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Gama Prasad Agarwalla (1925-1989),was the producer of the film Assamese film "Piyali Phukan" which has the distinction of being the first Assamese film to bag a National Award i.e Certificate of Merit in the year 1955 by the Film Division under the Government of India.
Gama Prasad Agarwalla was born in Tezpur, Assam in 1925. He was a renowned name in the world of regional cinema in Assam as well as in India. He took film making as a hobby and was deeply involved in all his film projects. He setup Rup Jyoti Productions which was a production house for Assamese films and Rup Roshni Distributors which was a Distribution house for both Assamese and Hindi film. His efforts to bring Assamese cinema on a National stage were recognized when the Government of India awarded the film Piyoli Phukan with the Certificate of Merit in 1955. He was also awarded and honoured by the Government of Assam for his contribution to Assamese Cinema in the year 1988.
He produced or financed many Assamese films viz. Era Bator Sur, Puwati Nikhar Swopun etc. He also opened up many cinema halls in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam like Kamala Talkies Dhekiajuli, Kamala Talkies, Rangapara, Ganesh Talkies, Kharupetia. He was married to Bhanwri Devi. He was very popular among the residents of his home town, Tezpur in Assam. He died in 1989. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agarwalaav ( talk • contribs) 10:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
There are a few episodes of Timothy Goes to School tagged with Template:Notability. I'd put them all up for deletion, but doesn't there have to be a deletion review before mass-AFDing stuff like this? -- Montchav ( talk) 16:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Why does the nutshell require secondary sources, but the article does not? Hobit ( talk) 21:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
What articles or article types are exempt from falling under Wikipedia:Notability? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 23:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
If articles which have no evidence of notability are combined in a composite article (a list of, or similar), is the latter article then exempt from qualifying under WP:N? Frequently in article deletion discussions people !vote to merge into a "list of" or similar; but if the single article is not notable under Wikipedia standards, how does a collection of non-notable information then meet that same standard? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 00:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
(OD) You're still being a bit obtuse. Can you tell us what specific article you tagged? For example there might very well be notability for Famous Midgets as a list with bio snippets while each once may be non-notable. We really need to look at your specific case. I don't believe this is stated quite in policy, but we are also encouraged to use common sense in interpreting notability. Additionally, there is nothing stopping you from starting a new section for Notability for Lists. Wjhonson ( talk) 06:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I came across an AfD that was discussing an article lacking notability. The lack of notability wasn't denied or refuted (that I recall); but the majority of people were arguing to merge the content into the article Minor characters in CSI: Miami. I started thinking that the latter article was effectively a dumping ground for a collection of non-notable articles; and, in fact, couldn't find any evidence of notability or reliable sources as defined by Wikipedia. So I tagged it with {{ notability}} and {{ primary sources}}. AnteaterZot ( talk · contribs) quickly removed the notability tagging saying (as above): "Removing notability tag. Such lists are the compromise to having scads of individual pages. Each entity on the list may not meet WP:N, but collectively they do, at least for well-known shows." Since I wasn't aware of a point of criticality whereupon non-notable articles massed together became spontaneously notable w/o meeting the requirements of this guideline, I brought it here before pushing further. — pd_THOR | =/\= | 19:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
The fact that something contained in a list may not be notable as stand alone material, but is when contained in a list on the topic, does not mean it must not be sourced. verifiability is non-negotiable; everything requires sourcing. In practice, we often do dump material that is non-notable into a list without checking its verifiability, and that is a problem.-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 20:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
"A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject."
The guideline in a nutshell requests secondary sources to establish notability. While this may work on a large number of cases it is often not so helpful. I feel rewording is necessary.
For example an average person serving in the armed forces will have a secondary source covering his life. This does not make every serviceman notable. Also in some cases authors of books do not get secondary coverage of their biography for a while even if the book they wrote is popular and had critical review. And lastly in the case of certain topics such as articles on fiction related content the lack of secondary sources do not always mean the topic is non-notable.
Also in the case of WP:SPINOUTs and WP:STUBs this guideline seems to be being contradictory.
-- Cat chi? 22:16, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
How could something so frequently used as a reason for deletion and probably used to justify more actions than at least half the policies on Wikipedia be called a guideline? Why even call it a guideline when it is being treated like a policy? Can anyone explain how this "guideline" has so much power? --No signature; I have an account, but I'm not going to expend the wasted effort to login. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.228.166 ( talk) 07:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I am fairly new to Wikipedia, but it seems to me that since we have a template for AfD, why not create a template that users can put into a discussion page that would cover the following: "Presumed" "Significant coverage" "Reliable" "Sources"
This way, a lot of personal attacks could be avoided in discussion pages. Just a thought. Runnynose47 ( talk) 19:54, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I really don't understand how to fill in these templates. Can you provide more info. For example, does one insert a "subject" into [expert-subject], and how do you know what subject to use? The explanations on this page are a bit cursory. In puzzlement, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 21:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
The subject of notability has come up in discussing merging at Template talk:SubArticle. Input on whether a parent article can provide notability for its 'subarticles' would be appreciated. Richard001 ( talk) 02:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be worth discussing the possibility of changing non-notability deletion policies to include the step of transplanting information not suitable for wikipedia to a suitable wiki if it exists. One could argue that outright deletion is little better than book burning. . .
I argue only for the preservation of information. . . -- Carterhawk ( talk) 07:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I know wikipedia is the nerd's revenge on real world. But somebody, Please! Please! be a human somebody (and not a wikipedia editor nutcase) Please! check if this so-called guideline meets the basic requirements for logical coherence? I know wikipedia is the wisdom of the crowds, but still hoping for some sanity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.161.31.228 ( talk) 09:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm sick of notability being used to bypass WP:NOT#NEWS, especially in articles concerning living people. Can we make sure this is explicitly discouraged? Will ( talk) 16:03, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
It has been suggested that the proposal I made here may be relevant to Notability. I would appreciate comments. Thank you-- mrg3105 ( comms) If you're not taking any flak, you're not over the target. 04:18, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Recentism is a balance to Wikipedia:Notability#Notability_is_not_temporary and some awareness of that should inform the section. The recent link to Wikipedia:Notability does not degrade over time is also inappropriate as that essay confuses Verifiability with notability. SilkTork * What's YOUR point? 19:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I have had my article deleted four times, so i need help on how to present it to Wikipedias standard.
It is a true crime story, Marie Greening Zidan is my mother,
REGARDS
Bluepetals —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bluepetals ( talk • contribs) 13:32, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I've been hearing reports from a web forum I go to, that this and certain other Wikipedia rulings often get changed by some people (for instance, certain people on many webcomics) particularly right after a failed AfD, to attempt to alter the results. Personally, I don't care if the rules are too light, or too harsh, so long as they can be consistent, and not changed at a whim, or a grudge. It is for this reason that I move some consistently agreed upon notion of what notability be declared, after which even if it is later found too harsh, it should regardless be either sprotect or protect tagged. Bulmabriefs144 ( talk) 06:04, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
The <span id="CONTENT" /> tag does not work correctly on my browser. Seems to me that "CONTENT" is reserved, or mixes with the table of contents. I propose to change it to, say <span id="NCONTENT" /> if there are no objections. Oceanh ( talk) 02:38, 9 March 2008 (UTC).
How is it done? Say there's a debate over whether or not a topic is notable. One article covers all the information in the article, but one source (arguably) isn't sufficient to establish notability. So editors go out and find six or seven other articles that establish notability, but can't really be cited because they don't offer anything new to the article (or, say, they're from a major paper and behind a paywall). How are those supposed to be included in the article, and is there even a point to including them? —Torc. ( Talk.) 07:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I ran across Zen Center of Syracuse and put a speedy deletion tag on it for failure to make any claims of notability. The original creator of the article put a hangon tag on the article and claims in the article's Talk page that WikiProject Buddhism is planning on creating an article on every temple in the world. That needs to be nipped in the bud. Every temple in the world is no more notable than every Christian church or every mosque in the world. Just existence isn't notability. How do we stop this before it spreads? Corvus cornix talk 23:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Following the publication of a story about Wikipedia in today's issue of The Economist, a discussion started on the English language Wikipedia mailing list about notability. One reply said "We don't _need_ notability, or anything like it. Our other existing policies would suffice to keep the actual "crap" out." [3] I think it would be constructive for interested editors to discuss here the merits or otherwise of this assertion, and to gauge if there is any consensus to either upgrade the concept of notability into actual policy, or to replace it with some other subjective measure. Catchpole ( talk) 19:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, in a way, I tend to think notability and it's sprawling subguidelines are harmful in the sense that they are often used to short-circuit common sense and rational debate on both sides. On one side, you have the main notability policy being used to justify a "it exists" rationale (after all, there are sources) and the subguidelines being used to circumvent sourcing requirements (they're a "pro" athlete, this book won X award, etc). On the other side, you have people arguing against (what appear to me as) clearly notable topics (such as widely-cited academics, historical landmarks, etc). I personally believe that the "essence" of notability is ensuring that the topics we cover are appropriate and have enough available sources to craft complete (if occasionally short) articles, following the content-orientated portions of notability's "mother" WP:NOT. In the absence of such guidelines, it would boil down to conflict opinions about what is "appropriate", "complete" and/or "encyclopedic". However, it would be better (in my eyes) to have debates about such topics, than the current debates that rage depending on the language of the notability guidelines (which, to me, largely exclude real discussion of the principles and reasoning involved). Just some thoughts. You're welcome to take them or leave them. Vassyana ( talk) 23:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
In response to Cacharoth's original question, I think notability is overall a very good thing to have around. I could write an article about anyone who has had an obituary in the newspaper that passes V, NPOV, NOR, and NOT (V doesn't say the published third-party sources should be significant, only that they must exist). What keeps it out? Notability. (If you think such things should be included, well...I don't know what to say.) That alone should show that the core policies, while admirable and important, are not sufficient to keep out garbage articles. This being said, I agree with Cacharoth that the guidelines are too subjective. We need a less squishy definition of "significant coverage" (currently defined as "Whatever I think is significant"), along with an explicit note that two thin sources do not meet the multiple sourcing requirement, and a removal of the sub-guidelines (it matters only can you substantially source it or not, not if they've had a trip across the country in the band van or if they made X gazillion pornos or if it sold X copies or if it was released by a band which in itself is sourceable or if they play on a professional team or...). The sub-notability guidelines are second-guessing sources, and we don't do that. If the sources decide "It's not important, don't write (much) about it", we shrug and follow their lead. Period. We don't give more weight to something than they do. If they decide it is important enough to write about, and the subject otherwise passes the core content policies, we do write about it, period, even if it seems silly. The main thing is, we shouldn't be making the decision ourselves. Reliable sources should decide to write or not write, we should follow their lead. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:13, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi.
I saw this:
"However, many subjects presumed to be notable may still not be worthy of inclusion – they fail What Wikipedia is not, or the coverage does not actually support notability when examined. For example, directories and databases, advertisements, announcements columns, minor news stories, and coverage with low levels of discrimination, are all examples of information that may not be evidence of notability for the purposes of article creation, despite their existence as reliable sources. "
So then this raises the question of what exactly constitutes evidence for notability. What, exactly, does that? Why no guidelines about that, just "examples"? mike4ty4 ( talk) 09:22, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
We seem to be prepared to create a Wikiproject Television-specific guideline, or possible a high-level subguideline for notability, based on recent discussion. In WP:N, we have this statement: A subject is presumed to be sufficiently notable if it meets the general notability guideline below, or if it meets an accepted subject specific standard listed in the table to the right. Now, when I look through the accepted nondisputed subguidelines, all of them in the end come back to say that "significant coverage in secondary courses" is still required, even given the "likely to be notable" cases that they list (eg album release by a major notable artist/band in WP:MUSIC).
Should it be the case that a notability subguideline or project-specific guideline remove the need for secondary sources? I know there are editors that would like to go this direction for television-specific articles like episodes, but I fear that if we took it that way, then what would happen is that other editors may bypass the project-specific guideline and jump right back to WP:N, and we're back at the recent ArbCom case again.
So the question I ask is two-fold: is, for purposes of being a guideline, the "significant coverage in secondary sources" a non-negotiable aspect of any subguidelines, and if so, should we reflect this in the language currently in WP:N? -- MASEM 13:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
What we need sources for is article content. That's the meaning of V, which is very appropriately policy. That the sources for the content have to be objective and balanced, is the meaning of NOR, also appropriately core policy. Without those standards for content, we dont have an encyclopedia. But neither of them says anything about notability. any way of demonstrating notability is acceptable. (more exactly, whatever way of demonstrating whatever it is we decide we mean by notability is acceptable). we still need reliable content to write the article, but that's a separate issue. If we have no reliable content, it's an empty article and should be deleted, notable or not. "Notabibility requires appropriate evidence" would be a better way of putting it than "objective" . ""Substantial coverage in reliable sources constitutes such objective evidence." " is one way of demonstrating notability--just one way. DGG ( talk) 03:02, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Had a recent discussion with another user regarding the notability of a particular politician, so for future reference I would like to try and establish consensus on a couple of the issues raised.
Firstly, would a city like Buffalo, New York, with 295,000 residents, qualify as a "major metropolitan city" or not? Secondly, would a failed candidate for the US Congress qualify as notable?
The issue concerns an article about a Buffalo city councillor who once stood unsuccessfully for Congress. Gatoclass ( talk) 04:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
There is a question that has come up in one or two of the deletion debates in which I have participated here, where it's been argued that the section means "Once notable, always notable." Indeed, this is pretty much what the first paragraph states. However, this has been taken to mean that if a topic receives just a brief flurry of media attention, then it becomes notable and stays notable -- in contradiction to the second paragraph. I've flagged this as a self contradiction which will need to be clarified. — Snthdiueoa ( talk| contribs) 16:24, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
'nuf said! Digital athena ( talk) 22:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Notability was a first shot at preventing people from wasting their time on things that were too trivial to easily be checked. I thought it could be entirely replaced by verifiability and reliable sources by now.
The page says that notability criteria should be objective, but imho notability itself has always been a fairly subjective subject.
Finally, I simply don't like guidelines that are made solely to serve some XFD process. (Imagine if Esperanza or AMA had created guidelines... there'd be an outcry!)
Have people already been phasing out the use of Notability as a criterion?
Perhaps we can replace the guidline with just "2 reliable sources" and merge that with Wikipedia:Reliable sources?
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 10:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC) I'm asking here first, because redirects are annoying :-P
Absent strong objections at the talk page for WP:Academics I think that it is time to merge this page into BIO. The better parts of this process have been incorporated into BIO for some time and this is now just a redundant page. Perhaps further ideas in clarification of BIO could be included in an essay. -- Kevin Murray ( talk) 18:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
One of the bullets under General notability guidelines begins "'sources,' defined on Wikipedia as secondary sources...." I don't know what that means. Also, refuse recognize a guideline that purports to define anything for all of Wikipedia. (Yes, that means that I find that so arrogant that I do not recognize this guideline at all.) -- Gerry Ashton ( talk) 02:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I am somewhat new to WP so if this has been discussed before please point me in the right direction to see the history. I have been reading quite a bit on notability issues here at WP but I have not yet seen anything that addresses the following:
I believe a waiver of the {{ Primarysources}} tag may be in order for articles which describe the details and nature of any modern school of thought or belief systems. Published experts who would write on such matters would most likely be either proponents or opponents to such teachings.
For example: The WP article on Unity, the largest of the New Thought denominations is currently tagged with {{ Primarysources}}. This is a denomination that has tens of thousands of congregants and is quite controversial (ergo notable) among some sects of Christianity ... yet it raises no academic or journalistic red flags so the only published sources on the teachings of the church are all primary sources either for or against those teachings.
Another example might be the New Thought denomination called Divine Science which has already fallen to the WP:NN issue. This denomination has significant historical context within New Thought seminaries due to one of its widely published authors, Joseph Murphy.
Maybe what we need is a new tag, something like:
Primary Sources Waiver for Belief System Description
"Readers are advised this article/section describes a belief system and uses only primary source material which cannot be considered objective. This article/section is allowed under a specific exception to the WP policy requiring secondary and tertiary sources, provided the article is accurate to it's sources and maintains a NPOV." See WP:PSTS for more information.
Is this a good idea or if not why not, and how would one go about proposing creation of a new policy and tag indicating such a waiver? Low Sea ( talk) 20:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I have been giving a lot of thought and review to the subject of WP:Notability (WP:N) and come to a rather radical new perspective on the subject: "Notability may need to be defined and/or qualified, at least to some degree, by the informational needs of the readers."
In trying to find solutions to my issue of WP:N versus details for subjective belief systems (see the section above) I perused a lot of the WP internal policies, guidelines, discussions, memoranda and essays on content requirements. In the process I noticed that many of the editors here may have developed a mild case of IvoryTower-itis -- that is they appear to have developed a tendency to forget about the end-users of their research efforts. It may sound cold considering that every editor here is a human being (if you ignore the bots) but I begin to wonder if we haven't forgotten about the people side of the equation -- "people" in this case refering to those non-editor users who come to Wikipedia to simply read the information collected here.
This is not a rant or flame, merely an observation and my admittedly subjective interpretation. To test if this interpretation is accurate I propose the following question: When was the last time you asked yourself: "Why do people come to Wikipedia?"
I remember reading somewhere in those guidelines and policies that when trying to determine if an article is appropriate for creation at WP we should think about the question "Would you find this article in a printed encyclopedia?" (link needed). Thinking about that question led me to wonder about matters like "How does a print encyclopedia decide what to include/exclude?" and "Why do people use encyclopedias (print or otherwise)?"
I would be curious to hear what your answers are to the above questions but since this is the WP:N talkpage let me stay on topic and bring it into focus with the following question:
Can WP:Notability be qualified in terms of what people come to Wikipedia looking for?
For example: If 5,000 people each month type in the same search term and find "No page with that title exists", should WP add a page to answer the people's need/desire for information even if it does not meet typical WP:N criteria? Low Sea ( talk) 07:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
In the lead, there is this troublesome sentence:
'If an article currently does not cite reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, that does not necessarily mean the topic is not notable.'
True, a poorly written stub can still be notable. But ultimately, the notability must come from secondary sources. So, if those cannot be shown, then the topic / article cannot be shown to be notable except by original research. I don't advocate deleting stub / poorly written articles. I do advocate deleting topics that are not and cannot be sourced.
I advocate removing the sentence as it requires the community to prove a negative which is an impossible standard. Either the topic / article states why it is notable through reference to secondary sources or it doesn't: if it doesn't, then it is de facto not notable. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast ( talk) 17:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
The way I read this is that a non-notable subject may be a section within a notable article. Of course then you again get to deal with the circular logic problems but it seems that you might be able to use only reliable primary sources in such a section to satisfy verifiability. Could this be the reason for needing WP:N -- to differentiate between criteria for stand-alone articles versus sub-articles? Low Sea ( talk) 08:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)Verifiable facts and content not supported by multiple independent sources may be appropriate for inclusion within another article.
Should Wikipedia articles about celebrities, etc. mention siblings, or no? I'm wondering as some articles mention certain celebrities having sisters/brothers while others don't mention about them. -- 72.230.46.168 ( talk) 20:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
It's a ridiculous policy meant to keep people from making articles about their brothers and classmates, but come up with something addressing that issue that isn't a cop-out. The criteria for notability are too subjective, and frankly notability would limit the encyclopedia to about 1000 articles, under any reasonable interpretation of notability. The only reason I came by the notability page is because I had visited maybe the third or fourth article in a month where there was a debate about the "notability" of the article in question. Nevertheless, the articles in question provided valuable information to me. So let's leave the calls for what is notable to the person USING wikipedia and actually looking for the information. One man's notable is another man's junk. 24.182.229.4 ( talk) 18:37, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I believe that if Wikipedia wants all of their articles to be published in such publications as Newsweek, or Time, than they should get rid of most of there now 10 million+ articles. Some pages are about published topics, and are in newsletters or press releases, but aren’t on the NBC Nightly News, or on CNN. Everyone isn’t that privileged. I disagree with what some admins have told me about what is a "reliable" source. I think that a school's newsletter or a local newspaper article is a reliable source.-- Headtechie2006 ( talk) 03:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Another thing i have to say about this all is why does it have to be significant. I could see it needing to be significant if you were trying to fit the articles into a 1000 page book, but your not. wikipedia has nearly unlimited capacity, and if not, server storage is cheap. who is judging how significant the article it. to a lot of people, academic team is their life. I'm having this problem a lot with wikipedia, and quite frankly, I'm insulted because i don't think that my article needs to be significant to everyone. I understand that things need to be reasonable, but the articles I'm dealing with are not wickedly long, or illagly obtained, or anything else, except that some admin deemed it "not significant" to their standards. I'm not finding fault with you, just the system-- Headtechie2006 ( talk) 04:07, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Can someone briefly (20 words or less) explain to me in what the key difference is between WP:N and WP:V. I have tried and the answer I am coming up with is just plain silly so I must be crazy. I would really like to see as many people provide their own independent interpretations. Low Sea ( talk) 15:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
"Key difference"? Wait, what? Verifiability and notability have no significant relationship in the first place. There is a small correlation between them in that things about which there is no verifiable information cannot be significant, but that's not really related to the principle of either rule. The notability guidelines are here because, even after limiting ourselves to knowledge that is in some way or another encyclopedic (e.g. not advertisements, directory entries, etc.), we still cannot have an infinitely broad focus or we could get nothing done. By defining only certain things as notable, we can work more effectively and better serve our readers (which is the main reason we're here, of course). They help support other things as well, such keeping out spam and nonsense, but those aren't the primary reason. -- erachima formerly tjstrf 21:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
If you cut through all the sludge that is about the sum total difference between the two other than WHY they exist. Please correct me if I am wrong (as mentioned earlier, I may be crazy). Low Sea 08:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I am trying to identify the difference in the mechanics of these two policies - the "how it works" if you will... Motivation and reasoning for using policies are fine but the actual mechanics used to say "complies" versus "does not comply" should be independent of these.
A good example of mechanics is the WP:RS primary/secondary/tertiary source definitions. Reguardless of why you might use one of these three types of sources, the difference between them is consistent and able to be identified with ease.
So, can anyone define the difference between how WP:V is proved and how WP:N is proved without refering to why the references are needed? As far as I can tell the mechanical difference between these two policies (as written) is nothing more than one of how many WP:RS are referenced. Low Sea ( talk) 18:16, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Biographicon : crowd-sourcing non-notables.
There should be a pleasant, courteous, automatic way to tell users who create non-notable biographies that there are other appropriate forums for their work. Wikipedia is not the only game in town. 96.231.161.184 ( talk) 04:10, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks for the links. Skomorokh 16:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I am sure the topic of book sales volumes has been raised before in some context but I just found this website [5] who identify themselves as a small firm doing independent research on book sales volumes using the amazon.com database. Would this be considered a secondary (tertiary?) source for book sales volumes and if so would these numbers be acceptable for providing notability on (A) books, and (B) authors ?? Low Sea ( talk) 22:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
To give an example, academic books often have small printing runs, but come to be published through very different processes than mainstream books and may be used only or chiefly by universities so the numbers will be small, or they may be on an esoteric subject but be the leading authority on that subject, yet have a tiny publication footprint. Or a book that is read all over a tiny country, but nowhere else, will pale next to a book read all over a larger country.
Then, of course, there was wrangling over the arbitrary benchmark number of sales to use, for the very reason that choosing a number was to some extent necessarily arbitrary. It kept getting lowered for the exceptions to the rules to the point where it became ineffective. You must have a too high number, not a too low, because we are attempting to establish notability criteria, not lack of notability criteria. Then it was raised that there are certain types of books that can sell huge numbers but may still not be notable (the example were certain types of cookbooks or manuals for particular types of machinery if memory serves), and with very low numbers we were at a point it was so tepid it was useless.
Anyway, there was much more and you are welcome to torture yourself
reading the gallons of ink spilled (don't forget to start with the archives and see you in about ten hours), but the long and the short of it was: it was too hard to use effectively because of the variability of books; it was arbitrary and so on. After it was removed, from all of the research that came out we actually included a note for a long time: "There is no present agreement on how high or low a book must fall on Amazon's sale's rank listing (in the "product details" section for a book's listing) in order to provide evidence of its notability, vel non.
" We eventually removed this too. I think similar problems may crop up for authors.--
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
02:53, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
{{
Cite book}}
with the <ref></ref> function). For Hornaday, here's a few
[8];
[9];
[10]. My quick look with results shows that there must be many more sources to mine. I'm certain the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers in the area must have written about both these men many times during their era. The fact that you might have to dig to find sources is the nature of the beast. We are an encyclopedia, a tertiary source, and our material must be written from already published sources. On the LA Times front, I just went to their website and searched their archives which only go back online to 1985 (but for images), and immediately found articles on or mentioning Hornaday—one called "Despite Unresolved Split, Religious Science Convention Goes On"; another called "Religious Science" and here's one really worth looking into: "Rev. William Hornaday; Religious Science Leader" (
here's the absract). You would need to pay to access the full articles online. This means to me that if you go physically to a library with LA Times on file from the 50s and 60s in microfilm or in some other form, you'll find scads. In short, the system works fine. If someone was as influential as you say, then sources will exist, and lo and behold, here they do. But those wishing to include material and topics have the mandate of verifying information on the subject. No one ever said it wasn't work to write a proper encyclopedia article.--
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
11:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)The whole issue of "Notability" has to be very narrowly intersrted. People use encyclopedias for terms that run into but can not get much reliable information orgenized in one place. Therefor Notability does not be streached - other wise why need an encyclopdia at all.... Zeq ( talk) 08:00, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
-- 76.185.167.132 ( talk) 15:47, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
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Archive 15 | ← | Archive 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | Archive 21 | Archive 22 | → | Archive 25 |
Gama Prasad Agarwalla (1925-1989),was the producer of the film Assamese film "Piyali Phukan" which has the distinction of being the first Assamese film to bag a National Award i.e Certificate of Merit in the year 1955 by the Film Division under the Government of India.
Gama Prasad Agarwalla was born in Tezpur, Assam in 1925. He was a renowned name in the world of regional cinema in Assam as well as in India. He took film making as a hobby and was deeply involved in all his film projects. He setup Rup Jyoti Productions which was a production house for Assamese films and Rup Roshni Distributors which was a Distribution house for both Assamese and Hindi film. His efforts to bring Assamese cinema on a National stage were recognized when the Government of India awarded the film Piyoli Phukan with the Certificate of Merit in 1955. He was also awarded and honoured by the Government of Assam for his contribution to Assamese Cinema in the year 1988.
He produced or financed many Assamese films viz. Era Bator Sur, Puwati Nikhar Swopun etc. He also opened up many cinema halls in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam like Kamala Talkies Dhekiajuli, Kamala Talkies, Rangapara, Ganesh Talkies, Kharupetia. He was married to Bhanwri Devi. He was very popular among the residents of his home town, Tezpur in Assam. He died in 1989. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agarwalaav ( talk • contribs) 10:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
There are a few episodes of Timothy Goes to School tagged with Template:Notability. I'd put them all up for deletion, but doesn't there have to be a deletion review before mass-AFDing stuff like this? -- Montchav ( talk) 16:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Why does the nutshell require secondary sources, but the article does not? Hobit ( talk) 21:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
What articles or article types are exempt from falling under Wikipedia:Notability? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 23:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
If articles which have no evidence of notability are combined in a composite article (a list of, or similar), is the latter article then exempt from qualifying under WP:N? Frequently in article deletion discussions people !vote to merge into a "list of" or similar; but if the single article is not notable under Wikipedia standards, how does a collection of non-notable information then meet that same standard? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 00:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
(OD) You're still being a bit obtuse. Can you tell us what specific article you tagged? For example there might very well be notability for Famous Midgets as a list with bio snippets while each once may be non-notable. We really need to look at your specific case. I don't believe this is stated quite in policy, but we are also encouraged to use common sense in interpreting notability. Additionally, there is nothing stopping you from starting a new section for Notability for Lists. Wjhonson ( talk) 06:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I came across an AfD that was discussing an article lacking notability. The lack of notability wasn't denied or refuted (that I recall); but the majority of people were arguing to merge the content into the article Minor characters in CSI: Miami. I started thinking that the latter article was effectively a dumping ground for a collection of non-notable articles; and, in fact, couldn't find any evidence of notability or reliable sources as defined by Wikipedia. So I tagged it with {{ notability}} and {{ primary sources}}. AnteaterZot ( talk · contribs) quickly removed the notability tagging saying (as above): "Removing notability tag. Such lists are the compromise to having scads of individual pages. Each entity on the list may not meet WP:N, but collectively they do, at least for well-known shows." Since I wasn't aware of a point of criticality whereupon non-notable articles massed together became spontaneously notable w/o meeting the requirements of this guideline, I brought it here before pushing further. — pd_THOR | =/\= | 19:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
The fact that something contained in a list may not be notable as stand alone material, but is when contained in a list on the topic, does not mean it must not be sourced. verifiability is non-negotiable; everything requires sourcing. In practice, we often do dump material that is non-notable into a list without checking its verifiability, and that is a problem.-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 20:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
"A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject."
The guideline in a nutshell requests secondary sources to establish notability. While this may work on a large number of cases it is often not so helpful. I feel rewording is necessary.
For example an average person serving in the armed forces will have a secondary source covering his life. This does not make every serviceman notable. Also in some cases authors of books do not get secondary coverage of their biography for a while even if the book they wrote is popular and had critical review. And lastly in the case of certain topics such as articles on fiction related content the lack of secondary sources do not always mean the topic is non-notable.
Also in the case of WP:SPINOUTs and WP:STUBs this guideline seems to be being contradictory.
-- Cat chi? 22:16, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
How could something so frequently used as a reason for deletion and probably used to justify more actions than at least half the policies on Wikipedia be called a guideline? Why even call it a guideline when it is being treated like a policy? Can anyone explain how this "guideline" has so much power? --No signature; I have an account, but I'm not going to expend the wasted effort to login. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.228.166 ( talk) 07:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I am fairly new to Wikipedia, but it seems to me that since we have a template for AfD, why not create a template that users can put into a discussion page that would cover the following: "Presumed" "Significant coverage" "Reliable" "Sources"
This way, a lot of personal attacks could be avoided in discussion pages. Just a thought. Runnynose47 ( talk) 19:54, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I really don't understand how to fill in these templates. Can you provide more info. For example, does one insert a "subject" into [expert-subject], and how do you know what subject to use? The explanations on this page are a bit cursory. In puzzlement, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 21:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
The subject of notability has come up in discussing merging at Template talk:SubArticle. Input on whether a parent article can provide notability for its 'subarticles' would be appreciated. Richard001 ( talk) 02:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be worth discussing the possibility of changing non-notability deletion policies to include the step of transplanting information not suitable for wikipedia to a suitable wiki if it exists. One could argue that outright deletion is little better than book burning. . .
I argue only for the preservation of information. . . -- Carterhawk ( talk) 07:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I know wikipedia is the nerd's revenge on real world. But somebody, Please! Please! be a human somebody (and not a wikipedia editor nutcase) Please! check if this so-called guideline meets the basic requirements for logical coherence? I know wikipedia is the wisdom of the crowds, but still hoping for some sanity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.161.31.228 ( talk) 09:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm sick of notability being used to bypass WP:NOT#NEWS, especially in articles concerning living people. Can we make sure this is explicitly discouraged? Will ( talk) 16:03, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
It has been suggested that the proposal I made here may be relevant to Notability. I would appreciate comments. Thank you-- mrg3105 ( comms) If you're not taking any flak, you're not over the target. 04:18, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Recentism is a balance to Wikipedia:Notability#Notability_is_not_temporary and some awareness of that should inform the section. The recent link to Wikipedia:Notability does not degrade over time is also inappropriate as that essay confuses Verifiability with notability. SilkTork * What's YOUR point? 19:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I have had my article deleted four times, so i need help on how to present it to Wikipedias standard.
It is a true crime story, Marie Greening Zidan is my mother,
REGARDS
Bluepetals —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bluepetals ( talk • contribs) 13:32, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I've been hearing reports from a web forum I go to, that this and certain other Wikipedia rulings often get changed by some people (for instance, certain people on many webcomics) particularly right after a failed AfD, to attempt to alter the results. Personally, I don't care if the rules are too light, or too harsh, so long as they can be consistent, and not changed at a whim, or a grudge. It is for this reason that I move some consistently agreed upon notion of what notability be declared, after which even if it is later found too harsh, it should regardless be either sprotect or protect tagged. Bulmabriefs144 ( talk) 06:04, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
The <span id="CONTENT" /> tag does not work correctly on my browser. Seems to me that "CONTENT" is reserved, or mixes with the table of contents. I propose to change it to, say <span id="NCONTENT" /> if there are no objections. Oceanh ( talk) 02:38, 9 March 2008 (UTC).
How is it done? Say there's a debate over whether or not a topic is notable. One article covers all the information in the article, but one source (arguably) isn't sufficient to establish notability. So editors go out and find six or seven other articles that establish notability, but can't really be cited because they don't offer anything new to the article (or, say, they're from a major paper and behind a paywall). How are those supposed to be included in the article, and is there even a point to including them? —Torc. ( Talk.) 07:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I ran across Zen Center of Syracuse and put a speedy deletion tag on it for failure to make any claims of notability. The original creator of the article put a hangon tag on the article and claims in the article's Talk page that WikiProject Buddhism is planning on creating an article on every temple in the world. That needs to be nipped in the bud. Every temple in the world is no more notable than every Christian church or every mosque in the world. Just existence isn't notability. How do we stop this before it spreads? Corvus cornix talk 23:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Following the publication of a story about Wikipedia in today's issue of The Economist, a discussion started on the English language Wikipedia mailing list about notability. One reply said "We don't _need_ notability, or anything like it. Our other existing policies would suffice to keep the actual "crap" out." [3] I think it would be constructive for interested editors to discuss here the merits or otherwise of this assertion, and to gauge if there is any consensus to either upgrade the concept of notability into actual policy, or to replace it with some other subjective measure. Catchpole ( talk) 19:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, in a way, I tend to think notability and it's sprawling subguidelines are harmful in the sense that they are often used to short-circuit common sense and rational debate on both sides. On one side, you have the main notability policy being used to justify a "it exists" rationale (after all, there are sources) and the subguidelines being used to circumvent sourcing requirements (they're a "pro" athlete, this book won X award, etc). On the other side, you have people arguing against (what appear to me as) clearly notable topics (such as widely-cited academics, historical landmarks, etc). I personally believe that the "essence" of notability is ensuring that the topics we cover are appropriate and have enough available sources to craft complete (if occasionally short) articles, following the content-orientated portions of notability's "mother" WP:NOT. In the absence of such guidelines, it would boil down to conflict opinions about what is "appropriate", "complete" and/or "encyclopedic". However, it would be better (in my eyes) to have debates about such topics, than the current debates that rage depending on the language of the notability guidelines (which, to me, largely exclude real discussion of the principles and reasoning involved). Just some thoughts. You're welcome to take them or leave them. Vassyana ( talk) 23:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
In response to Cacharoth's original question, I think notability is overall a very good thing to have around. I could write an article about anyone who has had an obituary in the newspaper that passes V, NPOV, NOR, and NOT (V doesn't say the published third-party sources should be significant, only that they must exist). What keeps it out? Notability. (If you think such things should be included, well...I don't know what to say.) That alone should show that the core policies, while admirable and important, are not sufficient to keep out garbage articles. This being said, I agree with Cacharoth that the guidelines are too subjective. We need a less squishy definition of "significant coverage" (currently defined as "Whatever I think is significant"), along with an explicit note that two thin sources do not meet the multiple sourcing requirement, and a removal of the sub-guidelines (it matters only can you substantially source it or not, not if they've had a trip across the country in the band van or if they made X gazillion pornos or if it sold X copies or if it was released by a band which in itself is sourceable or if they play on a professional team or...). The sub-notability guidelines are second-guessing sources, and we don't do that. If the sources decide "It's not important, don't write (much) about it", we shrug and follow their lead. Period. We don't give more weight to something than they do. If they decide it is important enough to write about, and the subject otherwise passes the core content policies, we do write about it, period, even if it seems silly. The main thing is, we shouldn't be making the decision ourselves. Reliable sources should decide to write or not write, we should follow their lead. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:13, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi.
I saw this:
"However, many subjects presumed to be notable may still not be worthy of inclusion – they fail What Wikipedia is not, or the coverage does not actually support notability when examined. For example, directories and databases, advertisements, announcements columns, minor news stories, and coverage with low levels of discrimination, are all examples of information that may not be evidence of notability for the purposes of article creation, despite their existence as reliable sources. "
So then this raises the question of what exactly constitutes evidence for notability. What, exactly, does that? Why no guidelines about that, just "examples"? mike4ty4 ( talk) 09:22, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
We seem to be prepared to create a Wikiproject Television-specific guideline, or possible a high-level subguideline for notability, based on recent discussion. In WP:N, we have this statement: A subject is presumed to be sufficiently notable if it meets the general notability guideline below, or if it meets an accepted subject specific standard listed in the table to the right. Now, when I look through the accepted nondisputed subguidelines, all of them in the end come back to say that "significant coverage in secondary courses" is still required, even given the "likely to be notable" cases that they list (eg album release by a major notable artist/band in WP:MUSIC).
Should it be the case that a notability subguideline or project-specific guideline remove the need for secondary sources? I know there are editors that would like to go this direction for television-specific articles like episodes, but I fear that if we took it that way, then what would happen is that other editors may bypass the project-specific guideline and jump right back to WP:N, and we're back at the recent ArbCom case again.
So the question I ask is two-fold: is, for purposes of being a guideline, the "significant coverage in secondary sources" a non-negotiable aspect of any subguidelines, and if so, should we reflect this in the language currently in WP:N? -- MASEM 13:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
What we need sources for is article content. That's the meaning of V, which is very appropriately policy. That the sources for the content have to be objective and balanced, is the meaning of NOR, also appropriately core policy. Without those standards for content, we dont have an encyclopedia. But neither of them says anything about notability. any way of demonstrating notability is acceptable. (more exactly, whatever way of demonstrating whatever it is we decide we mean by notability is acceptable). we still need reliable content to write the article, but that's a separate issue. If we have no reliable content, it's an empty article and should be deleted, notable or not. "Notabibility requires appropriate evidence" would be a better way of putting it than "objective" . ""Substantial coverage in reliable sources constitutes such objective evidence." " is one way of demonstrating notability--just one way. DGG ( talk) 03:02, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Had a recent discussion with another user regarding the notability of a particular politician, so for future reference I would like to try and establish consensus on a couple of the issues raised.
Firstly, would a city like Buffalo, New York, with 295,000 residents, qualify as a "major metropolitan city" or not? Secondly, would a failed candidate for the US Congress qualify as notable?
The issue concerns an article about a Buffalo city councillor who once stood unsuccessfully for Congress. Gatoclass ( talk) 04:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
There is a question that has come up in one or two of the deletion debates in which I have participated here, where it's been argued that the section means "Once notable, always notable." Indeed, this is pretty much what the first paragraph states. However, this has been taken to mean that if a topic receives just a brief flurry of media attention, then it becomes notable and stays notable -- in contradiction to the second paragraph. I've flagged this as a self contradiction which will need to be clarified. — Snthdiueoa ( talk| contribs) 16:24, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
'nuf said! Digital athena ( talk) 22:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Notability was a first shot at preventing people from wasting their time on things that were too trivial to easily be checked. I thought it could be entirely replaced by verifiability and reliable sources by now.
The page says that notability criteria should be objective, but imho notability itself has always been a fairly subjective subject.
Finally, I simply don't like guidelines that are made solely to serve some XFD process. (Imagine if Esperanza or AMA had created guidelines... there'd be an outcry!)
Have people already been phasing out the use of Notability as a criterion?
Perhaps we can replace the guidline with just "2 reliable sources" and merge that with Wikipedia:Reliable sources?
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 10:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC) I'm asking here first, because redirects are annoying :-P
Absent strong objections at the talk page for WP:Academics I think that it is time to merge this page into BIO. The better parts of this process have been incorporated into BIO for some time and this is now just a redundant page. Perhaps further ideas in clarification of BIO could be included in an essay. -- Kevin Murray ( talk) 18:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
One of the bullets under General notability guidelines begins "'sources,' defined on Wikipedia as secondary sources...." I don't know what that means. Also, refuse recognize a guideline that purports to define anything for all of Wikipedia. (Yes, that means that I find that so arrogant that I do not recognize this guideline at all.) -- Gerry Ashton ( talk) 02:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I am somewhat new to WP so if this has been discussed before please point me in the right direction to see the history. I have been reading quite a bit on notability issues here at WP but I have not yet seen anything that addresses the following:
I believe a waiver of the {{ Primarysources}} tag may be in order for articles which describe the details and nature of any modern school of thought or belief systems. Published experts who would write on such matters would most likely be either proponents or opponents to such teachings.
For example: The WP article on Unity, the largest of the New Thought denominations is currently tagged with {{ Primarysources}}. This is a denomination that has tens of thousands of congregants and is quite controversial (ergo notable) among some sects of Christianity ... yet it raises no academic or journalistic red flags so the only published sources on the teachings of the church are all primary sources either for or against those teachings.
Another example might be the New Thought denomination called Divine Science which has already fallen to the WP:NN issue. This denomination has significant historical context within New Thought seminaries due to one of its widely published authors, Joseph Murphy.
Maybe what we need is a new tag, something like:
Primary Sources Waiver for Belief System Description
"Readers are advised this article/section describes a belief system and uses only primary source material which cannot be considered objective. This article/section is allowed under a specific exception to the WP policy requiring secondary and tertiary sources, provided the article is accurate to it's sources and maintains a NPOV." See WP:PSTS for more information.
Is this a good idea or if not why not, and how would one go about proposing creation of a new policy and tag indicating such a waiver? Low Sea ( talk) 20:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I have been giving a lot of thought and review to the subject of WP:Notability (WP:N) and come to a rather radical new perspective on the subject: "Notability may need to be defined and/or qualified, at least to some degree, by the informational needs of the readers."
In trying to find solutions to my issue of WP:N versus details for subjective belief systems (see the section above) I perused a lot of the WP internal policies, guidelines, discussions, memoranda and essays on content requirements. In the process I noticed that many of the editors here may have developed a mild case of IvoryTower-itis -- that is they appear to have developed a tendency to forget about the end-users of their research efforts. It may sound cold considering that every editor here is a human being (if you ignore the bots) but I begin to wonder if we haven't forgotten about the people side of the equation -- "people" in this case refering to those non-editor users who come to Wikipedia to simply read the information collected here.
This is not a rant or flame, merely an observation and my admittedly subjective interpretation. To test if this interpretation is accurate I propose the following question: When was the last time you asked yourself: "Why do people come to Wikipedia?"
I remember reading somewhere in those guidelines and policies that when trying to determine if an article is appropriate for creation at WP we should think about the question "Would you find this article in a printed encyclopedia?" (link needed). Thinking about that question led me to wonder about matters like "How does a print encyclopedia decide what to include/exclude?" and "Why do people use encyclopedias (print or otherwise)?"
I would be curious to hear what your answers are to the above questions but since this is the WP:N talkpage let me stay on topic and bring it into focus with the following question:
Can WP:Notability be qualified in terms of what people come to Wikipedia looking for?
For example: If 5,000 people each month type in the same search term and find "No page with that title exists", should WP add a page to answer the people's need/desire for information even if it does not meet typical WP:N criteria? Low Sea ( talk) 07:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
In the lead, there is this troublesome sentence:
'If an article currently does not cite reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, that does not necessarily mean the topic is not notable.'
True, a poorly written stub can still be notable. But ultimately, the notability must come from secondary sources. So, if those cannot be shown, then the topic / article cannot be shown to be notable except by original research. I don't advocate deleting stub / poorly written articles. I do advocate deleting topics that are not and cannot be sourced.
I advocate removing the sentence as it requires the community to prove a negative which is an impossible standard. Either the topic / article states why it is notable through reference to secondary sources or it doesn't: if it doesn't, then it is de facto not notable. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast ( talk) 17:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
The way I read this is that a non-notable subject may be a section within a notable article. Of course then you again get to deal with the circular logic problems but it seems that you might be able to use only reliable primary sources in such a section to satisfy verifiability. Could this be the reason for needing WP:N -- to differentiate between criteria for stand-alone articles versus sub-articles? Low Sea ( talk) 08:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)Verifiable facts and content not supported by multiple independent sources may be appropriate for inclusion within another article.
Should Wikipedia articles about celebrities, etc. mention siblings, or no? I'm wondering as some articles mention certain celebrities having sisters/brothers while others don't mention about them. -- 72.230.46.168 ( talk) 20:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
It's a ridiculous policy meant to keep people from making articles about their brothers and classmates, but come up with something addressing that issue that isn't a cop-out. The criteria for notability are too subjective, and frankly notability would limit the encyclopedia to about 1000 articles, under any reasonable interpretation of notability. The only reason I came by the notability page is because I had visited maybe the third or fourth article in a month where there was a debate about the "notability" of the article in question. Nevertheless, the articles in question provided valuable information to me. So let's leave the calls for what is notable to the person USING wikipedia and actually looking for the information. One man's notable is another man's junk. 24.182.229.4 ( talk) 18:37, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I believe that if Wikipedia wants all of their articles to be published in such publications as Newsweek, or Time, than they should get rid of most of there now 10 million+ articles. Some pages are about published topics, and are in newsletters or press releases, but aren’t on the NBC Nightly News, or on CNN. Everyone isn’t that privileged. I disagree with what some admins have told me about what is a "reliable" source. I think that a school's newsletter or a local newspaper article is a reliable source.-- Headtechie2006 ( talk) 03:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Another thing i have to say about this all is why does it have to be significant. I could see it needing to be significant if you were trying to fit the articles into a 1000 page book, but your not. wikipedia has nearly unlimited capacity, and if not, server storage is cheap. who is judging how significant the article it. to a lot of people, academic team is their life. I'm having this problem a lot with wikipedia, and quite frankly, I'm insulted because i don't think that my article needs to be significant to everyone. I understand that things need to be reasonable, but the articles I'm dealing with are not wickedly long, or illagly obtained, or anything else, except that some admin deemed it "not significant" to their standards. I'm not finding fault with you, just the system-- Headtechie2006 ( talk) 04:07, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Can someone briefly (20 words or less) explain to me in what the key difference is between WP:N and WP:V. I have tried and the answer I am coming up with is just plain silly so I must be crazy. I would really like to see as many people provide their own independent interpretations. Low Sea ( talk) 15:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
"Key difference"? Wait, what? Verifiability and notability have no significant relationship in the first place. There is a small correlation between them in that things about which there is no verifiable information cannot be significant, but that's not really related to the principle of either rule. The notability guidelines are here because, even after limiting ourselves to knowledge that is in some way or another encyclopedic (e.g. not advertisements, directory entries, etc.), we still cannot have an infinitely broad focus or we could get nothing done. By defining only certain things as notable, we can work more effectively and better serve our readers (which is the main reason we're here, of course). They help support other things as well, such keeping out spam and nonsense, but those aren't the primary reason. -- erachima formerly tjstrf 21:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
If you cut through all the sludge that is about the sum total difference between the two other than WHY they exist. Please correct me if I am wrong (as mentioned earlier, I may be crazy). Low Sea 08:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I am trying to identify the difference in the mechanics of these two policies - the "how it works" if you will... Motivation and reasoning for using policies are fine but the actual mechanics used to say "complies" versus "does not comply" should be independent of these.
A good example of mechanics is the WP:RS primary/secondary/tertiary source definitions. Reguardless of why you might use one of these three types of sources, the difference between them is consistent and able to be identified with ease.
So, can anyone define the difference between how WP:V is proved and how WP:N is proved without refering to why the references are needed? As far as I can tell the mechanical difference between these two policies (as written) is nothing more than one of how many WP:RS are referenced. Low Sea ( talk) 18:16, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Biographicon : crowd-sourcing non-notables.
There should be a pleasant, courteous, automatic way to tell users who create non-notable biographies that there are other appropriate forums for their work. Wikipedia is not the only game in town. 96.231.161.184 ( talk) 04:10, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks for the links. Skomorokh 16:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I am sure the topic of book sales volumes has been raised before in some context but I just found this website [5] who identify themselves as a small firm doing independent research on book sales volumes using the amazon.com database. Would this be considered a secondary (tertiary?) source for book sales volumes and if so would these numbers be acceptable for providing notability on (A) books, and (B) authors ?? Low Sea ( talk) 22:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
To give an example, academic books often have small printing runs, but come to be published through very different processes than mainstream books and may be used only or chiefly by universities so the numbers will be small, or they may be on an esoteric subject but be the leading authority on that subject, yet have a tiny publication footprint. Or a book that is read all over a tiny country, but nowhere else, will pale next to a book read all over a larger country.
Then, of course, there was wrangling over the arbitrary benchmark number of sales to use, for the very reason that choosing a number was to some extent necessarily arbitrary. It kept getting lowered for the exceptions to the rules to the point where it became ineffective. You must have a too high number, not a too low, because we are attempting to establish notability criteria, not lack of notability criteria. Then it was raised that there are certain types of books that can sell huge numbers but may still not be notable (the example were certain types of cookbooks or manuals for particular types of machinery if memory serves), and with very low numbers we were at a point it was so tepid it was useless.
Anyway, there was much more and you are welcome to torture yourself
reading the gallons of ink spilled (don't forget to start with the archives and see you in about ten hours), but the long and the short of it was: it was too hard to use effectively because of the variability of books; it was arbitrary and so on. After it was removed, from all of the research that came out we actually included a note for a long time: "There is no present agreement on how high or low a book must fall on Amazon's sale's rank listing (in the "product details" section for a book's listing) in order to provide evidence of its notability, vel non.
" We eventually removed this too. I think similar problems may crop up for authors.--
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
02:53, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
{{
Cite book}}
with the <ref></ref> function). For Hornaday, here's a few
[8];
[9];
[10]. My quick look with results shows that there must be many more sources to mine. I'm certain the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers in the area must have written about both these men many times during their era. The fact that you might have to dig to find sources is the nature of the beast. We are an encyclopedia, a tertiary source, and our material must be written from already published sources. On the LA Times front, I just went to their website and searched their archives which only go back online to 1985 (but for images), and immediately found articles on or mentioning Hornaday—one called "Despite Unresolved Split, Religious Science Convention Goes On"; another called "Religious Science" and here's one really worth looking into: "Rev. William Hornaday; Religious Science Leader" (
here's the absract). You would need to pay to access the full articles online. This means to me that if you go physically to a library with LA Times on file from the 50s and 60s in microfilm or in some other form, you'll find scads. In short, the system works fine. If someone was as influential as you say, then sources will exist, and lo and behold, here they do. But those wishing to include material and topics have the mandate of verifying information on the subject. No one ever said it wasn't work to write a proper encyclopedia article.--
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
11:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)The whole issue of "Notability" has to be very narrowly intersrted. People use encyclopedias for terms that run into but can not get much reliable information orgenized in one place. Therefor Notability does not be streached - other wise why need an encyclopdia at all.... Zeq ( talk) 08:00, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
-- 76.185.167.132 ( talk) 15:47, 5 April 2008 (UTC)