There's a show called 100 Women (BBC) where for four years they have picked "100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year." [1] and have them come together to discuss major issues. So the question is whether any of the participants who were selected are now considered notable if they weren't already from other sources. Do they automatically get articles, or do they redirect to the list? They are likely to get some news coverage for being on the list. Are they still WP:LOWPROFILE or WP:BLP1E afterwards? AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 18:24, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
Muhabbat Sharapova (was misspelled both name and country; fixed:-( -- Hero of Uzbekistan - an ordinary school teacher of math in a small town. Low on google hits both in Latin and Cyrillic "мухаббат Шарапова" spellings (used in the native country). "Inspirational" -? yes, "influential" yes only in a sense she she influenced her students. (By the way, her story says that her students work in many countries all over the world. Phrased as a boasting point, but in fact a sad story of a country depopulated of well-educated people...) Staszek Lem (talk) 20:59, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
Observations -- Hero of Uzbekistan would qualify, as the highest national award with only 50 awards since 1994. Simply being on a list of 100 women identified by BBC would not. There's got to be something else notable about the person; WP:SIGCOV as always applies. The above AfD rightly closed as delete. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:23, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
WP:ANYBIO has some nuance when discussing notability of highest rewards, as it claims that such a highest reward is an indication of possible/likely notability. That the Hero of Uzbekistan award is rare does make it somewhat more relevant (but e.g. Victoria Cross - the UK highest award has only been awarded 3 times during the time Hero of Uzbekistan exists). So I would argue both the (sourced) awarding of the Hero of Uzbekistan award and the inclusion in the BBC list may count towards significant coverage, but we would need some more on exactly why this individual is notable. Arnoutf (talk) 09:01, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
The VC is (a) a gallantry award and (b) incredibly rare even as far as highest gallantry awards go, so I'm not sure it's a fair comparison with a country's highest award in a civic sense. You can't really compare awards in this way, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect recipients of any country's highest award to meet notability standards unless it's a country that gives awards ridiculously freely. We consider the CBE to meet WP:ANYBIO #1, and that's technically about the UK's twentieth highest award! It's all about context. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:23, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
In answer to your question "whether any of the participants who were selected are now considered notable if they weren't already from other sources.", my answer is no. Journalism profiles all sorts of people because journalists have hours of broadcasting and inches of print to fill. Let's wait until the subjects pass GNG or one of the SNGs. Chris Troutman (talk)17:20, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Could there be a sentence put at the bottom of the "basics" section that says something like: "Editors should not interpret a subject's failure to meet any of these subject-specific criteria as a reason to delete an article whose subject already appears to have met the principal notability criteria-- subject-specific criteria can only increase the likelihood of qualifying as notable, not reduce it." Actually, is that even true? IvoryDinn (talk) 23:06, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
Notability of City Managers
In many cities in the United States, city managers exercise far more authority than any single elected official. They often create budgets, hire and fire staff, and generally exercise the authority that mayors do under strong mayor systems. They're far from simple bureaucrats. Would you support a proposal to consider city managers inherently notable?--TM13:59, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Generally, elected municipal leaders aren't presumed to be notable either. If you can't find sources to satisfy WP:GNG or WP:ANYBIO, then you won't be able to write an article, anyway. Pburka (talk) 15:19, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
As Pburka points out, you'd never be able to assemble a decent article on someone that can't pass GNG, and presuming notability would be silly as many Wikipedians want to reduce the number of elected officials we cover. Chris Troutman (talk)15:55, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Agree, GNG should be leading, and it is unlikely many city managers meet that. Specific notability guidelines make sense to include those topics that should be assumed to meet GNG but where sources are very limited (e.g. on some of the early popes, or monarchs of England) or to exclude those articles (i.e. be stricter) where normal professional conduct would meet the letter but not the spirit of the guideline (e.g my own name is mentioned in several hundred scientific papers that cite my own papers. That does not make me notable - as a wp:academics requires a substantially higher standerd as being cited in scientific paper is just part of the job). So in this case, where GNG is unlikely to be satisfied based on being city manager alone I would vote no indeed. Arnoutf (talk) 18:21, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
The only category of person that has inherent notability and that trumps GNG are those that meet WP:NPROF. This is something that I find almost unblievable...I wonder if it was the academic community that managed to push that through because this phrase gives pause for thought
"if an academic is notable under this guideline, his or her failure to meet either the General Notability Guideline or other subject-specific notability guidelines is irrelevant." Domdeparis (talk) 14:02, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
Have you read e.g. WP:NSPORT "general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria" which also claims that as long a sports criteria are met, GNG is irrelevant (the word OR being key). The academic guideline says the same but in much more floral wordings (which in my view is not a good thing but sadly a handicap of many academics). But let's get back to topic, should we create a special case for city managers? Arnoutf (talk) 09:17, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
Notability of British knights
I don't know whether this is the right place to do this, but I would like to take some soundings about notability. I have recently been creating articles for British people who have been knighted. Last week, one of my articles, Murdo Maclean) was CSD'd (though not deleted in the end) despite him having a knighthood and an entry in Who's Who. Yesterday, another article, Jack Croft Baker, was AfD'd (outcome pending). He had a knighthood, CBE, obituary in The Times and an entry in Who Was Who. I've now had notices slapped on Reginald Ayres and William Cash (accountant) – both knights with Times obituaries and entries in Who Was Who too – stating that "The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline." In the nearly four years I've been here editing articles, I've not had this sort of response, certainly not this often. I do not doubt the good intentions of those tagging, but I am surprised at the fact they have done so. While I appreciate that these individuals are hardly celebrities and their articles aren't particularly long, I was genuinely under the impression that, by virtue of their knighthood meeting WP:ANYBIO, and with entries in Who's Who and obituaries in The Times (a world-renowned paper of record), they have enough secondary coverage for us to at least ascertain their notability. But apparently the matter is not so clear cut. I thought it might help me – and maybe others – to hear some opinions from the community; do people think these people meet our criteria? If not, what would it take for them to do so? If these people probably don't meet our criteria (which I think would be regrettable), then I'll stop wasting my time by trying to add them. Cheers, --Noswall59 (talk) 14:00, 9 January 2018 (UTC).
I think they're pretty obviously notable. I suspect some people are just getting a bit querulous about sourcing: the citation to the obit doesn't give information about the article it was in (only the page and date), I don't know about the English edition but my local edition of Who's Who is not known for being terribly selective. The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:51, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
@The Drover's Wife: You are incorrect. ANYBIO says nothing about knighthood. It presumes notability for "a well-known and significant award or honor" which, with how commonplace British honors are, might not really be significant and for some, not even well-known. It's a subjective matter. Further, my point is that even if a subject is notable, I won't necessarily seek to keep an insufficient article about it. Noswall59 is better off letting these articles go to AfD where most of them will be kept, thereby ending dispute about them. Finally, my attitude is productive if you share my goals. If you don't share my goals, then you're hardly in a position to complain about my opinion. Chris Troutman (talk)18:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I think you have conflated "benchmarks." Chitty passes WP:NCRICKET (maybe). It is unclear if any of these knights meets GNG, ANYBIO, etc. This is the problem when we have over-broad SNGs written by fanboys and the audience expects that their minor celebrity has to be at least as notable as the pornstar with the AVN award. Wikipedia:Notability (royalty) would have solved Noswall59's problem has the proposal passed. Chris Troutman (talk)19:30, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
The honours provision of ANYBIO could really use reworking since it gives no indication of what qualifies as a "significant" honour. But I don't think there's really any question that knighthood qualifies as such - it is not really that "common" at all and is among the highest civilian honours. Very frequently ANYBIO is used to attempt to justify keeping articles whose subjects have received much, much lower honours and a kind of informal consensus has developed that anything below CBE doesn't count, but knighthood is definitely above CBE. This whole idea could use formalising because I for one am tired of having to argue that ANYBIO doesn't cover, say, the Medal of the Order of Australia or the Centenary Medal. Frickeg (talk) 20:28, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you all for your comments. I take it that having an obituary in a major, national newspaper generally indicates notability. Most people commenting suggested that knighthood is also sufficient, but this is an area where there is some disagreement. As Frickeg points out, it would be worthwhile for ANYBIO to be expanded and specified. IMO a knighthood is a significant, well-known and selective honour. One critique is that knighthoods are awarded commonly; I don't think they are, but it brings up another problem. I have heard it said elsewhere that, because Knight Bachelor is the lowest grade of knighthood, it is not sufficient to indicate notability. But most people aren't eligible for other orders: the Bath is for civil servants and military officers, the GCMG etc is for diplomats, the GCVO etc is for courtiers and the Garter and Thistle are very rarely awarded (in its 750 year history, the Garter has had a third of the appointees the Medal of Honor has had!) The GBE/KBE is one case where there is no such criteria but in practice the KBE at least is awarded sparingly to civilians outside the civil service or military. Hence, despite technically ranking lower compared to the others, Knight Bachelor is itself a substantial honour, the highest a musician, politician, public administrator, businessperson, academic or artist (for instance) can ever really expect to achieve. Anyway, thanks again, I shall persist with my editing. —Noswall59 (talk) 19:19, 11 January 2018 (UTC).
I think there are already way too many SNG's to promote fan favourites (be it knights or cricketers). As far as I know SNG's were created for those situations where it is very likely that a person would be generally notable (i.e. the spirit of the guideline), but because of specific issues with their reason for notability would be less likely to easily pass GNG criteria (i.e. the letter of the guideline). So the bottom line here would be: Do we really think that knight bachelors, merely be their knighthood should pass the spirit of general notability. I would say - probably not. In any case if we would allow that, why only for UK lowest knighthoods as that seems to go against global pov - so we should allow ALL lowest knighthoods..... Not a good idea imho. Arnoutf (talk) 13:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
The point that I'm making above is that, while Knight Bachelor is technically the lowest knighthood in the UK, it is the highest knighthood people in the spheres of business, medicine, law, the arts, academia, philanthropy, local government, etc. can really receive, the higher orders being restricted to civil servants, military officers, diplomats and courtiers, or being extremely selective (e.g. the Garter and Thistle). The Order of the British Empire ranks higher, but the civilian KBE is awarded very sparingly (not at all in the latest New Years honours list) precisely because the Knight Bachelor grade exists. Hence, it seems wrong to argue that one knighthood conveys greater notability; if anything, a musician or academic receiving a Knight Bachelor is likely to be more notable than a civil servant receiving the KCB, for instance. Perhaps we don't need SNGs in this instance, but the fact that everyone who's replied here has offered different opinions indicates that there is some ironing out to do. Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 14:26, 12 January 2018 (UTC).
@Noswall59: Precisely. Much of this rubbish stems from people shooting their mouths off without having any real understanding of the British honours system. I've seen people say that because the Order of the British Empire is the lowest of the orders in precedence then nobody awarded any grade of it should be seen as notable, while clearly failing to understand that it's the grade that's important as well as the order (e.g. a KBE outranks anyone except a knight or dame of another order, including a Knight Bachelor and lower members of other orders). The bottom line is that if you don't understand what you're talking about then you should avoid commenting. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:39, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
I would also note that there's often an element of republicanism involved here. Some people don't like knighthoods and would simply like to forget that they exist and they are given for a reason. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:41, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
We have always considered that, as far as the British honours system goes, WP:ANYBIO #1 covers anyone with a CBE or above. That has been established over the course of many AfDs and clearly includes all knights. If they're notable enough to have received an honour this high then they're notable enough for Wikipedia. They're not given out with the rations. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:32, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Regardless of knighthood, I believe that an (unpaid) obituary in a major national or international newspaper (e.g. Times, Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, The Hindu) is de facto evidence of notability. Pburka (talk) 15:54, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
There are knights and knights and knights. For example, baronets are addressed as "Sir" and to be a baronet you only need to be the son of a deceased baronet so I wouldn't want to use that to assess notability. However, I would regard anyone awarded any type of (UK) knighthood as being notable. Another UK matter: Who's Who? (and Who Was Who) is pretty selective and is often used (rightly in my view) as a criterion for notability whereas I understand there are all sorts of varieties of "Who's Who?" vanity publications in the US where you can simply purchase an entry. However, even in the UK version, the content is at least partly determined by the subject and so cannot be regarded as an independent source for verifying some types of information. Thincat (talk) 17:16, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Can we please try to avoid making guidelines that are only relevant for a single country (here the UK), as we would have to make a "sister" guideline for every country where a similar type of reward exists. Arnoutf (talk) 15:54, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
While I understand your point, it doesn't help with the question over knighthoods in the UK. Given the problems and disagreements I outlined above, it would be nice to do away with this ambiguity and, if people agree that knigthoods are notable, note somewhere that they count as a "significant, well-known award or honour" for the purposes of WP:ANYBIO#1. I don't know where to put it, but I envisage a guideline looking like this: "For the purposes of establishing a subject's notability under WP:ANYBIO#1, if a person has received any of the following from the Sovereign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland they are considered notable: a knighthood or damehood, the Order of Merit, the Order of the Companions of Honour or the Royal Victorian Chain. For the same purposes, if a person has been appointed to the Commander/Companion grade of an Order of Knighthood of the United Kingdom for work not connected with the royal household or the civil, diplomatic or military services, they are considered notable (if they are in the royal household or the civil, diplomatic or military services, such an award only helps to establish notability and further grounds are needed for inclusion based on the criteria laid out in WP:GNG or applicable SNGs). Awards below the grade of Commander/Companion are not considered sufficient for establishing notability. The guidelines for recipients of gallantry awards are laid out in WP:MILPEOPLE"' I would like to discern whether there is consensus for such a guideline and, if so, where it can be specified. Those working on other countries can do the same via separate RfCs, right? Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 19:14, 13 January 2018 (UTC).
My point is here that most people deserving a UK knighthood would pass GNG with a few exceptions - and we should seriously consider whether these few exception are sufficiently notable (even if they are a knight) to deserve an article. In that light we should seriously consider whether creating a specific rule for UK knights does not simple fall under WP:CREEP (as in my view a substantial proportion of existing SNG do). In addition creating a UK specific SNG without including similar cases in other countries would support the already existing systemic bias of Wikipedia (see WP:BIAS). In short I oppose including a special provision for UK knights. Arnoutf (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I take on board what you are saying about systemic bias (and completely agree that it's a problem), but systemic bias does not just work against non-anglophone or non-male subjects. The fact that I have recently been able to create dozens of articles about UK subjects with substantial state honours and citations to high quality RS sources highlights how certain groups – even apparently privileged ones – remain poorly covered on Wikipedia: for instance, industrialists, leading professionals, eminent local politicians, UK subjects who died pre-internet (where sources are behind paywalls or offline). These are all forms of bias. There isn't interest in those topics or information is harder to get, so notable people are absent from the encyclopedia. The point here is that some people don't agree with you and me that nearly all British knights (or even people receiving Times obituaries) are notable, and that creates room for biases to creep in and be manifested in a WP:ILIKEIT approach, which I reckon is what's happened with the issues I initially raised here. I think that, by creating articles for people based on their knighthood, we are helping to avoid certain kinds of systemic bias, but it might not be worth the effort if there is no agreement that their award makes them notable. Hence my proposal. Hopefully that makes sense at the very least? –Noswall59 (talk) 19:54, 13 January 2018 (UTC).
I wonder if this might not be an opportunity to clarify this guideline for every country, not just the UK. I am wary of instruction creep but the fact is that the guideline simply doesn't define what it means by "significant honour" at the moment and this leads to a LOT of confusion at AfD. Perhaps there could be a subpage defining which honours are considered significant for the purposes of the guideline. Obviously most of these will require discussions of their own, but a few - the Victoria Cross, etc. - would seem like gimmes. I suspect WP:MILHIST probably has a list of the ones they use somewhere. Frickeg (talk) 20:52, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Fantastic, I'm glad that people believe it would be helpful. A subpage for awards is the sort of thing I had in mind—it can be changed and expanded for other countries or professions as users think fit. How do we go about proposing or making such guidelines? —Noswall59 (talk) 16:47, 14 January 2018 (UTC).
My suggestion would be: (1) Create an essay (or guideline) in which specific awards that should fall under ANYBIO#1 are listed (and if necessary given context). (2) Add a reference to ANYBIO#1 referring to that list (something like: "1. The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for such an award several times. See WIKILINK THE NEW PAGE for an overview of awards and honors to be considered.". While I think this would solve a considerable amount of AfD POV discussions, it should be noted, however, that maintaining the list of significant award and honors in turn may become a target for endless POV discussions ("my community park cleaning effort award is notable!") so we need to figure out how to streamline that. Arnoutf (talk) 09:51, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
Wow, I really, really like this list and the whole concept behind it. I hadn't thought of the whole adding up lower honours concept but I think it's a strong concept, allowing us to catch some people who have had sustained but lower-level recognition. I've looked over the areas I'm familiar with (Australia, imperial), and can't see anything I disagree with. Frankly I'd support transferring that straight over to a guideline, as long as the usual "there may be exceptions" caveat is applied. Other countries can be added as consensus emerges aroudn their own honours systems. Frickeg (talk) 04:48, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I also like this a lot and would strongly support this becoming an actual guideline. This would help resolve so many disputes and provide actual guidance to newbies. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:19, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I would be more careful. It is a (very) good start but there are several subjective judgment calls (e.g. the listed peerage heirs in the UK is an award for being born - seems hardly notable to me). Also the list seems fairly biased to anglo-saxon military awards and honours. In fact it misses out on perhaps the highest honour of all the Nobel prize. Mind you, in spite of this criticism, I think it is a very good start and User:Necrothesp fully acknowledge the limitations of the list, so thanks a lot for sharing. But at this stage I think the list could be posted as an essay, but not yet as guideline. In my view the guideline status runs at the risk of causing substantial Wikilawyering in a host of articles about specific awards and honour in the mentioned and not mentioned countries. So I would say yes as essay, no as guideline. At least for the time being. Arnoutf (talk) 10:39, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I like the concept and would like to see something like this incorporated into guidelines, but, like Arnoutf, I am sceptical about whether some of the tiers really constitute notability. Under your system, someone with an MBE and an MVO could be notable as these are tier 2 awards. I think that's probably not in the spirit of our notability guidelines. At the same time, I am not sure everyone getting a CVO or CBE is notable, which is why in my proposal above I included the caveat that "if a person has been appointed to the Commander/Companion grade of an Order of Knighthood of the United Kingdom for work not connected with the royal household or the civil, diplomatic or military services, they are considered notable (if they are in the royal household or the civil, diplomatic or military services, such an award only helps to establish notability and further grounds are needed for inclusion based on the criteria laid out in WP:GNG or applicable SNGs)". It's fair to say that we don't need articles on the Retail director of the Royal Collection Enterprises Ltd., a Research analyst at the Eastern Europe and Central Asia directorate of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or the Work Services Director at the Department For Work and Pensions (who received the CVO, CMG and CBE respectively in the 2018 New Years honours). I endorse the spirit of what you've done though and I think it's time for us to put an essay in the WP namespace. Hopefully we'll reach consensus for a host of countries and industry or learned awards as well. Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 11:05, 16 January 2018 (UTC).
I tend to think that someone with an MVO and an MBE probably is notable. Few people have two separate awards at this level. Neither do I think there is any reason to make exceptions for those honoured for royal, military or government service. Why, exactly? After all, we have articles on every person who ever played a single sports match in an all-professional league! Is it really too much to ask to have articles on people who have received high honours for their work, even if it is lower profile? We do not want Wikipedia to be a repository of pop culture which ignores people who have done things genuinely worthy of recognition. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:24, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I appreciate the sentiment of your point and I too feel that the notability guidelines can be skewed to favour particular groups. Having said that, I know that a Lieutenant-Colonel who spent a year as an equerry to a junior royal would likely be an MBE (routinely awarded to people of his rank) and an MVO (commonly awarded to outgoing junior equerries). The honours he's received are routine (providing he doesn't mess up) and there's nothing notable as I see it about his service. This is why I'm putting in a caveat about civil servants, etc. If an academic receives a CBE, then that is a major honour for them, but if a Colonel or Brigadier receives one, it's effectively part of the job. A select committee reported in 2004 that "In the home civil service, the diplomatic service and the armed forces, there is a clear correlation between the level of honour and the grade or rank of the recipient. Hence K/Ds go to those who reach the top grade or rank of their service—DS1, four-star and Grade 1/1A—and only rarely to those who do not"; they added that someone giving evidence said: "one Major-General told me last week that if he had not got the requisite CB, fellow officers would automatically have assumed that there must be a black mark against his name!" (p. 17). Elsewhere, one historian wrote that "a shelved Brigadier hopes for a CBE" (Paul J. Rich, Creating the Arabian Gulf: The British Raj and the Invasions of the Gulf (Lexington Books, 2009), p. 209.) For the military, civil service and royal household, the honours come with the job; if the job isn't notable, then the honour doesn't change that. If we think lower grades of civil servants are notable, then that needs to be discussed elsewhere (there are currently no guidelines for civil servants). Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 12:33, 16 January 2018 (UTC).
No, an honour is never "routinely awarded". Many lieutenant-colonels, commanders and wing commanders do not have an MBE; many colonels etc do not have a CBE. No honour is awarded just because someone reaches a particular rank except for those awarded to those who we would give articles to anyway (e.g. three-star military officers and permanent secretaries, who were traditionally awarded knighthoods), although even this is far from routine any more. Note that per WP:SOLDIER we would give articles to brigadiers (and equivalents) and above anyway. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:16, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
It's a work in progress. There's no bias. It's merely that I'm more familiar with Commonwealth awards and haven't got round to doing most of the rest yet! As to British peers, until recently they all passed WP:POLITICIAN as members of the House of Lords (and thus of a national legislature), and consensus over a number of AfDs is that, for consistency's sake if nothing else, we should continue to have articles on all peers even if they have never been members of the House of Lords. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:24, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I've created a page for this work in progress: Wikipedia:Notability (awards and honors). I've added my proposal about UK honours just to illustrate my point, but I take on board Necrothesp's statements and the guidelines can easily change. The point is that we now have an essay page to work with in the WP namespace. Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 12:02, 16 January 2018 (UTC).
I haven't added it because I don't know enough about non-UK honours to do so, and because I think we would need input from more people to gain consensus. Of course, anyone can have a go at editing the essay and it can then be discussed if there are problems with it: by all means, have a go. For the UK awards, it seems clear to me that there is consensus in this discussion that knighthoods/damehoods are notable, but conversation has turned to the lower grades. Necrothesp believes that CBEs etc confer notability and obviously likes his tiered system, but I've questioned whether it is perhaps too permissive, and whether some senior state employees receive their awards more routinely than other members of the public. I think we'd need input from other editors to resolve this discussion as well. Cheers, —09:59, 17 January 2018 (UTC).
I would agree that this needs some discussion but let's do that on that page. (PS I also much appreciate that with the peerage you limit it to those in house of lords, otherwise newborn babies who are heirs to the nobility would be notable at the moment of birth - but again lets discuss there). Arnoutf (talk) 10:58, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
The notability guideline says about major honors: "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards." It does not say they always are. So the creation of a stub article would likely be accepted because of the existence of substantial sources to expand into a good article. But if that is not the case, then the person is not notable. TFD (talk) 11:45, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
Notability of people accused of a crime
WP:CRIME: "...Editors must give serious consideration to not creating an article on an alleged perpetrator when no conviction is yet secured..."
In the past, articles like Bruce McArthur were not allowed to remain until/unless conviction. Now, they survive AfD.
In this particular case, this person has already been convicted of a felony charge of assault against a gay man in which he used a metal pipe to hit the man's head from behind without warning in 2003. That mitigates BLP concerns somewhat, but does not eliminate them. Perhaps the article could be renamed and restructured into an article about the serial killings of gay men in Toronto. Cullen328Let's discuss it02:37, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
I would oppose any "blanket policy" based on Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep. Each situation needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Clearly, we do not need a biography of a minor local official accused of vehicular homicide and drunk driving, even if press coverage is extensive. On the other hand, we are most certainly going to have a biography of an accused assassin of a major world leader, especially if the evidence is rock solid. We can debate the edge cases. Cullen328Let's discuss it02:52, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
For the record, I'm not convinced that the felony assault charge mitigates against WP:PERP in this instance, because the felony assault charge wouldn't have gotten him a Wikipedia article. The murders would obviously qualify him if he's convicted, but those are still only allegations and so PERP still applies — the fact that he's previously been convicted of a non-notable crime that's only tangentially related to the notable ones is irrelevant to PERP, because he hasn't yet been convicted of any crime that has anything to do with why this article currently exists. Bearcat (talk) 18:57, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
We simply cannot (and should not) create specific notability guidelines for any single profession in the world. In general we should use General Notability Guidelines. There are some exceptions when general notability guidelines for occupation that would systematically allow non notable people to be included or notable people to be omitted. I do not see why this would be the case for the occupations you mention above; so before we continue with that, please make that case. Arnoutf (talk) 18:21, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
Arnoutf, I keep seeing Articles for Deletion that are about people in these fields. We may often be on the wrong side disallowing some BLPs. Plus, we could make our life easier with specific criteria. That's the general idea. -The Gnome (talk) 22:08, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
General notability guidelines (or the more specific ones for people in general) are meant to indicate how to distinguish between notable and non-notable people - and I do not see where business people and entrepreneurs are different from those general guidelines. I also do not see why we would be on the wrong side disallowing business people, what justifies that they have more relaxed guidelines than for example volunteers? I think that is the substantial issue here and that needs to be answered first. Arnoutf (talk) 09:17, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
This is a proposal for practical purposes, more than anything. If the general guidelines were all-encompassing, we would not need special criteria for some fields, e.g. porn actors. The specific criteria are there to facilitate the process: The clearer the rules, the easier their application. The field of business and finance contains many factors that could be taken into account when deciding about a subject's notability, e.g. bypassing WP:TOOSOON in the cases of quick and significant successes that only get mentioned in specialist publications. I have not worked out any kind of blueprint; just "running it up the flagpole, see if anyone salutes it!" :-) The Gnome (talk) 10:41, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
It annoys me that accomplished unusual and interesting business people with significant press coverae are very often deleted while East German handball players who participated in one game in a world champiagnship in 1954 or some girl who won a one day pageant are given an automatic pass. Many of these people invented products used by millions, employ thousands of people and some actually changed how we live amd function as a society. The priority of Wikipedia in coverage is way off. Legacypac (talk) 12:59, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
Another thing to bear in mind it that businesspeople and their organisations/products are the most common issue we face at WP:COIN. If anyone is interested in trying to draft a specific notability guideline, I would suggest that they await the outcome of the attempt to draft a new WP:NCORP, as that would inform any such guideline. Edwardx (talk) 14:19, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
Hmm. :-) It does not appear that the proposal will arrive at a constructive conclusion very soon. I mean, I mostly agree with the comments by GreenMeansGo about the inherently chaotic nature of an RfC for major re-writes. I do not have a solution to this general conundrum, but for policies (as opposed to articles) we should perhaps be following the slow, very very slow process of itemized approvals. Let one hundred RfCs bloom!.. :-) Take care. The Gnome (talk) 15:00, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
Obituaries in the Times and NYT
I propose to add the following new criteria to WP:ANYBIO:
An obituary[1] for the person has been published in the The Times, or in The New York Times, or in a similar national newspaper.
References
^For this purpose, the word "obituary" does not include any paid death notice or memorial advertisement.
I am under the impression there is almost universal support for this. And since we now have criteria 3, we might as well include the other test we normally use.
@User:Chris troutman: I refer you to WP:NOTBURO and to WP:PGBOLD, which says "you should not remove any change solely on the grounds that there was no formal discussion indicating consensus for the change before it was made. Instead, you should give a substantive reason for challenging it and, if one hasn't already been started, open a discussion to identify the community's current views". Do you have any substantive objection to the change I propose? If so, please tell me what it is. If not, please revert your reversion. James500 (talk) 16:01, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
I would agree with the spirit of this change; I struggle to see how someone with an obituary in the NYT, the Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian etc would be non-notable (I primarily edit UK topics, but other country's national newspapers would usually also count). Occasionally editorial obituaries might be very short (as in a couple of lines), so there is some question-mark there, but then inclusion at all still indicates some degree of notability. Cheers, –Noswall59 (talk) 16:23, 22 March 2018 (UTC).
I would argue that such an obituary should contribute to establish notability but not necessarily be important enough on its own (in fact basic notability already gives this: "if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources" - of which an obituary in a major newspaper is clearly one. But whether the obituary on its own is enough? I doubt it. For example, if one of these newspapers decides to memorise common people by publishing an obituary of a random person once a week, the proposed policy would straight away propel that person to notability. The current basic criterion would require at least one additional publication. I think that 2nd publication is a fair safety net. So no, would not support this. Arnoutf (talk) 17:57, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
There is no justification for requiring multiple sources for any topic. The word "multiple" should be ripped out of every notability guideline in which it appears. GNG admits that a single source can be sufficient. But all of that is completely academic to this proposal. It is exceptionally unlikely that a Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Independent or NYT obituary would exist in isolation, and probably impossible. It is a virtual certainty, and probably an absolute certainty, that other coverage would exist. In fact, you can be confident that there would be a large amount of other coverage. This is primarily a time saving proposal to prevent crackpot nominations of people who are bound to satisfy GNG by a wide margin anyway. In any event, ANYBIO doesn't create automatic notability. If you look at the rubric of the additional criteria, the actually wording is "likely to be notable". That tautologous expression is probably a drafting error that should read "presumed to merit an article" as in the introduction to N (the present text literally means something like "likely to be likely to merit an article"). But no notability guideline creates an absolute right to an article. N is very clear that they only create a rebuttable presumption. And none of these newspapers memorise common people or publish obituaries for random people. Nor is there the remotest chance of them doing that in the future. So there is no risk. James500 (talk) 19:58, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict; reply to Arnoutf) In practice, it is quite rare for someone who has an obituary in a national newspaper not to have any other sources/indicators of notability associated with them. But regardless, while I know that GNG trumps most situations, we can establish consensus that certain, special sources are usually enough to establish notability (as with ANYBIO#3); I believe a long-form, editorial obituary in a major national newspaper should be sufficient. And to your point about 'ordinary people', I am not aware that any major newspaper writes obituaries for them as you suggest (the Guardian has an 'Other lives' section – well worth a read – but that is distinct from its obituaries section and is written by relatives or friends of the deceased, not staff or experts). Even if a newspaper did decide to publish obituaries about 'ordinary people', it isn't for us to decide not to include them; the fact that the newspaper has written about them means that we ought to include them indiscriminately, that's the point of us being a 'sum of knowledge' and a tertiary source. Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 19:59, 22 March 2018 (UTC).
Only as a suggestion, I strongly recommend calling this "long form" obits, and give examples of what we are expecting from that obit. NYTimes does have "shorter forms" (not death notices) that it gets from partners, like this one which I would say is not sufficient on its own. But the those written by Times staff off this page should be completely fair game. --Masem (t) 18:23, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
I have no problem with the Mike MacDonald obituary. It seems very long and good to me and it appeared in print. In any event Mike MacDonald (comedian) plainly satisfies GNG, with an enormous amount of coverage in other sources in GNews and elsewhere. So he is not a good counter example, because one of the strongest arguments for accepting NYT obituaries is that the people who receive them seem invariably to have an enormous amount of other coverage. So accepting the NYT saves us a great deal of leg work. It also helps us deal with the sort of editor who, when he is told that there are many good sources in GBooks, GNews, GScholar, HighBeam or JSTOR, pretends to be both blind and stupid, and starts insisting that he cannot find them unless he is given an URL for every source, and then, when you give him the URLs (and you usually don't have time to collect that many links), starts pretending the sources are much shorter than they really are. And just lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies. James500 (talk) 20:42, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Looking at this discussion I really do not see the problem this proposal would solve; and adding more rules does (in my experience) almost always lead to wikilawyering; and should therefore be a last resort option. As Noswall59 remarks, anyone with such an obituary likely meet other GNG criteria (if only a second article in a reliable source). Let the editors in favor of adding the article do their homework and provide such a second mention and we are good with the basic rules. Arnoutf (talk) 20:59, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
No, it is the vague and subjective nature of GNG that results in wikilawyering. The fewer inclusionary criteria you have, the more wikilawyering you get. This proposal is so specific, precise and objective that it could not possibly be twisted. James500 (talk) 21:30, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
This is an SNG. You are proposing, reasonably, that if there's a major obit from a national paper, and that is the only immediate source we can find for the person, then we can presume notability. If there are multiple sources easily found, then the GNG can be met instead, so that's not the issue. It is when this one obit is the only source that is shown, then that better be a quality obit. NYTimes' long-forms written by NYTimes writers are fine, I fully support that, but in the case of Mike MacDonald, if the AP short obit was the only source we have, that's a weaker claim to presumed notability. It is best to focus on the long-form obits that have more than a enough detail that we can summarize down to at least something more than a stub and have that presumed notability until someone can research the person more. --Masem (t) 22:04, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
I oppose this. First, NYT or The Times are still local papers for persons living in New York or London (respectively), so the obits will skew that direction. Masem points out the issue of long form vs short form, which shows we'd have to have a far-tighter proposal. I would also worry that the obits deemed acceptable would, in a few years, expand to the point where almost anyone that ever died could be notable. The nominator's claim that "there is no justification for requiring multiple sources for any topic" evinces an inclusionist mindset out-of-touch with the larger community. (His AfD stats are pretty interesting.) James500 seeks to make a single obituary enough to connote notability, enough so that he claimed that he thinks there's "almost universal support" for such foolishness. Our notability criteria are too inclusionist already. I do not support any new measure to presume notability. James500 has created more than 600 articles; there's not a single C-class, GA, A-class, or FA among them. This quantity over quality viewpoint is not sustainable. Chris Troutman (talk)21:24, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Firstly that is a blatant personal attack and trolling. Secondly, of course none of my articles are marked as featured or good. I never ask the reviewers to review my articles because I know that I have far greater expertise than them and they would simply introduce errors and reduce quality because they let any old totally useless and incompetent tom, dick or harry do those reviews. When the article on Sir William Blackstone was put through FAR it was badly damaged by inept copy editing. They made a complete mess of it. That isn't the only thing they've wrecked. And I have largely written many articles of C-class and above. My main effort on this project has been expanding articles on very high profile topics created many years before I arrived. So that is more distortion. Would you like me to go through your edits and find fault with them? You are, after all, significantly more deletionist than most editors. James500 (talk) 21:47, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
@James500: Criticizing your proposal and your editing is neither a personal attack nor trolling. I am portraying through your actions how unsound your view is, which is germane. You cannot banish speech you simply don't like. "Would you like me to go through your edits and find fault with them?" Yes. Stop by my talk page and write as much as you want about what I do on Wikipedia. I and my talk page stalkers will be entertained. Chris Troutman (talk)21:58, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
And of course, what you mean by "the larger community" is a small minority of mega-deletionist editors who hang around AfD and the related parts of the project space and exert an influence on this project out of all proportion to their actual numbers. I don't see how you can make anything out of my AfD stats when I rarely cast an explicit !vote. If you bothered to look at my actual behaviour at AfD you would realise that I am technically highly mergist. But we can't let the truth get in the way of The Holy War to Delete Every Article in the Encyclopedia, can we now? James500 (talk) 22:04, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
I have no problem with including a requirement in the guideline that the obituaries be "long form" if it stops your outrageous trolling and name calling, and if it stops editors from having a pathetic excuse to delay the inclusion of this criteria in the guideline. Because I would want this proposal to be delayed if any editor should in the future turn up at this page an start whining that NYT obituaries are not good enough. Nor would I want to incur the wrath of any editor who has massive OCD about deleting as many articles as possible (I am not naming any names here) who might show up on this page in the future. A requirement that obituaries be 'long form' isn't necessary, and I don't think you'll get much support for it, but I'll agree to include it anyway, if it puts a stop to your time wasting obstructionism, diversion tactics, and very rude behaviour. James500 (talk) 22:20, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Your ad hominem attacks are certainly not germane. If all you can do is invent fictitious stories about things that I supposedly did elsewhere that have no relation to this discussion, and never really happened anyway, then you are admitting that you have lost the debate, you have nothing constructive to say, you have no valid or substantive arguments to make and all you have left is to throw a lot of highly personal invective abuse. You might as well write "I Chris troutman admit that I am completely wrong" in block capital letters as tall as a man. Because no one with a brain is going to be fooled by the irrelevant abuse you have written. The fact that you think our notability guidelines are too inclusive indicates how unsound your own views are. Most of them have never been more deletionist than they are now. I don't think you could make ORG or NASTRO more deletionist than they are now in terms of the way they try to subvert GNG by introducing new-fangled and wholly artificial additional restrictions. The text of ORG basically reads "companies are really evil, delete them all right now, and let's invent some really absurd pathetic excuses to reject perfectly good sources that would normally satisfy GNG". These are recently introduced attacks on GNG. And this is too inclusionist? Really? Wow. Moving on I don't see any basis for your claim that the NYT or The Times are local newspapers. I have never heard of such allegations before. As far as I am aware, The Times is a completely national newspaper with no particular bias towards any part of the country. Now it my be that I am ignorant. But I notice that you have not provided a shred of positive evidence of any such bias. Could you please therefore immediately prove the existence of this alleged local bias with reliable sources and evidence. If you don't do this, I will have to infer that you have just made this up. James500 (talk) 22:54, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
I write better content than you will ever write. Because I have all the talent round here. In fact, I have been single handedly carrying this project for years. And you should show some gratitude. It is not as if I have anything like the level of assistance, or the intellectually undemanding source material, that people writing about light entertainment television have. No, I am left to do the hard stuff that no one else is capable of doing. And I get no thanks for it from the likes of you. And let's not forget that the quality ratings in wikiproject templates usually bear little or no relation to the actual quality of the article. Because anyone, no matter how incompetent, can assign any rating they like. I have been unable to edit this project for several years, and it is now collapsing in ruins. And the rot started the moment I stopped editing. Because without me around, this project would go straight to the dogs in five minutes. Which is exactly what has happened. As for "the obits deemed acceptable would, in a few years, expand to the point where almost anyone that ever died could be notable", that is absolute fantasy. The Times and the NYT are not going to start publishing huge numbers of frivolous obituaries. That would be commercially impossible. To begin with, the printed newspaper has severe length constraints. And they have to print a lot of copies. Publishing lots of rubbish would lead to bankruptcy. Can't happen. James500 (talk) 01:16, 23 March 2018 (UTC)}}
@Chris troutman: No, The Times is in no way a local paper for London. It's not a local paper at all. I think you might be looking at this from an American perspective. In Britain, we have national papers and local papers; they are completely different beasts. The London Evening Standard is London's local paper. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Ok all. If I look at the fierce discussion above, this whole proposal seems to be informed at least in part by a conflict between editors.
So I repeat my question: Considering that an obituary in a major newspaper would count as secondary source; and that you only need a few such reports to establish notability. What is exactly the major problem for Wikipedia in general this additional rule is solving? (and the associated question: Is this rule the best way to solve that problem?). Arnoutf (talk) 08:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Fierce indeed. I am not sure I want to take part in this discussion at all anymore. In principle, I agree that an obit in a major national newspaper should be enough to establish notability (and I struggle to see a sensible reason for rejecting it as such), but I also agree with Arnoutf in that (a) people with such an obit are usually notable either through other sources or for some other reason; and (b) this debate seems to have descended into some sort of battle for reasons which aren't being made clear to us. I am not sure this is the right way to deal with this problem (if there is a problem), and I am not sure that those fiercely opposing each other are talking about the issue at hand. Once again, I see this turning into an extreme deletionist/inclusionist discussion with the middle ground being drowned out. Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 10:02, 23 March 2018 (UTC).
Oppose as written. My knowledge is primarily of NYT, but I'll presume for the sake of argument that The The Times is similar. An obituary in those does mean the person is likely to be notable, but there are two problems. First, just listing those two could potentially exacerbate existing systemic bias favoring people that have coverage in the US and UK. Second, sad as it may be, I don't think it's safe to say that an obituary in any major national newspaper would be sufficient. I am unfamiliar with the major national newspapers of many nations, but do know that in many places there are unfortunate connections between national newspapers and outside interests, and that in many places the publishing infrastructure does not exist to the extent that we can presume sources exist about their subjects. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 14:03, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Your second point is an excellent argument. If you could supply a list of 'good' national newspapers for other countries, or a test for identifying them, I would certainly support a rewrite. The word "similar" was intended to exclude the gutter press or any kind of state or otherwise controlled propaganda mouthpiece or any newspaper that cannot be used to presume the existence of other coverage, but upon reflection I now agree that it might perhaps be twisted, and that a more explicit guideline would be better. James500 (talk) 15:42, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
How about adding a footnote to the word "similar" that reads as follows: "The following are not similar to The Times or The New York Times: (1) The gutter press (2) Any newspaper that is a propaganda mouthpiece for the government of its country (3) Any newspaper whose obituaries do not amount to significant coverage and cannot be used to presume the existence of significant coverage in other sources." or something like that? And while we are at it, I suppose we could add The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent to the list, and any other appropriate examples we can think of. Or we could have a closed list and omit the reference to similar newspapers. If you can think of anything better, please feel free to modify the text of the proposed guideline at the top of this thread. James500 (talk) 16:10, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
It is probably better and easier to make a whitelist, which I think will be rather short, than try to craft the vague blacklist. A long-form obit in the NYtimes by a NYTimes editor is going to be presumably notable. There's like a dozen or so other global papers or outlets (BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, CBC.ca, etc.) where this could be said. We can add to that whitelist if the language is added to NBIO if more sources are found, but that eliminates a lot of subjective guessing. --Masem (t) 16:14, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Comment. I'm only really familiar with British newspapers, but I think it is fair to say (and we have always considered) that a full obituary in any national newspaper, such as The Times (and no, The Times is in no way a "local paper"; only foreigners call it "the London Times"), The Telegraph, The Guardian or The Independent, is enough for notability. I can't speak for foreign newspapers, however. Presumably each has its own standards. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:09, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose(after all my comments let's give my conclusion). Considering all the above it seems that unless you encounter an extreme deletionist, there is no problem that requires a solution; while the adoptionof this rule might give extreme inclusionists an argument to engage in debates about how substantial an obituary needs to be and how important the newspaper should be (the Sun after all is also a national UK newspaper). So all together I see this cure as worse than the disease. Arnoutf (talk) 15:18, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose the 'long form' obituaries which would provide enough information about a person to write a good article are already acceptable and weigh heavily towards notability. The multi–column - multi–page ones would probably be accepted on their own at AfD as an extremely convincing argument for NEXIST. All this proposal would do is allow an automatic keep for subjects where we do not have enough information to write anything than a perma-stub. Jbh Talk16:39, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Modified proposal 1: closed whitelist with 'long form'
In view of the comments made above, I offer a modified proposal. The modifications are:
(1) This is a closed whitelist. Any publication not included in the list can't be used to establish notability. The publications presently included are based on suggestions by Masem and Necrothesp above. I personally consider the entries in the list negotiable and am open to further suggestions, whilst this proposal is under discussion, about what should and should not be included.
(2) The proposal is confined to 'long form' obituaries, per requests above.
^For this purpose, the word "obituary" does not include any paid death notice or memorial advertisement.
Oppose If the individual obits are convincing there is no need for this. If they are not then all this does is give inadequate sourcing a pass. Beyond that it opens up a whole can of drama over what is "long form" and what is not. Jbh Talk17:18, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
If you can write a definition of 'long form' that community can agree on, and I'm sure that someone as brilliant as yourself can do that, I will consent to it. In fact, I will consent to any modification that gets consensus for some form of this proposal. James500 (talk) 17:29, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Any definition will be gamed and wikilawyered, we are a pretty pedantic bunch here. The whole point is that if the obit contains enough information to show evidence of notability then there is no reason for this addition. If it does not then we should not be opening up a loophole to keep an article where notability can not be otherwise shown. What you seem to want is to say that getting an obit in one of these papers is in and of itself notable. That should not, in my rather strong opinion, be the case. Jbh Talk18:21, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
If any definition will be gamed and wikilawyered, then by that logic we should get rid of all our notability guidelines because they will all gamed and wikilawyered. And GNG must be the worst of the lot, because it is so vague and subjective. But I do not believe that. The community is perfectly capable of coming to a democratic compromise. If the community refuses to come to a democratic compromise on anything ever again, the community would be doomed. But I don't think that will happen. James500 (talk) 20:05, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose still not clear there IS indeed a problem that requires solution. In addition, the proposal is not better, not only the abovementioned long form vagueness, but also the arbitrariness of choice from sources of 3 anglophone countries (UK, US, Canada, but why not Australia? New Zealand? Ireland?; and why only anglophone countries). This can in my view only be solved by creating a comprehensive list of accepted sources across the world (which would run in the thousands and lead to endless POV discussions!), or keeping it with an even shorter list with all the objections voiced above. Arnoutf (talk) 17:48, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I only listed out good sources that I knew, and said more could be added. Probably something like the Sydney Morning-Herald? And as long as we know of a foreign language paper that when they write long obits, we can be assured that person was well known in that country and more sources can be obtained, then great. So something like Speigel in Germany, or Le Monde in France. --Masem (t) 18:02, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Indeed and Volkskrant, Trouw and NRC Handelsblad, as well as Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (Dutch national broadcasting who do long obits and is similarly reliable as BBC) and..... there we are with 13 listed already from only 7 out of 193 countries..... As I said, a comprehensive list is going to blow up beyond all reasonable proportion. Arnoutf (talk) 18:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
If the list gets too long for this guideline, we could just create a new guideline. We have ever so many policies and guidelines already, that one more will not make much difference. I doubt we'll be getting sources from all 193 countries. Most of them are presumably too small and/or poor to have the sort of high circulation 'quality' newspapers, and 'big' national publishing industries, that we are looking for. We will surely not have papers from San Marino or Andorra for example. I can't believe there are thousands. I'd be surprised if there were hundreds. James500 (talk) 18:47, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Comment Is there any evidence of subjects who have received this type of coverage in one of these papers not being remarked upon elsewhere? Or that they are being deleted at AfD because editors are unconvinced that such an obit provides strong evidence for NEXIST based keep? Jbh Talk18:25, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
We have crackpot nominations of everything at AfD. There have been nominations and tag bombing of articles about people with NYT obituaries, including the article on the late Adrian Wadewitz. And there was an awesome fight at that AfD, mainly over this issue. Even an unsuccessful AfD usually has a serious time wasting nuisance value. Anything that can shut down an AfD quickly, one way or the other, is A Good Thing. James500 (talk) 18:54, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) }But have there been deletions? If there have been is it a few or many? I would be very interested in reading some AfDs where you believe this change would have a) made a difference b) what the article would be like had it been kept. Essentially, so far, I am unconvinced that there is an existing problem to which this would be a good solution. I am willing to be convinced though. Jbh Talk19:05, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't know. I'm not sure how to check the archives because Google will not search AfDs. I think User:DGG might know, since he has commented on this many times. James500 (talk) 19:19, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose (edit conflict) Without a centralized notice or formal RfC, I don't think any decision here can realistically re-write the policy affecting potentially tens of thousands of biographical articles. As I've said before, this inclusionary attempt is fraught with problems. Wikipedia doesn't need an SNG based upon the biases of a few newspaper editorial boards. Chris Troutman (talk)18:59, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Agree completely. Even if, somehow, a local consensus formed here it would not be sufficient for a change of such magnitude. That needs a formal proposal and a widely publicized and attended RfC. Jbh Talk19:08, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
This proposal is actually a relatively minor step. It would merely codify existing practice that is at least normally followed, and perhaps always followed. The main effect would be to allow insane AfD nominations to be shut down more quickly. The vast majority of our millions of biographical articles would not be affected as far as I am aware. But if you want an RfC or a centralised notice, I have no objection to that. James500 (talk) 19:27, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I should point out that, on this page we now have five people (myself, Necrothesp, Masem, Namiba and Noswall59) clearly in favour of some form of this proposal, one person who seems to be willing to support a modified version of this proposal (Rhododendrites), two people who are completely against any form of this proposal, and one who is provisionally against it but is willing to listen (Jbh). Consensus is leaning strongly towards some form of this proposal passing. It is not likely to lean the other way in an RfC. A consensus here is not local, as this is the appropriate venue, and participation is not restricted to members of a wikiproject. James500 (talk) 19:54, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I think it's more accurate to say that there is a version of this that I would agree with (e.g. I agree that it is the case the someone with an obituary in the New York Times is likely to be notable). I don't know that there is a way to codify that in a way that I would support here. If we create a whitelist, it will further codify our geographic biases. If we create a blacklist based on difficult to define/determine terms, it will be difficult to make use of, given the amount of interpretation involved and because so much of what that interpretation would be based on would not be in English. There are practical realities that contribute to systemic bias in ways that are in some ways unavoidable, but I prefer not to see them codified in our guidelines unless necessary. I would say, however, that the whitelist approach does seem like a sensible addition to WP:OUTCOMES. Ultimately, no addition to this list will vaccinate against AfD nominations, nor even deletion, as what we're talking about is a list of things that indicate likelihood of notability, not automatic notability. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 21:43, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
As I see it,
I. Whether newspaper obit is a RS is not a straightforward question. From a otherwise reliable newspaper, they are liable for the facts of somebody's life. They are of more questionable reliability in evaluating it. There is auniversal tendency to he as positive as possible, especially for local figures, and this has to be atken into account. I would ordinarily consider the evaluative content of an obit as an editorial. But that's ordinarily-- they have to be judged individually. In particular, even in the most reliable papers, matter considered scandalous of improper for public discussion according to the taboos of the period, are ordinarily not included; there is also a tendency to the somewhat indiscriminate use of adjectives of praise. I would be very relutant to use such ab obit to establish someone's pre-eminence in anything. But I would not automatically disdain local papers. In many cases, they're the best sources available, if we take into account the possible prejudices. Remember also that at least the NYTimes and I think other papers, write the obituaries in advance, and update them occasionaly, not composing the entire thing on the day of the subject's death. This is basically part of my general way of thinking that no source is absolutely reliable for all purposes, and no sources is altogether worthless. It's a fallacy that having a NPOV means we do not have to think. NOR means that we do not make hypotheses or judgments about the subject; we do have to investigate and make judgments about the sources. Having black and white lists of sources is an attempt to avoid thinking. There will always in controversial cases need to be thinking and discussion.
II. For the related question of whether there are any papers whose obituaries prove notability all by themselves: Again,, it depends on the source. I trust full editorial obits in the NYT (after 1896) and the London Times. I am unsure about any other paper in those two countries for recent years, however reliable they may be for other purposes. There are other papers I trust for various parts of the 18th thru early 20th centuries. There are presumably equivalent ones in other countries, but I am less familiar with their standards.
An increasingly common problem with all newspapers, (and some National biographies) is their coverage of representative people, rather than important people, for obits and otherwise. This has not yet infected the NYT obit section.
Another problem is the focus of the NYT in the early 20th century upon high society figures. This tends to affect more the wedding coverage, but they are what people paid attention to back them. I'm not sure how to handle that aspect DGG ( talk ) 04:22, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose both this and original proposal; there's already too much leniency given for articles on overall obscure people (at least for their own merits), and this would just make it worse. Local papers are also naturally inclined to cover people from their area so they don't count for much in such instances when already affiliated with them to a certain extent. Snuggums (talk / edits) 16:39, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
After having numerous AfD discussion on the notability of politicians, I think we really need to make the guidelines more clear. Although the notability guidelines for local politicians says "Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article".", some have taken this to mean any local politician that gets an article in at least two sources passes GNG and therefore meets notability for an article. All local politicians get coverage from local sources, the local town newspaper always covers the town mayor (even if the population of the town is 10 people). What I am proposing is changing the NPOL guideline to read:
3.Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they are the subject of significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources that are considered to reach a national or international audience.
The current guidelines just set the bar too low, I'd appreciate any input on this proposal. I am also open to suggestions on wording it differently.--Rusf10 (talk) 01:53, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I appreciate the intent here, but I'm not convinced this is the best way to deal with this. Essentially all it says at the moment is "no inherent notability for local politicians, but they can still pass GNG", which is pretty uncontroversial. This proposal would place an additional burden on politicians only in relation to GNG, which is not workable. It seems to me the issue is actually with GNG itself, which doesn't preclude using local news as much as you want (and I'm with you, it should - otherwise we may as well just say every local politician does get inherent notability, because they're all going to get coverage in their local paper). It needs dealing with; I'm not sure of the best way myself, but hopefully the community can come up with something. I would suggest raising this issue at Wikipedia talk:Notability. Frickeg (talk) 02:05, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure this is needed: we have a long-standing practice that articles on local mayors and local councillors known only for being ordinary local mayors and local councillors (unless, for example, they've got some other claim to notability, that there was something special about them, or they're a larger city mayor) get whacked. Many of the cases that get discussed are going to be in borderline territory - I don't think it's possible to remove the judgment call, and I don't think we're handling these cases badly when we come up.
I also don't like restricting editorial ability to make judgment calls in remotely disputable cases: for example, in Frickeg's and my area, we have some larger-city regional mayors (cities with their own daily newspapers) that we've generally held to be notable because heading cities big enough that they're very public figures. Now, because of that they're probably going to have broader coverage - but much of the better coverage is going to be from their local daily newspaper (because that's their specific beat). I'm not really a fan of the prospect of having to have deletion arguments around how well the bigger papers were on the ball about municipal politics in that city in that era. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:47, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I pretty much agree, but while I do think there needs to be a place for judgement, I've been finding an awful lot in AfDs lately (both in my own contributions and in others', both in support and in opposition to my own opinions) that we're all relying a lot on "conventions" that have developed over the years, and while that's natural and fine I think it would be good to get some of them in writing. I mean, technically, if the local paper of a town of 5,000 has written a bunch about its mayor, why shouldn't a newbie editor think that that counts as passing GNG? A bit more clarity in the guidelines would, I think, both reduce the number of non-notable articles we have to deal with, and reduce the number of newbies whose first experience with Wikipedia is a bunch of people saying, "Yes, but we don't interpret the guideline that way". GNG in particular could use some clarifying that the judgement of "significance" doesn't just include how in-depth the coverage is but how "significant" the source is. Frickeg (talk) 02:54, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
This is a terrible suggestion. Wikipedia should be moving towards including more information about local politics, not less.Kiernanmc (talk) 07:29, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, I take your point. I guess I'd just be a bit wary about where we draw the line if we start cracking down on "local" news because I don't want to have to defend every article on some notable person from a regional city that someone decides to take a swing at. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:07, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Some recent examples in AfD of editors arguing that local sources alone pass GNG:
Well, there is an issue in that local sources are acceptable under WP:GNG and WP:NBIO but it seems you do not accept the guidelines as written. You are perfectly entitled to go against the purely advisory guidelines but others are entitled to abide by them. Suppose an academic fails WP:NBIO but passes the specifically independent WP:NPROF criteria and so has an article. If they run for political office should their article be deleted? Thincat (talk) 10:03, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Rusf10, I would recommend that you read those AfDs more carefully. In the two in which I participated (Parker and Kieliszek), national news coverage was cited. — MShabazzTalk/Stalk14:27, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I wasn't specifically referring your comments, I think someone else's "coverage is coverage" comment makes my point. However, there was not national news coverage. You made the argument that New York Times coverage in the regional section equals national coverage. The New York Times regularly covers local politicians in their local section. I don't see how that rises to national coverage.--Rusf10 (talk) 16:26, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I assume you're referring to this book [2] So now were going to argue that notability is inherited from the publisher of a book? A book in which the subject of our article is mentioned on a total of three pages. I think you missed the part of GNG that requires significant coverage.--Rusf10 (talk) 17:00, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Right, and I stated at the Erin Stewart afd, "...when Florida based Newsmax says, 'Considerable state and national press attention is focused on Stewart, whose upset win at age 26...made her an overnight Republican superstar in the Nutmeg State.', this is pretty strong evidence of GNG." Unscintillating (talk) 17:53, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
and you also said " As to the argument that local sources are a reason to claim that the coverage is not sustained, I find that illogical."--Rusf10 (talk) 18:10, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
You've identified no relevance, since the word sustained either refers to WP:SUSTAINED or the WP:N nutshell, neither of which have been discussed here. And you claimed at that same AfD that "every mayor everywhere gets some type of local press coverage" Likewise above you stated, "All local politicians get coverage from local sources, the local town newspaper always covers the town mayor (even if the population of the town is 10 people)." The metric is unsourced, also known as hyperbole and exaggeration for effect. And I'll at least present my counter evidence, which is that I've known of two mayors of sixth class cities in Kentucky and there was no press coverage of their activities.At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bo Sullivan (2nd nomination) your post dismissed the nation's third oldest daily newspaper with, "The Philadelphia Inquirer regularly covers New Jersey politics due to its proximity to south jersey and Trenton."Even the standard at WP:AUD doesn't exclude local media, they just require at least one regional media. Local media classify as WP:RS writing by professional journalists, and most of the so-called local media we see at AfD are available worldwide via the internet. Unscintillating (talk) 19:49, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
It is completely relevant because the sustained coverage is in local sources not national sources which covered the person for one event only. If you want to discuss WP:SUSTAINED we can discuss that too. The coverage for Erin Stewart was not sustained outside of her local area. Her only non-local coverage was a single NewsMax article, that alone would not meet WP:SUSTAINED, you would have to include the local sources to meet that requirement. I don't know if you've ever picked up a copy of the Philadelphia Inquirer, like whatever local newspaper you have in your area, it has a local section. The local section covers local topics that are not of interest to a larger national or international audience. Subjects don't inherit notability from a newspaper, so my statement doesn't reflect onto the significant of the newspaper either. And your its "available worldwide via the internet" argument is nonsense, everything is available worldwide via the internet even small town newspapers, so that really lowers the bar.--Rusf10 (talk) 20:28, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
As for lowering the bar, we don't need to lower the bar, as Wikipedians long ago set the GNG bar low. The real bar is reliability of the information. Unscintillating (talk) 21:18, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
So what you're saying is that the only thing that matters is WP:V, every other guideline/policy can be ignored? It's because of people like you who have this interpretation which ignores all common sense that we have a problem with notability requirements to begin with. Well, maybe its time to raise the bar and change GNG.--Rusf10 (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
As you can see in the discussions above WP:ROUTINE is mentioned, but some people insist that local political coverage does fall under WP:ROUTINE because it isn't specifically mentioned there. Are you suggesting that WP:NOTNEWS or WP:ROUTINE be modified instead?--Rusf10 (talk) 16:45, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm generally in favor of including most subjects which pass WP:GNG, and I'm not convinced that coverage of local elections is WP:ROUTINE or WP:NOTNEWS. But making WP:POLITICIAN more exclusive than WP:GNG is illogical, since WP:GNG applies to all articles regardless of SNG. If you want to exclude local politicians, it only makes sense to do so via WP:NOT. Pburka (talk) 22:35, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I think a crucial issue in this discussion is the disconnect between GNG and SNG; to my knowledge, GNG does not specify what kind or level of coverage one needs to establish notability, simply that the article's subject be in multiple, reliable, independent, secondary sources. This can be done for plenty of local politicians, but typically using local newspapers. What we have done with WP:NPOLITICIAN is say that this is not good enough for this specific subset of people. While this has been agreed for a host of reasons, many of them sound, it does seem to be the equivalent of saying "I don't like it". I am not sure I know whether I think our guidelines should be changed (I don't want to see an influx of poorly sourced stubs simply stating when people were elected to office), though WP:NPOLITICIAN does set the bar pretty high. I am interested to hear the arguments that lay behind the current SNG and for using national-level coverage as a guideline for local politicians (local coverage doesn't always equal routine coverage). Local politicians work locally not nationally; do other SNGs require coverage from outside of their subject's specialised domain? —Noswall59 (talk) 16:56, 13 January 2018 (UTC).
When we only have a few sentences from reliable sources about someone holding an office we aggregate them into a list of holders of that office. There are dozens of mayoralty appointed positions in New York City and we have lists of the holders of that office. --RAN (talk) 01:22, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
Those types of lists are just as bad as the articles on non-notable politicians. I can't see any reason to have a list of non-notable people who held a non-notable office. If it were up to you we'd have "list of mayors from x" articles for every single town in the world.--Rusf10 (talk) 02:21, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
There are about 400,000 populated entities and we have a lists for about 200 mayors of those populated entities, not a worry at this point in time. 10 years ago we were arguing whether to include an article on every town in the world, and 5 years ago we were arguing whether to include an article on every high school. --RAN (talk) 18:46, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Well, this all seems to have got a bit off-track. There's no need to re-litigate the AfDs here. I think it's clear there is no consensus to make any changes to WP:POLITICIAN, and that there are significant differences of opinion regarding notability of local figures. This is the sort of thing that could use an RfC at another venue, but I don't know that we're accomplishing much here. Maybe the village pump? Frickeg (talk) 05:30, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
I don't think this problem is going to be solved here either. And no, I don't want to argue about the closed AfDs here, I only brought them up to illustrate why this has become an issue. From the feedback I have gotten, it seems like a change to GNG or WP:NOT is the way to go with this instead of changing NPOL.--Rusf10 (talk) 05:42, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
Oppose The proposal has a healthy number of problems, many of which are discussed above. (Digressing) My concerns with many local office holders, of which there are nearly 520,000 in the United States alone, is that the vast majority of these officials should be considered low-profile individuals and treated accordingly. To me, this is why in many cases, we should take heed of the guidance in WP:ROUTINE and Run of the Mill and focus on WP:Depth and WP:Diverse ("coverage must be significant and not in passing" and "Significant national or international coverage is usually expected for an event to be notable"). (/end digression). I think it is important that these debates about sourcing and general notability occur at XfD where we can address each case on their merits, instead of changing the contours of that discussion with a change in the guideline. --Enos733 (talk) 22:13, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Support I haven't digested most of the arguments above, but I'd just like to say that the guideline to consider sub-national legislators as notable by default has seemed like a huge problem to me since I first learned of it. I'd say that for public-sector politicians, coverage in sources with an established national or international reputation for reliability should be required to prevent corruption. I also think that Wikipedia should consider the effects of eventually requiring every state legislator to have a page (the inevitable consequence of considering all state legislators notable). It limits the types of people who would run for office.--Michael WhiteT·C15:36, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose You haven't demonstrated that the bar is too low, you've only shown that you want to raise it. Adding requirements for international and national coverage does nothing except move what has become a de facto policy, as its mentioned in WP:POLOUTCOMES, which shouldn't exist in the first place. Bangabandhu (talk) 22:13, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Commercials are not credited roles and there is, to my knowledge, no significant body of work in existence which would imply the existence of sources about an actor who performed in commercials. If the commercial itself is notable then the actor might get a redirect if they are briefly mentioned in media coverage. If they are covered in any significant way then GNG works. The ENT SNG is a shortcut to gauge 'when sources are likely to exist' even if they can not be found online. Jbh Talk12:09, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
Commercials do count towards SAG. You are correct that there is no central database. Most data is found from advertising agencies, actors pages, and awards. As an aside what are examples of other productions? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 05:37, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Call me naïve, but where does it say that commercials count towards SAG?
Other productions might be performance art or other notable appearances.
Personally I would not exclude notable commercials. But I doubt commercials that are themselves notable are around. Merely being in a commercial of a major company should definitely not be enough, since these major companies also make commercials aimed at incredibly small markets (Unilever commercials for a local brand in a small country). MY definition would be that the commercial itself should have substantial and lasting impact on a substantial population, culture or similar. The We Can Do It! poster would qualify; some of the Benetton Group commercials might. But their impact and notability needs to be established at the level of individual commercials not some catchall term. And the main role of the actor would need to be established. Arnoutf (talk) 12:08, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Oppose, unless the commercial is wiki-notable itself; i.e. there's a page for it, and the actor had the lead role. This would be pretty rare, I assume. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:37, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
Oppose, if the commercial is notable itself and the actor had the lead will be very rare, ecept for someone who is already notable otherwise. DGG ( talk ) 16:15, 1 May 2018 (UTC) . K.e.coffman (talk) 05:37, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
Support (except the "major corporations" wording). The expression "notable films, television shows ... or other productions" does include notable commercials. There are some incredibly famous commercials such as the Smash martians (1973) or the secret lemonade drinker (R Whites, 1972) and it would be ridiculous not to take them into account. Especially when the lead actors in such commercials have received significant coverage because of that commercial. James500 (talk) 10:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
Comment - the significant coverage itself would clearly count towards notability under GNG guidelines. I am worried here that we are trying to find a problem that does not exist for this solution. Arnoutf (talk) 17:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
No, the proposal is that an actor should be presumed notable if he has appeared in multiple notable commercials. In this case it is the commercials that satisfy GNG, not necessarily the actor (though he sometimes will). There is a problem here in that if an actor has been in multiple notable productions, it will not normally be inconvenient to redirect him to one of those productions. Your line of reasoning also seems to imply that we should not have SNG at all. There is a need for SNG because GNG is a far from satisfactory test of what is and is not notable. James500 (talk) 05:00, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Either the commercial is that notable that a carrying author is likely to have sufficient coverage to meet GNG criteria, or we would end up in debates about notability of commercials and/or the significance of the author to the commercial. Arnoutf (talk) 17:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
No, this is not a proposal for a completely new criteria. It is a proposal to make the wording of an existing criteria more explicit. James500 (talk) 05:00, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. Commercials as genre do not have cultural impact comparable with cinema, etc., therefore they (and their production) lack presumed notability. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:53, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
WP:ANYBIO says "The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for such an award several times." I believe the Order of Canada, the highest award the Canadian government can bestow, is significant and that any person so awarded warrants a Wikipedia article under ANYBIO. In the AfD Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Nazmudin_Rayani the Order of Canada was relegated to being like the second highest military declaration - yet the only higher civilian honor possible for a Canadian is Order of Merit which is exceedingly hard to earn (24 living people in the entire Commonwealth). I've searched the archives and can't find any discussion of the Order of Canada, so I'd like to clarify it's importance. Legacypac (talk) 03:08, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
The Order of New Zealand has been discussed before (can't remember where, and it was decided that met the criteria easily). Even awards as low as Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit have been supported as meeting the criteria (though 'member' of the New Zealand Order of Merit was shot down). Can't remember where this was, but I'd suggest a WP:REFUND if the award is verifiable. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)03:47, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
I would have thought CC and OC would be, but not the lower level. I'm pretty sure we apply a similar guideline for the AC and AO in the Order of Australia, but couldn't put my finger on the discussion. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:57, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
It is not just the order that is important, but the grade. In this case it would seem that Rayani's award was a CM (the lowest grade of the Order of Canada). Equivalent levels in British and Australian honours systems have not generally been held to confer notability unless the subject can otherwise demonstrate that they have met GNG, which was evidently not the case here, so I would say that the AfD's outcome was appropriate.
Slight digression: As I have said before, that clause of ANYBIO is an atrocity and would honestly be better gone entirely than the way it is now. It gives no definition of just what it means by "well-known and significant award or honor", and I strongly suspect it was written with things like the Academy Awards/Nobel Prize/Pulitzer Prize in mind, not national honours systems. In any case, the awards provision is usually only a guide; people who have been awarded the highest honours (CC, in this case) rarely have trouble passing GNG anyway. Frickeg (talk) 09:58, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
For my opinion on this, please see User:Necrothesp/Notability criteria for recipients of honours. Yes, all grades of the Order of Canada are sufficient. It's not quite the same as the Order of Australia or New Zealand Order of Merit or Order of the British Empire, which have more grades and are also awarded at lower levels. As Canada has never had the knighthood levels or equivalent that those orders have, the CM is essentially equivalent to a British CBE, which we have always considered to meet WP:ANYBIO #1. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:06, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
Call for discussion
Someone monkeyed with the anchors in this wikidocument.
Redirects, like WP:ACADEMIC, WP:JOURNALIST, used to redirect to the actual relevant subsection. Someone seems to have decided these should, instead, redirect to the footnotes section.
They generally are treated as criteria for keeping the article. Most editors don't even read that section of the guideline. In any event, the lead section of WP:N says that topics meeting the additional criteria are notable. BIO should be rewritten so as to clarify that topics satisfying the additional criteria are notable and therefore presumed to merit an article (per WP:N), a presumption that is not rebutted just by failing BASIC, as we can write an article with less coverage than what BASIC requires. This is long standing consensus. James500 (talk) 10:38, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
We really need to clarify this in the guideline. I've seen it argued both ways in deletion discussions. Some argue that WP:GNG is always required, and that additional criteria are needed for establishing notability in certain professions where lots of coverage is WP:ROUTINE, as might be the case with, say, college football or local politicians. Others argue that guidelines such as WP:MUSIC and WP:NACTOR are sufficient for notability if some criteria are met but no in-depth coverage may be found. This is especially the case with WP:NFOOTY, where footballers with zero in-depth coverage get articles because they have played on professional teams.
There's an AFD discussion right now in which we're trying to decide if a young Spanish-language voice actor who has voiced the lead role in several translations of American children's TV shows is notable if he has no significant coverage whatsoever, but still meets the WP:NACTOR criterion of having a lead role in multiple notable TV shows. A clear guideline would really help.
Frankly, I can see merit to both sides. I'd like to see consistency. If there is indeed a "long standing consensus", as James500 asserts, that meeting additional criteria are sufficient, it should be explicitly stated in the guidelines. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:50, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Meeting a subject-specific guideline means that the topic is presumed to be notable. That's what the lead of WP:N says. Obviously, if a topic like that cannot be written about in encyclopedic fashion because source material only contains trivial details, that topic falls under WP:NOT. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:10, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
@Finnusertop: Well, that would eliminate a bunch of soccer-player articles who meet WP:NFOOTY but don't have anything written about them except mentions in game stats. As I mentioned previously, there's an AFD (Héctor Ireta de Alba) in a similar situation; a voice actor who appears to meet WP:NACTOR with no significant coverage. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:13, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
I think what Anachronist means is that specific guidelines are used in 2 different ways (1) To provide additional criteria to allow inclusion of a topic that does not meet (the letter) of general notability guidelines (i.e. make it easier to keep the article compared to GNG). This fits with the previous comment by Finnusertop (2) Additional criteria that raise the bar above and beyond general notability guidelines (i.e. make it harder to keep the article compared to GNG). This is indeed confusing (although I see the rationale for both. Perhaps reframing specific guidelines into 2 sections: Allow entry even though GNG NOT met / Additional criteria to met even though GNG is met (or similar) might help? Arnoutf (talk) 18:49, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
@Arnoutf: Thanks for stating it more succinctly. Yes, that's what I meant: Is it sufficient to meet subject-specific criteria without significant coverage as required by WP:GNG, or are those criteria intended to raise the bar over what WP:GNG requires? We definitely need a consensus on this. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:05, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Some SNG are used to clarify/interpret GNG for the topic e.g. NORG. Others specifically exist to give alternate paths to inclusion e.g. NPROF. The rest, as I understand it, give a set of criteria which create a rebuttable presumption of notability ie they formalize a WP:NEXISTKeep arguement for that topic. Where we fall down at AfD is most editors ignore rebuttable in 'rebuttable presumption'. If an article has been around for a long time based on passing some SNG criteria but no one has been able to locate or identify sources which pass GNG then that, in itself, is a good arguement to delete. Every time sourcing comes up in these cases it is worthwhile to cite WP:V - if there are no reliable sources then a policy compliant article can not be written, take out everything that can not be traced to a reliable source and see what is left. If all that is left are stats or some such then delete based on WP:NOTDIRECTORY or similar. In short if the only thing that can be verified by RS is an SNG criteria (say a charted song) then I would argue that the 'rebuttable presumption of notability' has been rebutted. Jbh Talk20:52, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
What you describe is exactly how this should work, Jbhunley. Why it doesn't is because at AfD precedent and !vote headcount weigh a lot, and article creators in certain subject areas are motivated to fight wars of attrition by !voting "keep" across the board to secure their own creations. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:12, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
The central problem here is that not all of the additional criteria have equal value -- nor should they, at least in their current forms. These criteria (or SNGs) are intended as proxies for evaluating notability, enabling editors to avoid time-consuming searches when the expected outcome is predictably clear - especially when the main sources are likely to be print-based rather than online. A few years ago, a particularly foolish editor attempted to purge most of the articles about the films of D. W. Griffith, insisting that since he couldn't find contemporaneous newspaper reviews online, the films must not be notable. Fortunately, this scavenger hunt mentality regarding notability was soundly rejected. I also think too little attention is paid to the principle in WP:OSE that when the great majority of subjects falling into a particular category are notable, there is no point in trying to weed out the small fraction that are not (especially since they are still likely to be plausible searches for encyclopedia users). I think the community now recognizes that for academics, creative professionals, scientists, and those in similar fields, coverage of the work is for encyclopedic purposes coverage of the person, and even though we know very little about the personal lives of winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, or the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons, or the holders of the endowed chairs at Harvard, people turn to encyclopedias to learn about their work, not (mercifully) their love lives, their childhood pets, or their preferred sports teams. Similarly, I think that most of the sports-related criteria are sound because the important/noteworthy aspects of their careers are typically limited to the aspects summed up by their standard statistics. Few baseball players could be Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson (mercifully!) (although there does seem to be a particular fascination about documenting hookups between prominent curlers, about which I hope never to learn more than I already have).
So -- additional criteria/SNGs should be highly correlated with GNG outcomes, if perfect information about every subject were easily accessible. That's an impossibility, of course. Some SNGs are very good fits, some not so good. The most serious problems arise when criteria that are generally solid break down for special cases or subfields. Voice actors are a good examples of a subfield where the general criteria for actors don't work well (and PORNBIO is a special case where they're quite dire). Other problems arise when different cultures value efforts differently: Playback singers are much more notable in Bollywood than in Hollywood.
The attempt to set uniform (meta)standards is not productive. At least one of the basic ideas underlying this discussion is just incorrect -- that question is not whether we cover certain topics which do not meet the GNG, but under what circumstances we infer that a topic is sufficiently likely to meet GNG requirements that we do not require detailed proof and the associated time- and effort- consuming inquiry. And we need to remember that our concept of "notability" is itself a proxy for the more inchoate idea of "a subject a person might reasonably turn to an encyclopedia to obtain information on", and not apply notions so inflexible they impair our underlying encyclopedic purpose. Otherwise we're just playing an unwinnable online game. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. (talk) 22:17, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
So it looks to me like a subject notability guideline either exists as an exception to GNG (as is the case with NFOOTY or NPROF, resulting in hundreds of articles about soccer players and academics that likely won't ever get any significant coverage), or it exists as a higher bar than the GNG (I've seen MUSICBIO argued this way for garage bands that have received a lot of local coverage). We can split hairs over my choice of the word "exception" but that's functionally what it is as long as GNG isn't met. In fact Wikipedia:Notability (sports) says as much right up front.
We have a pretty low bar for most subjects. I'd like to see the subject guidelines used as a higher bar in most cases. After all, this is an encyclopedia, a compendium of human knowledge that matters. The subjects we cover should matter to a world-wide global audience. I daresay most pop-culture and company articles are about subjects of such long-term insignificance that 30 years from now nobody will need to remember them. ~Anachronist (talk) 21:26, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Definition of Multiple - Pre-RFC
Hello,
A request for some early thoughts. In several discussions I've come across recently, people have disagreed over the definition of multiple. Generally a disagreement of two (premised off definition) and others who say consensus generally/always (variable) have wiki meaning of multiple as three+. With sources I can understand vagueness, to cover for strength of each source, but with others (Number of films, medals, prizes, races etc etc) it causes confusion.
Thus, I have a question, conditional proposal and a specific commentary statement.
1) Question
In the event of "multiple" being used in number of notable films etc etc, shall multiple mean
a) Two or more
b) Three or more
2) Proposal
Should usage of multiple be clarified, especially if we are going to use "three or more" as the agreed definition
I've never seen anyone claim that 'multiple' should be interpreted in any way other than its plain meaning, i.e. more than one. I think attempting to redefine multiple to mean three or more is doomed. If you proceed, then you should propose replacing 'multiple' with 'three or more', not redefining it, and you should enumerate all the places you intend to change. Pburka (talk) 23:44, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
I myself do have a strict definition of "more than one" meaning, but I've had several people disagree with me just in the last fortnight. You're right on both counts: I wanted to use this phrasing so that it didn't come across as having already adopted my personal usage in the phrasing of the question, but I can see the issue. I certainly would list each specific usage if I made a full RFC, say at the village pump, but I must apologise for a degree of laziness/unwillingness to do so at this early junction. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:57, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
I guess I misunderstood: I thought you were endorsing the 3-or-more change. If we have to define simple, unambiguous words like 'multiple,' where do we stop? Pburka (talk) 02:59, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
A little corner of my mind wants to cite WP:MOS as a sign we've already fallen down the rabbit hole Nosebagbear (talk)
I go with the dictionary and feel multiple means "two or more". As regards "If we have to define simple, unambiguous words" - that the discussion has appeared surely means it less unambiguous than we would hope? Nosebagbear (talk) 08:41, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
This is an instance of the classical "paradox of the heap. If two is not enough, why someone will think 3 will be enough? In any case, since you claim repeated disagreements, a RFC for a clarifying footnote may be due, but not replacemnt of "multiple" with "two or more" all over the text. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:59, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Changing 'multiple' to any specific number seems a non-starter to me. Sometimes two is fine, simetimes three, and in others more. It often depends on the quality of sources and/or depth of coverage. There is also often a question of independence of the sources to be considered and whether coverage is being driven by a PR campaign or some other artificial means. More succinctly; the ambiguity is a feature not a bug. Bright line rules remove editorial judgement and that is nearly always a bad thing. Jbh Talk21:22, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
If the vagueness led to conditional judgement from editors, then I would agree with you. However if it is driven from a lack of clarity in understanding of certain terms then it isn't editorial judgement but straightforwardness vagueness. A re-phrasing that left the vagueness purely in terms of what wiki wanted (rather than just misunderstanding how it was being presented) would be fine, if one can be found. Nosebagbear (talk) 21:52, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
@Jbhunley: Re-reading your comment I realise I didn't respond to the first half - I fully agree that vagueness regarding multiple sources is a big plus - definitely varying on the factors/qualities of the sources. My concern is on other usages. To use the most recent discussion I've had - multiple films. There wasn't any comparable discussion on (e.g.) 3 films being needed here but 2 big films would suffice. Instead it was a strict 2/3 breakdown discussion Nosebagbear (talk) 08:41, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
I would prefer to maintain some level of 'vagueness' here to give sound judgement and following the spirit of the guideline and edge against wikilawyering. If we define multiple as 3 or more (or 2 or more), we will see a shift from how much is multiple, to how notable is notable enough. So in short, I would not support specifying this. Arnoutf (talk) 09:44, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
• @Nosebagbear: hmmm… I think that even in cases like that is should come down to specifics of the case. For instance WP:BOOKCRIT has a threshold of two reviews, yet compared to the other four criteria finding only two reviews in anything other than top tier press is an incredibly low bar. Having 'multiple' in the place of a specific number would allow discretion to look at a books reviews in the context of needing to be of the same order as the other four criteria. I do not know how this would apply to your films case but I think it illustrative of what I am advocating to avoid with defining 'multiple' elsewhere via this RfC. Jbh Talk14:42, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
My concern is that 'multiple' isn't vague or ambiguous. It means more than one; two or more. If you want the criteria to be vague (and this can be useful), then use 'several', 'numerous', 'many' or 'significant number', or find some other way to reword the sentence. Consider copying the wording from WP:GNG which clarifies that "there is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected." Pburka (talk) 14:58, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
I would definitely support such a change but I am on the more conservative end of the spectrum when it comes to inclusion criteria – especially for articles which Wikipedia can serve as a promotional vehicle such as music, books, films and their creators as well as companies, products… Jbh Talk15:48, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
(1) "Multiple" means and always has meant two or more. It is neither vague nor ambiguous. Nor is not a low bar. It is actually too high. In truth, there is no justification for requiring more than one source. The requirement for multiple sources ought therefore to be completely eliminated. There is no question of introducing a requirement for more than two sources, or any "vagueness" designed to allow editors to play the "no matter how much coverage there is, I won't accept it is significant" game. Deletionism brought this encyclopedia to its knees by causing the editor retention disaster. The last thing that we need now is more deletionism. "Raising the notability bar" could only result in the total destruction of the project. The rate of article creation is abnormally low and we are standing at the edge of an abyss. (2) This argument does not apply however to the actor with multiple notable films. The reason we have a criteria for him is essentially BIO2E: if someone is notable for two things, they can't be convieniently redirected to one of them. In such a case, having an article makes navigation easier. (3) As for the "promotion" argument: Notability has nothing to do with preventing promotion. Quite the opposite. It is primarily used as a vehicle for POV pushing in the form of deleting articles about topics that nominators don't like. James500 (talk) 09:32, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Go find a dictionary. "Multiple" means more than one. Specifically, at least two sources that are not connected with each other (not same publisher or same author, etc). No it should not be clarified. In most cases where two sources might not be enough, it isn't because there aren't three, but because one or more of the sources are marginal or borderline in quality. Once there are multiple sources, the number doesn't matter, the quality is what matters. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)09:51, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Two or more. In general, as others said, sometimes one in-depth source (a book; a book chapter; a scholarly article) is sufficient. It's not the quantity; it's the depth of coverage that matters. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:44, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
The victim of the crime is a renowned national or international figure, including, but not limited to, politicians or celebrities. Shouldn't this be the perpetrator of the crime?--Farang Rak Tham(Talk)07:49, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
@Tyw7:Template:Subcat guideline#Template parameters says: "For the next optional shortcut, use another established shortcut. You can use up to five shortcuts in total, each as a separate parameter.". I think five is already too many, and you made the shortcut today so it's not established. Template:Shortcut#Usage says: "The point of these templates is not to list every single redirect for a page (indeed, that's what "What links here" is for). Instead, they should list only one or two common and easily remembered redirects." PrimeHunter (talk) 11:19, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
ONE EVENT is not workable
The current version gives no clear instructions. It basically says on one hand this, one one hand that. If Osama bin Laden were captured and tried on that basis, the prosecutor would be saying "Osama, on one hand should be executed and on one hand should be given a medal". That is poor presentation. It should be re-written. Here is the current version and below is a NEUTRAL revision. That revision is presented to start discussion but is not my vote.
Vanrich (talk) 20:04, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Current
When an individual is significant for his or her role in a single event, it may be unclear whether an article should be written about the individual, the event or both. In considering whether or not to create separate articles, the degree of significance of the event itself and of the individual's role within it should both be considered. The general rule is to cover the event, not the person. However, if media coverage of both the event and the individual's role grow larger, separate articles may become justified.[16]
If the event is highly significant, and the individual's role within it is a large one, a separate article is generally appropriate. The assassins of major political leaders, such as Gavrilo Princip, fit into this category, as indicated by the large coverage of the event in reliable sources that devotes significant attention to the individual's role.
When the role played by an individual in the event is less significant, an independent article may not be needed, and a redirect is appropriate. For example, George Holliday, who videotaped the Rodney King beating, redirects to Rodney King. On the other hand, if an event is of sufficient importance, even relatively minor participants may require their own articles, for example, Howard Brennan, a witness to the JFK assassination.
Another issue arises when an individual plays a major role in a minor event. In this case, it is not generally appropriate to have an article on both the person and the event. Generally in this case, the name of the person should redirect to the article on the incident, especially if the individual is only notable for that incident and it is all that the person is associated with in the source coverage. For example, Steve Bartman redirects to Steve Bartman incident. In some cases, however, a person famous for only one event may be more widely known than the event itself, for example, the Tank Man. In such cases, the article about the event may be most appropriately named for the person involved.
Editors are advised to be aware of issues of weight and to avoid the creation of unnecessary pseudo-biographies, especially of living people.
It is important to remember that "notable" is not a synonym for "famous". Someone may have become famous due to one event, but may nevertheless be notable for more than one event. Conversely, a person may be generally famous, but significant coverage may focus on a single event involving that person.
First Revision
When an individual is significant for his or her role in a single event, it may be unclear whether an article should be written about the individual, the event or both. In considering whether or not to create separate articles, the degree of significance of the event itself and of the individual's role within it should both be considered.
Rule 1. If someone is murdered and there is a Wikipedia article, the basic standard is to have a murder article, not an article on the killer or the victim unless those individuals pass by other means.
Rule 2. If the event is very significant, and the individual's role within it is significant or has many reliable sources, a separate article is generally appropriate.
Rule 2a. If the event is of great significance, even relatively minor participants may require their own articles, for example, Howard Brennan, a witness to the JFK assassination. In some cases, however, a person famous for only one event may be more widely known than the event itself, for example, the Tank Man. In such cases, the article about the event may be most appropriately named for the person involved.
Rule 3. Editors are advised to be aware of issues of weight and to avoid the creation of unnecessary pseudo-biographies, especially of living people.
It is important to remember that "notable" is not a synonym for "famous". Someone may have become famous due to one event, but may nevertheless be notable for more than one event. Conversely, a person may be generally famous, but significant coverage may focus on a single event involving that person.
In Pakistan, we've a unique system of caretaker government - both at the centre and in the four provinces. The cabinets of the caretaker interim governments are composed of non-elected individuals so I'm just curious whether the caretaker members (ministers only) of the cabinets automatically passes WP:NPOL? I'm pinging some editors who have worked in this area: @Kautilya3, DGG, DBigXray, SheriffIsInTown, and Capitals00: --Saqib (talk) 07:22, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, going by the wording of the policy, holding "office" qualifies people to have pages by WP:NPOL. But, I would say, let us not go overboard with this. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:04, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
No, I would say that only the Head of the Caretaker cabinet (i.e. the temporary PM or the CM) can be considered Notable. Basically it is a very short term duration and these people (members of the cabinet, both ministers and head) are not expected to do something that can have a lasting impact in that short period. But if they do something that gets significant coverage and passes WP:GNG then these minister can have a WP:BIO, but that will be on a case by case basis. IF you are looking for a General statement. I would suggest to only consider the Head of the care taker cabinet as notable. Ministers of the care taker government are not inherently notable and would need to satisfy the WP:SIGCOV criteria as well. --DBigXrayᗙ09:52, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
@Kautilya3 and DBigXray: I'm listing below a bunch of BLPs (on former caretaker ministers) which were created recently. I checked some of them and don't see them passing GNG easily. --Saqib (talk) 10:26, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
I don't think they pass. They are not exactly notable. There would be many such similar articles like some have been already noted in the list if this kind of criteria was justified for creating the article. I don't see a solid reason to ignore criteria of achieving general notability which is clearly not limited with being in a office either and that's why each individual may differ from other when it concerns the notability. AfD nomination is justified when there are issues with GNG and NPOL. Capitals00 (talk) 11:26, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
I consider that our consistent practice has been that all cabinet member in the US = ministers (or equivalent) elsewhere are notable. There should always be sources, though they may be difficult to locate. It is not our role to make judgements on the expected length or survival or relative importance of a caretaker government, and the few AfD discussions I recall on even temporary or acting heads of departments have usually found them notable. The only way of deciding this, of course is AfD, but i first want to remind people of cultural bias, and the need for those with the necessary acccess and abilities to help find sources. As I see it, part of the reason for presumed notability in such cases, is precisely this factor. DGG ( talk ) 14:53, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
Cultural bias is sometimes an overstated point used, not necessarily by DGG, as a means to retain anything and everything. Yes, I would agree that it can always be an issue - most basically in terms of non-English language sources - but it seems to me to be used as a sledgehammer at times. If they're notable then, sooner or later, something will appear and until then they are not notable. Our role is to reflect, not to anticipate or speculate. - Sitush (talk) 23:34, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
Political activists
What's the general view on political activists? For example Laura Bates. Now she has a British Empire Medal etc. but early on she had significant media coverage but - on a technical note - I'm not sure how her blp passes notability for a person diff. Is it a case of:
WP:ANYBIO – The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field. - with her "field" being political activism[1]
^A political activist who has received "significant press coverage" has been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists.
On a technical note: - The diff you are showing us demonstrate laziness of Wikipedians, rather than deficiency of our policies. I do not see why political activists need preferential treatment: by the very occupation a political activist is supposed to make noise to affect people. If none, let them try harder. Staszek Lem (talk) 16:27, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
So your opinion is its a case of 1. a WP:TOOSOON AfD that was missed. Okay. I don't see anything in my original post that suggested a deficiency of [Wikipedia's] policies or asked for preferential treatment. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 14:27, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
@The Vintage Feminist: I do not see anything in my post accusing you of anything. I was saying that "the general view" on them is ..er.. general and see no reason for otherwise. And no, not WP:TOOSOON. I checked the dates; there was enough sources at that moment, therefore I wrote it was the case of WP:TOOLAZY. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:25, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
ONEEVENT is a subclass of a broader principle which might be termed separable notability. If her notability were only in the context of the Everyday Sexism Project then redirection and coverage there might suffice per WP:NOPAGE, etc. Bates's second book Girl Up also appears to pass WP:NBOOK, however ([5][6][7][8]). There are various combinations of article(s) and redirect(s) that might work with ESP and her two books, but any of them are likely to need an article at LB. In the general case, agree that no explicit SNG criterion is needed for political activists. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~19:25, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
In general, if there's no SNG in place, the fallback is WP:N, meaning: is there significant coverage of the subject in reliable independent sources? Laura Bates seems to pass. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:28, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
Hi K.e.coffman & Hydronium Hydroxide going on from what you've both said, if LB had been up for AfD for notability back in August 2014, the basis on which to decide is she notable enough to have her own article would be:
Has LB received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, i.e. is there "Significant coverage", coverage that addresses the topic (LB) directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material? (As per WP:GNG because there is no SNG for political activists in place)
rather than:
Has LB made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in political activism i.e. A political activist who has received "significant press coverage" has been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists. (As per WP:ANYBIO).
so in the first example LB wouldn't have to be the main topic of the source material (the fallback in absence of SNG) but in the second example she would have to be the main topic of the source material and it would have to be in depth (a tougher test to pass). --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 15:28, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand the distinction. In LB's case, the coverage of her exists. In any case, an AfD is a judgement call. I would !vote "Keep" if the article ended up at AfD. K.e.coffman (talk) 18:49, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
What I'm really trying to figure out is - in the event of their being no SNG on a bio of a political activist does GNG apply as though the person is a topic, or does ANYBIO apply taking the term "field" to mean political activism. In LB's case the main topic is her creation of the Everyday Sexism Project so I see how she satisfies GNG but I would say ANYBIO is much thinner. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 19:24, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
I suspect there might have been enough additional sources at the time to have voted some sort of Keep, but in a hypothetical situation where that 2014 version of the article basically contains the only reliably sourceable material with no prospects at that time for significant expansion, then I'd probably have argued for merge/redirect with the following logic:
The Everyday Sexism Project meets GNG
She does not meet ANYBIO#3 (Dictionary of National Biography level) and the British Empire Medal has thousands awarded annually so that doesn't meet ANYBIO#1.
Nor does she appear to meet ANYBIO#2, which has two key components. The first is that she "has made a widely recognized contribution" — the ESP can have had coverage sufficient to meet the GNG but it's less clear that this has been widely recognised if RS coverage is limited. The second is that the ESP be "part of the enduring historical record" — which is hard to justify after a limited period unless (say) it's covered in multiple books, journals, full documentaries, whatever.
Nor does she appear to meet NAUTHOR, NBOOK, or other SNGs (but even if she did her book is a byproduct of the ESP)
The coverage of Bates outside of ESP-related activities does not clearly meet GNG. She had no notability prior to the ESP, her subsequent noteworthy activities are limited to her work with the ESP, and her bio without the ESP has little substance so it is likely that expansion is going to be very duplicative.
If somebody's work meets GNG, then at least one article (work and/or bio) is justified. (By analogy) If someone writes one book, and that work gets a level of critical appraisal that meets NBOOK, but not to the level where the author meets WP:AUTHOR then coverage for the book either at its own article, or as a section of a bio article is warranted but probably not both. Which way the merge/redirect should go is a judgment call.
Covering Bates at ESP's article in the context of the ESP -- rather than ESP at Bates's article in the context of Bates appears far cleaner.
More examples of types of people where WP:ONEEVENT doesn't apply but the concept of separable notability does... It is quite possible for an entrepreneur to have founded a company that meets NCORP and warrants an article, to have ranked in power lists, to have won a BEM-equivalent award, to have achieved limited personal coverage outside of that company, and to be thus deemed as only warranting coverage at that company's article. Similarly treated would be inventors of one significant invention, musicians who appear in only one band of sufficient but limited notability, founders of towns, someone who builds and operates a notable theatre, etc... ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~01:34, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the detailed answer. It's just lately in AfD debates I seem to have been saying things like, "yes, they're an academic but their notability doesn't come from being an academic it comes from being an activist." but not been sure how to pin that down. I just thought there might be some clear cut way of doing it. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 10:43, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
AfD is often a judgement call, but generelly, a BLP, if not meeting an SNG, would have to be notable for several things, in order to be kept. For example, entrepreneurs who started at least two notable (i.e. blue-linked) companies tend to be kept, vs just one - which often edn up in a "delete" outcome. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:00, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes AfD is a judgment call, but care must be exercised not to take WP:ONEEVENT too broadly. Yes, an inventor may have invented a single best mousetrap, but if there is enough sources which detail some other less famous endeavors, elements of notability, not necessarily deserving a separate article, then WP:GNG trumps. By "elements of notability" I mean non-mundane, somewhat outstanding achievements of life ("born, raised, studied, worked, dined, died" do not count). and IMO that makes a general sense: if ONEEVENT is of interest, then there is a natural interest in person who is blamed for it. And if there is something interesting to say about that person, then why not have a separate page, rather than squeezing their bio into the ONEEVENT page in a WP:COATRACKish fashion. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:43, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
A clearer way to put it is ONEEVENT ≠ ONETHINGOFANYKIND. It specifies "event" for a reason and it has no applicability outside of that context, and instead other guidelines or policies are relevant. Founding a company is not an "event". postdlf (talk) 16:42, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
A resource for political activists and candidates?
WP:NPOL is causing grief to some newcomers. Unfortunately for them, running news commentary and promotional interviews do not make suitable sources for basing new article biographies. The unencultured Wikipedia newcomer should be forgiven for not understanding this. Can we send them somewhere more useful for attempting to document candidate and activists activities? Something like https://www.imdb.com/ which is good for upcoming actors and films not (yet) sufficiently notable for Wikipedia? Is there a user-editable repository of information on political candidates and activists? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Ballotpedia. They are not user-editable. They claim to use professionals, they have submission forms that required verified identities, if you want to help you can donate. It's not a place to send Wikipedian wannabes to. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:26, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Agree on not advising to go to Ballotpedia. Candidates would be advised to work on their campaign websites and social media presence, instead of trying to place articles on Wikipedia. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:32, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Yes, that is good advice for candidates, and also for their staffers, consultants and enthusiastic volunteers, K.e.coffman. Their main focus should be on winning the damned election to high office. If they do so, then there will be a Wikipedia biography and nobody will try to delete it, as long as it complies with NPOV and verifiability. Cullen328Let's discuss it23:20, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
Does "with verifiable notability" mean "has an article?"
In the section of this guideline that addresses "Lists of people", it says: "For instance, articles about schools often include (or link to) a list of notable alumni/alumnae, but such lists are not intended to contain everyone who attended the school — only those with verifiable notability." Does this mean that only people with articles should be included in those lists? If so, why does the sentence say "verifiable notability" instead of simply stating "notable" or "an article?" And how does this square with WP:N which clearly says that notability is not applied to the content of articles? ElKevbo (talk) 21:20, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
It depends on the list and what editors decide is appropriate for it. Editors may decide that there already must be an article for an entry to be included in a particular list, or they may decide that a redlink is permissible so long as a secondary source supporting notability is also provided. postdlf (talk) 21:27, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
That is not what this guideline says or implies. If your answer accurately reflects Wikipedia practice, please consider editing the guideline so it's clear and accurate. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 17:19, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
@ElKevbo: I think that the guideline is relatively clear. Either the list should contain blue links to biographies (presumably they are verifiably notable or their biography wouldn't be on Wikipedia (assuming that new page patrol did their job properly), or they can be verifiably notable via at least two reliable sources that are independent of the subject and provide significant coverage (added to the list, especially if someone contests inclusion). These people may be notable but not have an article because either someone hasn't written it yet, or because of some other reason, but as long as verifiable notability can be established via sources, there is no reason they cannot be included in the list (although if you are going to that much trouble, starting a stub might be worth a little extra time). — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)21:51, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
I think that "verifiable notability" is pretty clear, meaning either a blue link (existing article) or a red link (for a subject who is notable but for whom an article does not yet exist). That said, I believe the best (better) practice is to limit such entries to those alumni already with articles. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:20, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
A little more specifically, I interpret it as meaning "has an article or is obviously qualified for one" It is appropriate to leave red links for people such as members of a legislature, or holders of a named chair,or winners of an unquestionably major prize. I usually also leave links to such people as presidents of a famous company. Such links are a good way of suggesting to people that they write the articles. DGG ( talk ) 00:51, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
I would also add that if you are talking red links, there better be a quality source on that red link to show 1) the person is likely notable but doesn't have an article, and 2) meets the list's inclusion criteria. --Masem (t) 01:17, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
I am raising this issue again because I continue to see many editors who explicitly reference this policy when they remove people included in embedded lists because those people don't have articles already created for them. Here is the most recent such edit that popped onto my watchlist a few hours ago: remove individual from list of notables, who needs both a Wikipedia article **AND** independent reliable and verifiable sources establishing connection here, as specified by WP:NLIST. (Sorry, Alansohn - I'm not trying to pick on you!) I know that specific example doesn't have a reference but the explicit reasoning used by the editor clearly does not reflect the understanding of this policy as many of you have described it. And that - the apparent difference between how some editors read and understand this policy and how others read and understand it - is the problem I am raising. ElKevbo (talk) 19:22, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
ElKevbo, no offense taken. When this edit popped up on my watchlist equivalent, I searched for Patricia Puglise King and found nothing, including no Wikipedia articles with that name mentioned. I did the same for Annamaria Alfieri and found no article and no mention in an article. Similar to what DGG stated above, I looked at the description and saw that this wasn't someone who is presumed notable, say an elected official, professional athlete or prize-winner, among other possibilities. With no article, no meaningful claim of notability and no reliable and verifiable source, I deleted the entry. The catchphrase I use for deletion was verified at some point against policy and represents my understanding. In many other cases where an unlinked or unsourced entry has been added to a list of notables, I have found the article and identified a source connecting them to the place or school. I have added thousands upon thousands of notables to lists and I've added sources for 99.99% of them. There are limited circumstances where an entry should be retained without an existing article, but those are rare exceptions. If we insisted on articles existing for lists of notables *AND* required reliable and verifiable sources establishing a connection to the place / school, we'd solve the vast majority of problems with unsourced lists. I've tried to do cleanups and mass additions of sources, but this is a painstaking task that should be the responsibility of those adding the material to the article. If there needs to be a better bolierplate explanation to explain why entries without articles and sources have been removed, I'll be happy to add it to my edit summary repertoire. Alansohn (talk) 21:14, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
For someone who does have an article, I consider it sufficient if the reliable information connecting them to the category is found in the article on the individual; I do not think the reference needs to be copied to the list: WP is hypertext, and articles relate to each other. That said, it is still advisable to check., and check not just that there is a reference but that the reference says what is claimed. Yesterday I removed several "notable faculty" from a category who in fact were only teaching assistants during their PhD. In all of them, the information was also wrongly claimed in the infobox on the person. For all of them, I consider for independent reasons that it is very likely that the articles & categories had been written by PR staff from that university. (I am now proceeding to check every individual listed there.) This level of analysis of sources is not practical for us as a general rule. It's only really practical when there is good reason to challenge the information, and whoever is checking knows how sources in that area and aspect work. DGG ( talk ) 21:51, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
I generally view having an article as sufficient for inclusion, assuming the verifying material exists in that article. If it's there, anyone who has a problem with a lack of refs in the list can just copy it over. But yeah, typically an article should exist. I treat that as the default, and in some cases local consensus determines that citations to sources that demonstrate sufficient notability for an article could be sufficient (but really, at that point, just create an article). — Rhododendritestalk \\ 01:08, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
To respond to DGG and Rhododendrites - The problem, to coin a phrase, is that sourcing is not inherited. If someone has been added to a list of notables in some article, the fact that that person has a Wikipedia article doesn't prove that they're from that place or attended that school. This edit is typical, with an edit summary stating "remove Chris Wylde as notable; no source here, none in his article and no reliable and verifiable source found in a Google search to connect him to Hackettstown" This is a frequent situation, where someone takes an unsourced statement in Article A and uses that to spread the virus to Article B.Then there's this edit, with the edit summary "remove Joseph Perella as notable; no source here, no mention in his article and no reliable and verifiable source found in a Google search to connect him to the school". This type of unsourced notable often leads me on a wild goose chase trying to figure out why the entry was added; surely there must be a source somewhere, but often there isn't and I have no idea why the entry was added.If an entry is added to a list of notables and it has a source, then I don't need to check the article and I don't need to care if the fact is mentioned. If there is no source added, then the burden is on me and every other responsible editor to go to the article to see if there is a source there. Why should we accept entries without sources on blind faith?ElKevbo, I stand behinf the original edit summary, because there is absolutely nothing to hang a hat on, either in terms of an article or a source. If we have nothing about the person to demonstrate notability, why are we keeping the entry in a list of notables? Alansohn (talk) 03:44, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
If there is no source added, then the burden is on me and every other responsible editor to go to the article to see if there is a source there. -- Well, yeah, like so much else on Wikipedia sometimes the choice is whether to take 5 seconds to revert or take 10 seconds to fix. Ideally, yes, there's a source in every instance, for every claim all across Wikipedia. In the case of a list, it doesn't take much more effort to click over to the article and see if it has a source than it does to revert. If there isn't a source in the article, I don't think anyone would have a problem with removing it per WP:BURDEN. Invoking WP:BURDEN without taking a few seconds to check the article, however, seems like a WP:PRESERVE, WP:SOFIXIT, etc. etc. matter. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 03:58, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
Alansohn, your edit summary was "remove individual from list of notables, who needs both a Wikipedia article **AND** independent reliable and verifiable sources establishing connection here, as specified by WP:NLIST" and my point is that this policy does NOT specify that people included in inline lists must have an article. Your edit summary reflects a common misunderstanding of this policy AND of [[WP:|our core policy about notability]] that explicitly rejects the idea that material included in articles must be notable. Your specific edit appears to have been fine in this instance but your edit summary reflects a common misunderstanding of important policies. My original question confirmed that my understanding of this policy is shared by many editors but your edit summary illustrates that other editors do not agree with this understanding. So we need to modify this policy to make it more clear, we modify if to match your understanding (i.e., the idea that some editors expound that policies should be descriptive of editors' practices and not prescriptive), or we accept that different editors have diametrically opposed interpretations of this specific bit of policy. ElKevbo (talk) 05:15, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
Please also see Wikipedia talk:Notability#Is there a contradiction in other policies and essays?. I've just WP:PGBOLDly cleaned up the worst contradictions, but fundamentally, I think we should consider moving most or all of LISTBIO entirely out of this guideline. Notability is about whether the subject (e.g., a school) gets to have a separate article all about itself. Notability is not about which names you're allowed to type into that separate article after you've decided that it ought to exist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Inherited notability and architects
Would an architect be deemed to be notable because one or more of the structures that they designed are listed on the National Register of Historic Places (US), are listed buildings (UK), or similar national heritage etc directories? It is an issue that has bugged me for some time, bearing in mind WP:NOTINHERITED, but I know that there are a fair few people whose primary interest lies mainly in dealing with NRHP/LB etc articles. Perhaps this applies further afield also, eg: if an artist has a work exhibited/catalogued by a major gallery then is notability presumed? - Sitush (talk) 23:40, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
Good point. But if little is known or written about them despite their creative work then where do we stand? The various notability criteria do sometimes appear to work at cross-purposes. I'm guessing the argument would be that, sooner or later, someone will find something that enables an article to progress but, hey, that is more or less the same argument I have just responded to in another thread on this talk page: when it happens then that is great but until it happens ... - Sitush (talk) 00:04, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Listed buildings can be listed for many reasons besides their architecture--in fact, the reason for most of them is the historical associations, and although the architect if known will be given in the description, that doesn't make him notable, any more than it does the builder or the original owner. Being listed as an example of the architectural work specifically would certainly contribute to notability . DGG ( talk ) 18:39, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
an example of the architectural work specifically meaning the architectural style, such as Gothic or Neo-whatever etc? I think pretty much all listings would refer to the style? Sorry, but I am a tad confused here - it may be the meds. Also confused about "historical associations": I can see that, for example, a building might be listed because person A or B lived there or because it was connected to a battle, a treaty signing etc but I'm pretty sure that, at least in the UK, most listed buildings do not fall into that type of category. I am not even sure that pretty much anything designed by, say, Charles Barry, Augustus Pugin or Christopher Wren would necessarily qualify for a listing (although the likelihood is quite high). Those three people are extremely well documented and would qualify regardless of listings but there are others whose bio articles seem to rely more on the fact of association with a listing than on the available biographical information. - Sitush (talk) 23:42, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
The more I think about it, the more I think this discussion may need a wider audience. There are certainly some people, such as Doncram and FloridaArmy, who will have significant opinions because of their connection to the NRHP project and I am fairly sure that there will be equivalent contributors involved with similar national projects. - Sitush (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for pinging me. Yes, I created a good number and have contributed to the majority of the current 1,052 articles in administrative category Category:NRHP architects. A while back I systematically started articles for all architects having 5 or more NRHP listed works. If someone wants to contest such articles, go through that category and try to find the weakest ones. Please notify wt:NRHP if you open an AFD. And/or open a big negative ANI proceeding about me personally. :} Any architect who has an article by dint of other notability and has any NRHP work, even just one, should be put in the category (though perhaps not all are so categorized); it is an admin category and that is not controversial.
About whether designing one work that is NRHP-listed automatically makes an architect notable, the answer is no. Sometimes a house is NRHP-listed because of some notable person living there, and it may randomly be known that a local architect designed it; no one is creating an article for such an architect. But far more often, a building is notable architecturally as a good example of its type in a wide area, and/or it may be especially notable because it is a good example by a certain architect. For example I just created James Murdoch (architect) article, upon coming across him while developing NRHP article All Saints Episcopal Church (Denver). Its NRHP nomination document states the building "has added significance since it is the work of James Murdoch, an important architect in Denver in the late 19th and early 20th centuries." And I was able to find, elsewhere, a bio that gives birth and death dates and quite a bit more, though I only wrote out a fraction of the info available. And I list a few NRHP-listed works and a few others. I can think of a few cases where the reason a place is listed is because it is the only surviving known good example of work by a certain architect who is deemed to be notable, worth recognizing in American history, and their importance is noted by the listing itself. This is fine and good.
You might ask, what if very little info about the person is available, and if they are not generally otherwise deemed significant? If there are only one or very few known works by a person, and nothing much factual about the person, then probably an article isn't needed. If there are numerous works by the person, then even if little is known about the person biography-wise, then it is still worth having an article, essentially as a list of works by the person, covering the notable topic of the significant works of this person. If someone designs 50 schools that get NRHP-listed for their architecture, then they were doing something right, and it seems silly to deny an article. Also it is a matter of convenience: we want to state the list of works by this person in one place and link to that, rather than including mention of all 50 works in each of 50 separate articles. The title is better as the person's name, even if the article is essentially a list-article, IMO.
I don't think there is any widespread problem with the NRHP architect articles. Some which were created a while ago using little more than the NRHP's NRIS database info may now be considerably improved, since individual NRHP documents have become available over time, and these documents often convey interesting bio detail about an architect. If you do come across weak articles, I would be happy to be notified of them and I would be glad to put some effort in on them myself or try to coordinate others' involvement too. Cheers, --Doncram (talk) 01:43, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
P.S. Hey, the question of NRHP architect notability has been tested already in numerous AFDs around 2012, all of which closed Keep as I recall. I joked above, but do not welcome any new round of AFDs. This is settled stuff.
In case it makes someone feel better, basically the reasoning in developing NRHP architect articles has been essentially that they meet some version of wp:ARTIST. My reasoning is not at all about notability being inherited. wp:ARTIST includes statement that "The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series, but usually not a single episode of a television series) or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." The NRHP architects are more or less notable for having created a significant body of work, e.g. the slave who built covered bridges all over the state of Georgia, or the future governor of Kentucky who built numerous early stone houses, each of which is itself the primary subject of an NRHP listing and its review/nomination document representing systematic collective judgment of local, state, national level reviewers. Perhaps that wp:ARTIST statement could be modified to clarify that an NRHP listing is equivalent to a book, file or television series. --Doncram (talk) 02:59, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
My sense is that if there is only one such building, the coverage belongs with the building. If there is more than one, an article would often be justified. But only if we can find enough in reliable sources to write one that at least as the potential to be more than a stub. Hobit (talk) 21:22, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
In my view - WP:NFRINGE - applies to Holocaust denier bios (when the person is primarily known for publishing/advocating denial). It is impossible to construct such a biography in a manner approaching WP:NPOV (while avoiding promotion of the fringe theory associated with the bio) - without strong independent 3rd party sourcing.Icewhiz (talk) 07:36, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
To the extent that's even a coherent question, no, categories don't "need to be notable", it isn't necessary to have Holocaust denial (though we do here), or Holocaust denial of David Irving. Certainly this is a significant enough fact about some notable individuals to merit categorization (look at its prominence in the intro in David Irving, for example). See also WP:OCAT. But it also doesn't need to be "why" we have an article about someone. postdlf (talk) 01:13, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
RfC: Amendment for BIO to address systemic bias in the base of sources
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 following section be added, just before the "additional criteria" section?
The requirement for multiple reliable sources with substantial discussion of the subject, can be relaxed for non-living individuals who were members of a marginalized group,[a] for whom limited sourcing exists.[b] For such individuals, the "additional criteria" should be read in light of the bias in the underlying base of sources (e.g. a contribution by such a person may not be "widely recognized" in sources, while similar contributions by a person who is not in a marginalized group might be widely recognized.) This should not be taken as justification for the creation of thinly sourced permastubs. However as scholarship is developing on the history of marginalized peoples, pages about such non-living people should be given a two year moratorium on deletion before judging whether there is no reasonable prospect for expansion.
^A marginalized group is a segment of society which because of class, gender, ethnic origin or race, belief, colonization, or other systemic bias was subjected to discrimination or exclusion.
^The community recognizes that the base of reliable sources from which it draws, is itself the product of societies with systemic biases and thus reflects those biases – increasingly less so with respect to more contemporary sources.
Note - the two year moratorium was added to address concerns raised in the linked discussion. Removed. Everybody who has voted, has been pinged. Jytdog (talk) 14:03, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
!votes on addition
Oppose I don't see why "non-marginalized groups" (read: European/white men) shouldn't fall under the same guidelines just because we have too many minor dukes, bishops, and cricketers already. Having discussion at AFD about whether a person qualifies as part of a "marginalized group" or not sounds like pure hell. A principle that the volume of coverage necessary for an article is lower for deceased persons is probably fine. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:40, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Support, except the two-year moratorium on deletion – It makes sense that our notability criteria not strictly replicate the biases outside of Wikipedia. While our standards for the inclusion of information in articles reflect the idea of "verifiability, not truth", the same does not apply to our notability criteria. The two-year moratorium on deletion, however, really isn't justifiable. Jytdog, can I suggest that that be dropped from the proposal? I suspect many would find the proposal much more palatable without it. 142.160.89.97 (talk) 02:28, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose, agree in principle on relaxing requirements for dead people - not recent deceased, but dead for at least 10 yrs - and in particular for marginalized groups, but 2 yr moratorium is ridiculous. Renata (talk) 03:33, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose a step backwards that makes our already ambiguous notability guidelines more ambiguous, which will only make it more difficult for people to include articles of people who should be covered from marginalized groups. This is because it makes it substantially more difficult for new users to determine who meets our guidelines. We need to remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written by amateurs who do not in most cases have professional training in evaluating sourcing and weight it accordingly when determining historical significance. Ambiguity makes this even more difficult and leads to more people getting pushed off the project when the article they thought met our guidelines gets deleted, because the 2 year moratorium will not be enforced since this guideline cannot overrule the deletion policy. Objective criteria is the way to fix this problem, not more imprecise language about sourcing. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:50, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. The criteria are so vague that they will lead to endless quibbles about their interpretation. And indeed the likelihood of the creation of more content-lite perma-stubs is increased. I can't understand the reason for the two-year moratorium. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:04, 26 October 2018 (UTC).
Support to some degree in principle, but oppose making a rule of it. I think that Xxanthippe has it right: any attempt at great specificity here will lead to even greater confusion. However, I think we do need to use some flexibility with respect both to marginalized groups, and earlier periods. I personally interpret the rules about sourcing to mean reliable sourcing in the context of what can be expected for the subject. We already do this to a considerable extent--for example, inclusion in a reliable biographical directory for figures in antiquity. I recognize that it's going to result in some considerable erraticness and overemphasis on what is temporarily popular to leave this up to the community judgement in individual instances, but I think that we are showing increasing good sense and some degree of consensus in deciding when and when not to interpret strictly.
I agree totally with TonyBallioni about the better way to do this, which is objective criteria. Our emphasis on sourcing give all sorts of artificial results--it in effect means that the criterion for notability is whether people who know how to argue here care deeply enough in any particular case to use their skills to include (or exclude) the article--almost any source can be argued as reliable or non-reliable, depending on the desired result. I'll agree with almost any fixed criterion whether or not it is what I would prefer--our efforts are better used improving articles than arguing about them.
And a long moratorium on deletion is exactly the wrong approach--if we let articles on unencyclopedic subjects get established, they will become much harder to remove, and in the interim lead to more dubious articles being submitted. We are still dealing with the effect of the very erratic standards of the first few years. DGG ( talk ) 05:06, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose although I support the underlying sentiment. Wikipedia should be a lagging indicator, not a platform for advocacy that takes the lead in endorsing various marginalized people as notable. The solution is for authors and historians and journalists and literary critics and social scientists to write more research and reporting about marginalized people, and to have that work published in reliable sources. Then, we will have the raw materials to write more policy compliant encyclopedia articles about topics related to marginalized people. Cullen328Let's discuss it05:50, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose, although like Cullen328 above I agree with the sentiment. The reason why we require a certain degree of sourcing for an article is that we need these sources as a basis for a verifiable article. Relaxing these requirements, in these cases as in others, invites the creation of inadequately sourced, unverifiable or inaccurate articles, which would lower the quality of the encyclopedia and do a disservice both to readers interested in topics related to marginalized groups, and to these people and groups themselves. If because of past bias or discrimination inadequate sources exist, then this is sadly not something that we as Wikipedians can do anything about. Sandstein 05:56, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose I'm very, very sympathetic to the underlying problem driving this discussion but I strongly believe that this encyclopedia must be a trailing edge indicator and aggregator of knowledge and not a leading edge. That much of the scholarship in different bodies of knowledge is historically rife with prejudice and sometimes outright bigotry is a massive problem but that fundamental problem needs to be fixed by the knowledgeable and ethical scholars in those disciplines and not by amateurs writing an encyclopedia. This encyclopedia must reflect the state of knowledge documented in reliable sources and not try to get ahead of it or drive it; to do otherwise is to become a very different kind of project altogether (which would be a very worthy cause but would require some very different policies and practices!). This proposal seems to be a form of WP:GREATWRONGS; although the wrong exists and is indeed great this is not a good venue in which to address it. ElKevbo (talk) 05:59, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Support There is no possible way to make "objective criteria" for all the fields of endeavor in the world, nor make that criteria equitable. For example, noted woman scientist, (still being cited in at least five languages, 160 years after a discovery, who worked at notable universities and laboratories her entire career), is clearly notable. Details of her life are very sketchy because she was forced to move, a lot (She lived in at least 4 different countries), to find employment. There are multitudes of sources which can be used to ferret out her life story, to confirm significant coverage of her accomplishments, though that coverage does not occur in a single source. She was dismissed from various posts for being a woman, for being a foreigner, for her religion. Internationally known male scientists who were her peers and wrote recommendations for her had a different merit scale than she did. So how do we write this objective criteria? If you were a woman, this is the minimum standard for merit, if you were a minority religion this is the standard, if you were a member of this ethnic group this is the minimum? Since in almost every field, until the 1960s jobs were specifically defined by gender and race and status, having one scale to judge merit would be comparing apples and oranges. Even if two people worked at the same employer, women were assigned different jobs than men, people of color were only eligible for certain positions, etc. As one can see, quite impossible. No one is asking for thinly sourced articles, simply a recognition that sourcing differs historically for different groups, meaning one arrives at significant coverage in different ways. SusunW (talk) 06:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose, very strongly for any moratorium on deletion of anything, and generally so for the rest. As Sandstein said, the requirement for substantial quantities of reliable source material is not an arbitrary decision, it is to ensure that articles we write are factual and neutral. We do that by summarizing a variety of high-quality sources. If such sources don't exist, but could, the solution is for the sources to be created, and then the article can follow. If the trend in scholarship is for more intensive study of historically underrepresented groups, I very much welcome and encourage that, but Wikipedia follows such things, not leads. SeraphimbladeTalk to me07:48, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - It's not our place to fix the alleged biases of the past, it's to follow the reliable sources on what matters about what happened in the past. If reliable sources believe that fixing WP:GREATWRONGS is a worthy cause, they will do so and then we can follow their coverage, if they don't, there's no problem to fix. Iffy★Chat -- 08:48, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. The proposal is self contradictory in citing "limited sourcing exists" while disclaiming "thinly sourced permastubs". While well intentioned, this is a clear case of trying to Right Great Wrongs. In a perfect universe half of our biographies would be women. That idealism patently fails when it requires half of US-President biographies to be women. Throughout most of history and most of the world, women (and other groups) have not had equal opportunity in education, achievement, or recognition. The past is permanently unfixable, and it's not our job to try to fix the present either. Our job is to try to build a perfect encyclopedia. That means 100% of our US-President biographies are men. That means accurately reporting and reflecting that women and various other groups are grossly underrepresented throughout most of history and most of the world. The world sucks, the history of the world sucks even worse. Please don't accuse me of supporting that suckage. I'm eager to get a first female US president biography. I'm eager to see more women and other under-represented groups get more biographies as the world slowly gets it's shit together with more equal opportunity for all. Alsee (talk) 09:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
I support the principle that topics that have received less coverage due to any form of systematic bias need proportionately less coverage in order to be notable. Since there is a massive systematic bias against dead people, I support the principle that dead people need less coverage in order to be notable. I think that notability criteria for dead people should be made generally more inclusive. I think that we should have more articles about dead people. In fact, I think we should have at least 12 million of them for reasons that I stated in the discussion at WT:N. This proposal only applies to dead people. I am under the impression that it will result in more articles on dead people than we would otherwise have. I think that the logical conclusion of the preceding propositions is that I must support this proposal in principle, at least as a starting point, with the caveat that, if an even more inclusive criteria for dead people is proposed in the future, I reserve the right to support that as well. I am not concerned that this proposal is too inclusive of dead people; my only concern is that it might not be inclusive enough. I am not concerned that this will result in poor sourcing because I am aware that many of our present restrictions on sourcing have no basis in real scholarship, as they are not based on the published reliable opinions of real scholars. "Significant coverage" is one of those. It is a piece of meaningless gibberish that we invented. James500 (talk) 09:18, 26 October 2018 (UTC) As far as I can see, this proposal does not authorise unreferenced content or suspend the policy WP:V. Indeed, a guideline cannot suspend a policy. What this proposal authorises is shorter articles based on a smaller number of shorter reliable sources. There is no reason to imagine that this will result in greater inaccuracy, since the sources are still required to be reliable. There is no sourcing issue whatsoever. Further, there is nothing partisan about this proposal. Nothing in this proposal says that the articles created have to be flattering about their subjects. There is no reason why they could not be deeply unflattering. James500 (talk) 03:53, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose- taking away sourcing standards will lead to falsehoods getting into the mainspace, and a moratorium on deleting the falsehoods would just compound the problem. It'd be a big disservice to both the encyclopedia, and to the subjects of those articles. ReykYO!10:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Comment- now that the moratorium business has been struck, I am still opposing this proposal per the sourcing standards argument and InsertcleverPhraseHere's eloquent protest below. ReykYO!14:57, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Too blunt and vague, tending to lead to lack of good encyclopedic articles and many disruptions. The way to deal with specific issues around a particularized group is SNG's that specify the group in a refined, workable manner, identify why and what is good info, and specifically deal with sourcing vagaries in that area. (Also, a side suggestion, go off the internet and read modern books, long form articles, modern RS encyclopedias, textbooks, WP:SCHOLARSHIP, etc: make sure you are not missing what is there (and if it's not there and/or not on the internet, how can you possibly write) and if what you find is a sentence or two than see if and where the info fits in a larger Wikipedia topic, eg Women in science or gather enough RS for a sub-article, eg. Women scientists in the 19th century; African women in science, etc. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:26, 26 October 2018 (UTC) Adding: As this discussion has developed, more and more, there appears to be an argument along the lines of, 'the proposal does not say what you think its says'. So, let me add: the proposal is too ambiguous, to my oppose. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:22, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. We only include topics which have significant coverage in reliable sources. That's what makes us an encyclopedia instead of something else, which we are not. If you want to start including topics that currently have no significant coverage in reliable sources, you need to win the fight outside of Wikipedia first and get those topics covered. I also second power~enwiki's rationale: "Having discussion at AFD about whether a person qualifies as part of a 'marginalized group' or not sounds like pure hell." – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:44, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Strongest possible of strong Opposes Sorry, but no. I understand the sentiment behind it, and I know how hard it can be to find sources on topics where I often think "this should be notable". However, it is not our job to decide who is 'marginalised' and who isn't (and not the place to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS). Can you imagine the debates this would cause in AfD discussions? Are all women marginalised? only minorities? If so, does that count white people in South Africa? Does it count all people that grew up outside the West? What about class boundaries? Are all poor people marginalised? Are rich minorities marginalised? Is everyone marginalised? Am I marginalised? If you argue that someone isn't maginalised, are YOU racist? I really don't want these arguments to happen at Wikipedia at all and the atmosphere it would create would be horrific to the point that I would likely abandon the project entirely. No, for the love of god, NO! — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)14:53, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Insertcleverphrasehere, you have hit the nail on the head along with above !votes which mention If you want to start including topics that currently have no significant coverage in reliable sources, you need to win the fight outside of Wikipedia first and get those topics covered and This isn't a partisan social justice project.
As Cullen says, The solution is for authors and historians and journalists and literary critics and social scientists to write more research and reporting about marginalized people, and to have that work published in reliable sources, not develop noble standards and publish them over here.
FWIW, while I don't admire pile-up(s) and thus won't contribute by !voting, I will note that the two main proponents of this change somehow seem to believe that defining a marginalized community or creating a set of marginalized people, (who would be protected by the addition), is a very objective criterion) are quite off-the-base.
Oppose for the same primary reason of many of the above - the vagueness will be a nightmare. AfDs on bios are already unpleasant, this will make them impossible. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Support with caveat that the word "relaxed" be replaced with something more along the lines of "reconsidered" or "reassessed in light of historic marginalization." We aren't talking about a "short bus" here. These people did ALL THE SAME THINGS that would be deemed notable if done by white, first-world, upper class, men. (Except, as in the Ginger Rogers example, people from marginalized groups may have had to accomplish these goals by also dancing backwards in high heels). What we are doing is assessing notability by a criteria that neutralizes past bias. In effect, what we are looking at is similar to adjusting a historic monetary value for inflation. We are assessing history through a lens that factors in past devaluation. Montanabw(talk)18:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Editors of an encyclopedia are not qualified to "assess history." We leave that to professionals e.g., historians. ElKevbo (talk) 19:02, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Additionally, both the degree of and if at all the bias will fluctuate wildly, with as many different view-points as there are editors Nosebagbear (talk) 19:45, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose as well, with regret. I definitely sympathize with the underlying problem, but I agree with the opposes that it will cause far more problems than it solves on a number of fronts. As much as many of these marginalized people deserve to be written about, someone besides us actually needs to do the writing before we can include them. Otherwise we will be left with permastubs or WP:OR. CThomas3 (talk) 19:51, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. This is just WP:ILIKEIT. It would be marvellous of there were better sources on things we absolutely know in our heart of hearts to be important, but sometimes there aren't, and that's not Wikipedia's problem to fix. Find a friendly academic to write a treatise. Guy (Help!) 20:56, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - although I understand the desire. I've written a couple of articles on what I would consider folks who were in marginalized sectors of society, and it was incredibly difficult research work. But it can be done (and doing the research on Lone Wolf was incredibly interesting). Onel5969TT me23:20, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose: a solution in search of a problem, to some extent. There are countless members of various marginalised groups who are notable, with significant RS sourcing, but the articles for whom do not exist yet. There is plenty for editors to do: join WikiProject Women in Red; translate articles from other wikis; research under-represented women scientists or Native American community activists; and so on. I would focus on the low hanging fruit to improve coverage of such groups on Wikipedia, instead of loosening existing guidelines. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:03, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Recruitment: One more thing -- editors can join Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation to review and surface promising drafts on such marginalised groups. That would not only expand Wikipedia but would also improve retention of editors who submit drafts on related topics. Current wait times could be two or three months, especially if the subject's notability is unclear. Editors could use their research skills to actively improve such drafts. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:13, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose After the discussion below, I feel as if this is a solution to a problem which doesn't really exist (the problem being I see not being the bias, even though the bias requires hard work to overcome.) There are some very good quality articles mentioned below which I would easily vote keep on at an AfD because of WP:GNG and a "delete" AfD which seems as if it was properly decided, though I can't view that page's history. While I recognise the bias exists and that the bias makes it harder to write articles, I don't see a clear enough pattern based on the AfDs or articles presented to require the creation of a new notability rule. SportingFlyertalk02:28, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose in broader context. I know Wikipedia has a problem with articles about women, but the sources generally exist to pass WP:GNG, if that is fairly interpreted. I think that if we have two good general biography sources about somebody, that should be good enough to go, without having to try to prove their overall significance in the world of men (emphasis on the men). Specialty notability guidelines are of no real use beyond GNG anyway and I favor scrapping them all -- properly read, they admit very few additional articles, but they are usually improperly read to restrict GNG-worthy articles which is never any good. Furthermore, I doubt that we should really be hosting biographies that are not GNG-worthy because of the usual concerns: if we don't have multiple independent reliable sources, we are likely writing from bias or writing a very incomplete "biography". So I can't support extending the circumstances in which unsourceable biographies are admitted. I mean, if there's just one general source about someone and a few snippets floating around that seem to relate to it, we risk propagating a hagiography or a hit piece. Wnt (talk) 03:40, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Support. Despite many of the above objections, I believe editors are generally mature enough to be able to interpret the proposed changes sensibly. If implemented, the changes will provide for richer encyclopaedic coverage.--Ipigott (talk) 06:16, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
@Ipigott: "generally mature enough"? "interpret sensibly"? I laughed out loud at this. The proposed changes are so opaque that I would no idea where to enact the rule, and it could conceivably be argued to apply pretty much everywhere except on pages of upper class Caucasian European dudes. Not only that, but it isn't precisely clear what the proposed changes expect us to do; what does 'relaxed' mean anyway? — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)08:30, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Strongly Oppose. Wikipedia is not a place in which we can WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. We must cover content objectively and fairly, and set the bar no higher or lower for a person because of their being a member of a marginalized group. Doing so will encourage people to overstate the possibility that a person may have been in a marginalized group, therefore lowering quality by adding in sections that may not be accurate, so that said person can be added into the encyclopedia. If we are to lower the bar to entry (of which is a bit high), we should do it universally, and perhaps strike a balance between this and the current guidelines. Nonetheless, the current notability guidelines are far too strict; I would be in full support of a system like what was proposed by Wnt. SuperChris (talk) 17:32, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
@SuperChris: Honestly, I don't think I'm actually proposing anything new. The entire WP:Notability (people) is a snake's nest of screwed up logic, but it still says front-and-center that "People who meet the basic criteria may be considered notable without meeting the additional criteria below." What's more, it explains lower down that if subjects "fail basic criteria but meet additional criteria" the article still ought to be merged. In other words, the entire mass of drivel committed to the guideline summarizes down to what it should be: #REDIRECT WP:GNG. Unfortunately, that's not how it is interpreted -- people interpret it to mean whatever they want it to mean, and usually, they don't want it to mean having articles about women they don't personally think are interesting ... which they rarely do. Wnt (talk) 21:47, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose While I've run into the problem before of not being able to create biographies of deceased female scientists that I believe should be notable enough for an article, there is a reason for the guidelines we have, and this change is not consistent with how wikipedia works. We write article on topics covered by reliable sources and I agree with the mentions of WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS above. Natureium (talk) 22:37, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - I foresee abuse of this should to be added, and fervent disputes as well. It seems to move us away from the reliance on reliable sources. If deceased persons of marginalized groups are discovered by research to have been notable after all, for reasons that were ignored at the time, there will be sources which support that notability, so there is no reason for a change at our end. The solution to this problem does not lie with us. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:41, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose as per Cullen, although I understand the pressing need to deal with these difficult underlying issues. GABgab17:21, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. There are many things that we'd like to cover but there aren't sufficient sources for. We don't have reliable sources on important early historical figures in many regions where writing hadn't been invented yet, or where records weren't sufficiently durable, or where all records were successfully destroyed. This doesn't mean we should pretend as though we do have such sources. We don't get to RIGHTGREATWRONGS, nor can we advocate for or against the standing of any society's marginalized groups. This is an encyclopedia. --Yair rand (talk) 17:50, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Support as long as it's clear that we still need reliable sources— that is, that we're relaxing the requirement for substantial sources, not the requirement for reliable sources (agreeing with James500 and SusunW here). It's crucial for the bios of people from marginalized groups that a Wikipedia page be able to be built out of multiple good sources that may individually be rather tiny but that add up to a coherent picture of a person of notable accomplishment. In my opinion, this is not a case of making the standard weaker or more vague; it is a pragmatic response to a clear difficulty: that of reliable but individually thin sources. (I find the worry about creating permastubs to be a red herring— stubs may be useful and there is no telling what info may come along to make expanding a stub possible.) Alafarge (talk) 00:13, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - Two separate issues. First is that as Wikipedians we are not in the business of defining marginalized people. Definitions like that are best left to professional historians whose work we are, in theory, building on. Collectively the community is not qualified to pass judgement on what makes an individual or group marginalized, and if we try to do it anyway on an ad hoc basis, I can only see total chaos in the making.
Second, and more importantly for me, is the prospect of weakening sourcing standards. Wikipedia's premise fundamentally rests on being a compendium of information from reliable sources, and I don't think that can be compromised. It's unfortunate that the pool of reliable sources is limited or unbalanced, but it's what we have to work with, and we shouldn't be opening doors to moving outside of the bounds of existing sourcing standards. I am in complete agreement that humanity's incomplete historical record is a tragedy, but it is not ours to fix. We can only do the best with what we have.
Furthermore it's not entirely clear to me what the proposed effect of the wording would be - does "relaxing" standards mean that a looser view of "reliable" would be accepted? Would it allow for articles to cited entirely to a single source? How would it be reconciled with the assertion that thinly sourced permastubs are still discouraged? I don't see how a policy of allowing articles based on even more "limited sourcing" than is acceptable now could possibly fail to lead to thinly sourced permastubs in abundance. It pains me, as a rather staunch inclusionist, to oppose an idea that could lead to more content added, but I just can't support a proposal that would see such a significant change to fundamental principles of the project while being so vague on the specifics. The Wicked Twisted Road (talk) 01:35, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Moral support. I'm not sure how practical this is, and since the !votes are pretty one-sided I'll make this a moral support without considering practicality for now. (If that changes, someone ping me and I'll reassess.) That being said, GNG is relatively subjective as it is, and I feel like the status quo is that biographies of historical women often face a higher bar for what "significant coverage" means or how many sources are necessary (or something that isn't even covered in GNG, like the scope of the source). If it takes a written guideline to cancel out the unconscious biases against historical women's biographies at AfD, then we might just need one. TheCatalyst31Reaction•Creation02:27, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Support - If our goal is truly to share the sum of all knowledge, we need to account for systemic biases in the existing sources. I'm not sure the best way to accomplish that, but I support the effort in that direction. Kaldari (talk) 17:11, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Support Per the essay User:Ocaasi/under. We are here to share the world's knowledge, which happens to also be righting great wrongs. When done with specificity and intention, there is no contradiction between WP:RGW, WP:N, and WP:V. We are at a point where it's ok to stop making excuses about why this can't be done, and start thinking of creating ways to make it happen. Wikipedia's nature as a tertiary source does not preclude efforts at inclusion, and following guidelines by rote does leaves me wondering why we don't ask more often, "are we really doing the best we can here?" I personally, as a volunteer, applaud the effort at a textual intervention to the notability policy by User:Jytdog. It gives me great hope in our projects and the way we can continue to grow and evolve into fulfilling our mission. Ocaasit | c20:42, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Comment This is really an interesting discussion, because I think what tends to happen on Wikipedia is that editors de facto relax the requirements for topics like xmonad, which has undergone 3 AFDs with terrible sourcing yet has passed every time because Wikipedia editors are overwhelmingly technical. I definitely think it's worth putting effort into implementing policies that can counter WP:Systemic bias, but I'm not sure if this particular policy is the right one. I think it may be a little too vague and it's unclear which sourcing requirement we're relaxing: are we relaxing the secondary aspect, the substantial aspect, the multiple aspect? I'm really glad that this discussion is taking place though. It's a very important conversation to have. Editors !voting on this should keep in mind that we already have de facto source requirement relaxation for quite a few topics, and that a de jure relaxation for more underrepresented topics may not be as absurd as it seems on the surface. – FenixFeather(talk)(Contribs)20:21, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Reading Suggestion I'm going to post this article from Sue Gardner, a former Wikimedia executive, here because I think it's relevant reading to this discussion: [10]. One of the key reasons she cites for women not editing Wikipedia is that there are lax sourcing requirements for topics like software and video games, but much more stringent sourcing requirements for topics like female YA authors. This difference in sourcing requirements isn't embedded in policy (no WP:CAPITALWORDS here) but rather in how discussions like AFDs usually go down because of the demographic makeup of current Wikipedia editors. So before you dismiss this RFC as non-"objective", keep in mind that current de facto sourcing requirements are far from objective. – FenixFeather(talk)(Contribs)20:31, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Support per Jytdog's nutshell statement here."We end up with systemic bias because the base of sources is the product of systemic bias." (Jytdog from past N discussion). I don't like the term "relaxed" which suggests sloppiness so maybe something else would work. I also think sources must be reliable although I don't think Jytdog is suggesting they shouldn't be. I acknowledge the very real issue of identifying notability when what is considered biased is often based on the subjective. Right now I don't think we see notability as consistent in anyway with importance possibly another consideration. I also don't know that we consider that even hard copy sources are much more available in the present day West than at any time in the past. For all of these reasons and many good points above we must deal with this issue. Only a support vote leaves the door open. Note: someone may have to resuscitate Jytdog since I don't think I've ever agreed with him before and he may have had a heart attack or passed out after reading this support. :O)(Littleolive oil (talk) 21:28, 29 October 2018 (UTC))
I see Montana has suggested replacing relaxed with, "reassessed in light of historic marginalization", which I like. Per DGG no we are not lowering our standards; I'd suggest we are taking on the very real task an editor faces which is to make educated and more sophisticated judgements about what we do and do not included. In reading years old posts I noticed editors back then lacked some of the knowledge and sophistication we have now. I believe we can handle more nuance than we could when the policy was first written.(Littleolive oil (talk) 21:36, 29 October 2018 (UTC))
"Reassessed" may not be as hair-raising as "relaxed", but is entirely meaningless; as if the sources were not assessed the first time around (?). It begs the question: What is the point then? We are going to have to debate at AfD how marginalised certain groups are(oh god no... please no) for... what gain exactly? What advantage would "reassessed in light of historic marginalization" give to 'marginalised' biographies? There is no substance to this proposed rewording. Are we just virtue signaling at this point? — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)22:20, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Relaxed to me means a judgement. Reassessed is active, driven to action. In the RfDS I've been involved in I and others have discussed marginalization and sources are reassessed all the time. For example, in science based topics research can be withdrawn, and archived and we have to be aware of that and act accordingly. Sources are never frozen-in-stone acceptable. This wording simply opens the door for the fact that we are even in ten years more knowledgeable, have better access to sources and maybe have learned a few lessons about how to discuss differences.(Littleolive oil (talk) 22:45, 29 October 2018 (UTC))
It is not virtue signaling so much as a gentle reminder to keep an open mind, and to consider non-hegemonic perspectives. I don't know why there is so much hand-wringing over debates over "how marginalized" a group is. You really think AFDs are going to devolve into people debating whether women have x marginalization units vs how black people have y marginalization units? I don't really see that happening and I don't see why it would; intersectionalism is a thing and oppression olympics are generally frowned upon, especially in social justice circles. This just seems like reactionary fearmongering and a strawperson argument. I think what's going to happen is that we'll be reminded to be mindful of our own biases, since Wikipedia is biased toward Western, technically savvy straight white male perspectives. – FenixFeather(talk)(Contribs)23:17, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
FenixFeather, I've been involved in far too many heated AfD discussions not to think that "debates over "how marginalized" a group is" would be common and horrific to be involved in, especially if this conferred some benefit toward 'keeping' the article. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)07:18, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm still not sure how this would go down. It's just an encouragement to keep in mind that marginalized groups should be considered more carefully because Wikipedia is biased against them. I don't know why it would be comparative? What kind of person would be doing those comparisons? This just doesn't make any sense to me. You can't just say "there will definitely be people comparing how oppressed women are compared to how oppressed Asian Americans are!" and not provide any evidence or scenarios to back that up. That's called fearmongering. – FenixFeather(talk)(Contribs)17:24, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose I like what this is trying to do, but the problem is really to do with the purpose of notability. Years ago we used to argue about whether or not to change the name, because it wasn't meant to indicate "importance", but to indicate whether or not sources have "taken note" of the subject. If we don't have sources that provide extensive and balanced coverage, even extremely important topics can't be covered, as we don't have the material to write the article. If the significant but marginalised subject has not been written about in enough detail to pass the primary bar of non-trivial coverage in two or more sources, then we're stuck - an article about such a subject based on trivial coverage in multiple sources is unlikely to have the depth we need for an NPOV encyclopaedic article; an article based on a single source with non-trivial coverage risks not having the balance we require. - Bilby (talk) 23:51, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. While I respect the principle of trying to get more members of underrepresented groups covered in Wikipedia, and actually participate in efforts where I can (e.g. LGBT writers), the problem is that I actually have seen attempts in the past to argue that only straight white men should actually be held to notability standards, while women, people of colour and LGBTs should be entitled to have articles, regardless of what they have or haven't actually accomplished, just because we can verify that the person exists. I actually have seen the argument attempted that a woman, a person of colour or an LGBT person should be able to get into Wikipedia just for being a school board trustee or a committee member or a small-town municipal councillor or a county clerk, even though we wouldn't normally accept those as NPOL-passing offices otherwise; I have seen people try to play the gay or race cards in deletion discussions about people whose only sourceability was their own Twitter feed; and on and so forth. Yes, it's important to be conscious of the fact that there may be a bias in Wikipedia, and to make an effort to counter that by locating the women, POCs and LGBTs who do pass our existing notability standards and are getting overlooked (e.g. a lot of LGBT writers who pass WP:AUTHOR by having won Lambdas are still redlinks) — but as written, this effectively just suspends Wikipedia being able to apply any notability criteria at all to a very large percentage of our biographical articles about people, and makes some articles undeletable even if they really, truly shouldn't be here. Bearcat (talk) 17:38, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Support - Per Jytdog and SusanW. Systemic bias in the sources leads to embarrassing gaps and bias in our coverage. This small addition isn't righting a great wrong, let's not blow it out of proportion. Proposed change only affects dead people, does not mean that no sources are required, and does not (anymore) call for significant change in our deletion processes. Editors focusing on adding useful content about people from marginalized communities to Wikipedia run into roadblocks with bias in sources every day. It is indeed necessary to address larger issues of systemic bias in the sources, outside of Wikipedia. But while we're waiting for that to happen, adding this small bit of language helps to acknowledges the issue and lessen just one of the barriers to writing biographies about notable people from marginalized communities. Siko (talk) 21:53, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Support more articles on historical figures - I think even broader than the current proposal, we should have allowances for more articles on non-BLPs that are clearly of a non-promotional nature (ie those that are not genealogical or similar). This is important for coverage of marginalized groups, but it's also valuable in general, and more dukes and bishops really wouldn't do any harm either.--Pharos (talk) 01:49, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose solely because such an addition is unenforceable. If there is not enough sourcing to write a good quality article which satisfies WP:V requirements, the article should not be written. Wikipedia should encourage speakers of other languages (who would be able to use foreign-language RS) to write more biographies, instead of lowering article quality standards. feminist (talk) 07:04, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Support these kinds of policies are really important in making sure that for folks who need clear rules for AFD and patrolling purposes, can understand why exceptions are necessary when dealing with marginalized knowledge. Sadads (talk) 10:48, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Support and if the amendment hadn't struck through the last part it'd have been strong support - Wikipedia has not handled marginalized people well for a very long time. This would be a small step in the right direction. Simonm223 (talk) 12:02, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Support and comment - I don't see it as a huge departure from how we currently work that we consider that 'significant' means different things at different times and in different contexts. In fact, I think we already do this - coverage of a notable person today might be regurgitated in dozens of different news outlets, whereas we would consider a handful of mentions in the past to be sufficient because we understand that the world was a different place. In the same way that the breadth of possible coverage of a person has changed over time, so too has the degree to which groups of people are covered. I think it's important to note, as Alafarge says above, that we're not talking about Verifiability here - though many oppose voters above seem to think we are - this proposal does not advocate for relaxing our standards on how to verify information; it doesn't say "Content about marginalized people can be original research", it requests that we consider what "significant" means for different groups. Viewed through this lens, I think this proposal is a) not at odds with current practices and b) a step in the right direction for a project which aims to bring free knowledge to the world. I think it's also worth mentioning that a number of voters above state that things will get better over time, and we can simply wait for that and have better articles on marginalized people in the future. This ignores that we're talking about people from the past, for whom this breadth of sourcing is likely to never magically appear. Sam Walton (talk) 12:25, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose the mainstream media has shamefully ignored me and I'm due my unsourced, unverifiable autobiography... stuff and nonsense. Cabayi (talk) 12:43, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. The bar for inclusion is already very low (too low in some instances, e.g. sports), lowering that bar even further (but only for some vaguely defined groups) is not the way forward. If people have not (yet) received significant attention in multiple sources, they aren't notable. This applies to everyone (and everything for that matter), and should remain so. The current proposal would mean that if we get for example one book dealing with "important people in the history of X", we could include all women, non-whites, ... from such a book, but not the white males (unless they are otherwise a suppressed minority apparently). And this would solve things how exactly? Wikipedia shouldn't try to solve the unequal treatment and chances many groups have had throughout the ages, by supporting reversed unequal treatment. I fully support attempts to uncover truly notable persons from suppressed groups, and to create and improve articles on them (e.g. a project like Women in Red, if used for this goal). I would support attempts to enforce rules that SNGs may never allow people who don't meet the GNG to get articles anyway (e.g. non notable soccer or cricket players), regardless of their religion, gender or supposed race. But I can't support a proposal which would treat people with the same achievements and the same level of recognition (in reliable sources) in a different way. Fram (talk) 12:47, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose At the end of the day it is not our job to make up for poor scholarship of under represented people, that is the job of scholars. If they are genuinely notable I find it impossible to believe that you could not find half a dozen "whateverologosts" noting them, even if in op-ed pieces.Slatersteven (talk) 12:55, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Not our remit - how can this be reconciled with the fundamental approach of proportionally documenting what the world has written, rather than assigning the proportions ourselves? Wikipedians by and large are can not be expected to be experts at assessing someone's historical import, impact or legacy - that's why we leave that to the actual experts, whose works we rely on. It's tempting to imagine Wikipedia doing its bit to address historical and societal injustice in a more overt way than that of providing free information to everyone. But it can't be by way of fracturing the guidelines that prevent it from becoming Wikia. Also, practically not workable - how can this not turn AfD discussions into bubbling tar pits? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:35, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose While I agree the problem exists, we need less notability exceptions not more. I would support a generalized relaxing of the standard for people who have been dead for >20 years or so. As others have said, this feels like a great wrong that Wikipedia can't fix. As much as I support everyone who is actually notable having an article, we shouldn't be creating carve outs for specific groups, will that result in some level of biases/missing coverage? Yes, but that isn't a problem we can fix. We have to have good sources. zchrykng (talk) 15:42, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - I agree and sympathize with the underlying problem here, but Wikipedia is not the place to solve it. All this proposal stands to do is make arguments over notability at AfD, a tricky topic to start with, even more nitpicky. Plus, I'm sure we'll eventually end up with unending fights over the definition of "marginalized group" and ultimately accusations of racism on all sides. I support less rules for determining notability, not more, and especially not ones that will turn AfD into even more of a minefield. --Nathan2055talk - contribs23:01, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose basically per all the above opposes. The systemic bias in Wikipedia is for the most part merely a reflection of the systemic bias of the world at large. The problem exists in the source material, it's the historians and journalists who should be "forced" to write about marginalized people, then we can in turn create the WP articles. When the Strickland Nobel topic became an issue in the media my first thought was that these news media who were screeching about the lack of a WP article are actually the ones to blame. They have no right to demand/expect an article of us if they have never written anything about her before! We're a tertiary source, the problem is the absence or inaccessibility of primary and secondary sources. We cannot create articles out of hot air and wishful thinking. It's an issue I deal with regularly in my roles as an AFC reviewer, admin and as a founder of WikiProject Disability. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 23:34, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose The definition of marginalized groups is too broad ("and other"). Also: who decides that "sourcing" lacks because of a bias, or simply because the person is not notable? If a Wikipedian really thinks that he or she wants to write a Wikipedia article about a person without "sourcing", then the Wikipedian should invest time first in writing and publishing such a "secondary source". If the person really is notable, and if you can find and use enough reliable primary sources, then you certainly will find a journal that wants to publish your secondary source article. Ziko (talk) 08:15, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose The tendency to want to compensate formerly committed injustice in the aftermath looks praiseworthy, but in the end it is just nonsense. You can not retroactively improve the history. On the contrary, if one did not serve history and science, one would soften the criteria. Rules should always apply universally, otherwise there is a positive discrimination - but that too is discrimination. - Marcus Cyron (talk) 12:14, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - while I wholeheartedly support the plight of marginalized groups (being a member of one myself), I can't really support this proposal in good faith for a number of reasons. Everyone opposing above has pretty solid reasoning, so I'll keep this short: Wikipedia is supposed to be a lagging indicator, and everything in the project should be verifiable. This is a core foundation of the project, and we can't really relax that standard. This RfC is basically asking us to change the second pillar. We avoid advocacy. This is POV-pushing, albeit in a good-faith way. An encyclopedia is just not the place to do this. cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 19:31, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Strong Oppose How are we going to write an accurate and verifiable article about someone if we don't have multiple reliable sources with substantial discussion of the person? Inaccurate and poorly sourced articles do not benefit marginalized groups and damage the credibility of Wikipedia. Tornado chaser (talk) 15:38, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Support in principle. This is a really, really well-documented pattern: you define a set of "objective" criteria for determining the merits of Foos and Bars. You notice that Bars are underrepresented in your final selections, but you convince yourself that, because your criteria were "objective" and you chose only on "merit", then the problem must not be your fault or something you can solve. The source of this mistaken impression is usually that the "objective" criteria are themselves biased, and that you - probably coming from a cultural context similar to the one that created those biased criteria - are unaware of your own biases and how they might influence your decisions. Attempts to explicitly correct for these baseline biases tend to elicit the same reactions elsewhere that they're getting here - "Are you saying some people should get special treatment? I thought we were all for equality!" In this context the biases are not only in the sources, but also in how Wikipedians think about and evaluate sources, and are baked into our particular idiosyncratic terms of art like "reliable sources" and "verifiability". (You can see the conceptual seams cracking in some of the comments to the effect of "but how could we write a well-sourced article if we relax the notability criteria?" - special bonus points for bluelinking WP:V or WP:RS but not doing any introspection about where anything documented there originates or whether those criteria might also be biased.) As a matter of practice, I do think after-the-fact blunt corrections - like "relaxed" notability expectations - are imperfect solutions that are generally less effective than trying to address the biases closer to their source. But since that doesn't seem to be a practical alternative here, I think this proposal is reasonable to try. If it turns out that Wikipedia is unexpectedly inundated with articles about members of underrepresented demographics in history, to a point that we can barely find all our one-line stubs on cricketers anymore, then we can revisit the issue. Opabinia externa (talk) 22:39, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Wikipedia is based on WP:V and without enough independent and reliable sources, how are we supposed to even write about a person in a way which follows Wikipedia's policies and guidelines? Without enough sources, what editors write can easily fall into the realm of original research and then the article becomes unreliable. If independent and reliable sources talk about a person, Wikipedia will then be able to follow, with writing an article on them. We don't WP:RIGHT WRONGS, so have to wait for these sources to be available. Also, this change would only murky the waters of notability further. What constitutes "a marginalized group" is subjective, as you could say that Christians could be "a marginalized group", as Christians have been (and are still in some parts of the world) discriminated against and persecuted, but are also the largest religious group in the world. There would have to be a hard and definitive "cut of point" for what makes a group "marginalized" if this proposal is to be accepted, as editors can argue both ways with relative ease. Although I think that Wikipedia should have more articles on people who have been marginalized, lack of sources cannot be a way bypass having enough reliable and independent sources. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions12:35, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose, on two grounds: Practicality: "Marginalized" is so broadly/poorly defined here that it could be stretched to cover just about everybody. Morality: If we worsen verifiability standards for a particular group, that group will by definition come to have less-verifiable, lower-quality articles. Over time this could even be a vector to insert racist and sexist material into Wikipedia, which would then be harder to remove due to the poorer verifiability standards. Article subjects deserve verifiable articles with solid sourcing--if we can't manage that, it's better to have no article than a badly sourced, possibly-defamatory article. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind20:03, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. For two reasons - first determining who is marginalized is OR and POV (and - heck - American WASPs are now claiming to be marginalized and persecuted) - leading to an unclear criteria. Second - this is simply not needed - as such systemic attempts at "correction" already occur by a plethora of WP:RSes who choose to cover individuals perceived to be of marginalized groups for accomplishments (e.g. first X to do Y, or just inspiring life stories) that would not be covered otherwise. Notability should be (mainly) SIGCOV based - with the underlying coverage correcting biases (or introducing biases in the case of models and football players) - not us. Icewhiz (talk) 12:24, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Comment: numerous people have commented that determining who is marginalized is difficult. It is not. If law forbade someone for having equal civil, socio-economic or political rights, they were marginalized. No OR or opinion required. SusunW (talk) 15:16, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Which, if we look at the world pre-20th century, includes probably 98% of all men, and 99.9% of all women. Fram (talk) 15:29, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Even in the 20th century, many would consider African Americans to be marginalized even after de jure equality (we can quibble on when that was achieved - but following the 60s civil rights legislation, constitutional amendments, and court rulings one would generally claim de jure equality - though many still argue persisting discrimination exists due to factors outside of the law)). Many forms of discrimination are informal or extralegal (e.g. the KKK in the US context which operated outside the bounds of the law). In many class based systems (think of India's myriad castes, or serfs, Jews, freemen, clergy, petty nobility, major nobility, and royalty in a medieval context) there is a lack of equality vs. any class - each class (and subsets within the class) had different rights. Icewhiz (talk) 15:49, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Fram, yes, the majority. I would argue that any historical figure who was legally marginalized and for whom verifiable notability exists in multiple sources qualifies under the proposal. Icewhiz being a target of extralegal or informal discrimination is not likely to prohibit media/academic publishing, in fact the opposite. The point is the place and time in which one lived and the characteristics which made up their identity impacts the amount of sourcing that will be available. Doesn't say no sourcing, doesn't imply poor sourcing, doesn't fix history. Simply acknowledges that what is required to constitute significant coverage may take different forms. SusunW (talk) 19:35, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
"any [...] figure [...] for whom verifiable notability exists in multiple sources" is already what WPBIO has as rule, and what we use as the general inclusion criteria at AfD (with some exceptions like some politicans, pornbios, ...). Fram (talk) 07:29, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Support in principle I don't have an ideal solution, but it's a problem that needs to be solved. If this isn't the right solution, we need to keep thinking and talking valereee (talk) 20:07, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Strong oppose. We're here to make an encyclopedia not to right great wrongs. I echo power~enwiki's view that all people should have to conform to the same standard. Exception clauses are inherently biased, we need one rule for all or no rules at all. SITH(talk)13:59, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. This belies the very concept of our notability criterion, which isn't just based on "importance." It's based on actual verifiability as well. If most of these people are ignored throughout history and have significantly less coverage than the WP:GNG warrants or other subject-specific notability criterion, there's most likely not going to be enough sources to even create any sort of verifiable encyclopedia article beyond a name. The presumably non-white person who invented the wheel almost certainly satisfies the subject-specific notability criterion, for example, but we don't have a Wikipedia article on them because there's almost certainly no verifiable information on this person. This will most likely be the same with most "marginalized" (included in quotes as I don't believe there is agreement on what the term means) peoples who don't really satisfy the GNG or notability criteria. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess(talk) Ping when replying 13:50, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - Like others have mentioned above it is a good sentiment. But generally not a good idea to relax verifiable requirements. It also seems like something that is vague enough to be easily abused. PackMecEng (talk) 14:13, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Comment: though this specific proposal may fail, Sam Walton makes a very cognizant point above that we already take historical context into account, when implicitly deciding how many sources are enough for a 17th century figure and a 21st century one. While I'm not a fan of the actual wording of this proposal, something more on the lines of this may be closer to existing practice and less objectionable: "The requirement for multiple reliable sources should be judged according to historical context. More sources are required for contemporary figures than for historical figures. Additionally, historical sources may underrepresent the contributions of certain groups of people e.g. women in science, so a lower threshold of coverage for a person in these groups may still indicate notability." — Bilorv(c)(talk)12:22, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Late to the party but I want to add another vote of opposition to this unbelievably bad idea. The proposer should be embarrassed for suggesting such a degrading of the project. Wikipedia reflects what outside sources discuss about topics and individuals, and if someone does not have multiple reliable sources illustrating why they are notable, then they should absolutely not have an article, or else we risk degrading verifiability and standards for all other topics. It is not our job to invent notability for those for whom it does not exist. History's marginalization is real, but this is an incredibly poor way to address that. Reywas92Talk04:52, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Only moral support as an interesting first draft. There's a germ of an idea here, but many of the opposes make good points. It is too vague and gameable as currently proposes. I don't buy the GREATWRONGS argument, however. While there are elements at work in our content creation who are trying to do champion their impassioned causes, there's also a broad consensus that WP:Systemic bias is a real problem we need to work on. This just isn't quite the solution. I hope that the feedback received in this RfC is sufficient to draft one that is more practical. In short, I agree that this version would just result in a shit-storm of AFD and related wikilawyering to keep trivial articles on people who just really are not notable in any sense except locals.
I also want to direct people (especially anyone who's not been here for a decade) to both WP:Notability/Historical and WP:ITSIMPORTANT for an overview of how the community has reacted, consistently, to the idea of including subjects just because they're subjectively "important" to someone or some group.
Rather, we have an objective criterion. If we relax its exact requirements for particular classes (e.g. academics) we do so with another objective criterion in place of GNG. Simply being from a group that has been claimed to have been marginalized (by whom? for how long? to what extent? with what effect on this particular article subject?) isn't one. E.g., under this proposal I would expect to see demands for relaxed standards of notability for Irish subjects because of centuries British colonialism and cultural suppression, and I don't think the community would buy it, yet we'd still have to wrangle endlessly with people making those demands. It'll be too much of a drain on editorial productivity. Just consider how much trouble it takes to get consensus to delete or merge an article on a handful of dogs with funny noses which are not a breed. Ratchet that up ×100 for a locally "important" poet from the Kingdom of Tonga, or the best juggler among the people of Nunavut, or the longest-lived chieftain of the Yanomami. I think we should pass. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 20:04, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
I think that all editors need to think about how they might address the disparities in coverage. This discussion made me look at my own editing history. I have started 34 biographies. Thirty are about white men. So, I have been part of the problem. I will have to keep that in mind whenever I'm looking for a new subject to write an article about. - Donald Albury22:20, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Strong oppose - I support the idea of increasing certain gropus' presence on Wikipedia, but this is not the way to do it. Wikipedia is fundamentally built on reliable sourcing, in concord with WP:NPOV. If the avaliability of sourcing results in exclusionary bias, then it unfortunately reflects the reality we live in, and should not be countermanded by subpar sourcing. Should this proposal come into force, it would severely harm the encyclopedia's reliability, especially with the vague wording it currently employs. User:Axisixa[t][c]22:50, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. The opposers above have already given the rationales I would use and, by the way, I am one who works extensively in topic areas affected by systemic bias. I know the problems but this proposal is not the solution. - Sitush (talk) 04:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Many of the stated reasons I agree with. Relaxing standards rarely produces good results, & in this, it is likely to produce shoddy scholarship, which (judging by some pages I've seen) is bad enough already. Not to mention it's just begging for delete arguments, which alreadyturn up, even without lower standards. TREKphilerany time you're ready, Uhura06:04, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
Discussion on addition
I don't mind this except for the two-year moratorium on deletion, to which I am vociferously opposed. I'd also prefer a bit more clarification on exactly when this would and would not apply. SportingFlyertalk01:27, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
I propose modifying "can be relaxed for non-living individuals who were members of a marginalized group" to "can be relaxed for non-living individuals who were members of a wp:notablemarginalized group"
The proposed wording smells of righting great wrongs, and it invites WP:OR on assigning the characteristic "marginalized". "wp:notable group" is much more objective, it means the group has a Wikipedia article.
Is the individual a member of the group? At the most lax, there must be a reliable source for the individual being a member of the specific group. More restrictive, and probably more reasonable, would be a requirement that the individual is mentioned in the article on the group. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe, IMHO, this is more nonsensical, than the one being proposed. What's a group? Individual castes, individual tribes, caste-clusters, a community, a linguistic race, a political group, a religious sect, fringe groups of lunatic charlatans, how is a group defined? I can give a hundred more examples, all of which have (very-deservedly) an article on en.wiki.
And, if you propose extensively loosening the notability guidelines for all deceased members of this huge set, which will contain a near unbounded number of elements, that's just disastrous. ∯WBGconverse15:55, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
User:Winged Blades of Godric, I'm sure I could modify to avoid your concerns, but I was just trying to steer a bad idea in a better direction. "Groups" must be wikipedia-notable; some mention of sourcing. But don't worry, the proposal is going nowhere. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:45, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Comment How can this work, when people have made these !votes, to re-open as an essentially different discussion? Shouldn't this be addressed as a separate proposal? Jacona (talk) 15:22, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
It says "This should not be taken as justification for the creation of thinly sourced permastubs"; but how are you supposed to create a non-stub without having reliable sources to cite? Are we going to have a bunch of uncited material in these articles? Or are they going to be cited to unreliable sources? If you have multiple reliable sources to flesh out the article, why do you need this change? If you have only one decent source to flesh out the article, how is it verifiable? My only conclusion is that this proposal is contrary to the 5 pillars: Excerpt from the Second Pillar of Wikipedia:"All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy, citing reliable, authoritative sourceS" (emphasis mine). Thus being added to this page is both invalid and can be ignored in light of being superseded by higher-level policy. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)15:31, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Lots of strong feelings being aired, which is all fine. Some of them don't appear to be dealing with the actual proposal, which is how these things go. This specific proposal doesn't appear to be likely to gain consensus, but I am hopeful that a closer will be able to pull out directions for future community consideration. We'll see. Jytdog (talk) 19:42, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
The logical consequences of the proposal are the biggest problems. If you want to discuss changing the 'significant coverage' guidance for long dead people, then that is probably the most promising avenue, but anything where Wikipedians are required to assess the degree of 'marginalisation' a given person has been subjected to is a complete non-starter. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)21:09, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
User:Insertcleverphrasehere in your experience, are there a lot of people clamoring to add badly-sourced pages about really obviously non-notable dead people from marginalized groups where there is some actual risk of this being abused? If so I am interested to hear about that. (I am very aware of people clamoring to add badly sourced content about living people - athletes, executives, entertainers, etc - that is a different issue). Jytdog (talk) 22:47, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
there are a number of problems:
(1) to the extent people work on adding non-notable people in marginalized groups, they don't add the notable ones.
(2) worse, this tends to perpetuate the myth that there is less to be expected in the way of accomplishments from members of these groups.
(3) they generally to use nonselective directory sources
(4) this impairs our recognition and location of good sources for these individuals -- usually, printed sources.
(5) any lack of selectivity for people from the late 20th century and later, even if deceased, lays the ground for similar articles of living individuals.
(6) NOT ADVOCACY refers to more than commercial advocacy--it refers to advocacy of any enterprise or movement, even the most laudable ones.
(7) to the extent we compromise this in directions we think justifiable, we provide the basis and the excuse for others.
(8) aside for being a distortion of the purpose of an encyclopedia, articles written with an intention of advocacy tend to be poorly written and sourced, and almost always depart from NPOV.
(9) while overing borderline notable subjects does not necessarily detract much from the value of Wikipedia , but departures from NPOV destroy it.
(10) to the extent we tolerate such articles, we need to bring them to some semblance of community standards, but the resource that we are most limited in is experienced editors willing to improve articles, and they are more needed for the inadequately written articles of subjects that are actually notable .
but there's solution: Wikidata is much less selective, and not limited by WP concepts of notability (they use the term in a different and immensely broader meaning [11]: can be described using serious and publicly available references. . Verified information entered there will be of direct and indirect benefit to everyone in the community, now and in the future, and to users, with all their various purposes. This is the place to enter these people: if the sources are considered at some later point show notability , the basic references will be there. DGG ( talk ) 03:11, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
DGG I'd like to see your documentation for these claims. Having read numerous studies on Wikipedia and its coverage of women and western-bias, notable men and women are represented equally in field specific studies. By equally meaning, notable figures recognized by other encyclopedias tend to be equally covered in WP. Articles about women on WP typically are longer and more in-depth, despite the sourcing biases. However, due to those same sourcing and systemic biases, there are less notable women in the historic record.[12][13] Articles about significant cultural figures from outside the language scheme of the platform are underrepresented; meaning that significant Chinese figures are more likely to appear on WP.zh than on WP.en and vice versa.[14] But if significant figures are covered, the sourcing tends to be better with more references cited on WP.en.[15] I have no data regarding your claim that there are many non-notable people written about on WP, but as <18% of biographies on WP.en are women, if that is indeed the case, it would indicate that the non-notables tend to be figures from mainstream cultures and not marginalized populations given actual research by academics of the platform. SusunW (talk) 14:18, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
SusunW, I agree with you completely that people from marginalized groups are under-represented in WP. I agree with you 100% that they need to be added, I agree with you 100% that campaigns to add them are appropriate, and I have been participating in as many such events as I can. Though I usually don't often start articles, I revise them to better show the notability and defend them if challenged. I admit I never thought of it this way, but you are completely right that articles on women in WP are usually better-than those for men, because they have been added more carefully, with experienced people working on them and revising them, as you and I both do. And I agree that this is true for other marginalized groups also: if we cover people from them at all, we cover them well. I think that the way that WiR and similar projects (such as Black Lunch Table) are doing this is a very good way to make articles, and a model for many other areas. This is an important argument, and I am glad you have called it to my attention, for I shall be using it also in the attempt to improve WP quality.
That's not the question here. The question is is whether to get adequate representation it is necessary to lower the notability standards for them, because that is what has been proposed. I think doing this will cause the loss of the quality you rightly refer to above. There is no need to do this, for there are many thousands of women who do meet the standards for us to write about, covering many fields. We need to maintain the same high standards, not compromise them. DGG ( talk ) 06:29, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
DGG I think you and others are misreading the proposal and maybe its the choice of the word "relaxed". All the proposed change is asking is that the way we view substantial coverage to reflect historical reality, as Montanabw said reassessed in light of historic marginalization of certain segments who have been historically ignored. Where they were written about, source articles tended to be short with very little detail, other than weighty statements. What the proposal is asking that instead of requiring length, we acknowledge depth. For a visual example instead of a 5 lb. bag of sugar, we recognize that five 1 lb bags is the equivalent and more likely what we will be able to find. One long biography may not exist, but if one can use multiple smaller references to develop a complete profile, we can increase the number of articles on notable people in large segments of the population. SusunW (talk) 16:14, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Then this should be applied across the board to long dead people. I will Oppose any proposal that purports that Wikipedians are qualified to assess weather a person was 'marginalised' or not. This is a terrible idea that will lead to very ugly discussions and very ugly accusations that nobody wants to be a part of (I won't go into deatail as to what sort of discussions I fear, for fear of sparking one off here). — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)21:28, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
SusunW Yes, we should be assessing the sources for notability in the context of what can be expected for the subject. But notability is not a quantity that can be approximated by counting sources or by adding them, but rather by what the sources are and what is said in them. It's not something infinitely dividable like a pile of sugar: if we must use far-fetched analogies like this, a closer one is that if I need 5lb of sugar to make something, it doesn't help if I have 1 pound this week and 1 pound next week, and so on --I need 5 at a time. to be notable a person has to do something recognized as important, not do many things that are not really important. A writer gets to be recognized as notable for publishing a best seller, not any number of books that are only slight noticed. A scientist, by publishing even a small amount of important work that is highly cited, not any number of papers that almost nobody cites. A political, by winning an election, not coming in second in many. What we need to do is recognize a wider range or sources, and a wider range of accomplishments. (I've argued for years that nursing is as notable as any other medical profession, where the head of a national association & the like is notable & I think this has become accepted; I now recognize that being head of a state WCTU is an important civic office (tho I didn't realize this at first). DGG ( talk ) 02:57, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Which is probably why articles on women are longer—from the get go, one must compile a list of resources to justify their import. You have nailed the problem, DGG, it isn't about notability, it's about perception. It is the idea that the kinds of positions marginalized people were allowed were unimportant, thus anyone doing them could not be notable. It isn't just nurses who are deemed less than. Public administrators who are politicians are notable if they won an election at a minimum of the sub-national level, but social workers who run state level agencies are perceived as just routinely performing a job, regardless of whether they were the person who established the statewide network for public aid. And yes, being a state, national or international leader of notable organizations like WILPF, NAACP, League of Women Voters, the Anti-Slavery Society, the International Alliance of Women, the WCTU, etc., which represented the only political activities marginalized people were allowed to participate in, is an indicator of notability. It isn't remotely about lowering standards or righting society's wrongs, it is about looking at what is and including a "wider range of accomplishments" and better assessing the quality of sources, not their length or circulation base. SusunW (talk) 05:52, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
@DGG: I'm surprised to see you here making arguments about maintaining high sourcing standards and not compromising them, because on the xmonad AFD you were making the argument that we should relax sourcing requirements [16], because Wikipedia is "known for software articles" and also made a WP:IAR argument in favor of relaxing sourcing requirements for xmonad here [17]. I'm curious as to your reasoning why we can relax sourcing requirements for software without compromising quality, but apparently we can't relax sourcing requirements for marginalized groups. – FenixFeather(talk)(Contribs)20:37, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
I've been watching silently for a while. In terms of what is sufficient sourcing for an article about a (in this case, black) woman, I offer an article I created almost 12 years ago, M. Athalie Range. This article has never been challenged, even with its weak sourcing. Are we talking about creating articles with even less sourcing than this, or has this article slipped through the system? - Donald Albury01:15, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I wouldn't have thought so. There's excellent coverage in the Marvin Dunn book, the Miami Herald obituary is also good, and the South Florida CEO piece seems ok to me. The article seems to pass the current bar of significant coverage in multiple independent sources. - Bilby (talk) 02:29, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Then, what about Virginia "Ginny" Montes? This article has survived almost 13 years on very thin sources (I just added the obit from The New York Times a couple of weeks ago) without being challenged. Because of my conflict of interest (acknowledged on the talk page), I have been reluctant to work on the article since creating it, but it does need cleaning up and more references. In this case, it appears that an article about a Hispanic woman managed to fly below the radar despite poor sourcing. I think the obit in The New York Times, which was sent out over its news service and printed in papers across the US, establishes her notability, but that is the one solid source. So, is this a test case for sourcing a biography about a dead person? - Donald Albury16:17, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@Donald Albury and Bilby: Montes is a good example, as are the discussion of Bess Adams in the previous thread and my examples above. With Maymie de Mena, I found one detailed biography in the Oxford Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro–Latin American Biography, which made the claim of her notability and was published in a reliable source. The problem was much of the information in the article was wrong. It said de Mena was Nicaraguan and born in 1891, when in actuality she was born in Louisiana in 1879. I found a second scholarly article written in Women, Gender, and Families of Color, which analyzed the problems in the published record about de Mena, her fluid identity, her name changes over 5 marriages and the reasons why her biography had been obscured by historians. Though it depicted her rise in the Universal Negro Improvement Association, very little of her life in Jamaica was covered by the author. With a thorough search in primary records and newspapers, I was able to confirm that the feminist article was the more reliable source and flesh out de Mena's life in Jamaica. What you referred to above, Bilby as "trivial" sources is a misnomer; short does not mean trivial. Trivial is unimportant or unnecessary minor detail. Weighty detail, like she founded an organization which brought technical training to island women, is significant. By combining the information from the one reliable source, a feminist journal, what could be verified from the Oxford Dictionary piece and multiple short but weighty articles, de Mena's became a GA, not "an article about such a subject based on trivial coverage in multiple sources is unlikely to have the depth we need for an NPOV encyclopaedic article". (As a side note, in the year and a half since the article was reviewed, I have been corresponding with Morris, the author of the feminist journal, who researching a full book on de Mena. So, again, we are not talking about a stagnant situation, where adequate secondary sources may not at some point be available).
Donald Albury, my guess is that Montes can be fleshed out with newspaper articles. I find several articles that could help you do that [18], [19], for starters. She apparently worked as a journalist for the The Tampa Times in the 1960s, as there are many articles "by" her. Possibly you can find sources to document that. She was honored by the GA legislature [20]. While "find a grave" is not a RS, her tombstone photograph shows she was born [21] 1 April 1943. SusunW (talk) 17:46, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I really doubt that she was writing for the Tampa Times in the 1960s, as she was a student at the University of Florida in Gainesville when I met her in 1964 (although she was from Tampa and had transferred from the University of South Florida). We were married in 1966, and I was never aware of her writing for any newspaper, at least through 1979, when we were divorced. She was active in civil rights in Gainesville in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but coverage (under her married name) for that period may be difficult to find. The The Gainesville Sun does not keep back copies more than a year, and the local library does not seem to have microfilm copies going that far back. She was in Tallahassee from 1976 to the early 1980s, when she moved to Atlanta, so there may be some coverage there. The birth date at 'find a grave' sounds about right, but I can't verify that. It is probably true that more newspaper coverage is available now on-line than when I created the article in 2006, but I have shied away from making more than some wonky edits over the years. In any case, I don't plan on editing the article, although I will post anything I find on the talk page. - Donald Albury20:43, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Donald Albury, everything I found with her writing was in the early 1960s and talked about university policies. And yes, marriage and name changes always make women's bios more difficult. SusunW (talk) 21:03, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
And this sums it up nicely for me (and says more or less what I have) [[22]], the fact that this situation exists is not one we can fix, it is down to the professional commentators to do it.Slatersteven (talk) 18:32, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
Jeez I dunno. My experience is that the number one problem is with subjects who are from non-English speaking countries. Those aren't a marginalized class, at least in the proposal as written. Material on these folks is hard to find, and when you do it's in the foreign language and maybe only in archives in the foreign country. Here's Konstantin Mikhaylovsky; he's extremely notable in Russia. I don't have any sources for the article. That's unusual, but there's a bunch of other reaonably notable Russians where the only sources (that I can find) are like encyclopedia entries.
Konstantin Mikhaylovsky was a nobleman and Privy Councillor, Knight of the White Eagle and so on. Can't be much less marginalized than that I guess. Still the article is subject to deletion on grounds of no sources. So that's the problem I see, in my experience; I don't much work on marginalized groups so I can't address that.
FWIW in Who's Bigger?, which uses algorithms to parse Wikipedia data, they say "Our methods show that for historical figures from the past 300 years, the average significance of women appearing in Wikipedia was substantially greater than that of the average man. This implies that women required greater credentials to get into Wikipedia, analogous to being about 4 IQ points smarter in the mean. Fortunately, this significance gap has closed and essentially eliminated in modern times." Herostratus (talk) 10:34, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Alt suggestion
I would be inclined to support something a bit more nuanced, something like:
Just as context matters when determining the reliability of sources, it also matters when determining notability. While it may be reasonable to expect notable individuals in the age of the internet to have scores of sources easily available, this may not be true of those in other historical contexts. For example, someone from an earlier time may have comparatively few sources that are difficult to access, while still having sufficient sourcing available to construct a verifiable article, and may still be among the most notable of their peers.
This should not be taken as leave to create permastubs or engage in original research, but should serve as a reminder that the first metric we should be considering is whether a verifiable article can be written which doesn't violate our core content policies, and not a subjective measure of "importance", which may contain its own implicit historical biases.
That's not bad, but doesn't directly address the systemic bias in our base of sources, which is the actual (not imaginary) problem that started this whole discussion back at WT:N. The bias in the source base makes articles that we can create vulnerable to deletion, and folks trying to create those articles get discouraged. None of that is about having policy-violating articles but rather thinking in a nuanced way about N for dead (not living) people (article topics) who have been objects of systemic bias -- to have something concrete that people can point to in deletion discussions and can help guide creation of appropriate pages about such people (which is why I linked to the WiR guide in the proposal).
If people don't want to craft something that addresses this actual problem I understand that, but this misses the mark. Jytdog (talk) 16:15, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Jytdog, Systemic bias can't be qualified in any meaningful way. Codifying that 'context matters' is about the closest that you are going to get without creating a quagmire of marginalisation Olympics that we will all have to wade through. You can't lower the sourcing requirement bar below two reliable sources with significant coverage:
If you have only 1 good source, then all you can create is an article that isn't verifiable, then you have no way to verify WP:NPOV.
If you have a bunch of reliable sources, but none cover it with anything more than a couple sentences, then you create notability out of Synthesis.
Without multiple reliable sources, you simply can't create a verifiable standalone article on someone. Yes. History sucks. But you can't fix thousands of years of bad scholarship by lowering sourcing standards on the encyclopedia. GNG is a minimum bar that exists because that is what is needed to properly source an article verifiably, not because it is some handwavy threshold of 'importance' that we made up.
Saying that context matters, and that the main concern should be "can we source a decent length article on this person with the sources that exist?" is the best we can do. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)16:30, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
If the "1 good source" really is a high-quality source, then it is verifiable in the real world. It is often the case that someone from a marginalized community will be "rediscovered" (bad terminology!) by an academic or other high-quality publication, that is the first to write about them in a prominent secondary source in many decades. This also sometimes happens with biographies of people who are not from marginalized communities of course. Perhaps a version of your text that acknowledged the importance of the issue for covering marginalized communities, and accepting something like a high-quality "1 good source", without necessarily setting a separate standard, would be helpful,--Pharos (talk) 17:02, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Pharos Sorry. You are correct that a single reliable source can be considered verifiable. The issue with only one reliable source is establishing a neutral point of view. As discussed in WP:WHYN, We require multiple sources so that we can write a reasonably balanced article that complies with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, rather than representing only one author's point of view.. I have amended this above. Requiring only one source would also be contary to the five pillars, which require sourceS. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)17:30, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Insertcleverphrasehere you also aren't creating notability out of synthesis unless you are drawing conclusions. Simple paraphrasing of the information in multiple sourceS does not require conclusions to be drawn. SusunW (talk) 17:40, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, but if the source you start with is, for example, a 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article that you can copy verbatim because it's public domain, then you've got a pretty damned good start. GMGtalk17:37, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm a Britannica nostalgic myself, but if you're happy to accept a copy-paste from 1911 with a distinct British Empire POV, then I think a 21st century scholar writing about a historical figure from a marginalized community for citation as your "1 good source" (with others cited as well, but that being the main contributor to notability) would be at least as good from a global NPOV perspective.--Pharos (talk) 17:37, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Well I think if you're fishing for a standard that is lower than "verifiable article that doesn't violate our core content policies" then you're not gonna get it, and IMO shouldn't get it. I'm not gonna link to diffs, because my intention is to call out the organizational culture, rather than particular individuals, but if you don't think deletion arguments are being based on subjective "importance" criteria like I'd accept Chair of the committee as sufficient for probable notability, but I would not extend that to vice-chair or Neither being the head librarian of a city library nor being the first president of a city-club-federation does contribute to encyclopedic notability. then you are definitely wrong. Neither of those rationales pertain to whether an encyclopedia article can be written; they have to do with arbitrary personal standards of whether a subject is "worthy" of an article. GMGtalk17:07, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Jytdog, How do you define subjects "who have been objects of systemic bias" as 'marginalised' without creating an insane amount of turmoil and ending up with a subjective, biased, result anyway? (the grey areas are especially problematic here.)
You are still not acknowledging the problem and there is no point talking about your objection to proposed solutions if there is no shared understanding of the problem. It's cart before the horse, CWOT. I reviewed all your comments here and there is no point where you have grappled with the problems (the systemic bias in the source base; people at AfD being quick to dismiss) other than the barest nod in your original !vote. If you do understand the problem and your ground-response is "not WP's problem" then just say that. Jytdog (talk) 22:37, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Jytdog "Acknowledging the problem" isn't the issue here. Are certain people less likely to receive coverage due to societal biases? Yes. This was especially true in the past. However, this isn't Wikipedia's job to fix. Wikipedia does not lead, we follow. Moreover, there is no practical solution to creating articles when sufficient sourcing to meet the bare minimum of the GNG doesn't exist. Additionally, there is no practical solution to decide who is 'marginalised' and who is not. These are the things that you have not "Acknowledged" and are the main reasons why the original proposal above is in the process of being opposed. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)07:24, 1 November 2018 (UTC)`````````
Thanks for stating that in your view, this isn't Wikipedia's job to fix. Everything else you have written on this issue is noise.
I do hope at some point that you think more carefully about the problems of systemic bias in WP and what that means to our mission. As I said above, I remain interested to see how this RfC is closed, to see if there are hints of a way forward (or not) on how we might address the particular root of bias in our source base. (btw, the P&G have loads of concepts that are not clearly bounded and sharply defined - civility, pseudoscience, and even notability itself, for example -- yet we use them every day, because they point to concepts that are important to the community.)
Finally, in the future, please do reconsider attempting to mansplain basic P&G concepts to people who are far more experienced than you.
I will reply to that, to simply note the continuation of sloppy thinking. My comments here have been purely about what you have been doing in this discussion. There is some validity to a stance that this is not WP's problem to solve but instead of simply stating that you have been throwing shit at the wall (as you just did again), which is not helpful. I have no tolerance for bullshit. Jytdog (talk) 14:34, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Jytdog, From the beginning I have maintained that there are two issues with your proposal: 1) Wikipedia is supposed to be a lagging indicator, this needs to be fixed elsewhere first. and 2) difficulty in defining 'marginalisation' and the resultant conflict it would create at AfD discussions.
There is absolutely no reason to use that kind of language describing me or my words, which is bordering on PA.
GMG's proposal addresses these issues by focusing on examples where sourcing is difficult to obtain, but likely does exist, and avoids adding terms like 'marginalisation' as it seems clear from the !vote section above that it is unworkable.
I've read what you have written; repeating yourself is dull. Calling this "my proposal" and framing this as "my concern" is yet more bullshit. If you do want to understand my thoughts on this, please do read my comments at the preceding discussion at WT:N, from the first one onwards.Jytdog (talk) 12:14, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
You show no awareness of having read the section Wikipedia_talk:Notability#so_what_could_we_do? nor having thought about it. I stepped in there because the discussion was going no where, and I stated my skepticism very clearly, and asked authentic questions and listened to the answers. My mind was changed by listening to SusunW especially; the proposal arose from listening and trying to capture the concerns of the people whose work is being thwarted (work that does not violate any policies). The people doing the WiR work and similar work (which in my view is highly valued in the community) have identified a problem and are asking for community support. I am not sure this proposal is correct but in my view we should work toward something that will be specifically helpful to address the problem they identified at AfDs. This is a first effort and like many such efforts it will take a while to arrive at something. Jytdog (talk) 13:42, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Jytdog, how would you prefer someone refer to the above proposal? Since you made it, "your proposal" seems like a very normal english way of referring to it. Same with "your concern", how would you prefer it have it referred to? "The concerns that the above proposal attempts to address" is kind of awkward and long. I don't think the usage of those words/phrases was meant in anyway to dismiss the real problems that the proposal attempts to address. Can we all please assume good faith and be civil with each other? zchrykng (talk) 14:00, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Zchrykng I have been around the block a lot of times. Framing something as being about "your proposal" and "your concerns" is a very typical (and very human) way to personalize things and dismiss them. it is a very common form of bullshit. Its just "the RfC proposal" (I don't particularly own it; i just happened to be the one who posed it after listening to what people wanted) And the "concerns" are the frustrations expressed by the people whose work is being thwarted: i would hope that we are all concerned about that, at least. As to what we as a community choose to do about it - that is a very open question. The RfC proposal is just one (there are other possible amendments to BIO; another would be to show up at AfDs and just slowly work to change the way N is applied on these topics, afd by afd; there are others) Or maybe nothing. Jytdog (talk) 14:43, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Jytdog, I think the main issue is with people being to strict with certain rules (i.e. significant coverage) in certain contexts (long dead people, marginalised people). The fact is that If we have significant enough coverage in reliable sources overall that can be used to write a strong non-stub article, then we probably should be able to.
I agree that there is a proposed change somewhere here, and I think it lies somewhere in saying that for assessing notability that "context matters" when assessing sources for notability (this is a phrase that Susan brought up in the discussion over at WT:N as well). Additionally, it lies in stating that if we can write an extensive article that is well sourced to multiple reliable sources, without engaging in WP:SYNTH, then we should, regardless of the arbitrary length of individual sources (e.g. when each reliable source discusses different aspects of the person's life, but not with much length of coverage in each source). This might be rare, but it does happen.
Note that under this rule, if you have multiple reliable sources that all say the same thing about the subject, then we can't write an article, regardless of context (e.g. coverage that is substantially the same between sources can't add to the significance of the overall coverage, regardless of how many sources it is found in).
However, anything that attempts to allow this only for 'marginalised' people is a nonstarter. I believe that trying to define who is marginalised and who is not (especially if this gives some benefit at AfD) would be detrimental to the AfD process and in many cases wouldn't be able to get a clear consensus anyway due to the vagueness of the term. Refer to my original Oppose above: "Are all women marginalised? only minorities? If so, does that count white people in South Africa? Does it count all people that grew up outside the West? What about class boundaries? Are all poor people marginalised? Are rich minorities marginalised?". These are unanswered, and fundamental unanswerable questions in many cases that will only serve to cause friction in discussions. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)08:29, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
You are repeating yourself yet again and again are mansplaining basic policies to me. So tedious.
I directly addressed the definition question above, and your failure to acknowledge that is IDHT bullshit.
There is nothing I can do about your paranoia about identity politics nor your "unanswerable questions" which are fox-news-worthy garbage along the lines of "Are there terrorists and rapists in the caravans?" and "What if Hilary knew about Benghazi?" That is the garbage rhetorical card you have been playing relentlessly here. I return to the stance of not responding to you further. Jytdog (talk) 17:28, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Insertcleverphrasehere, thank you for taking the time to reassess what is on the table. (I'm guessing y'all are talking about me—2 "u"s no "a"). I honestly do not care one iota if reassessing our sourcing and significant coverage requirements for dead people allows more notable historic white men to be covered too; if they are notable, they should be candidates for an article provided there are sources. Context is everything. We aren't righting wrongs, we are simply acknowledging that the sources we are working from reflect the past reality. Historically anyone who wasn't part of the power structure could be ignored and publications typically omitted their activities. I truly do not understand why recognizing historic bias creates any emotional reaction or drama. It happened. White South Africans were typically part of the dominant culture and though they were in the minority, they suppressed the majority. While wealth may be an equalizer in some instances, it doesn't mean ethnicity or race would historically have been ignored in published materials. The question is not "are", it is "were", as we are talking about history, dead people, those who lived in eras where there was little concept of human rights being equal for all people, there were the haves and the have nots. The point is, notable males from the dominant culture should have sufficient traditional sourcing, because someone probably wrote about them. For everyone else, the question does become can you "write an extensive article that is well sourced to multiple reliable sources, without engaging in SYNTH"? SusunW (talk) 09:46, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi SusunW, If we start to build some criteria, and updated guideline would state several things:
Context matters when determining notability,
Where a person died x years ago (before the internet age kicked off fully, I'd lean for before January 1 2000 as a good round number);
If person's coverage consists of difficult to access offline sources, foreign language sources that are difficult to search, their peers would not have been literate or members of the media, or they were from a non-literate society, etc. then they are more likely to be notable if we have multiple reliable sources, even if they don't each discuss the subject with extensive coverage.
For such people, so long as multiple reliable sources can be established, which together provide significant coverage of the person's life; sufficient to create a well sourced non-stub article (sourcing exists to potentially create a GA equivalent level article), then that person is notable and such topics should be kept regardless of how much coverage is in each source.
If sufficient coverage does not exist across sources to flesh out such an article, then the topic should be merged into another topic, if possible, or deleted unless it meets broader GNG or N criteria. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)10:38, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Insertcleverphrasehere I'd put in something about avoiding SYNTH, but acknowledging that combining sources without drawing conclusions is not original research or synth. I'm not sure about "their peers would not have been literate or members of the media". Lots of highly educated women, colonized individuals, members of certain racial groups were literate and members of the media, but they were barred from mainstream publications. How does one address the elephant in the room if one cannot acknowledge that it is there? "Their peers were not typically covered in traditional media nor historic academic publications", maybe? I'd also state something that if an individual's activities indicate that their sphere of influence was larger than local, even if that confirmation is contained in local sources, they are considered notable. Surely there must be a better way to say that, but the problem manifests when you have someone working in an endeavor at a state/province/district level (and at times even national/international), but not something that is comparable to other fields with more prestige, for example the head of a state/province/district agency/organization who widely effected policy as opposed to a politician. SusunW (talk) 14:54, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Insertcleverphrasehere I keep struggling with why you have problems with "marginalization" and who might be considered "marginalized". It is really quite academic—anyone who was historically, legally deprived of their civil, socio-economic, or political rights, leaves very little up for discussion or editor's opinions. It is a measurable standard. Does that help you with the concept? SusunW (talk) 21:15, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
SusunW The concept is very easy to understand, and many people are unambiguously marginalised and coverage about them suppressed (in these sorts of cases I will always argue to give sources the best side of the coin flip at AfD). The problem is that AfD often deals with fringe cases, and near the fringes of who is 'marginalised' and who is not it is difficult or even impossible to define the term. Enshrining a "sometimes impossible to define" term in policy comes with the very large downside of making our already ambiguous policy pages even more nebulous than they already are and I can see it leading to some very ugly disputes. I respectfully disagree with your comment that it "leaves very little up for discussion or editor's opinions". Editors will end up arguing vociferously over things like "what is a socio-economic right?" and how it applies to a given person. Its just a hornet's nest that is best avoided if possible. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)21:26, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Insertcleverphrasehere AfDs on women rarely deal with fringe cases, in my experience. They almost always revolve around sourcing difficulties and perception that the kinds of activities they were allowed to participate in were not notable. Socio-economic rights are those that allow people to earn a living and participate in society, like any other citizen. Laws that forbade education, deprived women of citizenship in their own right (requiring them to adopt their spouse's nationality and become stateless if a marriage dissolved), or forced them upon marriage to terminate employment are examples. Legal deprivation is an objective definition and quantifiable. Opinions certainly may surface as to whether there were such laws, but if it is verifiable, opinion is irrelevant. I think it is not a good policy to decide whether or not one will write about a notable person based upon whether it will survive discussions at AfD. No matter how policy is written, if people choose the path of aggression, they do—regardless of whether that thwarts our overall aim to build an encyclopedia. SusunW (talk) 22:00, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose I fail to see how the addressees either the issue (after all this could just as much be used to write articles about white men who would not pass under out current system, but who some hobbyist thinks is notable). Or many of the concerns (such it is down to academics and the media to create the notability, not us, then we can create the articles without having to create new polices (rather then writing articles but why we have not got articles about such and such)). If there is a problem write a book or magazine article get it published and then come here with notability established (its what many of these people are paid for, its why they are professional academics or reporters, and not me).Slatersteven (talk) 09:36, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
To be fair, this is intended to be more of an interpretation of existing policy, rather than a new addition per se. It's just the way I already think GNG should congeal with common sense. If we are applying for example, the same standard for SUSTAINED for someone born in 1794 as we are someone born in 1994, then I think we are applying an implicit historical bias. If we are applying a subjective assessment of "importance" such as my example above (e.g., being merely a head librarian for a city does not make one notable), then we are applying an implicit cultural bias, in this instance, that people should be defined first and foremost by their careers, and in a time when prestigious career advancement was systematically cut off from large swaths of people (and has honestly nothing to do with whether we have sources to work with in the first place).
Within the existing framework, we should already be applying an interpretation of GNG that asks primarily whether a policy-compliant article can be written rather than whether it should be written. The former deals primarily with the nature of the subject and the sources, while the latter deals primarily with our own preconceptions. The latter is a major avenue for bias, because it often applies what are historically white male markers of success: business prowess, political office, military achievements, and it predisposes us to give a pass to a subject with equal sourcing because they more neatly fit our preconceptions of "importance". Moreover, we're often applying these types of standards to historical periods when minorities couldn't own property (or were legally themselves considered property of another), couldn't vote or run for public office, and couldn't serve in the armed forces.
Would this fix our kerfuffle with Strickland? No, probably not. Would it regularly save articles on marginalized subjects from deletion? If applied consistently, yes. GMGtalk11:48, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
It is not the business of Wikipedians to attempt to correct for perceived bias in the historical record. This evinces more RIGHTGREATWRONGS thinking at the behest of a partisan agenda. Chris Troutman (talk)12:24, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Why not? We regularly do this type of thing with content and sources. We don't include conspiracy wackery from Breitbart and Infowars and say "well it's not our job to correct bias in the sources". Why would we not apply the same standard when interpreting GNG? GMGtalk13:04, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
No. If we have five sources and one of them is considered by the consensus to be biased, we can write using four good sources. If we have only one good source and maybe some unacceptable sources, you suggest we decide that it's good enough for the minority subject of your choosing. You're inventing notability. Worse, you have an end-state in mind (more articles about some people but not others) and you want to change the rules to achieve that goal. That's objectively wrong. Either the rules are applied or we have no rules. I prefer the status quo. Chris Troutman (talk)13:22, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
What I'm suggesting is precisely the opposite: that people are inventing rules related to subjective importance, when they have nothing to do with GNG. When someone says that being the head of a city library does not contribute to encyclopedic notability, they are not applying rules that I want to change; they are making up rules of their own.
Yes, fully agreed there is a problem, I'm just not sure that there is anything that can be done on Wikipedia's end to fix it. Only reason I commented was it seemed like you and Insertcleverphrasehere were talking past each other. They can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they agree that there is a problem, just that they don't think this proposal is a good solution.Maybe it is just my personality, but I see something like this and my brain immediately goes to all the ways it could be abused or used to game the system in some way. Since there seems to be significant opposition to the original proposal, it is probably more helpful to be working together on an alternative solution than arguing about how something is phrased, no matter how poorly. Anyway, that is my two cents worth. zchrykng (talk) 15:10, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
@GreenMeansGo: Being a head librarian would not result in the sort of source coverage we need to write a decent article. I agree in principle that WP:NATHLETE (for example) probably results in more biographies about men than women because there's little commercial interest in women's sports. WP:NOLY is much more fair (I think) because of the structure of the Olympics. I don't think Wikipedia should attempt a Title IX effort to correct for NATHLETE's perceived gender bias. NATHLETE probably allows for many biographies about people of color to be included, so check your privilege. If we don't have good sources, we can't write and it's not our fault if there's a lot of media around athletes. It was NSOLDIER (which you mentioned) that allowed me to write about Robin Fontes. Should we exclude her biography? If what you're arguing is that we abolish all SNGs, it would make Wikipedia less-inclusive. Further, GNG (which is a really low bar) is also subjective leading to many more disputes at both AfC and all XfD processes. Our more objective SNGs like NSOLDIER, NOLY, and WP:MUSICBIO are less fraught and open the door for various minorities. Chris Troutman (talk)16:12, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Being a head librarian is irrelevant, and has nothing whatsoever to do with whether sufficient sources exist with which to write an article. That's the point.
But anyway, I probably should have never perused this line of discussion to begin with, since starting with How dare you push such a partisan agenda as suggesting people consider context and nuance!? is probably a good indication this is going nowhere, and I've got other things I need to be doing. GMGtalk16:21, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose What exactly is a marginalized group? Are women a marginalized group, despite taking up 50% of the population. Bad idea, but with good intent. ~EDDY(talk/contribs)~ 17:16, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Support. This alternative proposal reflects how many of us already apply WP:GNG today. Context matters also applies to topics for which there are a surplus of sources, e.g. politicians. Context matters: running for office almost by-necessity results in dozens of potential sources, but, because of the context, we consider these less indicative of notability. Pburka (talk) 17:29, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose -- difficulty in availability of sources is not among obstacles for WP:V. "Multiple" means 2-3 and since in old times there was much less bullshit in printed matter, this number should be enough for WP:GNG. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:58, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Comment This discussion has gotten so long as to be a bit unwieldy. Could we perhaps get a summary of the arguments so far? Also, examples of articles that would be affected by this change would be useful. Benjamin (talk) 11:12, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose If you can't find multiple sources with somewhat substantive information about the subject, Wikipedia should not have an article on them. We should not be inviting degradation of the low standard at GNG and the even lower standards of some projects (see: absurd assumption of notability of athletes, allowing for almanac listings as sources despite lack of substantive coverage). Reywas92Talk08:35, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - as per my prior oppose to the original suggestion. These are just opening cans of worms and creating "difference" between potential subjects. Someone is either notable or they are not, regardless of a perceived and often arbirtrary status in society etc. It is not our role to be pro-active in matters of alleged discrimination etc. - Sitush (talk) 05:01, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
"notability" as used in WP is an artificial construct that has no actual meaning except the artificial one, "a topic which the consensus in an afd discussion decides to keep in WP as a separate article. " It is not a clear dividing line--because every word in the GNG can be of unclear significance and is often debated in particular cases. The supposed requirement for "multiply" applies most of the time, but it is recognized in practice both that a single very good source is sufficient (such as a book from a major published primarily about the subject), and that any number of borderline sources don't count no matter how many they are. Similarly for the other terms--I;ve discussed this repeatedly elsewhere. In summary, Notability is a guideline, and that means that exceptions are made as the community thinks appropriate. That isn't even IAR, but the ordinary use of guidelines, a practice we usually follow unless there's a reason otherwise. I would oppose any aformal modification of the rule--there is enough flexibility in the current one to deal with the needfor broader coverage. Interpretation is what actually matters. DGG ( talk ) 17:42, 6 December 2018 (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.
