I took as my inspiration Jimbo's statements at Wikipedia talk:Fame and importance: "Consider an obscure scientific concept, 'Qubit Field Theory' -- 24 hits on google. I'd say that not more than a few thousand people in the world have heard of it, and not more than a few dozen understand it. (I certainly don't.) It is not famous and it is arguably not important, but I think that no one would serious question that it is valid material for an encyclopedia. What is it that makes this encyclopedic? It is that it is information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an NPOV fashion." and also "When I say 'verifiable' I don't mean 'in some abstract fantasy theory' I mean actually practically verifiable by Wikipedians". Hiding talk 21:54, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I've basically tried to write a guideline or policy which gets around the thorny issue of notability or importance or significance by rooting it in the main policies which govern Wikipedia. I hope it can be accepted as a base level from which we can move arguments over encyclopaedic value on, so that we instead have arguments over sources, or points of view, or original research. To me, those are the issues a community building an encyclopaedia should be debating. Hiding talk 21:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't seem to define any sort of concrete standard of notability/significance to replace the existing standard of "no consensus to delete this article == sufficiently notable." What do you envision coming from this policy that doesn't already come from existing policies? This really seems to be more of an essay than a policy proposal. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
<carriage return>Okay, so what do you think of the idea in principle, that we equate notability on wikipedia with having coverage in third party sources? The issue of sourcing I was addressing is in articles like LUEshi and UGOPlayer. They don't satisfy my understanding of the policies, and yet they survive afd's. If the idea I'm outlining is common currency, then it should be delineated clearly and explicitly, for editors and administrators alike. That's the way I see it, at any rate. I'd rather move arguments on from this exists towhere has this been documented. The burden of proof seems to have been pushed onto the people asking for sources rather than those failing to provide them. Hiding The wikipedian meme 15:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Many have mentioned that notability is a word of our craft as compiliers of encyclopedias and almanacs. It doesn't possess a common meaning. It's a way of representing that a list of buildings that contains some are not the tallest, largest, or oldest, but nonetheless are notable, i.e. they merit inclusion in a list of notable buildings. That quality of the notability is established (outside the obvious objective qualities) only by consensus of editors applying some non-objective criteria.
After the fact, it might be possible to discern what the criteria were for selection (i.e. perhaps a notable building appeared in an objectively famous film, or the building was one of few which survived an objectively well-known disaster) and then declare that these criteria apply to future inclusions to the notable buildings list.
So in 2006, Abraham Lincoln remains a significant president, and Millard Fillmore doesn't. However among the people who care about American history, any president is significant, in fact, any cabinet member is significant. However, there's a threshold for significance among the officers of government, who was the deputy to Fillmore's Secretary of War, Charles Magill Conrad? As a person with an interest in American history, I'd offer the editorial judgment that's not significant, even if one could verify the identity of that person. patsw 18:53, 31 March 2006 (UTC) -
This has to be either:
Speedy delete Hawkestone 22:07, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
It has been suggested to me that this be reproposed as a notability proposal. Therefore I have moved the page and hope to restart discussions on that point. Hiding talk 08:36, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
It looks confusing, subjective and irrelevant. There are already guidelines in place to prevent the stupid examples from happening. For great justice. 16:17, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes - masses of guidelines exist already, and they really need pruning. For great justice. 19:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I strongly support notability as a guideline for inclusion. If it's not notable it should not be here. (I'm very open to creating a wiki expressly for non-notable content of all kinds -- but Wikipedia is not this.)
I think this proposal's wording needs a great deal of improvement:
Good to make a beginning. John Reid 02:48, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Hiding, I could argue the point, but I'd rather not -- I'd rather support the proposal. Instead, I'd like you to re-read comments above from those who object. They feel the proposal has shortcomings. Can't we address them?
Let the definition be less ambiguous, the justification stronger, and the derivation more compelling. John Reid 20:04, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Enough already. There are plenty of guidelines, about guidelines about guidelines. There is virtually nothing that is verifiable that needs rules like this. Please stop. For great justice. 00:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree. No more of this bullshit. "Notability" can never be a criterion for an encyclopaedia that covers the sum of all human knowledge. Wisely, the founders chose "verifiability". No judgement needed; just see whether it really is a thing. Grace Note 05:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Notabiity has long been a concern of mine, even before I began to edit in earnest. As a reader of Wikipedia, I often found myself not simply searching for particular information but browsing freely. I like to learn stuff. My favorite link on any page used to be Special:Random. But the bigger this project has grown, the more pages have been added on trivial or esoteric subjects and the less interesting a random article is likely to be. I was surprised to learn that Notability is not even a guideline, much less policy; it's an {{ essay}}. Indeed, it does not have wide support.
As Lore Sjöberg writes in his perhaps tongue-in-cheek Wired column, The Wikipedia FAQK, non-notable may just mean "A subject you're not interested in." Editors who don't hesitate to flag this article or that as non-notable rush to the defense of their pet cruft. Everyone thinks his topic -- however specialized or obscure -- deserves a place here. So, I've reluctantly concluded, any general standard of notability is doomed. The problem is political; there is just no way to get wide acceptance of such a standard.
"Wikipedia is not paper" and in theory there is no limit to the number of pages we can store and serve. But each page does have costs associated with it, small as they may be per page. Storage and bandwidth are not issues but human time and energy certainly is. Some of us specialize, for instance, in fixing typos. Time spent fixing typos on a nearly worthless page is time not spent fixing notable pages. Or, for example, consider that almost any page has the potential to turn (as Sjöberg put it) into an argument nexus. Each such may or may not become a focus of contention, a battleground for two or three editors. These in turn must be counseled and perhaps sanctioned; all kinds of editors, from rank-and-file members through ArbCom may have to spend considerable time and energy dealing with a situation that might never have arisen if not for a trivial article. Yes, of course, those members might have fought over an edit to something notable -- but then, one might feel one's time was well spent defending neutrality or verifiability. I'm afraid I just can't get up very much enthusiasm to defend those principles as they might apply to an article that is pure cruft to begin with. Instead of a sense of satisfaction at a job well done, I tend to walk away thinking, "So what."
We can certainly fight cruft, trivia, and esoterica with the tools we already have; just not very effectively. And I've finally come to believe that we will never be able to pass any tougher policy. After all, if you deleted all but the truly notable articles, I imagine that 9 of 10 pages would have to go.
I am thinking about a solution that will be tolerable -- if not to everybody, to most editors. It will allow a wide range of content to remain but also allow editors who would rather avoid certain kinds of content to do so. It would be something like an extension of the filtering on watchlist. I don't have details now but editors who are interested in working with me on this should feel free to contact me. John Reid 06:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Notability is a concern of mine as well. Why can we have a policy of articles being presented with a NPOV but then allow a removal guideline/policy/etc that is based on a subject so subjective that it is purely a matter of someones POV. The notability issues are also inconsistant. For example, people accept that selling 5000 books is enough to make one notable, but not textbooks. However, if a person receives 10000 votes in an election, that person is not notable in some peoples eyes (even though that person may be notable within their community while an author who sells 5000 books worldwide is hardly recognizable in any community. I would suggest removing notability as a guideline altogether and using policies like making sure an article is verifiable and the others that are objective creteria. DanielZimmerman 19:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with this idea of a notabiltiy guideline to begin with. It is stating NPOV, NOR, and verfiability, but it is only taking parts of each. It does not consider awkward cases of little outside evidence, yet the object itself is very popular. It also give undue weight to some of the more minor issues. That thing which you mentioned at the top, whatever it is, has little knowledge of it and is not widely understood. I do agree that there should be an article on it, if someone knew how to write it. Yet, I do not agree on the idea that should get an article, yet something widely popular and acclaimed does not get something. Like an internet meme, for instance. Those will not get a mention, unless it is from a source on the internet calling it the "Fad of the week". I think it is safe to say that internet websites with more than 1,000,000 hits are more notable than something less than a thousand people know about. I firmly disagree with this concept. I also disagree with the concept of 3rd party sources only in this guideline. WP:V already covered this as a policy, except it leaves a few exceptions. Disagreed on the entire policy. 68.192.25.106 01:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
This proposal establishes, clearly and explicitly, that the criteria for notability must be established within each field, for exactly that reason. Obviously no one suggests -- and it's unconstructive to claim otherwise -- that a score of a thousand Google hits could be a stand-alone measure of notability, when that thousand would equally represent an accomplished academic in a specialized field and an unnoticed blip on the pop culture underbelly. RGTraynor 16:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Anyone object if I withdraw and userfy this? Hiding The wikipedian meme 18:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I've tagged this as historical, there hasn't been cogent editing or discussion of the proposal for over a week. Hiding Talk 16:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
I took as my inspiration Jimbo's statements at Wikipedia talk:Fame and importance: "Consider an obscure scientific concept, 'Qubit Field Theory' -- 24 hits on google. I'd say that not more than a few thousand people in the world have heard of it, and not more than a few dozen understand it. (I certainly don't.) It is not famous and it is arguably not important, but I think that no one would serious question that it is valid material for an encyclopedia. What is it that makes this encyclopedic? It is that it is information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an NPOV fashion." and also "When I say 'verifiable' I don't mean 'in some abstract fantasy theory' I mean actually practically verifiable by Wikipedians". Hiding talk 21:54, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I've basically tried to write a guideline or policy which gets around the thorny issue of notability or importance or significance by rooting it in the main policies which govern Wikipedia. I hope it can be accepted as a base level from which we can move arguments over encyclopaedic value on, so that we instead have arguments over sources, or points of view, or original research. To me, those are the issues a community building an encyclopaedia should be debating. Hiding talk 21:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't seem to define any sort of concrete standard of notability/significance to replace the existing standard of "no consensus to delete this article == sufficiently notable." What do you envision coming from this policy that doesn't already come from existing policies? This really seems to be more of an essay than a policy proposal. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
<carriage return>Okay, so what do you think of the idea in principle, that we equate notability on wikipedia with having coverage in third party sources? The issue of sourcing I was addressing is in articles like LUEshi and UGOPlayer. They don't satisfy my understanding of the policies, and yet they survive afd's. If the idea I'm outlining is common currency, then it should be delineated clearly and explicitly, for editors and administrators alike. That's the way I see it, at any rate. I'd rather move arguments on from this exists towhere has this been documented. The burden of proof seems to have been pushed onto the people asking for sources rather than those failing to provide them. Hiding The wikipedian meme 15:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Many have mentioned that notability is a word of our craft as compiliers of encyclopedias and almanacs. It doesn't possess a common meaning. It's a way of representing that a list of buildings that contains some are not the tallest, largest, or oldest, but nonetheless are notable, i.e. they merit inclusion in a list of notable buildings. That quality of the notability is established (outside the obvious objective qualities) only by consensus of editors applying some non-objective criteria.
After the fact, it might be possible to discern what the criteria were for selection (i.e. perhaps a notable building appeared in an objectively famous film, or the building was one of few which survived an objectively well-known disaster) and then declare that these criteria apply to future inclusions to the notable buildings list.
So in 2006, Abraham Lincoln remains a significant president, and Millard Fillmore doesn't. However among the people who care about American history, any president is significant, in fact, any cabinet member is significant. However, there's a threshold for significance among the officers of government, who was the deputy to Fillmore's Secretary of War, Charles Magill Conrad? As a person with an interest in American history, I'd offer the editorial judgment that's not significant, even if one could verify the identity of that person. patsw 18:53, 31 March 2006 (UTC) -
This has to be either:
Speedy delete Hawkestone 22:07, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
It has been suggested to me that this be reproposed as a notability proposal. Therefore I have moved the page and hope to restart discussions on that point. Hiding talk 08:36, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
It looks confusing, subjective and irrelevant. There are already guidelines in place to prevent the stupid examples from happening. For great justice. 16:17, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes - masses of guidelines exist already, and they really need pruning. For great justice. 19:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I strongly support notability as a guideline for inclusion. If it's not notable it should not be here. (I'm very open to creating a wiki expressly for non-notable content of all kinds -- but Wikipedia is not this.)
I think this proposal's wording needs a great deal of improvement:
Good to make a beginning. John Reid 02:48, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Hiding, I could argue the point, but I'd rather not -- I'd rather support the proposal. Instead, I'd like you to re-read comments above from those who object. They feel the proposal has shortcomings. Can't we address them?
Let the definition be less ambiguous, the justification stronger, and the derivation more compelling. John Reid 20:04, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Enough already. There are plenty of guidelines, about guidelines about guidelines. There is virtually nothing that is verifiable that needs rules like this. Please stop. For great justice. 00:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree. No more of this bullshit. "Notability" can never be a criterion for an encyclopaedia that covers the sum of all human knowledge. Wisely, the founders chose "verifiability". No judgement needed; just see whether it really is a thing. Grace Note 05:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Notabiity has long been a concern of mine, even before I began to edit in earnest. As a reader of Wikipedia, I often found myself not simply searching for particular information but browsing freely. I like to learn stuff. My favorite link on any page used to be Special:Random. But the bigger this project has grown, the more pages have been added on trivial or esoteric subjects and the less interesting a random article is likely to be. I was surprised to learn that Notability is not even a guideline, much less policy; it's an {{ essay}}. Indeed, it does not have wide support.
As Lore Sjöberg writes in his perhaps tongue-in-cheek Wired column, The Wikipedia FAQK, non-notable may just mean "A subject you're not interested in." Editors who don't hesitate to flag this article or that as non-notable rush to the defense of their pet cruft. Everyone thinks his topic -- however specialized or obscure -- deserves a place here. So, I've reluctantly concluded, any general standard of notability is doomed. The problem is political; there is just no way to get wide acceptance of such a standard.
"Wikipedia is not paper" and in theory there is no limit to the number of pages we can store and serve. But each page does have costs associated with it, small as they may be per page. Storage and bandwidth are not issues but human time and energy certainly is. Some of us specialize, for instance, in fixing typos. Time spent fixing typos on a nearly worthless page is time not spent fixing notable pages. Or, for example, consider that almost any page has the potential to turn (as Sjöberg put it) into an argument nexus. Each such may or may not become a focus of contention, a battleground for two or three editors. These in turn must be counseled and perhaps sanctioned; all kinds of editors, from rank-and-file members through ArbCom may have to spend considerable time and energy dealing with a situation that might never have arisen if not for a trivial article. Yes, of course, those members might have fought over an edit to something notable -- but then, one might feel one's time was well spent defending neutrality or verifiability. I'm afraid I just can't get up very much enthusiasm to defend those principles as they might apply to an article that is pure cruft to begin with. Instead of a sense of satisfaction at a job well done, I tend to walk away thinking, "So what."
We can certainly fight cruft, trivia, and esoterica with the tools we already have; just not very effectively. And I've finally come to believe that we will never be able to pass any tougher policy. After all, if you deleted all but the truly notable articles, I imagine that 9 of 10 pages would have to go.
I am thinking about a solution that will be tolerable -- if not to everybody, to most editors. It will allow a wide range of content to remain but also allow editors who would rather avoid certain kinds of content to do so. It would be something like an extension of the filtering on watchlist. I don't have details now but editors who are interested in working with me on this should feel free to contact me. John Reid 06:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Notability is a concern of mine as well. Why can we have a policy of articles being presented with a NPOV but then allow a removal guideline/policy/etc that is based on a subject so subjective that it is purely a matter of someones POV. The notability issues are also inconsistant. For example, people accept that selling 5000 books is enough to make one notable, but not textbooks. However, if a person receives 10000 votes in an election, that person is not notable in some peoples eyes (even though that person may be notable within their community while an author who sells 5000 books worldwide is hardly recognizable in any community. I would suggest removing notability as a guideline altogether and using policies like making sure an article is verifiable and the others that are objective creteria. DanielZimmerman 19:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with this idea of a notabiltiy guideline to begin with. It is stating NPOV, NOR, and verfiability, but it is only taking parts of each. It does not consider awkward cases of little outside evidence, yet the object itself is very popular. It also give undue weight to some of the more minor issues. That thing which you mentioned at the top, whatever it is, has little knowledge of it and is not widely understood. I do agree that there should be an article on it, if someone knew how to write it. Yet, I do not agree on the idea that should get an article, yet something widely popular and acclaimed does not get something. Like an internet meme, for instance. Those will not get a mention, unless it is from a source on the internet calling it the "Fad of the week". I think it is safe to say that internet websites with more than 1,000,000 hits are more notable than something less than a thousand people know about. I firmly disagree with this concept. I also disagree with the concept of 3rd party sources only in this guideline. WP:V already covered this as a policy, except it leaves a few exceptions. Disagreed on the entire policy. 68.192.25.106 01:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
This proposal establishes, clearly and explicitly, that the criteria for notability must be established within each field, for exactly that reason. Obviously no one suggests -- and it's unconstructive to claim otherwise -- that a score of a thousand Google hits could be a stand-alone measure of notability, when that thousand would equally represent an accomplished academic in a specialized field and an unnoticed blip on the pop culture underbelly. RGTraynor 16:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Anyone object if I withdraw and userfy this? Hiding The wikipedian meme 18:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I've tagged this as historical, there hasn't been cogent editing or discussion of the proposal for over a week. Hiding Talk 16:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)