Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Notability

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[edit] Notability progress

What is {{Notability progress}} describing? --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 03:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It looks like the total number of articles in Category:Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance at the bottom, and the number from each month above. —Centrx→talk • 09:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion as a last resort

Could you make it clear that deletion should only be attempted if merging or rewriting won't work? At least, that's what I think. Try to fix it before you delete it. There is too many people who delete 'cruft' without ever considering other options. If this project makes an organized effort to save such articles (within policy) I'd be happy to see it grow. - 131.211.210.10 09:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I fixed the How to Help section in order to make sure deletion is used as a last resort. Thanks for the suggestion. Diez2 18:22, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
It may be good to put something in about always looking for a WikiProject that covers the article in question. Putting a note on that project's talk page will many times get multiple interested people to start helping. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not a bad idea

I think this project could be a positive force. I used to tackle the unclear importance category more often a few months ago (but I can't promise I'll be that active) and it was often difficult to maintain standards that I felt were supported by the community. In any case, I don't know how much publicity the project has been given but it should be announced at least on the talk pages of all the notability guidelines and probably at various places of the Village Pump. This project cannot succeed if it is not open to criticism and remains a small group of deletion-friendly editors. I tend to be fairly deletion oriented and supportive of notability as a content filter but everyone knows that the consensus on that idea is a bit shaky. Pascal.Tesson 06:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

But note that "unclear importance" or "does not assert importance" isn't the same thing as "notability" as defined by WP:N; they're not even related. I'm not sure you were saying otherwise; you may have just been saying "I used to do similar cleanup work on another type of common article problem." — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:12, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
But they are related de facto since all notability tags place articles in this cleanup category. If you have ever worked on clean up of those categories, you know that you get a whole bunch of articles which should have been speedy-deleted from the get-go and many articles which are clear prod candidates. Of course you also get things that were tagged incorrectly by people who think "I never heard of that guy, must not be notable" but all in all they are not the majority. Interestingly, the more difficult articles to handle are often those that were really tagged with {{importance}}. In any case, the notability guidelines are definitely relevant when you work on this backlog. Pascal.Tesson 01:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Then the tags need to be fixed (which was one of the suggested tasks of the broader WikiProject Notability I discussed below, I would note. :-) I agree with your assessment of the tagged articles; my point was that the template situation is a mess. It looks to me like they have not been updated since a very long time back in the notability debate/process, and do not reflect current ideas and consensus about notability (and definitely will not reflect the even more clear notability consensus that emerges over probably the coming month or three.) I.e., there's plenty more work to do than fixing articles flagged with this template! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scope too narrow

I'd already proposed WikiProject Notability about two weeks ago (see Wikipedia talk:Notability archives) and was actually going to go through the WikiProject Council "official" proposal process in a few days, with a much broader mandate (basically, all things notability, from archiving and indexing the internal debates and proposal ideas with regard to the topic, to bringing the subject-specific NN guidelines into WP:N, to cleanup work like the present WP:WPNN proposes, to patrolling AfD for bogus "NN - I haven't heard of this before" arguments, to creating new cleanup tags and other templates relating to NN, etc., etc., etc.) So now what? Do we broaden this WikiProject and make its cleanup activities a Task Force, or make it separate and more specifically named, like "WikiProject Notability cleanup"? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:12, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but your original idea for that project was mostly designed to work on the guidelines and to limiting what you feel is the abuse of notability. In fact, am I misrepresenting your position if I say that you believe that notability should not be used at all? It's sort of an akward combination to have one half of the project doing cleanup based on guidelines that the other half of the project is trying to delete (and I say that with the utmost respect for your opinion). Pascal.Tesson 01:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you would be misinterpreting me, sorely. I think you have been only half-following the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability. Short synopsis: I was opposed to WP:N's wording and to it conflicting with WP:DEL-"blessed" subject-specific notability guidelines; I proposed a WikiProject to attempt to work on establishing consensus on what "notability" really means and how it should operate, because no progress was then being made at Wikipedia talk:Notability; I later re-proposed the idea of WikiProject Notability, twice (with increasingly broad ideas for it); and since the debate began have rescinded my opposition to WP:N (as opposed to WP:DEL, which I've supported all along) because consensus looks like it may actually be reachable in Wikipedia talk:Notability after all and problems with WP:N's wording are being addressed. To get back to the point, I think WikiProject Notability is too broad a name for a one-purpose WikiProject devoted to cleanup work on articles flagged with a particular template, is all. I have never once in the entire debate suggested that WP:N should be deleted, and have defended it at least three times from that suggestion by others, over the last few weeks. I've already outlined above a few of the things I think should be under the rubric of a broader WikiProject Notability. And yes, abuse of WP:N in AfD is one them; even WP:N's probably second-strongest supporter, GTBacchus, has been posting examples of such abuse, and the most current topic of debate on the talk page relates to this problem (more specifically to specious arguments of the form "this subject was notable last week but isn't any more", as if multiple, independent, reliable sources just "go away"). Just an example. Educating wikipedians about the proper use of WP:N in AfD, and even what "NN" really means, is going to take coordinated, committed effort, which is why I bring it up again as an example of WikiProject multi-focus. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
PS: Just to be really clear: I'm not opposing in any way the purpose of this group; I'm simply suggesting either: a) that WP:WPNN be broadened and its present work become a Task Force (or at least a subproject area and major to-do list item), or b) That it be renamed to something more specific (WikiProject Notability cleanup?) so that a more general WikiProject Notabililty parent project can use this "spot" in the namespace. I think the former is vastly preferable, obviously. That is, I see the purpose of the current project being a task or activity or area of focus of a much broader collection of notability to-do's. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I stand corrected, apologies. I have indeed only been half-following (more like not following actually) the debate at WP:N since it has started producing a 100kb of discussions every day. I just don't have the energy to get into these endless debates and frankly, I think you should propose a one-week moratorium on that talk page until everyone just chills and starts listening again. But I digress... In any case, I think you do have a point that the name of this project might suggest it has other ambitions than taking care of this backlog but I don't think that redefining its mission is the way to go. Pascal.Tesson 04:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
As you wish. PS, re: the debate: I think it was ultimately productive. WP:N isn't WP:OWNed any longer, and more than basically the two people over and over again get to have their input on its text, so progress was made. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Sooooooooo, what is your proposal? Is it to change the focus of the project? Or just to widen the focus by also adding a force to get consensus on proper notability guidelines? Diez2 01:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Importance per project

I do see, that there are many articles that have either an {{importance}} or {{notability}} tag. In my feeling, there is a small, though distinct difference between the feeling that these two tags convey:

  • the importance tag is for articles, that are probably important enough, but do not state why they are important. They may indeed be non-notable, and hence are in the non-notability category
  • the notability tag is for articles where people have serious questions whether or not articles are notable, and these probably should be deleted, if noone has added importance within some time.

Now lately there is a lot of work removing the articles that have been tagged since June 2006 (people removing them, people changing them, people suggesting to delete). I can fully understand that for the notability tags, I do have some trouble with the removal of the articles in the importance tags. In my opinion, that should be done by people who are working in a project affiliated to that article. Only they are able to assess whether a certain article is important enough.

I have earlier suggested (not in this project, but to someone changing/removing importance tags) to create importance tags per discipline (I believe there is a music-importance-tag?), but another solution was adopted, tagging them per period (which is already a big step forward). Now I am going to resuggest the other suggestion, is it a good plan to tag articles with the importance tag per project, or are there other solutions for this problem? --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Importance and notability generally mean the same thing (pertaining to Wikipedia). Also, the individual projects do not set their own guidelines in deciding importance. You can find those guidelines at WP:NN. Diez2 20:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
The two tags certainly have a different text in the tag, and I indeed concur that they should both result in categorisation in NN. Also, I am not suggesting that there should be different guidelines per project, they should be the same all over, I am saying that the right people should be consulted before deciding on notability. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Something tagged with {{importance}} may very well be notable enough for Wikipedia, and there may be no doubt about it, but nevertheless an article might need information about importance. Is "Mozart" "among the most enduringly popular of European composers" or is he some obscure eighteenth century composer no one really ever listens to any more, even though he might be notable enough for an article and there might be substantial reliable sources, etc. In that sense, {{importance}} is like {{context}} or other cleanup tags, whereas {{notability}} specifically refers to Wikipedia guidelines on "notability". —Centrx→talk • 22:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I will try and clarify my point here. In my opinion a {{importance}} is not the same as a {{notability}}. The former states:

This article lacks information on the notability (importance) of the subject matter.

The latter:

An editor has expressed a concern that the subject of the article does not satisfy the notability guideline or one of the following guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia.

Note that the first template addresses the lack of information, while the latter is concerning the subject. I know that many people are treating these as the same, but they simply are not. They both should be categorising in the same category, because a lack of information may mean that the subject is not suitable for inclusion. Whereas articles carrying the notability template may simply be deleted, I again stress, before considering removing the importance template, or considering removing an article carrying the importance tag, please consider contacting an appropriate wikiproject (see e.g. stub-sort or other tagging on the article), if that assessment fails, indeed, consider changing importance into notability, and consider deletion when noone contests after a couple of weeks.

I know there is a backlog, but removing templates does not remove a backlog of articles which may not be notable, or lack the information that tells why they are notable, they only hide that fact, and readers who stumble onto that article will ask questions why wikipedia has that article, now people know that that concern has been addressed, and that work is (hopefully) being done on that (I have removed four importance tags of articles in the last month that did gain importance information after tagging, three (?) articles have been improved and have had their templates removed as well. But unfortunately, there is a lot of work to be done, and there is only so much certain wikiprojects can handle in a certain amount of time. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Importance is not notability

There seem to be some problems with {{importance}} and {{notability}}. Wikipedia:Notability explains that the two terms are different. Subjects must have some sort of importance and notability to be included. The distinction is usually blurred, but not always. A failure to assert importance is a criterion for speedy deletion. A failure to assert notability is not.

I'm a little concerned about the use of {{importance}} — in nearly all cases, this template is being used in situations where notability is being questioned, not importance. Unimportant subjects don't last too long on Wikipedia — these are the types of things that make you say "wtf is this crap? who cares!" when browsing the new pages. Anything that is even somewhat significant/important (these are near synonyms) should be tagged with {{notability}}.

Sometime in the future, I'll probably bring this up on the Village Pump while proposing a new Wikipedia:Importance page. For now, I'm proposing that {{importance}} be redirected to {{notability}}. --- RockMFR 01:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Upon further reading, it seems this is a fairly historical point of contention... hmmm... well, maybe I'll finally get around to doing something important in policy matters, heh heh. --- RockMFR 01:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] importance-s template - more notability vs importance

I am a confused that the {{importance-s}} warning and Template:Importance-s#See also both refer to WP:N which states WP:N#Notability_guidelines_do_not_directly_limit_article-content. Isn't importance of sections an issue of original research, sources, and undue weight? --Ronz 22:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The sections still have to be somewhat important, and should generally contain information about why they are important. Wikipedia:Notability is referring to the specific sourcing criteria it has, i.e. every single bit of article content does need to be supported by multiple independent non-trivial sources. —Centrx→talk • 21:22, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics update stalled?

I note that the stats on top of Category:Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance are supposed to be updated roughly once a day, but were last updated March 7. Has some cron job stalled? --Alvestrand 08:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Instructions could be improved

I came across a little controversy while maintaining articles within our project. Both merging or deletion procedures take some time (up to 10 days I guess), and the outcome of these isn't always clear. But the item 4.5 of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability#How to Help section says "After you have finished, remove the notability or importance tag on the article". If this means "after you changed the article by inserting a tag" than it might be impractical. What if I suggested to merge or delete but met no consensus? But already have our tag removed? In that case, the article may be tagged with "notability" tag again within 10 days by some other user, and undergo our procedure once again. That's why I suggest to expand the instruction on tag removing. Something like "After you finished with all improving/merger/deletion procedures regarding the article's notability, remove the tag". --Futurano 13:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure there is a need for that much bureaucracy. —Centrx→talk • 16:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, I was hoping it's about consistency of sorting. Anyway, may I follow the method that I desribed above? I mean can I leave the tag on the pages undergoing some discussion (regarding merger or deletion)? --Futurano 21:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I think that would be good. If the tag is removed too early, the article goes off the list and hence out of sight. I always leave it on until the matter is resolved. --B. Wolterding 21:32, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with this, I think that we should remove the tag as soon as we have applied a {{db}} or {{prod}} tag. Adding these tags make these articles part of another process that is monitored by a different project. Also, this removes it from our to-do list so other project members don't think it still needs sorting. I believe it is our function to arbitrate articles whose notability has been questioned and shepherd them on to the next step in the process, not necessarily see them all the way through to deletion. If any of us want to keep a finger on an article to defend our nomination for deletion, we should add it to our personal watchlist. Steve CarlsonTalk 21:03, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I decided to be bold and to change instructions my way. Some recent events convinced me. Feel free to revert. You know, Wikipedia is not a bureacracy, but tagging procedure certainly is, so it needs to be effective. Anyway, getting rid of the tag at any cost, not having "killed" the article proper, is really bureacratic and formal. --Futurano 09:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Surnames

Occassionaly one meets articles the subject of which is a surname, and which are extremely short. (See for example Hultgren.) Are these articles notable? In the example, there is no reference to notability or importance whatsoever, nor are there any third-party references. So, in a way, one might say: "Tagged for since more than XY months, does not even claim notability" and add a prod-nn template right away. Would this be the preferred procedure? Or what should one do instead? What should be added to an article on a surname to establish its notability? --B. Wolterding 16:23, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I have sorted Hultgren accordingly. --B. Wolterding 19:11, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
The surname stubs with the short definitions should be used on the top the disambiguations page with the same name. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 20:06, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Workflow

Someone remarked above that clearer indtructions for checking articles would be helpful. Actually, I cleaned up a number of articles during the last days. Below I post the checklist I was trying to follow, or, in some cases, that I would like to follow for future cleanups, based on experience. Take this as a suggestion, not as a guideline. Any comments are appreciated.

There is one general point that should be observed: Given the current backlog, we need to be efficient. The average quality of articles in the queue is rather low (that's why they are there, in the end). In fact, many of these articles are rather short, not more than one paragraph in length. We should not spend hours on them going through processes if creating them might take five minutes.

So here's the list of questions I follow, top to bottom, until one of the criteria fits.

  • Is it blatant advertising? Advertisement is easily identified by its grandiloquent tone: "Westside Lawyers is the pre-eminent community legal centre in South Australia." Surprisingly, a number of these articles stay in Wikipedia unnoticed for months. Some even undergo the usual editing process: Someone corrects the spelling, someone else improves the typesetting, again someone else adds a warning tag... Still the articles stay adverts, unless they have been rewritten considerably. In obvious cases, tag them as {{db:spam}}. If less obvious, send them to the AfD.
  • Has notability been established in the meantime? Sometimes an editor has reacted to the notability warning, e.g. added references to the article, but forgot to remove the notability tag. Sometimes the talk page contains relevant arguments, or a reference to a prior AfD discussion where the article was considered to be notable. Also check the edit history. If notability is established by now, remove the notability tag. You may consider adding other tags as needed, such as {{unreferenced}}, {{cleanup}} or similar, or {{expand}}. In other cases, there were arguments in favour of notability, but these are not sufficient; for example, sources were added, but too few or of the wrong kind. If an editor tried to establish notability, but did not succeed, remove the date from the notability tag. This will move the article to the start of our queue again, giving the author more time to improve the article. Be sure to add a comment to the talk page, stating your concerns, and mentioning that the article might be deleted if it is not improved. This comment will also prevent "endless loops" in the process.
  • Is there an obvious merge option? This applies in particular to short articles. Sometimes these have an obvious "parent" article: "Church Street, Liverpool" can be merged into "Liverpool". If the article is short, be bold and merge it. You may introduce a new section in the target article; leave it to others to clean up. Post a note on the talk page of the target article. If the article is longer, propose a merger. Keep the article on your watchlist. Leave the notability tag intact until the merger has been performed.
  • Is it marked with the "importance" tag? The "importance" tag asks editors to describe why the article is important. More often than not, these articles actually do not establish notability, or do not even assert it. If notability is not established by independent sources, replace the "importance" tag with "notability", removing the date. This does not really solve the problem, but moves the article to the start of the queue. Since the notability template contains a reference to "possible deletion", editors might now give attention to the article. If not, it will reappear later. If notability is undoubtably established, remove the "importance" tag and replace it with others. If the article is notable, it might just be lacking a good introduction that shows why the subject is important in its context. Consider adding {{context}}, {{cleanup}}, or {{expand}} as needed.
  • Is it notable? This is the stage where to consider the guidelines and policies in detail. Check whether the article is notable by WP:NN, WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, or others as applicable. In general, these say that the article must not only assert notability, but also establish it through independent reliable sources. If you find that the article is notable, remove the notability tag. Add other tags as needed. Leave a short note on the talk page, stating why the subject is notable. In some cases, you might be able to establish notability on your own. You might e.g. ask the Google oracle in order to find sources; but interpret the results with care. You might have a look at "what links here" and at the foreign language versions, if any. But it is not required that you carry on looking for sources indefinitely. You are not a subject-matter expert, in general, and the experts have had their time to clear things up.
  • If you proceeded to here, send it to the wastebin. The subject might still be notable, who knows? But obviously no one is willing to establish notability for the article. Check the edit history and the talk page once again. Verify that the "notability" warning has been on for an extended time. Be sure what criteria the article should have fulfilled. For short articles, or longer ones which are obviously non-notable, propose them for deletion. Add the {{subst:prod-nn}} tag. In the edit summary, use: "Proposed for deletion - lacks notability, see talk page. Sorted as part of the [[WP:WPNN|Notability Wikiproject]]." Leave an explanation (one or two sentences) on the article's talk page, citing the applicable guidelines, and mentioning that it had been tagged for an extended time. If the article is longer, and you are expecting controversy, send the article to the AfD process. The rationale behind this is that very short articles, which have not been given attention for a long time, can probably be deleted uncontroversially. In any case, keep the article or the AfD discussion on your watchlist.


As I said, I am eagerly awaiting your comments. --B. Wolterding 18:48, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Looks reasonable. Indeed I was thinking if I spend too much time for each article in the project. However, I'm not sure about removing the dates from the tag. Is that a widely-accepted tag procedure? I thought non-dated tags are a kind of inaccuracy undesirable to a thorough editor. --Futurano 08:02, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, as far as I know, the dates are automatically inserted by a robot at regular intervals. So if you remove the date, the next run of the robot will automatically move it to "May 2007", i.e. to the start of the queue. --B. Wolterding 14:22, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Read User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage and User:Uncle G/On notability#Dealing with non-notable things. Uncle G 14:27, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. In particular, "Copyright Judo" might in fact be really helpful in some cases. --B. Wolterding 20:20, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Elementary schools in British Columbia

Would somebody please weed out the 200+ cruft articles in Category:Elementary schools in British Columbia? Most high schools are notable in some way. Below that, very few are, maybe a dozen per province or state, certainly not over 200 in BC. Chris 05:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Schools

The comment above discusses notability of schools. In fact, this seems to be a more general problem. A considerable number of pages in our backlog are about schools of various sorts. Given that the specific guideline WP:SCHOOLS is no longer in effect, I assume that schools go under the more general guideline for organizations, WP:ORG. So the main criterion is that secondary sources must be cited in order to establish notability.

However, there seem to be different opinions on this matter. One school article that I sent to the AfD (since notability was neither asserted nor established) seems to pass without any controversy, see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Midway_Middle_School. On the other hand, I spent quite a bit of time on requesting sources for an elementary school in Australia; this just resulted in somebody from WikiProject Schools removing the notability tag (see the talk page).

I agree with the poster above that certainly not all schools are notable. The criterion for me, at the moment, would be WP:ORG. But does that meet the general consensus? Could someone clarify?

--B. Wolterding 16:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Aaargh. Basically, there is no consensus at all on the notability of schools. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Education discusses the frequent AFD outcomes on schools - fewer than 15% actually get deleted. Basically, most people consider secondary and tertiary level schools to me more notable to primary/elementary schools, but beyond that the chances of getting any agreement over this endless and thorny debate are minimal :) Cheers, DWaterson 20:05, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Hey get back to the primary inclusion criteria: every public school gets written about by people it has no control over. That includes - local newspapers and the relevent Education department.
What we need is a deletion criteria that says "nobody has provided references to a reliable source for over (insert suitable timeframe)".Garrie 01:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
This proposal was in fact suggested about six months ago, in a policy proposal called WP:Speedy Deletion Criterion for Unsourced Articles. It would have required that articles be sourced within two weeks of notice or they would be deleted. The proposal was soundly rejected by the community, and is so marked. The primary reason among the many reasons for rejecting it was the general consensus that it would destroy the encyclopedia. DGG 18:36, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
It doesn't have to be speedy deletion. One proposal is to replace long-unsourced articles with a more alarming template that specifically warns that the page will be deleted, and then after another suitable period of time, to automatically prod it. —Centrx→talk • 18:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Just to add a note to this old debate: I became aware that, once again, there is a proposal for notability criteria specific to schools: see Wikipedia:Notability (schools). You may want to join the discussion. --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] County roads, take me home...

I am a bit puzzled about the notability of County Road 702 (Palm Beach County, Florida) which is currently on the September 2006 backlog. Since this might apply to more articles, I thought I'd better ask.

I read the article and found nothing particularly notable about this road. No secondary sources are cited either; just Microsoft MapPoint as a source (and that is trivial coverage, since the software would list every single street on this planet). Also, the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (highways) says:

Some states or counties have no signed county highways, but do have county-maintained roads – some which have no other name than County Road 1723. These should not be confused with county highways, and are almost always not notable, even for inclusion in a list.

And in the end, applying common sense: Would you like to see those other 701+ Floridian county roads on Wikipedia too? So it seemed an uncontroversial case. I was about to add a PROD tag to the article, when I noticed that quite a number of the other roads are in fact there, with usually not much more quality: See Category:County routes in Florida and Category:County Roads in Volusia County, Florida.

Of course, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not an argument for notability; but am I missing something fundamental here? --B. Wolterding 11:03, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I have tagged that for speedy deletion (sorry, I didn't come to this talk page first). Some roads are notable - that one did not establish it. At best this road should be covered in a list of roads, until someone can show that it has been the subject of multiple independent sources. Hey, even planning and funding submissions get a road over the line for that one - and any public road has those things going on in droves!Garrie 01:38, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I've added a {{prod2}} as well (the speedy having been changed to prod). I don't see any assertion of notability here! Cheers, DWaterson 11:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Somebody contested the PROD, but I stil don't know why it should be notable... --B. Wolterding 08:48, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Well I think it's like this... currently there is a (proposed) notability criteria at Wikipedia:Notability (highways). County Road 702 (Palm Beach County, Florida) meets that criteria so currently it is a notable road.

Following a speedy / prod contest, notability has been well and truely argued, and I have removed the notability tag because the article meets a current proposed guideline. The question is, does WikiProject Notability agree with the notablity threshold at Wikipedia:Notability (highways) which seems way too low in my opinion. If the threshold is too low then it should be reviewed and articles identified for review.

In my opinion, most subjects are notable because secondary sources exist. Generally, any road will have been the basis of tender documents, funding submissions, and press following significant accidents so showing secondary sources exist should not be a problem.Garrie 00:37, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

County Road 702 (Palm Beach County, Florida) was speedied and recreated. I was suprised to see it had been deleted, as it seemed that it was established that it met notability criteria at WikiProject Highways (however arbitary / disputed / established those criteria are) and the prod tag had been removed.

I think we have come the full circle: this article met established notability criteria so it was kept. BUT are those notability criteria setting the encyclopedia up to have an entry for every road that shows up in a street directory?Garrie 23:31, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Project Departments - RFC

I think that the scope of simply deleting everything non-notable is too wide to efficiently carry out. As such, I think we should have departments, or categories of non-notable articles, so that users with knowledge in a specific subject can better gauge notability. In accordance with this plan, I would like to create a department of the Wikiproject aimed specifically at removing or improving Wikipedia articles on non-notable internet personalities. What are everybody's opinions on this? cacophony ◄► 19:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Personally I would think there is a fair bit of cross-project involvement. I would not hesitate to look for input from Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography for any article about a person which I thought may be border-line. I think that participants in other projects are realistic about getting rid of non-notable articles already - what is really needed is some projects aren't specific enough about establishing a notability threshold, for example it is a bit difficult to get out of Wikipedia:WikiProject Rugby league weather they consider certain competitions to be equivalent to help work out weather seemingly minor players may be more notable than a stub makes them seem.Garrie 21:47, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure regarding the proposal, and whether a splitting into "departments" will actually increase productivity. Of course, if you feel that you are specifically knowledgable in a certain area, and you want to review articles related to that, you can always browse the backlog and sort exactly these. (By the way, Popups is a great tool for that.) Or, if you don't have an opinion on an article, you can leave it aside, or seek expert advice. (Some Wikiprojects do respond promptly, some don't, unfortunately.) But adding more buerocracy to the process is unlikely to help, I think. --B. Wolterding 16:49, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree with GarrieIrons and even more agree with B. Wolterding. Let me rephrase and supplement them with following:
  • All topical Wikiprojects should be aiming at extinguishing non-notable articles within their scope. Let us don't hesitate simply reminding them about it.
I think you have it slightly wrong. Topical wikiprojects, and this one too, are and should be devoted to improving the articles within their scope, which means both improving the notable ones, seeing if notability can be demonstrated for the borderline, and as a last resort, nominating for deletion some particular articles where it is concluded that they are not notable. DGG 03:24, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) The problem with this is that at the rate we're going, the number in the backlog will hit 10,000 in no time. Our job in this project is to sort the articles into "notable" and "non-notable" bins. The WikiProjects can worry about improving the articles. I mean, if you feel like it, go ahead and improve the article. However, this is largely a maintainence project that is trying to deal with an enormous backlog. Diez2 04:36, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • No need for extra bureaucracy and duplication of other projects' tasks within our project. This also means that everyone is encouraged to create a notability taskforce within any topical project instead.
  • I believe no special expertise is typically needed for establishing article's notability of topic. BTW, that's what our project page says. If you feel a real need for experts then you probably feel article's marginal notability. Let us keep in mind that proving of notability is the burden of expert authors who present their articles for us laypersons (armed only with logic and common knowledge). BTW, this is a typical AfD phrase. -- Futurano 11:02, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Is there also a way we can go yell at WikiProject Chemistry for stubbornly keeping their completely non-notable chemistry articles? 68.217.210.88 04:32, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
Such as article...? AFAIK they have a notability guideline and follow it fairly well - they acknowledge that some chemistry topics aren't particularly notable. Others are (and have been the subject of texbooks etc).Garrie 06:34, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I would cite them as perhaps the best WP project in terms of having a consistent standard for articles--there are good reasons for it, including the lesser degree of factual disagreement than in some other fields, and the ability to give indisputably authentic information about almost all individual chemical substances. They've been able to keep it due to the general agreement of almost all WPedians having a knowledge of chemistry, and that is what I consider consensus. If I were to work on porn bios, I'd accept the standards there; when I work on shopping malls, I follow the specialized criteria that are the consensus on that project. Certainly there's room for disagreement & change in individual cases, and there are places to discuss that--this is one of the reasons we have projects.. DGG 17:35, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merger warning proposal

I proposed to create a special merger warning for user talk pages, using my experience of merging pages within our project. A proposed template, or its modification, might also include our promotional text "as part of the Notability wikiproject". Please cast your opinions at respective talk section: Help talk:Merging and moving pages#On merger warning again. Thanks, -- Futurano 11:10, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Band vs. band members in WP:MUSIC

I found these guys in our October backlog. They're members of a borderline notable band (1 album, 2 EPs), and by my interpretation of WP:MUSIC, this does not make the individual members notable.

But I was in fact a bit astonished by the template on the bottom of the page (a whole series on this band). Also, it seems that one of the band member's article was deleted before, and I was even more astonished by this related comment.

In short, I thought I'd better ask if someone knows comparable cases. --B. Wolterding 17:27, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

People whine about deletions. This shouldn't be taken as an indication of whether or not the deletion was a good idea. If all we have is "So-and-so plays drums for the band whatever-they're-called", these should be turned into redirects to the band article. Friday (talk) 17:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Friday. Beau and Chris are perfect candidates for merge / redirect. And guess what? Everything is already at the Saosin article anyway. It's not like EVEL have an article.Garrie 20:55, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
OK, I have entered the lion's den and formally proposed a merger. If you like, you can participate in the discussion. --B. Wolterding 12:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Articles have been merged in the meantime. --B. Wolterding 16:08, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Notability expert review" category

Hello,

putting the {{expert-subject|Notability}} tag on an article will move it to the category Notability articles needing expert attention. (OK, that's automatic and not too surprising.) I noticed that, while that category has one entry, the category page has not been created, and probably no one is monitoring it. Is that intended? --B. Wolterding 12:05, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it is intentional - if there is only the one entry now, then before this edit the category was probably empty. Empty categories get speedy deleted.Garrie 22:43, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notability of list entries

(Moved this to a separate section. --B. Wolterding 17:03, 16 July 2007 (UTC))

  • Am I asking in the right place? Question: I am editing an article in a field where I can reasonably be considered an expert. In an existing list of technologies/products, I see the appropriate vendor-independent items that are open standards, but I also see some vendor-specific technologies that are unfamiliar and perhaps not significant. How should I tag these list items as questionable? Howard C. Berkowitz 17:06, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Maybe it's best if you tag the list with {{cleanup-laundry}}, and explain related details on the talk page. --B. Wolterding 17:03, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bot request ... identifying SPA contributions

I have requested a bot to generate lists of pages created by single-purpose accounts. The reason for the request is that I expect that many pages created by SPAs will be tests, vanity pages, advertising, and pages that otherwise do not meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. The bot-generated list may make it easier to identify and correct or delete such pages.

Given the effort required to create the bot, it is important to know beforehand whether enough people would be willing to work on the bot-generated list. For more details and to share your thoughts, please see the thread at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Identifying SPA contributions. Thank you, Black Falcon (Talk) 00:30, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Avoiding interference

I have noticed the following a number of times: I had opened a discussion on an article in the backlog (merger or expert review) and intended to let it run for some time; however, a few days later, someone else from the project picked the article and sorted it, e.g. listed it for deletion or removed the maintenance tags.

First of all, this is a good sign, since it shows that the project is active. However, we might want to avoid such interference between editors. On the other hand, it is of course reasonable to sort an article if another project member has worked on it, but lost track. (I sometimes forget to hit the "watch" button, for example.) For better project-internal coordination, I would like to propose the following simple rule:

Project members should not sort an article they have not worked on before if there is an active discussion on its talk page. A discussion should be considered active if
  • it is not closed, and
  • there has been an addition to it within the last two weeks.

I do not insist on the two weeks, it might be any other reasonable time, but I think it would be best if we can agree on a definite number here. That's not intended as instruction creep, but serves for better coordination.

Any opinions? --B. Wolterding 10:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, I faced the some problem. B. Wolterding seems to be one of the very few people who do obey the "discuss before merging" rule. I suggest that we all respect that rule at least within our project. A discussion should be not only considered active, but also respected during a set time period, as an evident implementation of the WP:Consensus rule. An exact time of discussion or improvement may be as short as week, or as long as month. The only important thing is that we all understand the timing the same. -- Futurano 10:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Personally, I would go with "the same period of time as applies to a {{prod}}", as that is another common approach to dealing with {{nn}} articles. Yes, I know that's not much time, but it's how long they'd have if I looked at the article and put a prod on it. Could be worse, I still speedy quite a few articles if there doesnt even seem to be an assertion of notability. Sorry if I am one of the offenders, btw...Garrie 02:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Coming at this from perhaps the exact opposite approach to the above editor, I's argue that if there is an ongoing discussion the discussion must be continued untill it is resolved. There is no time limit on a talk page discussion, and there should not be. The point of prod is that it works only if the articles is already abandoned or if the author abandons the article rather than improve or defend it. DGG (talk) 04:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Userbox proposal

Hi, for those userbox maniacs i would like to propose a new userbox for the project, same colors plus an image from wikimedia commons.

Code Result Users
{{User:LuisAugustoPeña/Userboxes/Wikiproject-notability}}
This user is part of the notability sorting drive.
Transclusions

--Luis Augusto Peña (talk) 05:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summaries and removing the notability tag.

First off, just wanted to say that the job y'all do is certainly appreciated. Two very minor notes, however:

  1. Not sure if this is an issue or not, but you might want to emphasize for #7 that this tag does not obviate the "Proposed for deletion: Reason" or "AfD: Link" part of an edit summary as well. It does say "add" currently, but apparently at least one editor was only saying that the article had been "sorted" while proposing it for deletion, which could mean that the edit could well be ignored on someone's watchlist. Also, while I'm all in favor of allowing humor on Wikipedia... I'm not sure that the exclamation mark will be appreciated by those who see their article being proposed for deletion.
  2. #6 indicates that the notability tag should be removed after the editor is done. While this is obviously true for subjects that turn out to be notable... I'm not certain this is a good idea for AfD's and prods. The notability tag offers links to resources on what exactly is notable and how to show it; furthermore, if someone removes the prod (or the AfD closes keep/ no consensus), the problem has likely not been solved, so the notability tag is still useful. SnowFire 03:49, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I understand your point about this, but then the article continues to appear on our to-do list, which is kind of annoying when I'm trying to find an article to work on and keep coming across articles in that pending state with both notablity and prod/afd tags on it. It's disruptive to my workflow. Is there any way we can have both? Steve CarlsonTalk 04:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
You could maybe re-tag the notability date with the current month? That way it won't show up in backlogs... SnowFire 04:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
That would certainly work. How do others feel about this? Can we agree on this and update the text of #6 so it reflects this procedure? Steve CarlsonTalk 04:17, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't agree. The notability tag (including its date) is valuable information in the PROD and AfD process. Also I don't find that leaving the tag on the article disrupts my workflow. Rather, I can be sure that if I don't find the time to come back to an article that needs attention, or I just forgot to add it to my watchlist, then it's still on the backlog, and someone else from the project will handle it (after a while). That applies not only to AfDs, but also to merger proposals, expert reviews, etc. which tend to be open for a week or two, and need attention afterwards. If you find an article that is currently involved in some process, just skip to the next article; if all fails, even to the next month. (Lack of articles to work on is not one of our current problems, I'd say...) --B. Wolterding 17:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
No, the notability date is intended to show how long the article's notability has been in question. Subverting that use to manipulate how articles show up in the backlog of a particular project is not a good idea (in particular, with the current backlog, it would mean that a de-prodded article might stay in the system for another year!).
I definitely think notability tags should stay unaltered when an AfD or PROD is added. Firstly, it eliminates the error-prone procedure of re-adding tags should a PROD be removed or an AfD declined (if the original nominator is not around for a few days, there's a good chance it won't be readded); secondly, it means that PROD articles still get plenty of "eyeballs" checking out whether the PROD is valid. Otherwise, it may be that only the PROD nominator and the closing admin get to decide. "Sorting" also includes contesting PRODs if you think notability can be established, so such articles still belong in the backlog.
If that disrupts your workflow, just dip into one of the other months — if time is an issue, the oldest month isn't such a good place to be anyway, since it tends to be full of borderline cases rather than clear-cut decisions. Thomjakobsen 15:12, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

So, um, just to be clear, I agree with B. Wolterding and Thomjakobsen that ideally the tags shouldn't be removed. However, I'd also be fine with kicking the date back to the reviewed month as Steve Carlson now supports. Yet... the project page still says that the tags should be deleted entirely, despite no one seemingly supporting that. I'd change it myself, except I'm not a member... SnowFire 02:11, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, I see what you're getting at now. This sentence:
After you have finished with all improving/merging/deletion procedures regarding the article's notability, remove notability or importance tag on the article.
I read "deletion procedures" as meaning "the article has went through the AfD procedure" (and survived, otherwise there would be no tags to remove), whereas presumably you take the "deletion procedure" as "the procedure of adding a prod or AfD to the article"?
I blame point #6 for the misunderstanding, since it comes before the "use this as your edit summary" and could imply you remove the tags at the same time you add a prod or list at AfD. Under my reading, the edit summary point refers to whichever edit finally removes the tags, which could be at the end of an AfD.
If we agree that the notability tags shouldn't be removed at the same time as listing for deletion, then we should remove point #6 (it's redundant, because it already tells you to remove the tags should you establish notability by improving/merging) and a final point saying perhaps, "If the article is found to meet notability requirements as a result of surviving an AfD discussion, remember to remove the notability tag." Any objections? Thomjakobsen 03:27, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
That sounds fine to me, but I just want to stress that this isn't a hypothetical issue - this actually came up, and the other user referred to the project page as the reason behind removing the notability tag after adding a prod tag. SnowFire 04:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
quite apart from this project--I always leave the notability tag on when adding a prod. In case someone removes the prod without completely fixing the article, the problem will still be indicated. (of course the user could remove both, but hey rarely do). The time to remove the tag for a problem is when the problem is fixed. Not before that. DGG (talk) 04:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Have changed the instructions. Thomjakobsen 13:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category move

Note the parent category is now Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability per WP:CfD. Rich Farmbrough, 10:38 24 September 2007 (GMT).

[edit] Tools

In the process of sorting quite a number of articles from our backlog, I have developed some small project-specific tools that help me getting all those edit summaries and template parameters right. They allow me to spend more time on evaluating articles rather than on typing Wiki markup. Since the tools have stabilized a bit in the meantime, I thought I would share them with you, maybe they can be of help.

First, there are two small JavaScript programs for adding certain tags:

  • Proposing deletion: When editing an article, a button "Propose deletion (WPNN)" will appear in the Wikipedia toolbox (left-hand side of the screen). Pressing this, you will be prompted for a rationale - edit the default message as needed. A PROD tag will then be added to the article, with the edit summary automatically filled, and the article will be added to your watchlist. (User:B. Wolterding/prod-wpnn.js)
  • Closing discussions: When editing a section on a talk page (supposed to contain a discussion thread), a button "Close discussion" will appear in the toolbox. Clicking this, you can enter a result for the discussion. Then, the discussion will be enclosed in {{Discussion top}} and {{Discussion bottom}} tags, with the result plus your signature added. The article will be removed from your watchlist. Useful for merger discussions and expert reviews. (User:B. Wolterding/close-discussion.js)

Note that both tools display an edit preview, but they do not save any edits automatically. Be sure to click the "Save" button (or hit Alt-S) once you have finished editing.

To "install" these helper applications, include them in your user-specific monobook.js file; see User:B. Wolterding/monobook.js for an example.

I have also built some slightly more advanced tools that help me with workflows spanning multiple pages; namely: proposing and performing mergers; asking other wikiprojects for expert review; and listing articles on AfD. These tools do not perform edits automatically, but they provide clickable links to the relevant pages, automatic edit summaries, and template tags with pre-filled parameters for copy&paste to the articles. They should be self-explanatory if you are familiar with the processes. (It is however assumed that you are familiar with the processes; use the programs at your own risk.)

This second set of tools is based on local HTML files that you need to copy to your computer and open in your browser. Since there is apparently no way of uploading such files on Wikipedia, I have put them here for download. Expand the ZIP file and open "index.html". It can be useful to bookmark that page or its subpages in your browser. Note that these tools require that Popups is installed.

I find these tools quite useful, hopefully you will too. Feedback is welcome. --B. Wolterding 16:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Articles assigned to wikiprojects

Hello,

a considerable number of the articles on our backlog is assigned to one more more wikiprojects; and I was thinking how we could involve these projects more in the process, also because some topics require foreign language speakers or subject matter experts.

Here are those projects with 20 articles or more (data as of Oct 18):

Project template # articles Project template # articles
WPBiography 2511 Vgproj 38
WPSchools 175 WikiProject Germany 38
WikiProject Business & Economics 170 Dadsarmyproject 37
WP Australia 150 WikiProject Texas 37
Cvgproj 149 WikiProject Oregon 35
Album 117 D&D 35
Comicsproj 101 Martialartsproject 34
Songs 84 WikiProject Food and drink 32
ProjectGreyhawk 81 WikiProject France 32
TelevisionWikiProject 80 WikiProject Shopping Centers 31
NovelsWikiProject 76 WikiProject California 28
WP India 72 Physics 24
WPBooks 68 WP MMO 24
WikiProject Illinois 62 WikiProject Anime and manga 23
ChicagoWikiProject 60 WikiProject Japan 20
Film 56 StarTrekproject 20
LGBTProject 49 WikiProject Israel 20
HMM 39 WPMILHIST 20

Not unexpectedly, WikiProject Biography has by far the largest share. Their articles can be broken down a bit further:

Arts and entertainment work group articles 447
Musicians work group articles 432
Science and academia work group articles 182
Sports and games work group articles 111
Politics and government work group articles 91
Actors and filmmakers work group articles 56
Military biography work group articles 12
Baronetcies work group articles 9
Royalty work group articles 7
Peerage work group articles 2
Other 1183

(Some articles are assigned to multiple workgroups.)

On the other hand, 7335 articles, or about 60% of the backlog, are not assigned to any wikiproject at all.

Still, it might be helpful to inform the individual wikiprojects about their articles. Maybe this can help to reduce the backlog, but it would also help to prevent that wikiprojects "suddenly" find articles in the deletion process which they always wanted to expand.

I can generate a list of articles assigned to the individual projects, if needed. Would it be helpful to post these on the corresponding project talk pages? (Or, perhaps, build a central list and point the wikiprojects to there?) What do you think? --B. Wolterding 14:50, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

  • A note regarding updates: The lists are generated based on Wikipedia data dumps, which become available only at irregular intervals (between 2 weeks and 2 months, approximately). So, you will have to wait a while for the next update. On the other hand, the data doesn't change very fast, so longer update intervals should be fine. --B. Wolterding (talk) 13:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inter Project communication etc

I have just come across an article that you have merged as part of your projects work The Hard Way (novel). Whilst I have no problem with the basic work of the project I think we need to beef up the communication between project on what is being looked at. Just tagging for merging for a couple of week and then merging doe not give enough time for editors with specialist interests to respond. Can we have some agreement about how to do this. It is often the case the work is undone where notability can be established, there is just such a mountain of such material to get though it is hard to focus. If we had a means of indicating which items of mutual interest you have picked up on we could emprove, sort out or agree with the merge etc.
Also when a merge etc is done please take note of action required on Project notices on talk pages. These may have become redundant. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 11:42, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
With The Hard Way (novel), I just followed the usual procedure - feedback to the merger was positive, so I merged. Also, it would be quite a bit of extra work to notify Wikiprojects on every merge proposal or other proposed action, since there are quite a few of these. However, as mentioned above, I can generate a list of all articles in our backlog which are assigned to (say) the Novels Wikiproject. Since we usually work on the "end" of the backlog (currently February/March 07), you would have plenty of time to sort the articles which are of interest to your project. You can temporarily view the Novels Wikiproject list here. (I'll post it to a more appropriate place once a new database snapshot is available.) Would that be OK for you? --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Self-published books

Self-published books are usually (but not always) non-notable. See Vanity press#Examples; it may be productive to check out the "what links here" links for non-notable books and authors:

A search for the press's name in article text might pick up further instances:

Some of the publishers themselves may be marginally notable; I would not be agressive in deleting these since it's useful to have a record somewhere on Wikipedia for deletion discussions of who these publishers are. Alternately, consider creating a page in Wikipedia space (as opposed to article space) listing all vanity presses, notable or not. -- perhaps a subpage of this WikiProject.

It goes without saying that any self-published books and authors still need to be evaluated for notability each on its own merits since there are some that have been notable -- see Self-publishing#Self-published best-sellers.--A. B. (talk) 15:35, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ye Art Cordially Invited to the Annex

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, and All Ye blessed Folk in between, gather round and I shalt telleth Ye a Tale of a Wiki that well comes All Manner of Articles relating to Fiction. What is This wonderful Place of Fantasy, You ask? It is the Annex, Haven to All fiction-related Refugee Articles from Wikipedia.

Before nominating or proposing a fiction-related Article for Deletion, It is My sincerest Hope that Ye import It to the Annex. Why do This, You wonder? Individuals have dedicated an enormous Amount of Time to writing These Articles, and ’twould be a Pity for the Information to Vanish unto the Oblivion where only Administrators could see Them.

Here is a Step-by-Step Process of how to Bringeth Articles into the Annex:

  1. Ye shall need at least three Browser Tabs or Windows open. For the first Tab or Window, go to Special:Export. For the second, go here. (If Ye have not an Account at Wikia, then create One.) Do whatever Ye want for the third.
  2. Next, open the Program known as Notepad. If Ye haveth It not, then open WordPad. Go to “Save as,” and for “Encoding,” select either “Unicode” or “UTF-8.” For “Save as type,” select “All Files.” For “File name,” input “export.xml” and save It. Leave the Window open.
  3. Next, go to the Special:Export Window at Wikipedia, and un-check the two small Boxes near the “Export” Button. Input the Name of the Wikipedia Article which Ye wish to import to the Annex into the large Field, and click “Export.”
  4. Right-click on the Page full of Code which appears, and clicketh on “View Source” or “View Page Source” or any Option with similar Wording. A new Notepad Window called “index[1]” or Something similar should appear. Press Ctrl+A to highlight All the Text then Ctrl+C to copy It. Close yon “index[1]” Window, and go to the Notepad “export.xml” Window. Press Ctrl+V to pasteth the Text There, and then save It by pressing Ctrl+S.
  5. Now go to the Special:Import Window over at the Annex. Clicketh on “Browse…” and select the “export.xml” File. At last, click on “Upload file,” and Thou art done, My Friend! However, if It says 100 Revisions be imported, Ye be not quite finished just yet. Go back to Wikipedia’s Special:Export, and leave only the “Include only the current revision, not the full history” Box checked. Export That, copy the Page Source, close the “index[1]” Window, and go to the “export.xml” Window. Press Ctrl+A to highlight the Code all ready There, press “backspace” to erase It, and press Ctrl+V to pasteth the new Code There. Press Ctrl+S to save It, then upload once more to the Annex. Paste {{Wikipedia|{{PAGENAME}}}} at the Bottom of the imported Article at the Annex, and Ye art now finally done! Keepeth the “export.xml” File for future Use.

Thank Ye for using the Annex, My Friends — the Annex Hath Spoken 05:51, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dealing with non-notable fictional topics

I have raised the issue regarding the policing and enforcement of the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction). Your comments would be most welcome. --Gavin Collins (talk) 11:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Articles assigned to wikiprojects (cont'd)

With data from a recent snapshot (March 12), I have now uploaded new listings of the CAT:NN category, ordered by WikiProject assigned to the article. You can view these at Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability/Listing by project.

To get people from other WikiProjects involved, I would like to announce these listings to the broader community, e.g. at the village pump. That should be done while the data is more or less "fresh", i.e. within the next days. Any opinions on that are welcome. --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notability proposal needing comment.

A proposal to tackle the notability issues surrounding biographies of the victims of crime can be found at WP:N/CA. I hope to get some feedback and form a consensus Fritzpoll (talk) 11:27, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cricket articles of dubious notability

Thank you very much for drawing your concerns to the attention of the WP:CRIC. There are nine people on your list and eight of them have played first-class cricket at the highest domestic level in their country, which generally equates to WP:ATHLETE and which has been accepted as the baseline for notability in cricket biographies. The ninth is Elaine Wulcko and she has played cricket at international level, which is more than sufficient for WP:ATHLETE. Now that you have drawn these articles to our attention, we will make an early effort to make the notability of their subjects more obvious. The other 11 articles are, IMO, less defensible, but colleagues on the Cricket Project may wish to respond. Johnlp (talk) 00:06, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pornproject: Articles of unclear notability

In response to concerns posted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pornography#Pornproject:_Articles_of_unclear_notability:

Well, offhand, I'll note that Angelica Bella was winner of a 1993 Hot D'Or award, which means she meets the notability criteria established by this project. Megan Leigh got quite a bit of mainstream media attention as the result of her suicide (albeit, less coverage than Savannah or Shauna Grant, who suffered similarly tragic fates). And Jana Miartušová and Zsanett Égerházi (better known as Nella and Sandy, respectively) are very significant performers in the girl/girl porn genre. The articles need to be fleshed out better to establish the notability of these individuals, though, I agree. I'm not sure if A Vindication of the Rights of Whores falls under the scope of this project, but I will note that it was a milestone in the literature of sex worker rights and I think should be considered notable on that basis. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 10:38, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Friends of Fiddler's Green

To reduce the number of articles with questionable notability on the Canada Wikiproject, the original editors were contacted, and a reply was received from Pustelnik comments, as well as on the article talk page. I am not involved with WikiProject Notability, and would these points be enough to warrant that Friends of Fiddler's Green article is notable and the tag removed? Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 21:31, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Well, the article has a number of references now, there's secondary coverage - seems fine for me. Quite generally, there's no need to be involved in this project for adding or removing notability tags - if, by your judgement, the article passes the WP:N/WP:MUSIC criteria, you can remove the tag (unless someone objects). --B. Wolterding (talk) 22:24, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Episode articles ahead

With the April backlog almost cleared, we're heading towards the articles from May and June. Now as it seems, the June backlog contains dozens if not hundreds of TV-related articles, mostly episode articles (M*A*S*H, The Office and the like). They hardly ever consist of more than plot summary.

Usually, I would redirect those to the "episode list" articles which typically exist, citing WP:NOT#PLOT and "no improvement in 10 months". However with this approach, since we need to apply it to a large number of articles, we might well get in conflict with the recent ArbCom decision. ArbCom wants us to discuss with the article creators (volunteers wanted). Having seen some of these discussions, I don't think this would be effective. At the same time, WP:EPISODE is still under discussion.

So what do we do? The only "compromise" solution I can imagine at the moment is to move these articles to a separate category, temporarily, until discussions around WP:EPISODE have been settled.

In any case, we as a project should try to find a common approach. What's your opinion on that? --B. Wolterding (talk) 23:13, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the best thing is to try to have the discussions, but perhaps hold them on the article talk page, invite the major contributors to comment on a policy-based argument that is presented. It may be that we can cajole some of the article creators into citing sources and adding useful information. But having the discussion itself, and allowing sufficient time for a solution to become apparent should satisfy the ArbCom. In cases where the article deletion is clearly contested but no policy/guideline is cited, take the articles straight to AfD, otherwise PROD them. What do you think? Fritzpoll (talk) 23:19, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm of the opinion that given the sensitivity of this issue at the moment, it would be better to hold back on making any rash decisions to prod or AFD this type of article until a much broader consensus has been achieved than is possible within the scope of this WikiProject. DWaterson (talk) 23:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely - I wasn't suggesting hasty actions at all. This should not be a case of review and PROD/AfD. Engaging in a discussion will take time, but is clearly necessary Fritzpoll (talk) 23:45, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
(re Fritzpoll) I'm not so sure about the discussions. People tried and failed. (See Wikipedia:Television episodes/Review for the last systematic attempt, a quite sad story.) Consensus with "TV fans" will be hard if not impossible to find, and those discussions are not very enjoyable. So without a crystal-clear policy consensus on episodes, which might override article "owners", I wouldn't want to go that way. AfD also does not seem the best idea: Nominating all individual articles would clog the process; and mass nominations tend to end up in a big mess. --B. Wolterding (talk) 23:48, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for sharing that link - I can see the problem now. I'd say we try to empty out the rest of the category and leave a note to return to it at some point. That said, it's perfectly possible that we can improve the articles, so we shouldn't avoid having a quick look over them Fritzpoll (talk) 23:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
(dedent) I agree with what seems to be the general consensus here -- we should proceed extremely cautiously until WP:EPISODE and/or WP:SERIAL reaches fuller consensus. Unilateral mass action is quite likely to inflame a situation that is still recovering from the last round of acute controversy.
As far as discussion goes, I would first seek out series-specific venues where they exist, before attempting to find consensus or help from wider venues such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Television. For example, Wikipedia:WikiProject The Office (US) (unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for M*A*S*H). Let the series-specific project know what's going on with our project, that as we make progress through the backlog we're coming up on their episode articles. Make it clear that we don't plan on unilateral action, but that we would like them to focus their own cleanup and improvement efforts on these articles first and foremost. Some of these projects may have been pinged already as part of B. Wolterding's project-notification; let's give them a second reminder. Perhaps it will be easier to achieve positive results in the smaller venue. Jfire (talk) 02:45, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
So there seems to be consensus not to clean up these articles on the short term. Involving the other wikiprojects is also a good idea. (By the way, in this case, it's the BBC project since we're dealing with the UK version of The Office.) I will also notify WikiProject TV, even if their project tag is not on the articles.
Anyway, I think that even with involvement of the other projects, the TV articles will inhibit our workflow since we will be unable to fix them in the usual "sequence", in view of the controversial nature of the problem. I therefore propose the following interim solution. For those TV related articles which cannot be sorted at this time, we would add an extra parameter "cat=TV" to the notability tag. So we would change
{{notability|episodes|date=June 2007}}
to
{{notability|episodes|date=June 2007|cat=TV}}
which would remove the article from the "dated" categories, and move them to an extra category Category:TV articles of unclear notability. This requires a small change to Template:Notability, which I would request once we have consensus. We could move the articles back at any time. Would you support that idea? --B. Wolterding (talk) 12:50, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Did you consider the alternative of changing Template:Notability so that {{notability|episodes}} would automatically go to an extra category? Jfire (talk) 15:40, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but there are some caveats. First, the problem is not only with episodes but also with characters from TV shows. Second, some prefer {{notability|proposed}} for episodes in the meantime, since WP:EPISODE is disputed. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:48, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
  • It's hard to determine consensus when hardly anyone answers... Is this silent consensus or silent disagreement? Do you support moving the episodes to a different category? If so, would you prefer the cat= parameter, or JFire's suggestion of using {{notability|episodes}}? --B. Wolterding (talk) 08:27, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I am not a member of this project (yet), but I have edited/merged/redirected a lot of nonnotable episode articles. I have used {{notability|episode}} (without the -s) for the ep articles I watch, and I can relate to some of the difficulties mentioned above. You have my silent agreement for whatever you think works best. All that matters for me is to see the "dated" notice in the used template in the article. – sgeureka t•c 10:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
No consensus to start episode clean up? I disagree with that. Clean up is underway and has been since the ArbCom was lifted, starting with those that had consensus for clean up before the injunction. :P For newer stuff, what seems to work with relatively little hassle (except the occasional rabid fanboy/fangirl) is to tag the episodes for notability and give a reasonable amount of time to fix. If it remains unaddressed or a week goes by with no reaction at all, start a merge discussion in the series article. If there is no clear consensus, put in a request for input from the parent project. If still no consensus and its relatively even on both sides with no budging, take it to the fiction notice board. If all else fails, then AfD. Its working nicely for quite a few articles I'm a part of, both for episodes and characters. If I understand your suggestion, it would make it easier to see which episodes have been tagged, by date? If so, I can't see any problem with it, though I'd agree that doing the same for characters (if possible) would be good. Collectonian (talk) 14:45, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, I will go ahead with the implementation then. It will be available for both episodes and characters. These will be sorted into a category Category:TV articles of unclear notability. Sorting by date might be added later, but I don't think it will make a difference; all articles that we will move there have been tagged for at least 6 months. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:46, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
The template has been changed now, the category created, and I have put the usage instructions on the project page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
All articles in the June backlog have now been retagged. Jfire (talk) 01:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Topical WikiProject notifications

Hi,

A quick question, please: Were the base lists for the inter-project notifications (see here) generated on the basis of the presence of project banners on article talk pages?

Thanks, Black Falcon (Talk) 15:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes. The list contains all articles which have, on their talk page, a template that is listed in Category:WikiProject banners. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks - that's what I had assumed. My reason for asking is that I suspect that, for some topics, there are a substantial number of articles tagged with {{notability}} that do not have a project banner on the talk page. I will post a bot request later today to identify such articles based on articles' presence in certain categories. Black Falcon (Talk) 18:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
By the way, the week that the inter-project notices were sent out saw a noticeable decline in the number of articles tagged with {{notability}} (see diff) ... it seems to have been the only (relatively) major decline in a long time. :) Black Falcon (Talk) 18:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Very well! As for the bot, I think that similar bots already exist. See for example User:SkiersBot. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:07, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. I was thinking of adding to and then using Category:Category-Class Africa articles, but project tagging of stub articles (which are the most likely to have notability issues) could work as well. I'll do some work on this and post a proposal at the Africa project's talk page; if there are no objections in a few days (the talk page doesn't get much traffic...), I'll contact one or more bot operators. Thanks again, Black Falcon (Talk) 18:28, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, when will the next update take place? Black Falcon (Talk) 17:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Not sure yet. The listings are generated using database dumps; the next dump for enwiki will be available around end of May, it seems. --B. Wolterding (talk) 20:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
My reason for asking was to find out how much time there will be for bot and manual assessment tasks (bot requests seem to take at least 1-2 weeks) before the list is updated. One month is more than enough time... Thanks, Black Falcon (Talk) 20:25, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Somewhat unexpectedly, a new database dump has become available on April 25. I have updated the listings. I don't know when the next update from now will be, unfortunately. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:17, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notability tagging

Hi, is it appropriate to tag articles that apparently don't have notability. I was under the impression any article without notability is best to have {{notability}} added. I was browsing some random articles and hit quite a few that didn't have WP:RS to show WP:N so I added {{notability}} but later most of them got reverted (one or two correctly as I missed some book references), but most still don't have any WP:RS to show notability. One editor even admonished me that WP:N is only a guideline and not a policy which it turns out is factually correct. Still does that mean articles are not to be tagged for notability? SunCreator (talk) 00:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Though I generally don't do notability tagging, I tend to remove {{notability}} tags when an article proves that its topic is notable by citing coverage in reliable sources or when it is readily apparent that such coverage exists. For instance, an unsourced article about the history of a country or a head of government shouldn't be tagged with {{notability}}, since both topics are obviously notable—it's a certainty that there is substantial coverage of them in reliable sources. Similarly, articles about topics for which ample coverage can be easily found through a standard Google search generally shouldn't be tagged either. However, I don't think that WP:N's status as a guideline is relevant to article tagging; the fact that it's a guideline doesn't mean it shouldn't be followed. Black Falcon (Talk) 05:48, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for the reply. It seems notability tags are normally welcome it just seems on the occasion I started to add a few I hit upon two separate editors who thought otherwise. SunCreator (talk) 00:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Please read what Black Falcon wrote. You added notability tags to notable articles, and Black Falcon just explained why you shouldn't do that. Furthermore, your were not only admonished by two editors but by two admins on the AN/I board. In other words, don't add notablity tags to notable articles even if they are missing sources. Do you understand? Viriditas (talk) 22:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
but do add an appropriate tag, which in this case will probably be {{unsourced}} -- and any other serious problems you identify.DGG (talk) 20:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] {{importance}}, {{notability}}, and notability content

I was recently involved in a dispute with another user who absolutely insisted on placing {{notability}} on a stub I'd created and for quite a while he simply refused the compromise of placing more specific templates on the article. Neither of us were aware of {{importance}} and a third editor's introduction of it sort of broke the deadlock (or would have, if the miscreant hadn't started tracking down other articles I'd written and trying to get them deleted.) So I've had the opportunity to very closely examine WP:N, {{importance}}, and {{notability}} and the distinction between them and this seems like a good place to voice my observations.

{{notability}} is the tag that actually questions whether the subject of an article is actually WP-notable. But per WP:NNC (the subsection discussing the clause that WP:N doesn't place any constraints on article content) establishing notability doesn't necessarily depend on the number or nature of the citations within the article but rather the qualities of the subject; as mentioned in various places here at WikiProject Notability the characteristics of a subject often make it obvious that it fulfills WP:N. I think that the language in {{importance}} - asking for information about the subject's notability - make it clear that as the "2nd tier" notability tag it's simply requesting content about the notability of the subject, not challenging whether the subject is actually notable.

I also think that some of the disagreements that arise over notability may derive from the problem that some people, without really reading WP:N and the more specific notability guidelines closely, assume that the guidelines must be written so as to scope Wikipedia as a general encyclopedia like Britannica or the Great Soviet Encyclopedia - when in actuality the standards and general project practice construe Wikipedia as including any encyclopedic article, embracing the sort of articles that might appear in a specialist encyclopedia covering a single decade of American television-related topics or a technical encyclopedia for a sub-discipline of IT, for example. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 17:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
As the person labeled a "miscreant", I would invite anyone truly interested in the dispute in question to read for themselves and to determine who, if anyone, should be described in that manner.
With that said, my far larger concern here is the construction of this policy. Indeed, that was at the core of the original dispute. I think the above editor misreads WP:NNC to be far more sweeping a declaration than it actually is. I think the relevant section of WP:N to the {{notability}} template is clearly the "Articles not satisfying the notability guidelines" section. I think the above editor misreads WP:NNC to suggest that notability is never a concern that should be raised if the editor has the slightest hunch that the subject may be notable. I disagree. I think deletion is absolutely supposed to be a last resort, but I think it is absolutely fair game to suggest a stub that does not cite reliable sources that establish notability should probably carry the notability template. As to the difference between {{notability}} and {{importance}}, I dismissed it when {{importance}} was first raised. I think I'm still in that mindset now. If you ask me, it's a guessing game. I don't oppose those who want to take that guess, but I personally don't feel the need to spend much effort at all at it. I don't think {{notability}} challenges notability at all -- it is simply a notice that notability is not clear. It's a valuable notice to both reader and editor.
I also think this talk of specialized encyclopedias is a bit overblown. To an extent, it is very true. Wikipedia should be a place for articles that would be found in print legal, medical, or other specialty encyclopedias. A line has to be drawn somewhere, though. That's what notability is all about. Notability is what says that we don't have an article about each of the billions of people on the planet even though a good fraction of them are absolutely verifiable people who have been covered to some extent in a source that would be reliable (like a country's official birth records). It's what says we shouldn't have an article for every song recorded or every commercial ever recorded. Featuring an article that would belong in an encyclopedia of television in the 1990s is okay, but featuring an article that obsesses over the color of the shirt a reality contestant wore one episode would go too far. It's certainly okay for editors to be bold and push the envelope, but they shouldn't take it as a personal affront when a skeptic questions some of their work. Erechtheus (talk) 22:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
even I accept this about specialised encyclopedias. There is a great range of meaning in the term "encyclopedia". I am trying to figure out how to word this part more precisely--for academic things, i would certainly say that encyclopedias beyond a certain degree of specialisation are not necessarily proof of notability-- at the extreme, it can turn into a concordance of every word mentioned anywhere in anything dealing with the subject. But I think at least a minimum ins encyclopedias directed at the general reader or undergraduate. And again, even here, it depends on the degree of coverage and the organisation of the encyclopedia. for example, everyone listed in ODNB as the subject of a main article is certainly notable for our purposes, & I would extend that to everyone with a sub article heading there--but most certainly not to everyone who is merely mentioned in an article. But some other biographical dictionaries would list everyone about who, even the minimum of directory information can be found equally, and there we might not accept it uncritically. I'd like to say it depends on judgment and common sense, but I know just how far that would get us. DGG (talk) 04:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I just don't think that notability needs to be a "guessing game" at all. I think the policies that the community has built are very clear, the nature of Wikipedia as a work that includes articles on topics so focussed and arcane as a particular episode of the fourth season of a cartoon that aired in 1997 or an obscure programming language used in a subset of computer-automated products in a particular manufacturing industry produced in the 60's and 70's is well established, so anyone asserting that their personal opinions about notability really, really need to be brought to bear in preference over the actual text of WP:N is using extremely questionable judgment. (Note by the way that I am not asserting those two articles I linked to are necessarily notable - just that Wikipedia does include articles on that sort of topic when it "has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject".)

If Erechtheus' example of "the color of the shirt a reality contestant wore one episode" has received significant coverage - if it's a distinct and discrete topic - in reliable, independent secondary sources it just doesn't matter what his personal opinion of the topic is - it qualifies for inclusion in Wikipedia by the impartial and objective criteria of notability that this community has decided upon. This simply isn't about personal opinions of what one person, or even a group of like-minded people, considers silly or insignificant (or wishes to assert may be insignificant, for whatever reason).

On WP:NNC - that section of the policy is not a declaration of the principle. As I've pointed out to Erechtheus several times it's simply an extrapolation of and direct policy link for this sentence which appears at the top of the policy above even the TOC:

“ These notability guidelines only pertain to the encyclopedic suitability of topics for articles but do not directly limit the content of articles. ”
But he insists that this is just an "exception" and that consequently his personal judgment takes precedence over it.

There certainly can be topics that hover near a fine line distinguishing the includable-by-guidelines from the non-includable. But what that means is to ascertain the topics' notability it's time to pay close attention to what the guidelines say and to make reasoned, supported arguments over whether the sources indicated for the topic are reliable and independent and whether the coverage in them is significant, et cetera. It does NOT mean it's time to start playing a "guessing game" and tossing around personal anecdotes and emphatic personal opinions about how articles should be written. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 06:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
If we had workable guidelines you might be right. But we do in only a very few areas, such as athletes, and the ones we do have are frequently challenged. The general guidelines depend on the chance of sourcing; since this gives absurd results, we qualify it by NOT and BLP and a very elaborate reading of what makes a RS to get some degree of discrimination between what two newspapers or books happen to cover and any real meaningfulness for an encyclopedia. I wonder what we would get by a match in Google News or Books or Scholar to find everyone mentioned twice (they wont let the database be used that way, so it isn't practical). I wouldn't call the this a guessing game, I would call it a game of being able to make an argument and get enough support for it--which is a combination of logic and skill and community feelings and power and chance and the mood of the day. DGG (talk) 14:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
but S.B. is right that this does not affect article content--which just has to be relevant and verifiable--and I think it is clearthat Erechtheus ( agrees about this.DGG (talk) 14:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC).
I think the issue is in what sense content is meant. I read content to have the meaning, "something that is contained" while I believe that S.B. is reading it to mean, "something that is to be expressed through some medium". I think his reading guts the notability guideline and that the explanation under the heading "Notability guidelines do not directly limit article content" makes the meaning of content quite clear. It's just saying that you can't challenge the "Towards revolution" subsection of the Thomas Jefferson article on the basis that it's not a notable topic. It isn't saying that articles can express whatever they like and are above the grasp of notability. Erechtheus (talk) 22:22, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
As to the meaning of the word "content", that's pretty straightforward - web content, article content, et cetera - the entirely common usage of the term that distinguishes the actual text, hyperlinks, and images within the article from the subject of the article, that subject being an entity external to the article itself. Totally consistent with the etymology "something that is contained" by the article. Thank you for concurring with me that WP:N does not affect article content, DGG.

DGG, I hear what you're saying that in many circumstances the presence-within-sources criteria may be problematic. But I do not agree with you that it necessarily gives absurd results in all cases; to give a pertinent example if the content of an article makes the cited statement "the subject of this article is an incorporated business entity in the State of New York, here is the date of incorporation" that pretty unambiguously indicates that there is or was significant coverage in reliable secondary sources in the form of State of NY incorporation documents and incorporation records. That's evidently the sort of thing Erechtheus is talking about when he implies that I think an article author "can express whatever they like and are above the grasp of notability" and is one example of the context in which he appears to believe it's necessary to start talking about his personal experiences and opinions on writing style, rather than discussing the reliability or article-indicated significance of coverage in sources.

To repeat - Erechtheus is talking about an article composed entirely of cited facts, all of which indicate the existence of secondary sources, when he's talking about how notability is a "guessing game" and how he just absolutely had to insist on using the {{notability}} template and no other, applying it via repeated edits to the article that reverted both its removal by a third-party User:I am not a dog and my subsequent removal of it. (Despite the fact that he claims below that this sort of thing is one he "[doesn't] see much of a point obsessing over.")

So yeah, there's definitely potential notability problems if an author appears to be simply making up whatever facts he or she feels like about the subject of an article - but that's not the sort of situation we're talking about here, we're talking about articles with cited content indicating significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. (In the case of the article that is the origin of the dispute between Erechtheus and I the citation includes both a direct link to the particular page of a Google Books entry and an OCLC number to the WorldCat entry for the cited book - so it was even a directly and immediately verifiable citation.)

And again, I'm not saying that the notability of the subject of an article of that sort cannot be debated at all, I'm saying that such a discussion pretty obviously should include actual quotations of policy text and arguments about the significance of coverage and reliability and independence of sources - not personal anecdotes and opinions about notability or opinions about writing style. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 07:38, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Not every business entity documented is notable. Not every business entity that began in 18xx is notable, either (particularly when it is very unclear whether that entity still exists). What types of business entities are notable is a subject covered quite well by WP:CORP. This supposed indication of the existence of secondary sources is another issue that keeps coming up but my response never changes: I don't think you get to claim that since you have proven there are 200 members of a club, that club is notable just because some document of that person's life will indicate they were a member. S.B. likes to call that a biography, but I don't buy into the idea that every person is guaranteed to have a biography, so I call that a resume. The article that is in question contained one reference to a directory of organizations. Notability was in no way established. As to this allegation that I acted improperly because one person removed a maintenance template without addressing the concern or explaining his rationale, I submit that is no basis to suggest any wrongdoing. Would it surprise S.B. to learn that the editor in question started an article that indicated, "X is a professor," I questioned the notability of just one day prior? I don't think the editor whose change was linked to had any sort of conflict of interest, but I have to say I don't really believe that the editor in question has a particularly strong grasp of notability guidelines. Erechtheus (talk) 12:11, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
As to this claim that discussion should include talk about policy/guidelines and not personal anecdotes, I'll point out that my first appeals to S.B. were to link him to relevent policies. It was only when he chafed at them that I attempted to explain myself in alternative ways. Erechtheus (talk) 12:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Man, you just keep demonstrating over and over again that you're relying entirely on personal definitions of notability and have very little interest in what that word means on Wikipedia. Whether or not a 19th-century organization still exists has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not it's WP-notable; notability is not temporary as it says right there in the main notability policy. As I've said repeatedly, you really should not be going around telling other people they need to go read WP:N - and you should particularly not be doing that in lieu of actually discussing notability policy and notability criteria with them.

In addition to needing to develop the habit of accurately quoting Wikipedia policy, you also need to try harder to accurately quote the people you're talking with. I didn't "allege wrongdoing" when I pointed out that you repeatedly reverted edits by two different users removing {{notability}} from the article in question - I pointed out that you were being baldfacedly mendacious below when you tried to strike the pose that choosing which maintenance templates to apply is something you just "don't see much of a point obsessing over" when in fact you absolutely insisted on applying one particular template no matter what other ones I suggested. As you point out above, one source is a problem for example - but that's a great reason to apply the {{onesource}} template and does not explain why you would insist on putting {{notability}} into an article - insist on it without making any WP-notability related arguments in its favor, and in fact including arguments about writing style as a reason the article supposedly didn't establish notability.

And no, I had not noticed that you were messing around with I am not a dog's contributions too. I went and looked through the history and you didn't "question the notability" of his article, by the way, you nominated it for speedy deletion 16 minutes after it was created as though it had an obviously non-notable subject, without any preceding attempt to contact the author or discuss notability - the article talk page is completely empty. You even threatened him with blocking, that was evidently important enough to put something on a talk page over.

But yes, knowing this circumstance, I am not a dog clearly isn't an impartial third party here, he shouldn't have reverted your change to the NYPS article. Doesn't change the fact that your "I don't see much of a point in obsessing" comment is a crock, though, and this incident with him you've brought up is another demonstration that you aren't interested in discussing Wikipedia notability with content contributors.

And another thing - pretending that you aren't being totally pejorative with this late-in-the-game insistence on calling any secondary biographical source a "resume" is just silly. I'm genuinely surprised that you seem to think anyone will buy the story that you simply have an innocent terminology preference. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 13:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
The reason that it matters whether NYPS exists now or when it ceased to exist is that WP:CORP suggests that length of existence is a consideration with nonprofit organization. This has never been about my personal opinion of notability -- it has been about whether Wikipedia's consensus notability guideline has been satisfied. You know, that's why I applied {{notability}} in the first place.
As to you alleging wrongdoing, you began that with your very first comment to me when you accused me of trying to manipulate you into creating content. You may also want to try accurately quoting people in terms of context and not pulling a quote about a specific consideration (importance template versus notability template) and then trying to make it a broader statement than it was.
It seems clear you are not familiar with the A7 speedy deletion rationale or the policy surrounding speedy deletion. When notability isn't even asserted, speedy deletion is appropriate. When the article creator removes the speedy deletion template, a warning to him is appropriate. When he does so a series of times, blocking becomes a real possibility. "X is a professor" does not assert notability any more than "X is a lawyer" or "X is a pathologist" would. As to 15 minutes, we have {{underconstruction}} as well as {{hangon}}. The reason new article patrolling is appropriate is that when an article is created, there is no way to know whether somebody is in the midst of a series of small edits to expand the article or if they're leaving behind something that isn't appropriate to languish in the database until somebody stumbles over it. Erechtheus (talk) 16:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
No, I wasn't familiar with the A7 criterion for speedy deletion. Now that I am I think it's quite interesting that this criterion states "to avoid speedy deletion an article does not have to prove that its subject is notable". I would of course be inclined to believe that it's saying this to concur with WP:NNC that an article's content is never required to contain an argument, explicit claim, or step-by-step proof of its subject's notability.

I would actually be inclined to say that the fact someone is a professor in the theory of a branch of science indicates they've probably either authored some notable books or otherwise contributed to the theory of that branch of science, and hence maybe someone genuinely interested in improving Wikipedia would at least choose the normal deletion process rather than trying to yank the carpet out from under the author, but my response to you bringing up your involvement with I am not a dog wasn't specifically intended to disagree with the speedy deletion nomination. I am pointing out that you certainly aren't at all intent on articulating to content authors the purportedly WP:N-based reasons for your actions.

This and many of your other actions look distinctly like wikilawyering to me - I have a very hard time believing that after thoughtful consideration (within the 16 minutes) you decided that an article about a professor of theoretical ecology couldn't possibly be notable and Wikipedia would be so much better off without it that it ought to be speedily deleted without even mentioning it to the author first (I checked, you didn't). No, it seems much more likely to me that your degree of consideration for the Wikipedia project in that situation went as far a "the rules say I can" and that the actual motivation to try speedy deleting such an article was something other than making Wikipedia better. (See WP:WL #2 for why this fits the description of wikilawyering, and again I am describing your behavior, not reacting to what you've told me is your RL profession.)

As to the context of your statement about obsessing - are you saying that you meant that something like the choice between {{onesource}} and {{notability}} is a really great subject to obsess over, but obsessing about the choice between {{importance}} and {{notability}} is completely pointless by comparison? If that's really what you meant, I apologize; but I hope you can concede that next to your own behavior of strenuously distinguishing between {{notability}} and the large array of other templates available for use, to announce that it's "pointless" for me or anyone else to distinguish between {{importance}} and {{notability}} looks quite a bit like the rhetorical tactic meiosis. Given the fact that you have engaged in various sorts of legerdemain like begging the question or this insistence on referring to all biographical sources as "resumes" you've made it clear that you're willing to employ rhetorical tricks like that.

And yes, I confirm that although I was not stating above that reverting the removal of {{notability}} by two separate users is evidence in and of itself of wrongdoing - just obsessiveness, which I am certainly prey to myself as is anyone who spends their time editing encyclopedias - I have definitely made several well-documented allegations of wrongdoing supported by thoroughly explained reasoning concerning your behavior. And I stand by all that I have said about you, I welcome examination and questioning of it by any third party. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
An article may never be required to establish notability, but there are potential consequences if it does not. One such consequence is application of a maintenance template that points out what the article is lacking. Another consequence (as the notability template advises) is that somebody may eventually decide to use some process to delete the article. What A7 is saying is that the standard is lower than notability. I think a good way to describe what is needed is an assertion of notability. Is saying somebody is a professor that sort of assertion? Frankly, I have seen that go both ways. Professor is a somewhat imprecise word as asserting notability goes. If I were an admin with the power to delete such an article, I'd personally want to know more about the professor. That's not the position I was in, though.
I don't think I come close to wikilawyering. I try my best to treat articles as though they belong to nobody and to consider absolutely nothing about who started them in my actions. That's actually why I felt I had to nominate Shrady as a copyvio. I think a completely legitimate purpose of our various policies is to help worthy articles bloom while discarding articles that have been deemed by the community to be insufficient. That's why I don't have a consistent track record of voting delete or keep in AfDs I participate in. I know that this doesn't sit well with some inclusionists, but I would hope those inclusionists recognize that their view is not the consensus view. I don't think my actions would always sit well with deletionists, either. I'll note that to the extent I am actually an attorney, I bend over backward not to use that when disputes arise. I think we both well recall who brought that up first in our discussions.
I tag a lot of articles with maintenance templates. I think it is appropriate to consider with some care whether to use something like {{unref}} rather than {{notability}}, but I will say that even then, I leave open the possibility that I'm wrong. I hold no illusion that I'm perfect. That's one reason why it took me something like a day to reapply notability to the NYPS article at one point and why I felt the need to resort to the article talk to explain myself. I value working through things with people. That's why I'm still here talking.
I once again invite you to show me these biographies. I think you're assuming they exist. I'm skeptical. I think that issue is as simple as that. 76.104.78.147 (talk) 22:50, 10 May 2008 (UTC) Erechtheus (talk) 22:53, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
It appears that you still have not fully digested WP:NNC. As I said in the NYPS talk page at the very beginning of the discussion there, whether or not you feel like doing a couple minutes of Google searching to verify the existence of the secondary sources indicated by the content of an article has no bearing on whether or not it establishes notability.

You have seen with your own eyes, through the links I handed you on a silver platter, that the NYPS published a medical journal and that its journal is included in the collections of medical libraries, just as anyone approaching the original article in good faith would expect of a 200 year old medical society. You have personally viewed the 1894 Google Books copy of the Proceedings through a link I went and got to satisfy you. On I am not a dog's Eric Charnov article you have seen the content and citations added after you twisted his arm with your speedy deletion nomination (you're seriously going to maintain you were justified in bypassing the normal deletion process?) that prove that, surprise, surprise, a person identified as a science theorist by the faculty and administration of a state university has made notable contributions to scientific theory. (Wanna attempt to come up with some argument that a person being granted the title of "Professor of Ecological Theory" by a state university community doesn't indicate he's probably a notable science theorist? Go ahead. Try me.) You also know that, again ever-so-surprisingly, the Shrady content constituting the biography of someone who died in 1908 was in the public domain and that a few minutes of thought or due-diligence research would at least have turned up enough evidence to indicate that the normal deletion process was appropriate.

So you personally know that the notability-establishing facts in the first two articles were completely valid at the points when you attempted speedy deletion of the Eric Charnov article and while you were insisting on adding {{notability}} to the NYPS article, and you personally know that trying to get the Shrady article speedy deleted was a complete and utter fumble on your part, not to mention the dazzling array of fairness and impartiality issues that exist in that last case even without getting involved in Wikipedia policy or procedure.

So for anyone impartially examining this situation and making it to the current point in our conversation there is no question whatsoever that you fighting with me about these things now, making specious notability arguments and demanding biography links from me, in some sort of effort to retroactively justify actions that I hope even you can admit were mistakes, is a clear act of bad faith. Regardless of whether someone believes the original actions were taken in bad faith, riding on me about this, pulling things like the "all secondary biographical sources are resumes" crap, trying to portray notability appraisal of an all-content-cited article as a "guessing game", or stating or implying that you're doing any of this stuff purely for the good of Wikipedia is an unmitigated crock of shit you're throwing out in a vain and cavilous attempt to retroactively justify your actions.

This is not a matter of inclusionism or deletionism. This is a matter of you not bothering to read policies, not bothering to read articles or do due diligence before you edit them, and working your ego on others via Wikipedia policies and processes. (That's what it is at the least, if I'm totally and completely wrong in my arguments and evidence of most of the bad faith motives.)

If you're going to go around tagging every one-sentence or two-sentence article with {{notability}}, guess what - a bot could do your "job". That's what your "patrolling" contributions to the project amount to, at least for the NYPS and Charnov articles, equivalent to a bot that also harasses editors, makes specious policy arguments, and tries to get articles speedy deleted. Until you have dealt with some of these personal issues I really think you need to at least limit yourself to only trying to use the normal deletion process, even if it means avoiding working on articles that deserve speedy deletion. (And, like I've said a million times, stop going around telling people to read policies you aren't reading yourself.)

And for the record I will again point out that I at no point said anything about you being an attorney and I did not know you were an attorney until you told me. My condemnation of you as especially at fault for intentionally employing rhetorical legerdemain, for sloppily trying to utilize a biased and elided reading of Wikipedia policy, and for ignoring playground-level principles of fairness and impartiality were based upon the advertised fact that your education includes a doctorate-level study of law. It was not motivated by any moral judgments based upon guesses about what your occupation might be; I would have said the exact same things if I'd been certain I was talking to the Catholic Pope, whom I believe was an author on ecclesiastical legal policy at the Vatican and received a similar education. You aren't compelled to accept this statement of motivations, of course, but again I did not literally say anything about your occupation, only your education, and any such meaning would have needed to be implied rather than explicit.

Let me also say, now that you've pointed me to it, I do think that I am not a dog's reaction to your speedy deletion nomination not only looks uncivil, but was inarticulate and appeared to include baseless allegations, which definitely makes any appearence of incivility unjustified. But I think it's clear that he was reacting to the behaviors that I have now thoroughly documented.

And I'll make one more statement in the hopes that I have persuaded you that at least my criticism of you derives from good faith, so far a concession as I'm willing to make: yes, the things I've said to you and about you have been harsh, perhaps even harsh to the point of incivility. But they have been supported, rational, honest, carefully-made statements, and I believe I have acquitted myself with honor and not done anything that would qualify as slander or libel. Your actions and rhetorical games demand a harsh response, not a response dressed up in the mere appearance of civility that you yourself employ. (And, frankly, I think I would have been justified in being a hell of a lot harsher on the whole than telling you that you shouldn't spuriously cite policy to people and that you should act like an adult. Though being harsher would have undermined my purpose of creating neutral-as-possible documentation of this behavior.)--❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 15:57, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
As to this allegation that my personal judgment comes into play, let me clarify exactly what I believe to be the case there: I don't think my judgment comes into play at all when it is clear that notability has been established. The question is closed at that point. When notability isn't established, it becomes a judgment call. I think most would agree that if the topic is something as notorious as George Washington, notability shouldn't be questioned even if it isn't established. When notability isn't established and it isn't clear, it's a judgment call in my book whether to go with {{importance}} or {{notability}}. It's a judgment call I don't see much of a point obsessing over. I'm not going to go behind changing one of those templates into the other. I think the importance template is a weak template and isn't nearly as effective a notice as the notability one, but I don't think it's worth fighting over or honestly giving it more than a second worth of consideration. The point is that notability isn't established, and everyone should be on notice. That's what a maintenance template is supposed to do. Erechtheus (talk) 22:40, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] back to the issues

  1. I do not agree that "if the content of an article makes the cited statement "the subject of this article is an incorporated business entity in the State of New York, here is the date of incorporation" that pretty unambiguously indicates that there is or was significant coverage in reliable secondary sources in the form of State of NY incorporation documents and incorporation records. " These are exactly examples of primary sources in every sense--the standard academic sense, the WP sense, & I think the legal sense. Such information can only prove existence and not notability, no matter how much of it there is or how reliable it is.
  2. But I also do not agree that showing PW:N is clearcut and depends only on the sources. to take the example of a company. A company can be notable in many ways. For example, if a company is sufficiently large, it is notable. How large this must be is a question for us to decide on the basis of common sense as expressed in consensus. Once we know this, we need a RS to show it--and a primary source such as a financial report can do it, just as can a statement in a reliable magazine. We might also decide--and I think we should--that any company with a NYSE listing is notable. (that is in fact one way of dealing with "size" because they have their own objective standard for that.) Showing that is then enough to0 jhustify an article, no matter how little can be said beyond the bare financials & date of incorporation. Of course, even the smallest company that gets significant national news or magazine coverage for something is notable also--sufficient public interest on is another form of notability. But just another form; it is not the only way. Counting references is only good enough if it's something for which there is no other rational basis. As I see it, it's a reaction to the use of ILIKEEIT, and agreed, it's an improvement over that. But actual importance/popularity/prominence/significance/public interest is what is meant by notability. any of these, by standards which we set by consensus--the limitation is then WP:V. and possibly those parts of WP:NPOT for which there is actual consensus, not just unexamined habit. DGG (talk) 21:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
You make a good point about primary versus secondary sources that I glossed right over. I will also respond to say that I agree this isn't just a matter of source counting. To get past speedy deletion, there needs to be some claim of notability (even if it isn't backed up). To get an article beyond the point of the more skeptical editors questioning notability, there needs to be a claim and some level of proof. Depending on exactly the claim, primary sources may be enough. If the claim is an ordinary one, I'd submit primary sources should be enough. If it's an extraordinary one (first private company to land a rocket on the moon), secondary sources should be required. Erechtheus (talk) 02:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Ah, well I may actually have a misunderstanding of the concept of a "secondary source" in the context of notability, then; I was interpreting it as meaning a source that does not originate from the subject of the article itself, but is from a different entity or person which mentions the subject of the article. This is why I was considering documentation of the NYPS's existence created and held by the state government of New York to be a secondary source.

I was actually considering the Transactions medical journal mentioned above to be a non-secondary source because it was authored by the NYPS itself. The secondary sources which would have bearing on the notability of the NYPS would actually be the other medical journals and papers that cite the NYPS Transactions but that intricacy did not seem worth mentioning before now. (Since at the time Erechtheus's view was that the existence of things like the NYPS Transactions journal could not be validly considered without the presence of article content explicitly referencing it.)

But I think, if I'm parsing it right DGG, you would regard the incorporation documents as independent primary sources for the NYPS?

There is one nitpicking point I feel I must contradict you on, when you say "Of course, even the smallest company that gets significant national news or magazine coverage for something is notable also..." This appears to be in contravention of the passage from WP:N which says

“ ...it takes more than just a short burst of news reports about a single event or topic to constitute evidence of sufficient notability. ”

which to me appears to be an explicit exception to the significant coverage in reliable independent secondary sources criterion in regards to a specific kind of news coverage. (So if it weren't for this explicit exception, I think your statement would be correct.)

I concur with you that rules of thumb like "any company with an NYSE listing is notable" would be appropriate but I don't think it's necessary to regard that as doing away with or bypassing the core sources criterion - it's simply saying that obviously a company listed on the NYSE is going to have received significant coverage in reliable and independent secondary sources.

Also, I think it's worth distinguishing between the English word "notability", which definitely means exactly what you say above, and what I've been calling WP-notability, the practical criteria for objectively establishing notability for the purpose of article inclusion. I don't think that distinction really changes anything, I just use it as shorthand for "yeah, that could be an actual aspect of notability, but it's one that couldn't be objectively demonstrated in any practical way." --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 03:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Forgotten Realms

I still owe you a summary of feedback for the per-project listings; but there's one particular situation with which I would like to bother you right away.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Forgotten Realms is currently inactive. Most of its 61 articles are flagged for notability, and would be clear deletion candidates in my point of view. After some discussion with User:Fw190a8 [1], I am searching for a consistent solution for that project. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Forgotten Realms/Closure for details, and please leave your comment there. This topic seems controversial in many respects, so wide input is requested.

I'm not sure whether this is a special situation or happens more often; let's handle it as a special case for the moment. --B. Wolterding (talk) 09:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested changes to notability template/better categorisation of articles

Discussion at Template_talk:Notability#More specific categorisation?. Paulbrock (talk) 13:19, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Feedback on per-project listings

In the meantime, the next data update for the per-project listings has been uploaded (snapshot of May 24), and on that occasion I would like to give you a summary on the reactions so far.

I received a number of replies on my talk page, most of them positive. Several projects have in fact invested a lot of effort and cleaned up a good part of their backlog, e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games and Wikipedia:WikiProject Equine, just to name some. In other places, there has been less improvement, in particular (understandably) with the largest part of the list, the biographies. Interestingly, some projects have begun to tag a lot of articles for notability, in particular Wikipedia:WikiProject Ireland. (However I presume they will be sorting out those in the near future.)

I have received a special request by Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth: They are currently in the process of merging a lot of articles, and ask us not to nominate them for deletion in the meantime. Since these articles are mostly on the October 2007 backlog, I think that won't be a problem at this time.

Since these listings were in a way quite successful, I have begun to offer per-project listings also for other maintenance categories; see User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings.

Of course, there still remains the problem that about half of the articles are not assigned to any project. But still, at least for the more remote parts of the backlog, adding a project banner can be an option if an article cannot be sorted immediately. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC)