RfC: As regards WP:PORNBIO, should the criteria for awards nominations be removed from the guideline?
Closure by uninvolved administrator: After a week of being open, this RfC has demonstrated overwhelming consensus among experienced editors for the removal of the criteria for award nominations from the subsection for notable pornographic actors and models. This follows from the earlier discussions on this talk page, which indicate that the guidelines should reflect current practice. This may be exemplified by the recent Kiera King AfD, in which an article on a pornographic actor was deleted on the basis of award nominations being insufficient to confer sufficient notability to the subject.
The RfC and earlier discussion also demonstrate a widely-held concern among participants over the notability of many adult industry awards themselves, and that nominations for such can not be considered to confer notability. A minority of participants in the RfC advance the opinion that removal of the nomination text from the guideline would have a knock-on effect on WP:ANYBIO, but that argument does not garner support.
I note also that a broadly-held desire for reform of the notability guidelines for pornographic performers is clearly on display here, to which removing the text in question would be contributory.
Following consensus, I have removed the text from the guideline.
Closer note: I have had no participation in any earlier stages of this process or subject area, and have come to this conclusion from reading and considering the discussions present on this page and various articles and guidelines that were linked to within it. — Scott•talk00:45, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Should the subsection for notable Pornographic actors and models be changed to remove the criteria for award nominations? BusterD (talk) 08:25, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Based on their view of consensus revealed in the PORNBIO again thread above, User:Spartaz has made a change in the notability guideline for the Pornographic actors and models subsection of Entertainers. Spartaz challenged opponents of the change to raise a request for comment for restoration of the deleted material. Afterwards a number of editors chose to revert Spartaz's change and other editors chose to restore the change. The guideline has been changed back and forth a total of sixteen times in roughly 55 hours. While clearly the edit warring is unbecoming and inappropriate, the underlying dispute deserves a fuller examination by the larger Wikipedia community. I have no opinion on this subject myself; I have not edited the guideline page or been involved in the discussion above. I have no intention of taking a side here. However, I believe the question should more properly discuss the initial change, not the restoration. BusterD (talk) 08:25, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
I'll briefly add I see three issues in the threads above which deserve separate treatment: 1) the question asked in this RfC, 2) whether some of the industry awards used to indicate notability are worthy of use whether awarded or merely nominated, and 3) whether some purely industry sources can be considered reliable for the purpose of determining notability. BusterD (talk) 08:31, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
As pointed out by several below, another separate issue is 4) whether a similar removal of nominations as part of the ANYBIO criteria might be warranted. BusterD (talk) 05:56, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
The references to nominations in ANYBIO should probably be removed as well, for the same arguments. However, conflating multiple issues, and not progressing until all issues are dealt with, is a recipe for inaction. References to nominations for porn awards should be removed from this guideline because in pornography, having nominations as the sole achievement does not correlate with independent secondary source coverage. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:17, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Support I believe the arguments in favor of tightening the rules in this case are more solid. - Altenmann >t17:21, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Support and I'd agree with Morbidthoughts - removal of nominations from ANYBIO would absolutely be acceptable. I think we will need to be especially clear with PORNBIO (and ANYBIO if the same change is made) that a nomination on its own won't be enough to demonstrate notability, but if that nomination results in significant press coverage etc, then notability could likely be asserted via the General Notability Guidelines and that should be investigated before deciding the subject isn't notable. Nick (talk)
Support removal, and also agree that such a closure could already be done on the basis of the preexisting discussions, without waiting for yet another full RfC period. Another procedural thing: even if there should be no strong unambiguous consensus for removal, the passage should be removed on the grounds of no consensus. In a case like here, where the alternative is not so much between two different proposed versions of a rule but basically just between the validity of a rule and its mere absence, lack of consensus must lead to removal rather than preservation of the status quo. This is simply because guidelines are meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive, and a valid guideline is, by definition, that which has consensus. Therefore, demonstrable lack of consensus in (including a persistent pattern of the rule being overridden in practice) logically entails that the guideline is invalid and has to be struck. No opinion on whether the corresponding verbiage should also be stricken from ANYBIO, but I don't think the two need to be necessarily linked. There may very well be awards in some topic domains that are so highly notable that even mere nominations are almost certain to generate the kind of outward attention that then translates into RS coverage and Wikipedia notability. The thing is that in this particular domain, we have found that there are no awards of that type. Fut.Perf.☼17:44, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
What Morbidthoughts said is exactly what I have been saying all along. If the nomination clause is removed from PORNBIO, it should be removed from ANYBIO as well; if it stays in ANYBIO, it should stay in PORNBIO (and all other niche bio guidelines). But one thing Future Perfect at Sunrise seems to always have inaccurate is when s/he says that "no consensus" means that "the guideline is invalid and has to be struck". That is simply not true. In any discussion about an article, guideline, etc. on Wikipedia that is already established, "no consensus" defaults to "keep", not "delete". (Check any recent AfD that has been closed due to no consensus; the article title isn't a redlink, is it?) ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???19:05, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
So are you saying that PORNBIO shouldn't have the same consideration as other niche areas? That wouldn't be fair (btw, WP:OSE would only apply here if PORNBIO didn't exist already and someone was proposing to introduce it). And I know articles aren't the same as policies, but "no consensus" means the same thing in both of those areas. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???06:37, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
Please read again what I said. "Fair" is irrelevant. "No consensus" in policies means "no consensus to have a rule". If there is no consensus to have a rule, we have no rule. - Altenmann >t08:08, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
False dichotomy. No other SNG purports to presume notability for being nominated for, or even winning, industry awards; ANYBIO certainly doesn't. 74.74.150.139 (talk) 08:38, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
Really. The very first point of ANYBIO is "The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times." The corresponding text in PORNBIO is "Has won a well-known and significant industry award, or has been nominated for such an award several times." The added word is critical.
I'm not aware of any pornography industry awards that any reasonable person would consider well-known and significant outside of the industry, and have seen no evidence to the contrary presented. (I'm sure there'll be plenty more bare assertions of such, though.) Most of the awards being used to prop up these BLPs don't even meet the far, far lower threshold of notability required for a separate Wikipedia article. 74.74.150.139 (talk) 21:22, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
Support removal from the PORNBIO SNG. Removal from ANYBIO is at best premature; we don't have evidence that I've seen, for any other field or in general, of outcomes so squarely at odds with the GNG or with BLP requirements. SNGs here ought to vary from ANYBIO, based on the attributes of the particular field; otherwise there'd be no need for them. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 21:00, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Against - for the reasons stated concerning the conflict with WP:ANYBIO and if ANYBIO is changed, this would create havoc with the articles based on this guideline. Furthermore, I'd like to mention actress Susan Lucci. Yes, laugh if you must, but she went over 20 years BEFORE actually winning an award yet I doubt anyone would contest her article based on only being nominated for awards. And No, I'm NOT comparing the Daytime Emmy Award to the AVN Award or XBIZ Award. But the fact remains that the latter are significant and important in their respective industry segment as the former is in its segment. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 21:09, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
"As far as ANYBIO is concerned, it doesn't matter whether the awards are significant and important in their respective industry segment." I'm sorry, where does ANYBIO state this? If an author passes WP:CREATIVE by getting nominated for a Newbery Medal, s/he doesn't then have to also pass a second sub-guideline of WP:BIO. Why should a pornographic actor who passes PORNBIO be any different? ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???09:18, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
WP:CREATIVE doesn't mention the Newbery in specific, nor awards in general. It doesn't have to, because WP:ANYBIO does, and WP:CREATIVE doesn't try to lower that bar like WP:PORNBIO does by opening it up to industry-internal awards. Even if it did, you'd have a very hard time finding a Newbery Medal winner or nominee who didn't pass WP:GNG too, usually in the form of critical attention. 74.74.150.139 (talk) 09:37, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
None of the guidelines are going to list every single thing that's included, but they're definitely going to list what's excluded, and industry awards aren't one of them. And you seem to act as though pornography is the only "industry"; music is an industry, sports refers to an industry, literary arts refers to an industry; heck, anything listed under a guideline subsection on WP:BIO is an industry because they're based on notability in a certain field. I'm not sure what your deal is, but even if you don't agree with me, everything I have said has been backed up by policy; what you've been saying is mainly based on personal opinion (i.e. your Emmy comparison above), so making sarcastic edit summaries won't make this discussion go anywhere. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???18:50, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Support removal from PORNBIO. I concur with Hullaballoo Wolfowitz's statement above. The sheer number of porn award nominations make them an unreliable indicator for notability by themselves. If reliable sources acknowledge the nominations, notability might be claimed per GNG. • Gene93k (talk) 21:39, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Support per FutPerf and the common outcome that these biographies are frequently deleted whether the subject has been awarded these industry-specific awards or not. ReykYO!05:43, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
Comment: When drafting this RfC, I specifically kept the question itself narrow and brief, only describing the changes made by User:Spartaz. While users are welcome to speak their minds here, ideas of linking the request to another guideline subsection or giving specific conditional support to the proposal question seem outside the intended scope of this informal process. While other questions exist (and I mentioned a couple of these directly under my opening statement), this RFC was instituted to muster consensus on THIS single question. Conflating separate issues has been one of the challenges the PORNBIO threads above have demonstrated. When drafting this process, I proposed to discuss this question only, then move to other issues where consensus was still unclear. BusterD (talk) 05:56, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
"Should the subsection for notable Pornographic actors and models be changed to remove the criteria for award nominations?" No, instead it should be modified to increase the number of award nominations needed to pass PORNBIO to a number greater than 4 major award nominations.
"whether some of the industry awards used to indicate notability are worthy of use whether awarded or merely nominated"...it has been longstanding Wikipedia policy that not all adult industry specific award categories are "well-known and significant", and I see no reason to modify this concept now, which I think is basically embodied in an example list located here.
"whether some purely industry sources can be considered reliable for the purpose of determining notability." This issue has already been settled via longstanding policy located here, which I am not opposed to modifying further. If further specific discussion on this matter is needed, it should be moved to the relevant discussion board (which I think is located here) for more updated comment than was done previously in the past.
"whether a similar removal of nominations as part of the ANYBIO criteria might be warranted." No, the ANYBIO standard should not be changed at this time. The ramifications of this kind of change for many other genres (besides the adult industry) have not been fully discussed above IMO.
As an aside, the statement "discussions about articles are big time not the same as discussions about polices" is obviously an invalid point, since Wikipedia policies are in large part what determines whether a specific article should be on Wikipedia at all in the first place. In other words, discussions about Wikipedia policy are as important, if not more important, than discussions about specific articles on Wikipedia. Also, the statement "Most of the awards being used to prop up these BLPs don't even meet the far, far lower threshold of notability required for a separate Wikipedia article" is obviously farcical, since there are around a dozen or so Wikipedia articles on individual adult film award ceremonies. Again, I've yet to see a pornography-related article kept at AfD because of an individual winning (or even being nominated for) an award that wasn't already described somewhere else on Wikipedia. Guy1890 (talk) 06:46, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
"Which am I so 'farcically' missing?" I suspect that you know exactly what you're missing, since obviously not every single, solitary award ceremony (whether adult film-related or not) that has a Wikipedia article also has Wikipedia articles on every single, solitary award catergory given out at those same ceremonies. "And what possesses you to refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography as 'policy'?" As far as I can tell, just about every Wikipedia Project has guidelines, and, in this case here, the relevant Project has had established guidelines for quite some time on which sources in the adult industry are considered to be reliable. If there need to be changes made to these guidelines (and I am not saying that there cannot be changes made), then there are obviously other, more appropriate venues for those types of changes to be made from. Guy1890 (talk) 21:28, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
That's probably because there aren't enough reliable sources available for more award categories to have separate articles, but...that doesn't mean the categories are any less important. BTW, Guy, four nominations seems a little too high. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???09:18, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Based on which metric? I'd be interested in understanding how you are arriving at the number of nominations? Is there some way that we can be sure that X number of nominations = reliable sourcing existing. Did you ever respond to the question about whether you accepted that porn bios needed reliable sourcing to meet BLP standards? SpartazHumbug!14:40, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
It's sure evidence? To whom? And no one ever disputed that the porn bios need reliable sourcing; the problem is people that seem to think all industry-related agencies don't count as reliable sources (which, thankfully, is a viewpoint that is now being challenged by independent users; this is probably why deletion attempts like this and this didn't fly). Actually, this question has already been touched on too many times, so we need to move on. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???18:50, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Let's all try not to be such self-centered Wiki Bigots. Granted, I understand and appreciate the power of WP as an information source as well the Google ranking that the articles receive on any particular subject. But to say that because a subject or topic DOES NOT have a Wikipedia article that it must not be very important or interesting is arrogantly LUDICROUS. We [editors} are here to inform and educate, not censor, critique, research, or back-handedly legislate. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 21:07, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
On what basis can we establish how many nominations is likely to lead to the presence of reliable sources? Its no point saying we need 4 7 9 12, or even 100 nominations if at the end of the day the level of sourcing remains inadequate. I'd be happy to look at a compromise but only of that compromise gives us reason to believe that the sourcing is out there. SpartazHumbug!08:21, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
There is no correct (nor will there ever be) answer to this question. Everyone will have a problem with the "number" whatever it is. I'd say that even just one nomination for any of the Major Awards (AVN, XBIZ) and/or more than one from any of the newer or not as established award programs is sufficient. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 21:07, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
But what are you basing that on? The number of articles you want to create or a realistic assessment of what sourcing is available? My position is evidence based on examples of AFDs and DRVs passing through for articles quite demonstratively not having sources and quite clearly the community doesn't accept this - or the articles wouldn't keep getting deleted.. So rather then just work on assertions and unevidenced opinions we need something concrete to base a standard on. Let me as the same question that is being ignored elsewhere. Do you accept the community standard that BLPs require decent sourcing and if no, why do you think porn articles need to be exempted from the same standard that permeates across the rest of the project? SpartazHumbug!05:01, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Spartaz, I don't recall anyone ever saying pornographic articles need to be exempt from other standards. And I believe I already answered the first part of the question you just asked Scalhotrod, so it definitely isn't being ignored. (I'm not going to go through the whole thing again but I will reiterate that none of the people who claim industry publications aren't decent sources have provided explanations that are actually based on Wikipedia policy rather than personal opinion.) ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???08:54, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm pretty confident that AVN and XBIZ have been discussed on more then one occasion and issues with fact checking and a tendency to reprint press release as fact (including inaccurate er dimensions of the performers) have been raised on numerous occasions. Since I'm at work and trying to find examples on a work pc is well.. going to get me into trouble maybe someone else can fill in the gaps with this argument. That said, since we do have something of a consensus that they aren't RS, and you do accept that PORN articles have to meet community standards, why are you supporting an inclusion standard when so many of these articles demonstratively don't meet the GNG? I'd really be interested in understanding how you equate that with accepting the general standards. SpartazHumbug!10:28, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Here are some guidelines that I use based on my experience on WP and my understanding of the variety of policies that apply to the articles we're discussing. First, Notability DOES NOT EQUAL Popularity and Popularity DOES NOT EQUAL Notability. Second, Notability is relative depending on the community and/or audience. In other words, a person can be relatively unknown on a global scale or by virtue of the sheer number of people who "know of them", but STILL be notable within a particular community. The same concept is applicable to a variety of topics and subjects.
In the Porn community, is a single award nomination for a major award (AVN, XBIZ) significant, yes. And in the same context, are several nominations across several years notable within this community, absolutely! Now we're back to my Susan Lucci example. If this basic principle can't be acknowledged then it puts hundreds and hundreds of BLP (as well as non-living people) articles at risk for deletion in areas such as sports, science & technology, politics, and the arts. Porn isn't special, its just another industry or subject like the ones I just mentioned, but its no less worthy of inclusion. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 18:03, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
@Spartaz: Have people argued in the past that AVN, XBIZ, etc aren't reliable sources and don't pass the GNG? Yes. Has there actually been consensus for that argument? No. If there were, no articles whose nominations are based on sources from those websites would exist; but more importantly, there would be a mention of such a consensus in PORNBIO (or maybe even somewhere in WikiProject Pornography). You asked earlier why people think pornography articles "need to be exempted from the same standard that permeates across the rest of the project", but the fact that porn is being disputed here while other niche categories aren't suggests that the answer to your question is really the other way around. In other words, it isn't the pro-pornography editors who are trying to exempt porn from established community standards; it's the other side...in the sense that pornography shouldn't be allowed the same standards as the rest of the community's subjects. How is that being objective?
Support because the lists take up large parts of the respective articles, but don't necessarily give notability to the subjects themselves. Epicgenius (talk) 21:53, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
COMMENT - I'm getting thoroughly tired of the opinion that Adult industry awards such as AVN or XBIZ are not relevant because they are "internal industry awards". Unless I'm wrong, the Oscars have NOT been opened up to include home movies, the Grammys have NOT been opened up to include garage bands, and Pulitzer consideration has not been extended to little Sally in Mrs. Smiths 3rd grade glass in Anytown, USA. These are ALL industry awards, so lets start deleting articles that rely on these awards. Please, please, PLEASE tell me if I am wrong. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 23:00, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
You are wrong because your premise is wrong AVN journal sources don't fail reliability. They fail because the AVN journal is not independent of the AVN awards (let alone nominations). The oscars, in comparison, are well-covered by unaffiliated publications. And in many cases, the AVN sources also fail, more seriously, because they merely mention (eg list) the persons name, and do not provide direct non trivial secondary source coverage.
@SmokeyJoe: No matter how many times you repeat your opinion, there hasn't been an actual consensus that the industry publications aren't reliable sources. If you think there actually is a consensus for that, please direct me to it.
@Erpert. Never have I said industry sources are not reliable. I have said they are not independent, and I have said references concerning nominations have lacked secondary source comment, have lacked any depth of coverage. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:16, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
AVN are industry awards because they have no coverage or repercusion beyond the publicity generated that the industry that promotes them. Oscars, Grammies and Pulitzers have lots of independent commentaries, analysis of the impact on the career of the winner and of the nominees, huge impact in sales and audience ratings and future career prospects and media coverage of future work, etc. All covered by sources not dependent from the industry that created the awards. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:20, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
The Huffington Post citations go to articles in its "WEIRD NEWS" section, along with coverage of such other significant matters on the current section page as "Beerless Husband Stabbed With Ceramic Squirrel", "This Year We Drove A Tank, Drank Cat Poo, And Dated A Porn Star", "Well That's One Way To Cook A Turkey", "Hotel Security Guard Loses Life Trying To Catch Snake", "Teen Decapitated Man As A 'Present' For His Aunt", "An Awesome Holiday Video Salute To Puppies Opening Presents", "We Can't Enough Of This 6-Year-Old Breakdancing Girl", "Unfortunate Deer Hops Into Cheetah Enclosure At National Zoo", and two of the most significant stories of the holiday season, "These Disturbingly Creative Snowmen Would Make Calvin And Hobbes Proud" and "Driver Caught With Frankincense, Myrrh And Weed: Cops". The LA Weekly's "in-depth" coverage consists only of a large long slideshow, with any individual captions or identification of the individuals depicted. And the Las Vegas Sun covered the event as part of "Robin Leach's Vegas Deluxe, "giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground." More detailed coverage than the Sun provided of the annual Cataliba Cat Show, I admit, but still basically a local business story. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 20:58, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm arguing simply that coverage like the cited examples is not significant and should not be given any significant weight in assessing notability. I do think that when LA Weekly publishes a set of uncaptioned photos in lieu of an article it's expressing an editorial judgment about the significance of the subject. Of course, since LA Weekly did away with factchecking a few years ago, I suspect that the reliability of its editorial judgment is somewhere between that of a coin flip and a stopped clock. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 22:26, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree that an uncaptioned slideshow is not significant coverage; however you still conflate significant coverage as defined by WP:Notability ("Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content) with the importance of the topic. It doesn't matter whether the Huffington Post thinks it's weird news or you think the Las Vegas Sun is just doing its job in covering local events. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:46, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Support I am unconvinced that receiving a couple of porn industry award nominations is a reliable rule of thumb indicating that the individual has received significant coverage in reliable, independent sources, and therefore this is not a useful guideline in my view. The Susan Lucci analogy fails because she clearly met the GNG before winning the award in question. Cullen328Let's discuss it21:59, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Support, it's right about time. The purpose of an SNG is not to override the GNG, but to identify cases where it's very likely to be passed. We've seen far too many cases of subjects which pass this SNG but fail the GNG for it to be a useful heuristic. SeraphimbladeTalk to me20:29, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
Support' Nominations except for cetain exceptionally famous awards where the nomination themselves are very selective do not show notability for anything, to the extent that I do not think they are necessarily even appropriate article content. The purpose of a sng can be to over-ride the GNG, if the community explicitly wants to use it that way, but I think there is very clear evidence the community does not want to use this one that way. DGG ( talk ) 01:17, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Since when do article subjects have to pass more than one guideline? And I still think it would make more sense to remove the nomination requirement from ANYBIO first and then move on to the subject-specific guidelines. The only real argument against that is something along the lines of "removing it from ANYBIO would affect too many articles", which I don't necessarily disagree with, but if subject-specific guidelines are based upon ANYBIO, they in turn should be affected. We need to be as fair as possible to different subjects. Speaking of that, no one has ever actually answered why only PORNBIO is being discussed while other subject-specific guidelines (that are also dependent on nominations) aren't. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???06:56, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Support as a modest but essential first step to reform. As to the argument that if this section is reformed then ANYBIO has to be reformed: no it doesn't. There are all kinds of awards, of all levels of importance. The argument "Well, if nominations for the XYZ porn awards are excluded, then Oscar nominations also have to be excluded, for purposes of determining notability" is quite weak. In point of fact we exclude most awards. How about the Franklin, Massachusetts Elementary School Teacher Of The Year Award? How about the Grismore, Oklahoma McDonald's Employee Of The Week Award? Does being nominated for those (or even winning them) get you a Wikipedia article? Of course not. We're not robots or morons here, and we can distinguish between awards of different importance. The considered opinion is that most or all of these awards are not that important in the worldwide scheme of things, and certainly that just being nominated for them is not a marker of sufficient importance to rate you a Wikipedia article. Herostratus (talk) 17:11, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't think I've ever seen anyone argue for keeping an article because a subject won an employee-of-the-week award. Anyway, if the award has its own article already, that's the first step in determining notability for it, isn't it? (If an actor's only claim to fame was being nominated for a non-notable award, that's different.) And just because some people think a sub-guideline of ANYBIO isn't important doesn't mean both the main guideline and the sub-guideline shouldn't compliment each other; in fact, that's the very reason this thread was started in the first place. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???18:53, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Does anyone here see the slippery slope that this starts us down? If you declare the AVN, XBIZ, and similar awards as essentially irrelevant, what will fall next? How many science or technology or music or artistic award articles will be discredited because they are only awarded to people in a specific industry or community AND don't have the marketing dollars and media attention that the Oscars, Grammys, and Pulitzer garner? I like to point out that this is a site where Deletionists run rampant and minority (even logical and reasoned) opinions are trampled on continuously. There's a reason that so many "Don't do this or be like this" articles, essays, and at least one Project exist on this site; things like Please do not bite the newcomers, POV Railroading, and the Systemic Bias Project. Where does it stop, or for that matter, is there a middle ground? --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 21:35, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I think we are only (or primarily) talking about nominations for awards, not awards themselves. I can only think of 4 awards for which nomination would make for notability , because the nominations themselves are highly selective: the Booker short List, the Academy Awards, the "nominated finalists" for the Pulitzer and perhaps the Nobel prizes--though information about that is not always public. There may be a few more, and it would not hurt to have an agreed list.
But if we're talking about awards, the basic criterion for most ought to be that it be , first, a national or international level award (with a few exceptions like the state awards in the Miss America competition.) and second, that the award be notable enough to have an article here. And normally only first place counts, tho there may be exceptions also. This will still leave the national awards in every industry and country, so I do not see the systematic bias. The current bias is in the other direction, where we unduly give positive bias to occupations with an inordinate number of relatively minor awards. DGG ( talk ) 00:34, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
The "middle ground" you seek, Scalhotrod is really quite clear: significant coverage in several reliable, independent sources is what is required to show notability of a topic. We call that the GNG. The purpose of topic-specific guidelines is to facilitate rapid evaluation of articles. It is not a get out of jail free card. We have concluded, for example, that state or provincial legislators, or high schools, or Olympic athletes almost certainly meet the GNG if sufficient research is done. Many editors here are saying that no such assumption exists with regard to porn award nominees. So therefore this guideline language is of no quick evaluative use to us. But any individual porn actor could meet the GNG, based on the coverage in high quality, independent sources. So show the coverage in independent sources, and the article will be kept. Cullen328Let's discuss it05:14, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Support necessary and long-overdue first step towards reforming PORNBIO, frankly one of Wikipedia's silliest aspects. A SNG by definition cannot stand in opposition to the GNG, so it's time to either bring it in line or rework it as part of a different SNG, such as ENTERTAINER. This is, at least, a step towards that end. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind04:33, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
@DGG: There are several porn-related categories that don't even qualify for notability on their own anymore (group and scene-realted awards come readily to mind), so those could possibly be the minor awards you're referring to. And as far as the award having an article here first, well, that's what I just said. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???06:03, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
@Cullen328: I actually don't agree that any individual pornographic actor could meet the GNG, but if you're saying that, I'm now scratching my head as to why you support removing the nominations. Also, with all due respect, I think you're another person who is misinterpeting what "independent" entails in this case, as I explained in my example here.
@Starblind: WP:ENTERTAINER is actually much more lenient than PORNBIO, so I'm surprised you suggested that, but combining the two actually sounds like a good compromise. But a step towards the end of what? ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???06:03, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Erpert, Let me be clear: I support keeping biographies of those porn actors who meet the GNG. I support deleting biographies of those porn actors that don't meet the GNG. Accordingly, I oppose any special guideline in any specialized field that does not reliably differentiate between topics that meet the GNG and those that don't. I have concluded that the porn bio award nomination language fails that test, and will support this and any other any modifications to the guideline language that serves the goal of quick but accurate differentiation. Cullen328Let's discuss it06:20, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Erpert, are you referring to my ignoring your assertion that a nomination is "independent" of the subject? You think that being nominated for an award happens independently of the person, not personal or financial interaction at all connecting the actor and the body who accepts the nominations? I've looked, and fail to find information on the nomination process. Can you tell us how a person gets nominated for an award? I could be wrong, but I suspect orchestrated most non-independently with the persons manager, and in some cases we can't even find an report of the nomination that is independent of the body giving the awards. Personally, I worry less about the independence of the sourcing, thinking that we are doing well to have even non-independently sourced secondary sourcing, but if you are going to keep bringing up nominations as independent sources, you are going to have to explain that a bit better. And no, I am not also misinterpreting WP:PSTS. Yes, you can use primary sources with care, but that's irrelevant to the need for secondary sources. An article has to be built first on secondary sources. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:22, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
@Cullen328: I notice that you said that the nominations fail "that test", but you didn't actually say how they fail. Earlier you said you "are convinced" that the guideline isn't useful...without actually going into detail about how it violates Wikipedia standards (granted, you're definitely not the only !voter in this thread who has done that, but...).
@SmokeyJoe: I'm not sure why you'd expect me to know how someone gets nominated for an award (I sure hope you're not accusing me of being affiliated with the porn industry again), but it's interesting how right after that, you said, "I could be wrong, but I suspect orchestrated most non-independently..." You "suspect"? You don't even know how nominations are done, so you thus can't automatically assume the noms aren't independent. Also..."An article has to be built first on secondary sources." WP:SECONDARY doesn't say that; in fact, it says that secondary sources "rely on primary sources for their material". ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???06:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
That is an excellent article that verifies Sasha Grey's notability and also illustrates the profound weaknesses of porn industry awards and trade publication coverage for establishing notability. To answer Erpert, the reason that this guideline language "fails the test" in my view is that our notability guidelines need to enjoy broad acceptance from experienced editors representing a wide range of normative Wikipedia philosophies. I think that my record in 1800 AfD debates shows that I am a moderate, and that my judgment reflects consensus about 88% of the time recently. I rely on many of our notability guidelines without hesitation. I do not trust this guideline language at all, and many other highly experienced and respected editors are expressing similar concerns. It seems to me that it is defended only by editors who take a strong inclusionist position regarding articles on pornographic performers. It simply does not enjoy broad consensus, and the sooner we recognize that, the better. Cullen328Let's discuss it03:01, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
What I meant is that mentioning that article had nothing to do with the point I made right before that. And I don't recall saying your judgment wasn't important; at the same time, though, you can't assume that Wikipedians who don't spend time commenting on hundreds of different subjects aren't experienced editors. But that's a little off-topic; personally, I do not take a "strong inclusionist position" on pornographic articles (if this doesn't prove that, I don't know what else to tell you...and actually, you !voted right after I created that AfD), but I am in favor of giving a fair chance to subjects that are already here, even if I dislike or am indifferent toward them. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???05:55, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
It speaks directly to the non-independence between adult video actors, the adult video awards, and the adult video news magazine. It is all one, and it's purpose is promotion. I feel confident in deducing that there is nothing independent in an AVN nomination. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:48, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
PORNBIO again
RESOLVED BY RFC
Discussion resolved by December 2013 RfC. Consensus was found to remove award nominations from the guideline. — Scott•talk12:41, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I have tagged this as disputed as its clear from the latest imbroglio on AN that this section is not in receipt of wide community support and that in the case of a porn actor the community isn't going to accept awards in lieu of actual sources. SpartazHumbug!21:12, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
The current PORNBIO guideline is just fine. If any changes were to be made to it, I think it should be less strict and more oinclusive of pornographic actors. I find it difficult to understand how some of the porn industry's biggest stars, such as Sara Jay and Rachel Starr, don't have an article simply because they don't meet the PORNBIO guideline on WP. I do understand why WP has these guidelines, but notability is something too abstract to measure on a scale. I'm also wary about WP users with an anti-pornography agenda who have made their conflict of interest very obvious by:
1. Always participating in porn-related AfD's only to vote "Delete", regardless of whether the subject passes PORNBIO or not
2. Compulsively PRODing multiple porn articles and if they are deprodded and improved, starting an AfD anyways
3. Campaigning on WP to degrade the value of "well-known and significant industry awards"
5. Removing properly sourced, factual, and encyclopedic information from porn articles because they simply don't like it.
We can't be naive and allow these users to brainwash us. Recent examples of this are the deletions of Deauxma and Elexis Monroe, two porn actresses who clearly pass PORNBIO but whose articles were deleted simply because they had more "delete" votes than "keep" votes, without regard towards the actual arguments made. If we allow this kind of behavior to continue, we will someday end up having AfD's for Jenna Jameson and Sasha Grey and possibly deleting them. Leave the PORNBIO guideline alone. Rebecca1990 (talk) 22:01, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
What a pathetic excuse for an argument. Fact is, these articles get deteleted in spite of PORNBIO because they are BLPs that don't meet the GNG. That's the only reason that people vote delete. If more people feel that the GNG should be the standard for BLPs then you need to work towards making PORNBIO fit that rather then railing against the majority. If you can't accept the way that the community has decided to deal with the content then you need to leave or FORK, rather then wasting your time and ours by arguing against the inevitable. Its time to wake up and smell the coffee, you brought the issue to a head and the outcome supported the view of DRV nor your one. Now we have that clear external consensus you need to either accept it or take your campaign off wiki. SpartazHumbug!08:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
Please stop intimidating editors, Spartaz. You can't bully people into accepting the mob rule. The editor above is entirely entitled to her view, regardless of it being a majority and minority one, and to argue politely in defense of it. WP should encourage diversity of opinions on its own governance and policies. --cyclopiaspeak!09:52, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
They are not entitled to label and cast aspertioms and can expect to be called out if they continue to ignore the wider community view. SpartazHumbug!11:10, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
There's obviously a pretty active group of anti-pornography editors (and even some Wikipedia administrators unfortuntely) out there. While I am sympathetic to pushing back against them where feasable, I have thought for a long while now that the current PORNBIO standards could be improved, regardless of whether or not changing those standards would change any of the minds of those anti-porn editors. With that in mind, I would propose something along the lines of the following changes to PORNBIO:
The first section of PORNBIO should be changed to read:
"Has won at least one major, well-known and significant industry award or has been nominated for such an award more than three times; Has won at least two industry awards in scene-related categories. Nominations in scene-related categories or nominations and awards in other ensemble or minor categories are excluded from consideration. For awards with multiple rounds of nominations, such as the Fans of Adult Media and Entertainment Award, only final round nominations in major categories should be considered."
If we're going to continue to have a sub-section of the ENTERTAINER guidelines for "Pornographic actors and models" alone, then, IMO, that standard should be tailored to meet the adult industry, where many adult performers are paid on a per scene basis, if they are not under a long-term contract. PORNBIO has apparently been a similar but technically more strict guideline than ANYBIO for a while now, and, while I don't personally agree that it should be very much more strict than ANYBIO, I realize that (like it or not) there are at least some on Wikipedia that feel like we have "too many" pornography-related articles on Wikipedia.
It's unclear to me whether or not the "Has been featured multiple times in notable mainstream media" wording that's currently in PORNBIO adds anything of value to it, given that it appears to be very similarly-worded to the current GNG standard. I'd like to hear some more commentary on whether or not that last portion of the current PORNBIO standard should be change or removed, especially in light of the commentary located here. PORNBIO is, of course, a sub-section of the ENTERTAINER standard. Guy1890 (talk) 23:18, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
It's unclear if changing that helps or hurts. The problem for many of these actors is that they have so many search hits, it is difficult to find ones that those who oppose these articles on principal accept as good sources. So they may well meet WP:GNG, but identifying those sources is difficult. One other option that has been discussed is to simply fold this into WP:ENT or some other guideline. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:04, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
I really don't think that we want to go down the path of trying to figure out which adult film actors/actresses have "a large fan base or a significant 'cult' following", like is currently in the ENTERTAINER guideline right now. If one can actually prove that an adult performer meets GNG, then that performer should very likely have an article on Wikipedia. Guy1890 (talk) 00:48, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
Indeed, you have it squarely, because of underlying factchecking/independance/credibility issues both AVN and XBIZ are not widely accepted as RS. If we have a separate PORNBIO standard then we need to work with this and not just refuse to accept it. My view is that we remove reference to nominations and modify the widespread impact as requiring reference from reliable sources to confirm. On that basis we will have something that fits more closely to the GNG and would be more likely to carry weight in discussions. SpartazHumbug!08:42, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
"because of underlying factchecking/independance/credibility issues both AVN and XBIZ are not widely accepted as RS." An argument can certainly be made over how & what portions of info that AVN & XBIZ choose to report on, but the idea that I've seen recently (that because there may be issues there that they can't even be trusted to report on their own awards ceremonies) pushed really doesn't hold any water with me. Who better to know who won or was nominated for an award but the organizations that are basically running those same award ceremonies? It's also not true that these kind of award ceremonies & their results don't ever get any mainstream media coverage.
Since there obviously is at least some kind of problem with using nominations in the PORNBIO standard, my first choice is to raise the number of major, well-known and significant industry award nominations that can satisfy PORNBIO. If consensus ultimately dictates that we get rid of nominations in PORNBIO altogether (even though they could be considered under ANYBIO), then so be it. I also know that the definition of "several times" unfortunately comes up for discussion occasionally at AfD, so having an actual number (whether that number is 4, some number higher than 4, or even if that number is ultimately zero) for how many nominations it takes for a subject to pass PORNBIO seems necessary at this point.
Being "featured multiple times in notable mainstream media" obviously requires confirmation from a reliable source. There's got to be a reason why PORNBIO #3 exists in its current form...I just don't know what that reason is or whether it's a very good reason or not. Guy1890 (talk) 23:33, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't recall the last time I've seen such brazen disrespect for the community's decisions. Despite a long strong of AFDs rejecting looser standards for porn performer notability, a series of AFDs and related discussions resulting in consensus that PORNBIO needed more restrictive language, a string of DRVs that without exception supported the community's deletion of biographies of insignificant performers, and a string of discussions on multiple noticeboards rejecting their positions, pretty much the same small group of editors now resorts to name-calling, casting aspersions, and making accusations of bad faith against editors who support the established consensus, and against administrators who close discussions in accordance with both immediate and more global consensus and who enforce BLP policy. The next step is likely to be sanctions against such deliberate disruption. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 03:06, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
I am fine with keeping PORNBIO as it is. PORNBIO requires the award to be both "well known and significant". The debates or contention in AFDs/DRVs like Deauxma and Elexis Monroe have been whether their nominations are significant enough to satisfy PORNBIO simply because they are performer awards. No, they are not and consensus had made clear when we last edited PORNBIO that the category is important in determining significance.[7] The AFDs and DRVs have made clear that the MILF of the Year nominations are not significant enough not that PORNBIO is flawed. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:09, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
Every single claim on WP I have seen so far against the notability of MILF performer awards has been made by Hullaballoo Wolfowitz, who is campaigning to degrade the value of several other adult industry awards as well. The MILF performer awards are quite significant indeed. To my knowledge, the first awards show to introduce this category was the XRCO in 2007. AVN followed suit two years later. Now, pretty much every awards show, both big and well-known or small and insignificant, has this category: XBIZ, FAME, Urban X, NightMoves, SHAFTA, Adam Film World, CAVR, XFANZ, Fame Registry, BBW FanFest, The Fannys etc. Considering the fact that they are basically an industry standard and universally accepted by pretty much every awards show, they are definitely enough for recipients to meet PORNBIO. Rebecca1990 (talk) 04:18, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
You need to relook at Deauxma's AfD and realise it's not just HW making that argument. [8] Consider me another person who believes they are insignificant. It's not the award giver that determines their significance. It's us as in wikipedia. Morbidthoughts (talk) 04:28, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
You think MILF awards are insignificant? So, if a porn actress actually won one of these awards, not a nomination but an actual win, she would not be notable? If winning an award makes you notable, than so does multiple nominations for one. And I really think it's odd how some WP editors are looking for any excuse to delete as many pornography articles as possible, but no one seems to notice their hypocrisy. For example, if she passes PORNBIO, delete because she fails GNG, but if she passes GNG, delete because she fails PORNBIO.Rebecca1990 (talk) 14:45, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that award is an insignificant token award for older actresses given that they're not disqualified from consideration for performer of the year or best actress or technically even new starlet awards. Further the Luscious Lopez example showed that people didn't think she satisfied the GNG despite the sources, not that it was ignored. Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:45, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, older actresses ARE disqualified from being nominated or winning Female Performer of the Year and Best New Starlet. For example, India Summer was the busiest female porn performer in 2011 and wasn't even nominated for Female Performer of the Year, instead she won MILF/Cougar Performer of the Year. 2013's oldest Female Performer of the Year nominee was Dana DeArmond at the age of 33 and the oldest Best New Starlet nominee was Adrianna Luna at 28 years old. We can't just disregard an award category because it is for a certain group of people and not a "generic" Female Performer of the Year award. The AVN Female Foreign Performer of the Year award for example, was recently established by consensus in an AfD as a "well-known and significant industry award", so why should the MILF category be treated any differently than the Foreign, Unsung and Transsexual categories? And also, lets not forget we are talking about the AVN, the "Oscars of Porn", being nominated for any AVN category, with the exception of "scene-related and ensemble categories", is a very big deal and certainly makes a performer notable when winning or being nominated for one several times. Rebecca1990 (talk) 23:42, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
You are wrong about older actresses not being eligible for those awards and you made it obvious with your example since Elexis Monroe is younger than Dana DeArmond. I am actually familiar with the nomination process and voting criterias since I actually vote in these things. I consider the Foreign and Transsexual performers categories more significant than the MILF of the year and I welcome the AfDs to ultimately determine any of these awards' significances. Morbidthoughts (talk) 03:20, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm not anti-pornography, I just question its value in an encyclopedia beyond the most notable people. I mean, do you know how high the bar is to be considered "notable" if you are an academic? It's not just that you have published books or taught at a university, they have to be extraordinary and gotten national coverage. I'd say 1 out of 50 (or less) professors are eligible for an article on Wikipedia. WP doesn't include a biography of everyone who has ever been a candidate for political office but for those candidates who are elected to important offices. In other words, Wikipedia isn't a directory of popular porn stars but ones who are notable, who are the top-earning stars, who would be known outside of porn in mainstream media.
This isn't about pornography itself, it's just the expectation that for this area of WP that the standards of BLP notability should be as high as they are for other areas. The number of people who are notable in a field are a small minority of those who participate in it. For good or ill, the vast majority of individuals in any area of life are not considered notable, by Wikipedia standards. If you want to lower the bar for inclusion, I think it's better to contribute to the Adult Movie Database or a relevant Wikia where fans can set their own standards. LizRead!Talk!22:47, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
I would support eliminating the pornography guidelines entirely, just not ignoring them with one lame excuse or another. Getting awards seen as notable in science makes a scientist notable even if they get no coverage otherwise, because obviously accomplished scientists belong in an encyclopedia. No need to use that standard for porn stars. DreamFocus00:11, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
Reducing the porn guidelines to essay or similar status might well be reasonable in this case. I know people could say that I am anti-porn because I tend to edit religious material, and, honestly, I personally don't have any real use for it, although I'm not really against it, but I don't see any reasons why these articles and topics necessarily are of such broader significance that they necessarily require separate entertainment bio guidelines for themselves. Those individuals who don't meet general ent bio standards may not, and I think often probably don't, necessarily have enough real encyclopedic content to really have reasonable bio articles here anyway. Now, porn films (and audio and whatever) are a different matter, and I suppose it might, if reasonable, be possible to have articles on production companies, which might have subsections on actors they regularly employ. But particularly for minor or lesser figures in the business, who would be the ones least likely to meet regular ent bio guidelines, honestly, I don't see how much encyclopedic content there would necessarily be on them anyway. Unless it can really be demonstrated that these topics receive such obviously non-proportional coverage in any significant independent reliable sources that the regular ent bios can't be used (I don't know, but I find it hard to believe that is the case), I have reservations about such separate guidelines. I can and will check the Gale directory of publications, and see what if any I can find which I might be able to give the group which might be useful in establishing notability according to standard entertainment biography guidelines. John Carter (talk) 00:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
"I don't see any reasons why these articles and topics necessarily are of such broader significance that they necessarily require separate entertainment bio guidelines for themselves." I don't think at all that the PORNBIO standard exists as a "low-bar" to inclusion on Wikipedia. The current "standards of BLP notability" are actually as high, if not higher, for adult film performers as for anyone else in the entertainment industry. I think PORNBIO has existed pretty much to prevent "too many" pornography-related articles from existing on Wikipedia. Is the adult industry the most important topic that Wikipedia needs to cover? Of course not. All "well-known and significant awards or honors" (including being nominated for just one of those awards several times) are included in the ANYBIO guideline. It could certainly be argued that many adult film performers have "a large fan base or a significant 'cult' following", and at least some of those same adult perfomers have had "significant roles in multiple notable films or television shows" under the ENTERTAINER standard. Some adult performers are also directors, so the FILMMAKER standard would (and currently does) also apply to them as well. If PORNBIO has to go entirely, then so be it...just be careful for what you wish for. Guy1890 (talk) 01:08, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
If I am take the above comment as indicating that this guideline, in some way, is if anything stricter than those of other performers, then I guess I could see it reduced from a guideline on that basis alone, if it serves to inhibit the development of a truly encyclopedic site, with the possible exception (I don't know) that BLP issues regarding some individuals and porn might maybe be not unreasonably a bit more restrictive, if the individuals themselves have never openly acknowledged or discussed their earlier porn work or whatever, I dunno. Like I said, personally, I am not particularly interested in this topic one way or another. Now, having said that, if maybe the awards which are considered significant enough to meet standard 1 were itemized as much as possible, to avoid disputes regarding what qualifies. But, yeah, if the guidelines are changed to more or less be equal to those of regular entertainment bios, honestly, that would be fine by me, that might prompt discussion about those broader guidelines as well, which may or may not be a bad thing on its own, again, I dunno. John Carter (talk) 01:26, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
I think it would be helpful to try to list specific awards that that would make one notable, specific awards where winning 2 or more would make one notable and specific awards (likely highly limited, if any) where nomination for multiples would be enough. This is a 2-20 billion dollar industry. Some of these awards must be above the bar. It would be nice to find consensus on the issue. There are a few people who want any nomination to count. There are some who likely won't accept any industry award here. I'm hopeful the rest of us can find a middle ground. I'd love to see a few specific proposals (ideally based upon old AfD results and maybe any sense we can get about what awards the industry considers most prestigious). A few lines in the sand. Anyone know the field well enough to give specific proposals? Hobit (talk) 02:16, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
Awards that make one notable are, by definition, awards that are noted – i.e. awards that are regularly reported upon in independent mainstream media. That is simply the definition of what notability means according to Wikipedia policy. No amount of discussion here or elsewhere can change this basic fact. Any guideline that attempts to circumvent this by artificially defining some other awards as allegedly conveying notability would be ipso facto invalid, as the current guideline still is. The number of porn awards that meet this basic criterion is probably zero or close to zero; at least in all these months of debates I have never seen anyone attempting to show that any of them does qualify under it. Fut.Perf.☼08:08, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
"There are a few people who want any nomination to count." I don't know that that's actually true at this late date...that's certainly never been my position at all. As for "specific proposals", I made one above on October 5th...you don't have agree with it if you don't want to. As for a listing of what I would call major awards that should be eligible under PORNBIO, I believe the Pornography Project tried maintaining such a listing in the past, but, for some reason unknown to me personally, it proved difficult to maintain over time.
As a possible example for what I might call a "major award"...just using the AVN Awards as an example...that would mean something along the lines of the Crossover Star of the Year, Unsung Starlet of the Year, Unsung Male Performer of the Year, Best New Starlet, Best Male Newcomer, Female Performer of the Year, Male Performer of the Year, Female (or Male) Foreign Performer of the Year, Transsexual Performer of the Year, Performer of the Year-Gay Video, Newcomer of the Year-Gay Video, Best Actress (or Actor)—Film (or Video), Best Supporting Actress (or Actor)—Film (or Video), Best Actor—Gay Video, and Best Supporting Actor—Gay Video. That's around 22 awards.
Again, just using the AVN Awards as an example, the most significant scene-related award categories appear to be something along the lines of Best All-Girl Sex Scene—Film (or Video), Best Couples Sex Scene—Film (or Video), Best Sex Scene in a Foreign-Shot Production, Best Transsexual Sex Scene and Best Sex Scene—Gay Video. That's around 7 awards. I don't know that setting a very specific listing of awards that meet PORNBIO would be easy to do, since award names change, at least slightly, from award ceremony to award ceremony. Guy1890 (talk) 04:12, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
For some history, this was discussed in an various extensive discussions and RfCs:
which list doesn't include pre-2011 discussions and some short discussions and I think I missed an RfC I ran. The basic problem is that the rule says "Has won a well-known and significant industry award", and (as someone just did above) this is taken to mean Category:Pornographic film awards. But Category:Pornographic film awards has 31 entries (counting articles in subcategories and not counting articles that aren't awards or list awards given one year). Quite simply, that's way too many for a category of such limited academic or artistic interest, and there's the crux of your problem.
But various discussions to cut it down to (let's say) six or so run onto the shoals. You can't get people to agree on which six (or eight or whatever). I tried. For instance, I said look, we have the Japanese Adult Video Awards and the Japanese Pinky Ribbon Awards, can we decide on which is the most notable so we have just one qualifying award for Japan (and commensurate numbers for Europe and America and gay porn, or whatever). And you can't. The whole industry is balkanized and you can't get editors to agree on some reasonable subset of the entire Category:Pornographic film awards. I tried and tried hard, and maybe someone better than me can do it, and good luck if you want to try.
In light of all the energy spent on this and the intractability of trimming it to something reasonable (on top of the fact that it's very hard to change rules here in the best conditions), what I'd suggest as a possible solution is:
Keep PORNBIO just as it is.
Continue to ignore it, just as we do, since it's ridiculous.
Accept that this is just thing we do, have a written-down rule that's not actually followed, as a quirky little artifact of our imperfect governance structure, and not worry about it too much.
Sounds like a plan to me.
Further, I'd advise people wanting to keep articles about obscure porn actors, that, as the best way to advance their interests, they should stop citing a rule that nobody follows or cares about and instead directly engage the audience. Don't say "This article should be kept because WP:PORNBIO" because that doesn't work. Instead say "This article should be kept because _________", where ________ can be any argument that convinces your colleagues. Tell us why, even though he doesn't meet the general WP:BIO criteria, this person is an important person in the world at large such that readers of a general-purpose encyclopedia need to know about him and so we should carve out an exception in this case, and so on. We're not unreasonable people and we're willing to listen to cogent arguments along these lines. Herostratus (talk) 06:17, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
Gee, do you think that's maybe because mainstream films have a little more historical value, artistic merit, cultural impact, and scholarly interest? Herostratus (talk) 12:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
I tried once to get rid of a porn actor article. I turned out he was too notable, and that didn't happen.
Mercifully, I was not exposed to the man's acting when I finally conceded defeat in the Afd process. It was purely done on WP:RS, awards, etc.
Having said that, that actor also directs his wife in porn films. You think Miley Cyrus is strange? These people do not live on the same planet with the rest of us!
In the best of all possible worlds (or possible encyclopedias), heterosexual women would create articles or vote on Afds for women actresses, only. Heterosexual men would evaluate the bios of men to be notable.
I suspect that articles on women get created because some guy saw the woman in a porn film. With women doing the nominating, this isn't going to happen.
I have no intention whatsoever of accepting AVN or XBIZ as reliable sources, since they're obviously, blatantly, unreliable.—S MarshallT/C21:07, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Just for the adult industry awards that have being given out in recent years, all one has to do is look at the references & links cited on the current Wikipedia pages for the AVN Award, Venus Award, Fans of X-Rated Entertainment (FOXE), Soft and Hard Adult Film and Television Awards (SHAFTA), Adam Film World, Erotic Awards, X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO), Hot d'Or, and Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival to see that yes, in fact, those award ceremonies and/or some of their award winners/nominees have been mentioned in mainstream media. Like it or not, both AVN & XBIZ are simply trade magazines for the adult industry, and the Free Speech Coalition is just another trade group for the adult industry. As for the subject reliable sources, I believe that issue was apparently decided, at least in part, back in 2009. Guy1890 (talk) 04:26, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
Standards have moved on since 2009 so that rather inconclusive discussion is probably moot. I do tend to agree however with your general point. I would personally accept the awards you mentioned as probably meeting the inclusion criteria for individual awards. I'm not sure that ensemble awards would been enough for me but that is something that could be looked at during an Afd if necessary. With regard to AVN and XBIZ we generally accept trade journals because they tend to be authoritative and have rigorous standards. Not sure we can say that for these two given their tendency to reprint press releases as fact and their peer review is generally accepted as being somewhat lacking - the argument I generally hear is that they reprint pornstars facts and figures when they are obviously exaggerated. YMMV but that's the way it has been for years. SpartazHumbug!05:07, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
I rarely comment on porn issues, and am personally neither "pro-porn" nor "anti-porn" as I place NPOV as an important value, and accordingly believe that porn topics should be neither highlighted nor suppressed on Wikipedia. I don't think that the best way to prove that Wikipedia isn't censored is to stretch notability standards to include large numbers of porn bios, just as I don't think that the best way to show that Wikipedia is "serious" is to campaign to delete as many porn bios as possible. I watch porn occasionally but don't consider myself an enthusiastic fan. So call me a moderate. All that being said, I looked at the list of awards mentioned by Guy1890, and I passed on a closer look at the AVN awards since I have heard of them and accept them as notable and useful in this context. Instead, I took a look at the second entry on the list, Venus Award, and discovered not a single solitary reliable source in the article. So, where is the significant coverage in "mainstream media"? Similarly, the link to the 2009 discussion about reliable sources on porn topics was, as I read it, pretty much inconclusive. I see trade publications and associated awards as a mixed bag, and I speak as a long time writer for trade publications (though not porn related). I think that a critical reader of a high quality trade publication will recognize certain things: first of all, a modicum of editorial judgment is involved in selecting which press releases to republish, and to separate the wheat from the chaff, and verify the claims. Secondly, these publications often run stories that are independent coverage by staff reporters or regular columnists that include editorial control and fact checking. That being said, there are some trade publications that are little more than press release republishers and "link farms". And some industry awards are handed out to pretty much anyone who submits an application and a "modest processing fee". We have to be aware of the existence of "pay to play" award schemes. It takes expertise and sober editorial judgment to evaluate the reliability of such sources. I lack that expertise in this topic area, and don't want to do the work to develop it. I think that high quality trade publications are useful in referencing the details in articles about notable topics, but are of relatively little use in establishing notability itself. As for the less professional and more promotional "trade publications", well, the less said, the better. Cullen328Let's discuss it06:03, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
"Not sure we can say that for these two given their tendency to reprint press releases as fact" Can we please try & put these press release issues to bed? The fact that AVN has had issues with not properly identifying when they are re-releasing info from a press release has been a known issue ("AVN also does not indicate when an article is a press release.") in the Pornography Project for years now...it's not anything new. As far as I can tell, there is currently no restriction on using press releases for citations on Wikipedia. If there was such a restriction, then the press release citation template surely wouldn't exist. I am not in favor of generating articles based mostly or solely on press release content. Using press release information responsibly in an article depends on context. For example, there's nothing wrong with using a press release to cite information like Actor A appearing as a particular character in Movie B, Actress C being signed to a contract by Company XYZ, or Actress D being quoted as saying something about their own personal life, since pretty much all of that kind of info is very non-controversial. Would it be OK to use a press release to cite something contentious, like "Movie B was the greatest movie ever made"? IMHO, no. Many, many mainstream media sources use press release information all the time. I've edited articles on Wikipedia, which were way more important than anything currently contained in the Pornography Project, that used, in part, press releases for valid citations.
The problem with press releases is that many news papers reprint them as news. If a newspaper does this we accept it as a reliable source. Yea, they may reword a bit, but the press release is the only research they do. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
In fact we don't do that. Sources that routinely reprint press releases are not generally accepted as reliable and a source that can be shown to be a substantially a reprinted press release will be discounted in a deletion discussion. SpartazHumbug!14:35, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
"where is the significant coverage in 'mainstream media'?" The Venus Award is an European adult industry award that's a part of one of the world's largest erotic trade fairs, the Venus Berlin trade fair. Am I certainly not an expert on all of the European adult industry awards, but the Venus Award has been mentioned before in the mainstream media in Europe..."Venus Awards, since 1997 - the 'Oscars of the adult industry' and 'the world's largest erotic trade fair'" & "Venus Awards - 'a kind of Porn Oscar'"...as currently indicated in its Wikipedia article, which certainly needs some more work. As I've previously said, there are, IMO, relatively few major awards given out at the Venus Awards. For example, awards somewhere along the lines of the Best Newcomer Europe, Best Actress Europa, Best Amateur Actress Germany, Best Newcomer International, Best Actress International, and Best Actress Germany appear to be major awards to me. Guy1890 (talk) 20:49, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
Well OK then that's a start. Let's change "Has won a well-known and significant industry award" to "Has won a Venus award". Would that be acceptable to everyone? Herostratus (talk) 02:15, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Well there's your problem right there. If I said "OK add a couple of American awards" we'd have "But what about Japan" and then if I said "OK add a Japanese award" we'd have "But you need them all, they focus on different things" and so on. It's near impossible to get a consensus to reform the guideline.
I note that an editor tagged the guideline as disputed, but another removed it. But that's ridiculous. Of course it's disputed. It's not just disputed but widely mocked and ignored. There's a big difference between "I wish it wasn't disputed" and "It's not disputed".
Meh. Pornography is an important and interesting topic. The public depiction of sex throughout history is an important in interesting topic. The porn industry is an important and interesting topic. That Mary Buttsecks won "best double anal, amateur, lesbian group" at the East Lubbock Jizzmo Awards is not an important or interesting topic and has little to do with what we're trying to do here. Herostratus (talk) 01:04, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I think that we can find essentially zero articles about non-porn actors on Wikipedia whose notability is based on winning some second tier acting award, but have no significant coverage in reliable, independent sources other than that insignificant entry on a long list of award winners. Any such articles should be deleted if no such coverage can be found. Notable actors receive detailed coverage in reliable sources. That should apply to all genres. Cullen328Let's discuss it03:08, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
It's actually quite simple really if you think about it. AVN, etc. shouldn't be considered valid sources the same way gap.com wouldn't be a valid source for the GAP article. Taking into account a large amount of porn actors' articles rely on AVN and PR releases as proof of notability (and I can tell you most AfC submissions we receive fall under this category), clearly porn BIO isn't fulfilling its purpose. Given this there are 2 options: 1) treating all porn BIOs as common BLPs and discard porn BIO; 2) come up with suitable criteria that are specific enough to weed out all the spammy propotional new porn actors' articles, and at the same time not make it seem like Wikipedia hates porn professionals. Whaddya think? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 02:14, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Agreed, AVN is a 30 year old industry publication covering a variety of topics that are related, but clearly not exclusively commercial. Subjects ranging from 1st Amendment cases and challenges, to product legislation, to industry trends and developments on a worldwide scale. AVN media needs no defense, anyone questioning it as an WP:RS is simply ignorant of its status or biased against it. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 19:56, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
@Malik: I don't think that pornography is necessarily entirely based in the United States; for instance, every entry in Budapest is shot in Europe.
@FoCuSandLeArN: I actually think your first option makes a lot of sense, so long as people can treat bios of porn actors the same way bios of non-porn actors are treated (via WP:ANYBIO). It's not that I have a problem with your second option; I just think the current wording is fine. However...I do have to agree with Malik in one point: comparing AVN.com to gap.com is rather ridiculous.
@Cullen: How detailed does the coverage need to be?
As a whole, though, it doesn't seem like it matters a whole lot whether PORNBIO is changed or not because people who don't like it will most likely either try to claim that AVN, XBIZ, etc aren't reliable sources; or, as a last resort, they'll just continue to ignore itbecausethey don't like it (and before anyone tries to throw out the usual "casting aspersions" accusation, notice that the latter was flat-out stated in this very thread). ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???08:49, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
The gap example was an obvious exaggeration. I don't see why we should adhere to an industry publication when notability guidelines require extensive coverage in independent and reliable sources. Most new porn articles I see at AfC are for relatively new actor/actresses that rely on AVN references exclusively because they do not fulfil WP:GNG. Anyone can be a pornographic star these days, but most careers are short and nobody remembers them 20 years later. The porn audience is relatively small compared to other media, so we have to be particularly careful when judging respective notabilities. Some porn actors/actresses branch out into other industries, such as TV, but very often are non-notable in both, and are rarely notable in either of them. I don't see how having articles for all newcomer porn actors/actresses will make this encyclopaedia better (same goes for any other person. Just pop by AfC and have a look). The majority of submitters have serious COIs and PR agendas; the least they could do is present better sources. I'm absolutely in favour of porn, but think WP:GNG is holy. If it passes WP:GNG, it'll be accepted; if it isn't, it won't. It's that simple. We at AfC have a very tough job of weeding out thousands of submissions and are severely understaffed. If you want to improve accepted articles, either draft up a more stringent policy, or come work with us. If you're a porn enthusiast or are being paid to write porn-related articles, be careful with what you submit, and adhere to Wikipedia's policies. That's how I see it. Regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:16, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your opinion Focus, but its just that and not policy. And trying to discredit AVN as a reliable source in my opinion is a weasel method to undermine the addition of new porn actor related articles. Plus I'd very much like to see your evidence of COI with the editors who are submitting or editing porn related articles. But you lost all hope of ever having credibility when you stated, "The porn audience is relatively small compared to other media...". Whether you are talking about just Wikipedia or in general, I guess you are ignorant to the fact that porn makes up as much as 30% of the worlds internet traffic at any given moment. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 08:38, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
To test the wider consensus on this I listed a recently created pornstar article that was based on multiple AVN nominations at AFD, The article was deleted based on the wide community consensus around BLP. The discussion can be found at [[9]]. Based on this, we clearly no longer have community support at AFD, DRV or ANI around the nominations under PORNBIO. I am therefore removing the reference to nominations from the text. I don't expect this to pass unchallenged but the onus is now clearly on those who want to retain this to show a community consensus to support PORNBIO in that form. I suggest that those editors defending the inclusion put a consensus where their mouth is and raise an RFC and see whether the have a consensus on their side to readd this language. SpartazHumbug!21:39, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
Fully endorse and would welcome even further tightening of notability criteria for porn stars, perhaps winning multiple awards for multiple films across multiple years rather than just single or multiple awards for a single film in a single year.
The AVN nominations (and awards) which seem to underpin notability claims in the majority of porn biographies are handed out like confectionery (in contrast to Academy Awards, BAFTA Awards, Grammys etc) and there's an element of awards being used to promote the film rather than genuinely reward the best acting or skills.
I'm not wholly convinced that AVN awards should count at all towards notability given the strong evidence that AVN advertisers are more likely to win awards, and that AVN is so reliant on advertisers as to call into question their impartiality, but in the absence of other more reliable and independent awards and media coverage, AVN is generally the best there is. Nick (talk) 21:57, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
thanks Nick but can we keep it focused on nominations for now? Going off on tangents that fragment discussion loses focus and that's one of the reasons we never managed to make this change before SpartazHumbug!22:17, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
Ugh, thanks for confirming, what was already obvious at the time "Spartaz", that your AfD there was all about attempting to prove a point. As I said in the AfD in question: "What this AfD appears to be about is circumventing PORNBIO, which was labelled as being 'disputed' by none other than yourself. I don't appreciate that kind of behavior." One single AfD does not define "consensus" IMHO. Also, I'm aware of no discussion at AN/I about PORNBIO, and this kind of change almost completely ignores the discussion(s) that is still ongoing below. Guy1890 (talk) 21:59, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
What you might be missing is that this is exactly how we move policy along over time. I'm acting in good faith, testing the consensus through community discussions and its only when we clearly have AFD and DRV making a deliberate choice to depreceate PORNBIO in favour of wider consensus that BLPs must meet the GNG that I am making the minimal change necessary to reflect this consensus. Please stop with the little snide comments suggesting bad faith on my part. Generally, when one side starts to personalise discussions instead of sticking to policy and consensus building its because they think they have lost the argument and I'm quite disappointed that you are resorting to this. I honestly thought you were much better then that. SpartazHumbug!22:17, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
"Please stop with the little snide comments suggesting bad faith on my part." As anyone can clearly see from the AfD that you started to try & prove a point "Spartaz", I gave you the opportunity to come clean on what you were up to, and, IMHO, you basically chose to duck & cover. That's not acting in good faith IMHO, not that anything will come of it.
"its because they think they have lost the argument" What part of "If consensus ultimately dictates that we get rid of nominations in PORNBIO altogether (even though they could be considered under ANYBIO), then so be it" (stated by myself above on October 6th) and "However, if the community supports getting rid of award nominations entirely, then so be it" (stated by myself below on December 7th) do you not understand "Spartaz"? Have I undone what you've recently done to the PORNBIO standard? No, and I won't, but this kind of behavior is not the way that one generates real consensus IMO. Can you please remove the "disputed" tag from PORNBIO now?
Not that you should care about this, but I am quite disappointed your conduct in these long-standing discussions, because this is not the way to "build consensus" at all. I honestly had a fair amount of respect for you based on some of your past actions as an administrator "Spartaz", but that's all gone now from my prespective, which is too bad for both of us. Guy1890 (talk) 22:41, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
Guy1890: You agreed that change was necessary and suggested a minimum of three nominations to prove notability (based on proving notability via awards, rather than going the general notability route). The majority of respondents below agreed change was necessary and wanted to go with no longer using nominations to assert notability, instead asserting notability based on winning awards. The AfD discussion comments show there's demand from the community away from this noticeboard to modify the policy. Spartaz change meets the majority of respondents wishes below and at the AfD. Whether you determine consensus by simply counting comments or by looking at the arguments presented, there's definitely consensus in favour of nominations no longer counting towards notability. It's by no means overwhelming or unanimous, but it is comfortable. I would remind you this is a guideline, so it can occasionally be ignored so that a biography can be added when it would otherwise fall foul of the guidance presented. Nick (talk) 22:49, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
Please remember that majority is very different then consensus. Show us how the changes will protect us from those that don't want anything to do with porn being included? Vegaswikian (talk) 23:24, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
Hi Vegaswikian. Is your concern, of an anti-porn bias, well founded? I haven't seen any controversy over generic articles on pornography, or porn awards, or lists of winners, etc. I have seen argument over young recent porn star BLP-stubs, and where much of the argument is over whether the PORNBIO guideline is met or is worthless. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:49, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Vegaswikian. There's an overwhelming consensus that change is needed, surely you cannot be arguing such consensus does not exist ? Spartaz change satisfies the majority of those looking for change, their changes hit pretty much in the middle ground of the arguments presented, there are a few users who want no change or to tweak the policy so more nominations are needed to demonstrate notability, most want to simply swap nomination for award, so being nominated isn't enough, but winning one award is, and some, like me, would like to see a requirement to win more than one award. There's absolutely no suggestion anywhere that this is a prelude to removal of pornography from Wikipedia and that's not something I wish to happen. The sheer number of people nominated for awards at events like the AVN Awards is making hundreds of porn stars eligible for awards when regular actors, musicians and members of the public, with similar levels of general notability are considered not worthy of inclusion. This policy will effectively bring the inclusion criteria for porn biographies closer to that of other categories of biography without preventing the inclusion of biographies of genuinely notable porn stars. As Guy1890 states below, SNG and GNG aren't mutually exclusive, nomination for (but not winning) an award may well earn the subject the level of press coverage that would routinely be sufficient for an article, so it's not ruling out articles on those who have only ever been nominated for an award, it is simply preventing nominations alone, as a single inclusion criteria, from being used from this point on. The reality is that many people nominated for all manner of awards (getting away from the PORNBIOS nominations) lack sufficient independent reliable coverage to write a good article about them anyway. This change will not stop good articles on any subject being created, but it will reduce the number of basic, unsourced, not very good articles. You must surely see that's a good thing for the project. Nick (talk) 13:50, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
"based on proving notability via awards, rather than going the general notability route"...meeting an SNG guideline (via award wins or nominations) and meeting the GNG guideline are not mutally exclusive. "The AfD discussion comments show there's demand from the community away from this noticeboard to modify the policy"...by my count, there were a grand total of two people that participated in the AfD in question that didn't participate on this talk page here. Is there consensus to change the PORNBIO standard from what was the status quo? Absolutely there is, but the kind of editing pattern undertaken here is not the way to go about things IMO. Guy1890 (talk) 00:07, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Okay, that AfD doesn't prove that AVN, XBIZ, etc. nominations aren't important; they proved that those nominations aren't important in that discussion for whatever reason. And because there is no consensus on that in general, one user (not even an admin) can't just up and change the guideline, as I mentioned before...which is why I'm about to change it back (more on that later). The problem is that in a lot of porn-related AfDs, the closing admin often seems to count the majority of !votes instead of weighing the arguments; which, as Vegaswikian mentioned above, is not the way things work. Another problem is that in these same AfDs, the discussion tends to be less about the actor and more about supposed problems with PORNBIO and the usual "PR machine"-esque arguments (and since it happens so often, it's hard to assume good faith anymore; WP:AGF is a two-way street, people). I have often suggested that users discuss PORNBIO problems here instead of in the AfDs, but no one ever seems to want to do that (seriously, why isn't that a good idea?). Also, Spartaz, didn't DGG already say to focus on the subject, not other people? Ergo, once and for all, please drop the "personalizing" argument (and you have still never explained what you think that means).
Anyway, another reason that the guideline shouldn't be changed yet is because as I mentioned before, nominations are all one needs to pass ANYBIO, so if s/he passes that, s/he definitely passes PORNBIO (with respect to exceptions like scene-related or group awards, anyway). If anyone thinks that isn't true, please explain how. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???08:46, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I am warning you: if you revert that change now, I will immediately ask for you to be blocked for edit-warring. Spartaz has made a compelling argument why at the present moment, given the state of multiple previous discussions (here and at various AfDs) the default assumption must be that the clause about nominations has no consensus. Given this fact, the current state of affairs is that it is struck. If you want it back, it is on you to first demonstrate consensus for that. You can't go on preserving that clause through sheer filibustering and stonewalling forever. Fut.Perf.☼08:55, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I am not edit-warring (it was two reverts with explanations not close to each other, from different original users). He said there was a consensus when there really isn't; if there were a consensus already, people wouldn't be !voting below, would they? I have no problem waiting for a consensus to arrive, but he (and you) should do that too. And no one has even bothered to explain why the discussions were taking place in AfDs, where a lot of people might not see them, instead of on the guideline's talk page, where such discussions are supposed to happen. Also, the last time I checked, the only single person that can change a guideline without consensus is Jimmy Wales.
In addition, it would really help if it were explained why the nomination requirement would be taken out of here and not out of ANYBIO. I mean, that is a very fair question, and I find it interesting that instead of answering that, you issue a warning. Yes, PORNBIO refers to a niche topic, but how is AVN supposedly not a reliable source for that if that's where the nominations come from? Are we going to also say that Sports Illustrated isn't a reliable source for nominations for Sportsperson of the Year via WP:NSPORT? I mean, sports are a niche topic too (yeah, I know, WP:OTHERSTUFF, but still). If people don't like pornography, that's fine (everyone doesn't have to like everything), but now it seems like there's a crusade against porn and a lot of people won't rest until it's completely removed from Wikipedia. Since when is that how things work? ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???19:15, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Please explain why you think there is no consensus for the change and what you think the numerous comments in this discussion and in other discussions demonstrate, if not consensus for change. I would also be interested to see evidence demonstrating a campaign to rid Wikipedia of pornography, not your personal opinion or interpretation, but actual comments where people have said there's no place on Wikipedia for pornography. Thanks in advance. Nick (talk) 01:03, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
I never said there was no consensus for change period (see the discussion lower on the page).
For the sake of argument, let's just say Wikipedia was completely divided between two parties: pornography enthusiasts and pornography opposers. On this talk page (the proper venue for such a discussion), people are saying that PORNBIO should be changed, but there isn't a clear consensus on what that change should be. The problem with holding a discussion about this in AfDs is because when such articles get deleted, I notice that most (if not all) of the people who !vote "delete" (the opposers) basically just state how much of a problem a certain point of PORNBIO is instead of actually discussing the subject of the article. See, when that happens, it's like they then come over and say, "Well, in our little meeting over there, we decided that point such-and-such is a problem, so now it should be gospel." That doesn't really seem fair; I mean, if the enthusiasts went and said, "Well, we decided that group-related awards alone should pass PORNBIO after all," I'm pretty sure that wouldn't fly. Both sides should be getting the same consideration, don't you think?
RE: the DavidLeighEllis diff: Read "biographies of marginally notable performers". The bad stuff is the BLPs on young people, in a phase of their career that may well be temporary, especially where their peak claim to notability is merely having been nominated. Your tooth and nail defense of under-sourced BLPs doesn't do you credit. Do you fear a thin end of the wedge effect here? I don't think so. As I discussed with Guy1890, I think there is room, and need, for disinterested coverage of the many awards, and of the industry. I think he is wrong in thinking it wouldn't be welcome. What isn't welcome is the smell of promotion that accompanies (whether deservedly or not) coverage of young apparently upcoming stars. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:45, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
"Do you fear a thin end of the wedge effect here?" I'm not even sure what that means.
Also, with your promotion argument, people have still yet to explain how adult film award nominations are considered promotion while nominations in other subject-specific topics (Sportperson of the Year, Grammys, etc) don't seem to be. The same overall guideline (well, ANYBIO, anyway) should qualify for all niche categories; you shouldn't just pick and choose what you want (and sorry, but WP:IAR is a cop-out). ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???17:34, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
You want to use WP:CRYSTAL to support BLPs without independent secondary sources, because we don't know they they won't stay in the industry long enough to attract more sources? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:20, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
I think it reasonable to assume that many young porn actors, whose pinnacle of achievement is a nomination or two, will move on. It is not reasonable for their biographies, based on no independent secondary sources, covering a brief aspect of their life, to persist indefinitely. This is not the gist of WP:CRYSTAL. See Secret's comment of 17:23, 9 December 2013 (UTC). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:02, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Endorse with a reminder that meeting a subject specific guideline is just a strong indication but not a guarantee that the topic can meet the WP:GNG, which requires significant coverage in reliable independent sources. Cullen328Let's discuss it09:07, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Endorse. It is long clear that a list of nominations is not sufficient for Wikipedia to write an original BLP on a young porn star. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:42, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Endorse. More restrictive than I would have supported before this discussion began, but the well-founded community opinion that award nominations in this field are not correlated with genuine notability pretty much requires this outcome. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:09, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
Oppose the exclusion of nominations. There is an obvious bias by several editor's against pornography articles and I believe these articles shouldn't be treated any differently than actors, musicians, or other performers. If a porn star receives multiple nominations for prestigious awards such as the AVN Female Performer of the Year Award or Best New Starlet she is clearly notable and should not get her article deleted just because she didn't win. I personally believe that two nominations is sufficient prove of notability, but if you all would like to increase the minimum number of nominations needed to pass PORNBIO, I think that would be more fair that getting rid of nominees altogether. Either way, I'm not sure if it really matters what you do to the PORNBIO guideline, because we still have ANYBIO, so if the PORNBIO guideline is changed and articles with nominations only are AfD'd, I'm going to vote "keep per ANYBIO". And unless you want to dispute the ANYBIO guideline as well (good luck with that), that guideline applies to everyone, including porn actors. Whether you like it or not, nominations are important. As the saying goes, "it's an honor just being nominated". Rebecca1990 (talk) 20:27, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
Do you still believe the previous PORNBIO guideline was just fine? Are you not concerned about being so obviously at odds with consensus? Have you ever seen the PORNBIO guideline used with effect at AfD? Have you ever read WP:N? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:27, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
I've had a look at your link and we're currently deleting around 70-75% of articles nominated for deletion. That's the strongest, clearest evidence that this specific guideline has gone out of sync with the consensus of the community, it is abundantly clear that PORNBIO is allowing articles to be created that the community does not agree should be retained, which is why you're seeing so many deletions (and redirections) on those lists.
Guidelines and policies aren't set in isolation by just a few people discussing it here and there, on a small number of pages, guidelines (policy, less so) comes from reviewing discussions, deletions and threads at ANI and other venues and one of the best places to see the consensus of the community in relation to a content guideline is looking through deletion discussions, reviewing the comments made and looking at the end result, in terms of Keep/Delete/Redirect decisions to see what is happening.
We have to get this guideline to closely align with the community's wishes, nobody is arguing that there's not consensus to change it, the main point of discussion currently revolves around what the guideline is to be changed to. Removing nominations and making notability dependent on (in the case of this single guideline only) winning an award falls in the middle ground of what various editors want, so it's a perfect starting point, an ideal compromise between those who want something like one win to demonstrate notability, those who want multiple nominations and those who want multiple wins to demonstrate notability. It's fundamentally fair and reasonable, in keeping with the requests of those who have commented in various discussions.
We need to give this change a chance to bed in and see how it works, it's certainly moving the guidelines in the direction of comments left at AfD, if we get it right, you'll find something like 75% (or more) of articles nominated for deletion will be Kept (rather than being deleted), and you should also see a noticeable decline in the numbers of articles going for deletion.
That's desperately where we need to get to, so instead of articles being created, then deleted, time and effort can be spent making the (admittedly fewer in number) remaining articles shine and sparkle. The sad thing is that some of the articles I see (before and after deletion) are written to a high standard with little or no grammar problems, and feature neat and tidy infoboxes, appropriate images and neatly presented tables, deletion of them is sad, but that's the wish of the community.
I would ask that Rebecca1990, Erpert, Guy1890 and any other editors who strongly disagree with this change let the guideline stand as changed, monitor Speedy Deletions, AfD and DRV and see how it affects deletion and retention of pornography biographies, if you genuinely think the change is resulting in too many deletions or articles being rejected that should otherwise be approved, come back after a few weeks/months and we will discuss what needs changed and how we go about changing the guidelines again. The aim of this guideline is, at the end of the day, to make sure nothing is created that shouldn't be, and that nothing is deleted that shouldn't be, so everybody knows where they stand and so they can edit in confidence, knowing their time and effort will not be wasted. Nick (talk) 02:04, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Those articles were deleted because they failed the current PORNBIO guideline, the one which includes nominations. Most people in the porn industry never receive several non-scene nominations throughout their career and those are examples of people who didn't, and therefore, failed PORNBIO. They weren't deleted because users wanted to change the guideline, they were deleted because they failed the current guideline. There is really no need to tighten PORNBIO because like you said, 70% or more porn articles already get deleted under the current guideline. I just don't think it's fair to delete an article on an actually notable porn star who has been nominated for multiple well known and significant awards. That would be like deleting Leonardo DiCaprio's article because he has never won an Oscar. And don't tell me that a porn star who fails PORNBIO won't get her article deleted if she does pass GNG, because that is also untrue. For example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Luscious Lopez. Now when a porn star does pass the GNG, many dispute the sources used in the article and claim that AVN and XBIZ are not reliable sources, but they are. They aren't "PR businesses", they are news websites for the porn industry. Porn news websites do not equal unreliable sources. Here is a list of reliable and non-reliable porn sources: Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography#External links, AVN and XBIZ are listed here as reliable. There is an obvious anti-pornography campaign on WP and no one is doing anything to solve that problem. Porn articles aren't a problem on WP and there aren't "too many" of them. There are 7,088 articles in Category:American film actresses and only 659 in Category:American female pornographic film actors, but I don't see anyone arguing to tighten the guideline for actors as well. I believe it's fair to ask that porn stars and other entertainers, such as actors and musicians, be treated equally on WP. Please leave the PORNBIO guideline alone. Rebecca1990 (talk) 10:37, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
These articles were all deleted because the community disagreed with the PORNBIO guidelines: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 deletions in the last three months says you're mistaken. I believe you voted to Keep every one of those nominates too, citing PORNBIO as your reason for keeping the article. I've ignored any articles which have been deleted via PROD, which I think is reasonable given anything can be deleted via an uncontested PROD. Nick (talk) 12:32, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree with the deletion of Melody Jordan, a "Best Tease Performance" award is scene related. I also agree with the deletion of Kelle Marie, her only nomination was scene related. Not sure what kind of point you're trying to make with those two articles, since they were deleted in accordance with the current PORNBIO guideline. The Deauxma discussion was primarily a sourcing dispute and not much commentary on PORNBIO itself, but whether those specific awards were notable or not. Consensus has yet to determine whether they are notable or not. Jessa Rhodes's discussion seems in favor of reinserting the "multiple years" criteria into PORNBIO and Kiera King's discussion seems to be more in favor of increasing the minimum number of nominations needed to establish notability. No discussion has suggested getting rid of nominations altogether. Rebecca1990 (talk) 13:13, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
The point I'm making is that articles being included because of the single notability guideline are subsequently being deleted because of poor and non existent sourcing or other problems. That, as I've repeatedly said, shows the guideline has grown out of sync with the expectations of the community. It was expected, when that Single Notability Guideline was included initially, that nominees would have enough press and trade journal coverage to be able to write an article that would stand up to a deletion discussion. That is clearly not the case. However, I'm not at all opposed to the guideline changing to include multiple nominations and/or multiple nominations across multiple years but I would like to see evidence that changes the level of coverage and that it is likely to reduce the number of deletions and the number of nominations. Thanks. Nick (talk) 15:14, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Very well put Nick. If I may add to the argument. SNGs are supposed to reflect the likelihood of reliable sourcing existing for a subject so are a quick rule of thumb not a golden rule. The removal of nominations reflects the reality of what the community does so is more reliable a rule of thumb then just arguing for nominations because anybio has them. Opinion is not a replacement for evidence. Removing the nominations is based on evidence. If we have this wrong then those editors seeking to keep nominations must be easily able to show that subjects who get nominations do receive reliable sourcing as a result. Except we know that's not the case or the articles wouldn't get deleted at all. This is not some anti porn crusade its a pro BLP crusade trying to tidy up a contentious guideline that was never updated to reflect the fact that the community has moved on and now requires BLPs to be well sourced. I am very puzzled why some editors seem to think that BLPs in this field don't need reliable sourcing. If there is a consensus for that we should see it otherwise that line of argument needs to be dropped. SpartazHumbug!05:43, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Here's my question, then...are the 70-75% of articles being deleted all niche-related bios, or are they just pornography bios? In either case, this should mean that nominations should be removed from WP:ANYBIO too, right? ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???06:04, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
It depends on the award nominated. There is clear evidence that being nominated for AVN XBIZ etc doesn't automatically lead to the creation of reliable sources so for PORNBIO nominations are clearly a problem. I can't ever recall an ANYBIO related nomination reaching DRV which suggests the controversy around nominations is less. Let me ask two questions in return. Firstly do you dispute that the community now expects BLPs to be properly sourced and secondly, do you dispute that getting a nomination for an AVN or XBIZ does not automatically mean that sources exist? SpartazHumbug!06:11, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Support removing any provision for nominations. I actually favor complete deprecation of the PORNBIO low bar and making all such pages have to clear WP:GNG as inherently problematic with respect to our Biography of Living Persons doctrine. Carrite (talk) 21:24, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
When nominations for awards is all there is
PARTIALLY RESOLVED BY RFC
This discussion indicated very weak support for modifying ANYBIO but changed to largely become a discussion about the presence of award nominations in PORNBIO. The December 2013 RFC demonstrated consensus to remove them from that guideline. There is now the potential for a new discussion specifically focused on ANYBIO should it be felt necessary to pursue that aspect of this discussion further. — Scott•talk12:49, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Propose removal of ANYBIO's and PORNBIO's references to mere nominations for awards as a sufficient criterion for a standalone article [10].
These nominated criteria only come into effect where there is no independent coverage (GNG), and no awards have actually been won, and it is more than obvious that solely having mere nominations for awards gains no respect from the community. It invites promotion of someone not recognized in independent sources, & it doesn't make for content-containing articles. It doesn't matter whether the award is significant. Notability is not inherited, and it hasn't been won anyway. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:48, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Someone nominated for an Oscar or BAFTA Film award will very likely have critical commentary about their performance that earned them that prestigious nomination; on the other hand, other awards do not have that caliber (like Golden Globes, Emmys, etc.) A trimmed list of what awards that nominations are a sure sign of further sourcing would make more sense. This, I would suspect, eliminate the PORNBIO aspect, but would still apply to ANYBIO. --MASEM (t) 21:52, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Given the nomination, it will be very easy to find commentary on the nomination. In the absence of that commentary, it's best to assume it doesn't exist. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:01, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Comments - "These nominated criteria only come into effect where there is no independent coverage (GNG)" I would argue that as long as the subject is not nominating themselves for an award that, by definition, the source of the award nomination is an "independent source".
"it is more than obvious that solely having mere nominations for awards gains no respect from the community" As basically stated above, there are more than a few awards for which just being nominated does, in fact, gain respect from the specific community that is doing the awards in the first place.
"It doesn't matter whether the award is significant"...then why do you propose leaving those small portions of the current standards alone?
As already stated above on October 5th, I am still in favor of simply increasing the number of major awards that one should be nominated for (to a number more than three) before that subject passes the PORNBIO standard. I suspect that the above proposed change by "SmokeyJoe" is really being driven by a frustration with the PORNBIO standard, which I continue to agree needs to be updated. Guy1890 (talk) 22:54, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
A nomination is not a reliable source, but even that aside, it would have to be accompanied by evidence of independence of the nominator.
Respect from the community. Multiple nominations, like multiple occurrences of anything stimulates independent comment, and it is the independent comment that garners respect for the topic.
Whether the award is significant. If it is a nomination not won, significance of the award is disconnected. Just deal with one question at a time. A series of wins of borderline awards is a different, harder question.
Not frustration, but very long term observation that PORNBIO does not reflect broad consensus. Even sympathy for porn-interested contributors who correctly cite the text of PORNBIO at AfD but see no traction. I suspect that the aberrance is due to the broad community being wary of engaging, and there being undisclosed COI by proponents of a very low standard. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:20, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
"A nomination is not a reliable source"...of course it isn't, but the entity that is conducting and/or overseeing the awards themselves can be an independent source for sure.
"If it is a nomination not won, significance of the award is disconnected." I really don't think so...if an award is truly a significant award (and obviously not all specific award categories are significant), then the subjects that are nominated for those awards have at least a chance of being notable IMO.
"Even sympathy for porn-interested contributors who correctly cite the text of PORNBIO at AfD but see no traction. I suspect that the aberrance is due to the broad community being wary of engaging" The problem that I've seen over the long-term is that there are some vocal Wikipedia editors (and unfortunately at least a few administrators) that are unwilling to have any tolerance for pornography-related content on Wikipedia. Even changing the PORNBIO standard, which I am still in favor of doing, is, IMHO, not going to cause all of those editors to change their tune at DRV and/or AfD. Guy1890 (talk) 00:23, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Paragraph 1. Can you comment on my main point, about independence of the nominator? The suspicion is that award ceremonies are choreographed promotion which should be subjected to the high WP:CORP standard, and that nominations are organized by managers, (quite normal practice outside porn, even to the Nobel committees), but the end problem being that nominated&lost (with zero commentary in the process) is a non-achievement.
Paragraph2. You are arguing inherited notability.
Paragraph 3. Let's work on a solution. I suggest changing "Has won a well-known and significant industry award" to "Has won blue-linked awards". (This is assuming no more that trivial mentions in coverage; a single award is a BLP1E issue). This will give editors some surety in writing articles. Controversial edge cases should NOT be supported by a guideline, if the guideline is to have respect (both ways). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:03, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
"The suspicion is that award ceremonies are choreographed promotion which should be subjected to the high WP:CORP standard, and that nominations are organized by managers" You appear to be referring to "facts" that are not at all in evidence here, yet.
"You are arguing inherited notability." No, I'm really not...either awards are important or they are not. I'm not the one that added the award component to both the ANYBIO & PORNBIO standards. There has to be a reason why it's there in the first place.
"I suggest changing 'Has won a well-known and significant industry award' to 'Has won blue-linked awards'." I'm not sure what that kind of change actually means. Does it mean that an overall awards ceremony has to have an article on Wikipedia in order to be considered? If so, that's pretty much already the standard as it's been applied recently at AfD with respect to PORNBIO. If it means that a specific award category within an overall awards ceremony needs to have its own Wikipedia article in order to be considered, then that likely means that we'll end up with an attempted proliferation of Wikipedia articles about specific award categories, which would not at all appear to be helpful. Also, if it's really true that "a single award is a BLP1E issue", then that sounds to me like you're in favor of making more broad changes to the ANYBIO & PORNBIO standards as it relates to winning awards as well.
It's been obvious to me for quite a while that there is an over-emphasis on award counts (or award nomination counts) when it comes to PORNBIO-related AfDs & DRVs, which isn't constructive IMHO. The vague wording of "several" occasionally comes up for debate at AfD in terms of what it means as an actual number (2, 3, 4, etc.). Significantly increasing the number of major award nominations that a subject would have to have under their belts in order to pass something like PORNBIO (or maybe even ANYBIO?) would seem to be an appropriate compromise at this point. However, if the community supports getting rid of award nominations entirely, then so be it. "Masem" actually has a very clear grasp of another main dilema at AfD though...what the heck is a "well-known and significant award"? The same people go 'round & 'round on those issues over & over again. Guy1890 (talk) 09:13, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
"Has won blue-linked awards". The award is explicitly on some page, and a redirect justifiably exists. Probably, I'd want to require the specific award to have its own section.
An attempted proliferation of Wikipedia articles about specific award categories would be preferable to the current attempts at proliferation of BLP stubs on non notable porn actors.
Yes, if a person has won a single award, and has done nothing else of note, and has a total of zero commentary from reliable sources, they should not have a standalone article, and any coverage should be on the page covering that award, or a spinout page covering recipients of the award.
Your last paragraph I got well into while thinking you were quoting me. I agree. Last time I was here trying to modify PORNBIO, I got into an argument with someone insisting that "several" is satisfied by "two", which was so absurd I gave up. Since then, I see nothing has changed. Some reasonable-sounding editors are clutching onto the text of PORNBIO while most consider it worthless.
What is a "well-known and significant award"? Instead of doing OR in defining a ProjectSpace list, we could define it in terms of where the award has at least a measure of coverage in mainspace (I suggest a section). This would make the list self-managing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:44, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Your apparent definition of a "blue-linked award" doesn't seem to have much meaning to me, since it appears to be a very easy bar to exceed. There are a lot of awards out there that are mentioned "on some page" somewhere on Wikipedia. Obviously, not all awards are truly notable.
I'm also not aware of any restriction against the existence of BLP stubs. I view the concept of notability as a doorway through which a subject may pass through (in order to possibly get an article on Wikipedia) but may not contribute much once they pass through that door. I can show up at my local bowling alley with some cash and bowl, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to bowl a 300 or even bowl a set of turkeys. If a subject merely has a short Wikipedia article about themselves that only contains a very few pieces of reliably-sourced content, then so be it. I don't view notability as a doorway through which a subject gets a Wikipedia article (because of only one truly notable thing) that's full of poorly-sourced information.
BTW, the current accepted definition of "several" at the many AfDs that I've seen is still two...if that needs to be specified more clearly or increased, then so be it.
"we could define it in terms of where the award has at least a measure of coverage in mainspace (I suggest a section)." Again, I don't know what you're exactly talking about here. Guy1890 (talk) 21:04, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
The bar for awards: A mere mention on some page wouldn't be enough. I think an award is, for our purposes, a significant award if it is introduced and described directly, with its own independent sourcing. This is a lower bar than "notable", and many awards are well structured on a single page.
BLP-stubs are the worse kind of stubs. Stubs have negligible secondary source content from few sources. A biography based on negligible seconardy source content and few primary sources is an unreliable thing capable of causing harm. A biography based only on primary sources is an orignal biography and is foul of WP:NOR. Wikipedia should not be writing original biographies on living people. Even porn starts.
"Several"=2 is a perversion, and if it is accepted, "several" sould be abandoned. It may have crept in because WP:N requires "sources", which has led some to take (not quite accurately) as meaning that two reliable sources is the threshold.
"we could define it in terms of where the award has at least a measure of coverage in mainspace (I suggest a section)." I am talking about constructing a mainspace-based test for deciding whether an award should be counted as a significant award. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:59, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
"I am talking about constructing a mainspace-based test for deciding whether an award should be counted as a significant award"...maybe I wasn't clear enuff before on this, but I still don't know what you mean by "mainspace". There are around a dozen or so pornography-related award ceremonies that have their own Wikipedia articles, but those articles have not all been developed to the same extent as of yet in terms of describing the individual awards that they give out in detail. Also, I've yet to see an article kept at AfD because of an individual winning (or even being nominated for) an award that wasn't described somewhere on Wikipedia. Guy1890 (talk) 20:58, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
May I suggest that articles covering the awards ought to be developed as a priority? If someone wants to claim that winning a certain award is significant, but Wikipedia has little content on the award, well the claim looks thin. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:38, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
A key to remember is that the purpose of the subject-specific notability guideline is to define criteria that, if met, indicate the likelihood of GNG-quality sources existing (but may be difficult to get a hold of in the short term) or coming to exist in the near future, such that we can presume the topic is notable to allow it to have a stand alone article and be developed on the open wiki. To that extent, the general condition "the person has been nominated for a major award" is not a sufficient condition, as this falls on the weak definition of a "major award" as not all major awards are created equation. Again, my example of an Oscar or BAFTA is good, since these are pinnacles of the industry and even being nominated is an honor that will create coverage of the person. On the other hand, this isn't likely going to happen with MTV Video Awards. Hence, the criteria as given is weak, without better explanation of what are major awards or listing those awards out specifically. The alternative idea of being nominated for awards form X different sources is also reasonable. --MASEM (t) 01:45, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Have you been participating in PORNBIO AfDs or DRVs? It is not good enough that encultured wikipedians remember the nuance. The guideline should be intuitive and useful on a single reading by a newcomer. The guideline brings newcomers into conflict with actual practice. The guideline as written focuses on dot point achievements at the expense of appropriately sourced content. The guideline needs fixing. If you don't like this proposal, do you have something better? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:00, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I've avoided PORNBIO, but I've been involved all over notability. The text on this page matches the approach used at WP:N and most other subject-specific notability guideline. The problem is that the statement in question, at least for ANYBIO, is "The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times.", the issue of what is a "well-known award or honor" is going to be the subject of debate and combative discussion ("I've never of this award!" "Trust me, everyone in this industry knows this!") I would rather see, over time, a list of actual named awards that qualify here to be filled out. It will be a potentially long list, and will never be complete but it will be more objective and avoid the issues I can envision you're talking about. --MASEM (t) 02:25, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I've actually been trying to develop a listing of awards that meet the major award (as it relates to PORNBIO at least) threshold that I originally proposed far above. Give me a few more days, and I'll likely have something to look at. Guy1890 (talk) 09:13, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Nominations for major awards, like the Oscars, even if a one-off, is generally a strong sign that there is critical discussion about why that person was nominated for that major award - the nomination doesn't come out of the blue. So, following the "presumed notability" model that we use for subject-specific articles, it would make sense to allow a standalone bio to stand on the fact a person recieved a nomination for a major award with the presumption GNG-quality sources exist or will exist. If this turns out to be false, and no GNG sources are ever discovered, we can AFD the article later. --MASEM (t) 14:07, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't know if this will help this discussion here or not, but I've completed an examination of what I personally think are major, well-known and significant adult industry awards that should be considered under the current (and any future) PORNBIO standard. This listing includes what I believe are some significant scene-related awards in support of my original proposal for a modified PORNBIO standard that I stated back on October 5th. Guy1890 (talk) 01:20, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Guy1890, I think it is indirectly helpful. It is helpful to have some guidance on the more important awards. However, difficulties with it are: (1) it will be easily be inaccurate, incomplete and out-of-date if it is not maintained; (2) it directs new editors into thinking that new topics need to have a minimum threshold based on facts of achievement, detracting from the truth that we require new topics to have independent secondary source coverage. If your page went a little further, and gave examples of reliable sources for these awards, I think that would be better. Also, if the list were based on a criteria of coverage in mainspace, I think that would encourage more attention to coverage of the awards than there is now. For example, AVN Award: Crossover Star of the Year - I think there should be some coverage of this award, and that this coverage (now missing) is more important than covering the awardees individually. What is a "crossover star"? Is this a competitive award? Are there things that correlate with this award? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:34, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
"if the list were based on a criteria of coverage in mainspace, I think that would encourage more attention to coverage of the awards than there is now. For example, AVN Award: Crossover Star of the Year - I think there should be some coverage of this award" Again, trust me when I say that a proliferation of more Wikipedia articles on individual award categories given out at adult film awards is going to go over like a lead balloon.
"What is a 'crossover star'? Is this a competitive award?" A Crossover Star is just what it sounds like...someone that has sucessfully "crossed-over" into more mainstream media coverage for whatever reason. Some examples are Sasha Grey, Jenna Jameson, Sunny Leone, James Deen & Ron Jeremy. Pretty much all adult film awards are competitive, but this fact is unfortunately held against them...i.e. there are "too many" people competing for one award category. Guy1890 (talk) 19:23, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't asking for the answers, but pointing out really simple questions not answered anywhere in mainspace, that I can see. If an award is not significant enough to have a one paragraph referenced description, then it is not notable. NB I am not suggesting new articles for every award, but some content, a paragraph of description, where the award is mentioned. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:01, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Support - I was surprised by the boldness of stripping ANYBIO without prior consensus or a current discussion but I have long agreed with this. Awards/nominations by themselves do not indicate notability as their listings are primary sources and secondary coverage that the nomination/award exist is a shallow basis of notability. There must be more substantive coverage. Morbidthoughts (talk) 02:34, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Absolutely oppose, per common sense. Eg., being nominated a "mere" half dozen of times to the Oscar for best sound is a clear sign of notability in the relevant field of sound mixing, not less than winning one. Loren L. Ryder was nominated to 14 Academy Awards for best sound and I doubt anyone would argue that he is a non-notable individual or that the page about him is mere "promotion": conversely, that's "information". I'm not saying that all the nominations count towards notability: what it counts is the value of the award, the number of the nominations, the timespan between them etc. It would be sufficient dealing with these subjects with the good old common sense, weighting these noms as "signs" (and not automatically guarantees) of notability. And about "promotion", every article about a person (excluding serial killers, terrorists and a few others), a film, a song, a book, a company, a product could be seen as a direct or indirect promotion to the relevant subjects. Every source we use in our citations could be seen as a direct or indirect promotion to the source. A very little of this encyclopedia would survive if we should apply this witch hunt approach towards "promotion". Cavarrone14:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Comment. Is Loren L. Ryder notable for the 14 nominations, or because the New York Times published his obituary in 1985? I would argue the latter. The specific notability guidelines, like WP:ANYBIO, are there to provide guidance on presumptive notability. Per WP:ANYBIO, we presume that anyone who has received a major award, like an Academy Award, has also received significant coverage in reliable sources. Should we presume that anyone who's been nominated for such an award, even several times, has received such coverage? Perhaps not. Pburka (talk) 14:56, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
In fact, that's why we currently presume that anyone who's been nominated for such an award several times is ultimately notable, the two things are linked. However if you look at the most recent winners (not just nominated) in similar technical categories, you will find that many of these Academy Award winners apparently fail GNG (and we are talking about the best known award in the entertainment field). Sure, when they will be dead they will receive some obituaries, at least in specialized publications, and some coverage is very likely to already exist in some niche publications, but if you try to use our usual web tools the coverage that comes out is often quite unsatisfactory. Cavarrone15:41, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately Loren L. Ryder turns out to be a poor example, since he is notable for the five Oscars he won in addition to the twelve he was nominated for. Our article was incomplete at best. Pburka (talk) 16:29, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Sorry for the example (if the article misses five Oscar wins, referring to it as incomplete is a very kind comment) but I assume my point was clear. I will fix the article asap. Cavarrone16:40, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Not only nominations, but even winning. If the award is truly a significant one (Oscar, etc.), finding sources about a winner will be trivial. There are no obscure Oscar winners about which little source material exists. On the other hand, there are a lot of other, more minor awards, in many different areas, in which being nominated or even winning might not occasion much coverage. In that case, we should evaluate case by case whether there are or are not sufficient sources to sustain a full, in-depth, balanced biographical article. If the only reference material we can find is "X won Y", but the award itself is notable, a "List of Winners of Foo Award" is probably more appropriate than a bunch of permastub BLPs. SeraphimbladeTalk to me18:49, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
That's pure theory, you are probably just looking at categories such as Best Actor or Best Director. Actually, there are a bunch of obscure Oscar winners that definitely are hard to source. Eg. Ray Beckett (sound engineer), winner of an Oscar and a Bafta. Or Mindy Hall. Or Aldo Signoretti. Or Paul N. J. Ottosson. I'm not saying they are unsourcable or their articles are permastubs, they are probably just waiting the editor who has enough off-line specialized publications to expand them... but actually articles like these in an AfD discussion that ignores ANYBIO would be likely deleted for lack of significant coverage. We'll throw out the baby with the bath water. Cavarrone20:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Smokeyjoe's proposal and Seraphimblade here, PORNBIO needs to be reformed or removed as they are no different. The area probably has way more potential to cause harm to the subject than any other biographical area in the project. We been getting too many complains lately though WP:OTRS or even IRC of people who did porn before, was nominated for a few rewards (mostly silly ones like best three way sex scene), doesn't meet GNG otherwise, and now wants their articles deleted because it is causing harm to the subject as they want to move on to a regular life. Most of these awards are sponsor and press release generated anyways so comparing them to a Oscar is pure nonsense. Secretaccount17:23, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
I can't agree with the proposals but fully support the thought process behind them, this proposal as it stands doesn't go far enough but I'll support it if we can do no more. We really need to sit down and decide what awards and what nominations we should be using as inclusion criteria. Pornography biographies are being created at the rate of a dozen a week and the only claim to any sort of notability is being nominated for an award. These awards are handed out by trade journals reliant on advertising and there is evidence the awards reward advertisers and not talent (see the sources at AVN_(magazine)#AVN_Adult_Movie_Awards).
The AVN Awards, which are probably the biggest biography notability related problem on Wikipedia at present have more than 100 categories, taking into account the way in which some awards reward multiple people as they relate to sexual performances, along with the way traditional awards reward multiple producers, and all the other professions rewarded with nominations at the Adult Movie Awards, the nominations alone would make around 2,000 people this year eligible for a Wikipedia article. If we restrict biographies just to the winners of the 100+ categories, you could still have over 200 biographies eligible purely from winning one award at the Adult Video Awards, despite no other hint of notability.
It's not just pornography though - we need to really look at how we address specialist areas where awards we use to establish notability are given out by trade publications with clear vested interests in supporting their advertisers, to make sure we don't become a party to their promotional behaviour. Nick (talk) 18:07, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Comment- "We been getting too many complains lately though WP:OTRS or even IRC of people who did porn before, was nominated for a few rewards (mostly silly ones like best three way sex scene), doesn't meet GNG otherwise, and now wants their articles deleted because it is causing harm to the subject as they want to move on to a regular life." This is the first that I'm hearing of this, and I'd like to see recent examples of it happeneing. It's been a rarity that I've seen pornography-related BLPs that have been deleted because of these kind of concerns. Also, no one that I know of thinks that a "best three way sex scene" meets even the current incarnation of PORNBIO.
"The AVN Awards, which are probably the biggest biography notability related problem on Wikipedia at present have more than 100 categories, taking into account the way in which some awards reward multiple people as they relate to sexual performances, along with the way traditional awards reward multiple producers, and all the other professions rewarded with nominations at the Adult Movie Awards, the nominations alone would make around 2,000 people this year eligible for a Wikipedia article." Again, I am not aware of anyone that has argued that every single award given out at the AVN Awards is "a well-known and significant industry award" under even the current PORNBIO standard. Please see my comments above on this same subject, as it relates to the AVN Awards, on October 8th. Guy1890 (talk) 03:05, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
The main issue I have with this proposal is that it appears to suggest wanting to change WP:ANYBIO but it's really a disguised attempt to change WP:PORNBIO. I mean, if it's about PORNBIO, say it's about PORNBIO! I also don't understand, SmokeyJoe, why you keep assuming that anyone who !votes "keep" in a pornography-related deletion discussion (for example) must have a COI--and you have yet to provide proof of this. You've accused me of that before, and I can tell you right now that I have !voted "keep" in hundreds of articles, sometimes in subjects that I have never even heard of, thus proving that I have no connection to them. The fact that I have created a few porn-related articles proves that I am interested in the topic, not that I work for the industry. Also, I think it's good that Masem hasn't participated in porn-related AfDs and DRVs before because it's a fair and neutral observation into the situation.
But back to ANYBIO, there are still a few issues I have:
“Solely having mere nominations for awards gains no respect from the community.” If that were the case, India.Arie wouldn't have had an article until after she actually won the Grammy.
“If a person has won a single award, and has done nothing else of note, and has a total of zero commentary from reliable sources, they should not have a standalone article.” I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. For example, Peter Ostrum’s single film role was Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and his article has never even so much as been prodded (and he wasn’t even nominated for anything; more on that later). Anyway, notability is not temporary.
“A nomination is not a reliable source, but even that aside, it would have to be accompanied by evidence of independence of the nominator.” Independence of the nominator? I don’t even think that’s possible. Why? Because people who serve on the Grammy review board (or whatever it’s called) are the ones that have to nominate artists, albums, etc. for Grammys, right? I mean, a random music listener can’t just email the corporation and say, “Kendrick Lamar deserves a Song of the Year Grammy for “Swimming Pools” and then all of a sudden that very nomination shows up.
In addition, maybe in subject-specific guidelines nominations are the most important evidence of notability (more on that in a minute), but there are plenty of people who have never been nominated for anything and are still notable (Andrew W.K., Brian Benben and the aforementioned Peter Ostrum) because they pass other guidelines. Unless I’m wrong, one guideline is all a subject needs to pass to be notable. And as for how “several” is defined, the count is still two because that is how the term is definied by Merriam-Webster but more importantly, if the number were to be increased, no consensus was met as to what that number should be.
One more thing I can say about PORNBIO is that I think the guideline is fine as is, but…there should be an addendum that states that passing point #1 of the guideline should be the notability qualification if pornography is the only thing the actor is known for. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???22:17, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
The proposal is to remove mere nominations as criteria. (Listening to Masem, maybe a compromise is to tighten the set of nominations). Nominations for awards (undefined) is common to ANYBIO and PORNBIO. No disguise. Yes, it's about PORNBIO, but PORNBIO should not be tighter than ANYBIO.
I strongly suspect that people in the porn industry would like to promote their industry by making their product look mainstream, and one way is to have pornstars listed in Wikipedia. I asked you, and you denied haing a financial interest in the porn industry. I suspected you becuase you have created a lot of porn related BLP-stubs. I agree that Masem overlooking this is very good.
(1). Might look into another time.
(2). I don't support BLP-stubs, even if some cases show a WP:CRYSTAL-prediction was correct.
(3). This is exactly my point. If the nomination is not independent, then it is not acceptable evidence for Wikipedia-notability. We require evidence of third-party interest. At least with an award, there was surely some judging, and some attempt at independence in the judging. If there is no independence in the nomination, we should not pay attention to the nomination itself (commentary on the nomination, yes).
Nominations are certainly not a requirement. Third party coverage is the requirement.
Several = 2 or more is not reasonable. Several is more like seven, more than a couple, more than a few, less than many. A better criterion would be "commentary on the person's several nominations".
"passing point #1 of the guideline should be the notability qualification if pornography is the only thing the actor is known for" Is the basis for this that being known for pornography means that normal BLP standards don't apply? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:09, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
I didn't say normal BLP standards don't apply; I'm saying that sometimes people can be known for pornography and something else; the most common example I can think of is when a pornographic actress was only nominated once but was also a Playboy Playmate or a Penthouse Pet (that seems to be determined by a case-by-case basis except when she is a Playmate/Pet of the Year nominee, but...). And when it comes to a nomination being independent, well, I don't think you quite understand what "independent" entails in this case. I mean, if a porn star nominated him/herself for an award, that's not independent. But if the award nomination comes from AVN, XBIZ, etc, that is independent. (Some people have tried to argue in AfDs that the latter isn't third-party coverage after all, and then when asked how it isn't, no explanation is ever given.) I don't like the idea of getting rid of nominations completely (and seven is way too high a number) because that does show some sense of notability; and I also don't understand why a commentary on the nominations would be necessary (the list of Grammy nominations don't have commentaries, do they? Why should porn nominations?). One thing we do agree on, though, is that PORNBIO should indeed not be tighter than ANYBIO. Basically, with the nomination aspect, if an actor passes PORNBIO, s/he definitely passes ANYBIO. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???19:19, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
Nomination by AVN is not coverage, because coverage requires commentary, directly addressing the subject, non-trivially. Whether or not it is throd party is another question. Does the star have a manager who contributes money, in any way, to the AVN? These are tricky questions, but the question of "depth of coverage" should be easy, and for these nominations-only bios, I see a lack of depth of coverage by any source. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:16, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Honestly, at this late date, I'm not so sure that the PORNBIO standard shouldn't be a tighter standard than the ANYBIO standard. There appears to be more than a few Wikipedia editors that feel, for a variety of reasons, that the current PORNBIO standard is too "lax". I'm not sure yet, but I don't think that we're going to get consensus on eliminating all nominations from all awards under ANYBIO & that personally seems like an extreme move at this point. While I also agree that 7 is too high a number for nominations (I would prefer a number closer to 4 or so), it's been obvious to me for quite a while that there needs to be a specific number in place instead of the current word "several".
It depends on what the ultimate purpose of this kind of change to PORNBIO is intended to be. If weeding out a significant number of pornography-related BLPs is the goal, then increasing the number of nominations to a significantly higher number than the current 2 will do that. If one is out to get rid of a larger amount of pornography-related BLPs, then eliminating nominations altogether from the PORNBIO standard will likely do that instead. Guy1890 (talk) 20:43, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
Weeding out porn-related BLPs is not the goal. Weeding out BLPs not supported by independent secondary sources is the goal. Especially old BLPs of then young stars now no longer in the industry. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:16, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. We don't want articles where the only contents is a handful of nominations and a list of titles, and absolutely no coverage of anything else. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:18, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
A thing to remember here: the point of the subject-specific notability guidelines is to provide an alternate route of presumed notability to allow a stand-alone page to be made, in lieu of eventually finding secondary sources to meet the GNG. That presumption can be challenged at any time, though per DEADLINE and BEFORE, you should give articles that meet the minimum requires enough time to develop, and then when you challenge it, you have to explain why you believe no such sources exist (documenting your efforts to find them). So if there is a person that meets PORNBIO but only ever has that one award nomination, leaves the industry a year later and never does anything of note again, yeah, that's probably a good case that our original presumption was bad, and an AFD some years after the award nomination would likely result in article deletion.
This is then the reasoning behind what these criteria should be - we want those presumptions to nearly always prove correct in the long run. If there's a criteria here that leads to cases of presumed notability that end up failing more than 10-25% of the time, the criteria is probably wrong. This is why presuming notability on a singular nomination for any major award is probably bad, but a singular nomination for known prestigious awards (Oscars, BAFTA) is reasonable. That's the type of thinking that is needed, as well as the logic when these are applied at AFD. --MASEM (t) 21:01, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
Indicators of likely notability is right. Evidence of notability, mere nominations (no third party coverage of the nomination, or anything else on the person). Indicators are important because we want Wikipedia to be timely in its relevance. It may be ok to list current nominations as indicators, but old lost nominations, no. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:38, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Primary source material, facts, not associated with commentary, can at most be considered indicators of likely independent secondary source coverage. The SNGs contain criteria that are easily determined indicators for whether, given time and research, the topic will meet WP:N. Few SNGs, WP:PROF only I think, support inclusion regardless of the GNG. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:05, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
To reiteration: There are two ways to show a topic is presumably notable. With a few exceptions, the "best" way and the way we'd ultimately like all topics to be presumably notable is to show significant coverage in independent secondary sources (the GNG) as such that we can build a proper encyclopedic article from that (one that meets WP:V, NOR, NPOV, etc.). However, we also recognize that for some topics the available of those sources are not immediate or easy to get to (particularly for paper versions) or that the sources haven't be generated yet. Thus the second way that a topic can be presumed notable is to show by a reliable source that a topic has shown an indicator that sources do or will likely come to exist. These indicators are the subject-specific guidelines like BIO here. So for example, if there is a person that wins the Nobel Prize (one of the BIO indicators) and we don't have an article on them, the fact they won the prize means that there will likely be a lot of coverage about their contributions to merit that in the days and weeks after the award is announced, so we'd safely presume the topic is notable and let the stand-alone article be created so that it can be developed in the open-wiki nature, with a mind's eye that we want to drive that growth towards meeting the GNG ultimately. --MASEM (t) 14:10, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
A nomination is not a source, it is not a source of content. The nomination itself is a fact but is not secondary source content, and is not independent coverage by others. It is, at best, an indicator, that sources surely exist, or are being written right now. Accepted indicators justify a presumption of notability, in the short term, despite no evidence on the table, mainly so that editors can add sourced content. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:03, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
And to further stress - if after sufficient time (per DEADLINE) and sufficient work demonstrate as best one can that no sources are likely forthcoming on a topic previously presumed notable, it can be deleted. The point is to give a topic that from our past experience should have plenty of sources because X happened the time to develop into a full article without breathing down the editors' neck to find sourcing immediately. --MASEM (t) 00:35, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
@Masem: But there is no deadline. In addition, nowhere in WP:RS does it state that an article necessarily has to have plenty of sources; in fact, if an article has a couple of reliable sources but might need more, well, that's what {{refimprove}} is for.
@SmokeyJoe: A nomination isn't a source? It depends on where you find it. For example, whether or not a list of supposed nominations found on IMDb is reliable would be debatable, but you can't honestly tell me that if grammy.com had a page that simply showed a list of their nominations for 2014, that that wouldn't be a source. To be honest, even when looking at PORNBIO, you're the first person I have ever come across to say that such a list wouldn't be considered a secondary source (even apparent anti-pornography editors haven't argued that). ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???08:59, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
That someone was nominated for something is a fact. The fact is primary source material. A source that reports the fact without commentary is a primary source. Only with commentary is the source a secondary source that provides material sufficient to build an article (for the relevant policy see WP:PSTS). Please read WP:PSTS, primary source and secondary source, and also note how WP:BLPPRIMARY talks of primary sources as acceptable as a supplement to secondary sources. In short, secondary sources are required. Minor porn actors whose peak achievement was a few nominations, like any person who was once nominated for an award that they didn't win, and no reliable source commented on the nomination, clearly fail WP:NOR; WP:N and WP:BLP.
On questions of notability, the source not only must provide content beyond mere facts, the source must be independent of the subject. For example, a published newspaper (not a blog, not reader/anonymous comment) comments on the individuals nominated. Having some significant sources that are independence is especially required for subject that may be being promoted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:52, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
"Minor porn actors whose peak achievement was a few nominations, like any person who was once nominated for an award that they didn't win, and no reliable source commented on the nomination, clearly fail WP:NOR; WP:N and WP:BLP." I don't see that connection; frankly, it sounds like you're misinterpreting WP:PSTS. And PSTS doesn't say primary sources can't be used at all; it says to use them with care. If you wanted to see the list of Oscar nominations from a current year, what more reliable place would there be to find it but oscars.org? Actually, we've been over these kind of examples already a few times in the past week and you're the only person who seems to object, so with all due respect, I think you have a different definition of "independent" than other people have. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???18:59, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
WP:PSTS says that content should be based on secondary sources. Primary sources are used to support the facts in the material that is supported by the secondary sources. This means BLP-stubs based solely on primary sources are not suitable content. WP:N says the same thing. A list of nominations for a notable award sounds like suitable content on the page covering the award, or its spinout page, but this does not mean that every nominee needs Wikipedia to create a biography.
Independent? If Oscar nominees were only reported at oscars.org, then they would not be Wikipedia-notable because no third party writes about them. They are notable because independent reputable sources comment on them. If others write about the nominees, oscars.org should still be cited as the most reliable source, supplementing the sources providing context and commentary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SmokeyJoe (talk • contribs) 12:45, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
PSTS clearly states: "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation." Note the word "interpretation". There is no restriction against simply mentioning a list of nominations (in this sense) acquired from a primary source alone; one just shouldn't follow it up with something along the lines of, "Thus..." or "This means that..."
Oh, and speaking of that..."This means BLP-stubs based solely on primary sources are not suitable content. WP:N says the same thing."WP:N doesn't say that, and neither does WP:BLP (or even WP:BLPPRIMARY), so your statement on BLP stubs is just an opinion and/or a synthesis. Frankly, I don't understand why we keep going in circles. If you feel a certain way about a certain issue, that's one thing, but continuing to state that something is backed up by policy when it isn't really doesn't get anywhere. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???19:00, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
In how many of your young porn starlet BLP stubs do you have reliable secondary source material providing context for the nominations and awards?
Maybe you're right that nowhere does policy state that BLPs especially have to be built upon independent secondary sources. WP:NOR and WP:N say it generally, but it could be confusing seeing as it is not demanded for ancient figures or geological features. This would be a fault of WP:BIO, not distinguishing between the historical and the still living. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:59, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
All the articles I make have reliable secondary sources (AVN, XBIZ, etc. are reliable, like it or not). And are your problems just the stubs? If I make a porn-related stub bio at all, it's only because I can't find enough encyclopedic information (for instance, I don't see how listing a person's favorite sex position would be important). ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???19:24, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Frankly, Guy, I personally don't think PORNBIO is too lax; for example, in the past, scene-related and ensemble-related nominations alone were enough for inclusion, but now they aren't due to a discussion and consensus (in fact, the only time I really see complaints about PORNBIO being too lax are in AfDs from these kind of users). Basically, I have no problem having an objective discussion on possibly tweaking the guideline if that's what it comes to, but if the ultimate goal of some (not all) users wanting to change it is due to, as you said, getting rid of more porn biographies, well, that's not a good plan. I mean, then that begs the question, "Why should we get rid of more porn bios?" (Actually, the same kind of question would come up if that was the goal of a proposal for any other subject-specific guideline.) Also, Masem, what exactly is the difference between a "major" and a "prestigious" award? ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???07:46, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
In movies, the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and the Peoples Choice awards are all major; but only the Oscars are prestigious in that there is significant discussion and debate about these awards as to generate sources (if not already existing) about the nominations alone . The others may have that but that's not a regular thing. --MASEM (t) 18:43, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Support. Need to tighten up process. Some pretty weak "notables" out there. Musicians may be worse than porn figures. Does "just making a living for several years" count as "notable?" It seems to me you'd have to more than get by, but not for music, apparently. Student7 (talk) 21:18, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Side note: Does anyone else have a problem with me closing this discussion? I tried to do that before and even left a link to this discussion in my closing rationale, but another user keeps reverting it by claiming I'm involved in that discussion (and I didn't comment even one time in that discussion). Why have two discussions open about the same thing? ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???00:55, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that the above discussion from a few months ago needs to closed just yet. Obviously, the two threads are about the same basic topic, but the same issue(s) are still in play. Guy1890 (talk) 01:13, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
The same issues are still in play? Exactly; all the more reason to not have both of them going at once. Besides, it's been two months since anyone commented in the first one; and on the off-chance that someone does say something new, would it really make sense to go back and forth between both of these? ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???09:17, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
It's pretty obvious that Mr. Wolfowitz is not going to allow you to close the above discussion from a few months ago "Erpert", which, again, is still relevant to this discussion here. I think it's time to move on... Guy1890 (talk) 22:38, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Support - a nomination for a serious award is usually discussed in serious sources, therefore this criterion is redundant. Please notice that receiving an award is usually covered in WP:RS as well, but this issue is non-controversial and having it as a separate criterion is just a shortcut in AfD discusions. On the contrary, nominations, combined with not-so-prominent awards will always lead to a controversy, which is ultimately to be resolvied via sources anyway. Therefore just forget this criterion and rely on sources from the very beginning. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:31, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
You might be a little confused; no one said that this guideline isn't based on sources at all. Also, who's to say porn awards aren't prominent? ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???08:59, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
No, I am not. WP:GNG specifically speaks about significant coverage (of a bio). Ninitoning in nomination is not significant coverage. What I say, there is no reason to elevate a nomination for a random award to the level of "significant coverage". What I also said is that reception of an award is usually accompanied by reasonable coverage of the person in question, hence I don't see that reception of an award is unduly elevated compared to significant coverage, unlike a simple nomination. Staszek Lem (talk) 03:01, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Noting that current nominations are reasonable indicators of likely new sources being written, and that current nominations are of immediate interest by readers, and that BLP concerns are less where the coverage is of current events, I think that this edit (above) will be broadly agreeable. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:01, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Editing the guideline according the apparent consensus is very proper. Per WP:BRD, endless discussion is non-productive. We do not want to reward filibusters. Your revert "due to 'no consensus'" (see Wikipedia:Don't revert due solely to "no consensus"), demanding more circles of talk while you disingenuously ask "please explain" or "what's an indicator", as if you are unable to read WP:N. You are clearly interested in supporting young porn star BLPs despite the absence of independent coverage, and your position is clearly at odds with typical results at AfD. You are highly involved and are obstructive to progress here. I am barely interested in porn articles, one way or the other, but am disturbed by under-referenced BLPs, narrowly covering one part of their lives, and by a SNG so at odds with consensus. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:49, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I note that you changed "several" to "multiple", which appears to me to be a distinction without a difference (Multiple means "more than one" & Multiple means "a number that may be divided by another a certain number of times without a remainder"). I would again argue that we need a specific number (I would again propose that number to be 4+) to help out future AfD discussions. Also, I note that you failed to repeat the "well-known and significant industry award" portion of the current PORNBIO standard (but you did repeat similar wording in the modified ANYBIO standard) when making your change to the nominations portion of that standard. I can unfortunately anticipate that some may try & use that to say that current industry award nominations wouldn't need to be "well-known and significant" like they currently are now.
Multiple means two or more, I think that is well agreed. Several clearly means different things to different people. The advantage I see for "multiple" over "two" is that some scope for logical fuzziness is implied. Multiple is more than two where the first two are partially connected. It is not critically important.
I encourage you to improve upon my edit (it is a wiki after all), notwithstanding Erpert's efforts to obstruct progress. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:17, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Am *I* the only one? Instead, *you* have been the only long term committed editor (Rebecca1990 is not really engaged in policy discussion) supporting the status quo of a widely disparaged guideline, and you have taken to multiple reversions of edits seeking to find consensus. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:53, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Is it "critically important"? No, and I guess those that choose to argue about it in the future at AfD could just refer to this discussion here that clearly states that mutiple means two. I can live with these recent kind of proposed changes to the standards in question here, as long as the "disputed" tag on PORNBIO goes away as well.
I understand the concern mentioned below about old nominations & notability, but I do agree that one probably needs to parlay (for lack of better term) a "well-known and significant award or honor" nomination into something more important over time in order to guarantee an article on Wikipedia. Obviously, not everyone & everything is notable enough to justify a stand-alone Wikipedia article. Guy1890 (talk) 06:13, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I personally think "multiple" and "several" mean the same thing. But as I mentioned a few days ago, I just want to be clear that the proposal to change PORNBIO and/or ANYBIO (it's hard to tell what this is about anymore) is for the right reason (as I asked before, "Why should we get rid of more biographies?"). One thing I noticed, though, is that whenever someone removes the {{disputed}} tag on PORNBIO, the users who reinstate it never participate in this discussion. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???08:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. We don't try to anticipate notability, nor is notability temporary. In my opinion, this proposal has it exactly backwards. The current guideline is most valuable for historical figures for whom in-depth sources are often difficult or impossible to find on-line. Their award nominations are evidence that they were likely the subject of significant coverage in reliable sources, even if those sources are off-line. Contemporary figures are in less need of the protections offered by WP:ANYBIO, as reliable sources should be easier to find. Pburka (talk) 22:52, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Anticipating notability for developing topics is one of the strongest justifications for these non-source-based indicator criteria in the SNGs, just as Masem mentions above.
Which historical figures rely on primary sources recording their failed nominations to justify having a standalone article?
I think the solution to your concern, to the extent it is valid, is that guidance here for bios for the living and the historical should be distinguished. Thresholds for the living should be higher. Old information on living subjects (like then young porn actors now no longer porn acting) is particularly undesirable.
Your point about off-line sources is a red herring. Off-line sources are more than welcome for all purposes on Wikipedia. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:03, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Jack Okey is an example of an historic person whose main claim to notability is his Academy Award nominations. Of course off-line sources are acceptable (did I say otherwise?) but they're much harder to find and most AfDs are closed with no effort to find off-line sources. Having notability guidelines which presume the existence of such sources allow us to keep articles, such as Okey's, for which on-line sources are limited but for which we presume more sources are available. Applying a laxer standard for more recent nominations makes little sense, as one expects that if sources can't easily be found for someone who is currently nominated for an important award, such sources probably don't exist at all. Pburka (talk) 05:25, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Jack Okey is a barely referenced stub. If it were a BLP covering a short phase of his life, I would supports its deletion, due to have zero secondary sources (IMDb doesn't count). As a historical figure (died 1963), it is not a BLP and we can wait much longer. more coverage probably exists in physical newpapers, journals or books. Allowing time for current nominations does make sense because coverage may be in the works, or may be expected to appear close to the awards. If the nomination was a year ago, and is now long sinse failed, and there are still no secondary sources, then it is likely that there'll be no sources to find by looking harder. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:34, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
We see this kind of argument all the time in AfDs: Keep: his new album will be a number one hit when it's released next week. The appropriate response to that is WP:TOOSOON. We shouldn't keep articles in the hope that more sources might appear soon. If this proposal were accepted, I believe it would be the only notability guideline to favor current and upcoming events over historical events. Pburka (talk) 14:03, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Bio format impossible to find - where is it?
When trying WP:Biographies I ended up here - how misleading! Where are WP guildlines on how to format biographical articles, and why is it impossible to figure that out through our search engine? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 21:09, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
I propose [12] this slight tightening of ANYBIO clause 1 from
The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times.
to
The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been reported, in an independent publication, as having been nominated for such several times.
This has been recently discussed, but inconclusively. The strongest point opposing complete removal of any reference to nominations was by User:Masem 21:52, 6 December 2013. This proposal reflects his point. A nomination can be interesting to whether to create an article on someone just recently nominated, but a better, sourcing-based test is not the nomination, but whether the nomination has been independently noted. I still think removing any reference to mere nominations is the way to go, but offer this as a compromise. Ideally, the wording could be refined by consensus-by-editing, but given that I was straight-reverted, here we are. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
Completely agree that the change is good and the right middle ground to avoid issues. The fact that an independent source has noted the person has garnered multiple noms is a step towards GNG-like notability. --MASEM (t) 03:19, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
I think "well-known"/"significant" award is a narrower criteria than "independent source", or more specifically that the selection of what is a well-known/significant award is one that is clearly covered routinely in sources. --MASEM (t) 05:02, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
As I see it, the purpose of these specific notability guidelines is to serve as a convenient and reliable "rule of thumb" for quickly determining whether a topic (a person in this case) is highly likely to have received significant coverage adequate to meet the WP:GNG. If somebody nominates for deletion a bunch of articles about Olympic athletes from the 1920s or Illinois state legislators from the 1830s, we can just quickly say "keep" and move on, confident that the awesome research bots of 2020 will be able to reference the articles, even if we can't easily do so right now. So, in the case of award nominations, I think the main issue is what defines a "a well-known and significant award or honor". Taking the case of an Oscar nomination for best actor, actress or director, I feel very confident that any nominee, even once, is notable. But even moving down to Pulitzer Prize nominations for journalism, that is a very prestigious nomination that any journalist would be proud of. But it would likely to be far harder to find in depth coverage of such people than for the Oscar nominees. So it is all relative. There are awards several steps below the Pulitzer that are still well-known and significant. Do we have a list of such awards? And some awards, like the Nobel Peace Prize, allow open nominations by large groups of people, any parliamentarian in this case. So winning the Nobel Peace Prize itself certainly shows notability, but being nominated for one by a member of San Marino's legislature plus a parliament member from Palau may not. That's why I like the language about reports in independent publications. Independent coverage is a much better indicator of notability than a simple entry on an award's nominee list. Cullen328Let's discuss it05:21, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
The only thing I worry about the "independent" source is that means something like the "Kids Choice Awards" , which I have seen reported in independent sources, are suddenly a metric. The independent reporting is a good starting metric, but we need something tighter for the "well-known"/"significant" award. --MASEM (t) 05:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
COMMENT - As long as the proposed change is going to be respected in "letter and spirit", I'm in favor of this change, but with one addition...
"The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor in their respective field or industry, or..."
That means if a scientist or musician or artist (et. al.) is nominated for an obscure award and its published in an equally obscure journal, newsletter, or other publication aimed at that community, its acceptable to mention it. This also means that the Notability of the award itself is a separate and distinct issue. If the award becomes notable, then it becomes a candidate for its own article, but the mention of the nomination should be allowed if its sourced. Otherwise, as Cullen mentions, this change will become a "license to kill" a great many articles. If you disagree or dispute, please review this list first and see how many articles could conceivably be deleted because of your original wording. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 05:40, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
The range between "well-known and significant" awards and honors (Best Actress Oscar) and totally obscure awards (Student of the month at Podunk High School) is a very great continuum. Notability of the award itself falls somewhere in the middle of that continuum. In other words, as I see it, an award can be notable enough for an article here without conferring notability on every single one of its winners. I am certain that there is no consensus that winning or multiple nominations for many of the awards on that list you linked to is sufficient to meet this guideline. But the "license to kill" argument is also weak. There are many people who meet the GNG who have never won a notable award. Famous criminals and figures in ancient history come immediately to mind. There is a big difference between "mentioning" award nomination(s) in a biography of an otherwise notable person, and asserting that those nominations in and of themselves demonstrate notability. Notability comes from coverage in independent, reliable sources, and Group B's official list of nominees for the Group B Great Person Award is not an independent source. Cullen328Let's discuss it07:59, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm not talking about (Student of the month at Podunk High School), I'm talking about established awards, some that have been around for decades, but are seemingly unknown unless you're a part of that community or industry regardless of how small or obscure it might be. So we can "narrow" the Continuum considerably, then again maybe not in your opinion. But for a fairly obscure award, the "fairly obscure award newsletter" might be the only publication that covers it.
And I agree that GNG and awards/nominations don't always go hand in hand. The "license to kill" comment isn't an argument, its a commentary on not going "too far" that we make it possible to delete hundreds of articles. We have absolutely no control or influence over how a brand new editor that starts an account the day after the change will interpret the new guideline. We're in the crux of this, hundreds or thousands of editors are not. Lets keep that in mind. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 08:46, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
This is getting so theoretical that I can't quite follow the argument. It might be easier if you could give us an example of what you mean. Surely, if a particular award is so obscure that there is very little to no coverage then perhaps that makes the award non-notable to a general purpose encyclopedia? With regard to your second para, if the general inclusion standard doesn't meet an SNG then something is out of kilter and its not going to be the widely accepted GNG. I don't understand your point about new editors and cruxes. Awards are assertions of importance so articles from new users citing them don't get speedied, they go to AFD where a discussion decides whether we keep the content. Noone is suggesting we miss that step out. SpartazHumbug!10:10, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
First off, I see two issues being discussed. One is the use of the nomination or win (of an award) in the article, if its sourced by an independent publication it qualifies for inclusion regardless if the award has its own WP article or not. The second issue is the Notability of the award itself. An award (or any subject for that matter) certainly does not need an article here on WP to be significant in the real world or in its particular community. These two issues are independent of each other.
For example, if a Mathematician is nominated for (or wins) a well known award in that field (something fall less known than the Fields medal, but still relevant to that community) and its covered in an equally obscure publication, the inclusion of the win/nomination should be allowed in the Mathematician's article. I'm going by the list, but what appears to be a good example of "lesser know, but community relevant" would be the Salem Prize. According to its article its awarded to young people who demonstrate outstanding work in a very specific field of Mathematics and mentions that several winners have gone on to win the Fields Medal. We know in hind site that the Salem Prize has special significance, but none of us have can predict the future and know the significance of any award. If we don't include the nomination or win of even an obscure award, its likely that the information will be lost for good. What I'm saying is don't prevent the possibility of identifying the next "Salem Prize" type of award.
Oppose. First of all, I think the "reported" clause is essentially redundant. I think that meeting that test is generally necessary (but not sufficient) to show that an award/nomination meets the well-known/significant standard. It's a bit of instruction creep that actually has the potential to relax current restrictions, to the extent it suggests that the standard may be equivalent to notability and verifiability.
Second, it's a solution without a problem that needs addressing. While the matter of nominations may have been problematic with regard to one particular SNG, I haven't seen any evidence of broader problems, and am therefore leery of changing a standard that has been working well in practice. If change is needed, I think it would be better to focus on more specific criteria for determining which awards/nominations meet the well-known/significant test. We appear to have working consensus on various issues that are not spelled out in ANYBIO --for example, that when an award has both a longlist and a shortlist of nominations, only shortlist nominations meet the test; and that the test takes both the awarding organization and the award category into account.
Third, I have a quibble with the language, which as it stands appears to require that the fact of "several" nominations be documented in a single independent report. This sort of running total is often not noted in standard press reports; for example, with regard to the most recent National Book Award, even the New York Times did not note that Thomas Pynchon had been nominated for the award three times [13]. I think that either an individual source reporting the total or or multiple sources collectively documenting several nominations should suffice. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 20:58, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
"re:notability and verifiablity". Sorry, either you or me are sleep-deprived. Please clarify what you had in mind with this phrase, which sounds dubious argument. Verifiabilty is our major policy, which trumps all, and reminding about it in other rules is good. And notability is exactly what is the purpose of this guideline. - Altenmann >t18:31, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
This would solve the problems with non-notable Nobel nominations. Typical case: a scientists creates a "foundation", and he gets "nominated for the Nobel" by that foundation. This only gets reported by non-independent sources. And Nobel nominations can't be verified because they are secret. A nomination that gets no coverage in secondary sources is not bound to be a notable nomination. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:39, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
Support. "Independent sources" is a good clarification, because we do allow "dependent sources" in certain respects. And "multiple times" is a good indicator of non-randomness. A single nomination will still require extra proof. - Altenmann >t18:31, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
Comment. It seems like the subject heading and the proposal mean two different things. "Mere nominations in ANYBIO" suggests that the proposal would be to remove nominations from ANYBIO (that I would fully support, but only because it would keep in line with subject-specific requirements), but then the actual proposal is to merely reword point #1, which actually doesn't sound much different from the current wording. ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???19:04, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
"Mere mentions in ANYBIO" means: What (if anything) should be done? Nothing, modify, remove? Per Masem, there may be a problem with straight removal. The proposed rewording is actually substantially different, and if you don't see that, then you don't understand Wikipedia-Notability. The core of Wikipedia-notability is that others (independent others) have already covered the topic. If independent and reliable and reputable newspaper "A" reports the person "B" has been nominated for award "C", that is substantially better evidence of notability than if "A" was paid (or sponsored, or used for advertising) by "B", or B's manager, or if A is connected to C.
The nominees for Nobel prizes are a good example. These nominees are not notable due to being notablenominated, because no one covers their nomination, because (in large part) the nominations are secret for a long period of time. However, if some reliable and independent and reputable publication speculates on a person being nominated, well that's something we might pick up on. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Oppose No sense in the change. If the official website of the award list them as being nominated, we can go on that. Having a brief mention of that information elsewhere instead, makes no sense at all. And if they talked about the person in detail, they'd meet the general notability guidelines, and wouldn't need to pass a subject specific one at all anyway. DreamFocus00:20, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
"The official website of the award" could be facebook. The award could be anything trivial.
A brief mention of that information elsewhere demonstrates that someone else cares. It makes sense to seek evidence that someone else, independent and reliable, cares.
Independent reporting of the nomination is a reasonable indicator that coverage to some depth is likely to be immediately forthcoming, or may exist somewhere harder to find. It is an indicator that the GNG is likely to be met, and further research is to be encouraged. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:32, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
If it was a notable award, it'd have an official website. Obviously we don't bother with awards that aren't confirmed as notable. DreamFocus00:35, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Non-notable awards can have official websites. "Confirmed as notable" is difficult to define for every award, and the current leaves it far from obvious as to which we bother with. And we are not talking about awards, but nominations for awards. Presumably, you are of the school that would like to have a list of all notable awards that confer notability to recipients, and a smaller set that confers notability to nominees? Such a list would be a chore to maintain, and it conflicts with WP:NOTINHERITED, and it encourages new editors to look for content in primary sources. Material "reported, in an independent publication" is a more robust method for finding correlation with notability, and it encourages new writers to look for material in independent publications. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Actually, I do understand WP:N, thank you; you just always seem to have a different interpretation of things. Also, "these nominees are not notable due to being notable..." What? ErpertWHAT DO YOU WANT???07:37, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
You understand WP:N? OK. Sometimes I doubt it, though mostly you clearly understand policy. I find it very hard to understand where you are coming from. Corrected: not notable due to being notablenominated. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:19, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
WP:DIPLOMAT provides a guideline for presumed notability of diplomats:
Diplomats who have participated in a significant way in events of particular diplomatic importance that have been written about in reliable secondary sources. Sufficient reliable documentation of their particular role is required.
I believe that this criteria is meaningless. If anything, it sets a higher standard than WP:GNG or WP:ANYBIO. If a diplomat has participated in a significant way in events of particular importance, and if the event has been described in reliable sources with sufficient documentation of that individual's role, then they've already met WP:GNG. Since this guideline doesn't serve a useful purpose, let's just remove it. Pburka (talk) 01:00, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, you're suggesting that the guideline was added to try to exclude ambassadors from WP:POLITICIAN. If so, it failed, as a person can obviously be both a diplomat and a politician (for example, the United States Secretary of State). Let's remove WP:DIPLOMAT, and then we can have a separate discussion about which diplomats are included in WP:POLITICIAN and which ones aren't. Pburka (talk) 19:17, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
Some people were claiming diplomats are inherently notable because they they are politicians "who have held international ... office". I wonder whether the subsequent assault on articles on ambassadors and embassies was by way of retaliation. People in some jobs do not get coverage in the press, others get excessive coverage, and this leads to a populist bias in the guidelines which I think is highly unfortunate. However, diplomats do not stand out for me as requiring any special treatment in either direction. Thincat (talk) 10:36, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
In the interest of full disclosure, I am one of those people who believe that permanent ambassadors should be presumed to be notable. I'm happy to have a discussion about how to improve WP:POLITICIAN, but let's delete WP:DIPLOMAT first. Pburka (talk) 14:07, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Well, you and I are agreed we'd be better off without the diplomat guideline. On your other point, it doesn't matter to me which of two approaches could be taken. (1) We presume ambassadors are notable but then go on to assess whether there is adequate material for a biography (and often there won't be). (2) We assess whether there is adequate material for a biography. What I don't like (and what we normally do) is to equate passing the criteria in the guidelines with having an article (and vice versa) – missing out the "presumption" bit. Thincat (talk) 14:35, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I disagree that ambassadors should be presumed to be notable. I believe that many ambassadors are career public servants/diplomats and do not currently possess any independent role or function in shaping foreign policy. Certainly ambassadors are involved in international incidents, but those involvements should not presume notability for the entire class of ambassadors. I think, in general, ambassadors should be covered only by WP:GNG, but since the existing consensus is that ambassadors are not presumed notable, I think it is worth keeping a separate line or note indicting the current consensus towards ambassadors. Enos733 (talk) 20:22, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Picking up this discussion rather late: now let's have the discussion proposed by Pburka, about which diplomats are notable and which ones aren't. In fact, I don't think diplomats should be included in WP:POLITICIAN at all. Most diplomats aren't politicians: the intersection of (diplomats) and (politicians) is very small, especially British diplomats who are almost always professionals. But, pace Enos733 above, career diplomats often have significant roles in shaping foreign policy and influencing events. Stanning (talk) 16:42, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
On an Afd for a mayor in NY state, it is assumed that since the city is 200,000, the mayor is automatically notable. Is this true? (Don't want to give the discussion for fear of WP:CANVASS). Student7 (talk) 16:34, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
It's not true. #2 of WP:POLITICIAN applies "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage." Usually though, mayors of cities that size will have received enough press attention to pass. Valenciano (talk) 17:31, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Removal of bio at the request of subject?
Do we have any rule, standard or practice concerning removal of biographies of people of marginal notability at the request of the subject? I recall reading this discussed somewhere but can't find it. Coretheapple (talk) 19:01, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Oh there it was, staring me in the face. Thanks. The situation I'm thinking of is not a requested delete but what I would describe as a "tantamount to a request." I'll dig out my wikilaw books. Coretheapple (talk) 21:31, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times.
@Piotrus: We have List of prizes, medals and awards, but that's a list of all awards and honors. The trick lies in the weasel words "well-known and significant", which are undefined and a matter of opinion. For example, many people may think the United States Purple Heart is "well-known and significant", but the article says over 1.9 million have been awarded: are all the recipients notable? Probably not! You have to make your own assessment, and others may disagreee. Good luck. Stanning (talk) 10:53, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
One of the features of WP:MILPEOPLE (an essay used by WP:WPMILHIST for notability) has criteria along these lines (i.e. a nation's highest award for valor, or multiple awards of the second highest award). I'm a fan of subject-specific notability guidelines for their specificity and I think at least drafting a list would be a great step forward in making notability more objective. As most of these awards already have articles, we have plenty of information to determine their relative worth. Chris Troutman (talk)12:09, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I can only comment on British honours. It has generally been held in AfDs that the CBE or higher qualifies for this criterion (i.e. any knighthood, baronetage or peerage, or the CBE, CVO, CIE, CMG, CSI, CB, CH or OM). Plus gallantry awards as per WP:SOLDIER (i.e. one first-level or two second-level awards), although I also consider that having a total of three second- or third-level awards would also qualify. No campaign medal or wound badge qualifies. Only the individual actually created a baronet qualifies, not his successors. The same would also go for hereditary peers were it not for the fact that until recently all qualified as members of a national legislature per WP:POLITICIAN. Criteria for other countries can probably be extrapolated from this fairly easily. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:05, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
COMMENT - Lets be careful about "qualifying" or "categorizing" any awards. Many awards are notable on a broad scale (i.e. Oscars) as well as within their field, but there are many that are simply notable within their field (see the List of prizes, medals and awards). One of my examples of this is the Salem Prize. Its a fairly obscure award, but has historic value and particular interest in the Mathematics community. In other words, the notability of awards is relative to the recipient and the field. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 19:30, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Notability of Fictional Characters?
I'm trying to go around making the case that Connie Corleone is notable enough a character to warrant her own wikipedia page... but it's really hard to mkae the case that she meets WP:GNG. Should there be specific notability requirements for fictional characters? Daniel J. Hakimi (talk) 21:06, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
Ambassadors and Permanent Representatives to the United Nations
Hi, I raised this issue on the Help IRC, but am moving the conversation here in order to garner a consensus. I have found the Notability guidelines for Ambassadors to be a bit ambiguous and was wondering if they could be clarified. According to the guidelines "Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office, and members or former members of a national, state or provincial legislature" are notable, however "For the purposes of this guideline, ambassadorships are not considered international offices". I believe that Permanent Representatives to the United Nations should also be considered notable ex-officio given the global influence of the United Nations General Assembly. However the helpers on the IRC advised that because UN PRs are generally not covered widely by news sources, particularly in the case of UN PRs from smaller nations, this should not be the case. I believe they should warrant inclusion even if the the primary source comes directly from the United Nations. It seems a bit absurd to me that at present Jordan Roberts warrents inclusions under notability guidelines, but the UN Permanent Representatives of India and China do not warrent inclusion unless enough third party coverage can be obtained.
Furthermore in relation to nation-nation diplomatic representation I think there could be greater clarity on what constitutes a notable position. Currently every former British Ambassador to the United States has an article, even in cases where the individual has not held a position beyond diplomatic postings, however if I were to write an article about the Belgian Ambassador to Turkmenistan i'm pretty sure that would not qualify as notable. So again, It would be helpful to clarify which ambassadors here can be classed as notable and which ones not. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.156.54.158 (talk) 05:07, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
Support. Though not stated in so many words, this request could be dealt with by reinstating WP:DIPLOMAT with clearer words (see the rather rambling discussion six sections up). As author of, or contributor to, several articles about diplomats, I eagerly support 109.156.54.158's request. It'd be very helpful to have clarity on the notability of diplomats. A few confusions and misunderstandings need to be cleared up:
Ambassadors (etc.) should not be considered as politicians. Most ambassadors are not politicians. It's very rare for a UK ambassador to be a political appointment, even in the most important places such as US or UN. It's more common for US ambassadorships in 'plum' postings such as London or Paris to be given as political rewards, but AFAIK most US ambassadors are career diplomats.
Despite not being political appointees, ambassadors and even lower-level diplomats often have significant influence on international relations and on events within their host countries. Even now, when communications enable matters to be referred to the home government more easily than in the past, the 'man on the ground' can still be important.
Up to the mid-20th century most diplomats who would now be ambassadors were called "ministers" (the full title was "Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary"). In Commonwealth usage a High Commissioner is equivalent to an ambassador. There are other titles such as Nuncio. In this discussion, for convenience, we can generically refer to all these people, and permanent representatives, as "ambassadors" if we rememeber that the outcome of the discussion does not apply only to people labelled "ambassador".
There are many ambassador-rank permanent representatives other than to the UN, e.g. to NATO, OECD, etc.
I fully agree with 109.156.54.158 that it's nonsensical for a minor-league footballer to be automatically accepted as "notable" but not a major-league diplomat! Stanning (talk) 12:42, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
We may be talking some very small nations here. Ones that have trouble a) finding someone qualified and b) paying them enough to fly to and live in New York (never mind "staff"). Nationalism is great, but it's gone crazy these last 60 years or so. I'm not sure these smallest countries are "better off" for it. The bottom line (for them) is budget. The bottom line for us is "notability" since an accredited representative might not have had the luxury of studying diplomacy or any related topic at any length. Or have very many other credentials either. Student7 (talk) 16:34, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Support Only for Permanent Representatives to the United Nations and only because the body acts or can act in a legislative function. As for ambassadors generally, Stanning is correct in articulating the historical and current duties of "ambassadors." However, I continue to disagree with the modern influence of ambassadors on international relations. I am of the opinion that a modern ambassador is a glorified government clerk (or staffer, or host) that can be influential, but in the era of modern communications, the ambassador looks more like a symbolic functionary than an influential leader on the creation of public policy.
The reason for granting "automatic nobility" is two-fold. First, the guideline solves discussions easily of who has or has not met the WP:GNG. Second, granting "automatic nobility" serves as a recognition that if we look hard enough at a particular subject, there will be significant (and independent) sourcing of the subject. Finally, notability does not equate to influential or powerful, instead notability has its basis on what an independent media deems to be newsworthy* (*Yes I know this is not precise, but as we rely on third-party sourcing, we rely on what those publications consider to be "fit to print"). Thus, we expect to find coverage of minor league footballers (as people are interested in sport), but not career diplomats (because we do not follow politics with the same passion as the EPL. (Thus, in the case of several ambassadors that have gone through the AfD process, independent sourcing is not found and the page deleted). Enos733 (talk) 08:19, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
Comment:@Enos733: If your opinion is that ambassadors are "glorified government clerks" or "symbolic functionaries" then I have to wonder how many ambassadors you've met. I've met some British ambassadors, and I don't recognise those descriptions! Then surely, for you, Permanent Representatives to the United Nations are remote-controlled nonentities like any other ambassadors, so they can't be exceptions, unless you think that on appointment to the UN an ambassador who has hitherto just been a glorified clerk somehow suddenly acquires a mind of his own and becomes as notable as a footballer? But all that's by the way: this isn't about your opinon or mine, but about notability. WP:GNG – or specifically in this context, WP:BIO – is all very well, but it fails to meet some people's expectations, which is why there are special guidelines for academics and politicians, and special get-outs for sportspeople such as "A cricket figure is presumed notable if he or she has appeared in at least one major cricket match since 1697 as a player or umpire" (example at random from WP:NSPORTS). The question here is whether we need similar clarity on which diplomats are notable. Your answer, based on your opinion, seems to be "none except Permanent Representatives to the UN"! My answer, based on my opinion, would be something like "anyone who has held one or more significant ambassadorships, or has played a significant part in a national or international incident" but I'm the first to admit that "significant" is a weasel word that I don't have a definition for. I'd be really glad of the opinions of some other people who have worked on this subject! Stanning (talk) 11:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Stanning, I agree to a certain degree that the role an ambassador currently plays does not adequately answer the question of whether an individual, by virtue of an appointment to the position of ambassador (or similar position) would meet the WP:GNG. The policy states "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Thus, the question then is whether we presume that there exists reliable third-party sources about the subject. Someone who is plays in a major league sporting event will (likely) have articles written about their call-up (or signing), in the United States, their college or high school affiliation, (in addition to any third-party sourcing of the subject's previous athletic exploits) likely meeting "significant coverage" (significant coverage is more than a passing mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material).
I go back to the statement I made about the presumption of notability - and the reasons for presuming notability over a wide range of subjects. The expectation exists (over the vast majority of subjects in the category), that they "received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." So, in the case of ambassadors, to presume notability, we would need to expect that the ambassador of Liechtenstein to Monaco, or from Ghana to Morocco, as examples, would lead to "significant coverage" in reliable third-party sources. I am not willing to make that presumption. I believe that lists of ambassadors of or from a particular state should exist, but that the notability of ambassadors is made on a case by case basis. Enos733 (talk) 05:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
@Enos733: - I guess I'm not making myself clear. One more try. Certain sportspeople are presumed notable. For example, baseball figures are presumed notable if they have appeared in at least one game in certain leagues (WP:BASEBALL/N). On the basis of just one single appearance we presume that WP:GNG applies, that there exist reliable third-party sources about the subject - no actual evidence of such sources is needed. You'll admit, surely, that that's a very low bar. (Nothing against baseball players or sportspeople in general - I'm making a comparison.) What I'm trying to suggest is that it would be reasonable to presume notability of "major-league" diplomats at a certain level (to be defined), just as WP:NSPORTpresumes notability of sportspeople. Stanning (talk) 15:55, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
Support. It has always been my view that all ambassadors qualify in the notability stakes. They are very senior officials and the representatives of their countries to other countries. The majority of British ambassadors, for example, will be honoured with the CMG or higher, which qualifies them for notability under criterion #1 of WP:ANYBIO in any case. The ambassadors of other countries which do not give such an obvious gauge of notability should of course be considered equally notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:12, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Support. All permanent ambassadors should be presumed to be notable, as they are generally the topic of significant coverage in reliable sources, even if such sources are difficult to find on-line. Specialty publications such as Diplomat, The Hill Times, and The Washington Diplomat will cover many ambassadors, although I've found their on-line archives to be sparse. I find the suggestion that ambassadors from smaller nations are less likely to be the subject of news reports to be flawed: they're less likely to be the subject of reports in the host country's papers, but are likely to be reported on at home. In the past, editors have argued against presumed notability for ambassadors based on a naive calculation that there must be 38000 ambassadors between the world's 196 countries at any given time. I'll preemptively refute this by pointing out that there are far fewer ambassadors than this, as many ambassadors represent their country to several other countries at once, and other countries rely on representation from an ally. Even if it were true, Wikipedia is not paper. Pburka (talk) 22:47, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Alumni of unestablished notability listed for a college
List of Brock University people says it includes notable alumni, but it has only 25 bluelinked names who have their own Wikipedia articles, and about 52 names with no article linked. Some likely would satisfy WP:BIO, but should such a list include mostly names without articles? Is it appropriate to leave them in if some claim to fame is mentioned for them? In lists of "people from a town" the non-bluelink names are typically removed. In "X university people" is it appropriate to leave in persons whose only claim to fame was filling some office at the university, such as Head, Provost or whatever? That seems to be failing WP:NOTDIR. How about other college people lists with long-time redlink names? Is it appropriate to remove redlink names after a year, 5 years, or whatever? List of McGill University people has many such redlinks, some of which don't include any obvious claim of notability, unless "socialite" counts. Edison (talk) 22:29, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
If they should have articles, they should be included in such lists, regardless of how long that takes. This helps make the lists more complete for readers and also helps identify missing topics to editors. And such names should be redlinked rather than plain text; don't we have a bot that identifies missing topics in part from whatlinkshere? If they don't merit articles, then remove them, but don't waste your time removing entries that should have articles. Spend that time instead researching and writing the missing articles or doing anything else on WP. postdlf (talk) 23:46, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Uhm, no. From WP:REDNOT, "Red links to personal names should be avoided—particularly when the name is reported in a context which might cause readers to hold a low or critical opinion of the named individual. Frequently a red-linked name has been placed in an article, and subsequently a different editor has created an article about an entirely different person with the same or a similar name."Msnicki (talk) 00:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Aside from the fact that "avoided" ≠ prohibited, I question the wisdom of that guideline section, which doesn't seem to address a real problem and just hinders building the encyclopedia. One might as well say that personal names should never be even wikilinked because there's always a risk that the wrong person's article could be linked to even when the right article exists, particularly after page moves. I also doubt how much it actually reflects a broader consensus and practice. What I have seen repeatedly, where greater stringency has been desired in lists of people, is the requirement that any redlink have a source added to the list to provide some support for notability, pending the creation of an article. postdlf (talk) 00:17, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
You're welcome to question the wisdom of the guideline but for now, it is the guideline and we should try to follow it. Msnicki (talk) 00:21, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
No, I didn't. I said we should try to follow the guidelines and I stand by that as a complete statement. From WP:ONLYGUIDELINE, "Guidelines do indeed have exceptions; however, it is unhelpful to suggest "WP:EXAMPLE is only a guideline, we do not have to follow it". We have policies which tell us what to do and why to do it, and guidelines to help us with how to do it. Rather than using a page's "guideline" designation as an excuse to make an exception, suggest reasons why an exception should be made." Your remark suggests you believe exceptions occur frequently. I don't believe that's the case. The usual expectation should be that the guidelines are right and they should be followed. Msnicki (talk) 02:46, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, it is quite appropriate to cull lists of "notable" alumni, removing entries that do not have articles, as discussed at WP:WTAF. My sense is that the biggest reason they aren't culled is that it's lot of work if there are a lot of these entries. (But once they are culled, they usually stay culled.) The exceptions, names that should not be removed, are individuals whose notability is presumed even in lieu of sources, e.g., Olympians who have competed at a Summer or Winter Olympics per WP:ATHLETE and WP:NOLYMPICS, or politicians who have held international, national or sub-national office per WP:POLITICIAN. Wikipedia is constantly attracting people adding their own names to lists (e.g., List of programmers) as a means of self-promotion and/or self-aggrandizement. But per WP:PROMOTION, "Wikipedia is not a soapbox, a battleground, or a vehicle for propaganda, advertising and showcasing." Promotional entries can and should be removed. Msnicki (talk) 00:21, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Don't equivocate entries that do not have articles with entries that should not have articles. The rest of your comment is more clear on that notwithstanding your first sentence and reliance on an essay in a manner that would appear to be contrary to WP:PRESERVE. postdlf (talk) 01:37, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Setting aside that I think you meant "equate", not "equivocate", WP:WTAF may "only" be an essay, but it appears to me to be clear, reasonable and widely-accepted: ""List of..." and "Comparison of..." type lists, both stand-alone and embedded are often prone to spam and redlinking. In many cases nearly half of the edits are limited to adding spam and redlinks to the list. A large portion of the remaining edits are removing them, which, while critical to maintaining the quality of the page, is a tremendous waste of WP editor resources. Lists are used in Wikipedia to organize information, and for internal navigation. Lists should only contain internally linked articles, thus serving as natural tables of content and indexes of Wikipedia. ... Far too many lists are full of this spam, with no end in sight, often more redlinks than blue. ... Because of this, editors are encouraged to write the article first before adding it to a list, template or disambiguation page."Msnicki (talk) 02:46, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
I rm WP:NN from Brock University alumni. Left the presidents and chancellors there. They don't belong but should be moved IMO to the univ article page and "hidden" somewhere well down the article. All, except those, are blue-linked now. Thanks for pointing that out. Student7 (talk) 21:42, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Msnicki. Names without articles should be removed unless you can confirm that they are obviously notable (which of course still leaves the question of whether they are actually alumni). Dougweller (talk) 21:56, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Source for claim made in this policy page
In the section titled "Invalid criteria there is a sentence that includes, "The adult film industry, for example, uses Googlebombing to influence rankings, and for most topics search engines cannot easily differentiate between useful references and mere text matches."
Twice I've added a [citation needed] template and its been reverted. I realize that this is not an article (as likely all hell would break loose if an unsubstantiated claim was made), but I am asking that the statement and/or example for illustration sake be substantiated and if it can't, then removed. I don't know if the statement is true or not, I don't even know how to find out if it is, so I'm asking for a source to support it. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 04:33, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
AfD currently underway: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Brandon_Mendelson. This AfD started from an COI problem. Basically, this is an article about someone who tries very hard to be notable, sort of like being famous for being famous. He's been successful at it, in some ways; he's the 97th most followed person on Twitter, and has press coverage for that. He's been self-promoting on Wikipedia, hence the COI issue.
The classic "famous for being famous" example is Angelyne. Back then, she had to buy billboard space. Now, with social media, it's easier. So what's policy on fame via self-promotion? Is that kind of fame enough to pass WP:GNG, even when someone fails WP:AUTHOR and WP:BIO? Does the fame have to last for a while (per "notability is not temporary")? This is probably going to come up again, especially in COI cases. --John Nagle (talk) 06:10, 17 March 2014 (UTC
The problem with Mendelson or Angelyne or Kim Kardashian is that the self-promotion doesn't make notability, but once newspapers and TV run with it they are considered notable, and that notability is permanent. I'm afraid Mendelson has already passed that point even though he's not really that notable. Chris Troutman (talk)19:33, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
You may be right. It's a tough call, worth thinking about from a policy standpoint. With some money and effort, anyone can be famous for 15 minutes. See Balloon boy hoax for an example. 75 citations, most of them solid. No lasting notability, but has a good article. On the other hand, we recently threw out Swenzy, after heavy self-promotion and so much phony information nobody could tell if it was a real business. What do others think about the "famous for being famous" issue, especially when it comes up in a WP:COI context? This used to be mostly a problem with garage bands promoting themselves on Wikpedia, but it's broader now. --John Nagle (talk) 03:34, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
WP:COI is about maintaining the integrity of Wikipedia against self-promotional edits of Wikipedia. It has nothing to do with whether a subject has promoted themselves elsewhere or happened to be successful enough at it to satisfy GNG. postdlf (talk) 04:07, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
I have run across cases where a person was quite close to the threshold of notability, and I thought to myself (but didn't say here on Wikipedia), "Dude! If you would just pay a press agent $1000, you could be notable in no time!". But even knowing that self-promotion is involved, we have to make our decisions based on the significant coverage in reliable, independent sources that we can assess. I am quick to discount passing mentions of self-promotional individuals. But when the coverage gets into real depth, then we have to accept the fact that GNG has been met. You won't find me recommending deletion of Kim Kardashian, though I might be tempted. Cullen328Let's discuss it04:22, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
Consider that WP:BLP1E would apply to someone that spent (financially or by other means) to build themselves as a top social networking celebrity but with little else to their name, and where that success dies very quickly, even if that is covered by reliable sources. --MASEM (t) 04:24, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
Except that someone who intentionally seeks fame and media attention is not a "low-profile individual", hence BLP1E does not apply (even apart from the fact that "one event" does not mean "one thing of any kind"). WP:NOTNEWS is how we deal with deciding whether to dismiss temporary spikes of news coverage. postdlf (talk) 04:41, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
"Where's the threshold on notability via self-promotion?" To the extent that's at all a meaningful question, the answer is WP:GNG. And again, COI is only about misuse of Wikipedia. It has nothing to do with external sources; for that we judge whether the source is independent as part of the WP:RS analysis. I'm generally finding it hard to wade through your confusion here, as you are smashing together a lot of separate concepts at a breakneck speed (and not even describing them accurately, either, if you think there is anyone who "can't be libelled" [sic]). postdlf (talk) 22:27, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
That's where the "independent sources" part of WP:GNG comes in. If someone "intentionally seeks fame and media attention", via "advertising, press releases, and the subject's web site" then is the resulting attention, as the publicity echoes through other media, independent? There are many media outlets which primarily rewrite incoming promotional material and republish. (AOL and Demand Media do that on an industrial scale.) PR firms exploit this fact. So, yes, it's a meaningful question. John Nagle (talk) 00:57, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
If a source is merely redistributing a press release, then it's not independent. It then would not count to establish notability. But we would not decide that a source is not independent just because the subject had been trying to get the public's attention and succeeded. It just doesn't matter here whether the source stumbled upon the subject while he was modestly hiding in a garret or while he was screaming his own name from the rooftops. It's all about the quality of the source according to RS analysis. postdlf (talk) 02:28, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Minor modification to creative requirement
The "Creative professionals" section #3 ends saying, "or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." I propose this be changed to "or of multiple independent published articles or reviews." so that the sources not be required to be periodicals. --Odie5533 (talk) 17:22, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Vandalism/test edits: Should this page be protected?
If so, should it be semi-protection, pending-changes-protection, or both?
@Davidwr: I think pending changes would be an easier sell as it still keeps edits from IPs and new users from being visible. I wouldn't be opposed to semi-protection, though. Chris Troutman (talk)01:27, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
Obituary in NYT or newspaper of Record
I thought I would flag User:Bluerasberry's recent addition to this page. Not because I disagree with it--or even agree; I find myself quite neutral--but simply to allow for discussion if others feel it warranted. Even if it is community precedent, it is quite a dramatic change to this page. Perhaps a welcome, simplifying and clarifying, one. But a change none the less. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 15:43, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and reverted it. In part, the claim that the "precedent" of a single AFD is not describing practice, much less for the matter that at the time of this edit, the AFD in question Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Adrianne Wadewitz remains open, so there's no precedent for this. I would also oppose this on principle - with the note that an obit in a paper of record like the NYTimes (and this really needs a short list to be clear what is considered "a paper of record") will be a secondary reliable source and that the information it contains had to be something researched and collected by the obit writer, meaning those resources should be out there for WPian editors to find and add as to easily meet the GNG. But given that should be the case (that a featured obit in such newspapers will have sourcing that can be found eventually as to meet the GNG) I can see that as a possible metric, but we need consensus on that first. --MASEM (t) 15:52, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't believe that Bluerasberry was arguing that the Adrianne Wadewitz AFD established the precedent, but rather that the discussion referenced ongoing precedent. In my years here at Wikipedia, I have often seen NYT obituaries cited as evidence of notability; I have never, not once, seen someone featured in a NYT obituary then determined to be non-notable here at Wikipedia. That's the precedent that was referenced by several people (DGG and me, at least, and I think one other editor) at that AFD. --Lquilter (talk) 20:41, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
other editors: RandyKitty, DavidEppstein, JSFarman, Michael Scott Cuthbert, "Paul, in Saudi", Daniel Case, also referenced the principle (and several stated that they did not believe in this principle). Me, DGG, and Barney the barney barney referenced prior practice, which is what I think Bluerasberry was referring to. --Lquilter (talk) 20:47, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
I guess my issues is not so much than an "obit in NYTimes" is not a sign of notability, but the "paper of record" aspect. This is a very broad term, and I would really need to see this list of papers of record defined, as well as to specifically call out to the major obits - the ones that get a full page and not the everyday single paragraph ones. --MASEM (t) 21:16, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
I see no mention in our guidelines/policies of the Old Grey Lady being the "paper of record." Does the project wish to endow the Times with an ironclad endorsement as a reference? What about the Washington Post or the LA Times? To my knowledge we require more than one reliable source. I'll admit this is a weird circumstance where the NYT has written an obit while general coverage is otherwise lacking. Chris Troutman (talk)02:24, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
In terms of journalistic integrity, NYtimes is one of the highest up there; I would also include the Washington Post and the Telegraph, as well as the BBC in terms of general reporting. The short list of "papers of record" is not going to be very long. The idea that if one of these papers of note has a full obit, they assuredly found sources that we would be able to find to back up their claims, and as such the existence of an obit will lead to more sourcing, thus making the existance of an obit a safe presumption for notability to be included here, but that's specifically in these papers of note. On the other hand, an obit in the Seattle Times is not going to have the assured for journalist integrity (simply due to size and capacity) that these papers of note. A full obit in one of these would certainly count as a secondary source towards GNG but not for this guideline. --MASEM (t) 02:47, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
I was going to object to the "NY Times obit = notability" claim on the grounds that the NYT is a local as well as a national paper, and undoubtedly runs obits on people who are notable only to New Yorkers. However, to look for examples I went to the obit page of today's NYT - and found that every single one of the 20 or so people listed there already had a Wikipedia article. There was not a single obit for anyone "non-notable". This suggests that the formula may be right most of the time. However, I would say this is unique to the NYT. An obit in the Washington Post or the Chicago Tribune can be used for information, but does not seem to carry the implication of notability as a NYT obit apparently does - "almost always" if not quite "always". But I do think it should be a "precedent" rather than a rule, and suggest putting it in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes instead of this page. --MelanieN (talk) 04:47, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
I wonder if it is worth suggesting that obituaries in two papers of record (which could be listed, though the relevant article does a pretty good job) should almost automatically denote notability. That is, in the end, what we have seen in this case (and it's what, incidentally, has made me switch my vote in that AFD). --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 00:23, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Wouldn't two obituaries constitute significant coverage in multiple reliable sources? If so, that's already covered by WP:GNG. (Arguably, obituaries are tertiary sources; I've argued in the past that, for the purpose of determining notability, tertiary sources may be superior to secondary sources.) Pburka (talk) 00:30, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
You are forgetting an important parameter: independent. I can pay to print obits for my dog in seven very reputable publications. Also, this may be a very good man and all obituaries may say yes, he was an above average good man, says his late wife, girlfriend, coworker, secretary, and cousin-in-law. Therefore the fact of the obit itself is of very minor contrib to notability. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:35, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
It's quite clear from the above discussion that everyone is talking only about obituaries written by newspaper staff subject to editorial oversight, not about family-submitted obituaries. So your comment has no relevance to this discussion because no one has forgotten independence; everyone is instead assuming it as a given. postdlf (talk) 01:39, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
I am opposed to Bluerasberry's addition. First, as recently as the seventies the Times used to run an immense number of obituaries every day, including some obits of persons who were not the slightest bit notable. Minor building owners for instance. I know, because I was amazed to find the owner of a building I lived in as a child in the Times! He was just a minor businessman. Undistinguished academicians and minor government officials also used to warrant obituaries. Secondly, many "newspapers of record" around the country, in small towns especially, provide nonpaid obituaries of local personages who would not even remotely meet Wikipedia notability standards. Coretheapple (talk) 15:27, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Those obits in the NYTimes, were they of the type that was like a single paragraph blurb, as opposed to a larger edited piece? (See Agathoclea's comment above) And this is why I would be very careful what we call "papers of note" which is not the same as your average newspaper. --MASEM (t) 15:31, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm referring to staff-written, unpaid obits of three and more paragraphs, sometimes with a photo. Death notices were and are totally separate. I'm not talking about that. As for "papers of note," I have no idea how you;d define that. Coretheapple (talk) 15:44, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Oppose I would object to this addition as a runaround of more rigorous notability criteria. Most NYT obituary subjects are already notable because of our guidelines and the remaining few might not be worthy of encyclopedic coverage. The important factor is not whether an obituary hints at further coverage but whether we can write a neutral article from an obituary without any additional sources. This is what this provision would and encourage. Contrary to this, I feel that our articles should be based off of more than one reliable source as single source articles have inherent problems. By no means should we be introducing more criteria that accept articles based on only one reliable source. An obituary in the NYT counts towards GNG/BIO coverage, but we still need additional sources to have an article. This addition would allow an encyclopedia article on every person who has ever had an obituary published in the New York Times, and other papers of similar repute. That is far too close to "inherent notability" for my liking. ThemFromSpace15:40, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Technically all of our subject-specific notability guidelines like this are written to describe cases that "hint at further coverage", which then leads to if a neutral article can be created, and not so much directly at the latter. If we have an obit like this [15] in terms of breadth of its coverage from the NYTimes, this is clear sign to me that we can build out an article on the person, with the obit later being part of the secondary sources to back up the full article. But if at its start the only source was this obit it would not make sense to AFD it before time has been allow for sources to be added. --MASEM (t) 15:53, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
I think that's correct. Just as an example of what I was talking about, I looked through the Times archives and found this[16]. You need a Times subscription to see it. If you do, you see that it is the death in 1937 of Henry Hesse, 75, former president of the real estate company that bore his name on the Upper East Side. He retired in 1925 but remained active. He was one of the oldest members of the Liederkranz Club, which he joined in 1882. He was survived by a son, a daughter and his widow. This was staff-written, not a death notice, and was three paragraphs in length. There are literally thousands of obits like this in the Times, mostly of obscure people. I picked this one at random. Coretheapple (talk) 16:03, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, that's not sufficient on its own for supporting an article, though would be a secondary source along with others for meeting the GNG. The obits that would meet inclusion here have to be long-form style which would be something to clearly define to avoid issues. --MASEM (t) 16:12, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
There's no question that today the Times only runs obits on people who are clearly notable by Wikipedia standards. I would unhesitatingly accept a Times obit as proof of notability if the obit was from within the past 10 years or so. But if you go back a ways, you can find even long obits of total nonentities! I swear. It's almost funny. I can try to find an example if you're curious. Coretheapple (talk) 16:14, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Hold on a minute. This discussion (and the original edit that triggered it) have gotten far afield. The addition was based on the assertion by many people at a one particular AfD discussion (and many others I have seen) that an obituary in the New York Times specifically gives a presumption of notability. Nothing was said about "equivalent newspapers of record"; the NYT seems to be unique in this regard. I have never heard anyone argue that an obituary in the Chicago Tribune or the Washington Post gives a presumption of notability. The NYT's editorial guidelines nowadays seem to be such that we won't mistake a family-submitted obit for a staff-written obit (although as pointed out above they used to do staff-written obits on non-notable people, many decades ago; at AfD this point is usually raised about fairly recent people, so that's probably not an issue). We have other "presumption of notability" criteria based on what people say at AfD, but they are not enshrined into guideline status at this page; they are listed under Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes and that is where this belongs. It should say "an obituary in the New York Times is often cited as granting a presumption of notability", period. Nothing about "other papers of record" because that has not been a common argument at AfD. No attempt to prove that this actually does confer notability, only the recognition that many people at AfD seem to think so. --MelanieN (talk) 16:48, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
I would figure there is a very short list of other papers and works that when they give an obit - of the same breath and detail we are seeing from the NYTimes ones - we can presume notability from that. We should particularly be considering other parts of the world - the NYTimes does tend to try to do international deaths but they are inheriently US-biased. I've seen equivalent obits from the BCC that I would argue the same that tend to be UK-biased, but fair game as a indicator of notability to be used. If we can flesh out that list, then that's a reasonable additional here. But it makes no sense to just highlight one paper as a criteria here. --MASEM (t) 16:53, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
My point was that only one paper, the NYT, gets used as a notability argument at AfD discussions. And that is its only claim to credibility - that many people invoke it at AfD. Hence, Common Outcomes. --MelanieN (talk) 17:01, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
If we can only say one paper , that being the NYTimes , has the distinction of "if obit --> notable" and there's no way we can agree on other papers, I then agree that that should just be an OUTCOMES case. But since we are here, the question if other papers have obits that imply notability can be defined, and if so, we should those, along with the Times, here. --MASEM (t) 18:06, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
The Washington Post, at least as of very recent history, frequently ran staff-written obits for non-notable people. I don't know if they still do. Coretheapple (talk) 18:20, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Does everyone mean the same thing by "Newspaper of record"? The WP article says it's "a major newspaper that has a large circulation and whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered professional and typically authoritative." The NYT is by no means the only such paper in the US, let alone the rest of the English-speaking world. It seems ridiculously parochial to claim that the NYT is some special, unique source of notability! Stanning (talk) 18:26, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
That's not really the point. Today (I emphasize) because it runs so few obits, the ones it runs are of notable people, always. But that is not a generality that, to my knowledge, can be said about other newspapers. Given the Times' former practice of running obits on nonentities, the best thing is to not mention it or any newspaper and deal with these things on a case-by-case basis. Coretheapple (talk) 18:54, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
I think we can define the type of obits that don't work - 3-4 paragraphs, compared to the ones done today that are a good quarter/half-page in print long. I would work on the assumption that we implement a criteria with clarification of what type of obits work and/or don't work, as I believe there's a clear bright line there. --MASEM (t) 19:00, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Though I would argue that defining a clear list of "papers of note" would also benefit WP:RS and other policy pages, highlighting these in other areas , though at the moment I cannot postulate a specific area. If "papers of note" was a defined term for WP and clearly maintained and recognized as "best" sources for things like bios and current events, then I don't see why adding an obit line that considers only those from papers of note to be bad. I do agree that if we don't define papers of note, this should drop back to outcomes but I think we can define it without problems. --MASEM (t) 19:37, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Object to "paper of record" without any qualification - almost every county in the United States with a daily paper of general circulation has a "paper of record" for that area. I think what we want to say is that if a person's obituary is published in a major national or international publication that typically only publishes obituaries of people who are already notable by Wikipedia standards then we can consider this evidence of notability. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:05, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Proposed re-wording:
"News obituaries" which are written and published as news items should be treated as news items. This does not apply to "routine" obituaries and death notices, even if they are presented as news.
This wording would give little weight to a NYT obit about an person who was only locally notable and even less weight to a "courtesy obit" about a long-time employee, while still giving great weight to an obit of Ronald Reagan. It would also give the same weight if a small-town newspaper wrote and published similar obituaries. The "no routine" clause is because some small-town newspapers may routinely write about every death in their town as if it was news. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:05, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
That can't work at all. A small -town paper will likely give a upstanding citizen a lengthy obit as a "news item", but that wouldn't indicated notability as defined on WP (eg notability outside of the locality). Further, as noted , in the past the NYTimes will have 3-4 para obits that are not routine (not the Death Notices page) and appear like news items. Thus, this simply cannot work as a presumption criteria of notability. That's not that these can't be used towards "multiple sources" of GNG, but they alone can't work here. --MASEM (t) 05:09, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
I think we know the guidelines here. They are the same for notability everyplace. We don't know when the NY Times began to be "notable," and am reluctant to retroactively grandfather it in without further research.
More importantly, does the NY Times have an article/obit about a person in Boston along with a bunch of other papers? That would clearly be an indication of notability. Does the Washington Post have a second page item about a person in NYC? Again, a candidate for notability. Locale shouldn't make any difference for a truly notable person. Student7 (talk) 19:59, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Fashion designers
In regards to the AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew Christopher and the acknowledgement that no notability guideline specifically for fashion designers exists, VQuakr suggested that WP:CREATIVE might be amended to address this issue. It seems to me that it's a good suggestion, and it may already mostly cover this case as is, but are there any changes someone could think of to better address this, though? AdventurousSquirrel (talk) 10:06, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
Comment - The main problem with fashion designers (indeed, with designers in general) is that they tend not to receive a great deal of what most would consider acceptable attention. For example, a designer may be frequently interviewed, but generally such interviews are not considered acceptable sources - even if in high profile publications - while they do not themselves receive independent third-party assessments or commentary on them themselves. Their work may be featured regularly in major publications such as Vogue, Harpers, WWD, etc, but as picture-heavy articles with a small comment or two on the trends perceived. This doesn't mean they are trivial or unnotable - but their regular, recurring presence in such publications, is in itself far from trivial. I draw a clear distinction between such featuring, and "advertising features", which are usually pretty obvious. I also feel that if a designer is regularly interviewed, the fact that they are sought out so regularly should be an indicator that they have notability and significance. We often reject interviews as "primary sources", but my take on it is that if the interview is in (or for) a very good publication, accompanied with a decent amount of editorial commentary, and/or demonstrably not a one-off or isolated incident, then it should not be dismissed as a source offhand. Mabalu (talk) 13:08, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
I agree completely. I figured that sections 3 and 4 of WP:CREATIVE in particular would be of good use in supporting the demonstration of notability for people like designers, in that they note, among other things, that notability is indicated by that fact that:
3. The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of ... multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.
4. The person's work (or works) either ... (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.
If you've experienced pushback against keeping articles you believed to be of notable designers, has the main opposing argument been, then, that although the individual's work had been "the subject of ... multiple independent periodical articles", the commentary was not substantial enough? Just trying to narrow down what type of specific wording change to the guideline would be useful. Or do you believe this is even the right place for this discussion, or is it getting into WP:RS territory? Because generally, there shouldn't be any issues with using primary sources like interviews, so long as no extra OR is being concluded from them, correct? AdventurousSquirrel (talk) 08:26, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
Recent vandalism or good-faith edits that were quickly reverted make me want to ask for page protection.
The only question is should it be semi- or pending-changes? Semi locks out all non-autoconfirmed editors, pending-changes means if a new editor makes a change, subsequent changes won't be seen until a reviewer steps in. If that "subsequent change" is merely to undo the new editor's edit, then it doesn't matter much since the page will look the same before and after the review. But if it's anything else, the change will queue up.
Semi would protect against new users and IP addresses, which shouldn't be allowed to edit any guideline page anyway. Do you think the person will keep attacking the page? DreamFocus23:55, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
It's multiple accounts, so the only way to stop that is full protection, and that's not recommended unless we're talking a major attack. Editors are doing a good job keeping this page at it's appropriate state. --MASEM (t) 23:57, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
The bulk are new accounts and non-registered editors, so semi-protection will help. Pending-changes protection would be a viable option if the editors were auto-confirmed and there were enough editors with reviewer-rights watching this page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 02:56, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
With respect, not much of a debate IMHO, since it starts from a complete misunderstanding of the importance of Dame or Knight in the Commonwealth honours system. As Necrothesp pointed out there, Dame or Knight qualifies per WP:ANYBIO #1. End of debate. Having said that: an award at that level is given because the recipient "has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field" (WP:ANYBIO #2); the award alone is therefore sufficient for notability; but still, an article about such a person should show the contribution. The particular article under debate needs improvement, but that doesn't invalidate the intrinsic notability of Dames and Knights. Stanning (talk) 09:34, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
I think we need to reinstate WP:DIPLOMAT in some form. I think it was a mistake to delete it (see 2014 archive of this talk page). Currently the only mention of diplomats is item 4 under WP:POLITICIAN: "For the purposes of this guideline, ambassadorships are not considered international offices." That's clearly about politicians who become ambassadors, not about career diplomats, but it seems to cause confusion for a few Wikipedians, perhaps because of the illusion (or maybe fact, in some countries) that all ambassadorships are given as rewards to retired politicians or to political donors, and that an ambassador is therefore a nonentity as compared (for example) to a sportsperson who was a team member in a single major-league game. In the case of British diplomats, there also seems to be misunderstanding of the status of Who's Who (UK) (and the historical Who Was Who), where a listing is a strong indication of notability. British honours are a separate issue IMHO, and they've been discussed here before, inconclusively (2014 archive again). As in other countries there's a hierarchy of honours. For Commonwealth countries, see what I said under "Notability of Dames and Knights" above. I suggest that an award below dame or knight indicates likely notability, but needs support (such as a Who's Who entry). Stanning (talk) 09:46, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Note that it is exceptionally rare for persons awarded the grades immediately below knighthood (CB, CSI, CMG, CIE, CVO, CBE) not to have a Who's Who entry. These should, in my opinion, be considered inherently notable (and have pretty much invariably been found so at afd in the past). Only a few dozen are awarded every year and one does not receive such an honour unless one has made a significant enough contribution to the country or the world to impart notability easily to Wikipedia standards. Lesser honours, which are far more common (especially OBEs and MBEs, hundreds of which are awarded every year), do not impart inherent notability, but may be an indicator that the recipient is notable and need to be discussed on a case-by-case basis. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:01, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Politicians
Consensus is solid for keeping the status quo, to refrain from easing the notability guideline for politicians who have done little other than get their name on a ballot. Binksternet (talk) 03:02, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I would like to propose to change the criteria for Notability of politicians to include getting on the ballot for any federal office (House, Senate, President) or any statewide office (Governor e.g.) I noticed today that Brian Herr, Republican candidate for Senate in Massachusetts, was "fast deleted" because he was insufficiently notable. Herr has made the ballot for Senate -- and that is a notable accomplishment! It requires gathering many thousands of signatures and jumping through many other hoops. The deletion message says "Come back if you win." That attitude is TERRIBLE -- it goes against SO MANY Wikipedia core principles! We should encourage coverage of candidates equally against the incumbents -- that message, and the current policy, help incumbents and hurt challengers. I will make a formal proposal for un-deleting Brian Herr, but would like to discuss here changing the criteria for notability to include "ballot success". 108.49.68.168 (talk) 23:49, 10 May 2014 (UTC)JesseAlanGordon (talk) 23:50, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Notability is determined by significant coverage in reliable sources. It doesn't necessarily mean important or accomplished. Politicians who have won an election are presumed to have such coverage. We accept their victory in place of direct evidence of significant coverage in reliable sources. Note that, although an election victory leads to a presumption of notability, a loss does not indicate that a candidate is non-notable. A failed politician may well be notable if editors can demonstrate actual (not presumed) coverage in reliable sources. Pburka (talk) 00:04, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
Exactly which "Wikipedia core principles" does this guideline go against? Wikipedia isn't here to "encourage coverage". People that don't win elections might not be notable. Chris Troutman (talk)04:46, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
I was referring to the "Neutral point of view" core principle. Keeping challengers off Wikipedia is NOT neutral; this policy directly favors incumbents and disfavors challengers. This is not about "democracy" -- yes, I get it, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a democracy -- but it is about neutrality -- I am suggesting that challengers should be treated with a neutral point of view, that those who make the ballot, or win a primary, are notable for making the ballot or winning the primary. The criteria should NOT be winning the general election. Obviously, there is a consensus that it's not about actually winning the general election -- look at Dave Brat -- he had no page until he won the primary last week -- but he is not yet elected, until November. His page was created on June 10, the evening he won. Prior to that date, he was not "notable" -- but he had to get on the ballot (not an easy process in the U.S.!); he had to file with the FEC; he had to campaign -- none of which this discussion would consider notable -- but he won. So it's not about being unelected, as Valenciano says -- getting elected or not is not the relevant criterion -- I agree that it should not be, and we should acknowledge that primaries matter, and sometimes getting on the ballot matters. The discussion below about the Olympics and FIFA strikes fear in my heart that this discussion will end up wiping out all election pages until AFTER the election -- that would be even worse than omitting Brian Herr! JesseAlanGordon (talk) 01:48, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
@JesseAlanGordon: Please re-read NPOV: "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." (emphasis mine). The night Dave Brat won there was a flood of media coverage, so he makes it with general notability. He still fails our notability criteria otherwise, and that guideline is pretty clear which politicians are considered notable. The mere fact that we have campaign workers and political partisans arguing for changes is exactly why I'd oppose any change. Chris Troutman (talk)04:54, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
I'd also completely oppose giving unelected candidates articles. Being a political candidate is not so hard in many countries. In the USA, candidates for senate or the house who are genuinely notable will have received sufficient press coverage already. There's no need to change anything. Valenciano (talk) 08:17, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
I also strongly oppose. In many types of election, all kinds of nutcases and publicity-seekers with no chance of getting elected can become candidates; also, candidates' articles are very likely to become more or less blatant election propaganda. JohnCD (talk) 11:14, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
Oppose The guideline is WP:GNG; significant coverage is required from multiple independent reliable sources. In the case of a candidate the coverage can't JUST be about the election they are running in; they have to show notability per GNG aside from their candidacy. Candidates for Congress often meet the GNG guideline, and when they do they are included here. If they have NOT received significant coverage aside from "So-and-so is a candidate for Senate", then they do not meet it and they are not included here. The candidates are evaluated based on their own situation, on a case-by-case basis. In the case of elected officials at the state or national level, they pretty much always get ongoing coverage, so we include them on the assumption that the coverage must be there. (Hopefully in most articles the independent coverage is included in their article, but in some cases, particularly historic cases, the coverage may be hard to find.) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia; it contains articles about notable subjects. Wikipedia is not a voter guide. --MelanieN (talk) 21:04, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
Just say "no" to future events The root cause of these otherwise unknown candidates trying to get articles on Wikipedia is because we allow future events such as [California Attorney General election, 2014] to have articles on Wikipedia. Once the name of the candidate is included in the encyclopedia, then it is within our policy to create a redirect for the name of the candidate to the future event. Further, given normal news coverage, these candidates meet WP:GNG, even if the topic fails WP:NOT, so editors have reason to create an article in mainspace. The fix IMO is to enforce our WP:CRYSTAL policy, and speedy incubate future events. As an encyclopedia, we can wait until two weeks after an election to post a mainspace article about the election. See also, WP:Articles for deletion/David A. King (attorney). Unscintillating (talk) 22:42, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
That's impractical. Are you proposing that we should delete 2014 FIFA World Cup because it hasn't happened yet? That we shouldn't document campaigns and primary elections? It's perfectly encyclopedic to publish articles about future events (even if they end up never happening!) as long as the event has received significant coverage in reliable sources. Pburka (talk) 22:58, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
I intended "speedy incubate", not "speedy delete". WT:Drafts#Survey, Guideline for CSDD uses the name "Criteria for speedy draft designation". It is practical, because the article is accessible to editors in draftspace, and can be a finished article when moved to mainspace. Meanwhile, it is not in mainspace and not indexed on Google. As to your other point, I'm not familiar with the World Cup, but I've written before about United_States_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics. As per this diff, we posted medal results in February 2011. For an MMA event, there is no need for a pre-event article. For the Olympics, I think it is a matter of choosing topics that will remain notable after the event, such as Preparation for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Unscintillating (talk) 04:07, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Unscintillating, I have to disagree with you. Our guideline is WP:GNG - the coverage requirement - and it is not in conflict with WP:CRYSTAL, which you should read. WP:CRYSTAL does not say we shouldn't write about upcoming events. On the contrary, it says Wikipedia is not a collection of unverifiable speculation. All articles about anticipated events must be verifiable, and the subject matter must be of sufficiently wide interest that it would merit an article if the event had already occurred. WP:CRYSTAL specifically offers United States presidential election, 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics as examples of topic which are appropriate to include. --MelanieN (talk) 17:09, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Comment on the article Brian Herr, which was speedy deleted to start this discussion: I believe the speedy deletion was in error. IMO it should have been redirected to United States Senate election in Massachusetts, 2014, where he is mentioned. I believe that is the usual practice for candidates whether notable or not. --MelanieN (talk) 01:35, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
I was mistaken. The article was properly deleted (prodded, not speedy deleted), but that was back in 2010. Now that it is 2014 and he is running for significant office, I believe a redirect from his name to the article about the office he is running for is appropriate, and I have created one. I will watchlist the redirect page to make sure it doesn't get inappropriately expanded. --MelanieN (talk) 17:16, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Absolutely not. If we change our notability standards to make all candidates for national or sub-national office notable worldwide (as I assume the proposer is not saying this should only apply to the United States - at least, I hope not, as that would be a complete misunderstanding of Wikipedia) then we will open the gates to articles on countless thousands of wannabe politicians who will never, ever get elected. The proposal does seem to be based on a "we should give equal publicity to all sides" political stance, which fails to recognise that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and not a promotional site for party politics. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:37, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
OpposeCalifornia gubernatorial recall election had "135 candidates who qualified for the ballot in the election, including four candidates who obtained at least 1% of the vote". Many if not most of these "novelty" candidates did not get enough coverage to qualify for an article under today's notability guidelines, and rightfully so. Interestingly, the winning candidate was a celebrity who at the time was unlikely to be able to win a major-party primary for governor and would not have been able to compete against the major parties' nominees in a regular election for governor. But for the special election, he would probably have never become governor of California. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:50, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Oppose Notability = substantial coverage in independent reliable sources, no more, no less. Winners "by definition" get such coverage, at least from the level of large city councilor upwards to president and prime minister - many small town mayors will never be notable. Losers might be notable but it's far from a sure thing. "Come back if you win" is a reasonable comment. I would actually go further and like to see a total ban on the creation of new articles about political candidates during their campaigns - if there isn't already an article about the candidate then they should wait until the election is over before creating it. We see plenty campaign-spam at AFC and such a rule would help filter out the wannabes who waste so much of our time. If someone is notable before the election, they will still be notable after the votes are counted - the reverse is not necessarily true. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:44, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Oppose. Dodger67 has a point about ban on WP:NN prior to "running." i.e. candidate was not an elected politician before (of note), not a general, not an athlete, not a Hollywood star. Where would s/he be coming from? For a local office, person would clearly be nn. Clint Eastwood ran for mayor and won, but he was already notable. Student7 (talk) 12:52, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose I see we now have Brian J. Herr with one reference, his own campaign website. This is the problem: no other coverage. The solution is to redirect his name to United States Senate election in Massachusetts, 2014 as has been done. That article is the place where his information and links should have been provided. Ballotpedia has an article for him with multiple sources. The Wikipedia election article includes Ballotpedia's election article in EL. Perhaps a good compromise would be to link to Ballotpedia candidate articles for candidates without their own Wikipedia article. In the past, Wikipedia election articles have included FEC, Project Vote Smart and various other links for such candidates, within the election article. 71.23.178.214 (talk) 16:07, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
Ooh - missed that one! I see it was recently created; as Roger Dodger noted above, this is the time of year for campaign-spam. I agree it should be redirected to the site about the election, as suggested above and per usual practice. That should probably be done via an AfD discussion - what do others think about process for this kind of redirection? We could also do a merger proposal but I think a case like this deserves broader participation. --MelanieN (talk) 18:37, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
AFD should never be the first resort for non-deletion actions. I've redirected the Herr article and left a comment on the creator's talk page. If it doesn't stick and has to be repeatedly reverted, then we can arrive at a more permanent way of dealing with it. postdlf (talk) 18:49, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
Commenting on "In the past, Wikipedia election articles have included FEC, Project Vote Smart and various other links": Yes, in the past, Wikipedia DID include those -- but in February, all of those useful links were removed. That method would, in my view, be satisfactory for minor candidates like Brian Herr. "In the past", Herr would have had links to Ballotpedia, FEC, OnTheIssues, Votesmart, the Washington Post, and several other political coverage links, in the "External links" section in a template called CongLinks. All of those were removed from all gubernatorial candidates (GovLinks), and most of them were removed from Senate and House candidates (CongLinks). I have read this discussion on "Notability" and I see there is consensus to keep minor non-incumbents off -- I yield to consensus on that -- but many of the points above talk about alternatives. I think the best alternative is to restore the external CongLinks template. In my view, there was never a consensus to remove them, but you can read the details on that fight elsewhere. Please comment on whether I should continue that struggle, or if you all disagree with having CongLinks and GovLinks also. JesseAlanGordon (talk) 01:40, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
Comment. It's one thing to report that "Challenger Smith received .1% of the ballots, and quite another thing to give "Challenger Smith" an article! It's up to Challenger Smith to get his own publicity. We ain't it! :) Student7 (talk) 11:58, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
Comment. You seem confused. Campaign websites ("publicity") have always been listed in Wikipedia election articles. What's being discussed here is third party information ("non-partisan voter information"). There's a difference. 71.23.178.214 (talk) 15:40, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose. Getting on the ballot is like a WP:SPS: It usually only requires collecting a certain number of signatures, which candidates often do with paid collectors. It's just not the same as actually holding office, where we might presume notability even in lieu of sources. Msnicki (talk) 04:33, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose The proper place to provide brief, neutral coverage of an unelected candidate for high office is an article about the election campaign, where all candidates can be described. Opening the floodgates to thousands of candidate biographies presents unacceptable difficulties in preventing these articles from being transformed into Wikipedia-branded campaign literature. Cullen328Let's discuss it02:20, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Religious leaders
There have been several AfDs about Church of Latter Day Saints leaders recently, who lack significant independent coverage, but are general authorities, who are analogous in some ways to Catholic bishops. (There are around 5,000 bishops for 1,000,000,000 catholics, or 1 per 200,000, and around 100 general authorities for 15,000,000 LDS followers, or 1 per 150,000).
The AfD debates have typically boiled down to "Keep, they're inherently notable", and "Delete, there's no significant independent coverage", with Delete dominating the final rulings. (Example open AfDs: 13-person bundled AfD, Dyches, Davies, recently closed AfDs: Wilson, Hamilton, Schwitzer, Vinson, Mazzagardi).
Someone pointed out that an essay on common AfD outcomes says bishops are usually found notable. (It doesn't suggest whether that's because they attract significant independent coverage, or in spite of not having such coverage). That person also suggested that it might be worthy of a broader discussion here, in case this is an issue of systemic bias.
So I thought I'd raise the issue of whether religious leaders should be considered inherently notable at some level, even without significant independent coverage.
I know very little about the LDS, so I'm not going to comment on them, but I do think that diocesan bishops (but not suffragan bishops, assistant bishops, auxiliary bishops etc) of major, widely-recognised Christian denominations (Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Orthodox) should be considered inherently notable, as they have generally been found at afd. -- Necrothesp (talk) 03:05, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
In my mind, terms like "inherently notable" and "presumed notable" are verbal shorthand for "if we looked hard enough and long enough, we would almost certainly find significant coverage in reliable, independent sources, so let's not even bother entertaining an AFD discussion about this topic unless the nominator claims to have searched far and wide for this coverage and hasn't found any." A broad class of topics, such as "bishops," may become considered "inherently notable" if, over time, AFDs almost always close as "keep" and the reason they close as keep is that either sources are found or it's obvious from reading the article and the AFD that sources are almost certainly out there if one had the time to look and access to the sources themselves (e.g. subscriptions to paywalled sources, the ability to travel to libraries to read RS but obscure print sources, etc.). So, the questions for me are: Do the outcomes of past AFDs for these religious leaders satisfy the criteria above, and/or do these religious leaders almost all satisfy the criteria above?
Typically I would agree that religious hierarchy of a certain degree is inherently notable, like the suggestion farther above about ambassadors. My only qualm is that to my limited knowledge, LDS leadership is not a permanent clerical class, but elected male leaders. There have been a number of LDS Presidents but none was considered clergy in the way that other Christians, Jews, and Muslims would describe it. I would hope LDS members could better answer this question. Chris Troutman (talk)02:54, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
I am not competent to comment on the LDS question, but I am strongly of the opinion that bishops in major Christian denominations (Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, etc) will always be notable. ON the other hand, the members of a diocesan synod will probably not be. Other denominations have a moderator, which may be an office held for quite a short time, but they may well be notable. Conversely the heads of miniscule denominations, even with grand titles such as archbishop, may in practice be the minister of a single congregation, or even self appointed: they will probably be NN. The leader of a church is normally less notable than the church itself, so that if the church has no article, its leader is probably NN. This also applies to the pletora of one-man ministries. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:35, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
What Davidwr said above. There really is no such thing as "inherently notable" independently of reliable sources. Inherently notable means nothing more than that, as a rule of thumb, we can safely expect that sources exist for a given class of topics. This may well be true for bishops in certain major denominations, but if it is not true for these kinds of LDS officials, then no amount of juggling guidelines around and !voting on AfDs can change the fact that objectively notability doesn't exist. Fut.Perf.☼16:19, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
In terms of scope, it's a bit like political notability where local elected officials and appointees at the city and perhaps county level have to demonstrate outside notability to warrant a page. Also, because the organization's structure is privately determined, it's comparable to a business where many of its leaders are low-profile WP:LPI -AngusWOOF (talk) 20:26, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
I am not competent to comment on the LDS question, but I am strongly of the opinion that bishops in major Christian denominations (Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, etc) will always be notable. ON the other hand, the members of a diocesan synod will probably not be. Other denominations have a moderator, which may be an office held for quite a short time, but they may well be notable. Conversely the heads of miniscule denominations, even with grand titles such as archbishop, may in practice be the minister of a single congregation, or even self appointed: they will probably be NN. The leader of a church is normally less notable than the church itself, so that if the church has no article, its leader is probably NN. This also applies to the pletora of one-man ministries. Peterkingiron (talk) 08:54, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
WP:NLIST says "Inclusion [of people] within stand-alone lists should be determined by the notability criteria above", this contradicts WP:NNC, which says: "the notability guidelines do not apply to article or list content (with the exception that some lists restrict inclusion to notable items or people)." Was there a discussion that lead to that wording? 109.76.112.239 (talk) 09:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
Well unless i'm reading it wrong, WP:NLIST is saying that if a person is not notable, they shouldn't go into stand-alone lists, whereas WP:NNC is saying that notability is irrelevent to whether they should go into lists or not (ie, non-notable people can go in lists subject to editorial considerations). 109.76.112.239 (talk) 20:23, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
I'm no pro on the guidelines, but just reading the two sections, my guess is that you're reading it wrong. WP:NNC doesn't say notability is irrelevant in all lists, and specifically mentions exceptions that some lists restrict inclusion based on notability. I'd take WP:NLIST as a further clarification on that, explicitly stating that non-nontable people shouldn't go into stand-alone lists of people. This January 2007 version of WP:NLIST is similar to the current wording, so this seems like a well established guideline.
I have always understood that one object of lists was to identify (though redlinking) notable people who ought to (but do not yet) have articles. This is partly because an article has to exist before it can be in a category, which does not apply to a list. Another reason for a list is that we do not generally allow award-winners categories, but often have lists of award winners. A list of people all of whom are NN is probably not worth having. A list of people some (but not all) of whom have articles may indicate that other list-members are also notable. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:28, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Criteria for actors
The points to decide notability of actors included in WP:ENT have been subject to multiple discussions (see below) and should therefore be reviewed.
Point 1: Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions.
This point has caused a number of comments in the past:
2) Actors who have played their first major role, just played one major role (see "multiple" in entertainers) as well as child actors (see young performers and child prodigies) who had a major role in one film but might not immediately get multiple roles do not pass.
Point 2: Has a large fan base or a significant "cult" following.
I guess that this is true for well known actors who easily pass point 1. This does not add much for the notability evaluation.
Point 3: Has made unique, prolific or innovative contributions to a field of entertainment.
This seems a point which applies to a very small group of people and is probably not a very representative criteria for actors.
As WP:NOTABILITY clearly states, they are notable if they pass the WP:GNG or any of the secondary guidelines. They don't have to pass both, despite what some misguided people keep arguing incisively. DreamFocus11:18, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
Additional criteria
"Additional criteria" seems to trump "Basic criteria" these days. In my own view, these additional criterias are subject specific tests to judge whether a person is successful or famous. Successful or famous people are likely to be notable but others may still be notable under BASIC. However, in bio-afds I see some people keep arguing that if a person fails all the additional criterias and the sources don't prove that they meet these criterias, he/she is not notable.
Take Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Chris_Hakel as an expamle. In this afd, an anonymous user stated "This may seem like a strange question, but he doesn't meet the notability criteria for football players at WP:NGRIDIRON so what is he notable for?"
In sports, it's quite natural that "successful" and/or "famous" are the definitions of notability. Because this is exactly what sports personalities are known for. They are applications of the concept of notability to a specific field. In other fields, notability might be something else.
But the argument that notability is somehow completely detached. of any specific application or definition to any certain field of knowledge is strange to me. That would imply that "notability" is some technical Wikipedia term that is defined not by the real world, but by simply being part of rules created by Wikipedians. It seems like a highly bureaucratic circular reasoning.
Reply I didn't mean notability is completely detached from fame and importance. But WP:SNG theoretically has a higher standard than WP:GNG, and that's why we consider if a topic meet WP:SNG it will probably meet WP:GNG.
Consider the following discussion. It's presumed to be taken from a book's AFD.
Keep There are multiple independent in-depth reviews.—A
Delete The book hasn't won a major literary award, been adapted to films or text books. Its author is not notable, either. These reviews contain nothing but common critics of a non-notable book. —B
Another discussion from a building's AFD.
Keep Its history and architecture feature is discussed in multiple reliable books.—A
Delete Fails WP:GEOFEAT. The building hasn't been listed in NRHP. Every non-notable building has its own history.—B
They seem perfectly rational, but given the context, I might make a different call.
I'm mainly opposing the idea of some sort of "automatic qualification" granted by sheer volume of coverage, no matter its nature or inherent encyclopedic value. A good example of this is Joachim Cronman, subject to a few AfDs back in 2009. An person who achieved nothing significant that has been described in any detail anywhere. It's easy to be distracted by the large number of sources, but even a brief inspection shows that every one of them is a directory of nobility or military officers. So the attention lavished on Cronman is merely an artefact of certain social and cultural interests, just like in the article on Mark Dodge, who is currently at AfD (but will most likely be kept).
I'd like to stress that this phenomenon is especially common when it comes to bios about men who have engaged in typically manly activities and occupations that enjoy social approval.
Formally, the outcome of this RFC is no consensus. Editors cannot agree whether voice actors should be removed from the WP:ENTERTAINER section. Two alternative proposals were advanced, but neither gained the kind of support it would be appropriate to call "consensus". In accordance with Wikipedia's normal practice the status quo ante should obtain for the time being.
I should disclose my own personal thoughts before going on to analyse the debate in more detail. I do not like specific notability guidelines. I've always thought the general notability guideline is sufficient in the vast majority of cases, and AfD doesn't need all the reams of guidance this encyclopaedia has produced for its benefit, and in my experience a lot of the guidance we do produce goes unheeded. I personally feel that SNGs should be as short as possible, and if I had been participating in the discussion I would have voted in favour of removing the words "voice actors" on the basis that they're already included within "actors". But that view has not persuaded the community here.
This next point will be obvious to most people but I should still say it explicitly: our normal rules on sourcing for biographical articles do prevail over this specific notability guideline. There is a presumption that unsourced biographies will be removed.
I found the point made most clearly by Postdlf, i.e. that guidelines are a place to document practice rather than prescribe it, is highly persuasive. It is shown in this debate that the guideline does document our current practice. It therefore seems appropriate to me that the close maintains the status quo.—S MarshallT/C12:30, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Support - VAs are far different from live actors who have to do more than just speak and rarely get any attention from independent secondary sources. Some do, but because this is nowhere close to a majority, having them in ENTERTAINER doesn't make sense. Those that do will meet the GNG without a problem. --MASEM (t) 00:15, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Support Such language seems to have the intended effect of saving non-notable individuals whose bio articles are put up for deletion. Notability is not inherited (by a nonnotable dubber from the notable movie he dubbed), but this present wording could grant automatic notability to someone who was paid to dub voices for major characters in several well know films, into some obscure language spoken by a few people in a small country. Unless their work has been NOTED by multiple reliable and independent sources, it is not NOTABLE. An ill-paid and unknown hack who voiced Harry Potter in several films for distribution in a minority language in East Elbonia should not have any presumption of notability, for instance. If they work in a major language in a large country, they will likely meet WP:BIO and WP:N, and the same is likely if their work achieves coverage in reliable sources in even a small country. I note that in the category American male voice actor, many are notable already for their other work in comedy, radio, movies and TV. There should be no Golden Ticket to notability. Edison (talk) 00:45, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Support. The inclusion of "voice actors" in the guideline has been used as a 'keep' argument in biography AfDs despite a paucity of notice in the media. We should not allow voice actors a magic pass to notability beyond the level they attract in real life. Binksternet (talk) 01:03, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Support And the "not fair" arguments of the opposers have missed the reason why entirely. Most special notability guidelines, in particular WP:ENT, exist largely as a rule of thumb that suggests that "if we know (some conditions) are true, then it is very likely the subject meets our general notability guideline." Here's the thing, though. In my experience, voice actors for whom WP:ENT#1 is claimed often fail searches, in my experience, to find sources meeting WP:GNG. This creates a hole for abuse, and voice actor/dub actor biographies, it should come as no surprise, more often end up being hoaxes, or, if I must AGF, are verified only by an unattributed DOC file within an open upload directory at an Indian fashion technology college.
The problem with WP:ENT #1 from my perspective is I think fairly demonstrated at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Sachi_Matsumoto, from a couple years back. This article was deleted over claims of WP:ENT#1, because there was just nothing to support any real biography here. That result was endorsed by deletion review, the article was recreated later with identical sources, and is now, a couple years later, back at AfD.
In short, it's not "fair", just like it's not "fair" that high schools are presumed automatically notable but elementary schools are not. But that does reflect our experience in the real world, high schools are likely to have sourcing, elementary schools, not so much.
Support The essential point is that these are BLPs with inadequate sourcing. The community has made it clear time after time that the expectation is that BLPs are properly sourced. Its clear that being a VA does not give sufficient expectation of having sources and must therefore be removed. SpartazHumbug!06:24, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Support removal. Note that whether or not to list a certain group here is not just a decision about a Wikipedia rule, but a claim of empirical fact. The current wording claims that voice actors will regularly become notable, i.e. gain significant in-depth coverage in reliable sources, if they have participated in such and such kinds of works. This claim is apparently empirically false; hence, their inclusion here is untenable. This of course doesn't mean that voice actors can't become notable; some of them undoubtedly do; it's just that we cannot automatically expect this to be the case just by looking at how many movies they have participated in. Fut.Perf.☼07:46, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Support removal. There are plenty of voice actors who would pass criteria 1 but would get little or no coverage in RS. For better or worse, models and actors are just more notable than voice actors, b/c we typically don't get to see their faces. NickCT (talk) 18:51, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Support removal. Right now the list is "Actors, voice actors, comedians, opinion makers, models, and celebrities" presumably this list is exhaustive, otherwise there'd be no opposition to removing an illustrative example. :/ Further, a voice actor is already an actor, so I'm not sure what effect it would/should have were they removed. But my bigger problem is the mismatch between the language here and the goals of a specific notability guideline. Every one of these subsets of BIO should exist to make it easier for editors to judge whether or not a subject would meet the GNG if we looked hard enough. For this dispute we really only care about "Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions." If voice actors, by the nature of their work are less likely to have articles written about them due to appearing in notable works, then the SNG becomes a bad proxy. We could end up keeping articles which have no hope of meeting the GNG, which is precisely the opposite of our goals for the SNGs. We're not talking about deleting articles on VAs which meet the GNG because "VA" no longer appears in the text of the guideline. We're talking about using a guideline which works (when it does) because entertainers in front of the public tend to have materials written about them on a category of entertainers who don't usually have materials written about them by virtue of their appearing in notable works. the fact that a single example in an illustrated litany could grant or deny notability to a class of articles is a good sign we have a bad heuristic. Protonk (talk) 19:43, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
also, focusing on the nature or medium of performance (as Edison does above and Dream Focus does below) misses the point and exacerbates the problem we have with creating SNGs in the first place. We shouldn't be in the business of judging whether or not a subject exhibits talent or undertakes a "difficult" job when setting an inclusion guideline because it has literally nothing to do with the coverage of the subject. If voice acting was everywhere a more difficult job than acting in front of the camera it wouldn't change the distribution of articles written about entertainers.
One more comment. Comparing the threshold of WP:AUTHOR with WP:ENT illustrates the problem we're dealing with. AUTHOR has specific and sensible guidance on when a creative professional might meet the GNG--conspicuously absent from which is "creating a popular work" because we know that merely creating a popular work doesn't tend to generate press about the creator. If we magically plucked directors of photography out of AUTHOR and put them in ENT, would we have a very good heuristic for when DPs meet the GNG? No, because merely being the DP on multiple notable films doesn't mean Variety is going to do a profile. This is true despite the fact that there are famous DPs and being a DP is hard work. Protonk (talk) 20:56, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose removal
Oppose The discussion back then was had in many places, including plenty of AFDs. These aren't people just hired to do a simple dub, but actual professional people, putting emotions in the voices, just like regular actors do. Any reviews for animated series or films have comments on the voice actors, just as film reviews review regular actors. There is no reason to treat actors and voice actors differently. DreamFocus01:12, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose The person's name appears in all the credits he/she is in for the works that they did, as well as there being interviews and commentary for bonus features on DVDs. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:56, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose: As long as a voice actor meets criteria 1, 2 and 3 within WP:ENT, how would it be any different to a comedian, model or actor who meets those three criteria? The idea that a voice actor is less of a notable entertainer than a live-action actor is a western-centric viewpoint, and is therefore WP:Systemic bias. Voice actors are often well covered in third-party reliable sources, but not in English - most coverage comes from Japanese news websites. However, per WP:NONENG, there is nothing which states that non-English sources are forbidden. --benlisquareT•C•E05:36, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose for everything that has mentioned. There are awards for best voice actor and they get their fair share of criticism. It doesn't really have to do with systemic bias, it just has to do with knowing how broad it is. Yes, Voice actors are more popular in japan and get noted more, but that doesn't mean that English voice actors don't get any coverage to deem them notable, because there are plenty. Lucia Black (talk) 13:07, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Opposed Really to make a distinction between one type of acting over another is absurd. Even if "voice actor" was not explicitly stated, voice actors would still be included in WP:ENT because they ARE actors. Whether their performance is on stage, in front of a camera, or with just their voice, the medium of their performance is irrelevant and the same criteria should apply to all. "Voice actors" was only explicit included to clarify that point and to prevent certain editors from "wikilawyering" that voice actors weren't explicitly included. —Farix (t | c) 13:30, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose Voice actors are actors, plain and simple. To discriminate them is an utterly ridiculous nonsense. Discriminating them is not even systemic bias, it is more akin to "I don't know anything about visual arts"-bias. --cyclopiaspeak!21:57, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose Voice actors include radio personalities, voice-over narrators and announcers. The productions they are in still need to be notable, but there are reliable sources for that. On-screen actors are also called in to do voice acting work such as animated films, or even on live-action shows, they are redubbing lines, doing voice-overs and singing tracks. -AngusWOOF (talk) 01:59, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose, you don't change a guideline in order to dictate a different result in deletion discussions; that's exactly the opposite of how it's supposed to work. I see no indication that community consensus has changed since this was added here (quite the contrary, hence the proposer's complaints about AFD results), which should be case closed. Even going beyond that, however, the arguments given by the other opposers above seem quite reasonable to me so I see no compelling reason to believe this guideline undermines the encyclopedia's quality even if a minority of editors also have a reasonable contrary view. postdlf (talk) 02:37, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose, the key word is "signficant" in "Has had significant roles". Without the word "signficant" everybody with credits would get an article, but that's not the case. We're not going to auto-give bios to obscure dubbers of movies, for the same reason we're not going to auto-give bios to every stunt/body double for a major role just because they "appeared". Regardless of the type of actor (on-screen or voice-only) we should always be requiring proper reliable third party sources, and not just making articles based purely on screen credits or imdb. We need to have sources that actually indicate somebody has a serious role. But, that's not a voice-actor-specific issue. --Rob (talk) 04:09, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose, I think Farix hit the nail on the head ("the medium of their performance is irrelevant"). The standard set up under WP:ENTERTAINER still requires the actor's been in significant roles (not just some guy who did walla). If the concern's the sourcing of these articles, that's a reason these pages may fail under BLP, especially if we can't get anything reliable. Honestly, I think our basic requirements for sourcing with secondary sources solve all the possible objections to including voice actors. Lastly, I'm not sure why voice actors should be distinct from the group for some reason. Sure, they're not in the limelight as much as, say, a movie-star, but that's not something relevant to notability. In the field of voice acting there are certainly people who're notable and have garnered sufficient coverage for a strong article. --Lord Roem ~ (talk) 13:45, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose - I personally think that someone who has had major roles in multiple notable works is notable and should be covered in Wikipedia, regardless of whether they meet the general notability guidelines. More generally, I think that meeting any of the "additional criteria" is enough to show that someone is notable, and would prefer the guideline be changed to suggest that such people can have standalone articles. I know the guideline as written says such people should be merged into other articles, but based on the outcome of many AFD discussions, it seems that there is instead a consensus that meeting any of the specific criteria is sufficient to have a standalone article. In addition, I also generally agree with Farix's reasoning that differentiating between types of acting doesn't make much sense. Calathan (talk) 19:01, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose. I'm not seeing any rationale for singling out voice actor in this way, and they would have to be singled out. Simply deleting voice actor would not have the effect of excluding them from WP:ENTERTAINER since they still remain actors; they would have to be explicitly excluded. SpinningSpark00:32, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose I think Mel Blanc was, indeed, a "notable entertainer" as are many other "voice actors." In addition, some people are particularly known for "voice acting" including Adriana Caselotti, Thurl Ravenscroft and a host of others, not to mention a host of radio actors who fall into that category. Sorry -- removal of that group makes no sense here. Collect (talk) 00:09, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
Noncommittal
The question appears to deal with proposed/existing language that is only implied in the motion, so it's hard to form an opinion. If a voice actor has coverage in RSs separate from credits and marketing for a particular gig, then to me there's no obvious logic that would grant notability to radio people (Garrison Keillor,Rush Limbaugh) and deny it to cinematic voice actors who also get coverage in RSs beyond credits and marketing for a gig. Whether the mystery language that was referenced is well-written.... well, newcomers to this issue can't really tell, can we?NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:20, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
The entire WP:ENTERTAINER section is very vague. We don't define what constitutes a significant role—is an overdub of a major character significant? How do we determine a large fan base or a cult following? What constitutes a unique contribution? These terms are all too subjective. Subject-specific notability guidelines should be clear and strict. These guidelines are neither. I think that the entire section ought to be revisited. Pburka (talk) 13:55, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes, WP:ENT has always struck me as a bit subjective. What is a significant role? Who decides this? Reliable sources? If so, then we don't need this guideline, because there's already coverage per the GNG. Maybe we should rewrite this section and hash out who to include. If this section is meant to give exceptions to the GNG, instead of a shortcut for obvious cases that shouldn't need to be defended, then each profession included should be justified. Why is fanbase a measure of notability? The whole thing is a mess. I'm not sure quibbling over voice actors accomplishes anything. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
Discussion on removing "voice actors" from WP:ENTERTAINER
In January 2011, Dream Focusadded "voice actors" to the WP:ENTERTAINER group. All the other entertainers appear in front of the public, so that makes them more notable. Voice actors, many of them, seldom appear before the public. Shouldn't the bar be set higher for them?
For example, is it equally notable that the Batman character of Commissioner Gordon was played in a live action TV series by actor Neil Hamilton in the 1960s, and will soon be played by actor Ben McKenzie in September 2014 on TV, versus any of the voice actors who have provided characterizations for Gordon in animated productions? The voice actors are certainly good (Ted Knight, Bob Hastings, Mitch Pileggi and more) but the absence of face recognition automatically makes their work less notable to the public. The voice actors are less recognizable as celebrities.
Note that I have a handful of borderline voice actor biographies at AfD right now, which is why I have been thinking of this issue at all. I do not intend this discussion to affect the outcome of the AfDs, which will likely conclude before we determine a consensus here. Binksternet (talk) 17:16, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Voice actors get reviewed just like regular actors do these days, as pointed out during the discussion in which that was added. Notability is determined by independent coverage in reliable sources, not in perceived celebrity status. DreamFocus17:19, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
To clarify. I mean, coverage confirms that voice actors are as notable as regular actors, they always mentioned in any anime review. You do NOT actually need to have coverage for each individual voice actor. DreamFocus18:10, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
I'd like to explore your statement that "notability is determined by independent coverage in reliable sources", with regard to voice actors. A voice actor biography, under the current wording which you added in 2011, can be created or kept without any coverage by independent reliable sources. Instead, all that's needed is to show that so-and-so voiced major characters in multiple animated programs, as seen on the credits. This is basically a magic shoehorn for voice actors, granting them Wikipedia notability far beyond the attention they get in real life. If your statement about "coverage in reliable sources" was part of the package, then a lot of voice actor biographies would fail the guideline. For example, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Steve Staley you argued to keep the biography simply because of the roles the actor played, despite a total lack of independent, in-depth coverage in reliable sources. Binksternet (talk) 17:48, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Places that review Anime do comment on the voice actors with decent roles. You don't need coverage though, they played a significant part in a notable work, so it meets this subject specific guideline. This person does get coverage though. [18]DreamFocus17:55, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Great to see a paragraph written about one of Staley's characterizations! Thanks for that. But getting back to whether we need to establish that a voice actor has performed in roles, or whether a voice actor has been discussed in independent reliable sources, it seems you are you saying that we need the independent coverage. If that's the case, this guideline needs to be modified. Binksternet (talk) 18:03, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
I just said we don't need the coverage. That's why we have all the subject specific guidelines, because you won't find coverage for everything, and that's not the only way to determine WP:NOTABILITY. DreamFocus18:10, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
I disagree with this statement. The purpose of the subject-specific guidelines is to identify topics for which we should presume reliable coverage exists, even if it's difficult to find on-line. Without reliable sources, these articles on actors and athletes become magnets for original research, relying simply on credits and statistics. Pburka (talk) 18:15, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
That isn't listed anywhere. When they were creating the notability guidelines it was determined that coverage wasn't the only way to establish notability. You can be notable for your scientific achievements even if you never did an interview or had anyone write about your life. Same way for winning a gold medal, a noble prize, or various other things. Read the guidelines at Wikipedia:Notability (films) or Wikipedia:Notability (books) for a good example of this. DreamFocus22:13, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Pburka's statement is exactly why we have subject-specific guidelines. They provide an presumption of notability that allows for a standalone article, based on conditions that we will be able to obtain better secondary sourcing so that we actually write a good encyclopedic article. That presumption may turn out to be wrong in the future, but per DEADLINE, we are giving the article a chance to develop. That said, the conditions to gain this presumption should nearly always assure that sourcing will be found. An actor/actress that wins an Academy Award is certainly likely going to have secondary sources as a result from that. On the other hand, an actor/actress that just has a bit part for a small show is unlikely going to gain sourcing for that. This, from my experience with VAs, is typically the case, they don't get coverage beyond their IMDB page, though there are exceptions (Eg Nolan North, Tara Strong, etc.) And those exceptions have articles because they clearly meet the GNG. As such, VAs should be excluded from this guideline. --MASEM (t) 22:32, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Further to add, even if you believe that these conditions bypass the GNG, all these are still global-level guidelines and changes/additions to this need to be vetted by the community - otherwise it would really easy for an editor to add in a clause to allow their favorite topic to have articles. --MASEM (t) 22:34, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
I see a short back-and-forth between you and Edison which took place at WT:Notability_(people)/Archive_2011#Voice_actors. There was no consensus established back then; with his final comment Edison remained critical of the addition you made. Nobody else chimed in. The current discussion is already more populated than that. Let's keep this discussion moving forward rather than pointing to the inconclusive past. Binksternet (talk) 23:52, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
And ideally this should be tagged with an RFC to attract global consideration of adding it, or at least if there's a reasonably consensus to go forward with adding it from local discussion here. --MASEM (t) 23:59, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Okay, good idea. I made the RfC be very simple: whether to remove "voice actors". Another more complex option would be to add a requirement for in-depth coverage by multiple independent reliable sources. In that case we would be duplicating WP:GNG territory. Binksternet (talk) 00:10, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Keep in mind that the GNG is always the default fallback; a topic may fail one of the subject-specific guidelines but the GNG is king here. This all works on the concept of notability's presumption to allow an article the opportunity to grow and develop if there's a good chance there's sources there, and if you show the sources from the start, hey, great. --MASEM (t) 00:17, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
As mentioned above, the idea that a voice actor is less of a notable entertainer than a live-action actor is a western-centric viewpoint, and is therefore WP:Systemic bias; in Japan, voice actors are well on-par with other entertainment fields when it comes to prestige and media coverage. There, voice actors are regularly covered in entertainment news and tabloids, and have a rabid, almost sickening fanbase second only to female singing idol fans.
As an example, when Aya Hirano stated in a television interview that she couldn't cum unless she used a very thin condom, tabloids in Japan exploded, and stalkers sending death threats to her were arrested by police. After that, some reports then went on to say that she fucked an entire rock band, except for the bass guitar player. All this nonsense topped the Yahoo! Japan trending topics for weeks, all because of a stupid scandal and a rabid, mindless fanbase.
I've only given one extreme example, however there are much more cases out there, some just as extreme as this one. Hell, people often cover voice actor shenanigans and scandals more feverishly than any scandal that has ever cast shadow on AKB48, one of the biggest cogs of the Japanese entertainment industry, which kind of demonstrates how much of a big deal voice actors are in Japan. They are no less significant than film actors or singers, and the coverage of voice actors in Japanese news and broadcast media justifies this. As long as editors here on Wikipedia maintain an Americentric viewpoint on voice actors, they can never be fairly covered, which makes the project at odds with the claim that Wikipedia strives to be a fair, neutral and balanced encyclopedia. --benlisquareT•C•E05:40, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
If a VA is covered like that, even if only in Japanese media, that meets the GNG. We don't require English sources (only that English be used for the article), and if VAs in Japan have that much of a following in the press, great. In NA (US + Canada), between animated shows and video games, the two primary mediums for VA, this is not the case. It is the minority of these VAs have that have coverage beyond credits. So saying removing this creates a bias is really false - the GNG works in the favor of covering theses. (If anything, then, BLP becomes an issue if this is tabloid like reporting).
An issue that I see is that ENT #1 is vague "Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions." I read that with emphasis as "multiple significant roles". This means that there must be multiple roles that the actor has portrayed that has been called out be the media. For live action roles, this usually is not an issue, but cartoons, animated features, and video games, this simply doesn't happen with the regularity that is expected of live action.
And to stress again: at the end of the day we want an encyclopedic article on these people; a page that replicated IMDB's entry for them is not going to cut it. --MASEM (t) 05:58, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Regarding systemic bias, I don't think this notability guide is the place to Right Great Wrongs. If actors that appear before the public are more well known than voice actors who remain largely hidden, then that is an accurate representation of the natural balance. Instead, those who wish to push voice actors forward should celebrate the voice actors who gain sufficient media attention. I don't think it helps the encyclopedia if we host voice actors who are merely pluggers. Binksternet (talk) 06:33, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
It really doesn't matter whether they are seen visually or not, their providing a form of entertainment. And for the record, voice actors often do appear to the public. they go to conventions, get interviews, accept awards, accept criticism, and so on. Lucia Black (talk) 13:10, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
"[they're] providing a form of entertainment" is not a reason to have an encyclopedia article. There are thousands of youtube with popular (not notable) channels, we're not including them. We are looking for topics that can be written about in an encyclopedic manner and for the bulk of VAs, this simply isn't possible with third-party/secondary sources. --MASEM (t) 13:21, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
I'm not saying they aren't entertainers, but for the purposes of how WP looks to write articles, they don't get the regular press coverage that would equate them to the other entertainers listed in ENT. The easy way to see this is that a famous live-action character is likely going to have their actor playing that character easily know, while a famous animated character is not; there is a much stronger tie between role and actor for live-action television than there is for animated works, and VAs, even the most highly prolific ones, are not well-known faces. --MASEM (t) 13:34, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
See you're trying to take "actor" part and trying to justify that real actors have more coverage, but that doesn't make voice actors not meet the criteria of entertainers. How about opinion makers? How about comedians? How about Models? Lucia Black (talk) 13:43, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
All those people are in front of the camera as themselves, so there is a connection between the actor and the character or role they play that is very explicit. VA's are, bluntly, disembodied, at least in the Western side of the world - I am well aware that anime show productions in Japan heavily use the VAs themselves in public promotions, but that simply doesn't happen stateside. Because VAs are not very much tied to their characters for the most part, they simply are overlooked; even if the character is notable, the voice actor may not be. This is a bias that simply exists in the media, and not something that WP can or should try to correct. --MASEM (t) 14:47, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
This is as far as you're going to get masem, because i honestly don't find it valid. VAs get enough coverage, and get enough attention. its not really about having more or less, its about meeting the threshold. the heart of the problem is asking whether voice actors are mainstream enough. In which they are, but you neeed to look elsewhere, and this happens the same with the others. and models and comedians differ from actors as well. Lucia Black (talk) 15:04, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
WP's baseline is the ability for a topic to meet , or the potential to meet, the GNG. As a rule, this doesn't happen with VAs even if they are the voice of multiple significant roles, simply because once you switch to the animated format, the person behind the mic is not what is seen by the people writing the reliable sources. IMDB can document those that we can't cover. --MASEM (t) 15:20, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
What other reliable sources are there for VAs? (Note, I am well aware of reliable sources that cover animation and comics, like Den of Geek or Comic Book Resources, that do get to talk to VAs, and I do consider them reliable - but even with that, most VAs in the West go unnoticed). --MASEM (t) 15:39, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
What makes a voice actor so much different from a comedian or a model though, so that it warrants singling out that one particular category out of the whole lot? How is a voice actor any less WP:ENT than those two, from a global perspective (and not an American one)? I see WP:GNG is mentioned, however why do voice actors only have WP:GNG to fall back onto, while models and comedians have WP:ENT and WP:GNG to fall back on? Is it logical to give comedians special privilege when it comes to notability, but not voice actors?
Of the example case I've given above, yes it meets GNG, however that's not what I'm worried about. That Aya Hirano case was just to demonstrate how mainstream voice actors are in a different part of the world that's not in the United States. What I'm pointing out is the special, preferential treatment the other categories get, which doesn't seem to make sense. If the concern is that WP:ENT is allowing certain individuals to have articles despite having few third-party sources, then WP:ENT should be axed as a whole - so why single out voice actors? What about the comedians and models protected by WP:ENT - why should they continue to be protected, instead of being measured by WP:GNG as well? Notice this double standard that exists?
Either axe the entire thing, or leave it as it is. There is no logical reason to give comedians and models a fair pass over voice actors. How "entertaining" a particular field is a subjective measure that is purely opinionated; if someone claims that voice actors do very little when they provide voices for an animation, I too can argue that a person walking up and down a catwalk for 45 minutes isn't doing much either. That would be my opinion, though, and hence it would mean little, so by the same token, the opinion that voice actors aren't significant entertainers is only one aspect of what we're dealing with here. This has nothing to do with righting great wrongs, as Binksternet has claimed, unless pointing out systemic bias within the project is considered righting a great wrong, to which it is not. --benlisquareT•C•E11:45, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
We are not saying VAs are not significant, we are saying - whether its human nature or the media or how animation is often considered a lower form of entertainment - that VAs do not routinely get secondary coverage that people that stand in front of a camera do, as to assume that a VA with many major roles is going to have any respectable sourcing to automatically allow for an article. And as an encyclopedia meant to summarize what reliable sources say, we can't correct that bias that is created outside WP. It is this part of human nature, that we are more visual than verbal, and make the connection to what we see more than what we hear, that causes live actors, models, and comedians to be recognized and be the subject of more media, compared to the VA that sits behind camera, and while doing their own good job, are overlooked by the press and the masses.
Personally I'd be in favor of removing that line from ENT altogether - since we are talking, for the most part, living persons, we need sourcing in the first place, and what is "significant roles" is very arguable. (As we start to get into less network-driven programming, at what point does a show become "major", for example?) That would remove the bias that that line creates in the first place. --MASEM (t) 13:19, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
ENT #2 (about having a large (presumably documented) fan base) and #3 (major significant contribution to the industry) are readily documentable on their own and seem completely reasonably conditions to lead to more sourcing about the actor/entertainer themselves. ENT #1 needs the massive revamp or removal. --MASEM (t) 16:54, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
We have Vic Mignogna, Seth MacFarlane, and Billy West are prime examples, granted some of their work is known outside voice acting (especially seth macfarlane), but they are still well covered and it is a main feature in their careers. Sure not all voice actors are notable, but not all actors, models, and comedians are either. Lucia Black (talk) 15:51, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Right, but these are exceptional, not the rule. You take an average VA that does significant animated shows or video games, and there will be little sourcing about that. We're not saying that you can't have articles on VAs, but the GNG works just well for the dividing line given that we cannot make the same presumption on sourcing that live actors will have. --MASEM (t) 17:54, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
A topic is presumed to merit an article if all of the following are true:
It meets either the general notability guideline below or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right.
It is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy.
I don't know why some misread that. You only have to meet the general notability guidelines OR a subject specific guideline, not both. The fact that the GNG was put on the same page might confuse some people. DreamFocus21:23, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
You missed the point. Yes, that's what it says and that's true, but that means that any subject-specific notability guideline has to have global consensus just like the GNG, so inserting something that is based on minimal discussion into a subject specific guideline is a problem. And additions are meant to be criteria that we know at the end of the day sources will exist - we don't need the topic to meet the GNG at the start, but we want it too at the end. We had this issue when editors that wanted to include MMA athelets wrote their own subject-specific notability guidelines, and that was proven a problem. So the question if this advice should have been added in the first place. --MASEM (t) 21:40, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
I was commenting on the fact you constantly keep incorrectly telling people that other guidelines exist because we assume coverage exist. That is not the case, nor has it even been. The fact you don't like the subject specific guidelines, does not mean you can ignore them, or neuter them saying it still has to meet the GNG one day. It does not. And if you have a problem with a guideline, then just like you can with any other page, including the one listing the GNG, you can edit it through normal practices. If consensus is that voice actors are notable as regular actors, as it was in the many AFDs the discussion was had in years ago before I added that bit, then so be it. If not, then it will be removed. The fact that mainstream media likes to interview attractive Hollywood people more than voice actors, does not mean we should treat them any different. DreamFocus21:55, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Dream Focus, there has never been a 'consensus' that voice actors are just as notable as face actors. They are not; they never have been. Wikipedia must reflect this imbalance rather than try to correct it. Binksternet (talk) 22:24, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
There was a consensus in many AFDS at the time, that's why I added it, and why it has remained there for years. There is a consensus now, most people supporting it. DreamFocus22:31, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
No one is saying that voice actors can't be notable. We are saying that they don't have the immediate notability that live actors get to allow them into this guideline. As long as they still meet the GNG, then they can be included, as most of the Spongebob actors have been. --MASEM (t) 23:01, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
I have nothing wrong with the subject-specific guidelines for the practice of allowing standalone articles on topics that have a good likelihood of becoming encyclopedic article (that's the whole idea of "presumption of notability" here), if they immediately cannot be shown to meet the GNG to start. The point, however, is that such subject-specific guidelines require criteria that assure that GNG should come about in the future or with time and effort to locate. It doesn't have to meet the GNG at creation, or even for years after creation (it may take that long for sources to come) but they have to have a high likelihood of coming. Hence the criteria must be carefully selected and vetted by the global community to judge if these conditions will be met by the subject-specific guidelines. And the case for voice actors is just not there. They can be notable, but the criteria that applies reasonably to live-show actors (that having done many significant roles leads to notability of the actor) does not apply to a majority of voice actors. There is still the GNG that these actors can be shown notable, and many easily met that, but there's no criteria for a subject-specific guideline that works. --MASEM (t) 23:00, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
No matter how many times you say it, doesn't make it true. You do NOT have to ever meet the GNG. That is not why the subject specific guidelines exist. They exist because there is more than one way to establish notability, things able to be notable without passing the GNG. DreamFocus23:11, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
You missed the point yet again. The subject specific guidelines, once accepted by the global community, give the presumption of notability to allow a standalone page on that topic to give it the chance to improve and grow and get references. There is no rush or deadline to find GNG-type sourcing, and it would be BITEY to AFD an article that meets a global-community approved notability guideline early in its lifecycle. That said, if 5-10years pass, and the topic is long since fallen out of the news or coverage, and no sources has come about to allow us to write a good encyclopedic article, then it is completely fair to send the article to AFD (or merge it if possible), on the basis that the AFD nominator has made a good faith attempt to find any sources, on the basis that the presumption of notability was mistaken in this case. This is why notability is a "presumed" quality. The important part of this is to make sure that we don't have poorly selected criteria that causes this to happen at the end of the day. We don't assume that any credited actor is notable for this reason - too many bit players simply are not notable at the end of the day, even if we can verify they acted, and we presumed they acted, we'd have way too many deletions to consider down the road. Thus the criteria have to be selected with care to avoid too many "false positive", and have the community vet that before adding it.
This is practice, how the subject-specific guidelines have been used and established in several RFCs in the past. These are not "automatic allowances" that can never be challenged - we don't have any concept of inherit notability on WP, and the ability to challenge presumptions of notability down the road are needed to prevent that. And that also means that we have to challenge any criteria that has been added without global input to avoid the case like the MMA athletes that came about before. Notability guidelines are not "what we include" but "what qualities we look for for topics that we want to include." And the challenge on the table is that voice actors simply do not have the "automatic" coverage that live actors get to allow them to be included in the guideline. --MASEM (t) 23:34, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
@Postdlf: There was no community consensus for the addition - effectively a submarine addition - which is now rearing its head because someone found several articles that are being justified by this addition now; as pointed out above, this basically came from a discussion involving two editors and no more, so there is no such thing as "community consensus" for the addition. This is a perfectly normal thing to question. --MASEM (t) 03:12, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Also, remember that just being listed on this guideline is not a guarentee that the article won't be deleted at AFD. As stated, this page only gives a presumption of notability that can be challenged later, so the act of seeking consensus on removal is no way a disruption of the AFD process. --MASEM (t) 03:22, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
So your position is that this didn't reflect community practice when it was added but nevertheless somehow remained untouched for three years, and now that it does demonstrably reflect community practice as seen at recent AFDs, now it should be removed? postdlf (talk) 05:15, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
That's what submarining edits do, especially on policy/guideline pages that aren't watched by many. It was a very small edit (two works) in a list, so it has every possibility of going unnoticed. And now that we are discovering articles on VAs that fail to show the sourcing necessary (and which should have had sources come out based on the actor's timeline) and that people are pointing to this addition, now is the time to do something about it. WP is too large to have every page monitored all the time, and these types of edits (Both main and policy space) sneak in all the time, this is yet another example of this. --MASEM (t) 06:14, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Nonsense. There are 586 watchers to this page. Things people don't agree with get removed rather quickly. Look at the edit history [19] and you can see how many times something has been reverted and how fast people respond to it. People are watching. There were 50 edits in January 2011 alone when I added this. AFDs at that time when a lot of voice actors were going to AFD, reflected people supported the same standards for voice actors as regular actors. Many are making that case even now in the slew of articles nominated by the same person all at once. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Johnny Yong Bosch for a good example of what happens when enough people notice and participate in an AFD, 11 saying keep, only nominator saying delete. This happens more often than not in these types of things. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Anime_and_manga for other voice actor AFDs open now. DreamFocus07:14, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
I think Masem has nailed it: the two-word addition of "voice actors" went unnoticed by too many editors here. Only Edison challenged it at the time, and only Dream Focus supported it at the time. Nobody else voiced an opinion. Binksternet (talk) 07:18, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Read my above post please, and click on some links. Discussions like this Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Johnny Yong Bosch, where someone would nominate a bunch of articles at once as you did with it, and people would overwhelmingly state that they passed WP:entertainer, they actors just like regular actors were. DreamFocus07:23, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
That argument is a Catch-22 in this discussion. You can't say that because AFDs use this clause to support retaining VAs that we need to retain this line about VAs in ENT. --MASEM (t) 13:10, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
That isn't what I was saying at all. I was saying the discussions happened in places like that previously. It wasn't just something I did without any discussion anywhere. DreamFocus13:18, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
That is what you are arguing - you're saying that we should keep VA s in ENT #1 because people are using ENT #1 to keep articles on VA today (eg that one for Bosch is this month). --MASEM (t) 13:27, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Before it was added, there were large numbers of people using ENT #1, explaining voice actors were the same as actors. So I just added that bit to clarify it for anyone that got confused. DreamFocus13:56, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
That's fair, but that also still points to the problem that ENT #1's overall wording gives. --MASEM (t) 14:46, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Voice actors are not equally notable as other actors
Some folks here have argued that voice actors are just as notable as actors who are recognized by face. I think that is wishful thinking. Here are some supporting views:
Cartoon Brew published a story in July 2013 ("Once and For All, Al Pacino Proves the Worthlessness of Celebrity Voice Actors") that discusses the general lack of importance of who it is who voices an animated character in a film. The article says, "the quality of the animation performance and storytelling are far bigger factors than who voices any particular character."
The authors of the book The Magic Behind the Voices: A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors note repeatedly that voice actors have always struggled for recognition, against the prevailing studio executives' view that they were easily replaced. They say on page xvii that producers have from the beginning sought to keep voice actors anonymous. They say on page xix that the name of Mel Blanc "is still more readily recognizable to the general public than even the most successful and versatile contemporary voice artist working today". They say on page xxv that voice actors get very little respect in the industry, to the point of their names being too frequently misspelled in the credits. They say on page xxix that union actors who are moonlighting as voice actors often use a throwaway pseudonym for the credits, especially in the low-paying field of English dubbing of foreign animation. On the bright side, the authors say that voice actors have enjoyed a degree of increasing respect since the 1990s.
The podcast and blog The MacGuffin Men writes that "Voice Actors Are Screwed, Basically" because of how little recognition they get. The voice actor Billy West is described as very prolific, well known within voice acting circles, but like all voice actors he is hardly known "outside of those circles."
The Village Voice wrote about voice actors: "They're Just Like Us: Life as a Voice-Over Artist is Really Just a Constant Hustle". Voice actor Sondra James said, "You're background, you're furniture. You provide atmosphere. But let's face it, you're not important." The article tells us that "Voice-over 'stars' are often afforded little to no recognition, a fact that insiders seem remarkably cool with."
The book Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema describes some voice actors who got famous in non-English-speaking countries for dubbing the parts of famous screen actors in live action films or TV, but tells the reader on page 201 that many voice actors "never achieve such fame," that they just do it for the money, despite the fact that they are "often denied residuals for their performances."
So here are people inside and outside the industry saying that voice actors are not as well recognized as screen actors. I find it especially convincing that voice actors are saying the same thing, that they are not given as much credit as screen actors. Binksternet (talk) 07:12, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
How many of those things you listed are reliable sources, and not just personal blogs? English language places that review anime are far less common than places that review regular television shows and films, but they always review the voice acting. Even mainstream media reviews the voice acting for big animated films, just as they would the regular acting in a non-animated film. DreamFocus07:21, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Voice actors who are already famous get reviewed a lot; for instance Robin Williams voicing the genie in Alladin, or Tom Hanks voicing the cowboy doll in the Toy Story franchise. English-speaking voice actors who are primarily unseen by the public rarely get reviewed, or we would not have the huge problem of so many biographies hanging on nothing but the two words you inserted in the guideline here. Binksternet (talk) 07:33, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Do you believe we need to mention regular actors in WP:ENTERTAINER then, if the famous ones get reviews enough to pass GNG already? If we're measuring people by what the media feels like covering only, instead of by their accomplishments, why not have the same standard apply to both types of actors? DreamFocus07:44, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
I'd argue for getting rid of ENT #1 because it is a minefield of sourcing bias and of subjective importance - what is a "major" work? What is a "significant role"? Removing it puts all actors and VAs and any other entertainer on the same field. --MASEM (t) 13:22, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps we can have some wording to make clear we need more than mere screen credit sources, like imdb, or producer supplied credit listings; but not require WP:GNG level sources in the article. I think if there are sources that make clear an actor had multiple signficant roles, that should be good enough. For example, if somebody starred in two hit shows, and you have an article indicating that for each, but the articles focus on the show more than the actor, we should accept that, and not demand whole articles be about the actor personally (to meet the "substantial" requirement of GNG). I think there's a false notion you can determine if a role is signficant by whether the person appears on screen. You need a neutral reliable source indicating that. --Rob (talk) 09:22, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
IMDB should never be used as a reliable source in any case, see WP:RS/IMDB and Wikipedia:ELPEREN#IMDb. Right now, they are the sources which the articles in contention are being written from--they're certainly not being writtten from sources that can't be found.
I think you're right to say that you need a reliable source indicating that a role is signficant, to be sure. I would be somewhat sympathetic to anything that nails down what would be evidence for that clause of ENT #1, since there's no real consensus on what signficant means. ENT #1 is almost never invoked outside of voice actors, and when it is, "significant" for some people means top two, for others, top twenty roles within the work--I don't know that we should put a number to it, but perhaps a range or other indication would be good.
There is also one more detail that turns out to matter. If an animated film is dubbed into several languages, are we including every voice actor who dubbed any signficant role in any language within the significance test? --j⚛e deckertalk10:57, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions. Multiple means more than one. I've seen ENT #1 used for others plenty of time not just voice actors. Google won't let me search through the articles for deletion for some reason, otherwise I'd be able to show you just how often it is invoked. And why would you need a reliable source to tell you if a role is significant? For instance, if they are a main character seen in every single episode, then that role is significant. As for as IMDB being used for the only reference, that's not true, since some of these articles have things that aren't in the IMDB. Most people have an official website listing their previous work. There are also websites other than IMDB that keep track of these things. And you can always see the credits in the show to prove the person was in it. Check Amazon.com for the product, and see who is listed in the credits. DreamFocus11:06, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
"And why would you need a reliable source to tell you if a role is significant?" Because everyone has subjective opinions on something like this. What is a significant role to one may be a trivial appearance to another. Is it by plot, by screen time, by critical reception? If it was more precise language - such as "a starring or regular cast member of a network television show" (whether a live or VA), that might be more reasonable, but the language of ENT #1 is way too broad in what we consider for roles that it has to be tighter. --MASEM (t) 13:26, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Then we can change the wording if it wasn't obvious enough already what a significant role was. It shouldn't just be network television though. Any notable work, be it a film or a television series, if its notable enough to get its own Wikipedia article it counts. For video games it'd be by how much time they spent talking I suppose. A few one liners wouldn't matter, but some games these days have really long cutscenes. I always thought the word "significant" was enough, no need for an actual time period or number of episodes. But if that's what it takes to avoid confusion, so be it. DreamFocus14:03, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
"Significance" can always be argued because of how subjective that is. And importantly, the conditions where we are assured that there will be coverage of the actors is nearly always limited to prime time network shows and a small number of premium cable netwoks (HBO, AMC, etc.) There are shows that are popular to get viewer but get nearly no critical reception. That's the problem with ENT #1 is that is written from the standpoint of notability being inclusion guidelines, instead of being sourcing guidelines. --MASEM (t) 14:45, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Rob, I don't think that voice actors should be represented at all in ENT, since they are not visible to the public most of the time, and for voice actors outside of Japan, they are often not the subject of in-depth coverage in the media. Let's not try to establish a false equivalence between them and screen actors. However, if we keep voice actors in ENT, we should require both ENT #1 and ENT #2. A voice actor who is mobbed at Comic-Con would count. Binksternet (talk) 14:25, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Why would voice actors be required to meet ENT#1 and ENT#2 when the others in the category would not? It should be clear by the role in the series whether it is significant or not. Stuff like ADR loop group / walla or Additional Voices would not be notable. There are exceptions to this as some titles such as video games do not list their voice talent credits on-screen, but other articles support their promotions. -AngusWOOF (talk) 14:58, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
As a side note, at the video games project we generally do not mention voice actors within games unless secondary sources mention them (eg the joke on how every game has Nolan North voicing).
The point that also affects live actors from ENT #1 is the vagueness of its phrasing. It assumes that every notable show recieves a vast amount of coverage, which is definitely not the case. As I've mentioned above, if we limited the shows to those in prime time network television (And whatever the national equivalent is elsewhere), where nearly every show is vetted by entertainment magazines, including any animated offerings (eg Fox's animation block), and as such any starring role (live or voice) it would completely reasonable to expect to find sources for the actor. But you move away from those conditions, and that broad assurance is gone. --MASEM (t) 15:10, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
AngusWOOF, I answered this above, but I'll answer this question again. In practice, only voice actors are ever discussed with respect to WP:ENT#1. The reason we don't get too fussy about it with on-screen actors is simple, for on-screen actors is that when notability is argued by WP:ENT#1, but dont' meet WP:GNG, it is generally assumed that they are not notable. For example, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joseph Booton (actor). That result could never happen right now if the fellow had only had off-screen work, because the actual bias in how we use this policy allows us to copy IMDB into Wikipedia articles and call it a biography only for voice actors. --j⚛e deckertalk16:39, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
I'm seeing the same debate going on A) Voice actors don't are not equal to real actors B) IMDB.
First off, it doesn't really matter if their not equal to real actors, their a different kind and subject to different type of coverage. Second relating to IMDB, no one here supports IMDB as a reliable source, so one thing to realize is that there is no need for it. So can we stop talking about IMDB? we know that, but you keep bringing it up as if we're trying to use it as a reason why their relevant. Lucia Black (talk) 03:00, 24 June 2014 (UTC)}
It's ironic here that one of the contributors to this discussion is using ANN/E (more or less IMDB-unreliable) as a source in their argument for a voice actor who does not meet GNG (apparently) based on WP:ENT #1 more or less at the same time I'm reading this. The idea that this is not relevant ignores the reality on the ground at AfD, that is why I bring it up. That having been said, I've made my point, and I will be happy to move along. As we are changing subjects, I would also welcome your comments about providing guidance on what "significance" means, below. --j⚛e deckertalk16:29, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Joe Decker, you link to a single AFD with a small number of people participating, as though that is relevant here. I have seen many AFDs with regular actors in them where Entertainer was used to support their inclusion. Cherry picking something like that, to try to convince people of your unfounded belief its only used for voice actors, is ridiculous. And none of those articles just copy IMDB to an article. The one AFD opened now where someone suggested that was the case, I disproved by showing that both IMDB and the current article each had items listed that the other did not[20]. DreamFocus06:13, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
Dream Focus (and btw, you're welcome to abbreviate me to Joe if you prefer, I'm cool either way): I have closed thousands of AfDs, my comments reflect my long and general experience, not only doing that, but the couple years I spent adding sources to 3000 or so unsourced biographies at WP:URBLPR. I am not speaking from a single example. In my experience, it is extraordinarily rare for an non-voice actor to be kept who doesn't demonstrate notability under WP:GNG. I don't think we're going to make much progress here convincing each other, though, so I'll leave it, and ask if you'd like to add an opinion to my question below. I'd love to hear your answer. Thanks! --j⚛e deckertalk07:56, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Define significance
What do we mean by "significance?" here? How do we measure it?
Hypothetical: You have a role, and someone tells you it is signficant in a series of movies. The role is never mentioned in the series of well-developed Wikipedia articles on any of the movies or the series. At ANN/E, which is an appropriate (not reliable, but on-topic) source for the series, the actor is mentioned in two of the movies. In the first, that actor is not included in the first grouping of 17, presumably most significant characters. In the second, the actor is not included in the top grouping of 11, presumably most signficant characters. In both cases they are mentioned, but it's hard to tell whether they are the 18th and 12th most important characters in the respective films, or 100th and 100th. No reliable sources can be found to back this claim of significance. No other evidence, except bare opinion, is used to back significance. Yes or no, is that role signficant?
More generally, how do we measure significance? Can we give any guidance at all? Or is significance just a word we use to turn AfD into a vote? --j⚛e deckertalk07:29, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
The Scottish guy who was in the Darth Vader suit didn't have a significant part, since anyone could've been in that suit, no facial expressions shown or body movements showing any skill. But the guy doing the voice for Darth Vader did have a significant role of course, that some talented voice acting there. Darth Maul on the other hand, had few lines, but the actor did a lot of work with him, body movements, posturing, and whatnot. So that actor had a significant role in him. DreamFocus09:37, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
There is actually a decent way to tell for most movies and TV shows, and that is the starring credits. If an actor's name appears in the regular show's main credit sequence, that probably means the character they are playing is significant. If they appear in the opening credits of a movie, that means their role is probably significant. If neither case is true, then it's not as easy to say they are significant but that doesn't mean immediately they are not significant, but you would have to show that the role of such parts was considered significant to the show/film. That takes out a lot of subjectivity in terms of the automatic allowance that ENT #1 implies. --MASEM (t) 13:22, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
In the case of Darth Vader, the main credits list do have the actors for him inside suit and his voice, as well as the guys who do R2D2 and C3P0. If an actor's most significant role is not credited, or buried in Additional Voices or Stunts, then other reliable sources need to be provided to show significance, as with Majel Barrett doing the computer voices for much of the Star Trek series. -AngusWOOF (talk) 14:00, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Dream Focus: I'm pretty sure that SW and ST have been covered so extensively that Darth is not a particularly critical test of what we're trying to do here, is it possible that either the Vader actors isn't covered to the point where they meet GNG? Still, I take your point.
Masem: That seems a completely solid test for significance to me, and I'm pretty sure that opening credits don't usually reach to eighteen actors, which leaves me thinking my impulse in my hypothetical is toward "non-notable unless shown otherwise." What I can tell you with certainty is that a case like that hypothetical would draw keep opinions from right now from actors arguing the significance of the role if it were a voice actor in an anime.
I do think some level of guidance would be helpful in any case, and perhaps I should start a discussion outside of this voice actor discussion, since it really relates to WP:ENT1 in general. I quite like your test, Masem. And I would agree with Dream Focus it should largely be of the form "if the role is XYZ, the role is probably significant, if it is not XYZ, then the role will not be assumed to be signficant without some solid evidence to the contrary.", and of course, I imagine we'd agree that GNG should be considered a means an actor can use to "pass" the notability test in any case, even for an "insignificant" role. --j⚛e deckertalk15:10, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
The GNG is always backup/default for determining if a standalone article is appropriate, definitely. --MASEM (t) 16:45, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
One more question about significance, if I might. One aspect of voice acting which is inherently different is the presence of arguably parallel "dubs" of a work into multiple language. If a work is translated into seven languages, do we accord all the actors of the signficant roles a claim of significance under ENT 1? Or should this be more restricted in any way, and if so how? --j⚛e deckertalk16:33, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
They use professional voice actors for anime these days, not just some random dub, they finding out early on that hurts their sales. DreamFocus17:32, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
I think Joe's talking about the reverse, when, say, Western animated shows are localized for other markets (dubbed anime is a special class, arguably). --MASEM (t) 17:34, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Disney has people singing songs from Frozen all over the world, it a hit in every market. For television shows, finding out if the show was successful everywhere would be more difficult. Unless someone finds a reliable source which list the ratings in all markets its released in. If the animation was successful in one nation but not another, and the only difference was the voices, it could be the voice actors chosen weren't any good. Then again somethings just don't do as well for cultural reasons, no doubt of the voice actors. Did the show get any media coverage in those markets? DreamFocus17:47, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Masem, Dream Focus: Yes, sorry if my wording was imprecise. The ENT #1 guideline gives no specific guidance on *any* voice acting, whether original or after the fact, whether related to an animated property or a live-action one. As such, it is often read as including any and all of those cases. I'm asking if that is the desired outcome. It was not my intent to imply that any one of these entertainers were not professional. --j⚛e deckertalk17:52, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
All fair points, but the language of ENT#1 begs that "well the show is popular in market A therefore it is a significant show; in market B this person does that voice for the same significant show, therefore that VA is notable"-type logic, which doesn't work. From my experience, the localization of English animated shows to European languages is rarely something done with care using any available and cheap talent (read: likely non-notable) compared to the localization of anime to English. Hence why the looseness of the ENT#1 language - applying to VAs as well as other actors - simply doesn't work given that we're trying to assure source availability. --MASEM (t) 17:56, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
TL;DR (at least not all the way)
Not sure what to say here, and by the time I got here there was too much to wade through, but my two cents is that VAs should be treated like any other actor - including those who might have many roles in many notable films but which amount to little more than Redshirt #34. If their articles are little more than lists of where they've been in the media, then no, WP:N remains unsatisfied. I don't think VAs are somehow magically "less notable" than any other breed of actor (I think the notion is preposterous), it just depends on how much extra-media exposure they have (e.g. interviews and such where they explain themselves). The emphasis should be on how much can be used to fill out their articles, not what kind of work they do. This applies even to live-action actors who do a lot of work. LazyBastardGuy16:31, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
For clarification, when you say "just depends on how much extra-media exposure they have", isn't that just what WP:GNG does? Are you suggesting eliminating WP:ENT#1 entirely? --j⚛e deckertalk16:34, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
"Less notable" does not mean less talented. It means less coverage in the media, which is exactly what you describe. As seen in the media links I provided above, for instance the one from CNN, there is a clearly acknowledged difference between screen actors and voice actors with regard to recognition. Binksternet (talk) 16:49, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
I think what I'm trying to say is this shouldn't apply only to voice actors. If we're going to go through the list of VAs and cut down the non-notable ones, we should take aim at all the actor articles that are in identical condition (and trust me, there are plenty). But we need to be absolutely certain we cannot expand an article on such a subject; I'm trying to avoid "Well, so-and-so's only a voice actor and their article is threadbare, I guess I'll just delete it rather than take the time to see if it can be saved". I think there's a bit of fall-out from the overly narrow focus of this RfC; in my view it should apply to actors of all stripes, even if in the end it ends up being more relevant to one class than the others. LazyBastardGuy17:07, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
I think there is an argument for ridding ourselves of ENT #1 entirely -- I really do have qualms about most biographies that don't have sourcing that meets GNG, both from a WP:V/hoax perspective, from a WP:NOTSTATS perspective (I can explain this one more if you want), and to a smaller extent from a WP:BLP perspective. The reason that this was voice actors *appear* to be being singled out is experience at AfD, quite parallel to the way that WP:PORNBIO already singles out a class of actors for what appears to be a higher bar. It is not some inherent judgment that one or the other is bad -- although that may have played into some editor's reasonings with PORNBIO -- it is that in my experience, a "signficant on-screen role" is likely to create a very good chance that there is reliable coverage that can be found, this is not true of porn actors nor does it seem to be as true of voice actors (either for animation or non-animated dubs.) There is a claim that this is somehow a matter of systemic bias because all the good sources are in Japanese, but I find it to be true of Hindi-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and Engilsh-speaking American-based voice actors as well. I understand that my perspective is frustrating to people who enjoy animation (I like to think I'm in that category myself), but it is, for me at least, simply the result of experience. In any case, perhaps reconsidering ENT #1 in general is a sensible discussion to have. --j⚛e deckertalk17:22, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Alternate proposal: Reword ENT#1
Based on the above discussion, I'd like to offer the following change to ENT#1: Instead of Actors, voice actors, comedians, opinion makers, models, and celebrities: #1: Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions., it would be Actors, voice actors, comedians, opinion makers, models, and celebrities: #1: has had leading/starring roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions. This deals with the issues that have been identified above - that just because subjectively one thinks a role is important does not assure that sourcing can be found, but when you focus on the leading or starring roles for any of these works (regardless of the entertainer type), then the likelihood of finding sources increases dramatically. Actors and other entertainers that don't have such starring roles still can meet the GNG to be considered notable and have a standalone article. This removes our implied bias against voice actors that some of the objectors above have stated, putting the issue to how the show or work considers the voice actors relative to everything else. --MASEM (t) 02:26, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps mentioning what "isn't" a significant role, would help more. Such as a background character or a minor reoccurring role. Lucia Black (talk) 02:51, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
I have seen people argue that a small, recurring is "the most important plot element ever"-type logic. The word "significant" here, particularly when we are talking works of fiction for the most part, is the landmine here that causes the problem, because what is significant to fans is not significant to the press. --MASEM (t) 02:59, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Sure, there are significant, non-starring roles. But the amount of coverage for that person behind that role will be a function of the type of medium that work is (and more specifically, tied to the work's audience size). There is a vast difference between how much coverage there is going to be between a live actor that plays a recurring role 3-4 times a season on a broadcast network, primetime program, and a live actor that plays a recurring role 3-4 times a season on a cable network. Limiting it to starring roles of notable shows means that someone has likely commented on the starring roles and thus sourcing will likely be available, irregardless of the show's medium. --MASEM (t) 02:57, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
I could see a "recurring" role, where the recurring actor appears in more than, say, half the episodes and as part of the lead credits (typically under "Guest Starring..." within the episode itself) would be reasonable to include too. --MASEM (t) 03:07, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Remember the point here: We're saying, by meeting ENT#1, that there's a very good chance that there's going to be sources that will discuss that entertainer in good detail that it's reasonable to allow for an article. So lead actors or those playing major recurring characters clearly meet that. But that's not saying all other roles are insignificant, but that just because of their lack of "starring" or "recurring" status, assurance about sourcing for the person is just not there to simply allow an article. But if you can find GNG-type sources for those actors, hey, great, that's the other route for notability. The point is to remove "significance" which is very subjective, to a more objective measurement that applies equally fair to all types of entertainers. --MASEM (t) 03:20, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
I'm not against it. but since this will apply to all entertainers, it wont be an issue anymore. So i support it if we find commong round. I'm wondering if anyone has objections. Lucia Black (talk) 03:25, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
As far as Masem is concerned nothing is notable if it doesn't get coverage in the media. There is no reason dragging this argument out with him, as has been done time and time over the years. You won't convince him otherwise. The AFDs open for voice actors during this discussion which have been closed all ended in KEEP, based on satisfying ENT #1 alone, [21][22][23][24][25][26] except one I see which was no consensus. [27]DreamFocus04:55, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Per policy at WP:OR, "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." Notability guidelines are there to make sure that we can write articles that can met this, not just to document who's who in the entertainment business per WP:NOT. And you can't use the circular argument that we should keep ENT #1 as it is because it hsa been used as the argument to keep certain articles in the past based on it. Even if any of ENT's metric are met, if no sources can be found beyond that when we should have expected some, then deletion is completely appropriate - this is how all the notability guidelines work, they are not automatic inclusion guidelines as you think they are. --MASEM (t) 04:54, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
You are quoting it out of context. That refers to information in an article, not whether it is notable. This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not clearly stated by the sources themselves.DreamFocus04:57, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
No I'm not. Articles overall cannot be based only on primary sources, that's what WP:NOT and WP:NOR are detailing. Hence the need for the likelihood to find secondary sources, and why ENT#1 needs to have a better line when those sources will likely come about due to an actor's roles. --MASEM (t) 05:17, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
No, but notability is there to make sure that there's a presumption of sourcing for a good encyclopedic articles. We require articles to have more than just primary sources - we need secondary coverage in addition to primary. Notability is a test to see if that is likely the case. And hence why we can't just presume a topic is notable because of implied "significance" that can be highly subjective for fictional works. --MASEM (t) 06:21, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Whether a role is "significant" is determined how it's covered. For various reasons the media give more attention (and therefore significance) to some seemingly minor roles, over roles with more screen time. It's not for us to judge, but just to follow the sources. Typically non-significant roles get no coverage outside of imdb and similar sources. Sources like imdb really say little about significance. If the role is explicitly covered in reliable sources, it's likely significant even if it's not "GNG" level coverage. If you have "leading/starring" as the requirement, than people will use that to give articles based solely on how the screen credits appear, ignoring independent sources. --Rob (talk) 05:59, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Again, the GNG is a baseline - if it meets that, it's fine. We're specifically talking about cases where the GNG may not immediately be met (due to sources being in print or where the person has just gained stardom) in which we would let any of BIO, including this ENT#1, apply so that notability can be presumed and given a full topic so that it has a chance to develop into an encyclopedic articles. If the actor has independent sources that meet the GNG, then they are good to go regardless of ENT#1. --MASEM (t) 06:21, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Support, per Thivierr/Rob. Significant media coverage is already dealt with by WP:GNG, so the ENT guideline can ignore articles built on that basis. What the suggested wording gives us is a narrowing of the focus to just leading/starring roles which somehow have slipped through the media without being covered in depth. Binksternet (talk) 06:41, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Support. Starring roles are more likely to fit a given definition of "notable role", and this will help address my concern mentioned in the previous section that the proposal seems to narrowly target voice actors who do little else. Starring roles also, as Masem pointed out, are more likely to have independent reliable information published about the people performing them, which will indeed help make articles on these people far more than mere lists of appearances in media. LazyBastardGuy16:20, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Support The "leading/starring" language, and I also support removing voice actors from the guideline. Let me be clear: I will support keeping any articles about Japanese voice actors that meet the GNG based on coverage in reliable Japanese language sources. I will support keeping biographies of voice actors of any nationality that meet the GNG with reliable sources published in any language. I see this Wikipedia as the English language encyclopedia of the whole world, not the encyclopedia of the English speaking world. But subject specific notability guidelines are intended to give us a quick tool for separating the wheat from the chaff. They establish a generally accepted presumption that reliable sources could be found for almost all examples of a category of topics, with an in-depth search. I do not believe that this presumption exists worldwide for voice actors. Maybe in Japan, though I claim no expertise in Japanese language sourcing, but not worldwide, and certainly not in English speaking countries. So, I do not advocate deleting any biographies of voice actors of any nationality who meet GNG. But I also do not accept that the probability of voice actors meeting the GNG worldwide is equivalent to that of on-screen and on-stage actors meeting that standard. Cullen328Let's discuss it06:31, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I do want to be clear that my ENT#1 proposal does not remove VAs from the list of Entertainers for the good reasons that others above had said - it is somewhat discrimatory of us to do that, when it is the media themselves that create the imbalance. I do believe this still addresses the fact that VAs do not get the recognization like live actors do, at least speaking from American animation - your big shows like Simpsons and South Park will list featured VAs (that's good for starring for me), but your average daytime children's animated show will not. Anime is different where the VAs are generally part of the intro role, and as others have stated, Japan does elevate VAs to a higher level than US media. --MASEM (t) 14:43, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose per Dream Focus -there are significant roles that are not starring/leading roles. They give a "Best supporting actor" Oscar for a reason.--cyclopiaspeak!16:18, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
... and that's why if an entertainer fails ENT#1, they can still be notable per the GNG. No one is saying that actors outside of starring role should not have articles, only that the allowance to have an article without having GNG-like sourcing should be limited to those that are in starring roles, which by that nature will likely have sourcing that can eventually be found. --MASEM (t) 16:29, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I think such supporting roles still count as starring roles. After a certain point, the cutoff line is difficult to determine - when does an actor go from merely portraying this week's Guy to being supporting? Reliable sources will help us answer that. It's not as if the single main character is the only one whose actor receives an article. LazyBastardGuy16:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I have been gone for a while, and i thought that we would instead define was isn't "significant" over than trying to define what "is". Meaning knowing what isn't a significant role (such as lets say a bystander or random person that gets two lines in an episode) will mean anything. I don't agree that significant role is only for "starring" and "leading" roles. Lucia Black (talk) 16:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Supporting roles are still significant in their own way, and reliable sources will see them as such. You can't have a house without support beams, even if they are not part of rooms where people spend much of their time. Someone can have a supporting role and still be considered to "star" in something, therefore having a starring role in it. Again, reliable sources will help us figure out when a character is no longer in the background and when they are actually part of the plot, helping to drive it forward. LazyBastardGuy16:42, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I agree that ENT#1 should include co-stars, which are usually considered lead roles in ensemble casts. Recurring stars and episodic guest stars would depend on the production, like whether they would be listed among a major characters list. -AngusWOOF (talk) 17:13, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
No issue with including co-stars - they will likley be listed as starring or regular cast in the credits rolls. --MASEM (t) 17:20, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I support the idea of clarifying what is a significant role, but I'm not sure if this wording is good. I think some people might take "leading" and "starring" to mean just the protagonist, and not other major characters. I think is might be better to add a second sentence to ENT#1 to clarify what is meant by significant, rather than trying to find a different word to use. For instance, the sentence could say "significant roles include the primary or regular cast of a work", or something like that. Calathan (talk) 18:11, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Or we can avoid WP:CREEP by not yammering away about what an ordinary english word means and instead allow AFD participants to determine what roles are "significant" in the particular dramatic works at issue. postdlf (talk) 18:43, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Because we are talking about shows (live actor or animated or otherwise) that have fan bases, the word "significant" is going to be an incredibly biased term, and too subjective to be used for a notability guideline. If a role is "significant" (from a more objective approach) but otherwise not a starring/regular role, there will certainly be sources that identify the role as such, and thus allow for the article on the actor via the GNG. --MASEM (t) 18:47, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Yet "significant" has been the guideline for how long? And can you point to AFDs disregarding that language as unworkable rather than applying it? If not, then it reflects practice and should not be changed. postdlf (talk) 19:07, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Many of the AFD examples about more specific for VAs demonstrate this issue (eg Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sachi Matsumoto). And just because it has been in the guideline for as long as it has doesn't mean it was right or wrong. Someone's identified a problem with how that is taken, so we should consider trying to improve it. --MASEM (t) 19:22, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I Oppose this change. There are people who spent their entire career as character actors and had no starring/lead roles. Trey Wilson springs immediately to mind. We don't recommend using "best known for" in our articles as it violates WP:NPOV yet this leads us right back down that road. MarnetteD|Talk19:56, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
It is not WP's place to document actors who may only have character roles that are not documented by third-party/secondary sources at large. If these actors have had such sourcing, (like [28] for Trey above), great, let's have the article, but actors that stay in the realm of character roles without starring credits are not assured to have coverage by media and thus should not be covered by ENT#1 in the first place. (Also, even with the existing wording, I'd have a hard time classifying "character roles" as "significant", by the very definition of character roles). --MASEM (t) 20:20, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
What Wikipedia documents and what it doesn't is for the community to decide. The fact that you have a "hard time classifying character roles as significant" shows a lack of understanding of the business of both storytelling and acting. Without character actors most films/plays/TV programs fall apart. No encyclopedia worth its salt should be keeping actors like Strother Martin or Eli Wallach from having articles. This smacks too much of a "lets delete 1000's of articles campaign" on a reasoning so narrow as to fly in the face of Wikipedia's purpose. MarnetteD|Talk04:32, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Well, the community, as a whole, has decided that we are to focus on documenting topics with third-party, secondary coverage (per the main policies of WP), and the fact that some of these minor actor's article on WP are simply rehashes of IMDB is what flies in the face of WP's purpose. But the point of this change is not to say that no character actor can be notable, but that not every character actor is going to receive the same type of recognition in sources as starring actors, and as such, there's no reason we should have ENT#1 automatically include them. For every character actor of Eli Wallace's reputation, there's like 10 that never bubble up beyond bit, unmemorial roles. Those that do get a reputation for their character acting skill, then the GNG should easily allow articles on them as they did for Eli and Strother. Remember, even if you kept ENT's wording as it is, the "presumption" of notability is still something that can be challenged down the road if no third-party, secondary sources develop. --MASEM (t) 06:20, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose The problem is reliable sources may indicate a non-starring role is significant in their coverage, but not necessarily have GNG level coverage of the actor personally. So they will be deemed to have failed GNG and NACTOR, even though they are playing significant roles. GNG has been interpreted to be very restrictive on Wikipedia (unfortunately). I can see !voters at AFD dismissing sources about a significant role, saying the source is about the role, not the person, and therefore it's only a "passing" mention, and doesn't count as substantial. --Rob (talk) 20:24, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Oppose, whatever criticism one may level at the term "significant", "leading/starring" is far narrower than current consensus supports and is thus an attempt to prescribe rather than describe actual practice. This whole line of discussion opened up just because of displeasure at the results of AFDs, which hardly indicates that the current guideline does not reflect community consensus. Lest someone object that the AFDs are "wrong" and therefore we should edit this little project page to set them "right," I put more trust in the cumulative results of AFD discussions populated by editors interested in and knowledgeable in the specific subject under discussion than I do in these attempts to legislate. postdlf (talk) 20:51, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
As I've mentioned, the problem is that we have a catch-22 going on here - people are using WP:ENT to say that AFDs should be kept, and now we're saying because AFDs were kept by ENT, it should remain unchanged. That is an unworkable solution. A legitimate challenge to find sourcing for a people that is claimed to meet ENT cannot be overriden by these types of cries. Hence if we at least change ENT#1 to something where sourcing is likely never going to be a problem - actors in starring/leading roles - then it's not going to be an issue when the catch-22 arguments come down the road. Otherwise, we are letting articles based only on primary sources slide which is unacceptable via WP:V and WP:NOR. --MASEM (t) 21:17, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Nonsense. You're honestly complaining that it should be changed because people are using it in AFD discussions. It's when people stop using it at AFD and instead criticize it that it no longer has consensus support and should then be changed. If you can't even get that to happen regularly at AFD, then you can't demonstrate that the guideline no longer reflects practice. Come back in six months after AFD shows a reliable consensus to reject ENT as written. postdlf (talk) 02:20, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
No, because this catch-22 is not in line with the relationship between policy, the main notability guideline, and the subject-specific guidelines. The present treatment is creating the condition of inherient notability, which is not something recognized by the rest of the project. The subject-specific guidelines are not to be used to protect articles from deletion but to justify the creation of articles and to assure they have enough time to grow properly, and to delete if we determine that presumption is wrong. In the case of actors, if they've done many "significant roles" but the only sourcing people can find is primary sourcing about those roles, that's a failure of the presumption this guideline gives and deletion should be done. The guideline should thus be cases where we know the presumption has a good chance of being met, which really is only the case of regular and starring roles in notable shows, and not something met by "significant roles" given how subjective the term is. --MASEM (t) 02:28, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose per Dream Focus and Cyclopedia: There are significant roles that are not starring/leading roles. They give a "Best supporting actor" Oscar for a reason. Softlavender (talk) 21:12, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Support I don't believe that holding up the 33rd largest role in a work as "signficant" (not hyperbole, but a very recent example, supported by some of the oppose votes above) is what the community intends, nor is it a reading I ever see consistently argued outside of the voice acting realm. The lack of any meaningful guidance in ENT#1 turns AfD into a vote, and one that brings out a very different set of participants for voice actors than any other role as a result. --j⚛e deckertalk06:38, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
A major reason for opposing this proposal - or any variation of it - is the inherent prejudice involved in its wording. Racial - Hattie McDaniel, ZaSu Pitts, Nick Stewart, Philip Ahn and countless others lived and worked in a time and place where "leading and starring roles" were not available to them. IMO they should have Wikipedia articles in spite of this. Physical appearance For every Roseanne Barr, John Goodman, Oliver Hardy and Edward James Olmos there are 1000s of actors - Una O'Connor, Roy Kinnear, Geoffrey Bayldon to name but three - who were never in the running for "leading and starring roles", again they merit articles. There are other prejudicial aspects to this proposal but I will close by stating that should any variation of this narrow view of acting be adopted Wikipedia will be in the curious position of having articles for fictional characters like Peter Quince, Mistress Quickly and Queequeg but not for the actors who portrayed them on stage, film or television. MarnetteD|Talk12:24, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
You're missing the point. Changing ENT#1 to "starring/featured actors" does not prevent WP from having articles on these people, because the GNG is still always the option, which all these merited. We want the criteria of ENT#1 to be one that assures there will be more sourcing about that person so that the presumption of notability is very reasonable, but that doesn't mean any actor failing ENT#1 can never have an article, it just requires the presence of significant coverage in secondary source, which if the actor is notable, will be available. Also, I did consider if we should allow the case of an actor who plays a notable fictional character to be considered notable themselves, and this actually isn't true all the time either, particularly when you consider animation and video games (There's also further complications when you have the same character but played by multiple people, who do you tag as the notable actor?) --MASEM (t) 14:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Masem, you keep saying that but in fact WP:GNG is not a guarantee of inclusion on WP: "significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included." Most articles on entertainers are judged on whether they meet WP:ENT, not whether they meet GNG. Indeed, that's true of any subset of GNG. Softlavender (talk) 23:35, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
And the same applies to all subject-specific guidelines too like ENT - we are presuming that the topic is notable as to allow it to have a stand-alone article so that we hope people can find sources and develop it. ENT is less of an assurance than the GNG for keeping an article if the only thing you can find to source a person is about how they meet ENT, the article will likely be deleted. While a GNG-meeting article can be deleted, it takes a bit more argument and discussion to establish why it should not, since meeting the GNG is effectively demonstrating sources. --MASEM (t) 01:48, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
Whereas, whether a role is signficant is rarely if ever debated on evidence. Which is why the "Sure, he's signficant, his role is the 33rd most significant role, and because this was only dubbed into two other languages, that means he's in the top 100, that's signficant right?" arguments are accorded full weight at AfD, in a way they would not be if inclusion were based on the reliable, secondary sources we pretend "are likely to exist" in cases like this, even when far too often actual legwork shows they do not. This causes problems in terms of bias, but more important it leaves a truck-sized hole in our verifiability and reliable sources policies. Why would anyone oppose the idea that we write articles from reliable, secondary sources? That seems to be the opposition argument here, and it is one which is directly contradicted by our pillars. --j⚛e deckertalk00:36, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose. A grossly misguided enterprise. Absent a significant showing that an inappropriate share of those who satisfy the SNG fail the GNG, this is just a proposal to waste a large part of the community's time and energy debated large numbers of deletion proposals which will not improve the encyclopedia -- whose coverage, after all, should be encyclopedic. The most glaring problem with Wikipedia's coverage of entertainers is not its coverage of the great bulk of working entertainers (who never "star" in movies, TV shows, or stage shows), but the absurd number of fictive biographies of wrestlers and other fields dominated by kayfabe coverage; the most substantive problem is the focus on celebrity journalism rather then informed critical evaluation of the subjects' professional work. This suggestion is not worth the time, trouble, and wasted energy it would entail. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 20:14, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
Alternate proposal 2: Reword ENT#1
The key word here is "significant roles" If the person is only notable for voicing third characters such as sidekicks and very minor characters I do not see it passing WP:ENT, this has been true for AfDs and a sort of WP:PRECEDENT has been established. My suggestion would be to add 1. "Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, and other productions "or has done award winning work for minor roles". A note can be adding saying that very minor voice actor works are usually deleted with few exceptions. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 21:18, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
If they have won a major award for their acting work, that automatically meets general WP:BIO conditions for an article, as well as being at least one secondary source for GNG. Hence unneeded, those types of actors aren't at issue here. --MASEM (t) 21:22, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Er, that doesn't make sense. An actor who plays a minor character but wins an award (if we're talking VAs here, that's likely the Annie Award), that award win gives the actor the presumption of notability via WP:BIO; what you are suggesting duplicates that. --MASEM (t) 21:31, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I also want to add that it is way too broad of a definition of what "significant roles" in notable works are. Are these roles by a person's WP:POV or are they supported by WP:RS? We need to draw a line on where the notability threshold is. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 21:21, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
As with anything on Wiki, common sense and editorial oversight and consensus apply. We've determined above that changing "significant" to "leading" doesn't work. What does work is editorial oversight, reviewing level of significance and level of independent coverage, and determining each borderline case on a case-by-case basis (either in an AfD, notability tags, prods, or whatever). I think all of us want to maintain notability standards, but the way that is accomplished sometimes has to be through actual analysis as opposed to rules which would exclude obviously notable people. Softlavender (talk) 23:25, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
We definitely do not want to exclude notable people, but the guideline as it reads now is being used to keep not-so-very-notable people.
Masem's point is true, that a Catch-22 is in place, whereby some here such as Dream Focus and Postdlf are saying that ENT should be kept as it is, because it has been used in past AFDs about voice actors.
I brought some reliable sources to the discussion to show how voice actors are not at the same level of recognition as screen actors, but a good many of observers here have ignored that and stated that voice actors are the same as screen actors, or should be treated the same by ENT. The latter argument runs afoul of "righting great wrongs", while the former argument is unfounded. I would like to see a handful of reliable third-party sources saying that voice actors are equal to screen actors before I yield to that argument. Binksternet (talk) 14:10, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
I think this whole "catch-22" claim only makes sense if you (oddly) assume that editors go out of their way to participate in AFDs and invoke guidelines they don't in fact agree with or support. Otherwise I don't see how you can dismiss a demonstrated repeat consensus in AFDs to keep articles on the basis of ENT as evidence that ENT reflects community practice. When I participate at AFD as a !voter, I certainly don't rely on guidelines I think are poorly written, not consensus-based, or should not be applied in that instance for any other reason; I expressly disavow them in my comment. postdlf (talk) 14:43, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
Motion to close
Given the discussion above I will make a request over at the admin noticeboard requests for closure or if someone wants to be WP:BOLD they can close this sooner. I need an uninvolved editor to close. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:18, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
WP:DIPLOMAT: notability of ambassadors
The discussion below does not reach a consensus to make this specific change to the guideline. But it does reach a number of conclusions that could inform future discussions.
There is cogently-argued support for the view that not all heads of mission are inherently notable. The discussion concludes that it is not appropriate for the guideline to treat Austria's ambassador to Finland in the same way as the UK High Commissioner in Canberra.
There is also cogently-argued support for the view that US ambassadors should follow the notability parameters for their military equivalents, and that UK ambassadors are likely to be listed in the Dictionary of National Biography and so have appropriate sources. But I could not extract from this debate a reasoned argument for treating ambassadors from other countries on equal terms.
I am not completely comfortable with this conclusion because it fits better with some of our rules than others. It sits very well with the general notability guideline, but is not really on all fours with our attempts at countering systemic bias. Most reasonable end-users would understand why the English Wikipedia should have articles on most American and British ambassadors, but I think they would also expect us to have articles on their German and French and Russian and Chinese equivalents. I hope that discussion on this point will continue.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Further to various discussions (some above, or referred to above), I propose to restore WP:DIPLOMAT with a section in the main page as follows:
Diplomats
This guideline is about career diplomats who are not politicians. For anyone who held elective office, or was associated with a political party, before holding a diplomatic post, see under Politicians.
A diplomat is presumed notable if he or she holds or held at least one substantive Head of Mission post following a series of junior diplomatic posts.
"Substantive" means a permanent post rather than acting, deputy or chargé d'affaires.
Rationale:
Head of Mission (ambassador, high commissioner, permanent representative, historical envoy, etc.) is a top-level diplomatic post, roughly equivalent to a named chair professor in academia; or a flag, general or air officer in the military; or a sportsperson who was a team member in a single major-league game; all of whom are presumed notable by WP guidelines.
This guideline presumes notability of diplomats who meet its criteria, but makes no statement for or against notability of other diplomats.
It could be argued that this would confer notability on otherwise insignificant ambassadors from one minor country to another. I suspect that most such tend to be politically-affiliated, therefore don't come under this guideline. And I'm not sure how to define a minor country fairly!
Definite support. I have always supported the idea that some senior people are inherently notable by virtue of their posts. This, to me, is common sense. Heads of diplomatic mission are among these people. If we assume that people who played a single match at the highest level of sport or had a single hit song are notable then surely people who have reached the top of their profession in this way must be notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 03:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
The problem, Necrothesp, is that that logic only works from a UK/US-centric perspective. Being appointed a small country's ambassador to the UK or the US is quite likely "the top of their profession". But being appointed a small country's ambassador to an equally small country with responsibility for an insignificant relationship (ie. not a trade partner or a neighbouring country) is hardly the top of anything. They are no more than visa application processing team leaders.Stanning quite rightly concedes this at the end of his proposal but I would suggest the majority of ambassadors would fall into the category of "insignificant ambassadors" rather than the minority. St★lwart11102:50, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose Head of mission may be a "top" level post (if by top you mean within the top 5000 positions in terms of power or ability to affect world affairs in the government), but it is vanishingly unlikely that all of these people, or even most of these people, will ever receive significant coverage in secondary sources independent of the subject. The idea of notability stems from the idea that we should only have articles on topics that secondary sources will bother to cover, or, at the very least, people who have done work sufficiently important that disinterested observers will write about it. I find that very unlikely for even, say, American ambassadors to small countries, to say nothing of the ambassadors small countries send to each other. I do agree that an ambassador seems no more important than a brigadier, and I would oppose notability there too. Named chairs in academia, well, at least people cite their papers/books at high rates, and there is quite a fascination with athletes and other professional entertainers. RayTalk13:21, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
Your last comment goes to the heart of the matter. What we should be asking is: should an encyclopaedia have articles on people because other people chatter about them or because they are genuinely significant in their field? I would argue the latter is more important than the former. It is obvious that the internet is going to have far more mindless chat about minor celebrities and sportspeople than about people who do real jobs, but should we discount senior people in those jobs because they don't fascinate the average internet fanboy or girl? No, in my opinion, we shouldn't. They are far more significant to the world, if not to the fanboy in the street. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:54, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
Well, what we're really asking is, should we cover people even when reliable, secondary sources do not provide enough verifiable information to write a properly neutral article about them? These are pretty core to the idea of Wikipedia, and the answer is no. So then the next question is, "are ambassadors such prominent people that such a body of published information will exist for most, if not all of them?" And the answer there is also pretty clearly no - lots of career ambassadors never get more than passing mention in the press, and then whatever short biographical blurb their foreign ministry releases onto the website. Such information is by definition promotional and non-neutral, from a primary source of dubious reliability (some countries' foreign ministries are far more dubious than others, but even, say, the US State Department is not a paragon of truthfulness), with little verifiability. RayTalk17:49, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
@RayAYang: You have a point, although in Wikipedia we do cover people based on minimal information, such as an entry in a list. (At random, see Reynold Kraft. Why is he notable? Because he's presumed so, per WP:NGRIDIRON.) Suppose we add words to the effect that the diplomat must be listed in an independent, reliable biographical source? For British diplomats, Who's Who (UK) is such a source. Would that meet your objection? Stanning (talk) 12:09, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Weak support. It is my belief and experience that sufficient sourcing can be found for most articles about permanent heads of missions to at least squeak by WP:GNG, especially if they've held multiple posts. I suspect, but haven't demonstrated, that additional sourcing could be found off-line in specialist publications aimed at the diplomat community. That said, I would prefer to see fewer and stricter subject-specific notability guidelines, especially for biographies. Our guidelines for actors, athletes and academics, for example, are too inclusive and the solution is not more subject-specific guidelines. I'd be quite happy to see them all discarded (especially for recent biographies) and for us to rely solely on WP:GNG and WP:ANYBIO. Pburka (talk) 02:16, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Support I'm an adherent of WP:MILPEOPLE, specifying that general officers/flag officers are notable. Ambassadors hold the same amount of diplomatic rank and should also be considered inherently notable. I also like the qualification about politicians. Chris Troutman (talk)02:57, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Support -- There is another reliable source for UK diplomats: London Gazette, which is the official publication of theri appointment. I expect that there are similar sources in other countries. Change d'affaires posts need to be judged on their merits: where the second most senior diplomat is in charge during the vacancy between one ambassador leaving and the next arriving, I would suggest that they are not notable per se. However, a charge d'affaires who arrives to reopen an embassy after a break in diplomatic relations or who is in post as the senior diplomat present for a substantila period might well be notable. At earlier periods, when the head of mission was not necessarily an "ambassador", but only minister plenipotentiary (or such like), it may well be appropriate not to apply modern definitions too rigorously. A year or trwo back, I worked on lists of UK ambassadors; almost all the people whom I was putting in lists had articles in Dictionary of National Biography, which is another criteriaon on notability. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:25, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Strongly oppose having participated and nominated many ambassador AfDs, ambassadors should meet WP:BIO in any case as a minimum standard. the issue I have is ambassadors that hold posts in smaller countries and do very little and hence get little except routine coverage, these indeed would fail WP:BIO. In fact, many ambassadors from/to smaller countries seem to only get coverage when they present their credentials to the receiving head of state (and people somehow argue this is WP:SIGCOV. Someone made a point in the AfD that say heads of foreign affairs departments (like the US State Department) don't get inherent notability even though they are more senior than ambassadors, ie that ambassadors report to heads of foreign affairs departments in most countries. and if there is inherent notability, does someone get an automatic article for doing the ambassador job for 1 or 3 months? LibStar (talk) 00:34, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Strong oppose - there should be no presumption of notability for people who hold these positions because there isn't necessarily equivalency between those who hold these positions. Peterkingiron's example is exactly why we shouldn't venture down this slippery slope. UK ambassadors to various countries are likely to be notable. In Australia, the UK High Commissioner represents one of the country's most significant cultural, trade, immigration, sporting, legal and historical relationships. The ambassador of Finland to Australia represents an obscure relationship, near-zero trade and no historical or cultural heritage. This proposal places them on equal footing and suggests that someone who represents the relationship between Australia and the United Kingdom would have the same inherent notability as someone who represents the relationship between Australia and Finland. That simply isn't the case. I've lived in Canberra, Australia's diplomatic epicentre. Most of those we're considering deeming inherently or presumptively notable are as ordinary as you or I. They live in the suburbs with everyone else, drive ordinary cars, eat at the local McDonalds and their kids are in local sporting teams. The only difference is the special licence plate they get for their car which occasionally allows them to avoid a speeding or parking fine. The UK High Commissioner is invited to major social events (even those not related to the UK), gallery openings, political functions, etc. When he says something, Australian papers notice and report it. When the Finish ambassador says something, the guy behind the counter probably gets his order wrong (again, no offence to someone I presume is a lovely person). When they announced the new ambassador from the US, he was in the first few pages of every major newspaper in the country and his YouTube introductory video was on every major national news broadcast. That's notability. As with anyone in any position in any field, if they have done something to warrant significant coverage in multiple reliable sources, then they should be considered notable. Otherwise, no. St★lwart11100:49, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
And I wanted to address Chris' salient point in particular. Equivalency between domestic military rank and diplomatic rank is an Americanism. Given the global reach of the US and the UK's historical colonialism, I would imagine ambassadors and high commissioners from both of those countries would be considered notable in most of the countries where they are posted. Likewise, ambassadors from others countries to the US and (to a lesser extent) the UK would likely be considered notable, those people having risen through diplomatic ranks to become Ambassador to the US - among the highest posts in the profession. St★lwart11100:57, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
re: "Equivalency between domestic military rank and diplomatic rank is an Americanism." for example in Australia, diplomatic staff and ambassadors are considered public servants and paid and promoted on the basis of this. unlike the military, there is a much less formal process to get promoted. there are some instances of appointed ambassadors not from the public service being former politicians like Andrew Peacock and Amanda Vanstone but they easily meet WP:POLITICIAN and WP:BIO in their own right. LibStar (talk) 01:03, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Isn't that the point? Perhaps the confluence of military and diplomatic rank is an Anglo-centric concept, but I would guess that nameless Finnish-ambassador to Australia (assuming they're not a politician or the recipient of patronage) is a notable civil servant in the Finnish government. Odds are, that ambassador will likely assume another position in the Finn government in the future, hence my point about inherent notability. I've always looked at this sort of thing like the Pankot Palace dinner in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: would this sort of person be notable enough to be invited to dinner? Chris Troutman (talk)03:44, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Only in the sense that his appointment might have been announced in some government gazette back in Finland, I suppose. But in any other context we wouldn't consider that significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. My point is that where a US diplomat has been conferred with the rank of a 3-star general, they are likely going to be notable. But they are likely notable anyway given that their appointment, activities and careers have probably received coverage. Being the ambassador to any country from the US will probably make you notable. Not so much for Ghana, El Salvador, Finland or New Zealand (sorry guys!). Especially, for example, the El Salvadoran ambassador to Ghana. What we're suggesting here is that such a person would be presumed notable, to the same extent as the US Ambassador to Russia or the UK Ambassador to France. There's no guarantee that being called back from some diplomatic (or actual) Siberia means being appointed to a position of more significance. That sort of crystal-ball-gazing wouldn't make for particularly good policy. St★lwart11104:56, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
@LibStar and Stalwart111: You make fair points. I wonder whether you'd consider any diplomat to be notable without rigorous adherence to the notability guidelines? My analogy is with sportspeople, who are presumed notable, even if they don't qualify under WP:GNG, because WP:NSPORT gives them a free pass: "sports figures are likely to meet Wikipedia's basic standards of inclusion if they have, for example, participated in a major international amateur or professional competition at the highest level". Replying to RayAYang above, I cited an example of one (of many) who would no way qualify without that free pass. The presumption is that for such people, notability will be there if you dig for it (not necessarily only on Google). Following that analogy, I proposed here that diplomats are likely to meet Wikipedia's basic standards of inclusion if they've held head of mission posts. That's too broad a category for you! So, suppose we narrow the criteria. Would you be willing to concede that diplomats are likely to meet Wikipedia's basic standards of inclusion – can be presumed notable – if they've held ambassadorships at the highest level? For some value of at the highest level – say between two G20 nations? Stanning (talk) 14:37, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
That might get more support, but as Resolute rightly points out, his random selection of an ambassador from one G7 country to another that probably doesn't meet WP:GNG is indicative of the wider problem with that proposal. The problem with the sportsperson analogy is effort, in my view. An ambassador can be appointed to a post and disappear into obscurity, having failed to generate any sort of media interest in his or her activities (in some cases they may be expressly instructed in this regard, depending on the relationship). If a sportsperson does nothing to generate interest in their activities (if they make no effort) they won't get a place on the team. A foreign affairs department might view 10 years in a diplomatic post with zero media coverage as being entirely positive - no news being good news - and justification for promotion. That's just the nature of international relations. St★lwart11123:14, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose The problem with the sportsperson analogy - aside from WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS - is that the preponderance of sources makes a strong case that most athletes who have played at the highest level will likely have enough sources to meet GNG. That is all an SNG is meant to say. For the diplomat SNG, I am heavily persuaded by the argument that not every ambassador will generate the kind of coverage required to meet GNG and other guidelines/policies. The argument about "top level ambassadors" is interesting. As a quick test, I randomly picked the Canadian ambassador to Italy - both G7 nations, so likely to be at the higher end of this argument for notability. Peter McGovern has been a diplomat for 30 years, does not have a Wikipedia article at present, and my quick search of news sources does not turn up anything that lends me to believe he warrants one. I suspect most such ambassadors will be the same. Resolute16:10, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
@Resolute: Really? Where did your quick search look? This is McGovern's first ambassadorship; he's been in post just 7 months. He's in Italy, so you'd expect most of the coverage to be there. So ... try a Google search for the past month. Plenty there; much more if you go back further. How's your Italian? Mine's non-existent, so I can't assess how much of it is "significant". Stanning (talk) 13:36, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
My Italian is non-existent as well, but thanks to Google Translate, we can easily see that the first four links on that search relate to a story about Air Canada opening up a direct route from Toronto to Malpensa. It appears that every link on the front page of that search provides only a trivial mention. Resolute22:06, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
I was canvassed for this discussion so I won't leave a formal vote but I am taken by the concept that there is a split between ambassadors at the top and those below that. Interestingly though, I did some research from the list of heads of mission accredited to the UK and picked on those from English speaking countries so I could read the sources. Looking at a random half dozen from smaller countries almost all had what was, in my opinion, adequate sourcing but then they were all notable individuals in their own right and only one was a career diplomat. Worth more research? Should we park this discussion while we get some clear evidence that we can present to inform discussion? SpartazHumbug!08:58, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose Like several others here, I am not convinced that every ambassador will generate the kind of coverage required to meet GNG and other guidelines/policies. I do think it is likely that ambassadors from several G-7/G-8 nations will meet other notability guidelines (e.g. many ambassadors in the UK receive or have received an Order of the British Empire) but the status and coverage of ambassadors varies across time and across nations. Enos733 (talk) 17:47, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose as written — the notability or non-notability of an ambassador is contingent upon the quality of reliable sourcing that can or cannot be provided about them. I'm more familiar with the situation for Canadian diplomats than I am for most other countries, so I'll speak specifically from that perspective — but far, far too many of the Canadian diplomat articles that have been created on Wikipedia have relied solely on a directory listing on DFAIT's website — an invalid primary source — with not a shred of reliable source coverage to demonstrate that they were in any significant way a notable ambassador. If all you can write about an ambassador is that "Joanne Smith-Copperfield is Canada's current ambassador to North Baluchistan", then until such time as you can write and source something of substance about her career as an ambassador we do not actually need an unsourced standalone WP:BLP that just says she's the ambassador to North Baluchistan — the presence of her name as a nonlinked entry in a list of Canada's ambassadors to North Baluchistan would give the reader the exact same information without requiring us to compromise our content policies in the process. I certainly do favour a resolution of the persistent DIPLOMAT problem — which has gone on far too long, with the result that WP:NPOL's exclusion of diplomats is getting mistaken as a blanket ban on diplomats ever being considered notable at all rather than what it really is, which is simply an acknowledgement that NPOL is not the test by which the notability or non-notability of a diplomat is measured — but the resolution cannot grant any diplomat an exemption from the requirement to actually be the subject of coverage in reliable sources. I'd agree that in principle, any person who has been named one country's ambassador or high commissioner to another country should be considered a valid potential topic for a Wikipedia article — but real sourcing's gotta actually be there to support it, because ambassadors cannot be granted a special exemption from the need to cite reliable non-primary sourcing. Bearcat (talk) 05:48, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
What determines Notability for Astronauts (and other country equivalents)
I'm presuming that anyone who did a complete orbit of the earth prior to the International Space Station qualifies
I'm not sure on Astronauts who did the ISS are, but I would tend to believe so
Do the two of those add up to anyone who has gone into space is notable? Do they need a complete orbit?
Are Astronauts who have been selected for the Astronaut corps qualify if they haven't gone into space? (Though first person into the astronaut program from a specific country may be)
Dear notability experts: This list: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/List of Alleyn's Old Boys and Girls has people who either have a Wikipedia article, or who are discussed in another Wikipedia article. There were a few entries that had no link, so I removed them. Do they also need a citation on the page? I have read WP:LISTPEOPLE and I am not sure. It seems to indicate that each name of the list must be a person who would be notable enough to have their own article, but this standard is not held for other types of articles, such as lists of band members in a band article. —Anne Delong (talk) 20:12, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Lists of alumni should be limited to only notable entries (those who have or should have articles) because there's no informational value to listing all the hundreds, if not thousands of non-notable alumni, any more than there would be to duplicate the phone book in lists of people by place. Lists of band members are different because such groups are smaller by orders of magnitude, and completeness is not only readily verifiable from secondary sources but integral to the topic.
On the issue of direct sourcing in such a list, there's no consensus, just a lot of noise, though an alumni list is bound to be less contentious in that area than others, and one should take the time to verify inclusion if it is questioned rather than disruptively and lazily blank entries. Ideally the alumni status should be at least sourced in the linked article. postdlf (talk) 20:22, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
WP:ALUMNI says "When alumni have their own articles in mainspace, it is not necessary for their notability to be referenced, as long as it is done in the biographical articles." Stanning (talk) 17:31, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
So, ideally, each person on the list should have an article in which they are particularly noted as a list member, with a reliable source. Or, alternatively, they should be a person who would likely be notable enough to have an article, and is prominently mentioned in another article as a list member, with a reliable source. (Do I have this right?) This would take hours of checking. You may think that I removed the redlinked names without links to articles out of laziness, but this was an abandoned draft which was about to be deleted within a few days under db-g13. Since it appears to be a notable topic, I was hoping to save most of it, but it is only one of over 1000 drafts which I have on MY LIST to improve, and there are 2-3000 new drafts each month which become eligible for deletion at Pages in category "G13 eligible AfC submissions" to sift through for useful material. I simply don't have time to spend hours one one draft, so if it can't be in mainspace until every item on the list is sourced, and deleting some items is a no-no, I will have to let it go down the drain. Maybe someone else will take it on before it disappears. Thanks, Postdlf and AngusWOOF for taking time to answer my query. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:27, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
"You may think that I removed the redlinked names without links to articles out of laziness..." No, my comments were only general observations about past practice I've seen from others. I wasn't speaking about what you had removed at all because I hadn't looked at the AFC edit history.
But again, this AFC submission duplicates an already-existing article section; see my previous comment above. So I don't think you should waste any more time on it. postdlf (talk) 22:34, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
In terms of sourcing, as long as we are starting with blue-linked entries, then for something that is not controversial as the school which they graduated from, then a reference on the alumni list is generally not required but this is presumed that the source for that fact is included on the bio page. It would be better if the list sourced each person but the identification of the graduating school is rarely a contentious point that requires immediate sourcing per BLP. --MASEM (t) 22:53, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Ridiculous. You don't need a reference they went to that school if its mentioned in their article. Since the information already exist in another article, no need to create a new one, but only for that reason. I find it odd people would waste time referencing a list, without bothering to add those same references to the main articles themselves. I click on a name on the list, V. S. Pritchett, and I see it mentions they went to that school but show no reference to back that up. DreamFocus22:47, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Currently the closest rationale is under WP:NACTORS for models. I think we REALLY need to establish some firm rules for notability for these women (and indeed, men) as a separate section, maybe with the WP:NBEAUTY redirect.
What I suggest is:
Minimum criteria for biographies of contestants/winners, in addition to BLP rules, the criteria should be:
Subject has won one of the Big Four international beauty pageants (Miss World, Universe, International, or Earth), or an equally, demonstrably notable equivalent.
Subject has represented their country at one of the Big Four (or equally notable equivalent) through winning one of the national/deciding heats. (usually appropriate for a basic stub entry in line with sportspersons.)
Winning a regional heat or being a runner up is not notable unless there are other, valid reasons to find the subject notable.
If a pageant that is not one of the Big Four (or equally notable) is shown to be notable, then the winners should be simply listed in the article (with a redirect there if appropriate) unless there are good reasons for them to have their own article. So if Bobbi Worldpeace is made Miss Podunktown 2014 and Miss Podunktown passes notability in itself, then Bobbi Worldpeace should only be mentioned as the 2014 titleholder in the article and not have her own article.
For beauty pageants: claims of international notability should be supported by INTERNATIONAL sources. A claim to represent the world should have proof that this is recognised by the worldwide press - if the majority of your coverage is in Manila or Timbuktu, with maybe a couple mentions in Denmark local-interest press because a Danish girl was in the show, then that really doesn't sound truly international does it?
Anyway - I really do think we need to establish some rules, as I'm kinda getting frustrated with all the beauty pageants and Miss Anywheres coming up for deletion discussions and it would be nice to have some firm notability rules established in simple straightforward terms. Mabalu (talk) 10:55, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
A big problem with this is that many articles about beauty pageant contestants are created by someone who is a professional beauty contest organizer (but undeclared) and that I have a nasty idea that he uses sock puppets and/or meat puppets to work on beauty pageant related articles. Unfortunately, I have only recently start my investigation into it so as for now, I am unable to prove it. The Bannertalk11:30, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
I agree with this. I think we really, really, really need some solid rules for this field just to make sure that there is a solid guideline - there seem to be 200 related AFDs a year coming up which is silly. Given that sportspeople are deemed notable if they have played in at least one match at a professional level, I think the suggested criteria is more than reasonable (plus more than generous!) and easy enough to police as per notability, (ie, Miss England almost certainly notable, Miss Bognor Regis definitely not UNLESS she becomes Miss England.) as long as there are basic sources to support the BLP and show that they held the national title. Mabalu (talk) 16:21, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure how active Wikipedia:WikiProject Beauty Pageants is but that'd be a good resource to see what's considered important. I would also include the Miss America winners given the legacy of that pageant.
Comparing with footballers is rather tricky, because there are several adjacent rules to determine the notability of a footballer (for example: playing in a fully professional league, what excludes many players even when playing at the highest level in their country).
I do think that going on to represent your country in one of the Big Four is not to be sneezed at. You are representing your country in a BIG pageant and that should meet notability on a national level for your country albeit certainly not in any way that I personally would consider important. So making it to the highest level competition is an achievement in itself that should be recognised. Particularly if you've made it to more than one of the Big Four. Mabalu (talk) 18:06, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
So a Miss Verysmallcountry, appointed national miss due to lack of competition, is automatically notable when she reaches the stage alive? The Bannertalk18:50, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, when the pageants are her only claim for notability, she would fail. But she can try to comply to the standard notability guidelines, like WP:GNG. The Bannertalk18:47, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
That's ridiculous that Miss America winners are relegated to "Miss Verysmallcountry" status and would lose notability. That pageant preceded the Big Four and has substantial notability in secondary reliable sources, including Hagan's article. It's like Indy 500 winners being surpassed by NASCAR. -AngusWOOF (talk) 20:12, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
I have to agree with AngusWOOF there. We accept people who are demonstrably notable in their country even if they are not notable in English language sources. I feel that, as long as sources exist to confirm BLP, anyone who has gone on to represent the entirety of their country in a notable pageant should be considered at least stub-worthy. Acting as your country's representative is a big deal in these things. I think that's a very simple, valid minimum standard that any idiot should be able to grasp - no runner-ups, no second-place winners, just the overall finalist. Mabalu (talk) 20:57, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Is there any reason to believe that WP:GNG and WP:ANYBIO are insufficient for beauty pageant contestants? I haven't seen any argument made explaining why the existing general guidelines are insufficient. Pburka (talk) 02:01, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
Because so many articles are created for beauty pageant contestants based on primary sources or kinda weak sources, and at AFD there has traditionally been a tendency to argue that because someone represented their country in an international, notable pageant they deserve a stub article. I agree with this at its most basic level. But I think there need to be rules firmly spelled out somewhere in Wikipedia policy, so we can point the hard-of-thinking at it. The rulea as they stand now are vague, nebulous, and as much use as a chocolate bosom is to a wax nun in a fiery furnace. Mabalu (talk) 09:12, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
They still need to meet WP:GNG with the significant secondary reliable sources that are independent of the subject. I wouldn't create any stub articles of contestants until that is in place. Those who won their nationals should have lots of those sources (assuming they aren't from the same news agency or from a niche beauty contestant media). The winners of the Big Four can be stubbed because they're expected to have that level of coverage for winning the highest levels of competition. I agree the regional contestants (those competing to represent their country) and below are not automatically notable. -AngusWOOF (talk) 14:39, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
Is it possible they'd win these national competitions, without getting coverage in their nation? Not every newspaper is in English, so searching is difficult, and not every newspapers has access to its archives online. If there is no possible doubt they would've all received coverage, then we need a guideline to just say they are notable, and leave it at that. We have the same guy going around mass nominating them now because its hard to find sources in other languages. DreamFocus03:23, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Why is researching foreign-language sources hard? If Google Translate covers the language it's not hard. Sounds like a convenient rationalization to do mass deletions. -- GreenC04:01, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Not all media can conform to wikipedia's tunnel vision relative to WP:RS. While Facebook might be a perfectly functional means of distributing content from what might be an original RS in a foreign country, it looks to WP like just another jerk on Facebook. Frankly, without boots on the ground in each country, speaking the native language and knowing local media, from a distance we have no idea what is important or not in Verysmallcountry. The concept of a free media, a reliable source in general, is not something we can assume in every country. Take North Korea, who could we trust to deliver factual information? Certainly not the official media. Back to Dream Focus' idea. How could we not assume a national champion to get extensive coverage in their country? Even in a country of a few thousand people, whoever is on the selection committee needs to go beyond the local pageant and raise the necessary funds to send the girl to the world pageant (probably with handlers, national costumes, hair, make up, coaching). It cannot help but to be a big deal even in a small country. Maybe even a more important source of national pride in such a small place. Trackinfo (talk) 19:33, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
With the case for national coverage above being the first event, the contestant is then taken into a second event, the worldwide media frenzy of the worldwide pageant, where respected media loves to cover pretty girls in pageants--its a G rated way to increase readership exploiting the female anatomy. In the case of Miss Universe which I have had to learn about, the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Las Vegas Review-Journal each do a (different) photo section on every contestant. Time Magazine Style covers the girls in interesting national costumes. Then its a world wide televised event. Thats not even mentioning all the gossip columns, low quality media, Facebook/social media and trumped up media to hype the event. For the week of the event, these contestants are all, each, individually doing media events, photoshoots and interviews displaying their great intellectual capabilities. OK thats sarcasm. The point is, they are celebrities. They are what the cameras are pointed at. We have WP:NTEMP, we have WP:NSPORTS as an example. This is the top level these girls can achieve in the field. Trackinfo (talk) 20:02, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Your constant accusations of bad faith are also not kosher, mr. Trackinfo. Are you trying to get decisions under the radar, by claiming that all beauty contestants are automatically notable, even when they have only Google hits on related websites related to that single event? (Main round and preliminary rounds are not two events but just one.) The Bannertalk09:52, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Your prejudicial "qualifications" in the sentence are not true. Otherwise, based on the constant, virtually overwhelming coverage each contestant receives during the pageant WP:GNG, yes. It should be assumed to meet GNG in the standard of notability as we are discussing here. Exactly as any Olympic athlete is assumed to reach the highest level in their field in WP:NSPORTS. Trackinfo (talk) 10:18, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
A person who is known only in connection with a criminal event or trial should not normally be the subject of a separate Wikipedia articleif there is an existing article that could incorporate the available encyclopedic material relating to that person.
Where there is such an existing article, it may be appropriate to create a sub-article, but only if this is necessitated by considerations of article size.
Where there are no appropriate existing articles, the criminal or victim in question should be the subject of a Wikipedia article only if one of the following applies:
For victims, and those wrongly convicted of crime
The victim or person wrongly convicted, consistent with WP:BLP1E had a large role within a well-documented historic event. The historic significance is indicated by persistent coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources that devote significant attention to the individual's role.[1]
The motivation for the crime or the execution of the crime is unusual—or has otherwise been considered noteworthy—such that it is a well-documented historic event. Generally, historic significance is indicated by sustained coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources which persists beyond contemporaneous news coverage and devotes significant attention to the individual's role.[3]
Note: A living person accused of a crime is presumed not guilty unless and until this is decided by a court of law. Editors must give serious consideration to not creating an article on an alleged perpetrator when no conviction is yet secured.
Consistent with WP:BIO1E and WP:BLP1E, a person who is known only in connection with a criminal event or trial should not normally be the subject of a separate Wikipedia article. An article about a person who is known only in connection with a criminal event or trial should only be created if one of the following conditions is met:
For victims, perpetrators, and others associated with a criminal event or trial
An article about the event or trial could not properly incorporate the available encyclopedic material relating to that person[1]
The person's role in an event of well-documented historic significance was the subject of significant media focus or attention.[2] The historical significance of an event is generally indicated by sustained coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources which persists beyond contemporaneous news coverage.
Note: A living person accused of a crime is presumed not guilty unless and until this is decided by a court of law. Editors must give serious consideration to not creating an article about an alleged perpetrator when no conviction is yet secured.
After a brief discussion in 2012, the section pertaining to crime victims and perpetrators now includes a brief mention to people "wrongly convicted". Per that same discussion, I outlined that there various other individuals who have some relationship to a criminal event or trial. I am wondering if there are any thoughts on replacing the current version with the proposal noted above that refers not just to perpetrators, victims, and those wrongly accused of crimes, but also to "others associated with a criminal event or trial". Although the wording has been changed, I believe I have preserved all the points that currently exist in the section. - Location (talk) 18:20, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
Okay - what's the official word on interviews?
It seems I often see arguments in deletion discussiuons that interviews don't count - e.g. "Only sources are interviews, delete!" but I'm not so sure about this. Do we have an official line on interviews? Obviously a small-paper interview or a blog interview isn't likely to count as a source, but if notable or significant publications are writing on the subject, including interviews as part of their article, surely we aren't supposed to just dismiss them offhand as "interviews don't count?" I've tried to find something like WP:INTERVIEW or similar but I REALLY can't find anything. Apologies if I'm missing the relevant page but is there an official line or guideline on interviews being used to scratch a person's notability anywhere? Obviously not talking about Single Event stuff here. Mabalu (talk) 18:17, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
They're treated as primary sources per WP:NOR, see the footnotes on that page. The questions and surrounding background information could be used to prove that the person played a particular character. -AngusWOOF (talk) 20:44, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
If a major publication includes an interview with someone then that should be taken as an indication of notability. Interviews vary enormously in the amount of independent coverage - some include a significant amount (e.g. in the introduction to the interview) but others consist solely of a list of questions and the answers. We shouldn't exclude sources simply because they contain interviews, especially of they also contain independent coverage. --Michig (talk) 20:53, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
I have to disagree, this would mean that every "talking head" on various media would be considered notable. The subject that their talking about maybe notable, not necessarily the person talking about the subject. Furthermore, if an actor or actress is interviewed about their roll in an upcoming movie, say on YouTube, that does not make the actor or actress likely to be notable themselves.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 19:34, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Oftentimes a reliable news source will quote a non-academic expert on a particular issue to give an opinion or otherwise inform the reader. Sometimes the quotes can be extensive. My question is, can this be considered "significant coverage" for the purpose of WP:BIO for the expert him- or herself? Clearly the article is not about the expert, it's about the issue. At the same time the news source has implicitly (sometimes explicitly) endorsed the person's expertise (and perhaps their prominence in the field).
I would echo the importance of providing clear guidance on this... it comes up very very very often in notability discussions of one sort or another. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:07, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
I would expect that in most cases where there would be enough of this to matter, the individual's notability has already been established in other ways. This could be enough to tip the balance in a few cases, I suppose, but I wouldn't expect this to be the deciding factor except in a few rare WP:IAR-type cases. @Demiurge1000: If this is coming up a lot, could you please give a few examples? I haven't been hanging around AfD a lot lately. – PhilosopherLet us reason together.02:22, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
I could be mistaken but don't think AngusWOOF or Philosopher quite address my question. Let's take a concrete example, the one that led me to initiate this discussion. Suppose I wanted to write an article about Grant Scheiner, a Texas criminal defense lawyer. I couldn't find any secondary sources about him, but I did find quite a number of sources in which he was quoted talking about his clients, or about other cases where he wasn't directly involved. Now consider this source from The Hindu Indian daily newspaper. It's about Scheiner's client, not about Scheiner himself, but Scheiner's quotes make up the majority of the story. Significant coverage? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 06:19, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
I think I misunderstood the question. First, a few weed-out questions: Is he merely parroting a party line? Is the coverage going to fall under WP:ONEEVENT? Is the coverage simplistic or short? For case which aren't trivial, as above, does the information contain concrete analysis where the paper was interviewing the expert in significant part because he is an expert and not merely because he is working for a client that is being covered. In this last case only, I would consider the significant coverage to apply to him even if the coverage is written to look like it is about the client. However, it would be weaker evidence and I would probably want to see more of it than I would of the more "normal" coverage.
The reason I would accept this indirect coverage is a question of scope more than of directness of coverage – the English Wikipedia should probably include people who are widely recognized as experts in their fields (or, in some cases, sub-fields), and this might be a way of countering bias against those fields where there is less directly-on-point coverage of these experts. The reason I wouldn't treat this more cautiously than "normal" coverage is because it can be difficult to judge who is a significant expert based on such coverage alone. – PhilosopherLet us reason together.00:56, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
The articles just cover his normal work on cases. While I'm sure he's trying to get notability for his firm as any businessperson would, he would have to get onto local and then national media sources as a high-profile contributor as with real estate businesswoman Barbara Corcoran writing columns for magazines, appearing regularly on The Today Show, and then landing gigs like Shark Tank. If there are notable cases that he is not associated with where the secondary media regularly ask his opinion then those would show more intention to be high profile. -AngusWOOF (talk) 13:05, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
County-level politicians
One group of politicians that seem to go unmentioned and uncovered on Wikipedia are county-level politicians, especially from the United States. Some county officials exercise significantly more political power than state or provincial legislators or even elected members of large municipalities. Should we consider county officials inherently notable as we do with members of state and provincial legislatures?--TM11:22, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
We certainly should not consider them inherently notable. GNG, as RightCowLeftCoast says. Generally they will not be notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:55, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
The current case-by-case approach seems to be serving us well for county officials. The issues of widespread impact and the need for encyclopedic completeness that drove the adoption of the inherent notability rule for state legislatures are not simply not present in the case of county officials. Similarly, while members of a sub-sub-national body may be important in some case, their importance is greatly varied both in theory and in practice and would defy a one-size-fits-all approach that is needed for an inherent notability standard. – PhilosopherLet us reason together.19:38, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
QUESTION
Would major party candidates in Senate, or House of Representatives races, be considered sufficiently notable (purely by dint of this fact) for inclusion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.157.19.15 (talk • contribs)
No. Being a candidate in and of itself is not enough. Typically candidates for national offices should have been discussed in the media enough (beyond the election issues) to qualify under WP:GNG. Chris Troutman (talk)17:32, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Advice on notability
I am currently working on the Sleaford article and am in the process of rewriting the notable residents list. One of the "notable" residents listed on there is Joseph Hayat, but I am not sure whether he is notable enough; certainly, there is coverage in the media, but compared to some of the other residents I have found, I am not sure both about his inclusion on the page and, more importantly, about the notability of the subject himself. Rather than take it straight to AfD, I thought it might be better to discuss it first. I would be keen to see what other editors think. Thanks, --Noswall59 (talk) 15:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC).
No opinion on whether he merits an article, but if he does and if he has verifiably been a resident of Sleaford, then he belongs in the list of its notable residents and shouldn't be removed unless his article is deleted. postdlf (talk) 16:16, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, that was my intention - it was more that, when looking over those mentioned, I checked his article and wasn't sure about whether it met notability criteria. Regards, --Noswall59 (talk) 16:29, 2 December 2014 (UTC).
Consensus is clearly to leave well alone. This is undoubtedly the least objectionable part of PORNBIO and fully consistent with other guidelines. SpartazHumbug!09:33, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I hope I'm posting this in the correct place. Anyways, WP:PORNSTAR (2) says, "is a member of an industry Hall of Fame such as the AVN Hall of Fame, XRCO Hall of Fame or equivalent." This criteria is unreasonable and overbroad. The AVN Hall of Fame is not selective. Often, the AVN will induct people whose contributions to porn has been minimal. Look at the list of AVN Hall of Famers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_AVN_Hall_of_Fame They began inducting members in 1995, yet they already have over 200 inductees (so at least 10 per year average). By comparison, the MLB Hall of Fame has been active since the 1940s, and only 240 players have been inducted. If you keep this requirement in WP:PORNSTAR, then we will soon have a Wiki page for many no-name pornstars, given the induction rate per year. Right now, some Wiki pages (Nick Manning, Devon, Pat Myne) survive solely on this terrible Hall of Fame exception.Redban (talk) 19:51, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
Two of the three you've linked also list them as having won AVN awards, not merely being in its Hall of Fame, and one of those was also the lead in an apparently notable mainstream feature film, so they obviously don't "survive solely" on that criteria. The third is a county of England. postdlf (talk) 21:38, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
The AVN Hall of Fame was created long before 1995. If you take another look at the list, you'll notice several members don't have an induction year specified. Those are members who were inducted prior to 1995. Since the internet probably did not exist yet at the time those members were inducted, we have some difficulty finding online sources which specify the year they were inducted in. The only source we've found listing inductees prior to 1995 does not specify which years they were inducted in, it only confirms that they are a member of the AVN Hall of Fame. I've only been able to find one AVN Hall of Fame induction prior to 1995 which specifies the year; Anthony Spinelli (1986). The AVN Awards were created in 1984 and have been inducting members into it's Hall of Fame since at least 1986, perhaps even a little sooner than that. Pornography has been legal in the United States since around the late 60's or early 70's; that's over 40 years. In the 40+ years that the porn industry has been around, only 200 people out of the 100,000+ who have worked in porn have been inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame. That isn't a lot and being in that elite group of people is certainly evidence of notability. Rebecca1990 (talk) 21:50, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
To Postdlf, Scene-related / Ensemble awards don't count (Pat Myne), male-only awards attract less attention and are less impressive because the amount of men in porn is so limited (Nick Manning), and the Devon I'm referring to is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devon_(pornographic_actress). NightGales is not a recognizable award, so the overbroad AVN Hall of Fame is her sole claim to a Wiki page. Also consider Mark Wood, Kyle Stone, Julian St. Jox, and Mr. Pete. None of these deserve a Wiki page, but the ill-advised Hall of Fame rule grants them one.Redban (talk) 21:53, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
...pointy question by a SPA account, just an attempt to backup this disruptive Afd, part of an anti-pornography crusade which include several retaliatory disruptive AfDs ([29], [30], [31]) and a bunch of indiscriminate, on-30-second-intervals improper and edit-summary-free notability tags ([32], [33], [34], [35]). Though I usually hope for the best, unless things change, it looks to me like we'll likely be seeing this individual very soon at AN/I for disruptive actions. Cavarrone22:04, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
Mathematics! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_AVN_Hall_of_Fame The AVN inducted 71 people before 1995. If you assume they began inducting in 1986, that's around 10-11 per year. Here are the number of inductees per year: 1995 (11), 1996 (8), 1997 (14), 1998 (16), 1999 (9), 2001 (13), 2002 (11), 2003 (14), 2004 (12), 2005 (12), 2006 (13), 2007 (12), 2008 (11), 2009 (11), 2010 (9), 2011 (14), 2012 (13), 2013 (13), 2014 (12). Therefore, the AVN typically inducts over 10 people every year. By 2024, it will have 400 members, based on these statistics. The AVN Hall of Fame, quite unlike the MLB Hall of Fame, is not selective; thus, the AVN Hall of Fame has no credibility worth considering in WP:PORNSTARRedban (talk) 22:16, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
I would echo much of what has been written above in response to this thread that was started by a relatively new & at least mildy disruptive Wikipedia user. In addition:
Mr. Pete is also a director and has one won at least one other, likely non-trivial XRCO Award
Devon (pornographic actress) has appeared in at least one major blockbuster adult film (Pirates) and has also apparently had many mainstream media appearances
Nick Manning is a director & has won at least one other, non-trivial AVN Award, and he has apparently had at least several mainstream media appearances
Directors can be evaluated under the Creative professionals inclusion standard as well. The remaining articles from above need responsible expansion, not deletion through some further unfair tightening of the PORNBIO standard.
"male-only awards attract less attention and are less impressive"...in your own opinion that is. The major AVN Award categories (including their Hall of Fame) are quite simply the gold standard in the adult film industry. Guy1890 (talk) 04:13, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
The claim that the AVN Hall of Fame isn't selective because it inducts more people than the baseball Hall of Fame is nonsense. 10 people per year is pretty selective. As a point of comparison, about 8 people receive Nobel Prizes every year. Pburka (talk) 04:26, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Excellent point, Pburka. I think about 21 Pulitzer Prizes are awarded each year, sometimes more. Winners are notable. The whole point of revising the PORNBIO guideline a year or so ago was to make it more difficult to judge porn stars as notable, and easier to delete articles about non-notable porn performers. Though I almost never edit porn related articles, my perception is that the revision was successful and is working. Why rock the boat now? Cullen328Let's discuss it06:39, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
I agree as well, don't forget that the porn business is a business with many actresses/actors, which rapidly come and go, and which as a business has over the years kept expanding. Each year more and more girls try to become the next major porn star. In all fairness, given that demographic, an average of ten inductees per year isn't much. This standard/criteria should be kept in PORNBIO. -- fdewaele, 29 December 2014, 10:24
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
