User talk:CT55555/sandbox/Notability Search Tips

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Collaboration[edit]

I'm tagging a few people here who I respect in the hope that you might help me by adding ideas, or critiquing what I'm working on. I've tagged each of you because it seems you have a mutual interest to my current theme of trying to save good articles at AfD, or create good articles about women and other groups under represented on wikipedia. My goal here is to help advise others on ways to establish notability. All advice, critique, edits to the page are welcome.

Tagging: User:Netherzone User:Star_Mississippi User:Ipigott User:Beccaynr User:7&6=thirteen

There's a few more people I might tag later if this round of check-ins goes well (i.e. if you don't all tell me this is a bad idea). Thanks in advance, and please look on the project page. CT55555 (talk) 03:14, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I prefer DuckDuckGo, although I also check GNews, etc. Beccaynr (talk) 03:38, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Is that a personal privacy thing, or you get better results? Should the essay suggest both? Or DuckDuckGo (I never use DDG , so don't know) CT55555 (talk) 03:39, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    DDG is my main search engine generally, and I find it provides better, or at least different, results than Google. I also use "[topic] news" (no quotes) as an initial search string. It may be beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the privacy features of DDG. Also, a neat trick I recently learned is the search string "[topic]" site:[website name, e.g. nytimes.com] (quotes included), and so far I have only tried it in Google. For Science Fiction topics, someone in a discussion had mentioned the Internet Speculative Fiction Database as a resource, and Literary Hub's Book Marks [1] can be a useful resource for book reviews. This project is also a good reminder about the WiR Biographical resources. Beccaynr (talk) 13:53, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Great tips. I'll add them in. Also, I'm happy for this to be a collaboration if you'd like to make any edits. CT55555 (talk) 14:03, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see you've made a good start on this. Given your active involvement in AfD, etc., you should certainly be able to make useful contributions to ways in which unnecessary deletions can be avoided. You might be able to include some of the suggestions presented in Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Essays/Primer for creating women's biographies and related essays. Perhaps some kind of collaboration with Wikipedia:Articles for creation would be useful, especially with a view to improving Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions. Please keep us posted on progress.--Ipigott (talk) 05:52, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]


Sorry this is so long.....My feeling is that both creation and deletion is a part of the "natural ecosystem" of building an encyclopedia. I'm a regular at AfD (my stats are roughly balanced between Keep and Delete). But in my early days I sometimes took deletion as some sort of personal loss, however I think about it very differently now, and understand that it is a very necessary component to maintain the integrity of the encyclopedia. This may sound harsh but deletion keeps promotional junk, self-serving autobios, memorials, undisclosed paid editing, blatent COI advocacy/advertising, and trivial use of WP as a "free website" necessarily in check. If someone or something is truly notable, it will eventually have an article (even if deleted now at TOOSOON.) Wikipedia is not a race to an arbitrary finish line, nor should everything/person have an article - it's not social media. I also deeply believe in the WP:HEY principle of article improvement. Here are some ways I go about searching:

My search methods for people:
1. Memorize or keep handy WP:N, WP:GNG, and the WP:SNG for various disciplines.

2. When searching for women, I always also do a search under their maiden names. This is especially important for women born before the 1960s or 70s. So, for example if Jane Smith is an architect whose maiden name was Jones, I'd first search for "Jane Smith" + "architect", then "Jane Jones Smith" + "architect", then "Jane Jones" + "architect", then (ahem) "Mrs. Henry Smith" + "architect". If her architectural firm was located in Chicago, I'd search all of the above but add + "Chicago". If she was married more than once I'd repeat that with other variations on her name. It's important to deeply read the search results to insure it's the correct person; double check birthdates, etc! Do the same with complicated family names or hyphenated last names, or names that originate in cultures, such as some of those in Asia, where the last name comes before the given first name.

3. When searching for artists or other specific professions, I've memorized the SNG and do a search for "Jane Smith" + "museum collections"; "Jane Smith" + "exhibitions", "Jane Smith + "awards" (or "grants" or "fellowships", "reviews" etc). I also do a search on JSTOR, and the WP Library, paying particular attention to dictionaries and encyclopedias of artists. Lastly, I do a Google image search for the artist's name which often finds images of artists' works in museum collections (one must discard auction records).

My search methods for places which I learned from Hog Farm:
1. The first step is to look on GNIS for the location. If the location existed after 1910 and isn't in GNIS, there's a good chance it's not notable.

2. Then, using the coordinates I pulled from GNIS, I search the coordinates in the USGS topographic maps database. The maps and GNIS aren't enough to show a place as notable, but they can identify a lot of the non-community features. I've been able to diagnose stubs as non-community features such as railroad sidings, individual ranches, and in a couple cases natural features such as ponds or canals misentered into GNIS as communities.

3. I have access to newspapers.com through WP:LIBRARY, so I use that as the third step. In places where there are old newspapers on the site (some going back into the 1800s), you can generally figure out what something is.

4. Step four is checking the google books preview of Gudde's California Place Names, which generally only lists significant features. Gudde also has a book about gold camps, which is useful to check for supposed mining features. (Note: if not California, check other historical place-name books).

5. The last step is to run a standard WP:BEFORE, with Google books generally being a better bet than Google search, as Google search is almost hopelessly polluted with clickbait and mirrors of both GNIS and Wikipedia.

I also do an image search and map search for places, which can lead to archives and newspaper articles.

Please do keep me posted on the progress of the essay. Netherzone (talk) 15:28, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this. Just for the record, I voted delete 31% of the time in my recent interactions at AfD. I therefore tend to argue to keep, but also found myself in line with community norms 90% of the time, so I consider myself within normal parameters in my quest to keep good content. I'm firmly in favour of deleting promotional stuff and your intro. You've added some great advice, I'll add it in. CT55555 (talk) 15:39, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen your work at AfD and agree that you are doing excellent work there. Your article creations are also impressive! Thank you for all you are doing for the encyclopedia! Netherzone (talk) 17:57, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I also wanted to mention the importance of analogue library resources; both public libraries and university libraries can yield sources not found online. If an editor does not have access to a library, they can submit a request here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request (shortcut is WP:RX) Netherzone (talk) 18:01, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
CT5, I've also found good sources by seeing if an article is included in a non-english Wikipedia by checking the "Languages" link on the left hand side. If any of those articles have good references to a verifiable reliable-source of SIGCOV like a newspaper or magazine or book, an editor fluent in that other language can be contacted to insure it's significant, in-depth, independent coverage. Netherzone (talk) 18:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Bing.com and Google books have sources that Google misses. Dogpile.com is another useful search engine, which picks up a lot of sources missed elsewhere. Look at the history of the article and the article's talk page. Sometimes sources have been deleted, and they can be useful in themselves, or may give you bread crumbs to other sources. Look at the linked pages in the wikipedia article to see if there is anything there that can be mined.7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:32, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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