think it might be impossible to actually change this document in anyway soon, even with just clarifying remarks, and efforts might be better spent in the other guidelines working on developing consensus' there as to what is notable and how they interact with the GNG. As much as I really do respect Masem's efforts, having read over all of these threads multiple times, I'm not sure that we are going to be able to get much done on this guideline. My wording above was an attempt to try to get a 2-3 sentence summary of what our understanding of notability was using terms people could understand: not to actually change anything. I'm not tied to those exact words, but if we can't develop a consensus for a 2-3 sentence summary of notability, we won't be able to make any larger reforms here (in the direction I would prefer, or in other directions). TonyBallioni (talk) 17:40, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I totally disagree that SNG are or ever will be more important than GNG. They fail to cover a broad enough definition of what is or is not notable, at this point cover minimal topics, and further fail to take into account media/publishing biases. While one might be able to qualify sports-based achievement (and I know many editors who think those guidelines are flawed), for example PROF has serious issues, in that it is geared toward hard sciences and fails to take into account demographic differences, citation variances, (law never cites someone else's work but rather case evidence; research shows men typically cite other men, while women cite both male and female authorities, name changes affect citation statistics, etc.), and the inherent biases that have typically omitted women and minorities from being included in the "accomplishment hierarchy". What is being touted here as moving toward a defined, rules-based inclusionary guideline is in fact one that excludes a vast number of notable people who have had impact in their place or origin or on a specific era. SusunW (talk) 18:09, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I actually think one of the strongest selling points of SNGs is that they are less likely to exhibit systemic biases than the GNG is. That is one of the main reasons that we have them: they are a double edged sword that makes it easier to include things that are significant, but hard to pass the GNG, and easier to exclude things that pass the GNG because of various privileges and social hierarchies (ex. a young PhD student in Canada knowing how to market herself and call the reporter vs. a top researcher in Africa who doesn't do that.) I also think that the SNGs need a lot of tweaking to account for what you are talking about, but ultimately, what I think needs to happen is a move towards including more of the topics that you suggest, which I don't see the GNG as providing. Those are the areas where we are currently lacking coverage, and the GNG builds in a systemic bias against them. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- We'll have to agree to disagree on that point. SNGs evaluate things in a hierarchical manner, placing value on things that are inherently "important" to the mainstream culture. They also buttonhole people into narrow categories, which exclude the experiences of all but the most notable people in any given endeavor. Many women/minority's experiences did not allow them to be singularly notable for a specific field, and yet, evaluating the totality of their role, clearly they had impact on their place and time. People and things are typically not one-dimensional and SNGs tend to place more significance on one facet than on the entirety of the topic. SusunW (talk) 18:50, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I think SusunW brings up several valid points here. The proponents of doing away with the GNG have not taken into account that the community will overcompensate for this by a dramatic increase in SNG's to establish a foothold for their favorite topics. This will result in coverage of tons of topics in SNG's where there is currently a minimal amount as SusunW pointed out. Spammers will always find a way to spam and putting exclusionary restrictions on the community at large is not the answer since that "punishes" the good editors the same as the bad. That is a plan of action that when followed to it's logical conclusion actually hurts the community more than it helps it. I fully understand the reasoning behind the idea, but I just think it's a bad idea. The Crusades and Spanish Inquisition were thought to be good ideas at the time as well, but I'll leave it to the readers to decide if they were a bad idea or not... Huggums537 (talk) 18:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- It should also be pointed out that a significant increase in SNG's statistically raises the odds that there will be more contradictions between the various topics related to policy, creating even more confusion about notability and policy in general. It is far better keep the amount of SNG's to a minimum by the KISS principle and why we have both WP:CREEP and WP:POVFORK guidance. The GNG helps us to accomplish this by providing a simple location of single coverage for virtually unlimited various topics. (With the possible exception of those that are currently limited to the SNG's). Huggums537 (talk) 19:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- One thing to keep in mind is that the GNG can be made field specific simply by defining what the RSes are for that topic, which may be more specialized than a general topic. Back to Video Games, we maintain WP:VG/S to comply with WP:RS requirements of what sources in video games are appropriate (in addition to any reliable general news source), so that we don't need a specialized SNG, just the GNG with our source list. This doesn't work for all topics, but it is a possible route to avoid too many SNGs. --Masem (t) 19:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, see my post below regarding the problematic approach of having an ever-increasing number of rules. I think it's probably moot, though: my feeling is that the community is not yet ready to have the subject-specific criteria replace the general notability guideline, as this would require delegating authority to domain-area experts who have the required context to create appropriate criteria. The community remains wary of giving up its veto power, given the inability to validate credentials and the understandable concern that the standard may be drawn too broadly and thus result in more articles than the Wikipedia community can adequately maintain. isaacl (talk) 20:58, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Technically it is already the case that SNGs have some ability to create new merit-based criteria, but this is after the global editor community agrees that an SNG in that area is appropriate. (EG the current NSPORTS was put in by a global RFC, but the small changes made to it since have been strictly limited to consensus on its talk page). We don't have formal processes, but if we did, that's pretty much how I see it being handled. If the community finds that an SNG has, though its own control, added a number of criteria that are problematic, then another global RFC can be held. That may be a result of when a series of AFDs of articles that rest on the SNG are shown to be a problem; we can enforce our "veto" in this fashion. This can help urge to only create SNGs when there is a clear need for it; reusing existing ones or see how the GNG can be used instead, and keep the CREEP of having a few dozen different SNGs to worry about. --Masem (t) 21:06, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Perhaps you feel the winds of change differently. At present, I don't foresee a large-scale movement to make subject-specific notability guidelines supersede the general notability guideline in the intermediate future. Until English Wikipedia's consensus decision-making tradition shifts to something that scales better, personally I don't think matters will change much. The sports-specific notability guideline has only survived through its deference to the general notability guideline. isaacl (talk) 21:16, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- This whole discussion came from the previous section of whether the GNG or the SNGs were superseding the other, of which I've pointed that has has traditionally been, that it should be neither superseding - it is "GNG or SNG" as WP:N is written as well as most of the SNGs that defer to the GNG should the topic not met its criteria. To align several different conflicting statements made since, I think it is important to stress that most of the confusion can be resolved as long as it is understood that the GNG is not sufficient for notability, it's only a presumption of notability to allow a standalone. This makes the GNG equal in weight to any SNG (barring those like NCORP that seek to be more restrictive than the GNG for good reason). The GNG is the necessary catchall, and though it and how articles grow and survive, it can lead to completely new SNG and/or additions to existing SNG to cover new topics that emerge (for example, as eSports are coming into a major growth mode, we may need to see how applying the GNG works, and subsequently how that factors into the SNGs; this is a potentially good test bed of this mechanism). But all this is not to change practice or make any massive guideline change, but provide clarity that I'm seeing on how to define notability, the GNG, the SNGs and the processes around it to avoid confusion that the misunderstandings between editors come up when discussing the roles of these guidelines. --Masem (t) 21:55, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, I've been following this discussion and many others that we've been having for years now, covering these exact relationships and roles that have been raised in this current thread (achievement-based standards, presumption of notability, gradual increase in sourcing in articles, and so forth). We've tried many times to add clarification to these guidelines. But so far, they have just been too many different opinions and not enough desire to modify the current text. isaacl (talk) 23:42, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- This whole discussion came from the previous section of whether the GNG or the SNGs were superseding the other, of which I've pointed that has has traditionally been, that it should be neither superseding - it is "GNG or SNG" as WP:N is written as well as most of the SNGs that defer to the GNG should the topic not met its criteria. To align several different conflicting statements made since, I think it is important to stress that most of the confusion can be resolved as long as it is understood that the GNG is not sufficient for notability, it's only a presumption of notability to allow a standalone. This makes the GNG equal in weight to any SNG (barring those like NCORP that seek to be more restrictive than the GNG for good reason). The GNG is the necessary catchall, and though it and how articles grow and survive, it can lead to completely new SNG and/or additions to existing SNG to cover new topics that emerge (for example, as eSports are coming into a major growth mode, we may need to see how applying the GNG works, and subsequently how that factors into the SNGs; this is a potentially good test bed of this mechanism). But all this is not to change practice or make any massive guideline change, but provide clarity that I'm seeing on how to define notability, the GNG, the SNGs and the processes around it to avoid confusion that the misunderstandings between editors come up when discussing the roles of these guidelines. --Masem (t) 21:55, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Perhaps you feel the winds of change differently. At present, I don't foresee a large-scale movement to make subject-specific notability guidelines supersede the general notability guideline in the intermediate future. Until English Wikipedia's consensus decision-making tradition shifts to something that scales better, personally I don't think matters will change much. The sports-specific notability guideline has only survived through its deference to the general notability guideline. isaacl (talk) 21:16, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Technically it is already the case that SNGs have some ability to create new merit-based criteria, but this is after the global editor community agrees that an SNG in that area is appropriate. (EG the current NSPORTS was put in by a global RFC, but the small changes made to it since have been strictly limited to consensus on its talk page). We don't have formal processes, but if we did, that's pretty much how I see it being handled. If the community finds that an SNG has, though its own control, added a number of criteria that are problematic, then another global RFC can be held. That may be a result of when a series of AFDs of articles that rest on the SNG are shown to be a problem; we can enforce our "veto" in this fashion. This can help urge to only create SNGs when there is a clear need for it; reusing existing ones or see how the GNG can be used instead, and keep the CREEP of having a few dozen different SNGs to worry about. --Masem (t) 21:06, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I actually think one of the strongest selling points of SNGs is that they are less likely to exhibit systemic biases than the GNG is. That is one of the main reasons that we have them: they are a double edged sword that makes it easier to include things that are significant, but hard to pass the GNG, and easier to exclude things that pass the GNG because of various privileges and social hierarchies (ex. a young PhD student in Canada knowing how to market herself and call the reporter vs. a top researcher in Africa who doesn't do that.) I also think that the SNGs need a lot of tweaking to account for what you are talking about, but ultimately, what I think needs to happen is a move towards including more of the topics that you suggest, which I don't see the GNG as providing. Those are the areas where we are currently lacking coverage, and the GNG builds in a systemic bias against them. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- I totally disagree that SNG are or ever will be more important than GNG. They fail to cover a broad enough definition of what is or is not notable, at this point cover minimal topics, and further fail to take into account media/publishing biases. While one might be able to qualify sports-based achievement (and I know many editors who think those guidelines are flawed), for example PROF has serious issues, in that it is geared toward hard sciences and fails to take into account demographic differences, citation variances, (law never cites someone else's work but rather case evidence; research shows men typically cite other men, while women cite both male and female authorities, name changes affect citation statistics, etc.), and the inherent biases that have typically omitted women and minorities from being included in the "accomplishment hierarchy". What is being touted here as moving toward a defined, rules-based inclusionary guideline is in fact one that excludes a vast number of notable people who have had impact in their place or origin or on a specific era. SusunW (talk) 18:09, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Ultimately it's unclear if your initial statement
I think there is a consensus that some sort of notability reform is needed
is true. English Wikipedia's community is just too large and decentralized for consensus to work as a decision-making mechanism (as I have discussed previously), particularly for changes that affect underlying guiding principles. In the place of empowered groups to make decisions regarding, for example, the need for an article on a topic, balancing encyclopedic coverage with the available resources to maintain articles, the community tries to enact a set of self-governing rules, and tries to patch them bit by bit as issues arise. Eventually the community may see that this approach has too much overhead and is too complex, as Clay Shirky discusses in "A Group is its own Worst Enemy", versus biting the bullet and adopting some form of hierarchical structure. (Hierarchies of course have their own weaknesses that would have to be mitigated.) isaacl (talk) 17:59, 9 January 2018 (UTC)- Yes, we are in general agreement. It is why I prefer working in AfDs and other pages to develop local consensus first and then develop proposals from that. I do think there is a general desire to clarify our conception of notability, but I think where consensus is lacking is how to do it. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:03, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Would it be possible to give some examples of AfDs which, in your appreciation, went south for the wrong reasons? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:32, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
"Likely" revisited
- There is no consensus for the recent change from "presumption" to "likely" or anything else [1]. Please do not make such changes without something approximating community wide consensus. I am changing it back to what it was. I also don't agree with "Historically, topics were "presumed" to merit an article by meeting these condition. "Were" indicates this is no longer in play on Wikipedia, which is not the case. Topics "are" presumed, not "were" presumed. Nor do I agree with stripping out anchor-links without consensus [2] if they have been long standing without consensus. Thank you. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 06:36, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Steve Quinn, there was a consensus on this talk page to do so. That was why the edits were made. There is no need for a community-wide RfC on minor changes. Most changes are done piece by piece, rather than by large discussions. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- This is not a minor change. Changing the tense of the verb makes it look like this practice is old hat, which it is not. We have not thrown out any of the criteria just yet. It is pretty clear already what is "presumed" notable already. I don't see any need to make the change that was made - unless we are making the criteria old fashioned (on a whim). Also, "consensus" in this discussion consists of about five editors. Some larger consensus seems to be needed. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 06:46, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I'll be honest. To me this appears to be a AGF- POV edit.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Steve Quinn (talk • contribs) 06:49, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Which is the norm for most project space discussions: editors boldly edit to clarify the meaning of the text to make it reflect the current understanding of consensus. Presumption has only historically worked because it was assumed to be rebuttable. An editor raised the concern that the word is confusing. People use it in a way that was never intended to be used: the consensus here currently and historically has been that the presumption is not a guarantee, but a starting point. Likely captures the meaning of that consensus better, and still links to the rebuttable presumption page. The footnote is describing what word was historically used in the article. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:53, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Don't agree with the change: too confusing. So, also, I don't think this change has enough support. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:54, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- TonyBallioni please revert your edit. I don't agree with you. And the number of editors in this discussion do not constitute enough of a consensus. We are talking about a Guideline which interraled with policy. This is not an article talk page. Also, this is WP:BRD - bold revert discuss. This is supposed to be the discussion phase, not where you revert phase. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:01, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Steve, Tony already self-reverted. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:07, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Oops! nevermind. Thanks Francis ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:10, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Steve, Tony already self-reverted. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:07, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks Tony ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Steve Quinn, not a problem. I would appreciate if you struck the AGF-POV thing, though. This type of consensus building and bold updating of policy and guideline pages is normal, even for very significant ones. As a project space regular, I do this frequently to make policies and guidelines reflect current consensus or practice, and would never have done so if it appeared controversial. We don't need a project-wide consensus for things such as this unless there is enough objection to it. There seems to be now, so I'm willing to drop it because it is minor. The only purpose here is to help people understand that notability is not a guarantee of inclusion, which is the reason for this insanely long thread with subthreads. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni: Sorry for pinging you again. Hopefully this is the last time for awhile. No problem with striking the comment - it has been struck. Regarding another matter, maybe its because I am a little late in this thread - but what do you mean that notability is not a guarantee for inclusion? Supposedly, the only way a topic can have an article is if it is deemed notable. If it is deemed notable - it stays. So how do I wrap my brain around this idea? Is this something you fleshed out earlier in the above thread? If so, no need to repeat yourself, I will try to see for myself. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:56, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- WP:N is a guideline that provides a rebuttable presumption of an article. There are 14 reasons for deletion, and notability is only one of them. Additionally, we can choose to limit our criteria to whatever we want, even in XfDs and decide that the guidelines are wrong and that we don’t want an article on something. IDONTLIKEIT is actually a perfectly good reason not to have an article, so long as the reasoning behind why you don’t like it is very strong and doesn’t contradict policy. We should and do delete plenty of things that are notable and we should and do keep many things that aren’t. TonyBallioni (talk) 08:07, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni: Sorry for pinging you again. Hopefully this is the last time for awhile. No problem with striking the comment - it has been struck. Regarding another matter, maybe its because I am a little late in this thread - but what do you mean that notability is not a guarantee for inclusion? Supposedly, the only way a topic can have an article is if it is deemed notable. If it is deemed notable - it stays. So how do I wrap my brain around this idea? Is this something you fleshed out earlier in the above thread? If so, no need to repeat yourself, I will try to see for myself. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:56, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Steve Quinn, not a problem. I would appreciate if you struck the AGF-POV thing, though. This type of consensus building and bold updating of policy and guideline pages is normal, even for very significant ones. As a project space regular, I do this frequently to make policies and guidelines reflect current consensus or practice, and would never have done so if it appeared controversial. We don't need a project-wide consensus for things such as this unless there is enough objection to it. There seems to be now, so I'm willing to drop it because it is minor. The only purpose here is to help people understand that notability is not a guarantee of inclusion, which is the reason for this insanely long thread with subthreads. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks Tony ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Support proposed change, or something like it. We do need some way to make it clear that the various SNGs don't provide automatic notability and that many of them are not accepted by the wider community. Reyk YO! 07:24, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Support likely as well, not just for the SNGs, but also for the GNG, which per my and DGG's mantra, isn't really worth anything. Importance is key here, and we are free to disregard notability if we don't think we want an article. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:26, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Sometimes, if you think of, analyze and write down what you intuitively judge, sometimes you really have something. IMO on notability such is really a combination of importantness and enclyclopedicness, with wiki-suitable sourcing being being a key objective quantifier of those two things. And the context is for an enclyclpodeia of the approximate size of en Wikipedia.
So we should not go too far with requiring importantness in a vacuum. For example, an article on an obscure, low prevalence animal species is appropriate. An article on a person whose only importance is that they got 20 million hits on youtube last week may not be. North8000 (talk) 13:52, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Support - As the editor who suggested the change to “likely” in the first place, I obviously support it. “Presumed” is all too often misinterpreted. “likely” captures the nuance much more accurately. Blueboar (talk) 14:35, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Mild oppose This weakens the main GNG statement, and the GNG is the best guide that we have regarding notability. North8000 (talk) 17:23, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- As I said above, importance is a value judgment and so has to be made with a set of criteria in mind. Typically the criteria evaluate the effect of the topic on its related domains. So articles on species are important for their particular zoological niche when they are significantly different from other similar species (where many species are very similar, Wikipedia will often group them together). As some editors are advocating to move towards evaluating importance (which for people typically means achievement-based standards), they have proposed text to lay groundwork for evaluating notability from an importance perspective. But to fully commit to this approach, as I also stated earlier, will mean deferring to domain experts to set the criteria, since for many areas only they have sufficient context to do so. It remains to be seen if the general community is willing to adopt this approach. isaacl (talk) 17:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose changing "presumed" to "likely". It causes the guideline to move in the direction of non-actionable theory. "Presumed" links properly to rebuttable presumption. The presumption is strong, despite loose aspersions recently. The vast majority of accepted topics meet the WP:GNG. Browsing WP:AfD is to explore the boundary region, and leads to the problem of hard cases make bad law. The GNG does work well, and the problem is that decisions in the boundary region should be expected to be difficult. "Likely" will only makes things worse, because it becomes unclear what someone should do when unhappy. The decision can't be made on what is "likely". The decision begins with what the GNG or SNG says, and failing that, the onus falls on the unhappy editor to actively rebut the presumption that the guideline applies to the particular case. NB. Lists have always been a problem, and SPINOUT articles are an issue very far from the problems that WP:N addresses. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:26, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
- Support, "likely" is a much better way to put it. That captures the essence of it both ways: SNGs should be a way of specifying what demonstrates that a topic is very likely to meet the GNG, and conversely, passing an SNG makes it likely that it does. Rather than trying to explain "rebuttable presumption", that makes it clear that passing an SNG, while a reasonable likelihood of meaning the subject passes the GNG, doesn't exempt it from passing. If we don't in fact have sufficient sources for a decent and reasonably comprehensive article on a subject, it should be covered as part of a parent or related article instead, rather than as a standalone. The last thing we need is more permastubs that are hard to clean up because "But it passes "WP:NXXXXXXX!" Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:28, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
- Comment – I think we need a wider consultation on this: proposing to proceed with an RfC. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:50, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
- Comment Francis I recommend letting those advocating for this change create an RfC - if it is so desired. I can't see doing an RfC when it is other editors who support this idea. If it matters, it will happen. Imho. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
- I don't care too much who writes it (it should be worded neutrally anyhow). The only thing I wanted to say with my comment above is that with the current apparent lack of "local" consensus it doesn't seem very well possible to make such change to the guidance unless there is broad support for it (which we're not going to get when keeping this local). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:27, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
- I agree. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:46, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
- I don't care too much who writes it (it should be worded neutrally anyhow). The only thing I wanted to say with my comment above is that with the current apparent lack of "local" consensus it doesn't seem very well possible to make such change to the guidance unless there is broad support for it (which we're not going to get when keeping this local). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:27, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
NCORP pre-RfC discussion
If you like please comment on proposed language to raise NCORP standards. I intend to launch an RfC Jan 7th and am looking for any refinements beforehand. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)#NCORP_standards,_continued. Thx Jytdog (talk) 18:03, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
RfC on small (but important) change to LISTN
At WP:LISTN, the opening sentence currently reads: "Notability guidelines apply to the inclusion of stand-alone lists and tables.".
I propose that it be changed to: "Notability guidelines also apply to the creation of stand-alone lists and tables." [Changes in bold].
The notability guideline clearly indicates that it exists as a benchmark for the creation of articles, not for the content within them. This is demonstrated in the nutshell: "The notability guideline does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic should have its own article.", the final paragraph of the lead: "These guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article or list. They do not limit the content of an article or list." and also the entire section of WP:NNC.
The existing opening sentence somewhat confuses between inclusion into Wikipedia (introducing a new list) and inclusion within the list itself (introducing an entry within the list). My proposed change eliminates this confusion by expressing the intended meaning that "inclusion" obviously means "creation of" or inclusion into Wikipedia, not inclusion of entries into the list. This is apparent since the following sentence reads "Notability of lists (whether titled as "List of Xs" or "Xs") is based on the group." and "The entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources for notability, only that the grouping or set in general has been. Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable...". Thanks in advance for supporting this minor, yet significant change. Huggums537 (talk) 01:02, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
I'm going to go ahead and boldly implement this change (since it is so minor without changing the intended meaning) and invite anyone who doesn't agree with the change to chime in on the discussion. Thanks. Huggums537 (talk) 01:38, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- It’s not quite that simple... many of our existing list articles (entitled “List of X”) have consensus criteria that limit inclusion in the list to items that are notable. You could entitle these: “List of notable X”, but spelling out “notable” is seen as unnecessary.
- To give an example - List of Freemasons. It would be rediculous to include every single Freemason, ever... There have been multi-millions of men who have been Freemasons through the years... most of them average joes who don’t merit being mentioned in Wikipedia... and we simply can’t list every one. So, we reached a consensus to limit inclusion in that list to the ones who are actually noteworthy (ie they have to have a bio article about them). That said... this limitation is not really governed by WP:LISTN (at least not directly) ... it is governed by WP:Consensus and practicality. Blueboar (talk) 12:17, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- Actually, list entry inclusion is also specifically governed by WP:LSC (which is linked to at the hatnote of WP:LISTN) just as much as by consensus, DUE or others. Correspondingly, we see the hatnote of WP:LSC links back to WP:LISTN for governing support as well. So, we see the two go hand in hand toward governance of the notability of lists and entries within the lists. Also, see WP:NOTEWORTHY (which ALSO links back to BOTH WP:LISTN AND WP:LSC for information about lists). We must remember that notability guidelines do not apply to content within articles (or lists unless otherwise specified by inclusion criteria) as set forth in WP:NOTEWORTHY. A list
(and consequently all of it's entries)is considered notable by default (according to WP:LISTN) unless specific inclusion criteria has optionally been set forth for a particular list. Keep in mind that it is well within the guidelines to set forth inclusion criteria for notability, but it's entirely optional since notability of listsand their entriesare "presumed" to be notable. In the case of List of Freemasons, it's perfectly reasonable to limit the list to notable entries only per the first bullet point at: WP:CSC (which is part of WP:LSC). However, it should be noted that such inclusion criteria (as exampled by the Freemason list) is supposed to be mentioned in the lede: "...and makes direct statements about the criteria by which members of the list were selected, unless inclusion criteria are unambiguously clear from the article title." and "Even when the selection criteria might seem obvious to some, an explicit standard is often helpful to both readers, to understand the scope, and other editors, to reduce the tendency to include trivial or off-topic entries." per WP:SALLEAD as well as "Selection criteria (also known as inclusion criteria or membership criteria) should be unambiguous..." from WP:LSC. Huggums537 (talk) 15:33, 31 December 2017 (UTC) - Striking untrue parts of statements about list entries per this quote: "Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable..." at WP:LISTN. Huggums537 (talk) 16:19, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
- I would also like to point out to Blueboar that saying, "...spelling out “notable” is seen as unnecessary." is not exactly accurate since even List of Freemasons actually DOES spell it out at the end of the very first sentence with "...lists of notable Freemasons." [no emphasis added]. It should also be pointed out that this is seen as necessary and intentionally done in compliance with WP:BOLDTITLE, WP:LSC and WP:SALLEAD (as quoted in my comment above). Huggums537 (talk) 14:28, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- I was referring to the title... that list is, appropriately, a “list of notable Freemasons”... even though the article title omits the word “notable”. Blueboar (talk) 15:08, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- It does depend on the list, eg omitting notable from List of video games notable for negative reception would invite a lot of poor entries. If notable is dropped from a list title but notability (blue-linked) is still used as an inclusion metric, the list lede should be very clear that the list is not exhaustive or some other indicator of what the list inclusion metric is for that list. --Masem (t) 17:00, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- It should be further pointed out that even List of video games notable for negative reception follows the governance of WP:SALLEAD where it is stated "...unless inclusion criteria are unambiguously clear from the article title." (also quoted above). So, it really does depend on the list and whatever the consensus is of the options that are available within the governance of the guidelines. Many editors incorrectly believe there is a "right" or "wrong" way, when many times, in reality, there could be several ways that are equally "right". Huggums537 (talk) 12:04, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- It does depend on the list, eg omitting notable from List of video games notable for negative reception would invite a lot of poor entries. If notable is dropped from a list title but notability (blue-linked) is still used as an inclusion metric, the list lede should be very clear that the list is not exhaustive or some other indicator of what the list inclusion metric is for that list. --Masem (t) 17:00, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- I was referring to the title... that list is, appropriately, a “list of notable Freemasons”... even though the article title omits the word “notable”. Blueboar (talk) 15:08, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- Actually, list entry inclusion is also specifically governed by WP:LSC (which is linked to at the hatnote of WP:LISTN) just as much as by consensus, DUE or others. Correspondingly, we see the hatnote of WP:LSC links back to WP:LISTN for governing support as well. So, we see the two go hand in hand toward governance of the notability of lists and entries within the lists. Also, see WP:NOTEWORTHY (which ALSO links back to BOTH WP:LISTN AND WP:LSC for information about lists). We must remember that notability guidelines do not apply to content within articles (or lists unless otherwise specified by inclusion criteria) as set forth in WP:NOTEWORTHY. A list
- Support change- It seems that the biggest effect of your proposed change will be to discourage the creation of very crufty lists. It won't affect navigational lists, or ones limited by design to their notable members. But it will, hopefully, damp the creation of terrible things like "List of fictional puddles" containing breathless exclamations about every time someone got their boots wet in a movie. I can only say that I approve. Reyk YO! 12:50, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- You could also use the word "merit" to align with the other parts of WP:N. I agree being clearer between "inclusion as a stand-alone list" and "inclusion guides for the contents of the list" is important. --Masem (t) 14:16, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- A simple word search on WP:N reveals "merit" having only 4 results, of which only 3 of those are pertinent to the discussion. However, a search for "creat" (not a typo) yields 22 results with various forms of "creat/e/ed/ing/ion". To be fair, not all 22 results are pertinent to the discussion either, but the majority are. In addition, the word "create" was relevant enough to be so aligned with WP:N that it warranted it's very own mention of the word in the actual section heading of WP:N's WP:PAGEDECIDE (as well as the word "creating" in the first sentence). So, we see that "creation" aligns better with other parts of WP:N than does "merit". Thanks for the suggestion and support though. Huggums537 (talk) 16:43, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- Support That's reasonable, though I think this does tie into the distinction between the concept and measurement of notability, and the processes that notability becomes involved in (read, the GNG/SNG for creating or meriting an article), but until we can address that, this change to "create" works. --Masem (t) 17:32, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- User:Masem, This is courtesy notice that I took the liberty to modify your comment to indicate your support. Thanks. Huggums537 (talk) 19:17, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- Support That's reasonable, though I think this does tie into the distinction between the concept and measurement of notability, and the processes that notability becomes involved in (read, the GNG/SNG for creating or meriting an article), but until we can address that, this change to "create" works. --Masem (t) 17:32, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- A simple word search on WP:N reveals "merit" having only 4 results, of which only 3 of those are pertinent to the discussion. However, a search for "creat" (not a typo) yields 22 results with various forms of "creat/e/ed/ing/ion". To be fair, not all 22 results are pertinent to the discussion either, but the majority are. In addition, the word "create" was relevant enough to be so aligned with WP:N that it warranted it's very own mention of the word in the actual section heading of WP:N's WP:PAGEDECIDE (as well as the word "creating" in the first sentence). So, we see that "creation" aligns better with other parts of WP:N than does "merit". Thanks for the suggestion and support though. Huggums537 (talk) 16:43, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
- I support the change. It is minor. Folks have brought up other issues which it does not really cover. North8000 (talk) 14:40, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- Support. It has been long established that WP:N is for article creation, not for their content. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:19, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
- Support per arguments already stated.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:10, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Comment. Shouldn't the wording be "existence of" rather than "creation of"? We want to apply these guidelines to all lists, not just the newly-created ones. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:08, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- This guideline deals almost exclusively with whether an article is suitable enough to warrant being created. In addition, "existence of" might be misguiding since it is already established that notability guidelines DO NOT "apply" to "existing" content within articles/lists. This incidentally means that this particular guideline was never intended for application to "existing" content. So, you can easily see how "existence of" is misleading, and even contradicts the rest of the guideline. Thanks for the good intentions, but it defeats the purpose of the proposal and doesn't really comply with the intended purpose of the guideline. Huggums537 (talk) 12:22, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose it is meaningless to establish the importance of a list by the notability criteria of GNG. May years ago, when for a while this was actually attempted, it was interpreted as meaning not only that such lists were generally made in reliable sources, but that there were significant discussion ofthe nature ofthe list. This came to a very narrow criterion indeed, and very few lists can meet it. Rather, a list is encyclopedic if other works of reference make similar lists, just as an ordinary topic is notable if other reliable sources include it. DGG ( talk ) 17:42, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- I see that your comments here and on your user page regarding the GNG suggest that maybe you are more opposed to the GNG in general than of my proposed minor change. I also see nothing specifically related to my proposal in your comments. People might view this more as someone venting about the GNG and less about being on the topic of the proposal. I think some of your statements actually support my proposal and I agree with the ones that do support it. Huggums537 (talk) 19:17, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- Also, your ideas are far more advanced than what is appropriate for this simple topic, which amounts to little more than "creation" Vs. "inclusion". Your oppositions may be better served by formally opening your own RfC to express those ideas there as opposed to this informal one here. Huggums537 (talk) 23:59, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- User:DGG, I see that you did in fact take the opportunity to express your ideas in a more advantageous setting. In light of this, I wonder if I could persuade you to change the status of your !vote to a "Comment" or "Neutral" position? Huggums537 (talk) 19:47, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- I did mean oppose. I oppose this change in particular, even with the existing general view of notability guidelines. It's excessive specificity as regards lists. DGG ( talk ) 21:46, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- To be fair, the existing wording, "inclusion" was extremely excessive vagueness regarding lists that leads to unnecessarily excessive confusion in that it has been wrongfully misinterpreted as meaning "adding new entries to the list" when in fact it actually means "adding a new list to Wikipedia". The "excessive specificity" of my proposal was needed to correct the extremely excessive vagueness of the existing wording. Perhaps you would consider this viewpoint and find it worthy of a Neutral change since you can easily see that the "excessiveness" of both versions do kind of "neutralize" each another. Thanks. Huggums537 (talk) 02:22, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- Also, we find that there could be as many as 20-22 instances of various forms of the word "create" used throughout the project page in a very similar fashion of specificity. So it does become evident that this amount of specificity is actually normal for the page when we view it from a broader perspective outside the narrow scope of my singular edit. To be even more specific, the most relevant example of these variations of the word "create" can be found right within the closing sentence of the very section we are discussing. From WP:LISTN: "Editors are still urged to demonstrate list notability via the grouping itself before creating stand-alone lists.". [Emphasis added]. We see that with my edit the opening and closing sentence now match in this section (as they match the many other examples throughout the page). This actually does promote conformity and consistency (within this section and throughout the project page) in addition to the benefit that does also avoid the excessive confusion of the old wording. This should be more than enough to convince anyone willing to be just a little bit reasonable. Huggums537 (talk) 23:40, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
- I did mean oppose. I oppose this change in particular, even with the existing general view of notability guidelines. It's excessive specificity as regards lists. DGG ( talk ) 21:46, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Based on the same principals and arguments of my original proposal, I would also like to make the following additional change:
- WP:GNG Currently reads: ""Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included."
- I propose: "Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits its own article. [Changes in bold]
- I'm going to assume this change is uncontroversial and boldly make the change considering the fact that there was nearly unanimous support for the similarly related change. Thanks very much. Huggums537 (talk) 21:04, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- Sounds good. Both have a logical flaw if taken literally, but I think that the actual meaning is presumed.....meeting notability does not always mean it should have an article, there are other criteria. North8000 (talk) 21:39, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- There seems to be a confusion between presumed with respect to notability , and the other requirements of WP:NOT. Presumed notability means it's notable un;ess there is evidence otherwise, but there are many other requirements for having an article. Most of the other criteria are unrelated to the issue No, that is not what it means. It means that it is notable, unless there is evidence otherwise. Quite apart from notability, there's even more important rules to consider. DGG ( talk ) 21:46, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- Agreed with both of you. I think it's good we have opened up a dialogue about it in the other section. Huggums537 (talk) 00:53, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
- There seems to be a confusion between presumed with respect to notability , and the other requirements of WP:NOT. Presumed notability means it's notable un;ess there is evidence otherwise, but there are many other requirements for having an article. Most of the other criteria are unrelated to the issue No, that is not what it means. It means that it is notable, unless there is evidence otherwise. Quite apart from notability, there's even more important rules to consider. DGG ( talk ) 21:46, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
- Sounds good. Both have a logical flaw if taken literally, but I think that the actual meaning is presumed.....meeting notability does not always mean it should have an article, there are other criteria. North8000 (talk) 21:39, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Editorial Integrity
My sincere edit of wanting "editorial integrity" defined in this article is apparently too much to ask for from John from Idegon. He mentions it's defined at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources, but I see nothing. Could we have that tag reimplimented or the definition of editorial integrity described? It's pretty wide open for interpretation. It's borderline WP:PEACOCK. By who's measuring stick does an article have editorial integrity, and when does it not? Leitmotiv (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- Like most any policy or guideline on Wikipedia, there is not a binary, "this is/this isn't" definition. If you take the guideline you mention above as a whole, you will find it explains what makes up editorial integrity quite well. If sources' reliability is disputed, the editor wanting to use them has the option of starting a discussion at WP:RSN. In any case, I cannot see how the addition of a remark on needing a definition into the actual guideline page could ever be useful. John from Idegon (talk) 09:22, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- John from Idegon If a noun such as "editorial integrity" is offered up front, but not defined, and I have to interpret it throughout an entire article, then it is a suspect noun, to say the very least. At the very most, it could be removed for being unclear, but I went for the other option and asked for a specific definition. Why is that too much to ask? Can you define it for me? Leitmotiv (talk) 09:32, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- Leitmotiv, best practice when you don't understand a policy or guideline is to enquire at the Help desk or WP:Teahouse, not to make edits to the policy you do not understand. John from Idegon (talk) 09:27, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- "Editorial integrity" is a key part of how reliable sources are defined, so it should be there. It may not be those exact words, its represented in "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". --Masem (t) 14:47, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
I think that editorial integrity is too specialized of a metric to worry about in policy. But it nibbles at the edges of a big gap. What we really need is an additional metric. A metric of strength of sourcing is the source's expertise and objectivity with respect to the item which cited it. North8000 (talk) 15:27, 5 January 2018 (UTC)