Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 69

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How do GNG and SNG interact? Do both need to be satisfied for notability purposes?

Latest comment: 3 years ago330 comments47 people in discussion

Hi, I'm sure this has probably been asked before, but different editors seem to have different ideas about how to approach GNG and SNG: some believe that both need to be met, while others believe that only one needs to be met. WP:N uses the word "or", but there seems to be a widespread approach that both GNG and SNG need to be made out. I would appreciate some advice on this.

Thanks,

Dflaw4 (talk) 13:14, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

No, you only need to meet the GNG or one of the SNG for the presumption of notability to be met. Ideally, we would like an article that started by showing it is presumed notable by an SNG to move towards showing notability via the GNG but that's not required from the start. --Masem (t) 13:45, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

- ”Not required from the start”... that’s an important caveat. Is there a point in time when passing a SNG “presumption” is no longer considered enough... a point where we EXPECT a topic to pass GNG as well? Blueboar (talk) 14:07, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
  - For all practical purposes, there's no deadline. That said, there are some SNGs that have criteria that are based on the presumption that sourcing will come about because the criteria has been met, typically those involving awards. If several years (probably on the order of 2-5) has passed since that award and the present, and we'd expect it easy to find such sources but not have appeared at all, then that presumption can be challenge. But otherwise, one nearly always needs to ask how easy it is to locate sources for the specific topic; some topics will only meet the SNG for years because the only sources are those local and/or in print, and we don't expect editors to necessary to be able to make the travel/cost efforts to get those. But if the topic should be only easily reported in online media (like anything involving European or NA-ian topics that exist mostly since 2000 or later, post-Internet), then yes, online searches for sources should be sufficient and we can apply these deadlines to expect the SNG to be advanced to an GNG. --Masem (t) 14:19, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
I am referring (mainly) to articles that are up for deletion at AfD. At that point, do both GNG and SNG need to be met, or still only one? Dflaw4 (talk) 14:08, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

IMO: The guidelines say just one needs to be met, but the SNG's all say that they are a guide to presumption of existence of sources. Regarding an article that meets only the SNG, at AFD they might look into it and decide that the suitable sources don't exist. Regarding an article that only meets WP:GNG, IMO it's pretty clear that that is enough. But there is a lot of fuzziness in the system that gives latitude in either direction to the community at AFD. North8000 (talk) 14:18, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

This is why I asked my question above... to my mind, A LOT depends on how old the article under discussion is, and how hard people have been looking for sources to support it.

A new article that passes a SNG, but does not (yet) pass GNG should not be proposed at AfD - and if proposed should be kept (because there is a presumption that the sources to pass GNG exist).

However... as time passes, if those sources are not added to the article, people begin to question whether the sources actually exist. They begin to wonder whether the presumption was justified. Ie we begin to place a burden on the article writers to “put up or shut up”. Blueboar (talk) 15:49, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Which does depend on where that sourcing should be expected to come from, as noted. If we're talking a 19th century topic that's mostly going to be print and that will take time to go to libraries to research. Even if the article's been on WP for a decade without improvement, I don't expect anyone to be forced to do that. But if we're talking a topic wholly within "Internet time", yeah, that excuse doesn't work. --Masem (t) 16:02, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Meh... I would not be quite that generous (a decade), but your point about print era topics is valid. Also... we need to remember that WP:BEFORE is a thing. If a topic meets an SNG, then there is an expectation that any challengers should also make an effort to locate sources prior to challenging. Blueboar (talk) 18:28, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

The guidelines are clear that only one needs to be passed. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:38, 24 May 2020 (UTC).

The reality is that if it makes it through new page patrol / new article review/curation it will probably never be checked again.North8000 (talk) 10:41, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

People might dial in for how slam-dunk the passing of the SNG was. And some are easier than others. For association football, anybody who played professionally for one day passes. Imagine if this were applied to all professions. On your first day of work at any job you would meet wp:notability.North8000 (talk) 10:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

WP:GNG is a shortcut into the WP:N article and the GNG disambiguation page references the article as Wikipedia's general notability guideline.

WP:SNG is not a shortcut into any article and the SNG disambiguation page makes no reference to any WP guidelines. Neither does WP:N.

Please could somebody create some text (in WP:N) that states what SNG stands for and how it then relates to GNG. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 17:40, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I've added a section on SNGs to explain that and their relationship to the GNG (which should duplicate what the lead already says). --Masem (t) 18:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

That's very helpful, thank you. I think that WP:SNG should redirect to that section, instead of a category. Do others agree? — Toughpigs (talk) 18:33, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Masem Yes, WP:SNG should redirect into WP:N, but also it would be kind if the new section linked to the category. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:55, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I've modified Masem's copy a bit to clarify that weak claims to meeting an SNG may be challenged, and to clarify that the use of SNGs is justified based on the assumption that meeting an SNG is a strong sign that GNG-level coverage either already exists or will soon. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 19:00, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

In this same vein I've made mention of Wikiproject level notability essays making clear they are not guidelines but can provide project-level more-restrictive advice, just as another form of SNG. --Masem (t) 19:29, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Also was bold to modify the redirect/shortcut SNG. --Masem (t) 19:36, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

... and I fixed the category and the SNG disambiguation page — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I added an example of an SNG that is stricter than GNG (WP:NPOL) and made a clarification about deletion (any article can be nominated). This wording is generally okay but I still don't care for SNGs (e.g. people who played in a single game of cricket) that are basically "screw your expectation of multiple sources, screw your significant coverage, this is my favorite topic and we should have articles for anything mentioned in a statistics database!" SNGs can modify the GNG but shouldn't indefinitely override it, and a "presumption" isn't a guarantee. Reywas92^Talk 20:58, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately the issue of the "easy to pass" SNG like some from NSPORT are beyond this scope of what we can do here: usually when challenged, they have been able to prove them out to a degree. --Masem (t) 21:30, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@Reywas92: Your addition doesn't strike me as an accurate summary of WP:POLITICIAN. The argument "that routine campaign coverage of political candidates is not necessarily sufficient for notability" is frequently seen at AfD, but I can't find the support for it in the guideline. In fact, my interpretation of the final sentence of the guideline is that it's saying more or less the opposite, i.e. that routine coverage can be sufficient to satisfy GNG (although it's an odd sentence, since the first point it makes is surely so obvious as to not need stating). I haven't been able to find any relevant discussions at WT:BIO, though perhaps I've missed something. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 22:11, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I see where that comes from, this is not explicit; WP:POLOUTCOMES and with that Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Politicians have fairly consistently shown that individuals who have never held public office and lost an election, and who would not otherwise be notable if not for routine campaign coverage, are still not notable, and perhaps WP:POLITICIAN should be updated to reflect that. As another example WP:GEOLAND says only "legally recognized populated places" are exempt from GNG, but WP:NPLACE suggests virtually any small village someone can claim to be from is; I've been mired in BS related to that lately but the outdated and poorly-worded SNG should be updated to reflect ongoing consensus so it can be more clearly cited. Wikipedia is a mish-mash of changing local consensuses made at different times, giving various interpretations of the rules. So yes, I admit not summarizing that carefully, but this is why I don't want to give too much power to the array of SNGs out there, especially ones like NSPORT that were foisted upon us by the sports fans and those who mass-produce athlete microarticles based only on stats, and apparently "presumption" cannot be disproven. This section should not give too much deference to SNGs supplanting rather than supplementing GNG. Reywas92^Talk 23:31, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry to see that Masem's brief and easily-understood draft has been bloated into three lengthy paragraphs that I personally find difficult to read and make sense of. I think that the desire to be precise and to give examples has inadvertently made this section less useful for the reader. The two examples in the original draft (print works in libraries and people winning Nobel prizes) are easy to understand; the lengthy examples added to the current draft (politicians and military history) have ensnarled the text in unnecessary detail. Is it possible to prune this back to a less-precise but more-readable form? — Toughpigs (talk) 21:59, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I've cut back some of the examples to improve readability. I think that it's important to include some mention of both SNGs that place further limits on establishing notability (like NCORP) and notability essays, but agree that the level of depth provided was not useful to readers. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 22:30, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

We must demand meeting GNG of all articles on living people. Without a bare meeting of GNG the articles are not reliably sourced enough to justify having the articles, and they are thus in violation of our rules on biographies of living people.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:42, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
- Not true at all. Any BLP must met WP:V, and the SNGs that are for BLPs, like WP:NBIO and WP:NSPORT establish criteria that must be at least shown with a WP:V-meeting source. --Masem (t) 13:54, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
It shouldn't be there at all as it's incorrect. Meeting an SNG is a presumption that the GNG will be met. It is not a substitute if it is not. If a subject can be shown not to meet GNG, then even if it meets an SNG, it is ultimately not notable. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:02, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
- Nope, that's not correct. Again, the GNG itself is a presumption of notability. Just having a couple loose sources with some coverage may be enough to start an article but if you cannot expand it beyond that (after doing the necessary BEFORE legwork) we'll still delete/merge it. It has always either/or. --Masem (t) 03:38, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
- This goes back to the point that I think we need to stress that there's this level of having more than enough coverage and sources that a topic being notable is never ever going to be in doubt and no one will ever send the topic to AFD for this purpose (other reasons like WP:NOT notwithstanding), and that the purpose of BOTH the GNG and the SNGs are presumptions of notability that the topic can reach this "unquestionable" level of notable, where the presumption no longer is needed. --Masem (t) 03:42, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
  - Seraphimblade's dogmatic position on the primacy of GNG over the SNGs is neither in accordance with what the SNGs actually say, nor with how they are used in practice. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:43, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
    - It is certainly not. Let's take a look at, for example, WP:BIO: People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards... Note "likely to be". Not "definitely are". It is a presumption, and that is a rebuttable presumption. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:19, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
      - Your objection doesn't make any sense then. We've had this established since pretty much Wikipedia talk:Notability/RFC:compromise that SNGs are alternate routes to presumption of notability. --Masem (t) 04:43, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
        @Seraphimblade: Your reply makes no sense to me. When I wrote that your position is inaccurate, I wrote that it was inaccurate with respect to "the primacy of GNG over the SNGs". But your reply is about something else altogether, the meaning of "likely to be notable". Why are you falsely pretending that I wrote about a different aspect of the notability guidelines than the one I actually wrote about? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:53, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
        To Masem, that now does not make sense to me. In the RfC you linked, "SNGs override GNGs" is listed as "Failed" in the results. (The only proposition which passed is "SNGs can outline sources which establish notability", demonstrating that sourcing is still a requirement.) So far as to David Eppstein, the SNGs assert when the GNG is probably met. That's why they use language that notability is likely or presumed when they are met, not that it is certain or established. It is the same subject—SNGs are there to tell us when there's a high likelihood of a subject meeting GNG, not as an alternative to actually doing it, and the very wording of them shows that. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:58, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
        You are piling up more falsehoods. It is false that all SNGs "assert when the GNG is probably met". —David Eppstein (talk) 05:00, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
        
        The SNGs are to help to determine when a topic can be presumed to be notable. The GNG is help to determine when a topic can be presumed to be notable. Both the GNG and the SNG are rebuttable presumptions. To your other point, as you had said before the SNGs should also be a guide towards a GNG-type quality, which is also what the one B.5 on the RFC states and which is what was stated in the added text "Thus, we allow for the standalone article on the presumption that meeting the SNG criteria will guarantee the existence or creation of enough coverage to meet GNG." --Masem (t) 05:09, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
        I would disagree slightly... the SNGs tell us WHEN we should presume that a topic is notable... GNG tells us HOW to demonstrate that a topic is notable. The SNGs are focused on “benefit of the doubt”... GNG is focused on “proof”. Blueboar (talk) 14:55, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
"Note, however, that . . . in cases where an SNG criterion is met but there is virtually no usable coverage available, the article may still be deleted or merged." This language is quite vague, especially as applied to pre-Internet topics. What is "usable" coverage? This seems to a wholly new and undefined concept. Also, what does "available" mean in the context of a pre-Internet topics where coverage is likely only found in hard copy sources? Cbl62 (talk) 10:49, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
- ”Available” means that you, OR SOMEONE ACTING ON YOUR BEHALF can gain access to the source and read it. Note: It may be difficult (or expensive) to access, but we still consider it available as long as members of the public can access it. (For example, let’s say the source is located in a library in a distant city... it is “available” because you can either 1- travel to that distant library to read it yourself or 2- ask a local volunteer to do so for you). Blueboar (talk) 15:31, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
  - "Available" also considered PAYWALL issues too, so like many scientific/academic topics, as well as some searchable magazine/newspaper archives, etc. Basically, this is what WP:V spells out in terms of access. --Masem (t) 16:25, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Still no answer on what "usable" means in this context. Further, these strike me as wholly-new and utterly vague concepts that ought not be introduced into our core policy documents without a clear consensus and definition developed through a formal process. Cbl62 (talk) 17:52, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I think much of the new language is helpful and unobjectionable. However, I have stricken the phrase about "usable" and "available" sources. These are wholly new and vague concepts being introduced into our core policy document. Such changes should not be made without clear consensus and a formal process. Cbl62 (talk) 17:57, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

In general the SNG's are worded as if they are mere predictors of availability of GNG type sourcing; I.E they give deference to the concept that in the end wp:gng type sourcing is required. So in that respect I think that Seraphimblade is right. But, when the rubber meets the road, statements of general principle generally have no effect and only specific operative statements do. And those basically say that if it meets applicable SNG criteria there is no sourcing requirement.North8000 (talk) 16:45, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

What I would at least say is we reaaaaally want to prefer to see independent third party sources that are secondary in nature to the topic even in a short article, as that better meets the V/NOR/NPOV pillars, but we recognize the SNGs may allow for primary sources (that are reliable and demonstrate the criteria). But because there's no DEADLINE, we can't force that improvement. --Masem (t) 17:01, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

North8000's description of how wp:notability actually works right now

I wrote this for an off-line discussion. Possibly it might be useful, even if only to put a lens to ourselves ?

Currently Wikipedia's notability requirement is an immensely complex kludge that mostly works but which few really understand. And most of the few that do do so instinctively from experience rather than being able to describe it. Here's an outline of what it structurally is and how it works:

The lead of wp:notability is not a summary of the body, it is a separate meta-guideline which defines Wikipedia's requirements for existence as a separate article. In essence it says:

A topic is presumed (with a seldom-noticed link to REBUTTABLE presumption) to merit an article if:

It is not clearly excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy.
It fulfills either the body of the wp:notability guideline (which uses sourcing as it's criteria and is often called "WP:GNG", deliberately not linked) or a relevant listed subject-specific guideline ("SNG")

Rather than being written worded as being authoritative criteria, the guidelines use vaguer, softer wording, in essence saying that they are merely indicators. Operatively, that means saying that they are mere predictors of community wp:notability decisions made at WP:AFD. The operative parts of the SNG's provide alternate ways (besides the sourcing based requirement in the body of wp:notability) to fulfill the wp:notability requirement. The SNG criteria give lip service to sourcing requirements by saying that they are merely predictors of sourcing, but that lip service has no operational effect.

The actual operative wp:notability criteria is community decisions at wp:afd. Wp:afd has a sort of circular relationship with the notability guidelines; the guidelines usually heavily influence results at wp:AFD, but the guidelines are written as if they are merely predictors of what will happen at wp:afd. Wp:notability-related decisions at wp:afd are based on (in decreasing order of importance):

Degree of compliance with either the body of wp:gng OR with an applicable SNG. (but sometimes the degree of compliance with the "un-applicable" of the two is also taken into consideration.)
Past precedence at wp:afd where such bypasses/overrides the written notability guidelines. Most of these exceptions are documented at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes but a few others are unwritten.
Regarding wp:GNG, allowance for proportion of coverage to notability. For example, allowing for the fact that there is likely less coverage of a notable 200 year old historical topic than of a non-notable current local kid's baseball team.
Degree of enclyclopedic-ness of the topic, including degree of compliance with What Wikipedia is not. Note that, beyond the separate test of meeting the low bar of not being clearly excluded by What Wikipedia is not, degree of compliance and degree of enclyclopedic-ness is also an influence on "notability" decisions.
Famous-ness

The most common review of whether or not to nominate an article to wp:afd occurs by the new article review/curation process / new page patrol. They try to follow the same criteria as above.

North8000 (talk) 17:41, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I always go back to the point of WP:POLICY, which says that policies are meant to "describe best practices". Meaning, it shouldn't be a weapon for editors to enforce their ideals, but a description of what most editors agree on. Which, if we're honest with ourselves, we don't quite have a consensus about SNGs.

If I had to make an honest observation of our current practice, it's that WP:N flows from WP:V and WP:NOT. How are we supposed to write verifiable articles without reliable secondary sources? How do you avoid original research if editors are just cherrypicking from primary sources? How do you keep the article neutral and proportional without a collection of reliable third-parties to give a sense of what's important? So much of what Wikipedia is WP:NOT is based on avoiding info dumps from primary sources. The operative word of WP:POLICY be best practices, meaning we prefer to follow guidelines that don't lead to a domino effect of other issues. That's why we always come back to reliable, third party sources.

The GNG is king, but we would have to concede that SNGs are a part of Wikipedia practice. I haven't been the biggest fan of SNGs. I see third party sources as the only workable standard, and these SNGs introduce a lot of ambiguity, which means a lot more arguing. But take a look at, say, WP:NSPORT. If someone is a major league athlete, it's safe to presume that there's some reliable source about them somewhere, if only in some niche or local press. It means that we can probably write a good article about that athlete if we do enough digging, even if we don't have those sources right now. A good SNG flows from editorial expertise of what will eventually be verifiable at a high standard. A bad SNG is just someone carving out an exception so that they don't have to care, and most of those SNGs are rejected (as far as I can tell).

But there's lots of conditions to even the best SNGs. Maybe the presumption turns out to be inaccurate, and those sources don't exist. Or maybe a few sources exist, but nothing to create more than a stub article. Or worse, a few sourced statements, with a WP:COATRACK of original research that you can never seem to reduce. So what happens when an article meets an SNG, but not the GNG? If we describe our best practices honestly, a lot of editors are critical of that, but there's ultimately not a consensus of what to do across the board. That's why we have merge discussions, deletion discussions, and even WP:NOHURRY as we try editing for a while to see if things WP:IMPROVE. Shooterwalker (talk) 19:29, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

If we deprecated all the SNGs, the encyclopaedia would be better for it.—S Marshall T/C 10:47, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I would agree, we have far to many one line stubs because a person did one thing once that enabled them to pass an SNG, and then never did anything again of note.Slatersteven (talk) 10:58, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

So would I. When we brought those in, it was intended to cover obvious common sense situations ("even if you can't immediately find the coverage because it's in print archives, it's reasonable to assume that an Oscar-winning movie has been the subject of significant coverage so we probably ought to cover it", not to make permastubs like Bellingham Graham forever untouchable. ‑ Iridescent 11:52, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Honestly I would agree too, particularly given the issues we've had in the past with how to tell editors that we can't weaken notability to allow articles on underrepresented minorities and yet we have these stubs, principally on athletes that have has minimal careers (like Graham above) (this was a recent issue in wake of the George Floyd stuff). We know the sports projects have typically been able to show these notable when pushed and given time to collect sources, but these stubs cause this type of problem. I would rather see for at least bio-related SNGs that criteria must be based on some type of field/industry merit (winning the Nobel prize, breaking a world's record in a sport event, etc.) as to actually make these focused on why we'd have an article on that person , with the understanding that the GNG with in-depth coverage is still a general criteria for all topics that can be used. The current criteria give us too much a reason for some fields to build out a "who's who" -- which maybe they can with the sourcing they have, but that should not be something allowed via the SNG, but only if the bios can all be shown to meet the GNG. --Masem (t) 13:10, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Do you folks want to test a theory that I have? Despite the current situation of "no change ever really accomplished at Wikipedia" my theory is that if 3-5 experienced editors put together / develop a single really good idea (single, not 3-5 versions of it) and the support it thoroughly, it will get implemented. Wanna try that on this? North8000 (talk) 13:17, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

OK, but maybe all we need is just better implementation, SNG is not a guarantee of notably (even though that is how it is often "abused").Slatersteven (talk) 13:24, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

But many SNG's are used as guarantees of notability. I was threatened with a block for merely pointing out that SNGs aren't guarantees. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:50, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

That's one of the stupidest block threats I've ever seen. Your decline was not unreasonable since the draft, as you saw it, did not have any significant coverage and was not ready for mainspace. Typically in situations like that where a SNG is met but GNG isn't met in the article of an AfC, I will comment instead of accepting or rejecting, since accepting puts a terribly sourced stub into mainspace and declining makes people mad because it would "likely be kept at AfD." That's a separate topic though, but we should put a little bit more of a burden on articles at AfC to demonstrate that they pass the GNG. SportingFlyer T·C 18:51, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

I want to be careful: I don't think we need to get rid of all SNGs, but criteria must be more selective, they should not be aimed to be inclusionary (as I'd argue NSPORT is now) but written more like how NORG is written which is meant more to be exclusionary (within the context of the SNG) where most topics are not going to meet it unless it clearly shows that the organization should have an article but the GNG can't currently be met. We want editors to use the GNG as the primary reason to have an article, but when they have a topic that meets the appropriate merits of an SNG, then that could be used instead. This would not change how notability is used, only how the SNGs are constructed. --Masem (t) 13:28, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Why not make it clear that this is only for the purposes of avoiding CSD or early AFD (in effect "this is a work in progress"). But that after a time all articles must still met GNG?Slatersteven (talk) 13:34, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Because we've always had the lack of DEADLINE factor in play. That would be a significant change in how these have been seen. --Masem (t) 13:41, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

As I indicated in "how it really works" above, my position is "Currently Wikipedia's notability requirement is an immensely complex kludge that mostly works but which few really understand." I'd start with a few tweaks to GNG as described below so that it doesn't need so many exceptions. But either way, if we want to test my theory, that would get decided in a 3-5 person workshop and then presented here. North8000 (talk) 14:35, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Damned cricketer bios. The amount of abuse I copped for suggesting stat dumps and scorecards should be presented as such instead of being dressed up as biographies. Unbelievable. Reyk _YO! 11:26, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

S Marshall, amen. Guy (help!) 14:26, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Step one to getting rid of the SNG's would be to tweak WP:Notability a bit so that it doesn't need so many exceptions. The narrowest fix would be to add something in to say to take into consideration how coverage-heavy the field is or isn't. E.G #3 above. A broader fix would be to add something to the meta-guideline (the lead of wp:notability) to say to take #4 into consideration. We also have to admit that wp:GNG is used as an arbiter of #5, (it's not just to see if there is material to build an article from) and so the prominence and stature of the sources should be taken into consideration. North8000 (talk) 13:01, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure that "weakening" gng to allow more articles to pass it does anything other than reproduce the problems SNG has, but on a wider scale.Slatersteven (talk) 14:39, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Well, the first section of the body of it is very stringent and constantly weakened in real life....I'll bet only about 5% of articles meet it exactly as written. Besides, it could be calibrated so that taking those other items into consideration could work both ways....I.E have it interpreted more stringently. And right now in a few cases we're at the other extreme. If a soccer player played one game professionally, defacto they are automatically exempt from all other wp:notability requirements. North8000 (talk) 16:14, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Which is why SNG, not GNG, is the issue.Slatersteven (talk) 16:18, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I think that if your aim is to move policy in the direction that Masem suggests above — "winning the Nobel prize, breaking a world's record in a sport event, etc." — then it's not likely to succeed. There is room in the encyclopedia for more than just a handful of extraordinary worldwide achievements. Bellingham Graham is a good example of what you're trying to avoid, but if you want to gain traction on a new definition, then it should also have a good understanding of what you want to include. — Toughpigs (talk) 16:26, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Let's be clear: the current state of Bellingham Graham is not what we want notability to be able to support - its an article that gives no special reason why this person was important, and because of the SNG's presumption of notability from NSPORT, it really can't be deleted without a BEFORE, and due to its age, that BEFORE check is going to be hard to do, but for that same reason, its also going to make it difficult or unlikely for anyone that wants to improve it to find the sourcing. I don't know if it is the case that if Graham actually is a notable person, we'd only know if we had all sources available to us.

This is the issue is that we have a lot of these stubby articles that are coming from SNGs that are coming from criteria similar to NSPORT's general "played one pro game" which at the end of the day, has been shown to lead to secondary sourcing, but in the interim, gives a stub that shows no reason why that person is notable. In contrast, if we has a bio from NSPORT because they made a world's record but that's all the article said, AT LEAST we have some sign why that person was important and thus a better reason and justification to keep these. There's still presumed notability - that records may have been shortlived or the like, but importantly, having that stub sit around for years is less a problem than a stub like Graham. This is sorta why I 'm saying that its not that we should get rid of SNGs but have a thorough review and make sure the criteria - if not written to be more exclusionary like NORG is - are based on clear merits so that if a stub article on that topic is created and is not touched for year,s at least its clear for all those years why we have that as a topic, and by showing merit (that is, some type of recognition by a third-party) that's getting to the core of WP:V/NOR that N is meant to support. We would need to figure out what to do with topics that have already passed the SNGs before this pruning (probably need to grandfather them in) if we did this. --Masem (t) 17:02, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

BTW my idea of tweaking GNG could also help this. I don't know the history but my guess at how the bar at the sports SNG got overly low was coverage based. Sports is unusual because the coverage itself is a from of entertainment, so immense amounts of that get produced irrespective of other attributes. If #3 were to come into play, the coverage bar could be a bit higher for covergage-heavy fields. North8000 (talk) 11:15, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

If I thought there was a chance of consensus to deprecate the SNGs, I wouldn't make a small incremental change. I'd make a great big bold RfC that says, "Hey, everyone! Let's deprecate all the SNGs. What do you think?" But there are a lot of people who've spent years adding biographies of those people who played in a professional football match for 8 minutes in 1973, and they will work very hard to stop us from torching all their work, so I'd be looking for significant community support for the idea before I started that.—S Marshall T/C 16:52, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
By the way, I think Bellingham Graham above is a terrible test case. It's a useless permastub, but it's not actually doing much harm to the encyclopedia. Maybe better to think about Donna Strickland, who caused enormous embarrassment to the whole project by being deemed non-notable until she won her Nobel prize. What change to the criteria would have allowed her draft to be accepted, at a point where her research accomplishments were significant enough to win her prize, but before she won the prize and got much greater public-press coverage for those accomplishments? Does having a separate SNG for academics help in making the criteria fit such cases (I think it does and that if her draft had been properly evaluated according to the academic SNG it would have been accepted) or is it really possible to make a one-size-fits-all policy that lets in articles like that but excludes the one-shot pro cricketers and publicity-hound middle managers? —David Eppstein (talk) 17:19, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Or in other words she is notable and we had an article on her when she became notable.Slatersteven (talk) 17:21, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Academics are a unique case, because academics simply do not really talk about themselves but about research, in a broad sense. Arguably, if we going to hold the GNG true across the board, we'd have to eliminate a lot of academics because we don't get independent secondary coverage of them as persons, only their research. This should be taken as a wholly separate problem from what's being discussed above, where SNGs are tending to be more inclusive and leave stubs. --Masem (t) 17:24, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

In my imaginary perfect world, Wikipedia's Notability Rule says something like (1) Things are usually notable if they've got non-trivial coverage in at least two reliable sources that are editorially independent; (2) If they're academics and educators, they're usually notable if they've written at least two reliable sources (being among the principal authors); (3) High schools are usually notable if they have a reasonable number of pupils; and (4) Geographical locations are usually notable if they're marked on a conventional 1:25,000 scale map. And all the SNGs are gone.—S Marshall T/C 17:41, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Imo, it's a terrible proposition that most people who have written at least two reliable sources, whether academics or not, are or should be notable. That would replicate the sport fiasco in academia. Johnbod (talk) 17:48, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I'll openly admit that I think an encyclopaedia should be biased in favour of educators, and mine is probably an outlier view there.—S Marshall T/C 17:50, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

A wholly separate idea I've proposed on Jimbo's talk page would be for the WMF to create a sister project that is a who's who that would allow for a lower threshold of inclusion of any bio but limiting discussion of any person to a paragraph at most, providing wikilinks to project pages for more details, and having some strong moderation checking to prevent self-promotion. This would address multiple issues: coverage of underrepresented minorities that don't quite meet notability guidelines, coverage of academics, and so forth, which would give us fair enough reason to make our notability guidelines stronger, with the understanding that a topic can still go to this sister site if they fail here. We can still provide redirects/search results to that site so that we have integrated results within the wiki. But that requires the WMF to act on that. --Masem (t) 17:58, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I like that idea, especially if we also allow see also links.Slatersteven (talk) 18:03, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

It should , just like I can do a standard wikilink like [[c:COM:FOP]] to point to commons, this new site would just need a simple prefix, like "ww" (who's who), and we could make wikilinks and the like. It should be easy to work in wikidata too and the like. Hardest aspect is respecting the BLP issue and self-promotion. --Masem (t) 18:17, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

The self-promoters want a en.wikipedia article. It's limitation on what gets in is what gives it the commercial value that they seek. BTW, I think that most of the non-notable self promoters get caught at NPP, although NPP can barely keep up (the top 20 reviewers there are handling a staggering 675 articles per day and still falling behind.....tradition says that they even need to source-search / research notability on sourceless articles. ) The gigantic firehose that is getting in is individual sports players that have no coverage, plus every imaginable permutation / commutation of nearly-text-free sports statistics articles. e.g. a list of games and their scores from the XYZ team during the 2019 season, or "list of scores from the 2009 ABC tournament in the XYX country" North8000 (talk) 20:16, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that if we had this who's who website, where there would not be a implied need to have articles on en.wiki because there's a weaker barrier for inclusion on this who's who, we could drastically strengthen the SNGs for bios to avoid, for example, the sports firehouse. We'd need SNG criteria that are basically one or two sources away from GNG quality - eg those that represent a recognized merit or accomplishment in the field, otherwise, go fill them in at the who's who site. But this is a "what if" situation, this site does not exist at all yet. --Masem (t) 23:09, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

You are right of course. I should have noted that because my response was more of a sidebar. North8000 (talk) 11:02, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

We shouldn't let reviewing the SNG's depend on whether this site is created or not. The reality is that the bar for presumed notability of many SNG's, especially with regards to sports, is currently set for too low resulting in the creation of many article on subject that are in reality not notable at all. And when they are AFD'd, they are almost always kept on the basis of "passes its SNG" even though they don't even prove notability by themselves at all. I hate to do so, but I have to state that the AFD reviewers pay a significant negative role in this as well. For to many AFD's are closed without the actual arguments being actually reviewed. It's clear that this abuse of SNG's needs to be finally dealt with.T v x1 12:38, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

To Tvx1 point, I think we're nailing down the issue is that we've gotten to a case where some of the SNG criteria allow articles to be created on simple facts but that do not show merit, and because we have a non-negotiable principle of no DEADLINE and the general BEFORE "requirement" before you can take it to AFD, these articles can sit there forever. And yet to people who are trying to create articles on underrepresented minorities, the fact they can't get their articles in while these sit around is an afront to them (This doesn't mean that even if we magically dealt with all these problematic SNG and the articles they created, those attempts at articles on minorities would be let in, but it would at least seem a bit more fair; this is still separately where a who's who site would help resolve that problem). Hence the logical step - but would require a couple RFC steps - would be to review all SNGs and strip out all criteria that can lead to these problematic articles where if the only sources added were used to show how that criteria was met, we'd be left with an article that did not tell us why that topic was important - that is, leaving only criteria that are strictly based on third-party's recognition and merit (awards, accomplishments, etc.), allowing the GNG to be used for all other cases. Then we'd need to figure out how grandfather existing cases - do we allow them, do we delete them?

Otherwise, the solution is that we have to throw some DEADLINE out and say that if you base the creation of an article on a SNG, you have X months or years to at least show GNG-style coverage for it, but I feel this is a more controversial though straightforward. It's not dealing with the heart of the problem in terms of getting editors that work in the SNG areas to think and plan ahead for article creation. --Masem (t) 13:09, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I've been at NPP for a few months. I looked at about 2,000 new articles and did reviews on about 500. Regarding articles the get through NPP but are probably not wp:notable and which will be perma-stubs or perma "stats only" articles, there are only a few numerically large areas:

Sports players, teams, tournaments, series's
"Derived topic" text free articles on wp:notable sports topics E.G. a "summary" (list of games and scores) of the XYZ team's games in the ABC country during the 2011 season. BTW the "XYZ" team can be truly wp:notable. Or the stats-only "summary" of ABC country's participation in the 2012 XYZ tournament
Tiny "inhabited places" (towns etc.) BTW I'd argue for keeping theses based on them being very enclyclopedic
"derived topic" articles on wp:notable TV shows. E.G "summary" (list-only of all of the results) of the 2012 season of the XYZ singing competition show. A stats-only article about the participation of people from ABC country in the 2013 season of the ABC singing competition show.

Also, while there is not a current huge flow of new ones, another numercically huge one of perma-stubs is articles on obscure plant and animal species. BTW I'd argue for keeping theses based on them being very enclyclopedic.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:06, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

In the long past I know we've established that WP does also function as a gazetteer so that any government-recognized named place with residents is eligible for a standalone article, notability not required, or how its been argued is that there will be a history of that place that can be obtained at worst from local sources.

And I've argued before that I think we should have articles on all of the taxological levels down to a certain point (not to Species, that's too fine) by default but when you get to the lower levels these need to show notability as given there's millions of species on earth...

Taking the two case combined of yearly performances, the sports team and the singing competition, there are ways these can be notable, discussing their reception, any major changes in the year, etc. However, editors tend to start these with the stats and don't build out the other parts that are required to make them notable. These do not fall into any SNG and assuming they are CURRENTYEAR type events, where internet searches should be reasonsable, they should be flagged for failing notability and PROD or prepped for deletion as to get editors off their butts and complete the article, assuming the sources can.

What these sorta tell me is that we may also need separately a case book of common NPP articles that NPP patrols should be aware of as check pass/fail checks. eg: "If this is an article about sports team XYZ in year YYYY, does it have any section about the reception/reaction to the team's performance? does it have any section about the team's structure and changes for the year compared to the past? If not, you should consider failing this." --Masem (t) 14:21, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Good ideas. I think that all of the "derived topics" articles need a little extra guidance. For example, say that they need a source that acknowledges that specific topic and provides some non-stats coverage within weeks of creating the article. North8000 (talk) 15:46, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I think "WP:GNG" is the core of Notability, I believe this is a good idea. «Iias!:,,.:usbkI» 19:54, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I think that WP:GNG should be the ultimate factor regarding notability, though I do feel that SNGs can and do play a very significant role in helping editors to determine notability. I feel a move to clarify notability would be useful for all, but feel SNGs should exist supplementary to GNG, rather than removing them altogether. I would support the proposal to have a new sister project which would deal with all of the eternal athlete biography stubs, but this is hypothetical at the moment since it does not exist. However, I feel that examples such as Bellingham Graham are edge cases that will clearly never be encyclopaedic, and the majority of sports biographies have sufficient sources to pass GNG, but contain just a line of text since that's about as much as the creator could be bothered with. This may be controversial to a lot of you (especially since most of you don't seem to be very keen on sport), but I don't see it as an inherently bad thing that there are so many stub biographies about sport as a result of the SNGs, as they still provide a useful function to people visiting the site, and even if you don't see these stub articles as useful, they are not harming anyone. As far as I'm concerned, the problem is not that there is too much coverage of sport (or indeed anything else included based on these SNGs) but there is too little coverage of everything else, and that rather than removing things in some areas sine there is far more depth in these than in others, it is better to leave them, and let the rest of Wikipedia catch up. As a result, I feel that having GNG as the primary indicator of notability, with SNGs supplementary to (but never overruling) GNG and existing for every WikiProject, would be beneficial as it would combine the clarity of having a single notability guideline with the more subject-specific guidelines, which are useful given that a few lines of text are never going to resolve everything. Though, frankly, notability could be summarised as: "if the sources exist, so should the article." SFletcher06 (talk) 23:01, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

This discussion seems to reflect a serious anti-sports bias on the part of several editors. As someone who edits primarily in the sports field, I obviously disagree with this bias. Some sports get lots of coverage. Others sports don't. The same is true with some types of business, film, music, politics, etc. That's life. WP:GNG judges all topics equally based on whether they receive significant coverage in multiple, reliable, independent sources. By judging all topics according to the same standard, we avoid subjective, values-based arguments over what topics are more or less important/worthy. IMO any effort to insert subjectivity into our notability standards (for example, by imposing higher standards on topics that are considered less worthy by those who regularly participate in discussions here) would be a huge mistake. Cbl62 (talk) 23:36, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree we're getting way too far into the topics I like/topics I don't like here. An article must meet GNG. SNGs are useful shortcuts to "we can have an article on this," especially for new users. However, if something meets an SNG but fails GNG, it should be deleted at AfD. The optics are that we keep too many sports articles, but I don't think this is the case at all - sports gets tons of GNG-qualifying coverage, and the SNGs actually help keep cruft out - if you don't qualify for WP:NFOOTY, we look closely at the WP:GNG, in my experience. The one area which remains unclear is where a person passes a SNG but we can't tell if GNG is passed (typically articles where the coverage would be found in pre-internet, non-English-language sources) and we usually err on the side of keeping in those instances. I will admit there are instances where we need to figure out what to do - I just reviewed an article that was under-sourced on the 1939 New York University football team, since it was likely to be kept at AfD even though it was terrible. We also need to expand the number of people involved at NPP: I've just done a very short shift as a result of reading this. SportingFlyer T·C 22:10, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

For example, 1992–93 Iowa State Cyclones men's basketball team (found at NPP) is not an acceptable article for mainspace based on its current sourcing. What to do? Separate discussion since this isn't SNG related, but helping to prove my point above. SportingFlyer T·C 22:12, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Add +1 vote for this degenerating into "topics I like/topics I don't like." I would very much relish hearing the objective criteria, for instance, detailing how the smallest of geographical locations are "very encyclopedic" and sports stubs are not. I am no fonder of "playing 5 minutes in a top-flight pro league in 1887 makes you notable" than the next editor, but if you're going to enshrine the GNG as the sole determinant of notability, then academics who do not meet it are gone, and high schools that do not meet it are gone, and geographical locations that do not meet it are gone (however much they might appear on a map somewhere). And so on. Period. I'd sign off on that proposal. Ravenswing 23:40, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I mostly agree, and I participate in a lot of geography AfDs, and strictly interpreting the WP:GNG would actually be terrible for many dots on the map in areas of the world where coverage is difficult or in non-English sources. SNGs are actually very useful in encouraging articles from outside the English speaking world. I generally agree in terms of high schools and especially agree in terms of academics (though I would exempt some types of either non-independent or non-secondary coverage for academic notability.) SportingFlyer T·C 01:26, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't have an anti-sports bias, I just think that the sports SNG a far lower bar than other SNGs. For various areas the SNG criteria is essentially "did it for a living for at least one day". Imagine if that was the SNG criteria for other professions. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:42, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Well, fair enough: let's put forth the precise equivalent. For example, for academics: having held down a named professorial chair (for the aforementioned one day) at a university that happened to be on the US News and World Report Top 100 list at the time.

Because, of course, that athlete didn't remotely do it "for a living for at least one day." S/he did it for a living long and proficiently enough to get into the top-flight. Now I certainly have some large problems with the various sports SNGs (among others, the farcical presumption that playing a single top-flight game is presumptively notable where playing a thousand minor-league matches is not). But given the far greater importance culture places on sport over academia (or geography, or education), let's not imagine that there's any set of objective notability criteria that will even the field. Ravenswing 04:16, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Well the SNG's are the requirements for de facto bypassinng WP:GNG not purporting to be an overall criteria for wp:notability.North8000 (talk) 14:58, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I can absolutely confirm that in the sports world, if you pass a WP:SNG but fail the WP:GNG, you will get deleted. They are not a bypass, they are designed to make it easier to predict which articles will pass WP:GNG. SportingFlyer T·C 16:59, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

I have just been notified of this discussion through my watchlist and hope that I can just add one observation from my own experience with AfDs in relation to GNG. For many years on Wikipedia I have fought running battles with editors who believe that all political parties automatically meet GNG and SNG alongside our policies on organisations. Most recently I have either run, or supported, successful AfDs removing political parties which do not meet notability guidelines. However, the vagueness of the policy and the (incorrect) assumption that a political party has a form of automatic notability does make it difficult to mount a counter-argument. You should be able to see from my recent contributions and related links how serious I am when it comes to this little corner of the project. I know that "things you made up in the classroom" is still around as a WP:NOT regulation, only this doesn't quite work when an editor is convinced that notability is automatic and ever-lasting, while I am trying to argue that references to a political party standing for election only proves *existence* rather than proving *importance*. I hope that we can find a way to bolster notability guidelines so the political party equivalent of "did something for a living for at least one day" (namely, "came last with 100 votes in a single election and was never heard of again") does not give them a free pass to an ever-lasting article. doktorb _words^deeds 06:08, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

One of the aspects that I think that WP:N is missing or does not stress well enough that a few of the recent comments bring up is that the GNG itself is a presumption of notability and not final. We expect an article that just meets the GNG to still add more reliable sources - principally secondary, independent and with indepth coverage but with some additional primary support as needed - to meet a hard-to-define bar where true notability is established and we can drop the presumption - that is, the topic has proven itself to have been notable in the real world and thus here on WP would never be subject to deletion due to notability (other reasons like BLP, NOT, etc. still may qualify though). EG: topics like World War II, Carl Sagan, Eiffel Tower, etc. are all clearly notable topics and way beyond this line. I dare not try to even define this line that distinguishing a topic that no longer has to worry about "presumed notability" beyond that it is far more than just the few sources that the GNG suggest.
A problem is that we do not push on this point in WP:N hard enough. Editors think getting to the GNG is good enough and that's it. That's fine to keep an article and per DEADLINE and BEFORE stuff (discussed above) it's hard to push on deletion, but we still expect more beyond just meeting the GNG and that's just not a point emphasized in WP:N at all. We want article, if possible, to easily clear this line, but we still want to allow for articles that meet the GNG but fall below this line the time to develop, which is fine.
Now here's where if we think about SNGs in all this, many of the SNG criteria are aimed to show how they could meet the GNG, but they really should be shown how they should meet this notability line that I'm talking about, even if the initial article is going to start with only showing how the SNG is met, then meeting the GNG and staying there for some time as it slowly progresses towards meeting this notability line - which is fine in terms of how the open wiki operates. It's as long as the potential gets there. But this would affect certain criteria like the NSPORTS "played one game". Sure, in the past, this SNG can get to a GNG with relative easy but from that GNG to this notability line is much more difficult for players with minimal playing time, and I would start to argue that that criteria is a poor indicator of getting to this ultimate point. From a practice point of view, this is no different currently that the SNG gets enough work to get to a GNG and then someone finds the GNG can't be improved more and thus nominates it for deletion. But if we started with the goal for SNGs that their criteria should be ultimately to show a clearly notable article, and not one that just meets the GNG, we would resolve a lot of these issues, as well as refine better how notability should be seen but still fit with existing practice. --Masem (t) 14:57, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Masem, your "problem" is that you are probably the most expert person on how this overall works and how to say things to help it work as-is :-) your post shows that you don't see that gap that nowhere is there a definition or even an attempted definition of wp:notability. :-) Both the guidelines and your post say that GNG and SNG are merely indicators, not definers. Your post made it sound like the actual definition (and missing definition) is real-world notability, but I think that we both know that real world notability is very different from wp:notability. I think that (for better or worse) how it currently works and the real standard is the description that I started this sub-thread with. North8000 (talk) 16:53, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I keep playing with an approach in my head that what we're doing here with "WP notability" is trying to gauge "real-world notability" as best we can. If we had infinite access to all sources, print and online and no barriers to that access (language or paywall), and could superhumanly search and read all those all those for a given topic at once, we could make an on-the-spot determination of the real-world notability of a topic objectively. The only effect time would have would be to create new topics , and have new topics become real-world notable; you can't lose real-world notability. But obviously, we can't do that. So "WP notability" is, in practice, a means to try to figure out "real world notability" that recognizes that we don't have immediate and open access to all possible sources, and we are humans and volunteers and it takes time (and money in some cases) to do all that. And that's why we have the GNG and the SNGs as stepping stones to allow articles that haven't clearly shown that real-world notability is there to be created as standalones to give editors time to build them out and the open wiki space to have others help. But that's why the GNG and the SNGs need to be tailors as stepping stones and not final points (hence presumed notability). This is how I try to resolve the conflict between "real world notability" and "wp notability" in my head while keeping to the means that we use in practice of handling "wp notability". It's just to the larger WP editor set, we've tried not to confuse the issue of "real world notability " and "wp notability" because they are difficult, and its sometimes earlier to just say what the practice is than the vision behind it. --Masem (t) 14:27, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Masem: Well, your depiction of real-world notability is more sourcing/coverage-based than the meaning in the outside world. But in doing so I think that you exactly described how Wikipedia notability actually works......a blend of real-world notability and a sourcing/coverage-based metric. Plus lowering the bar a bit on highly enclyclopedic topics. I think that it mostly works although only few can figure out how it actually works.North8000 (talk) 16:26, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, yes, its very abstract (I'm thinking like a scientist/engineer with it) - I know it works and can resolve how to argue most notability conflicts, but its hard to explain simply and clearly, in contrast to just saying "here's what we do in practice". --Masem (t) 16:54, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Masem:I wrote the "here's what we do in practice" only as a starting point and/or "helper". If we wanted to tidy this whole thing up we'd incorporate it (actual current practice) into the guideline.North8000 (talk) 14:02, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

I think that the combination of #1, #3, #4 and #5 (probably "with prominence its field" added) which is how it currently works might be a good definition. Maybe I'll make an essay :-) North8000 (talk) 17:00, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I would just like to throw into the mix the option of merging all the one-line stubs in a topic area into a list article of subjects sharing whatever characteristic is presently used to justify the existence of the one-line stub. I would say, in fact, that no article should be a single line, and if it is it should be merged into a list until more is found to say about the subject. BD2412 T 17:06, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
+1 A lot of stand-alone stubs should be redirects to their inclusion in a parent topic/list. Schazjmd (talk) 17:16, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

+2 I've been saying this for ages, lists are great and it serves readers better to put things in context rather than having them click to a new page and find nothing. It seems like common sense that if you can't say more than a sentence or two about the existence of something, it isn't notable and shouldn't have a separate article. Like all those damn Olympic competitor stubs, which provide nothing beyond the mention of their participation in the event page. And all the "unincorporated community" articles I've been working on: even those that aren't fake, there's nothing more to say than "people live here." Or species articles that have no additional information than what can be in the genus or family article. Reywas92^Talk 19:48, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Heck, this is something that's spelled out explicitly both in the pertinent guidelines AND in guidance from folks like Jimbo. But we all know (or should) that no matter what the policies and guidelines say, there are vocal factions that scupper any efforts to enforce them on their hobby horses -- a half-dozen editors or fewer can save pretty much anything in pretty much any deletion discussion. The only way to change that would be to organize a large enough movement to overpower the cliques, a cure worse than the disease. Ravenswing 03:20, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Aside from that you can make that argument both ways (which in fact you dort of do do yourself in the end, I don't quite buy that. Admins are supposed to decide based on guidelines/policies, so they might only "give in" to a "clique opinion" (be it for keeping or deleteing) if that "clique "opinion actually has some merit based on policies or guidelines.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:48, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, indeed, closing admins are supposed to rule on policy over headcount. As a matter of practice, they very rarely do, barring plain vote-stacking or SPAs. In the many hundreds of AfDs in which I've participated, I've seen maybe four that closed against the consensus of established editors, and every single one of those had the losing side take it straightaway to DRV. Ravenswing 14:17, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

English Wikipedia's tradition that guidance is descriptive, and not prescriptive, combined with its guidance on evaluating rough consensus, means that closers often only take into account arguments made by the participants in a discussion. As summarized by one closer, they leave it up to the participants to interpret and apply guidelines. This unfortunately waters down guidelines to a menu of prepackaged arguments from which editors can pick and choose. isaacl (talk) 01:27, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

-1. First of all i'm a bit fuzzy about the "one line notion". One sentence can carry more information than three stences depending on context and structure, so a formal one liners need to be deleted without the specific case, seems somwhere between iffy and nonsensical to me. I'm also not sure sure what is achieved by moving those stubs into list, instead it seems to me that it creates a bunch of additonal problems, linking won't work or be impaired, and there will be similar issues with categorization and wikidata object. Format/style/content rules for list may create conflicts as well as far as format and all the informatio contained in the stub is concerned. Furthermore we still have a usage scenario of a reader following link ending aup at stub (or more general an article needing extension/updates) and then editing it. This secanrio doesn't really work with list either. Another thing missinfg with the list approach is having a talk page specific to one notable object. Considering all that and more I rather have a one liner for a notable topic then it being in a list.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:39, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Where. To. Begin. The interaction of the SNGs and GNG are complex, but generally work in favor of inclusion, which, if we want to keep to our core principles of making Wikipedia a Free repository of the world’s knowledge, is good. Seems to me that a lot of the AfD discussions (other than those bios on garage bands, corporate middle management, and pornstars) center around either the quality of the article ( almost always fixable with WP:HEY) or the relative obscurity of a topic or individual that is, nonetheless, worth including. The idea that we need to trim down or eliminate certain topics or individuals, particularly if they don’t easily Google, is highly problematic. I think what is needed is perhaps a clarification of the notability criteria to clarify worthiness — particularly for historical topics. An individual doesn’t need an obituary in the New York Times to pass GNG, and many people who accomplished amazingly things did not get credit in their lifetimes. As we learn more, we expand our understanding and inclusion. This is not the same as making WP a repository of puff PR pieces on contemporary personalities. That GNG cannot seem to distinguish between a Nobel laureate and a pornstar is the actual problem here. Montanabw^(talk) 17:22, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Our core policies of WP:N and WP:NOR create that problem and it's an intractable one. Unless we're willing to change those policies, we have to live with the discomfort created by the fact that Wikipedia must necessary reflect the larger cultures in which it is based; for all of the benefits that brings, it also includes the many downsides such as coverage of some topics some of us personally don't believe are worthy of that coverage and lack of coverage of some topics that personally believe should be covered. ElKevbo (talk) 19:55, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

On a different note, I wonder if we could be making better use of the Draft space to deal with borderline cases. Instead of deleting or keeping an article that many editors are clear uncomfortable with on grounds of notability, send it to draft space with deadline six months or one year from now when it will return to AfD for another discussion based on what has been changed in the draft. A more substantive change to our common approach would be to change our standard from "it's plausible that this subject is notable" to "notability is demonstrated in the article as it's currently written" with the same option of sending to draft space for some standard period of time to allow editors to find and add sources. I acknowledge the logistical complexities involved in these poorly conceived proposals and the increased burdens they would place on volunteers. ElKevbo (talk) 19:55, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Good idea. This is the work of creating articles vs. just creating titles which some overworked volunteer has to research and prove notability or non-notability on. North8000 (talk) 23:16, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

"Our core policies of WP:N and WP:NOR create that problem and it's an intractable one." Quite. But here's the bottom line: any new dispensation which ditches the GNG in favor of subjective criteria of "worthiness" will be crafted by the loudest, largest faction in favor of their own pet hobby horses. There is no way around that -- even presuming, which I'm not remotely arrogant enough to do, that Nobel laureates are innately more "worthy" than athletes or pornstars. If anyone here feels that Wikipedia's overrun by pop culture now to the detriment of more "worthy" subjects, just wait until the flood gates open. Who's willing to wager that there are more editors working on articles on academics than there are working on pop bands or football players? Ravenswing 17:33, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

So I've only read about 60% of the above, but that some of the complaints are perfectly legitimate. Canning all the SNGs is an absurdly OTT "resolution" method, but I did like the order for consideration in how we identify things for notability. Sports SNG(s) are both the most OTT inclusive (says a staunch inclusionist) but also one of the vaguest for interaction with GNG. Strictly speaking, if you told a few patrollers to AfD any NSPORTS new article not clearly also meeting GNG you could single handedly remove a whole SNG without a discussion. However, others are specifically not just indicators - they either trump GNG within limited remits (NORG) or provide alternatives (NPROF). There's also the de facto rulings of such, one of which is at VPI atm (NPOL, which is universally interpreted stricter than is currently written (at least written without reference to other policies)). Specifying whether each SNG is an estimate of GNG-compliance, or toughens, or loosens, would be worthwhile. It would also be worthwhile to put this de-facto basis into the actual documents as they're meant to be descriptive. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:59, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Possible relationships between GNG and SNG

I see a bunch of handwaving above regarding the relationship between GNG and the various SNGs, but when push comes to shove, you often need to make a firm policy decision at AfD when a subject meets one but not the other. I've listed below all the possible relationships that I can think of between GNG and each SNG:

GNG only. The SNG is at most a defense to speedy deletion or a more detailed version of WP:OUTCOMES, and should be deprecated as a guideline. (Some want to apply this to WP:NSPORT.)
SNG only. A subject, if in scope for the SNG, must meet the SNG, or alternatively must meet GNG using only coverage of the subject's properties/features/activities outside of the SNG's scope. (Some want to apply this to WP:PROF.)
GNG or SNG. A subject needs to meet only one of the two to be considered notable. (This is the current status quo in most cases.)
GNG and SNG. A subject needs to meet both to be considered notable. (WP:EVENT is like this, because otherwise we would be filled with routine news reporting.)
SNG is a more specific version of GNG. The SNG represents a canonical interpretation of GNG (but does not contradict it in any significant way), and supersedes whatever interpretations of GNG editors may come up on the spot at AfD. So in practice this is SNG only, but for a very different reason from the one above. (WP:CORP is like this.)
GNG or SNG when sources may be difficult to find, GNG only otherwise. Perhaps a subject that meets SNG cannot be nominated for deletion in its first year (i.e. if it is nominated, SNG alone is a valid rebuttal), or someone must tag an SNG-compliant article as needing sources to meet GNG and wait a year before they can nominate it for deletion; once nominated at AfD, only GNG will be considered. Alternatively, we could say that any subject which meets SNG does not need to meet GNG if most of its sourcing is likely to have occurred before 2000 (i.e. prior to the Internet age), or is buried behind paywalls (i.e. if all we have is a snippet of 2-3+ paywalled scholarly sources, the burden of proof is on those wishing to delete the article to prove that it does not constitute significant coverage). (These are just my thoughts on how to concretize some of the things people were saying above.)

Different SNGs will probably warrant different relationships with GNG. I welcome any comments and additions. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:49, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

If I could go back in time and change one thing in Wikipedia’s history, it would be the introduction of the phrase “A topic can be presumed to be notable if...” (or variants) to the SNGs.

People constantly misunderstand what a “presumption of notability” actually means. They act as if it means the topic should be “deemed notable” if it meets the criteria. But that wasn’t the original intent.

What we should have said (all those years ago) was: “There is a strong likelihood that the topic will pass GNG if it meets the following criteria...”. That was the original intent, and would have tied the SNGs to GNG in a much more coherent and supportive way. Oh well. Blueboar (talk) 01:35, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

For instance, the first sentence in the sports notability guidelines says, "This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia." The third sentence says, "If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." The second sentence in the first section says, "The guideline on this page provides bright-line guidance to enable editors to determine quickly if a subject is likely to meet the General Notability Guideline." "Likely" is used all over the place. isaacl (talk) 01:55, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Except meeting the GNG is also only a presumption of notability. This is why I've spoken that I think we need to be clear that there's an expect third tier of notability where the notability has clearly been show by a vast number of secondary sources, which is what we'd like all article to get to. The presumption given by both the GNG and the SNG is meant to allow the standalone to be created in hopes that other editors will help to work to improve the article to that third tier and deletion will never be brought into question. "Presumption of notability" is absolutely required as part of the purpose of the notability guidelines. --Masem (t) 02:12, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

The problem with "presumption of notability" in WP:N is that it offers no concrete guideline as to how this presumption should be rebutted. So in practice, any topic which meets GNG without falling into a limited set of exclusions (WP:NOT, WP:BLP1E, etc.) is de facto notable and will be kept at AfD, period. There is nothing I hate more than meaningless words in guidelines. In my view, if any piece of a notability guideline cannot be cited in an AfD to argue for deleting or keeping an article, then it should be removed from the guideline. Case in point: 1) We should either remove the language about "presumption" from GNG to reflect actual practice, or come up with a specific way this presumption can be challenged. 2) As I argued at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 July 13, SNGs should not be called guidelines if they have no weight in an AfD. The use of the "presumption" language at GNG actually weakens its potency on SNGs, because people are conditioned to treat it as a farce. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:07, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

First section in the bullet points explains what the presumption of notability means. We don't say mechanically what that means as that would encourage a raft of AFDs without people making proper checks (doing the BEFORE legwork) but the concept is there. --Masem (t) 13:54, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

And I just looked at that AFD and its review and that flies completely in the face of practice. And this I think points to the issues of SNGs and being written by fans, because that's causes the !votes in such cases to be flipped against policy/guidelines. --Masem (t) 14:00, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

We had to add this in specifically, but it is nearly always the case that it is either the GNG or an appropriate SNG. Separately, we want the SNG's developed so they guide editors towards thinking about the GNG as a goal, but we do not require an SNG to get to the GNG - though of course, failure to any further sourcing beyond meeting the SNG and no other facets of notability will likely lead to deletion due to that presumption. There's only a couple SNG that work differently: NORG because we need to be stricter to avoid self-promotion, and NPROF because of issues that exist with sourcing of academic professionals and thus tends to bypass the GNG for specific reasons. --Masem (t) 02:12, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Before WP:N enjoyed consensus, there were two SNGs, WP:PROF and WP:CORP. All other SNGs should be read as subservient to WP:N, as predictors of whether the topic will meet the WP:GNG, which itself is a mere predictor of whether the article will be kept or deleted at AfD (aka "regrettable presumption". WP:PROF is different in that it details cases that are kept at AfD without strictly meeting the GNG. WP:CORP is consistent with the GNG but is written in firmer tones that should prepare people for stricter source interpretations at AfD for articles that may be read as promotional.

The key point is that the notability guidelines help predict what will happen at AfD, and AfD is not bound by the notability guidelines. Also not the frequently forgotten: failing notability doesn't mean deletion if there is a merge target. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:26, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

If SNGs are merely predictive, then how are they any different from WP:OUTCOMES? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:07, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

There is a lot of overlap, isn't there. I'd say the biggest difference is writing style. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:28, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

OUTCOMES is a case of vicious circle. These are cases where before notable was readily established those were outcomes of deletion discussions, but now most of those should fail notability (GNG or SNG), but unfortunately too many editors call to OUTCOMES as reasons to keep (despite this being a specific argument against keeping these articles), so OUTCOMES keeps self-fulfilling itself. And when OUTCOMES are tried to elevate to SNG, such as the schools one, there's no consensus to make it a SNG, means its whole presence is at conflict across the board. --Masem (t) 03:39, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

The WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES RfC is why I believe there is still a clear difference between OUTCOMES and SNG in how the community views them. If any SNG is entirely unusable at AfD, then we should make it clear and mark it as a mere OUTCOME, not a guideline. If an SNG is only partially usable at AfD, then we should make it clear the conditions under which it is usable (as opposed to when GNG only would apply), and/or remove individual criteria judged to be too loose and leave behind the ones to remain fully usable at AfD. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 12:59, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

SNGs aren't all applied consistently from what I've noticed. For example, WP:NPROF is gospel. If a criteria there is met, it doesn't matter if GNG is. WP:ENTERTAINER is treat as if it doesn't exist. We've seen multiple people meeting this (pornographic actors, YouTube celebrities, etc.) and refused to apply this to them if they don't have the GNG. WP:BASIC is pretty much just a repetition of GNG. For corporations, some !voters like to require both GNG and NCORP to be met. There are other examples. Some SNGs are treat like gospel, others not, some don't even make sense as written, some are applied differently to as written. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on how GNG and SNGs intersect. The whole thing seems like a mess imo, as written, but as applied it somehow 'just seems to work'. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:16, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
- "WP:ENTERTAINER is treat as if it doesn't exist. We've seen multiple people meeting this (pornographic actors, YouTube celebrities, etc.) " -- without seeing examples, I suspect that is more about the sourcing facets. There used to be a notability SNG for porn actors that has since been demoted, and the community has generally taken the stance that the bulk of coverage of the porn industry is based on non-independent sourcing so even when applying some of the qualified NBIO/ENTERTAINMENT metrics, the sourcing doesn't meet par. Same for Youtube personalities - self-published sources aren't going to cut it either. So there's valid reasons that there may appear to be issues but that's consistent with everything else - you still have to verify the criteria of an SNG with good sourcing. NPROF and NCORP are the only two SNG with different relationships to the GNG, the rest, I've seen, are generally consistently held to that at AFD, and more importantly, by the closers of AFDs who are free to ignore the !votes that have the relationship wrong. --Masem (t) 13:51, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  It is usually due to sourcing issues, but some other SNGs are treat as overriding even in the presence of poor sourcing, with no reasonable belief that better sourcing exists. Sports, of course, is another one where the relationship to GNG is somewhat different. Politics is one where the relationship with GNG is inconsistent. But when SNGs are applied differently to one another and in relation to the GNG, each SNG's policy page should at least specify how it relates to the GNG, rather than expect people to just gain an intuitive knowledge by being at AfD for a while. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:21, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  The sports notability guidelines do state the relationship specifically. But deletion participants continue to ignore it, and closers close discussions based on the arguments made by the deletion participants, based on English Wikipedia's guidance on rough consensus, which only refers to policies, and the general principles that guidelines aren't prescriptive and that consensus can change. isaacl (talk) 16:54, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  There is something total f'd up in all that. Guidelines are not as strong as policies but they are supposed to be far stronger than local consensus/AFD !vote consensus. These AFDs should not be happening and whether it is a misunderstanding of editors that weren't as involved with crafting the SNGs (as I know there are those talking here that are that know what we mean), closers that aren't aware of these things or a combination of both, that needs to be course-corrected. Nothing has changed in GNG/SNG writings so this appears to be a lax of enforcement and propagation of misunderstanding. --Masem (t) 19:04, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  The admin whose statement I linked to below knows what the sports notabiity guidelines page says, but feels it's up to the discussion participants to decide how to apply them. I'm not sure if it is the predominant view, but there is a significant number of people who feel the decisions made at articles for deletion define a community consensus on articles suitable for inclusion in English Wikipedia (bottom-up approach versus top-down) and so if there is a discrepancy, the guidelines should be altered to describe what happens there. isaacl (talk) 20:45, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  To pull in the quote I think you're getting too, While WP:ROUGHCONSENSUS asks closers to uphold policies and overrule a local consensus, if necessary, it doesn't mandate that guidelines be enforced if !voters (presumably) apply common sense and ignore them. I agree on the statement when qualified with that bolded part, but that's not what I'm seeing happening here with some of the AFDs being pointed out. The !keep votes are simply applying "but our SNGs!!!!" (which is not a common sense argument) and the closers are appearing to only vote count and not consider the !opposes that are appealing to the actual language and past practice of the guidelines. We have bad practices being put into place that need to be fixed or otherwise an RFC to reestablish where the line should be drawn. --Masem (t) 22:55, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  Recall the statement was in reply to my saying, This allowed the editors who created the sports-specific notability guidelines to reach a consensus, at the time of creation, that the guidelines will act as a supplement to the general notability guideline by providing rules of thumb for presuming the general notability guideline has been met. Closers need to respect the consensus view underlying the sports-specific notability guidelines. The first sentence in the reply was The onus is mostly on the !voters to apply to guidelines "correctly". This response is saying that closers don't have to respect the consensus from the creation of the sports notability guidelines if the discussion participants don't choose to do so. isaacl (talk) 23:30, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  Well that's still with "if they apply common sense". I can't take that as completely ignoring language that has existed at NSPORT and at the GNG and long-established consensus around GNG/SNGs. If we simply allow any consensus based discussion to let !votes override policies and guidelines at any time, that's a recipe for disaster. --Masem (t) 00:01, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  I agree this approach is a bad idea, negating the purpose of establishing guidelines if everyone involved in creating them must continue to show up to discussion after discussion ad infinitum to re-affirm consensus views. (Note this only applies to guidelines; policies are taken into consideration by the guidance on rough consensus.) But I recognize this is happening in at least some cases, and that there is a significant portion of editors who think it is preferable to create guidelines from the bottom-up. isaacl (talk) 00:16, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
The problems with SNGs are that most of them were written by fans of the topic in question and inflicted on the rest of us without discussion. They're invariably so lax that just about anything meets their very low bar. For some reason people keep looking at the words "rebuttable presumption" and reading "permanent and unappealable exemption from sourcing requirements, and an automatic entitlement to a shrine". I'm no fan of bright-line rules (they tend to remove actual human thought and editor discretion from the process, just how SNG promoters like it), but a useful guiding principle is this: if your pet SNG is likely to cause the creation of lots of unexpandable microstubs that verify only that the subject exists, it's likely a bad SNG and needs tightening. Reyk _YO! 10:48, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
I agree with your complaint that many SNGs are too loose. However, my problem with "rebuttable presumption" is this: at the end of the day, there are going to be articles that meet SNG but have not managed to meet GNG at the conclusion of an AfD. If we are to keep such articles, then the implication is that the SNG alone is sufficient and can serve as an alternative to GNG. If we are to delete (merge/redirect) such articles, then the implication is that the SNG has no worth, and is nothing more than a fleshed out WP:OUTCOMES page. (In the latter case I don't see how the SNG deserves to be called an SNG.) Alternatively, there could be conditions under which we would choose either of the results (I threw out some ideas in point 6), but so far none of our SNGs have gone in that direction. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 13:08, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Taken literally, the SNG's all pretty much say that they are merely a predictor of GNG, so on paper that is probably the answer to your question. But that part is completely ignored. The defacto situation is that if meets SNG, GNG/ sourcing requirements are ignored. North8000 (talk) 13:37, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

There doesn't necessarily need to be a conflict here. Maybe it would be enough to say the SNG is sufficient for article creation, but at AfD the general guideline (as well as WP:V) is the test. Reyk _YO! 13:48, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
You'd think but this Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 July 13 AFD/closure review that King of Hearts pointed out shows something got broken here in the process. --Masem (t) 14:13, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, what an absolute crock. We can and should do better. Reyk _YO! 14:18, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I think that the flaw "SNG's written by fans of the topic and the bar gets set too low" may be true of some of them. But I think that on the worst case (sports) there is another factor in play besides fandom. And that is because in that field coverage isn't coverage, it a part of vicarious attendance at / a product produced as a part of producing the activity. And so the coverage to actual notability ratio is out of whack. This is another argument for taking into consideration the ration of coverage to actual notability/encyclopedic.

As my "how it actually works" indicated above, IMO the system sort of works overall, in the usual Wikipedia fuzzy way, but in this case the situation is so complex that few can understand or explain it. Having looked at perhaps 1,500 as NPP I don't think that there is any crisis. If I had to pick the two somewhat-of-a-problem areas, one is the "did it for a living for one day" criteria in various parts of the sports SNG, the other is that we've never learned how to calibrate for "compounded criteria" title articles. Under the latter we have a lot of perma-stats-only sports articles. "List of games played by the XYZ team in the abc league in 2011" and also the same for TV shows. To illustrate what I meant by "compound criteria" here's an imaginary absurd one "List of Survivor episodes aired on the first Tuesday of the month during leap years" North8000 (talk) 13:31, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the sports SNGs are the absolute worst. The obsession with taking match scorecards, inflating them into awful little microstubs without hope of expansion, and calling them biographies is damaging the encyclopedia. In fact, one sports wikiproject I know is hostile to including anything beyond statistics. No actual biographical information is wanted- their derogatory term for article content is "bumf". I actually don't think compound articles are too horrible- they can be a step in the right direction. "List of Herpaderp United players" is better than individual articles on each player in the same way that "List of games played by the XYZ team in the abc league in 2011" is better than a bunch of articles about each of those games. Reyk _YO! 13:59, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Well, c'mon now. It is not, in fact, that sports articles are all "awful little microstubs without hope of expansion" ... given this culture's obsession with sports and the flood of sports information out there, I wager I can take -- for instance -- just about any stub sports article on anyone who's played so much as ten minutes in a top-flight North American league and come up with at least as much biographical information that exists for your average WP:PROF-passing academic with less than a half-hour's work. It's that there's not a whole lot of will to do so, that sports is a particularly fertile field for the Game High Score editor who yearns to make the Top 100 list of article creation, and that there seems to be a deep hostility against sports articles by non-sports-liking Wikipedians. (That being said, I would dearly love to know which sports wikiproject is hostile to non-statistics articles, because if true, they need their chimes rung, badly.) Ravenswing 14:59, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Ravenswing, the problem arises often when you take notability guidelines appropriate to sports and competitions that are big and important today, and extrapolate them back to when those institutions were not yet such a big thing. People forget that that even the first few modern Olympics were comparatively unimportant events. Record keeping was poor, so that it's now even debatable which events were included, and in some cases this has been decided afterwards. So you've got a bunch of athletes about whom nothing is known aside from their name (and sometimes not even their whole name) and that they competed. I think auto-bestowing notability on poorly-attested people is a poor fit and not a good use of WP:NOLY. My opinion is that if the only info available amounts to a couple of cells of an excel spreadsheet, it out to be presented in a list or a table rather than inflated and presented as a biography- because it isn't one. As for your other question, bumfity bumf. Reyk _YO! 15:21, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Reyk Oh, I agree with you there; I've spent years railing against the notion that some bloke who played two innings for the Worcester Ruby Legs in 1888 (and about whom nothing else is known) could be presumptively notable ... especially against the top-flight worshippers who serenely think nothing wrong with giving the finger to players who've toiled for a thousand games in the minor leagues. But there are only two solutions. The first is to enforce the GNG, but we've seen how that plays out at AfD; that's not going to happen. The second is to correct all SNGs to reflect poorer recordkeeping and press coverage in earlier times. However, that's a notion that's horribly subjective and endlessly debatable -- and is a cure far worse than the disease. At what Olympiad would you reckon that presumptive notability kicks in? I wouldn't go near that debate with an asbestos bodysuit. Ravenswing 00:10, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

People constantly lie whenever this is brought up. WP:NOTABILITY clearly states something is notable if it passes either the general notability guidelines or one of the subject specific ones. A scientists is notable for their accomplishments, an author for their works, and so on, even if they didn't do interviews or get coverage for any personal scandals. We are a legitimate encyclopedia, not just coverage of pop culture that the modern media fawns over. Your accomplishments count even if you didn't get two random media sources to comment on you personally. There has never been a requirement to meet both GNG and a SSG, and probably never will be, nor were the SSG created because someone thought coverage might exist to meet the GNG, that not making any sense at all. There are more ways to prove notability other than media coverage. Dream Focus 13:52, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
- This is why I keep on that I think we need to introduce concretely idea of a third or the "desired" tier of notability, that you've provided far more than enough independent, secondary sourcing that you don't need to rely on the presumption of notability anymore, you've proven it out sufficiently. Thus, both the GNG and the SNGs equally are meant to be guidance to get to that, and to that end we presume a topic notable and thus meriting a standalone if it meets the GNG or a related SNG. (with only NPROF and NORG having slightly different considerations due to their purposes, but still with those the end point is to ultimately move past the presumption of notability by having more than sufficient sources). GNG is a source-based presumtion, the SNGs are field-specific merit-based presumptions. Setting it this way would explain the practice of GNGs and SNGs better and make it clear that they are equals. --Masem (t) 14:12, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
It's not that simple. Per this RfC There is clear consensus that no subject-specific notability guideline, including Notability (sports) is a replacement for or supercedes the General Notability Guideline. Arguments must be more refined than simply citing compliance with a subguideline of WP:NSPORTS in the context of an Articles for Deletion discussion.. That alone is probably enough to actually alter the wording of WP:NOTABILITY. Also, point two says articles shouldn't be included if they fall foul of WP:NOT- the critical one here is "indiscriminate collection of information". There is no dispute that the worst articles seemingly permitted by the worst of the SNGs are simply indiscriminate database scrapes and should be excluded on those grounds. Pointing all this out doesn't mean anyone's lying. It just means we're engaging behaviour inclusionists hate even more, possibly more than anything in the Universe: we are thinking. Reyk _YO! 14:15, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
- That discussion was about the sports notability guideline, that what all the people commenting were talking about. There have been many other conversations specifically about the SSG that had different results. A small number of people randomly showing up to give their opinions, means you get different results every time. The Wikipedia Foundation needs to make a ruling, perhaps by allowing every editor with at least a certain number of edits vote on it, then that'd be the end of it. Many people who want to delete certain types of articles and are upset they can't, of course try to dismiss the subject specific guidelines that prevent them from their objective. Dream Focus 14:22, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  - "Many people who want to delete certain types of articles and are upset they can't, of course try to dismiss the subject specific guidelines that prevent them from their objective." I can't say I agree with you much, but this one should be engraved in bronze. Heck, my take on the PORNBIO controversy was that it was a good bit less about flawed criteria than it was that here was this rotten stinking SNG preventing right-thinking editors from wiping out those wicked, wicked porn articles. Ravenswing 15:07, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
- The RfC reaffirmed what has been the consensus view amongst those who discuss the sports notability guidelines since their creation. But as described in the guidance for determining rough consensus, arguments that contradict policy might be discounted, but there is no mention of guidelines. As described by one admin, closers rely on participants to interpret guidelines, rather than introduce their own judgment (this is also influenced by the concepts that guidance is descriptive, not prescriptive, and that consensus can change). So exact wording in guidelines only matters to the extent that discussion participants place weight upon them. isaacl (talk) 16:40, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Your accomplishments count even if you didn't get two random media sources to comment on you personally. How exactly are we going to write about them, whilst meeting the core content policies, if they can't get published by two independent and reliable sources (whether that be media, books, or something else)? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:17, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
By using primary sources. If your academic papers have been published in a respected journal and have been cited a zillion times by other papers (even if not a single one of them constitutes significant coverage), then that's a good indication that your papers are reliable and can be cited to describe your life's work. Many of our articles on academics of marginal notability have little or no biographical information, focusing almost exclusively on their research, which is fine since that's what's encyclopedic about them. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:09, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Subheading for convenience

Just thought I'd share here Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2020_July_20#Franzen_(cyclist)_et_al, a case about people whose names we don't even know but who are "presumed" notable because they were in a single event at the 1900 Olympics. Very clearly SNG vs GNG. Reywas92^Talk 17:02, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

I think we're headed for a sitewide RfC here, and we need to come up with various positions for editors to support or oppose. I feel that one of those positions should be: No SNG shall authorise the existence of any biography of a living person without at least two independent reliable sources.—S Marshall T/C 18:06, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
- If you took out the word "independent" (but left in reliable, of course) I might be willing to support that. There are many instances in which a source can be taken as reliable even when it is not independent (for instance, a published university catalog listing the faculty in a department by rank is a reliable source that those people are employed at that rank in that department); such sources by themselves contribute nothing to GNG-based notability but could nevertheless support other forms of notability such as WP:PROF#C5. I cannot support the wording you wrote, because it presumes that GNG-based notability subsumes all other forms of notability and if we're going to go down that road we might as well eliminate all SNGs altogether and base notability purely on publicity-generation, as we currently do for people without SNGs to provide better guidance. (There's another issue with your wording, though, which is that it doesn't say what the sources are supposed to be sources for. They need to at least be relevant to something specific about the subject of the article, rather than general background.) —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  - I'm sorry. I meant "two sources that are independent of each other", but I didn't express myself clearly enough.—S Marshall T/C 19:51, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
    - Why do we need more than one reliable source to show that someone is a distinguished professor? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:56, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
      - Can you give me an example of a full professor at an accredited university who doesn't have two reliable sources about them?—S Marshall T/C 22:27, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
        Suspect its not so much the "reliable" part but the "independent" part. School publications, professional societies they belong to, etc, would not be independent sourcing. --Masem (t) 22:57, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
- For me the main aim is to stop churning out loads and loads of cookie-cutter microstubs about people and things we know nothing about except that they existed. But bright-line rules are what got us into this untenable situation, and bright-line rules are not going to get us out of it. I suspect the solution will require three things:
  1. More vigilance about which SNGs get adopted. We don't want any more instances of wikiprojects making up something preposterously inclusionistic, sneaking it in unannounced, and relying on inertia to keep it in force.
  2. AfD participants should do more than just intone "Keep- Meets WP:NDERP" or "Delete- fails WP:NBLERP" but instead consider whether that SNG is a good fit for this particular article. The Franzen business is a good example: extrapolating WP:NOLY back to when the Olympics were comparatively obscure leads to absurd results so it's not a good fit in this case.
  3. AfD closers ought to give more consideration to !votes that consider the actual article content, rather than throwing themselves worshipfully at the feet of anyone who just goes "keep- meets NDERP". Credit where it's due, the admin team does seem to have been moving in the right direction here lately. Reyk _YO! 18:59, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  For point (1) it doesn't seem like there's that many SNGs in distinct topics? I've read far more failed SNG proposals. When was the last one added? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:14, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  Well, there are something like 40 subsections of WP:NSPORT corresponding to individual sports. Many are among the worst of the worst "everything is notable" bilge, and many seem to have been added without any sort of discussion at WT:NSPORT. For instance here is where the cricket SNG was added. Note that it says essentially "the wikiproject has decided" and there's no record of any actual discussion on the talk page. Subsequent edits have only made it worse. This is what we'd like to avoid going forward. You should also notice that WP:SPORTCRIT directly says trivial coverage does not contribute to notability, so if any sub-SNG seems to say database scrapes can establish notability, then too bad for the sub-SNG. Reyk _YO! 19:40, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
- Let's not get too hung up on the creation of SNG criteria. That needs to be fixed, but separately. That doesnt' affect the immediate problem that we have editors completely disgarding the clear established relationship of GNG and the SNGs. (in that outside NPROF and NORG, you can meet one or the other, you don't need both, but both are presumed forms of notability). --Masem (t) 19:07, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  Masem, you can meet one or the other, you don't need both, but both are presumed forms of notability forgive my ignorance, but could you clarify for some of us that weren't around back in the SNG crafting days (or maybe just me). With the WP:ENT example I gave above, that clearly fails GNG, but apparently would meet ENT, but you stated due to lack of reliable sourcing it isn't worthy of inclusion. Aren't these two statements in contradiction with each other? Since GNG itself seems like a minimum to write something meeting core content policies (with some exceptions, like professors for which coverage is often about their work rather than them, and you can still source stuff together), I don't get how you can allow "one or the other" and a backdoor past that reliable sourcing requirement for notability and still expect to have an article which meets the core content policies. And I don't get how, if you do use the "one or the other" interpretation, we can justify constantly binning entertainers at AfD. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:22, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  There's still the quality of sourcing; for an SNG like ENT, you still need to meet WP:V, and that's where the lack of third-party or independent sourcing is a problem. To take the PORNBIO, it was obversed that nearly all the coverage of porn actors can from the small subset of sources all with close ties to the porn industry, with self-serving awards and the like. While those sources arguably all could be used as demonstrating ENT, they don't meet WP:V, and if don't meet WP:V, they don't work for meeting ENT, and thus would not be appropriate. (PORNBIO's gone, so that's not an issue anymore). Youtubers are easier to show, as SPSs are generally not valid sources for BLPs in the first place, and there's far too many non-RSes out there that could be used to give anybody with some internet cred an article. In other words, while NBIO/ENT technically may be met by the sources, the sources themselves fail WP policies and thus can't be used, and thus the assertion that ENT is met also fails. -Masem (t) 22:36, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  Masem That part I get, the part I don’t get is, then, what is ENT allowing for that GNG isn’t? Anyone who meets those requirements would almost certainly meet GNG anyway, so what’s the point of ENT? I can only imagine a case of trivial but reliable coverage, ie solely one line about the person, as “X had a million regular fans on Y site” nested in an article about something else, failing GNG but possibly asserting credibility of an ENT claim? But I’ve seen such cases also chucked into the delete pile. Are there even many (any?) real cases at AfD of GNG not being possible but ENT being met, so the article is kept? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:57, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  In my opinion, ENT #2 and #3 are extremely subjective to the point of vacuousness. However, ENT #1 is useful: it is possible for ENT #1 to be met, and for some editors to believe that GNG is not met. If an actor has a major role in multiple notable films, then the significant coverage for those films will likely cover the acting performances of its principal actors. Some could argue "GNG is not met because WP:NOTINHERITED", but ENT #1 will tell them "nope, you're wrong, significant coverage of their acting performance is significant coverage of the actor." -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:05, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  
  Take ENT #2. Lets say there's a CNN article that talks about YouTuber personalities and in passing mentions a given person with a large following. That would be the bare sufficient to pass ENT but obviously not the GNG. But say the same statement was made in someone's blog rather than CNN. That's not a RS, so that statemetn fails the ability to support proving ENT out. --Masem (t) 01:05, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  Thanks for clarifying. So now, let's say we have met ENT #2 by a passing statement in CNN, but that's all we've got. Everything else comes from the Daily Mail or some other nonsense source. How exactly are we going to write an article on this person, who satisfies notability, when the only reliable coverage is a one line statement about their subscriber count, and everything else is garbage? Surely it's not possible to write something that meets our core content policies in this case? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:06, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  That's why the GNG and SNGs like ENT are rebuttable presumptions. In my example, editors will likely expand from the CNN article with bunches of primary sources (social media, etc.) which might give us more than a stub but still doesn't change notability. So if you came along, saw this article, and did a further search to affirm nothing but this CNN gave independent secondary coverage to this person, you would then proceed with nominating it for AFD (noting the lack of secondary sources in your search as we do not let articles rest on primary sources). That would put the onus on those wishing to keep to show any further secondary sourcing or otherwise the article would be deleted. --Masem (t) 14:15, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  
  Can you clarify why you listed NPROF? Under my current understanding of the status quo, it's an either/or situation just like most of the other SNGs (with a bit firmer consensus that GNG never needs to be met if PROF is met). I am aware that some people would rather disallow GNG for people whose RS coverage focuses solely on their academic accomplishments, but that is not how we currently do things. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:28, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  You basically have it: that NPROF does not use an presumption of notability, but simply that if NPROF is met, we presume that academic is notable and you really can't challenge that in the same manner as an NSPORT presumption. I know why we have that (academics are as important as athletes and celebs but rarely get the biographical coverage in any type of RSes), I'm personally not comfortable with that because of the disparate aspect it makes. But as noted above, NPROF is a grandfathered part of notability, so its hard to make it conform to everything else. --Masem (t) 22:40, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  The problem is then, when is it appropriate to challenge a presumption of notability conferred by NSPORT? If the answer is "always", then NSPORT shouldn't even be called a guideline, it belongs on WP:OUTCOMES. If the answer is "never", then we have maximum inclusionism. If the answer is somewhere in between, I would rather it be resolved by clear instructions or conditions (instead of a vote of whoever happens to show up at AfD/DRV, may the louder voices win and to hell with WP:LOCALCONSENSUS). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:24, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  First "when is it appropriate to challenge a presumption of notability conferred by NSPORT" is "when you, the one that seeks deletion, have been able to show to a good degree of confidence that there is no addition sources that can be used to expand the article". This generally means, you must complete BEFORE, but there are other ways of doing this depending. (Eg one case above is the situation where just one surname was used to identify athletes which would make it very difficult to locate more sources). The reason we can't spell this out further is because BEFORE is clearly not an established part of AFD (and even more recently has failed to gain consensus to be a part of it). The best we can say is you can challenge that presumption by showing the lack of further sourcing. --Masem (t) 00:42, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  But BEFORE ought to be done on all AfDs, because 90%+ of AfDs boil down to whether sources can be found; however, there is no way to verify whether BEFORE was actually completed. The basic way any AfD is run is as follows: A nominator sends an article to AfD, and is not required to prove anything at the moment. Those wishing to keep the article may then submit sources that, in their opinion, demonstrate the subject's notability. Once sources are provided along with plausible arguments as to why they constitute significant coverage, those wishing to delete are required to prove that the sources do not constitute significant coverage, and failing to do so will result in a "no consensus" keep by default.
  
  Under your ideal version of NSPORT, can you give one concrete example of a Wikipedia process that would proceed differently based on whether a sportsperson meets NSPORT? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:57, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  Making BEFORE a requirement at AFD is a perennial proposal that has never gained consensus (see [1] for the latest just this month).
  
  If an AFD is placed based on failure to be notable, but the nominator gives no indication they looked for sources at all, then it is fair game to call out the lack of a BEFORE attempt and consider the nomination invalid. However, if the nominator has claimed what and where they searched and came up empty, and that includes places that we'd expect the sources to have been found (print sources from the local area included) we take that claim in good faith that its been done. At that point, the onus becomes on those wishing to keep to prove that further sourcing does exist. At which point then the argument become if those are are sufficient to confer notability.
  
  Because not everyone has the capability of going to seek out local sources from a half-century to a century ago, that what tends to leaves these older NSPORT articles in place - the name's documented in record books but the bio only in local news. --Masem (t) 01:13, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  Let me make sure I get what you're saying. Suppose an 1800s footballer from Glasgow has represented Scotland in one international match against England, a fact which can be verified in online sources. No other information exists online about the footballer, but it is speculated that obscure book sources might contain significant coverage of him. If that's the situation at the end of an AfD, you believe that the article should be deleted if the nominator claims that they went to Glasgow Library and pored over the books and found nothing, but it should be kept if they only claim to have looked online or have made no mention of BEFORE? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:57, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  At face value yes, that's how this is supposed to work. That said, there is an aspect of trustworthiness involved here too. If the nominator is someone known to live in England, I'll likely take their word. If the nominator is an American and made the same claim, well, yeah, that might be a bit of a stretch (I have never seen anyone lie about going and doing a physical before search like this). Now keep in mind, that's to make sure we are starting with a valid nomination. The AFD can still end in a keep if the other users are able to dig up sourcing then. --Masem (t) 04:21, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  I'm a bit uncomfortable putting the fate of an article at the hands of a completely unverifiable claim. COM:FPC has shown us that people are willing to lie and cheat just to get some Internet medals; who knows what they would do to get a topic they didn't like off Wikipedia? In the first case we had a relatively new user pretend to be a UK bird photographer, telling a plausible enough story that people believed it for months. The latter two cases involve highly prolific users (one even an admin) using sockpuppets to vote on their own nominations. So this goes to show you that it's not that hard to pretend to be from somewhere, and a user could be accorded the greatest trust one day and exposed as a fraud the next. What's more, for someone who genuinely does live in the local area of a subject, you can't even catch them lying, because if you actually visit the library they claim to have visited and do find significant coverage there, they can just say whoops, must have missed it during my trip. Because they're not making the statement that there is in fact no local coverage, they're merely saying that they tried really hard and failed to find it. I would not give so much power to the word of one person, who (even if not lying) could be exaggerating their effort spent in locating sources, or be genuinely out of touch with the community on how much effort is needed to satisfy WP:BEFORE. Again, all we have is their word, their opinion. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:27, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  Wikipedia assumes good faith until proven otherwise. Period. We don't work on the assumption that editors are immediately working in bad faith. And even if people were going around faking arguments to delete that never get "caught", we're taking articles here that are still weak in sourcing to begin with (editors would be all over an article with a good number of sources that show some GNG-type coverage). Deletion of these is not a major loss, they can be restored if needed. (I have seen editors fake things to keep articles, like false references, but never the reverse). And besides, how do you expect someone to validate they did a BEFORE? Show airline tickets and travel receipts? This has been the practice, and that's why it is generally very hard to delete anything that's met a SNG like NSPORT because the BEFORE step is difficult to do, but people have done it in the past and successfully deleted SNG-meeting topics that have no further sourcing - typical the case of those athletes with one or two professional games and that was it. That's the presumption of notability working as intended. --Masem (t) 05:37, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  This is basically a version of "innocent until proven guilty". While we generally extend it to our users as part of AGF, we should also extend the same courtesy to our articles, i.e. a mere claim by a user should not change whether an article is notable or not. Again, I believe that AfDs should be closed solely based on concrete information available in the article, AfD, or external sources present in either. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:16, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

It looks like you are operating under the assumption that NSPORT will be equal or broader in inclusiveness compared to GNG, and is a valid first-line defense at AfD against nominators who did not search for sources in all places where one might reasonably expect them. I would actually support the reverse: I would move the vast majority of the line items to an WP:OUTCOMES-style page, and retain only the ones that unquestionably make the subject an important figure in the sport (this is subjective of course, but it's a conversation we'd only need to have once). These pared-down line items, if verified in a reliable source, confer automatic notability independent of GNG. They are intended to be extremely tight and exist mostly so that the next Donna Strickland of Indian cricket doesn't happen. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:27, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Let's step back: there is a strong agreement on this discussion that NSPORT is a major problem in how fast and loose it plays with its criteria. it has become a poorly written SNG because it is trying to carve out for every little case (per sport, etc.) SNGs should be based on a type of merit - the type of things external parties will write about for that topic. Eg winning the Nobel prize, winning a Olympic medal. The criteria "played one game in a pro league" have long been a source of problems that although the various sports have generally been able to show that additional sourcing for a pro player does exist (generally in the form of college level players), it encourages poor quality articles to be created out of databases and simple listings just because the players meet the easy-to-meet SNG criteria. (At one point we had someone mass create >10,000 assc. football or cricket players, I can't remember). This is not the point of the SNGs, they are not inclusion guidelines. They should be far more selective. This doesn't mean you can't have other athletes , they just have to meet the GNG, not any of the SNG. If NSPORT was more this way from the start, we'd have far less problematic articles to begin with.

But we are here now and stuck with a poor NSPORT that even if we revive, we have to detail with grandfathering in probably 100,000+ articles. If we make no changes right now, then as I have said, its near impossible to delete the short stubby articles that just meet the SNG without establishing that BEFORE search (to the point it doesn't make sense to start the AFD for that purpose) because, correctly, you have not properly challenged the presumption of notability NSPORT grants. Which I think as this situation shows, why expansion and changes to SNGs should have broad community, not wikiproject level, consensus to avoid the situation we're in.

I would not confuse OUTCOMES in this. OUTCOMES should be considered topics that do not fall into any notability SNG (unless that is specifically called out) , may have had a attempt to make notability guidelines for (like for schools) and failed, and otherwise would fall under the GNG for considering inclusion, but have gained a type of special status. None of the NSPORT at this time fall under that. If we change NSPORT and need to grandfather things, that might change. --Masem (t) 06:03, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

If we deprecate portions of NSPORT, then some of the criteria we deprecate might still be a useful rule of thumb so it could go in OUTCOMES, but should no longer be accepted as a valid defense at AfD. I don't see what grandfathering accomplishes; if it's not notable, it shouldn't get a pass just because it existed before we changed the SNG. I find speculation about the existence of offline sources unhelpful and BEFORE to be a wholly unenforceable requirement. An article should be kept at AfD if and only if it can be shown to meet either GNG or a revamped SNG (without needing to meet GNG) by the end of the AfD, regardless of the amount of effort !voters on either side made to find sources; in other words, the proof is in the pudding. The only time I'd accept unverified claims is when someone actually adds content from an offline book to an article; we will AGF that the book source actually supports the content added. Unlike online sources, which only need to exist and be judged by a consensus of !voters to constitute significant coverage, offline sources must be actually inserted in the article or there is no way for people to judge whether there is sufficient coverage to write an encyclopedic article using the source. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:32, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

The whole reason WP:ATHLETE was devolved to individual sports in the first place -- which I reiterate for others, because I know you've seen it before -- is simple: one-size-fits-all just doesn't fit sport. There are sports where 14-year-olds not only compete in the highest levels of competition, but have become champions; there are other sports where the very notion is absurd. There are sports where minor league play is highly notable; there are sports where it doesn't exist at all. There are sports where college competition is notable; there are sports where it's not remotely so.

Unfortunately, sports seems to be the whipping boy for All That Is Wrong About WP Notability. Sorry, but I just can't swallow that every geographical place is "notable," no matter how small or insignificant. It sticks in my craw that there's a bridge near my home so insignificant that the locals don't have a name for it, but having dug up a couple government documents for longterm plans to repair it, the claque demanding articles for every structure crossing that river shouted "Aha! Multiple Reliable Sources!!" Hell, I just stumbled across a series of articles on transmission wires across a river, and no one's exercised about that? Eeesh. Ravenswing 11:41, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Well under Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works right now there is a bit of a finger on the scale towards inhabited geographic places because they are more enclyclopedic....though maybe the ham-handed summary is too inclusine. For the bridge and power line articles, the difference is that there is no guideline supporting their retention as there is with nsports. North8000 (talk)

Geographic places are kept not due to notability but because we've also decided that Wikipedia should function as a gazetteer so every government-recognized place gets an article, regardless of notability (though here we assume in time that local sourcing can help establish those farther). Geographic articles like that should not be part our notability discussions because they exist outside the notability structure. --Masem (t) 13:42, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Ultimately, WP:GNG is an extension of WP:V. If significant coverage in independent reliable sources doesn't exist, then how can we write an article about the subject, even if it is subjectively "important"? It is thus not surprising that the main exceptions to the GNG requirement occur in fields where there exist many sources which may not be fully independent but are nonetheless considered reliable or authoritative. For example, named human settlements are a creation of the government, so government statistics are not independent coverage, but it is possible to write a reasonably informative (or at least much more informative than footballer substubs) Rambot-style stub using such sources alone. The same is true for academia, where the procedure for evaluating reliable sources is very different from evaluating news articles; reputation is much more important than independence.

Again, some SNG criteria can be thought of as a variant of GNG, ranging from light modifications (e.g. WP:BASIC) to heavy modifications (e.g. WP:PROF #1). Other SNG criteria essentially say, if it's included on a list published by some respected authority, then it is notable. The list might be census data (for populated places), the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, etc. Because we don't want articles on subjects about which nothing can be said, these SNG should satisfy one of the following two properties: 1) the authoritative list itself contains a summary of each subject's accomplishments or important facts, enough for at least an encyclopedic stub; or 2) entries on the list are believed to be so unquestionably notable that even if someone tried really hard to find sources and came up empty, the presumption is nonetheless that they didn't try hard enough (maybe it's on microfiche and they looked in the wrong cabinet). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:54, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Alright, I'll bite. What makes an otherwise non-notable geographical feature "more encyclopedic" than a fringe athlete? Is there any policy basis for this belief, or is this just WP:ILIKEIT? Ravenswing 01:19, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

WP:5P: "Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." Encyclopedias also have articles on places, so this implies that we are more inclusive on places than a mere "encyclopedia", i.e. there would be no reason to mention almanacs and gazetteers otherwise. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:25, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

That didn't answer the question ... quite aside from that (say) athletes are found in general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs and gazetteers as well. What makes an otherwise non-notable geographical feature "more encyclopedic" than a fringe athlete? Ravenswing 01:31, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

How exactly are athletes found in almanacs and gazetteers? Also, "encyclopedic" is thrown around a lot to mean "suitable for Wikipedia". In light of 5P, it doesn't just mean "of an encyclopedia", but rather "of an encyclopedia, almanac, or gazetteer". -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:41, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Gov't recognized towns and settlements have generally lasted and will last for hundreds of years if not more. Athletes are very much in passing. This starts getting into a wholly separation notion of "encyclopedic concepts" that involve core knowledge areas that, notability be damned, we should have articles in, like every country, high-level principles of government, the chemical elements, the Solar System planetary bodies, each entry in the higher taxonomic ranks, the fundamental religions, key geologic periods, the major wars, and so forth. If one really was to challenge notability on any one of these, it would be easy to find sources, and so the concept of notability works for these, but its really not the right way to see these types of topics, they're principle to why WP exists - to be an encyclopedia. Notability exists to help justify the inclusion of topics atypical of an encyclopedia, like athletes, because there exists (or should exists, based on the presumption) external sourcing to write a fairly comprehensive neutral article on the topic. --Masem (t) 15:17, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. Actually, I don't think being capable of writing a full-length article should be a requirement. IMO the right way to think about it is: in keeping with our goal to be an encyclopedia, we should have articles on everything deemed "important", and then whatever slips through per GNG can also have an article. We can have a substub as long as it verifiably asserts why its subject is important, e.g. "John Doe is an American baseball player who played for the New York Yankees. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945." Or "Jane Doe is a Canadian physicist and Professor of Physics at the University of Toronto. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015." Now, people of such renown are likely to have more coverage, but I would argue that we should have articles on such people even if nothing more is known about them. WP:ANYBIO #3 essentially operates on the lemming principle; basically, we can at the very least copy a (possibly short) public domain article verbatim from the Dictionary of National Biography. If the pros believed that the subject was one of the 50,000 most important people in the world, then we ought to have room for them in our 1.75 million. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:51, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I'd rather not have any doomed Wikipedia:Permastubs. If you can reasonably foresee that you'll never get past that substub status (which won't be the case for any Hall of Famers, but may be true for some very early participants in now-major sporting events), then I think we're better off merging the substubs into lists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

And one of the stigmas that I have no idea why people resist this, is that merging short stubby content into existing notable topics or associated lists that cheap redirects can be used to augment for searching. (eg all non-notable players on a baseball team) Editors seem to hate having this type of content merged and I don't know why. --Masem (t) 22:30, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I've wondered (specifically for athletes) whether the sticking point is the big infobox. I'm sure you can picture the article: two short sentences, plus a long infobox. The sentences are easy to merge, but a list of infoboxes would be ugly, and 99% of editors don't know how to 'translate' the infobox into either more sentences or into an infobox-like template different shape. (Just my guess; I've been wrong many times before, and this could be yet another instance.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

That would make sense for people who are easily grouped into a list, but for those who are not so well-defined we have two choices: keep or delete. And I would rather keep an article on a subject that an external authority, particularly one which is far more respected than Wikipedia, has deemed important. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:21, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Second subheading for convenience

If this is moving towards an RFC, it's good to frame it around a single issue, if not a single question with a few answers. You can try it with a more complex set of questions, but you'll find it produces a lot of discussion without a consensus, with inconsistent engagement. I'm speaking as an editor who wants to engage on this but sees a lot of different issues being brought up. If need be, it can be multiple RFCs, in parallel or serial. Take your time, do it right. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:31, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
- There's clearly a possible RFC around NSPORT, but that doesn't make sense to address before talking about a broader one if only to affirm there is site-wide consensus for at least what WP:N presently asserts: that both the GNG and the SNGs are means are indicators and presumptions of notability for a standalone article, that (outside NPROF and NORG) that you either need to meet the GNG or the appropriate SNG for that presumption, and that that because these are rebuttable presumptions, the presumption can be challenged via consensus discussion for deletion/merge/redirecting. Even though that should be the de facto point by how WP:N is written, reasserting this consensus so that the situations in some of the example AFDs that have outright ignored this part of the guideline don't come up again. This gets to the relationship between GNG/SNG question that was asked above. After re-establishing that, we can then poke the bear of NSPORT and see if the community agrees that is far too broad or not. I know there may be other factors too like being more explicit about challenging the presumption but its better to make sure we're clear that the community still see "presumption of notability" here as the practice. --Masem (t) 18:15, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  - Having a good order of operations will help a lot. That makes sense. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:21, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  - Trying to have a single request for comments for all of the sports notability guidelines at once has never succeeded because the criteria for different sports are at varying levels of discrimination. What has worked is addressing the criteria for a given sport. I strongly suggest anyone seeking changes do so one sport at a time. isaacl (talk) 18:27, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
    - Actually I disagree, as there's two ways to quickly tackle via RFC the issues. The big issue right now at NSPORT is the "One pro game" criteria, and while I am sure there are others in sports specific areas, this is the one that coverage the broadest number and has the largest allowance. One is to have an RFC that SNG criteria should be based on a type of merit, and not simply by a career achievement. The other way would be an RFC specific on that "One pro game" NSPORT criteria. But at this point, that's a few steps down the line to not yet think about. --Masem (t) 18:48, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
      - I know you do (as you proposed having one RfC), but historically speaking, it hasn't worked to-date. There is no single one pro game criterion for all sports as each sport is different. For sports that do have this type of criterion, they have different ways of defining "pro game". Try to deal with all the sports at once, and the editors interested in hockey and baseball will defend the efficacy of their criteria, and the editors interested in association football will defend the widespread coverage of anyone related to the sport. Split it up, and we can deal with the most obvious low-bar criteria for many sports. isaacl (talk) 21:24, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  - The thing is, I don't like the idea of "rebuttable presumption", because the way to "rebut" it is apparently making an unverifiable claim of having "tried" to find reliable sources, per our discussion above. We should tighten up SNGs and make them unrebuttable. GNG (with the usual NOT caveats) is already an unrebuttable presumption, and we should stop pretending that it is just because it says so. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:35, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
    - That can't fly at all even if you shore up the SNGs. If you want to remove "rebuttable presumptions" , then we need to introduce the idea that you should never start an article in mainspace until you have clearly shown the article has more than enough sources that it will never be deleted, which works very much against the principles of the open wiki. In the ideal world that would be great, but we're far too along in Wikipedia's history to change this. So instead because we have no barriers to people creating articles, we need the presumption of notability and the rebuttable presumptions to be able to properly challenge those creations at AFD. Even if you shore up the SNGs to be ones that are about merit (winning awards that will be written about), you still have cases that sometimes there are those that fall through the cracks and don't get further coverage and we still need the rebuttable presumptions. This can't go away as you are arguing without massively disrupting most of WP, which won't happen. --Masem (t) 18:45, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
      - Maybe we have different ideas of what "rebuttable presumption" means. For me: 1) Anyone can create an article in mainspace. 2) Anyone can send an article to AfD. 3) If the article is nominated at AfD due to notability concerns, the "keep" !voters must demonstrate by the conclusion of the AfD that either GNG or a relevant SNG is satisfied using sources in the article or presented at AfD. If a "keep" !voter believes that offline sources may exist but fails to present them, the article may be draftified/userfied to give them more opportunity, but it shouldn't be kept just because the nominator did not claim to have performed BEFORE on offline sources when those are believed likely to exist. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:05, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
        We can't switch the onus on those wanting to keep due to do the legwork on a poor nom. Its why BEFORE stressed the legwork that should go into the nom so that there is a reason to put that onus onto the ones that want to keep it. Otherwise, you'd have flyby AFD nominations that create far too much work to those trying to keep articles. AFDs are not meant as battlegrounds but conversations about improving the articles if at all possible. --Masem (t) 20:20, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
        As I've said again, there is no way to verify whether a nominator actually completed BEFORE. If somebody is nominating hundreds of articles a day, it's obvious that they didn't make even a token effort to comply with BEFORE and they should be sanctioned for disruption. But otherwise, I don't think that there is a significant risk of a flood of indiscriminate AfDs if we admit that BEFORE is unenforceable and should not play a part in the final decision making at AfD. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:37, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
        You are right in the point that BEFORE is unenforcable (its why it is not a required part of the AFD process), but !voters can challenge a nomination that does not show steps a BEFORE check where sources could be expected - eg a turn-of-the-19th century assoc. football player from Scotland where'd we only expect local print sources to go into detail. That can't change either. Again, this goes back to the point that it would have been great if the SNGs stuck to conditions that when met at minimum at least gave us articles closer to meeting the GNG or notability in general, but we don't have that and we have to make due with the excessive amount of stubby articles that will take excessive offline phyiscal work to remove, barring an site-wide agreement that something needs to change. --Masem (t) 20:54, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
        Nobody is nominating "hundreds of articles a day". AFD only gets 100 to 150 articles per day total. I'd be surprised if anyone consistently nominated even a dozen a day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
I have an alternative idea, based roughly on my point 6 above. Keep the SNGs as loose as they are now, with the silly "played 5 minutes of one match" nonsense, etc. Any subject which meets a relevant SNG has an "aura" around it which temporarily exempts it from having to satisfy GNG. If any editor believes that the subject does not satisfy GNG, they may tag it for reference improvement (let's call it GNGPROD), and at the end of one year (or some other period) the article loses its "aura". At AfD, articles which have been tagged GNGPROD for at least a year must meet the GNG (or an explicitly excluded SNG e.g. PROF); articles which have not been tagged GNGPROD for at least a year only need to meet GNG or a relevant SNG. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:28, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Sounds complicated! :-) North8000 (talk) 19:52, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

One year is a long time. Someone could just remove a GNGPROD notice along that period and it seems likely many of these removals might get missed. If you add an edit filter to keep track, well, then we've just created a new area which needs volunteers spending time monitoring and vetting removals. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:41, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

A couple things to keep in mind:

Most of the entire process of reviewing articles for the above is at NPP, with about 30 people handling 95% of the 700 new article per day firehose. Once it gets past NPP, odds are that it's notability will never get looked at again.
With a few exceptions, the giant fuzzy complicated Wikipedia notability system mostly works right now.

My ideas would be:

Tighten up the sports SNG a bit, even if to just take out the "did it for a living for one day" items. And maybe emphasize that stats are not notability-related coverage.
A general shift to thinking that finding GNG type sources is a part of the job of making an article, They are editors, not title-generators. Let the 1,000,0000 editors share that work, not 1,000,000 people generating titles and 30 NPP people doing the source-searching work for the titles they generate. Do this via some subtle changes at AFD and wp:before and elsewhere.
Try to brainstorm to give more notability guidance on "compound derived title" articles.
Then see what happens.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:11, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

By "compound derived title", are you referring to articles like Gendered impact of the COVID-19 pandemic? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:37, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

@King of Hearts: Yes, that would be an example, although maybe not a good example of missing guidance. Because it does have sourcing, the test could be applied of finding sources that cover the topic of the article, as such. I'm thinking more of "The 2011 season of the xyz television program" where the xyz television program is wp:notable, but there are no suitable sources acknowledging the season. Or a stats-only "the 2011 season the the abc curling team" where the abc curling team is wp:notable but it's a stats-only article because there is no suitable overage of the topic. Or "The xyz party in 2011 city council elections in Idaho" Where the party and many of the elections are wp:notable but it's a stats-only article because there is no coverage of the specific topic per se. North8000 (talk) 11:45, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean. I believe that such articles should only need to meet WP:V, not WP:N. They should be thought of as content which is part of the main article, but which is split out for editorial reasons and readability to keep the main article from getting too long. - King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 12:37, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Content splits need to balance the issues of both size and notability, as well as respecting other factors of WP:NOT (which overrides all WP:N factors). Some of the suggested pages North8000 makes, assuming no notability is given, would be failing of WP:NOT#STAT, for example. In other words, notability doesn't need to be modified to handle those pages, they are already inappropriate under other policies. --Masem (t) 13:16, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately our notability guidelines are primarily designed to evaluate entities that exist in the real-world, not WP:NDESC-style topics made up by Wikipedia editors. Of the AfDs on abstract topics that I've seen, they all tend to be very subjective in their interpretation of WP:SIGCOV, WP:SYNTH, etc. However, given that these topics are far from one-size-fits-all, I'm not sure how to go about making an SNG for them. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:02, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

The basic criteria section of the sports notability guideline has the current item: Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion, such as Sports Reference's college football and basketball databases. I know a lot of people at articles for deletion point to routine coverage including stats databases, but they're already considered by the guidance to be insufficient for establishing that English Wikipedia's standards for inclusion have been met. isaacl (talk) 21:30, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Sure thing, just as long as we apply the same razor to academics and geographical features, to take out the "just exist" items, y'know. See, this is one of the disconnects when dealing with sports articles. It isn't simply that X fringe athlete "did it for a living one day." That athlete did it for a living his or her entire professional career -- they didn't just appear out of thin air, put in a game, and disappeared promptly thereafter -- and furthermore did something that in the top-flight only a few hundred people at any given time are good enough to manage. And frankly? I think the "one day" bit is too loose myself. But I also think that "it's encyclopedic" is a poor reason to keep geographical features. I think that the admission/implication by some editors that some of the provisions of WP:PROF are there to confer presumptive notability on academics who'd otherwise not come within a country mile of the GNG is very telling. Own your own hobby horses, people. Ravenswing 01:29, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

The difference is that academics are paid to write reliable sources, which are an exception to our usual secondary source requirement because their accuracy is ensured by the peer review process. Athletes are paid to play sports, so we can only write about them if there are sources on them. Likewise, geographic features are covered in sources created by the government, which may not be secondary but again are considered reliable. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:23, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent. Or accurate. A secondary source is one that provides analysis. When Alice Expert writes an analysis of her scholarly theories, that does not actually help us write an article about Alice Expert. We could use her analysis as a primary source to support a claim that she wrote it (because all sources are primary for something), but your own writings aren't secondary sources about yourself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Local coverage

Something that comes up frequently at AfD is whether local sources count towards meeting the GNG / sourcing-based SNGs. The only place I see it mentioned is WP:AUD, so in theory it applies only to WP:CORP. But I see it being regularly applied to WP:BIO as well even though it's technically not a part of the guideline. Before we discuss its broader application however, here are some ambiguities in the wording of AUD. Does a New York Times article about an NYC business count as local? Does a Monmouth Journal article about a California business count as local? And what is the difference between local and regional? The link to Newspaper#Local or regional is not helpful. There's also disagreement over whether local sources should count at all; some believe that a business with significant coverage in 1 national source and 2 local sources should be deleted on the grounds that it is not covered in multiple independent non-local sources, whereas it is pretty clear to me that AUD implies that it should be kept. What are people's thoughts on AUD and its applicability to non-organizations? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:49, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

We have tried to get a AUD-like to apply generally but this has failed to gain consensus. The only thing that we can really use is that the more local the source the less it could be independent and reliable. --Masem (t) 21:58, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

I do think audience is a good way to frame the issue: the local audience for local papers (be it a small village or the New York Times) has certain expectations for local promotional coverage. This includes things like local sports, high school sports, restaurant reviews, local businesses, and so forth. (Sports journalism in particular has a promotional aspect to it, even when not covering the local team.) It's not easy to quantify in an unambiguous, context-free manner. Some of the guidance tries to use the concept of local and regional papers as a proxy of sorts, but even the New York Times has lots of promotional coverage, in local coverage or its specialist sections. Evaluating the quality of the source requires analyzing the intended audience and their expectations. isaacl (talk) 22:00, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

My feeling is that this local vs nonlocal distinction has very little to do with the main reason for demanding multiple independent reliable sources (verifiability) and is really an excuse to shoehorn a test of importance or significance into a criterion that is designed around coverage rather than significance. As such it works badly both for testing whether the subject actually is significant and for testing whether we have enough coverage to construct an article. It's not in most of the guidelines and it should stay out of them, in favor of something that more clearly fits the purpose. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:01, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

AUD's pretty firm on the subject: "... at least one regional, statewide, provincial, national, or international source is necessary." If local sources were to be debarred entirely, AUD should say so. Granted, I'd fight that notion tooth and claw. This is too subjective; as isaacl correctly states, the New York Times -- a newspaper with world-wide reach and repute -- has a lot of local content that would mean very little to anyone outside the municipal limits of New York City. Ravenswing 01:42, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, if we'd meant to debar local sources entirely, I would have explicitly said so when I wrote AUD. The goal was to make sure that there was more coverage of (especially small and strictly local) businesses and non-profit organizations than just what appears in a small-town newspaper. WhatamIdoing's Gas Station won't be a notable business until someone outside of Lake Wobegon writes about it, and Alice Expert won't be a notable person until someone who isn't her next-door neighbor writes about her.

We accept local newspapers for being reliable, and we trust that they verify their facts. But we also recognize that they are indiscriminate – when there are only 52 other businesses in the whole town, it is very easy for the town's sole newspaper to write a feature on each of them every week – and that they represent a single, and usually predictable, point of view. In practice, you cannot write a neutral article when all the sources come from your neighbor.

On the other side of this, we cannot have fair rules about inclusion in Wikipedia if we set rules that systematically favor people, places, and things in small towns over the equivalent subjects in big cities. One of my relatives lived in a small town, with a tiny newspaper that reported all out-of-town visitors for decades. Most people don't. This means that you could use the newspaper to create a reasonably comprehensive List of people, mostly close relations, who visited residents of Smallville during the 20th century. It would be impossible to do that in a bigger city because the bigger newspapers didn't need to include "Little Alice Expert is staying with her grandmother and aunt this week" just to fill up the space on the page. Wikipedia should not have rules that obviously privilege small-town people, places, and things over equivalent urban-dwelling people, places and things. Requiring one source (not even a great source, just one that exists) that isn't a local newspaper is one thing we've done to level that structural playing field. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

OK, so it appears that under your favored interpretation and original intent behind AUD, the NYT would never be considered a local source, is that correct? As to my second question, if a California business were covered in two local newspapers and a small NJ paper, would it be notable? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:17, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Many national and papers that have to cover a very large areas will have a specific section for local news. At The New York Times, that section is at https://www.nytimes.com/section/nyregion As a quick rule of thumb, if it's in that section, I'd assume that it was local news, and if it's not, I'd assume that it wasn't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, that section isn't quite reliable for determining whether the scope is local for Wikipedia purposes IMO. [2] is pretty obviously a story of national relevance. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:44, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

As I said, we need to analyze who is the intended audience for a given article, and what its expectations are. Is the article covering a subject of enduring interest to a broad audience in a non-promotional manner? In the context of the article, is the audience expecting promotional coverage? (The newspaper section plays a role in this, but isn't necessarily definitive on its own.) isaacl (talk) 23:53, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and yes, if you get significant coverage, etc., in newspapers that are separated by thousands of miles, then yes, that clears AUD easily. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I see the opposite problem—users can't tell the difference between the Weekly Shopper and a major regional paper. Major metropolitan dailies outside London, Sydney, New York and Los Angeles sometimes are classed as "merely local." I see that more often than the "too many small towns" argument. For example, I can recall the Denver Post and the Atlanta Constitution both dismissed as "merely local," (or "merely regional," like it's a bad thing...) which is patently ridiculous. These are not "small towns with 52 businesses." There is a need to understand that, for example, a regional paper may be significant because it is the largest daily in a 500-mile radius, or, like the Salt Lake Tribune, the major paper for an entire state. And if anyone thinks the New York Times isn't a local paper, trust me, I skim it online almost every day, and they cover a fair amount of stuff only of interest to people who live there. Montanabw^(talk) 21:22, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, as I've complained above, there is no official definition of "local" and "regional". One key point of contention is whether the localness of the paper is to be considered in isolation or in relationship to its subject. In the first case, we can create a registry of non-local (i.e. regional or national) sources that are generally accepted for passing AUD, similar to what WP:RSP does for reliability. Note that this assumes that a paper is always either local or non-local regardless of what subject it's covering. In the second case, we could have a rule of thumb like: if the subject is r miles away from the newspaper headquarters, then coverage of the subject in the newspaper is considered non-local if at least 1 million people live in the circle of radius r around news HQ or r is at least 100 miles. I know there are plenty of flaws in this specific plan (e.g. is NYT really local for Midtown but not for Queens?) but it's just a rough sketch of something we could do. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:07, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Defining what a paper is (local vs regional) is far less critical than understanding the context of a topic to both how the paper covers it and the geographic relationship between the paper and the topic. There is no question the NYTimes is an national paper, but it has a restaurant review section and so when it reviews Joe's Diner in the middle of Wall Street, that's a local story (local business, local to the paper). Alternatively, Joe's Diner may have landed a windfall marketing deal to become a nationwide franchise and with that covered in the business section of the NYTimes, and there that becomes a national story (though a local business to the paper, covered in a non-local manner). That's why trying to focus too hard on how to define the newspaper level is a waste of time, its all about the context within the newspaper. You do that line for nearly any level of news source, and its basically when you get to the truly local papers - the ones that rarely carry national and world news - that all of their stories generally fall into being about local topics covered as a local interest by the local paper - acceptable as a reliable source but if the only available sourcing on a topic, likely not to support notability. --Masem (t) 22:22, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

For me, if a restaurant gets reviewed once by the NYT, it could be a fluke. If it's written about by the NYT, Daily News, and New York magazine (regardless of whether people want to apply the subjective label "local interest" to those articles), it is IMO not a coincidence, the restaurant is genuinely important to a region of 8 million people and is notable enough for an article. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:35, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

That's not good, that's a bias we need to work around and what NORG would probably consider a non-starter for notability. Just because a restaurant happens to be in a populated city with multiple papers that we take as RS should not give it an advantage over one is a less populated city with only one paper, for example. --Masem (t) 23:47, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

OTOH, if a restaurant gets reviewed in those three, it's unlikely that those are the only three. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:59, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

At the end of the day, the bigger the city, the more notable things it will contain. (Remember User:Grutness/One street per 50,000 people?) Anyways, if a restaurant in Colorado was really important then the Denver Post, Colorado Springs Gazette, and Boulder Daily Camera would all write about it. They're all located in a state with about 2/3 the population of NYC. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:02, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Masem, I think that defining the newspaper level is helpful on the smaller end, because it lets you reject subjects that are sourced only to obvious small-town newspapers – the ones that not only don't carry much national or world news, but which only occasionally mention anything that happens more than an hour's drive from their front door. But I agree that it's not practical to focus solely on the definition. There is no arbitrary measurement by which you can say that a newspaper with 11,000 subscribers, 5% of whom are more than an hour's drive away from the office, is good but a newspaper with 10,000 subscribers, 20% of whom are farther away, is not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:57, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Sure we can define that, but I would focus on basically, to what degree their heads focus on. Open the NYTimes, the front page is most national headlines, therefore national. Open the Denver Post, its a mix of city, state, and national, so I would still consider it national but be aware about its focus. On the other hand a small town's news paper is going to have a front page filled with town and maybe state headlines, and so that's pretty much local. Trying to do it by population size or geographic area again leads to so many games that could be played, but when you consider the type of content they serve up front , that's a better measure. --Masem (t) 00:22, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Sometimes, though, the nature of the city/town does matter. The same type of news (coverage of a mayoral election) is going to be very different, solely due to the population of the municipality. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:28, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Except that per NPOL, regardless of the city/town distinction we don't cover local elections or mayors. The reason to cover those needs something that is GNG-meeting, which definitely required more beyond the city or town coverage, so we don't need to worry about that distinction. Eg, we cover the mayor of NYC (position and those that have held it) because they play a significant part in US politics frequently. --Masem (t) 00:46, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

NPOL is actually another SNG that needs revamping, because there's no class of people quite as overrepresented in media as politicians. It currently says that "such people can still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline", but GNG does not actually have a geographical restriction, nor can I find anything in the wording of NPOL or GNG that would directly imply that significant coverage in local sources is insufficient. (Yes, non-local coverage is a de facto requirement for politicians at AfD, but because it's not written down anywhere, that's how you get everyone interpreting it differently.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:47, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

There was a discussion recently (last month) and I forget where but it was about NPOL and limiting to what level. But this goes back to the point that our presumptions of notability - not just NORG - have to show more than just "local coverage" or the type of routine coverage that comes from regional or broader coverage of local events. For example, the NYTimes will probably publish the election results of all the NY county elections - that's expected and routine coverage in the wake of an election, and because its local, we should dismiss it as part of what goes into notability. That's also a consideration around routine coverage which notability also dismisses. --Masem (t) 03:15, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Election results are not SIGCOV not because they're local, but because they're mere statistics. Even U.S. House election results would not be considered significant coverage. Collectively they're notable because prose gets written about them in national papers. Insignificant U.S. House elections can come along for the ride since they're just going to be list entries, and list entries only need to be verifiable. But prose written in the NYT about NY county elections should not be considered local; if New York State is not a region, what is? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:14, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

[edit conflict; this was written as a reply to Masem] I think this attitude confuses coverage with significance. GNG, at its heart, is about coverage: do we have enough sourcing, and is that sourcing reliable enough, to write an article about this subject? More-local periodicals such as a small-town alternative-weekly could presumably be less reliable and more problematic from that point of view. But what you're describing with the NYTimes is not that. The NYTimes is as reliable (maybe more so) for its local coverage as for its international coverage. What you want is a marker of significance: does this subject go beyond the routine? And you're using publicity to measure significance: has this subject been publicized more than we would routinely expect? Publicity can indeed be correlated with significance but it's also very easily gamed by those who want to seem more significant than they are. If what you really want to measure is significance, that's what most of the SNGs do, pretty well: is this athlete at the top level of their sport? Is this artist in the collection of multiple major museums? Etc. We can argue that some of the sports SNGs might set the bar too low, but I think that also misses the point. The problem athletes are not problems because they played at too low a level of the sport, but rather because they have no coverage. We'd be better off more explicitly distinguishing coverage from significance, and demanding both of our articles: this 19th-century cricketer meets the standard of significance for 19th-century cricket players, but unfortunately we just can't find enough reliable sourcing to say anything nontrivial about him. This local microbrewery has reliable in-depth sourcing for the kind of beers it makes and the kind of food it serves, in the form of local newspaper reviews, but unfortunately it hasn't won any medals at the state fair, been noted in passing in stories from far-away newspapers about what to do when you're in town, or otherwise passed the standard for what it takes for a microbrewery to distinguish itself from the other five in the same town, so it has the coverage but not the significance. Etc. Keep coverage and significance separate instead of compromising both requirements by pretending they're the same. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:25, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Following up on your point, I actually have an idea for a comprehensive revamp of our SNG structure. A subject is notable if doesn't fail NOT and: 1) it meets an SNG listed as an explicit alternative (e.g. PROF); 2) it meets an SNG and the GNG, with local and non-local sources accepted equally so long as they are reliable; or 3) it meets GNG and AUD. GNG is in reference to the final state of the sourcing in the article or presented at AfD at the conclusion of AfD; I do not support Masem's belief that whether GNG is optional or mandatory for a subject that passes SNG depends on whether the nominator claims to have performed BEFORE, and in fact view it as inferior to always making GNG optional or always making GNG mandatory. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:47, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

You do not have the relationship right between notability, the GNG and the SNGs right still. Both the GNG and the SNGs (excluding NPROF) are rebuttable presumptions of notability. They are supposed to be conditions that suggest more sources with significant coverage can be found or will be created in the future to expand to an article where there is no question of the topic's notability. If one challenges the presumption of notability given by an SNG, it should be shown that sources exist (or don't exist) to carry it to that level where notability will not be questioned -- not just to the GNG level, because that still leaves it as presumed notability, though we do accept that as an interim point. This is why we strongly state (and affirmed from past RFCs), that a topic has to meet either the GNG or the appropriate SNG (with the exception of NPROF and NORG due to being purposely strictly than the GNG). Again, why I think we need to talk in this page about this level of notability where you've successfully reached a point that there no longer is a need to presume the topic's notable, that's the ideal goal that we like topics to get to but know likely impossible/impractical for that.

To add about the issue on BEFORE and concern on local sources. Local sources can confer significant coverage. The usual argument here is when we are talking athletes we're not talking local town newspapers but just the "local" regional and national papers, which probably will be in print and for some of the less wealthy countries like India, will not have online versions yet. But local "local newspapers" work too. That said, when a topic that has only passed the GNG or an SNG is challenged, and the only sourcing for the topic as presented already on WP is local sources, and the claim is that local sources are going to be necessary to expand it out and that's where a BEFORE check is needed, then something is a amiss as well. Ideally, the GNG/SNG-meeting sourcing should show that there is more than local relevance already as to make sense why a local BEFORE check would likely give more. For a hypothetical, say a local band gets an article or two in the city's free music magazine, and someone creates an article on the band with that + album info from the band's website (as a self-published group), arguing the GNG is met. But here, it should be rather easy to check national music publications for any mention of this band, and failing that, the only other source would be to go to the local city and review more print sources there, but there that's just going to add more local sources to the pile. That's not helpful overall and thus, you may not have to do that type of BEFORE work to start the AFD. So it really all depends on the situation. But keep in mind the point made in the section below: the only current topic area that AUD has consensus to apply to is NORG. You can attempt to start an AFD and claim "This appears to only appeal to a local audience" but that's not a policy argument you can hang your hat on; you can argue to it but others may simply go "notability doesn't judge based on audience" to dismiss that. --Masem (t) 14:07, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

You keep going on about how the GNG is rebuttable, but that does not reflect reality at AfD, which does not require there to be "no question of the topic's notability" no matter how many times you nominate the article for deletion. If a subject meets GNG and is not excluded from inclusion, it will be kept at AfD. We may be speaking on different wavelengths: you're thinking about what an "ideal" encyclopedic article would look like, whereas all I care about is how to !vote in and close AfD discussions. I still don't understand why you've listed NPROF as an exception to "a topic has to meet either the GNG or the appropriate SNG" - isn't this statement true for NPROF? In fact, it's more true for NPROF than other SNGs, where occasionally AfDs end in "delete" because the !voters have decided that meeting the SNG is insufficient. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:04, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

The GNG *is* rebuttable, but to show that, you definitely have to show that there are no further sources beyond what already have been in the article or identified in previous AFDs/talk page and thus no further room for expansion, and so if that requires more than a Google search, that's a difficult task. However, as we move into topics that are more recent and thus where all of their search results are expected to be online this becomes a more valid proposition, and this is actually common in many contemporary works (like television episodes and video games) where a topic was presented with maybe a couple sources that just barely met the GNG and it was easy to show nothing else existed and thus merging or deletion was appropriate. So yes, it works. Just not easily when the sources require more footwork than a trip to Google. --Masem (t) 13:27, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I have never seen an article be deleted at AfD where the "delete" side conceded that the article met GNG, but nonetheless argued that it was not notable enough for an article. If the sourcing is on the fence, they will always be arguing that it in fact does not meet GNG and picking apart the sources to demonstrate why they are not significant/reliable/independent, rather than making some WP:VAGUEWAVE to "rebuttable presumption". As for merging, that's an editorial decision. As I've indicated in my comment about House elections below, for editorial reasons sometimes we will have separate articles even when each individual topic is not necessarily notable, and sometimes we will merge everything together even when each individual topic is notable (e.g. Wright brothers). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the GNG can be one's individual assessment before they create an article as to justify why they created a standalone, or why others might argue to keep it. However, most of the cases that I talk about are basically the same as subjective evaluations of how well the GNG has been meet, which again shows why it is a rebuttable presumption. But I think some of this comes down to how subjective the GNG is as well. --Masem (t) 17:43, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Also, I think notability requirements should be relaxed sometimes for consistency reasons (tying it back to North8000's inquiry on "compound derived title" articles). For example, the U.S. House elections every two years is obviously notable enough for its own article. It is also encyclopedic to include a list of election results for every district. It is impractical and unwieldy to fit 435 detailed entries all on one page, even though that is probably where most of the notability lies; instead we break it out by state. In doing so, we'll end up with articles that receive tons of coverage, like 2018 United States House of Representatives elections in California, and articles that probably are technically non-notable, like 2018 United States House of Representatives election in Delaware. If we were to be strict about it, we'd have some election results listed on the main 2018 United States House of Representatives elections page and others broken out into states, which would be a mess and cause great inconvenience and unpredictability for our readers. That's why I view "compound derived title" articles are primarily an organizational tool, instead of requiring each page to be individually notable. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:26, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I wonder also how long things should stay notable. There is, for example: 1983_United_States_Senate_special_election_in_Washington. This is just one election, two candidates, 37 years ago. Also, there are separate articles for senate primaries for each state, senate general election for each state, house primaries, house general, and then state senate and state house. Should there be a suggestion (maybe not rule) on how long such elections should be notable? Maybe a summary article with just the results, but not all the details after some years? Gah4 (talk) 19:27, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

The thing with politics is that elections, candidates, etc. will almost certainly meet GNG, so the only question is whether they fail WP:NOTNEWS which is far more subjective than GNG. I think NPOL should be extended to cover anything political, and to specify: 1) certain classes of topics that are notable as long as GNG is met, avoiding arguments over NOT; and 2) conditions under which a topic is considered to have received enduring coverage, even if it doesn't meet any of the classes of topics specified in our new NPOL. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:40, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

That is the best Notability-related idea I have heard in some time. Newimpartial (talk) 20:01, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

This will 'never happen. Notability is a guideline, NOT is a policy, and cannot be overriden by guidelines. There is already a problem with local politics (elections or politicans) getting covers on WP that is of debate, we are not going to extend it. --Masem (t) 20:25, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

As I understand it, the point would not be to "override NOT", but to provide some practical guidance/consensus on the boundaries of NOT, just as other guidelines provide guidance on the boundaries of NOT and other policies (and I'm looking at NORG as I say this). Newimpartial (talk) 20:31, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

" 1) certain classes of topics that are notable as long as GNG is met, avoiding arguments over NOT;" is asking to override NOT. NORG is written to keep articles on organization compliant with NOT. --Masem (t) 20:35, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Respectfully, I disagree with your interpretation, Masem. I don't think NOT had a pre-existing boundary and NORG was written to be compliant with it. Rather, the effective boundary of NOT for organizations was defined in drawing up the current NORG. The NPOL proposal above would "avoid arguments over NOT" by offering a community definition of the boundary, "avoiding arguments" in exactly the same way as NORG. Newimpartial (talk) 20:56, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

+1 A belief I have long maintained (and it really should just be common sense) is that specific guidelines override mere possible interpretations of general guidelines and policies. If you believe the specific guideline runs counter to policy and want your view of policy to prevail, then propose for the guideline to be modified or removed. As long as the specific guideline is in place, "policy" is not a valid argument to ignore plain wording which specifies a particular course of action in a situation. I've frequently run into this before, whether it's on notability guidelines or naming conventions. For example, one might argue that WP:MUSICSERIES violates WP:CONCISE and claim that because WP:AT is a policy, it overrides WP:NCMUSIC. However, that is not the case; NCMUSIC is instead a canonical interpretation of policy, the result of an RfC which discussed the merits of all aspects of the policy before coming to one conclusion to be applied across all similar situations. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:46, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Guidelines absolutely do not or are not overriding policy; they are meant to be means to help interpret policy for specific needs (notability is a guideline that mitigates the intersection of V, NOT, NOR and NPOV for example), and it is important to emphasis that policies and guidelines are meant to be descriptive of practice, not prescriptive unless there is a need to change to change that.

The current version of NORG was a process only started in 2018 (See Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)/Archive 18 and subsequent through around 20). Not one change was made to NOT as a result: the reason NORG was made with it being stronger is an example where we had to be more prescriptive because NOT has language that we are not a local business, we are not here to promote business, and a whole bunch of other things, but due to paid editing and SPAs trying to use WP for free advertising, they were creating "GNG-compliant" articles on businesses that really weren't GNG complaint and instead were simply just adverts. A line had to be drawn - one that existed in NOT already but with stressing that the GNG was no longer sufficient but elements like AUD and other sourcing requirements at minimum.

Unfortunately, while NORG's revamp was done with proper attention and detail to solve a problem, what happens at NSPORT and the other SNGs (and like here with NPOL) is that editors get upset that they see some of there articles being deleted and go to the SNG to suggest they make criteria for these topics to include, and suddenly they get incldued. Notability guidelines are not inclusion guidelines (as per NOT, WP:IINFO wer're not an indiscriminate collection of information), they are not supposed to be permissive but more restrictive to what is included are topics that approach those that have been covered in reliable sources and likely possible to generate an encyclopedic article quality. Not to document for documenting's sake.

So if we are talking about NPOL, we do have to recognize that the community has rejected the inclusion of elections and elected leaders to the town level, whereas obviously national elections are included. We know that if this was simply judged by the GNG, all elections/politicans at all levels would meet the GNG but we know that's not sufficient for the community. So NPOL is going likely going to be bound be the combination for NOT#IINFO, NOT#STAT, and NOT#NEWS, in addition to concerns about NOT#ADVOCACY (covering each candidate and giving them "encyclopedic coverage" of their position can be seen that way , I've seen argued). And thus NPOL is going to have an AUD-type pricniple as well, at which point does coverage of an election go from something that's simply rote and too local/small that we should not cover per NOT, to something that has long-term impact as nearly all national elections do? (I have no idea where that point is, just that there is a point somewhere to be definied). This is thus how to view NPOL not overriding or changing any policy but setting and interpreting where the bounds need to sit in terms of elections. ( Furthermore I will point out that we have sister wikiprojects that are just better places for plain flat election results, like Wikinews or Wikisource, which can be used irrespective of the scope of the election). --Masem (t) 05:57, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

It's always interesting to see how other people remember what's happened. I think the key moment in NORG's development was in 2010, when AUD's precursor (which was written by me in 2008) acquired the word necessary as a result of this discussion. That necessity has been challenged off and on, but twelve years later, it's still there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

With all due respect, the above contains a good deal of argumentation that simply asserts, or even assumes, the result it intends to prove. Newimpartial (talk) 10:55, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

@Masem: I think you are missing my point, which is that NORG was created as a community-accepted synthesis of GNG, NOT, and other policies. Because NORG specifies in great detail the requirements for an organization to be notable, it is no longer a valid argument to say "notable because GNG" if it clearly fails NORG or "non-notable because NOT" if it clearly meets NORG; it reduces the subjectivity in applying GNG/NOT in a specific domain. I'm merely suggesting to do the same for politics articles. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:29, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

My point though is that NORG was specifically written to assure NOT was adhered to, and happens to be stronger than the GNG (as it eliminates certain types of sources per AUD). The way you have been speaking to an NPOL suggesting to bypass NOT (as its come out in the phrasing , to me) is of concern. You certainly can talk of an NPOL that starts with NOT as the point of what you can't have, and consider if you need to be stronger than then GNG in some cases (an equivalent of AUD for NPOL), or have specific merit criteria for an SNG in others. We just know that allow for all local elections/elected officials to a town/city level is not appropriate per NOT, which at one point you've suggested is where you'd want go. --Masem (t) 14:39, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Apologies if I gave you that impression. My point is simply that NOT is subjective, and if we can as a community draw a few lines in the sand regarding what NOT means in the context of politics and politicians, we can spend more time debating the merits of the case rather than the meaning of policy. Very often we see primary candidates in the US nominated for deletion, and unfortunately in these cases there is little choice for the closer but to count the votes (assuming both sides are properly argued), or to cast a WP:SUPERVOTE favoring one policy over another. If we had more specific criteria on whether a political topic complies with NOT, AfDs would be more productive. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:56, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

* Comment I, and I assume many others, would strenuously resist the extension of AUD outside of its intended place within NCORP. I have seen enough CORP-creep already outside of the domain where these restrictions above and beyond the GNG actually make some sense, and it would take a project-wide consensus IMO to extend them any further. Newimpartial (talk) 11:59, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

- If there was going to be a strong application of local-sourcing applied more generally, it would definitely be only after an RFC for site-wide concensus; its just that there's places where outside NORG it seems obviously needed where it may be unnecessary to be applied elsewhere. --Masem (t) 13:44, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

IMO the reason it is so hard to bring any of these to conclusion is that NOWHERE is there a definition of what this "notability" thing is. If, as we usually imply in discussions, it was simply trying to make sure that there is sufficient suitable coverage to build an article from, then of course, just local coverage would be fine. Even the SNG's imply that the real definition is at WP:GNG but then GNG just says "I'm a predictor of wp:notability, not a definer of it" , But we all instinctively know that it's more than that......after all, the word "notability" was chosen as it's name. We all instinctively know that there is some element of real world notability by the real world meaning of that term in the intended standard. Most likely the unwritten actual / de facto definition is a weighted combination of the factors listed at Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works right now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by North8000 (talk • contribs) 16:53, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

The ultimate kludge is that consensus doesn't scale up beyond a small group with strong alignment in goals. In the real world, people are generally notable for achieving noteworthy accomplishments, or doing interesting things. Since trying to use consensus to agree on this is impossible, instead we try to substitute the judgement of independent, non-promotional sources. But eventually trying to make decisions by consensus fails in some way or another. We do our best to minimize the impact of the failures: we distribute them to individual article for deletion discussions, and try to discern some patterns. We try to build guidelines that codify practices, but as Clay Shirky has discussed before in his speech "A Group is its own Worst Enemy", when you try to take individual human judgement out of the picture and follow a strict rule-based regime, eventually the rules become too precarious to manage. Trying to find a magic set of definitions that can work with consensus-based decision making is always going to face structural problems. We can try to jam that square peg into the round hole, and it may sort of fit for a bit, but it's a mismatch. isaacl (talk) 19:21, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

This is helpful for me because it points more precisely to what I disagree with. In my view, Notability can not be defined by or indexed to importance, which is implicit in people are generally notable for achieving noteworthy accomplishments, or doing interesting things. I simply don't don't see the relevance of this, since Wikipedia is NOT a paper encyclopedia. Notability really must be understood as the GNG operationalizes it, as independent verifiability. The few necessary exclusions, like amateur sports scores and business directory entries, can be made with relatively uncontroversial applications of WP:NOT, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 19:39, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking of paper encyclopedias when I was talking about real-world notability, but rather what someone might say if asked who they would like to know more about. People generally are interested in people who do something they admire, are impressed by, or find interesting. I didn't mention importance; personally I think why someone thinks something is important is more essential for answering my hypothetical question. I disagree that English Wikipedia's standard of inclusion should be viewed as equivalent to verifiability. Just being in existence doesn't mean a Wikipedia article should exist for it. isaacl (talk) 23:42, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

~~Isaacl~~, about 'NOWHERE is there a definition of what this "notability" thing is', the definition is in the first sentence of this guideline: "notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article." The three-part test is described later in the lead: the subject meets the GNG and/or an SNG; the subject doesn't fail NOT; and editors agree to have the article.

This is, as you note, wildly unsatisfying, because that's not the kind of definition we want. We want our "notability" to mean something (consistent) in the real world. I don't think that it ever will. I think our best hope is to rename this guideline, to something like WP:How to determine whether a subject qualifies for an article at the English Wikipedia, and to stop calling it "notability". WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:01, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

North8000 wrote that comment, not me. Regarding using a different term, I weighed in the last time there was a discussion to rename this guideline. (As I have been doing here, I generally write something like "standards for having an article".) As I said then, I believe what people use to describe the concept is more important than what the page is named, but I recognize that changing the page name is the easiest way to change that. And all the discussions to rename the page have failed to reach a consensus, mainly because people can't agree on a new name, and consensus doesn't scale up a decision-making method. isaacl (talk) 05:39, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm signing his comment for him now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:42, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Percentages are silly but can be useful. IMO the defacto wp:notability standard (the result of the overall kludge) is that wp:notability is a three variable weighted decision, weighted as follows:

60% Per the body of wp:GNG
30% Real world notability, by the real-world meaning of the term. Most of the SNG wording is about this.
10% Degree of encyclopedic-ness of the topic.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:48, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I get what you're saying, but I don't agree. Essentially, I don't agree that the SNG document aspects of "real-world notability"; mostly they deal with edge cases to do with potential verifiability, as far as I can tell, and helpfully document the correct scope of NOTINHERITED, albeit inconsistently.

I would support the idea that encyclopaedicity should be given greater consideration (it already has some), except that for me the key aspect of encyclopaedicity would be "consistency of treatment in spite of inconsistencies in the source material" (at least when it comes to Notability decisions). I certainly value this kind of ENC over "real-world Notability", which I perceive to be mostly a sinkhole of poorly examined prejudices. This is an area where the SNGs have the potential to be helpful, I suppose, if we could be a bit less defensive about them. Newimpartial (talk) 00:01, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Just clarifying, my post was to say what I think that the current standard is, the result of the overall kludge. Although I didn't say so, my opinion is that the overall kludge mostly works. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 10:36, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Second subheading for local coverage

The whole GNG/SNG relationship is very tricky, and everyone seems to have different ideas for it, so I'm going to think a bit longer about it before I jump into RfC planning mode. However, I think the ambiguity in WP:AUD is a much smaller fish to fry, and its due for a revamp. Note that it is still causing confusion e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Georgetown Bagelry. Since my plan is to rewrite AUD anyways, we don't have to stick to merely interpreting its text; I want to get a sense of what the community truly feels. Key questions to ask:

Should a major newspaper which is based around a city be considered local coverage for its immediate area? (For example, The New York Times for NYC and/or the NYC metro area.) If so, how do we determine if such coverage is local: is it solely by the geographic relationship between the paper and its subject (same city, metro area, etc.), by some different objective criteria, or by something more subjective?
Could a small, local newspaper ever count as non-local coverage? (For example, Santa Monica Daily Press for Beaverton, Oregon.) If yes, where is the threshold? (Is the Santa Monica Daily Press considered local for Santa Diego (130 mi)? Santa Barbara (90 mi)? Orange County (50 mi)? etc.)
Should local coverage (as defined in the previous two questions) count at all towards demonstrating notability? (For example, if there is significant coverage in one national paper and two local papers, is that enough?) If yes, what if the non-local coverage focuses solely on one event? (For example, if an organization is covered in national news only in the context of its involvement in an event in which it played a major role, but also received plenty of coverage in local news not related to the event, is that enough?)
(non-binding) Should the scope of WP:AUD be expanded? If so, which types of subjects should it cover other than organizations?

I am not asking for people to opine here. Rather, I would like feedback on my questions and any suggestions for improvement. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:06, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I would not even go to the area of touching on expanding AUD or using local sources towards notability, that's a landmine, at least, not until it is firm what are local and non-local sources. And this is where starting with what NORG has likely already covered may be the starting point because I'm sure they have debated how to handle works like the NYTimes in covering the local corner market. --Masem (t) 04:07, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I think a threshold question that informs the other questions is, "why don't local sources provide notability?" Is it because they're not reliable? They have a conflict of interest? Because local sources are very likely to cover local topics? Because local sources are unlikely to reach a broad audience? Something else? Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 04:13, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I think the original intent was so that your business can't qualify for Wikipedia just by getting covered in your tiny town paper; see Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)/Archive 5#Tiny newspapers. It's surprising that such an important part of WP:NORG was adopted initially without much discussion. It was later tweaked in response to a more comprehensive discussion not unlike the one we're having right now, but nothing approaching a community-wide RfC. It's time to settle the question once and for all. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:38, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

As I said earlier, I don't think this is the right path to go down. The location of the paper sets context but doesn't solely determine what coverage is targeted to a local audience. The article itself has to be analyzed to understand its target audience and its expectations, and the expectations determine the editorial slant of the article. isaacl (talk) 05:14, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Thinking about this more, there's a chicken-or-egg problem in the question here: "What are local sources?" and "Can local sources (presumably on their own) be used to determine notability?" To answer one may require us to know that its answer will be use to feed the other. I don't think we should handle both at the same time, but the RFC can be structed in two parts to say "We're going to ask both questions, but we are going to focus on this one first, and then move onto the second, but we are presenting both so that the context is properly framed." But again, I would still look to NORG's past discussions first to see if they have actually well defined local sources to any degree, as that would take that out of the equation. --Masem (t) 05:18, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

WP:AUD was a mistake and remains an aberration. It should not be extended further. There have been a handful of RfCs to extend its scope, and each has been soundly, and correctly, defeated. My view remains, as outlined above, that hyper-local coverage should not count as heavily in assessing notability and should also be weighed against the depth, frequency, and duration of coverage. But a fixed rule that local coverage can never suffice is misguided. Cbl62 (talk) 04:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Well, people have been de facto applying AUD at AfD to outside areas, especially WP:BIO. Discussion of this point will result in either explicitly extending AUD or explictly rejecting it (giving people something to point to if the issue of local sources is brought up for biographies at AfD). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:56, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
A few years ago, I tried to better understand WP:AUD and could not get very far. In theory, it would be useful to have a handy tool to categorize newspapers as local, regional or national. I was unable to find any discussion in reliable sources of the distinction between local and regional newspapers and the link in the guideline is of zero value. I am 68 years old and have lived in the same regional media market for 48 years. I can sort various Northern California newspapers into "local" or "regional" as I see them based on decades of experience but how can a younger editor new to a media market who did not buy paper newspapers from physical news stands make such distinctions? And even if we could decide that two newspapers were both local and both generally reliable, perhaps one is an award winning publisher of widely praised investigative journalism over decades while the other offers a predictable diet of police blotter/obituary/human interest/business opening/high school sports coverage. Personally, I would accept coverage in paper A over paper B for establishing notability, but that requires human editorial judgement and the recognition that sometimes categorizing things into three neat cubbyholes is not possible, and that we are dealing with a continuum which calls for discretion. That is why the consensus model is so important to the success of this encyclopedia. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:00, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Papers do fall on a continuum, so my intent is not to provide a rigid classification scheme for paper types. However, different people do hold mutually incompatible beliefs about AUD, and it would help to find out where the community stands. For example, to the answer of whether NYT is local for NYC: 1) some people believe that NYT is a major international paper that should never be considered local, because the purpose of AUD is just to weed out small-town papers as the sole determiner of notability; 2) some people believe that NYT should always be considered local for NYC topics to avoid giving special treatment to big cities, and anything that is really important enough should have received coverage in non-NYC papers as well; 3) some people say it depends, but can only give a vague description of how they would make the determination, which makes them susceptible to WP:ILIKEIT/WP:IDONTLIKEIT bias in AfDs. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
In my view, it is simply not possible to make a hard and fast rule that local coverage in the NYT falls into one of the categories 1, 2 or 3 as you described above, King of Hearts. I looked at the NYT's "New York" section of today's paper, and found there in-depth articles about Philadelphia and Greenwich, Connecticut and at least one article about COVID-19 of obvious national significance, at least to me. Other factors must come into play, such as significant, in depth coverage of the topic as opposed to two sentences that may barely scrape by the "passing mention" standard, as well as coverage of the same topic in a variety of other sources. Pure "I like it/I don't like it" commentary is not useful, but there is a certain level of subjectivity involved in exercising editorial judgement, which is OK if it is informed by a good record of creating, evaluating and curating encyclopedic content. In the end, AfD debates are closed when consensus is either reached or not reached, and trying to eliminate subjectivity/editorial judgement is not productive because it is not possible. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:09, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Sure - but AfD participants surely have something better to do than argue over the meaning of "local" vs. "regional". -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:21, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes — they should be evaluating the degree of editorial independence and lack of promotional coverage provided by the article, regardless of the geographical proximity of the reporter. isaacl (talk) 23:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
I don't think that's correct, as what you're referring to is already discussed in other portions of WP:NORG. AUD clearly implies that a business in Paris, Texas, cannot become notable by getting covered in the town paper, regardless of the journalistic quality of the reporting. What is less clear is 1) if a business in Paris, France which is covered solely in Parisian newspapers is notable; 2) if a business in Paris, Texas which is covered in local newspapers as well as newspapers in Paris, Tennessee is notable. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:30, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
As Levivich asks above, the key question is why isn't local coverage considered suitable for meeting English Wikipedia's standards for having an article? I didn't think you were asking for clarifications solely within the context of organizations. Within that scope, there is a reasonable question about the degree of editorial independence and the available organizations to cover for a very small population centre. In cases where there is disagreement on the suitability of a source, rather than relying on some fixed criteria that pre-designates a newspaper into a specific category as a proxy for the underlying issues, we can just discuss the underlying issues. isaacl (talk) 04:46, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
I think a major point of contention is with big-city papers covering their own metro area. Given such a news article (assuming it is not obviously promotional), what I have seen at AfD is that people will tend to !vote based on their philosophical beliefs regarding AUD rather than actual analysis of the sources. Then Wikipedia articles on big-city local businesses end up getting kept or deleted by sheer luck based on who showed up to the discussion rather than merit. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:04, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Ignoring the question of "major city-based newspaper covering a city business", the reasoning why we need to consider the issue of notability when it is only based on sourced from a "limited audience" can be seen by considering that even from a local newspaper, you could have city district newsletters, neighborhood newsletters, and even as absurd as family household newsletters. There is clearly some point that we are clearly fine with a topic that is sourced only to international papers, and would clearly balk at a topic only sourced to these household newsletters as we'd be breaking WP:NOT#IINFO clearly. Somewhere along that spectrum is the turning point, which we're been stating is "local sources" (that is, the sources has to be better than local) but its actually fair to consider if that is too broad or too narrow. --Masem (t) 05:21, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
What I'm saying is rather than try to write a fixed rule to cover all kinds of future cases, when an issue does arise, we can examine the underlying problems of lack of sufficiently independent editorial control, reliability of the source, and so forth, rather than trying to argue something like the distance of the event in question from a geographical city centre. The concept of local coverage works OK at the ends of the spectrum; once we get to the blurrier part, we should focus on the actual problems that make a source inadequate for determining if English Wikipedia's standards for having an article are met. isaacl (talk) 15:46, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
I think you're looking at the problem from a WP:V absolutist perspective (i.e. all notability guidelines derive from verifiability, and if something is not notable it's always because there is not enough verifiable information about it). I think that is a nice idea in theory, but at the end of the day WP:NOT means that we do have to consider the subjective "real-world" importance of topics. A paper for a town of 10,000 may meet all your requirements (sufficiently independent editorial control, reliability, etc.) but still be inadequate on its own for demonstrating notability unless supported by regional or national media. And that's where different people draw the line in wildly different ways. To people on one side, a major paper for a city of several million is "local", while on the other side, a paper for a county of a few hundred thousand is enough to qualify it as "regional". We don't need to draw the line exactly, but we need to give better guidance to help people draw the line in a hopefully more consistent manner. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:38, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

By the way, another topic to discuss (related to my third question) is how much coverage in non-local media is necessary. One extreme is to say that there must be significant coverage in multiple non-local sources, i.e. local sources don't count at all towards notability. The other extreme is that a mere namedrop of any sort in the New York Times is enough as long as there is significant coverage in local sources. I think the truth lies somewhere in between. So long as there is significant coverage in reliable sources, regardless of whether they are local or non-local, we can write an article on the subject, so the question is solely whether the subject deserves an article. If the NYT has one line about a business in Kansas getting an award, for me that's enough to demonstrate its significance, and the business is notable so long as it has enough verifiable content in local sources. But being listed in an NYT article about buildings destroyed in a tornado would not be enough. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:48, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
It's definitely right that when it eventually comes to defining what a local source is, that the use of population size should come into play as the sole measure. But I still think this is getting too far ahead of what potential RFC we're talking here.

To get back to that, we can take for granted WP:V and WP:NOT#IINFO are policy - we need verified info from reliable sources, and we want to avoid indiscriminate info. What this means is that when considering the nature of "local" sources, we're looking at the source and what its scope of what it covers is (of what information it is pulling) and what its audience scope is (who it is disseminating that information to). Its important to this along those lines because when you start narrowing either scope, you start hitting the problems of V (in terms of RS) and IINFO. If the information pull scope is so narrow that only so few people know about it (all 5 people knowing about the quantum entanglement of swiss cheese for example), it will likely fail as a reliable source; if the people that have interest in that material are so few (the history of underwater basketweaving at the Olympics of which only 1 person has done), that likely makes the information indiscriminate. The larger the scope on either side, the more likely V (via RS) and IINFO are met and those concerns go away.

Thus to the concept of local papers and notability, what we probably need to do in the RFC is figure heuristically where those scopes sit that we are comfortable in saying where are we making a line for what we want to call "local" or some other term as to delinate where the scope of coverage and scope of audience is generally too small to meet V(RS) and IINFO. Maybe WPians feel "local" is too narrow, maybe they feel its too "broad" and hence why its not worthwhile to get so stuck on the exact definition of a "local source" right now if that's not where the line is to be drawn. We figure out the line with this RFC, then we can start talking definitions including how to define papers like the NYTimes and ChiTrib (which I have an idea based on the dual area of coverage/target audience approach here, but that's for later). --Masem (t) 17:29, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Can you draft a set of RfC questions that you would ask? We can then combine the ideas presented in this section to finalize the wording of the RfC. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:38, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

No, many times I've written that verifying something is insufficient to meet English Wikipedia's standards for having an article. My view is more akin to what you described in the second paragraph: we need to examine the specific circumstances of something getting covered in, say, the New York Times, and thus evaluate if it is suitable as a source to illustrate that the standards have been met. Trying to handle every possible case ahead of time is more trouble than it's worth. isaacl (talk) 21:33, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
We're talking about two different things here: 1) When the NYT covers a non-NYC topic, we should lower the bar for "significant coverage" so the NYT article only needs to indicate why the subject is noteworthy (though if there is indeed significant coverage in the NYT by our usual standards, that also implies noteworthiness); the meat of the article content can come from local sources. 2) When the NYT covers a NYC business in detail, and doesn't violate anything else on WP:NORG (e.g. editorial independence, relying too much on information from primary sources, etc.), my view is to draw a line in the sand and say that the NYT article is not local coverage. Others may disagree, which is why we're having an RfC. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:42, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
I don't think we're talking about different things. I'm saying it's unnecessary to take that last step where you say "the NYT article is not local coverage", and instead just use that line of reasoning to determine that, under these circumstances, the NYT article is sufficient to determine that English Wikipedia's standards for inclusion have been met. Classifying the newspaper's coverage as local/regional/national is unnecessary once you've put in the work to analyze the extent of the coverage. isaacl (talk) 21:48, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Some editors would argue that when the NYT covers NYC topics in a way that doesn't connect them to national events, the NYT coverage is automatically deemed local. I think we can ask the community to decide whether that view is right or wrong, because currently both are plausible interpretations of AUD. Classifying as local/regional/national absolutely does matter, because a small-town paper can cover a local business with the same depth as the NYT covers a NYC business but it's just not the same. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:00, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
The end goal is to determine if the source is suitable; classifying it as local/regional/national is a potential waystation but instead of spending a lot of time trying to outline many different cases to figure out a classification, the time would be better spent using the same type of logic to directly determine if the source is suitable. isaacl (talk) 22:11, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
I agree that AUD in principle is a mistake. I also agree that people have long applied the "local" standard with varying degrees of consistency. Those people are wrong. I can't recall the specific AfD, but I remember someone arguing that the Houston Chronicle was "local coverage" for a biography and didn't contribute to notability. That's nonsense. It is a long standing established paper of record. At the end of the day, we should be concerned with quality of coverage, and being or not being "local" by whatever definition does not perfectly equate to quality of coverage. GMG ^talk 22:38, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
The extension of AUD has already been proposed and rejected numerous times on this page and the fact that AFD hard-line deletionists are trying to game AFD decisions by decrying not just local but regional coverage such as the Chicago Tribune is no good reason for an RFC. The deletionists wield more influence at AFD because they participate more than the rest of the community so their views should not be seen as representative of the wider community.Recent examples of their gaming include telling article creators that they are not allowed to vote and can only comment, that most obituaries are unreliable sources, that foreign language sources can't be used and that regional publications are local. Regarding local and regional coverage its the quality and reliability of the source that is important not its circulation in my view and more emphasis should be placed on specific SNG qualifications, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 00:02, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
- That people are trying to game things like the Chicago Tribune at least speaks to the need to define what is a local source and the notion that a source may be both local and (region/national/international) and how we can distinguish between that, for at minimum purposes of AUD at NORG. That's absolutely a necessary conversation to have. --Masem (t) 00:44, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
The idea that "local coverage" can be operationalized through some specification of community demographics strikes me as entirely farcical. For one thing, it seems to assume that WP is based on general-interest publications like newspapers and news websites, which are far from being the main form of source cited in WP articles or form of coverage relevant to Notability. Specialty publications are often the most relevant sources for Notability discussions on specialized topics, yet they cannot be inserted into any hierarchy of "local" (vs. what: national? Universal?) in a meaningful way. What is more, the idea that the national press of a small country would be insufficient to confer Notability on a topic than the local press of a metropolis runs directly counter to the GLOBALIZE imperative at WP, yet the only sources accepted by AUD extremists as "non-local" are the national publications of record in large, predominantly English-speaking countries. I see no way in which AUD could be operationalized that would not make WP in net poorer and more parochial, in spite of the undeniably good intentions of those trying to specify "local coverage". Newimpartial (talk) 17:47, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
WP:AUD explicitly states that a "national" source is acceptable, and I don't foresee any plans to change that. If any "AUD extremists" try to argue that a national paper of Burundi is "local", their arguments will be rightfully disregarded by the closer. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:59, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
But you are proposing to rework AUD, so who is to say? And the flip-side idea, that "regional" papers in Chicago, Melbourne or Manchester are not protected by this clause, doesn't reassure me at all, either. I just don't think any helpful definition is possible. The idea that second-tier jurisdictions in constitutional systems might only receive "local" coverage is one of many reasons I don't think this works. I can accept that some such units might not have reliable coverage within their borders (re: Verifiability), but the idea that an AUD definition could make them dependent on coverage from outside their birders seems fundamentally wrong-headed (and also a violation of ENCYCLOPAEDICITY since other federal units of the same tier would be covered). Newimpartial (talk) 18:21, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I do plan to revamp AUD, but: 1) I don't think it is likely for the community to want to deprecate the national papers of small countries, and would argue vociferously against it; and 2) if that really does end up being the community consensus, then fine, it is what it is. Better the devil you know (i.e. explicit wording in AUD) than the devil you don't know (repeatedly having to argue against arbitrarily broad interpretations of the word "local" every time at AfD). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:33, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I had understood that you intended to revamp AUD in conjunction with potentially expanding its scope outside of NORG. I would much rather have an incoherent and slightly damaging application of AUD within NORG, compared to a more coherent but still damaging application of AUD to the entirety of WP Notability. Newimpartial (talk) 18:57, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
After considering opinions from the discussion above, I only intend to ask the question about scope after getting a satisfactory rewording of AUD within NORG. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:29, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
King of Hearts, I think that your proposed questions #2 and #3 are poor. Question #2 ("is local ever non-local?") is either not what you really mean to ask, or you just need to go look in a dictionary and trust that we wrote in plain English. If The Paris News writes about something about one of the other places named Paris, then it's obviously not "local" coverage. If you actually meant to ask "Should tiny newspapers ever be counted?", then ask that.
Question #3 ("Is one national newspaper really enough?") can be resolved by reading AUD and taking note of the word one, which is in italics in the original. Again, we made an effort to write down what we actually meant, and I guarantee that if we had meant "two national newspapers required" or "completely ignore any small newspaper" or anything else, we would have written that instead.
For Question #1, this has been asked and answered repeatedly. We can put the answer in a FAQ at the top of the talk page, if you think that would help. For Question #4, it's not clear to me whether you mean to expand it in the context of NCORP (if so, then there isn't much scope for expansion), or if you mean to spread it to other SNGs. If the latter, then you should look at NEVENT's WP:DIVERSE, which has similar effects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Sure, I'll reword #2 to ask whether tiny newspapers should be counted as non-local coverage for subjects outside their area. Or maybe I'll just remove it to simplify the RfC, since it's not a situation that comes up very frequently. For #3, again I'm not asking to clarify AUD, but to revamp it entirely, so I'm leaving all the options on the table. You can !vote to deprecate all local coverage as a determiner of notability if you want. In the other direction, you can !vote to deprecate AUD entirely if you want. But anyways, the question I want to ask is: How much do we demand from our non-local source(s), if we don't require them to meet the standard of significant coverage in multiple independent sources (without the help of local sources)?

For #1, you have answered repeatedly what your interpretation is, but apparently not everyone interprets it the same way. And again, interpreting AUD is not the goal, but rather finding out where the community stands. The RfC might result in a consensus that directly and clearly contradicts the wording of AUD and that's fine (WP:CCC), or it might fit within the existing text and simply serve to clarify matters. It's all up to the !voters to decide. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:39, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

SIGCOV is badly explained

Latest comment: 3 years ago34 comments14 people in discussion

GNG says: "Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content.

I think this needs to be re-written to say "Significant coverage is _____". I recently saw someone (an admin, no less) claiming that sigcov was not possible in a local newspaper. Now all the regulars here know that is wrong, but I can easily imagine someone seeing WP:SIGCOV and guessing that coverage is about the source's market size/subscriber base, and the reason these misunderstandings persist is because we've historically done a poor job of explaining some of the terms.

Here are some off-the-cuff ideas about how to explain it, but what I would like is your thoughts on whether we should move towards something that sounds like a definition (i.e., not to choose any of these, because I'm sure we could come up with better ones, but just to decide whether to work on this), rather than jumping straight into what its purpose is.

Significant coverage is a measure of how many facts the source provides about the article's subject. Only count coverage that addresses the article's subject directly and does not violate the Wikipedia:No original research policy. For example, if the subject of the article is a cooking school, only count information about the school itself, not information in the source about cooking or food.
Significant coverage is the amount of information the source provides about the article's subject. The source must address the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content.
Significant coverage is the amount of content the source devoted to the article's subject. For example, 300 words about the subject is usually considered significant coverage, and 40 words is usually not. To show notability, the source must address the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. For example, if a book about cooking is 10,000 words long, and 500 words in that book is directly about a cooking school, then only the 500 words about the school would count towards notability of the school.
(Something along these lines, except much better than any of them)

What do you think? Should we find a way to revise this to include a more obvious definition? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

In considering any tighten or improving this definition, we have purposely avoided any type of quantified measure of coverage because as soon as you do that, it will be gamed. If you say "significant coverage from at least two sources" then suddenly the bar at AFD will be "but I have exactly two sources, should be kept!". Same would be the case on word count. We could add advise about other factors, but we know from the past anything that appears as an exact definition or minimum requirement that can be counted will be used to game the system. Each case has to be judged to the principles of what we are looking for in "significant coverage".
Also, on the concept about local sources, an article on a topic sourced only to local sources (or for a broadly distributed paper like the NYTimes, to its local area cover only), that does have problems in terms of the scope of our audience. While only WP:NORG specifically requires more than just local coverage, the concept applies everywhere - otherwise, we easily could have articles on small town mayors and the like sourced only to the local papers, which is not appropriate. I don't know if we'd necessarily say this is a problem with "significant coverage" or more an issue with the independence of the sources (the more local the coverage is the less independent it is), but that concept it there. --Masem (t) 17:55, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
- (Local sources when used with regional/national/global sources, however, are fine, I should add) --Masem (t) 18:02, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  - On your two points:
    1. I'm sure we can come up with a way of saying that SIGCOV is entirely about the "quantity" of coverage without naming any particular minimum threshold of necessary quantity. (OTOH, if we set that threshold high enough, even if we only applied that threshold to people and organizations, then some notability problems might evaporate overnight.)
    2. Sure, there are all sorts of problems with highly local coverage. But those problems aren't SIGCOV. The problems of local-only coverage should be named for the problems that they actually are (e.g., indiscriminate and promotional coverage) rather than picking a random irrelevant set of WP:BBQ letters and claiming that it's whatever bit of jargon that popped into your head.
  - WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I like WhatamIdoing's suggestion. It helps greatly with the ambiguity of what constitutes sigcov. I disagree that clearer standards will be used to game the system. To the contrary, I believe that clearer standards will greatly reduce such gaming. Cbl62 (talk) 19:17, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I think Masem is right that it's not a quantitative test. It's also a qualitative. You can have 500 words that are technically about the subject but don't really give us anything we would use in an encyclopedia (often related to WP:NOT). I think we can weed out the most obvious situations where coverage just isn't going to allow you to write a good article, but after that there is going to be some need for interpretation. That, or you set a very high standard, which arguably creates a host of other problems. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:34, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Shooterwalker, what I'd really like right now is your view on whether providing something closer to a definition might be a good idea. Whether that definition should involve any number of words, or anything else, is really something to determine after we've decided whether to do this at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:10, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

That's a fair question, and I think we can always do better. I'm open to improving what we have. In fact, I think a combined quantitative-qualitative test would sense. "More than..." and "helps the reader understand its real world relevance and significance". Shooterwalker (talk) 00:41, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Actually, I would consider 40 words to count towards significant coverage in some cases. If we had 10 sources that each devoted 40 words to a subject and are not largely duplicative in content matter (i.e. the actual information we can extract from the 10 articles as a whole; 10 sources saying the same thing are no good even if they independently arrived at the information), then I view that as sufficient to create an article. On the opposite extreme, 2 intellectually independent sources with 1,000 words each is enough for an article. Most of the time we are stuck in between these two extremes, so we expect at least 3 sources of reasonable length. But it's subjective, and the best test is still, would you actually use this source to write an article out of? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:53, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

There's a related discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(academics)#Quantifiable_metric_for_WP:NACADEMIC, for those hungry for more. Johnbod (talk) 21:16, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

King, I think that everything could "count" towards notability, but 40 words does not seem like it's significant coverage of the subject (Your comment, for reference, is 136 words long, so 40 words is only 30% of what you just wrote.)

The GNG requires significant coverage in sources. It does not technically say that one individual source must provide significant coverage. If the community were to say that "significant coverage = 10 discrete facts about the subject", then the GNG does not technically say that all 10 of the facts would have to come from a single source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:08, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

It all comes down to the possibility of writing an article. If those ten 40-word snippets can be arranged into a decent article, then there is significant coverage. If they're random trivia facts, then no. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:10, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

But a single 40-word snippet is not SIGCOV?

The real question, though, is simply whether we ought to have any sort of definition at all, or if we should keep letting people make up their own definitions. I'd rather not have people confusing SIGCOV with AUD, or saying that SIGCOV is really about how to combine Twitter conversations into a statement about where a celebrity was when he announced his plans to marry (<==not a made-up example). But maybe others prefer the current ambiguity. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

We certainly can say that "significant coverage" is meant to reflect how broadly in scope the sources cover the topic, it is not about the scope of geographic coverage of the sources, if there is that much confusion about local sources and sig cov. That's not going to affect anything. --Masem (t) 00:18, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

As I wrote above for a different question: It seems to me that many things are notable, as being slightly important to a large number of people. Some things are very important to a smaller number of people, but adding up to the same amount of notability. It isn't always easy to compare, though. Gah4 (talk) 18:16, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

It seems that the mayor of New York is known to the whole of the US. A small town mayor in a big scandal will be notable, as will a big town mayor in a small scandal. A small town mayor in a small scandal won't be notable. Gah4 (talk) 00:47, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

There is wisdom in Gah4's example. I've always thought of notability as a multi-dimensional sliding scale. The depth of the coverage is one dimension. The duration of the coverage is another. And the importance/reach of the source is another: national media > regional media > major metropolitan newspapers > mid-size city news outlet > small city newspaper > small town newspaper or outlet. Too often, I see folks at AfD arguing that coverage in major metropolitan newspapers (e.g., Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant, etc.) "doesn't count" towards notability because it's "local". Cbl62 (talk) 15:21, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Cbl62, I think you are right. The point of notability is to support WP:NPOV, WP:NOT and WP:V. We need enough coverage to be sure that we are writing a verifiably neutral article, not one based on the misleading vividness of a single event. not a directory entry, and not something where only extreme partisans talk about it. Guy (help!) 15:54, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I am militantly opposed to 40-word snippets counting towards SIGCOV. A forty word snippet is under the best of circumstances a trivial, casual mention, and I don't see where ten casual mentions somehow add up to "significant coverage." 0+0+0+0+0=0.
(Counting all those zeros as one word, what I just typed above is forty words precisely.)
That being said, there's a fair bit of commentary in that guideline giving guidance to editors. While I agree some hard and fast numbers would help, I also agree that it'd take about 47 seconds before the gaming started. After all the hundreds of hours I've spent at AfD and DRV I know as well as any how imperfect the result is, but the best we can hope for is the intelligent consensus view of the editors. Ravenswing 13:21, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
To be fair, it is quite rare that an article can be written using only 40-word snippets. Too many of them will say the same thing, include information that is too trivial or WP:UNDUE, etc. But my point is that the fact that they are short is not a reason to discount them; the reason to discount them is because they can't be used to write an article. By the way, I think mere mentions should count towards establishing "importance", which contrary to the purist school of thought (i.e. WP:N is no more than an extension of WP:V), does matter, i.e. we don't have articles on small-town mayors despite them receiving plenty of coverage in local news. Basically, if someone is mentioned in many national publications (more than a mere listing, but perhaps not quite significant coverage), we deem them "important" and worthy of an article. They are not notable yet, because there is not enough content to write a well-referenced article on them. However, if there is a lot of significant coverage in local news, then I'd argue that the national hits are an indication that the person is not merely of local relevance, even if we don't end up using any of the national news articles. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:17, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

This proposal is not supported by any evidence, examples, statistics or precedents. So, it violates WP:NOTLAW which states that "the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice".

To start some empirical assessment, I reviewed the OP's article creations and selected three recent articles for inspection:

These bring out some issues in trying to invent and impose a precise formula. In the first case, the basis of notability is somewhat different because it's a list and so WP:LISTN applies. This means that sources which are about a single web site don't count; you need sources which are about such websites as a group. This requires some discrimination.

In the second case, the phrase "diseases of despair" is rather broad and rhetorical. As this is the territory of WP:MEDRS, we again seem to need some discrimination in deciding what would count for this. What if someone claims that this is a political or philosophical matter?

For the third case about the rolls, I looked at a single source: Why Cinnamon Bun Day is an enduring Swedish success. The word count seems borderline if you're looking for 300 words. If the exact number matters then deciding what will or won't count towards this seems quite problematic. I could see this generating huge amounts of argument at forums like AfD. And what happens if all of the source isn't visible online. That's usually the case with good sources because they are behind paywalls.

For recent example of my own, consider Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of martini variations. I pointed out that there are entire books about this topic but a deletionist promptly turned up to say that this is still not enough and so the page must go. This demonstrates that the real rule at AfD is WP:IDONTLIKEIT and the Wikilawyering is pasted on afterwards.

Andrew🐉(talk) 21:32, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Andrew Davidson, except that nobody suggested that " this is still not enough and so the page must go", and nobody !voted "delete". Vexations (talk) 22:09, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

You could apply exactly the same thinking to the OP's three cases. List of fact-checking websites could be merged into fact-checking. Diseases of despair could be merged into despair. Cinnamon Roll Day could be merged into cinnamon roll. Right? But why aren't we using SIGCOV to determine whether a topic can continue to exist as its own page? It's always possible to merge something away to a broader topic and, in such cases, this is much the same as deletion. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:35, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

(No, the correct merge target for Diseases of despair would be Suicide – assuming, of course, that researchers and journalists hadn't already written thousands of words about the subject, which of course they have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:39, 8 August 2020 (UTC))

What a load of BS. Merging is NOT deletion, otherwise why is merging one of the alternatives to deletion? I'd think since you always cite WP:ATD you'd know WP:ATD-M. There is not a single fact in List of martini variations that would need to be deleted in a merge to Martini (cocktail), which already describes several variations in serving and composition. Why are you misrepresenting my position? At no point did I or anyone else say the books about martini variations are "not enough", nor does this have to do about the topic of significant coverage – there could be a million cookbooks giving the history of martinis and listing WP:RECIPEs, but that does not mandate a separate page here since Wikipedia is not the place to catalogue any recipe found in a cookbook which are hardly significant coverage. Reywas92^Talk 23:33, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

This, we cannot accept the propagation of the falsehood that "merging is deletion". The original content is still there, still accessible without an admin account. Deletion should only be used when the admin broom had been used to block access to content that makes required to seek an admin to see it again (if it still exists). --Masem (t) 23:45, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

+1. Nor am I enthused -- from an editor who preaches how civil he is -- at both blatant mischaracterization, the attempt to pin blame on a "deletionist," and, well, wikilawyering. Ravenswing 22:11, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

+2 woooooo evil scary deletionist ooowooooo [ghost noises intensify]. Reyk _YO! 22:16, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

For me, "significant coverage" means: Imagine that someone had infinite resources and infinite time, and they spent that working on the article. Now look at the final state of that imaginary article. Is it something suitable for Wikipedia? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:38, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
- SIGCOV is only one piece. Your description here seems fine for the whole of GNG, but which parts of it are due to SIGCOV specifically? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:30, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
About 250 words or one typed page, directly about the subject is how I would define it. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 05:00, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I can easily point you to articles on television episodes that are just recaps easily clocking in at 1000+ words. But they are recaps with perhaps a bit of snark (thanks Telelvision Without Pity) that one might consider them just outside being a primary source. But from a encyclopedia standpoint, this would not be a good source. This is why any attempt to put numbers or quantity on anything is asking for trouble. --Masem (t) 02:58, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

By way of visual comparison, Reywas92's comment just above (less sig) checks in at 138 words. I'd generally consider 250, about the subject, and devoid of puffery, to be adequate for a single source to be considered "significant coverage." Find multiple ones of those and you've got a GNG pass. That being said, this is my entirely subjective opinion. Certainly there are a great many editors who consider "significant coverage" to mean "I glanced at the reference list and That's A Reliable Source, so bingo!" Ravenswing 03:11, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Ravenswing, do you expect multiple sources with SIGCOV, or would you accept one with undeniable SIGCOV, plus several with "insignificant" coverage okay? The GNG's wording – which was not written in WP:BRADSPEAK, so it's not a good idea to assume too much about some ideal original intent – says "If a topic has received significant coverage in [independent] reliable sources...", but it does not specify whether that's sources-plural, each of which separately contains SIGCOV, or if that's SIGCOV when you consider all independent reliable sources in aggregate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:35, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I believe it specifies exactly that: "There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected." Sources that do not provide SIGCOV do not qualify, period; we start getting into that mess, and now we're parsing whether X sources giving (totaling? averaging?) Y amount of coverage = 1 SIGCOV, the very thought of which makes my head hurt. Ravenswing 06:11, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Asking for notability before creating an article

Latest comment: 3 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

Is there a place I can ask advice on the notability of a topic before spending time creating it? VR _talk 18:21, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I've sometimes thought it would be helpful, especially for newer editors, if there were a noticeboard where we could post the subject of a possible article with our three best sources and get feedback from other editors on whether they agree that it meets the notability requirements for that subject area. Kind of a pre-screening area. I've no idea if anything like that has ever been considered or tried in the past, or whether there would be any interest in it. Schazjmd (talk) 18:33, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

For most things, the relevant wikiproject is the place to ask, and people sometimes do. Johnbod (talk) 18:39, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Schazjmd it seems Wikipedia:Notability/Noticeboard/header exists but not used. Johnbod thanks for the suggestion.VR _talk 19:09, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Interesting. Maybe @FT2:, the editor who created it ten years ago, can shed some light on whether it was ever used or what happened to the idea? Schazjmd (talk) 19:30, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I believe it’s related to the wikipedia:Notability/Noticeboard which shut down due to inactivity in 2013. The discussion that caused that was at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 105#Close the Notability Noticeboard.--69.157.254.92 (talk) 05:10, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

There's the answer! Thanks for finding that history, 69.157.254.92, it's really helpful (and interesting reading). Schazjmd (talk) 14:19, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

NPEOPLE vs NORG for artists collectives

Latest comment: 3 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

I have nominated an article for deletion which I believe WP:NORG is applicable, because:

Simply stated, an organization is a group of more than one person formed together for a purpose. This includes commercial and non-commercial activities, such as charitable organizations, political parties, hospitals, institutions, interest groups, social clubs, companies, partnerships, proprietorships, for-profit educational institutions or organizations, etc.

The group United Graffiti Artists though seems to meet the definition of interest groups.

Although, an AfD participant posited, it's not applicable because of this part of the guideline:

This guideline does not cover small groups of closely related people such as families, entertainment groups, co-authors, and co-inventors covered by WP:Notability (people).

I'm trying to determine which guideline is applicable and if there's precedent from similar discussons/AfDs. Graywalls (talk) 16:18, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Its NORG. If it was 4-5 people that called themselves that, probably it would people, but I full agree this is more like a special interest group, far beyond any scope suggested beyond NBIO. --Masem (t) 16:57, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Agree- NORG is the best fit here. Blueboar (talk) 17:05, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

@Masem, Graywalls, and Blueboar: calling an artist collective a "special interest group" is absurd. Were they making an "attempts to influence public policy in its favour" ...? NO. This is a group of people who made art together; they held exhibitions together. It is like calling a band, or a dance troupe a special interest group. These are "entertainment groups, co-authors." Maybe you are not reading the irony in the name "United Graffiti Artists" -- yes, it is meant to ironically sound as if it is an advocacy organization. In 1975 the phrase "United Graffiti Artists" more or less would have sounded like "United Street Crime Artists" to most people who read the term. They took that phrase as an artistic gesture, which once again points out the fact that these are "entertainment groups, co-authors." To some degree this is moot, as the article is going to be kept because it ultimately meets GNG and NCORP, but I want to make it clear that this is a misunderstanding of what an artist collective is. Theredproject (talk) 03:01, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Bands and troupes would fall under NORG as well, because the issue there is about self-promotion. --Masem (t) 03:14, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

To stress , the key words in NBIO are "closely related". A family of painters (including extended family) would perhaps fall under that. A husband and wife similarly would be. Painters simply sharing a common interest aren't closely related. --Masem (t) 03:17, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

This isn't a source I would feel comfortable using it as a WP:RS in prose, but nonetheless, https://www.graffiti.org/faq/graffiti_edu_christen.html

"74 Upski, Bomb the Suburbs, 52-3. Coax describes how graffiti spurred him to go to art school; for Rich, it was a stepping stone to a career in design and marketing. According to Castleman, of the twelve original members of United Graffiti Artists, an early organization to promote graffiti to New York galleries, eight went on to college and four to art school. Coax, interview by Eklips, September 14, 1999. Rich, interview. Available from GuerillaOne at www.guerillaone.com; Castleman, Getting Up, 126"

So it's important to establish a precedent that such things are a lobbying group. Graywalls (talk) 03:35, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

notability of porn awards

Latest comment: 3 years ago21 comments10 people in discussion

Category:Adult industry awards seems to be a walled garden. If some of the awards get coverage in sources that are supported entirely by the porn industry, does that make them notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, or be mentioned in Wikipedia articles? Mainstream media does not seem to list who won pornographic awards. Can we come to an agreement and just deal with all of these articles at once? Perhaps a bit saying that: Awards are not notable if they are only mentioned in places that exist to sell something. Dream Focus 17:40, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I don’t think we frown at industry-specific sources in other contexts. And speaking broadly all media sources except for those published by nonprofits exist to sell something...so using that as a standard would seem to be a slippery slope and not really relevant to the assessing the subject. We shouldn’t be looking for a rule in order to have an excuse to exclude a subject. postdlf (talk) 17:48, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

If the only coverage something got was from a magazine that got 100% of his advertisement revenue from that one industry, should it be tolerated then? I don't see as how this would be a slippery slope. An award for writing a bestselling novel, directing a successful movie, having a successful song, or for a scientific achievement makes sense. Having awards for best sex scenes of every possible type imaginable, seems totally different to me. Dream Focus 17:59, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Seems to be a valid concern, is there a clear enough line between the award and the publication covering it?Slatersteven (talk) 18:09, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Can you provide an example of a magazine used in connection with this topic that actually gets 100% of their advertisement revenue from that one industry? I'm sure many get a substantial proportion that way, but I am also pretty sure that non-industry advertisers are represented. BD2412 T 18:13, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Many industrial trade magazines are this way. --Masem (t) 18:30, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

When we revoked the SNG for porn biographies, ad revenue wasn't so much the issue. The issue was more that these are awards given by the industry, to people in the industry, which no one outside the industry cared or wrote about. It was more of an independence issue.

In other words, if I'm really into balls of string, and me and my compatriots make videos about balls of string, we start some websites about balls of string, and then we give each other awards... if no one outside the "balls of string" community notices or cares, does that really satisfy our sourcing requirements? GMG ^talk 18:33, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

(Replying to BD2412) Excuse me, I was mistaken. Having searched for that I find that mainstream media does mention some of these porn awards at times such as at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-02-19-ca-29687-story.html So this discussion is pointless then. A musician might just sing a song someone else wrote, take 5 minutes to record, and win an award for it. So I suppose someone having sex in a video and getting an award for it, is about the same notability. Not sure how many mainstream media sources cover each exact award but whatever. Dream Focus 18:35, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

But surely that is what notability is, people on the outside have noticed it?Slatersteven (talk) 18:37, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Recently with video games, we have found that there video game awards that were covered in our RSes but basically surmounted to not-quite-press release coverage. That the awards existed and were given out but without much other detail. To that, we considred those non-notable and removed them. If that's the same here... --Masem (t) 18:39, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

The AVN awards have been accused of consistently going to those corporations that sponsor it 1:

Imagine the editors of Variety choosing the Academy Award nominations--then handing out Oscars to the winners--and you have a pretty good idea of how much manipulation can go on behind the scenes during the run-up to the AVNs. Coincidentally or not, companies that advertise consistently in Adult Video News often take home awards in Las Vegas. Actresses trying to secure a nomination stop in to schmooze at the magazine's Chatsworth offices. A Spiegler client once presented dolls of herself to editors and writers. Another baked cookies.

Of course this essentially anecdotal, but worth noting nonetheless. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:14, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the exact same sort of lobbying goes on with the Academy Awards. It just involves a great deal more money and arm-twisting. Ravenswing 01:41, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

But those outside the industry care about the academy awards.Slatersteven (talk) 08:30, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Not quite: those who care about the Academy Awards care about the Academy Awards. Were we to measure the notability of awards purely by popularity -- or more accurately, perhaps, those who would admit to caring -- vastly more people give a damn about who is going to win the next soccer World Cup or which nation will rake in the most gold medals in Tokyo next year than about all the Nobel Prize winners for the next decade combined. I doubt many editors would care for notability guidelines based on that premise. Ravenswing 09:06, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

I am not talking about popularity, I am talking about media coverage. When was the last Oscars that did not receive huge international press coverage, not just of the awards, but just the nominations?Slatersteven (talk) 09:21, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Splendid, I'll do the same. The next World Cup -- down to the qualifiers, three years in advance -- will receive vastly more international media coverage than all the Nobel Prize competitions for the next decade combined. (Which is a bit generous. Next "century" combined is likely more accurate.) Happily, we don't measure all awards by the notability bar the World Cup trophy sets. Ravenswing 10:26, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

What? Its not a case of "not a lot of coverage" its none.Slatersteven (talk) 09:20, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Both the Nobels and the World Cup will receive enough coverage to justify articles about them. The assertion here is that the porn awards, well, don't. That's a whole different thing and not a valid comparison. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 10:41, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Ummm ... given that the editor who started this conversation asserting that there was no coverage revised his stance upon finding some, linking one example above? Ravenswing 10:56, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry but the issue is notability. If RS notice then no issue, but just because RS notice some does not mean all are notable.Slatersteven (talk) 10:57, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the awards need to be held to the WP:CORP standards, unless they are connected to to single commercial organisation. The awards, the award system, receiving general secondary source coverage, should be enough to establish notability of the award. I would not be worried that the award is sponsored, as long as the sponsors are multiple. What I think is routinely failing is the existence of commentary, as opposed to primary source style reporting. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:52, 22 August 2020 (UTC)