You've done stellar work here, Ironholds. Thanks for undertaking this. We can start applying this and we'll let it evolve to fit our experience. I don't want to create an ( edit conflict), so go ahead and incorporate the suitable features of my proposed lead at your leisure.
Here's an idea I wanted some feedback on. When I wonder, "Why do we have WP:N in the first place?", the general answer has something to do with the fact that we're building an encyclopedia. But if I understand correctly, what we're really saying is that WP:N is an attempt to ensure that an article will remain in conformity with WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV over the course of its future existence. And if someone creates an article that fails WP:N, then ipso facto it's not of general interest, and by implication it's probably of personal interest to the creator, and is a likely candidate to violate WP:NPOV in the future. Thus we destroy articles that are vanity, articles on new startup companies, articles on the coffee shop down the street -- when we say they fail WP:N, what we really mean is that they pose a hazard to WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV.
Is this correct?
I am asking this in light of our experience at WP:Articles for deletion/HMA v Ritchie and Morren. This was a particularly interesting case because we simply could not fathom why the article was created. Since I'm a law student, I assume the article was created because it appeared in someone's casebook, and s/he was creating the article to augment the curriculum.
For the sake of argument, let's say we could verify that this is true. In this case, I would see no reason to destroy such an article, right? Shoehorning it into WP:N would be a headache, but you have to admit that if HMA v Ritchie and Morren poses no organic threat to WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV, and if someone says "But we're learning it in school!" there's really no reason to spite them that.
Where am I going with this. Ummmm, all of this could point to either of two conclusions.
What say you? Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 16:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Actually, I could have said this much less abstractly:
“ | A case is notable if it is mentioned in a casebook, because it could impact how thousands of people understand that area of law. | ” |
As for the other stuff, one could argue that WP:N is just a way of applying WP:V, WP:OR, WP:NPOV and WP:BIO for the purposes of AfD. On the other hand, even a "notable" rock band has an incentive to violate WP:NPOV at its respective article, yet our explanation for including these articles is that "there exists verifiable, non-OR, NPOV testimony as to their notability." So that suggests that notability is something independent.
Still, I am interested by this stuff. Is WP:N the best place to discuss it, or is there somewhere else? Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 17:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
“ | Note 3: Hostile corporate takeovers of military contractors. Applying the holding of the principal case, would the outcome be different if the object of the hostile corporate takeover were a military contractor during a time of war? For a discussion, see the trial court case of X v. Y. | ” |
“ | A case is also notable if a reliable scholarly authority (such as a law professor, law review, casebook etc.) has suggested that the text of the case may be useful for further understanding a legal principal. | ” |
“ | One of my favorite examples of legal principle XYZ was applied in the case of Ritchie and Morren. (The case itself was pretty humdrum, but Ritche and Morren had previously been convicted of sodomizing a goat, and so I use this case to illustrate how ridiculous Scottish people are.) As articulated in that case, principle XYZ means that ... | ” |
Actually, HMA v Ritchie and Morren (1841) 2 Swin 581 is cited in a number of law books, under several names, seemingly as a precedent for a rule relating to the admissibility of evidence: [1]. (Notice also how problems with OCR mask search results, such as by rendering Morren as Zllorren). The deletion was probably wrong. James500 ( talk) 03:46, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Please add to this list -- it's just supposed to be a list.
Proposed guidelines look great. At some point, we should think about expanding this to legislation as well. There are a lot of stand-alone articles for random Bills and Acts that aren't necessarily noteable. Both for current legislation and historical legislation... But so far, so good! Singularity42 ( talk) 19:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
A Bill introduced into a legislature is not legislation. It is a proposal for legislation. Neither is a draft Bill or a draft statutory instrument.
Statutory instruments receive a considerable amount of coverage. There is Halsbury's Statutory Instruments and The Statutory Rules and Orders and Statutory Instruments Revised. I am under the impression that there are similar collections of annotated statutory instruments and other material in LexisNexis and Westlaw. There is the Table of Government Orders and the Index to Government Orders. There are volumes containing collections of revised annotated statutory instruments relating to particular areas of the law. For example, Sweet and Maxwell's Labour Relations Statutes and Materials (2nd Ed) contains eighteen of them running to 83 pages. Statutory instruments also receive coverage in treatises. For example, the table of statutory instruments at the front of the 1999 edition of Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice, which indexes references to individual instruments in the book, is nineteen pages long. Statutory instruments are said to be assuming increasing importance due to the "skeletal" nature of some primary legislation. Some of them do look like a code, or make substantial amendments to one. They receive amendments and are discussed in case law and other commentary.
James500 (
talk) 00:50, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
I' ve replaced "a court with historical value or importance" with a reference to WP:GNG, because the prior criterion was a bit vague. Any court with historical value or importance will generally meet WP:GNG through coverage in specialist publications. Sandstein 11:15, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
A possible criteria is that a court is notable if it is known to have existed before a certain date. The introduction of printing is one possible date. The year 1660 is suggested by section 3(3) of the Public Records Act 1958. (This reproduces a provision of 1898). The year 1715 is suggested by section 1 of the Public Record Office Act 1877. (The provisions in question forbid the destruction of court records on grounds of historical importance: [2]). My preference would be for a later date. Common sense suggests that both those dates need to be revised forward due to the age of the sources. Common sense also suggests that a court can be historically important without all of its records being historically important. The year 1852 is suggested by the following calculation: 1877 - 1715 = 162, 2014 - 162 = 1852. The year 1921 is suggested by a report from UNESCO: [3]. The year 1912 is suggested by the Virginia Public Records Act: [4]. The year 1892 is suggested by section 8(2) of the Public Records Act, 1993: [5].
Another possible criteria is that a court is notable if any of its records have been selected for permanent preservation by the national archives of a country.
Another possible criteria is that a court is notable if a sufficiently independent and reliable source has said in express words that it is important, significant, interesting, unusual, or so forth.
Another possible criteria is the existence of a special Act relating to the court. This will be necessary to maintain consistency with notability criteria for legislation if we accept that primary legislation is notable, which we probably will. James500 ( talk) 07:08, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
I think that the current version of this guideline is far to lax, and basically contains two exemptions from the General notability guideline, namely a court case is considered notable if it:
My view is that only the verifiable evidence of notability justifies a court case for inclusion as a standalone article, otherwise you end up relying on the primary source or subjective importance as inclusion criteria, and I think that goes against the spirit of Wikipedia's content policies. -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 16:07, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
You may find this discussion helpful: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law/Archive 9#Notability of cases and doctrines. bd2412 T 02:23, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
In light of some recent AFD's, I've opened this conversation - your views are welcome! bd2412 T 00:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
This discussion is now located at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States courts and judges/Archive 4#Notability of U.S. Federal Judges. James500 ( talk) 08:23, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
I disagree with the premise that federal judges are inherently notable only if they reach the U.S Supreme Court. In my view, every Article III judge, whether on a District Court, Court of Appeals, or Supreme Court is inherently notable. This is a position that requires Presedential nomination and confirmation by the Senate. Federal judges at all levels have lifetime tenure. At the court of appeals level, they decide cases that set binding precedent for a half-dozen or so states. I consider them all sufficiently notable for a Wikipedia article, just by virtue of having attained the position.
My comment above does not extend to non-Article III "judges" such as bankruptcy judges, magistrate judges, patent law judges, administrative law judges, etc. Some of those may be notable, but they are not inherently notable by virtue of their position.
TJRC (
talk) 00:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
For consistency and convenience, given the discussion just initiated by User:BD2412, above, I have moved this discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States courts and judges#Are U.S. District Court Judges and U.S. Court of Appeals Judges inherently notable?. TJRC ( talk) 00:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject United States courts and judges/Notability may be relevant to further discussions on this talk page. James500 ( talk) 08:41, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
I propose that this version of Wikipedia:Notability (law) be declared an official Wikipedia guideline. Josh Parris 11:10, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
I think that conversation here has died. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2009 November 23#Wikipedia:Cases suggests that this guideline has failed to achieve WP:consensus, but perhaps the lack of active discussion indicates a lack of conflict.
I also suspect that the section on courts is largely moot, because most high courts will have received some degree of secondary source coverage through everyday reporting of cases, litigants and court decisions. (Perhaps in countries where legal journalism is ill-developed, this is not the case; in those cases, Wikipedia could become a convenient venue for basic legal research. However, WP:OR applies—there has to be independent coverage for us to report anything but a summary of the dry facts. At that stage, a stub linking to a decision/soft redirect to Wikisource might sometimes be more appropriate, depending on the nature of the decision and editors' difficulties in creating an unbiased summary.)
I do, however, think that opinions of a high court would be a reasonable exception to the GNG, because they're the product of a primary source that is essentially reliable per se. (It it is the most authoritative opinion of what the law is, and is cited in this fashion by secondary sources.) The clarifications for how to handle summary orders and the like by redirect are reasonable—unless independently notable, there's not much to write an article about in those instances. As for precedent, that's a good start, but we might also discuss a method for handling unpublished decisions of high courts (binding upon the parties, but not precedent-setting in their own right). TheFeds 05:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Comment Compliance with GNG is not necessary to avoid POV or OR.
I can't see any evidence that WP:JUDGE would result in vast numbers of articles that would not otherwise be created. Subjecting judges to a higher standard for inclusion than athletes would arguably be incompatible with neutrality.
WWBITV, Inc., v. Village of Rouses Point, mentioned above, has been included in West's New York Digest: [6]. It was also covered by the New York Law Journal: [7]. This suggests that that case may be proper subject matter for an encyclopedia. Three examples is far too small a sample to prove anything: They could be anomalous. Whether Wikipedians consider a case to be pedestrian or boring is arguably irrelevant to its notability (WP:BORING). James500 ( talk) 00:00, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above shows this guideline doesn't stand a snowball's chance.
Is there anything that can be salvaged from this guideline? Josh Parris 01:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
The discussion above shows this guideline doesn't stand a snowball's chance.
Should changes be made to the guideline to make it acceptable, or should be be {{ rejected}}? Josh Parris 01:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
This proposed guideline needs to be rescued. We need a subject notability guideline for every subject. As far as I am aware, it is not physically possible to prove that a topic does not satisfy GNG. In addition, the requirement for multiple sources is particularly obstructive if you are looking for paper based sources which are, by their nature, difficult to search. James500 ( talk) 06:46, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
I have included books of authority (every one of which will satisfy GNG anyway) but I am not sure about the sort of book that can be used in the manner allowed by Boys v Blenkisop (described here).
CHAMBERS is based on experience at the AfDs for 3PB, 5 Stone Buildings, 11 Stone Buildings and 5 Pump Court Chambers. A number of deletions of articles that possibly should have been moved or merged took place around that time. Those deletions should be reviewed at some point.
The deleted articles are 4 King's Bench Walk, 11 King's Bench Walk Chambers and New Square Chambers. King's Bench Walk, Inner Temple and New Square, Lincoln's Inn are obviously notable: [8] [9]. James500 ( talk) 01:07, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
This talk page now has an archive. The last revision before archiving commenced is this one. James500 ( talk) 08:21, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
I have removed the reference to the Crown Court centre at Aylesbury from WP:COURTS. It is not obviously non-notable. "Aylesbury Crown Court" gets 5 pages of results in GBooks. "Aylesbury Assizes" gets 25 pages of results. (I assume the assizes were held in the same building, as it seems to have been built before 1750: [10]). James500 ( talk) 11:18, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
The outcome of the AfDs for R v Khan and Dehn v Attorney-General indicate that criteria 2 of CASES has achieved consensus. James500 ( talk) 04:04, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
It appears that treaties are legally binding on states: E.g. [11] [12] [13]; and see generally; cf. [14]. They should therefore be regarded as notable in order to maintain consistency with the criteria which embrace all binding cases and legislation. It appears that treaties are capable of being a source of international law: [15]. This indicates notability. There are about 64,000 treaties registered with the United Nations, which is thought to be about three quarters of the total number: [16]. This is a small number (individual countries pass more legislation than that), compatible with notability. There are collections of treaties including collections of annotated treaties such as: Miller's "Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America"; "Multilateral Treaties: Index and Current" by Bowman and Harris: Commentary; Sweet & Maxwell's European Community Treaties; Sigeru Oda and Hisashi Owada, Annotated Treaties and Conventions (3rd Ed: Tokyo: Sanshodo, 1989). Such coverage indicates notability. Therefore, I shall now effect WP:TREATY. James500 ( talk) 07:56, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
This guideline previously read "A treaty is notable." A lot of treaties aren't, they're pretty prosaic, and the U.S. alone is party to several thousand treaties, most of which are not notable.
I've taken a stab at refining this a bit. Since this is not a guideline in force, I thought the best approach would be to just be WP:BOLD and make the edit for discussion (not least of which because I don't think the existing text reflected consensus, anyway).
Quick summary of my edit:
TJRC ( talk) 23:02, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
@ James500: I just noticed that you've very recently created the "Treaties" section I just revised. I didn't realize that; I'd thought this was a long-dormant document. I'd welcome your input on my comments above. TJRC ( talk) 23:20, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
@ User:TJRC: Regarding this edit, two editors (myself and Mendaliv) agree that bilateral treaties in force are notable. You disagree. I can't see any grounds for according any of your arguments greater weight, or any of our arguments less weight. So consensus appears to be in favour of the change. But, even if I was wrong about that, it doesn't matter. Material doesn't have to achieve consensus to be included in a proposal, especially one marked as rejected, or as a draft, which is what this is. A proposal only has to move in the general direction of consensus. And you are outvoted at the moment. So "bilateral treaties in force generally satisfy GNG" (I assume we don't care about small numbers of outliers) is the majority position, and is what should go into the proposal, until that situation changes. If you want it out, all you have to do is produce other editors who disagree. James500 ( talk) 01:32, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:STATUTE. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 25#Wikipedia:STATUTE until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 ( talk) 13:30, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:LGNC. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 25#Wikipedia:LGNC until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 ( talk) 13:48, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:LEGISLATURE. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 25#Wikipedia:LEGISLATURE until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 ( talk) 13:51, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
You've done stellar work here, Ironholds. Thanks for undertaking this. We can start applying this and we'll let it evolve to fit our experience. I don't want to create an ( edit conflict), so go ahead and incorporate the suitable features of my proposed lead at your leisure.
Here's an idea I wanted some feedback on. When I wonder, "Why do we have WP:N in the first place?", the general answer has something to do with the fact that we're building an encyclopedia. But if I understand correctly, what we're really saying is that WP:N is an attempt to ensure that an article will remain in conformity with WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV over the course of its future existence. And if someone creates an article that fails WP:N, then ipso facto it's not of general interest, and by implication it's probably of personal interest to the creator, and is a likely candidate to violate WP:NPOV in the future. Thus we destroy articles that are vanity, articles on new startup companies, articles on the coffee shop down the street -- when we say they fail WP:N, what we really mean is that they pose a hazard to WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV.
Is this correct?
I am asking this in light of our experience at WP:Articles for deletion/HMA v Ritchie and Morren. This was a particularly interesting case because we simply could not fathom why the article was created. Since I'm a law student, I assume the article was created because it appeared in someone's casebook, and s/he was creating the article to augment the curriculum.
For the sake of argument, let's say we could verify that this is true. In this case, I would see no reason to destroy such an article, right? Shoehorning it into WP:N would be a headache, but you have to admit that if HMA v Ritchie and Morren poses no organic threat to WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV, and if someone says "But we're learning it in school!" there's really no reason to spite them that.
Where am I going with this. Ummmm, all of this could point to either of two conclusions.
What say you? Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 16:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Actually, I could have said this much less abstractly:
“ | A case is notable if it is mentioned in a casebook, because it could impact how thousands of people understand that area of law. | ” |
As for the other stuff, one could argue that WP:N is just a way of applying WP:V, WP:OR, WP:NPOV and WP:BIO for the purposes of AfD. On the other hand, even a "notable" rock band has an incentive to violate WP:NPOV at its respective article, yet our explanation for including these articles is that "there exists verifiable, non-OR, NPOV testimony as to their notability." So that suggests that notability is something independent.
Still, I am interested by this stuff. Is WP:N the best place to discuss it, or is there somewhere else? Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 17:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
“ | Note 3: Hostile corporate takeovers of military contractors. Applying the holding of the principal case, would the outcome be different if the object of the hostile corporate takeover were a military contractor during a time of war? For a discussion, see the trial court case of X v. Y. | ” |
“ | A case is also notable if a reliable scholarly authority (such as a law professor, law review, casebook etc.) has suggested that the text of the case may be useful for further understanding a legal principal. | ” |
“ | One of my favorite examples of legal principle XYZ was applied in the case of Ritchie and Morren. (The case itself was pretty humdrum, but Ritche and Morren had previously been convicted of sodomizing a goat, and so I use this case to illustrate how ridiculous Scottish people are.) As articulated in that case, principle XYZ means that ... | ” |
Actually, HMA v Ritchie and Morren (1841) 2 Swin 581 is cited in a number of law books, under several names, seemingly as a precedent for a rule relating to the admissibility of evidence: [1]. (Notice also how problems with OCR mask search results, such as by rendering Morren as Zllorren). The deletion was probably wrong. James500 ( talk) 03:46, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Please add to this list -- it's just supposed to be a list.
Proposed guidelines look great. At some point, we should think about expanding this to legislation as well. There are a lot of stand-alone articles for random Bills and Acts that aren't necessarily noteable. Both for current legislation and historical legislation... But so far, so good! Singularity42 ( talk) 19:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
A Bill introduced into a legislature is not legislation. It is a proposal for legislation. Neither is a draft Bill or a draft statutory instrument.
Statutory instruments receive a considerable amount of coverage. There is Halsbury's Statutory Instruments and The Statutory Rules and Orders and Statutory Instruments Revised. I am under the impression that there are similar collections of annotated statutory instruments and other material in LexisNexis and Westlaw. There is the Table of Government Orders and the Index to Government Orders. There are volumes containing collections of revised annotated statutory instruments relating to particular areas of the law. For example, Sweet and Maxwell's Labour Relations Statutes and Materials (2nd Ed) contains eighteen of them running to 83 pages. Statutory instruments also receive coverage in treatises. For example, the table of statutory instruments at the front of the 1999 edition of Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice, which indexes references to individual instruments in the book, is nineteen pages long. Statutory instruments are said to be assuming increasing importance due to the "skeletal" nature of some primary legislation. Some of them do look like a code, or make substantial amendments to one. They receive amendments and are discussed in case law and other commentary.
James500 (
talk) 00:50, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
I' ve replaced "a court with historical value or importance" with a reference to WP:GNG, because the prior criterion was a bit vague. Any court with historical value or importance will generally meet WP:GNG through coverage in specialist publications. Sandstein 11:15, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
A possible criteria is that a court is notable if it is known to have existed before a certain date. The introduction of printing is one possible date. The year 1660 is suggested by section 3(3) of the Public Records Act 1958. (This reproduces a provision of 1898). The year 1715 is suggested by section 1 of the Public Record Office Act 1877. (The provisions in question forbid the destruction of court records on grounds of historical importance: [2]). My preference would be for a later date. Common sense suggests that both those dates need to be revised forward due to the age of the sources. Common sense also suggests that a court can be historically important without all of its records being historically important. The year 1852 is suggested by the following calculation: 1877 - 1715 = 162, 2014 - 162 = 1852. The year 1921 is suggested by a report from UNESCO: [3]. The year 1912 is suggested by the Virginia Public Records Act: [4]. The year 1892 is suggested by section 8(2) of the Public Records Act, 1993: [5].
Another possible criteria is that a court is notable if any of its records have been selected for permanent preservation by the national archives of a country.
Another possible criteria is that a court is notable if a sufficiently independent and reliable source has said in express words that it is important, significant, interesting, unusual, or so forth.
Another possible criteria is the existence of a special Act relating to the court. This will be necessary to maintain consistency with notability criteria for legislation if we accept that primary legislation is notable, which we probably will. James500 ( talk) 07:08, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
I think that the current version of this guideline is far to lax, and basically contains two exemptions from the General notability guideline, namely a court case is considered notable if it:
My view is that only the verifiable evidence of notability justifies a court case for inclusion as a standalone article, otherwise you end up relying on the primary source or subjective importance as inclusion criteria, and I think that goes against the spirit of Wikipedia's content policies. -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 16:07, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
You may find this discussion helpful: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law/Archive 9#Notability of cases and doctrines. bd2412 T 02:23, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
In light of some recent AFD's, I've opened this conversation - your views are welcome! bd2412 T 00:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
This discussion is now located at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States courts and judges/Archive 4#Notability of U.S. Federal Judges. James500 ( talk) 08:23, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
I disagree with the premise that federal judges are inherently notable only if they reach the U.S Supreme Court. In my view, every Article III judge, whether on a District Court, Court of Appeals, or Supreme Court is inherently notable. This is a position that requires Presedential nomination and confirmation by the Senate. Federal judges at all levels have lifetime tenure. At the court of appeals level, they decide cases that set binding precedent for a half-dozen or so states. I consider them all sufficiently notable for a Wikipedia article, just by virtue of having attained the position.
My comment above does not extend to non-Article III "judges" such as bankruptcy judges, magistrate judges, patent law judges, administrative law judges, etc. Some of those may be notable, but they are not inherently notable by virtue of their position.
TJRC (
talk) 00:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
For consistency and convenience, given the discussion just initiated by User:BD2412, above, I have moved this discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States courts and judges#Are U.S. District Court Judges and U.S. Court of Appeals Judges inherently notable?. TJRC ( talk) 00:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject United States courts and judges/Notability may be relevant to further discussions on this talk page. James500 ( talk) 08:41, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
I propose that this version of Wikipedia:Notability (law) be declared an official Wikipedia guideline. Josh Parris 11:10, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
I think that conversation here has died. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2009 November 23#Wikipedia:Cases suggests that this guideline has failed to achieve WP:consensus, but perhaps the lack of active discussion indicates a lack of conflict.
I also suspect that the section on courts is largely moot, because most high courts will have received some degree of secondary source coverage through everyday reporting of cases, litigants and court decisions. (Perhaps in countries where legal journalism is ill-developed, this is not the case; in those cases, Wikipedia could become a convenient venue for basic legal research. However, WP:OR applies—there has to be independent coverage for us to report anything but a summary of the dry facts. At that stage, a stub linking to a decision/soft redirect to Wikisource might sometimes be more appropriate, depending on the nature of the decision and editors' difficulties in creating an unbiased summary.)
I do, however, think that opinions of a high court would be a reasonable exception to the GNG, because they're the product of a primary source that is essentially reliable per se. (It it is the most authoritative opinion of what the law is, and is cited in this fashion by secondary sources.) The clarifications for how to handle summary orders and the like by redirect are reasonable—unless independently notable, there's not much to write an article about in those instances. As for precedent, that's a good start, but we might also discuss a method for handling unpublished decisions of high courts (binding upon the parties, but not precedent-setting in their own right). TheFeds 05:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Comment Compliance with GNG is not necessary to avoid POV or OR.
I can't see any evidence that WP:JUDGE would result in vast numbers of articles that would not otherwise be created. Subjecting judges to a higher standard for inclusion than athletes would arguably be incompatible with neutrality.
WWBITV, Inc., v. Village of Rouses Point, mentioned above, has been included in West's New York Digest: [6]. It was also covered by the New York Law Journal: [7]. This suggests that that case may be proper subject matter for an encyclopedia. Three examples is far too small a sample to prove anything: They could be anomalous. Whether Wikipedians consider a case to be pedestrian or boring is arguably irrelevant to its notability (WP:BORING). James500 ( talk) 00:00, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above shows this guideline doesn't stand a snowball's chance.
Is there anything that can be salvaged from this guideline? Josh Parris 01:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
The discussion above shows this guideline doesn't stand a snowball's chance.
Should changes be made to the guideline to make it acceptable, or should be be {{ rejected}}? Josh Parris 01:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
This proposed guideline needs to be rescued. We need a subject notability guideline for every subject. As far as I am aware, it is not physically possible to prove that a topic does not satisfy GNG. In addition, the requirement for multiple sources is particularly obstructive if you are looking for paper based sources which are, by their nature, difficult to search. James500 ( talk) 06:46, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
I have included books of authority (every one of which will satisfy GNG anyway) but I am not sure about the sort of book that can be used in the manner allowed by Boys v Blenkisop (described here).
CHAMBERS is based on experience at the AfDs for 3PB, 5 Stone Buildings, 11 Stone Buildings and 5 Pump Court Chambers. A number of deletions of articles that possibly should have been moved or merged took place around that time. Those deletions should be reviewed at some point.
The deleted articles are 4 King's Bench Walk, 11 King's Bench Walk Chambers and New Square Chambers. King's Bench Walk, Inner Temple and New Square, Lincoln's Inn are obviously notable: [8] [9]. James500 ( talk) 01:07, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
This talk page now has an archive. The last revision before archiving commenced is this one. James500 ( talk) 08:21, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
I have removed the reference to the Crown Court centre at Aylesbury from WP:COURTS. It is not obviously non-notable. "Aylesbury Crown Court" gets 5 pages of results in GBooks. "Aylesbury Assizes" gets 25 pages of results. (I assume the assizes were held in the same building, as it seems to have been built before 1750: [10]). James500 ( talk) 11:18, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
The outcome of the AfDs for R v Khan and Dehn v Attorney-General indicate that criteria 2 of CASES has achieved consensus. James500 ( talk) 04:04, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
It appears that treaties are legally binding on states: E.g. [11] [12] [13]; and see generally; cf. [14]. They should therefore be regarded as notable in order to maintain consistency with the criteria which embrace all binding cases and legislation. It appears that treaties are capable of being a source of international law: [15]. This indicates notability. There are about 64,000 treaties registered with the United Nations, which is thought to be about three quarters of the total number: [16]. This is a small number (individual countries pass more legislation than that), compatible with notability. There are collections of treaties including collections of annotated treaties such as: Miller's "Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America"; "Multilateral Treaties: Index and Current" by Bowman and Harris: Commentary; Sweet & Maxwell's European Community Treaties; Sigeru Oda and Hisashi Owada, Annotated Treaties and Conventions (3rd Ed: Tokyo: Sanshodo, 1989). Such coverage indicates notability. Therefore, I shall now effect WP:TREATY. James500 ( talk) 07:56, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
This guideline previously read "A treaty is notable." A lot of treaties aren't, they're pretty prosaic, and the U.S. alone is party to several thousand treaties, most of which are not notable.
I've taken a stab at refining this a bit. Since this is not a guideline in force, I thought the best approach would be to just be WP:BOLD and make the edit for discussion (not least of which because I don't think the existing text reflected consensus, anyway).
Quick summary of my edit:
TJRC ( talk) 23:02, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
@ James500: I just noticed that you've very recently created the "Treaties" section I just revised. I didn't realize that; I'd thought this was a long-dormant document. I'd welcome your input on my comments above. TJRC ( talk) 23:20, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
@ User:TJRC: Regarding this edit, two editors (myself and Mendaliv) agree that bilateral treaties in force are notable. You disagree. I can't see any grounds for according any of your arguments greater weight, or any of our arguments less weight. So consensus appears to be in favour of the change. But, even if I was wrong about that, it doesn't matter. Material doesn't have to achieve consensus to be included in a proposal, especially one marked as rejected, or as a draft, which is what this is. A proposal only has to move in the general direction of consensus. And you are outvoted at the moment. So "bilateral treaties in force generally satisfy GNG" (I assume we don't care about small numbers of outliers) is the majority position, and is what should go into the proposal, until that situation changes. If you want it out, all you have to do is produce other editors who disagree. James500 ( talk) 01:32, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:STATUTE. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 25#Wikipedia:STATUTE until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 ( talk) 13:30, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:LGNC. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 25#Wikipedia:LGNC until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 ( talk) 13:48, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:LEGISLATURE. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 25#Wikipedia:LEGISLATURE until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 ( talk) 13:51, 25 June 2020 (UTC)