User talk:DGG/Archive 0.4

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Barnstars, Awards, etc.

Reminders

Topical Archives:
Deletion & AfD,      Speedy & prod,        NPP & AfC,       COI & paid editors,      BLP,                              Bilateral relations
Notability,               Universities & academic people,       Schools,                       Academic journals,       Books & other publications
Sourcing,                Fiction,                                               In Popular Culture      Educational Program
Bias, intolerance, and prejudice

General Archives:
2006: Sept-Dec
2007: Jan-Feb , Mar-Apt , M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D 
2008: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2009: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2010: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2011: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2012: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2013: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2014: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2015: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2016: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2017: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2018: J, F, M , A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2019: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2020: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2021: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2022: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2023: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O

 

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2007

Wikipedia talk:Requests for verification

Response at Wikipedia talk:Requests for verification#How long before delete unreferenced article?. We both know that there is some unreferenced content in Wikipedia that is not appropriate. I am asking you to help me build a tool that will address that problem. There are a thousand what if's and a million more discussion, but lets start someplace. We can build a tool that is an appropriate compromise between M:Inclusionism and M:Exclusionism. Jeepday (talk) 14:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd be delighted to work with you, because first of all in individual cases good people generally agree on most subjects, and also because I think cooperation including people known for different views of things will be more readily accepted--as it should, because there will be less individualistic bias. Also agreed that inclusionism and inclusionism are not the right terms for most things and people (the only real inclusionists in a pejorative sense are those who want an article on every human, & the only exclusionists in that sense are those who would confine us to the limits of paper.

I'm not sure we could build an inclusive tool: there are too many problems why they might be inappropriate--and the basic problem isn't in my opinion unreferenced--the reason unreferenced picks up so many problems, is that unreferenced articles are often defective in other ways.

There are also areas where there is no agreement on inclusions, and if there is to be a general effort it probably should stay clear of these, which should be discussed separately until there is some real continuing consensus: crimes, plots, for example. If we go too fast on these we may end up doing the work over as consensus changes.

As policy, I am only willing to cooperate on a project aimed at deletion if there is a genuine commitment to improvement when possible, or if there is a high bar to limit consideration to the articles almost certainly unimprovable. For example, many business articles as they stand are not adequate, but could be improved in knowledgeable people used the right sources, and for this example there's a shortage. We can still work cooperatively, but in perhaps different ways.

Stevens Institute of Technology page

Hi DGG, I saw that my original note on your talk page was archived, so I'm adding this to make sure it doesn't get lost from your radar as there is clearly a lot of incoming requests on your page! This is the link to the latest correspondence, ready for your review. Talk:Stevens Institute of Technology#Updating_page_along_guidelines_for_college_and_university_articles

Thank you! QueenCity11 (talk) 14:36, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

haven't forgotten: I will get there tomorrow or this weekend. DGG ( talk ) 05:18, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Great, thank you! QueenCity11 (talk) 21:51, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

"I haven't forgotten. I'll get there soon. DGG ( talk ) 19:18, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the update - very much appreciated! QueenCity11 (talk) 20:00, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I still haven't forgotten. Some discussions this last week were rather long to deal with, & I'm a little behind. DGG ( talk ) 03:48, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

No problem - I appreciate that you have been keeping me posted. Yesterday I spent some time updating dead reference links since Stevens switched over to a new website. Thank you again. QueenCity11 (talk) 13:15, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi DGG -- Just wanted to check if you have a sense of when you may be able to review. I am getting pressed for an update and want to report back with the latest. Thank you again! QueenCity11 (talk) 16:22, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I shall try to get to it this evening. DGG ( talk ) 16:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi - Just wanted to check if you think you'll be able to review soon. I appreciate all the help and guidance you have provided thus far. If you would prefer that I look for help from another editor at this point, that is fine - please just let me know. Thank you! QueenCity11 (talk) 11:55, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

The only tools I know of are good objective human beings. Only humans can integrate disparate factors. But there can be technical helps. Personally, in my own opinion I think them secondary--my preferred approach to weeding--and as a librarian I have certainly done a lot of it, though to storage, not disposal--is repeated systematic passes through even the largest set, looking for particular criteria each time. WP has 2 million articles. I've worked with collections that size--though not doing it all myself. But I haven't done them all myself. There was a philosophy common to all, agreed to and applied over 40 years by over a hundred very individualistic professionals--get the obvious, leave the others for a subsequent round. This is the way to go fast. Our consistency was pretty good--the rate of restoration from storage to main collection has been well under 1%. But we had commitment to one common principle: the goal was to help the users, & anything the users had found useful in recent years was to be kept.

Since you started here, lets keep the general discussion here. I'll do a separate archive if appropriate. DGG (talk) 17:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

• Agreed, As you know I work towards inclusion and improvement. on questionable content I am more likely to suggest delete then you are, but I readily accept keeping with a less stringent verification requirement then you. Improvement is the primary goal. "high bar to limit consideration to the articles almost certainly unimprovable" I am not sure that you can dictate this in usage, I understand what you are saying, and I think I have addressed it by placing a very low threshold for removal (or nonplacement) of the template. Like anything there will be room to misuse it but, as proposed placing the template is only a suggestion for deletion. Even if absolutely no references are added to the article, before it can be deleted an adim has to come along and agree to remove the article by actually deleting it. Additionally it places articles in a category, that will be monitored (the same as Category:All articles proposed for deletion for much longer then a prods 5 days. I made some changes (earlier today) to Wikipedia:Requests for verification take a look and see what we need to address. Jeepday (talk) 18:13, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

the problem is that one person can place templates in one day that will take ten people a year to address. Thus the end result of such a process, however, well intended, will be destructive. I care for WP, and do not wish to sacrifice half of the potentially good articles.

You trust the accuracy of admins more than I do; I am one of them, and from doing the work, know how easy it is to make mistakes. DGG (talk) 19:23, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think putting source tags on uncontroversial statements it diverts energy from challenging and sourcing the controversial ones, and is not a constructive way of improving the encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 21:48, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there is potential for worthwhile articles to be deleted with {{RfV}}. Keep in mind there is no original work in Wikipedia so no knowledge will be lost, articles may be temporarily not on Wikipedia, but someone will add them back. I try to focus more on the future, think of the benefits in 3 to 5 years, every article will be verified. Thanks for joining the team at Wikipedia talk:Unreferenced articles Jeepday (talk) 13:00, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I am glad we agree on where we are going.But WP is also for today, and removing articles in the hope that someone will add back the notable ones is not in my opinion a reasonable approach.

Incidentally, I maintain some degree of sanity here by not getting over-involved in the fate of individual articles. I know I can't save them all, or, for that matter, delete them all. And certainly not get them all written right. DGG (talk) 16:44, 17

ACM Multimedia

Where is the assertion of importance in this article? What are the notability guidelines for conferences and meetings? Robert K S 06:27, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

1. Speedy for non notability can only be used for the classes of material given as WP:CSD. Technical scientific, business meetings etc are not included among them. There has been very strong resistance to expansion of those criteria. 2. Further, according to WP:CSD A7 even for those things included any good faith indication of notability at all is sufficient to prevent speedy. If you doubt the notability, you may test it at AfD. 3. But since this is a major international conference of the major professional association in a field where professional conferences are the main avenue of communication, it will probably be held notable. There are no special rules for articles on these, just WP:N., but all major series of conferences proposed for AFD in the last 9 months have been held notable. Individual conferences have usually been held non-notable. In practice, the guidelines are determined by the decisions at AfD. But that's just my advice, and you have the right to test them. DGG (talk) 06:34, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice. I'm not sure you answered my questions. All articles have to assert notability, no? I do not doubt that ACM Multimedia is a professional conference, but it must point to some source showing that it is in order for the article to stand. You seem to be saying that, to the best of your knowledge, there are as yet no notability guidelines for meetings and conferences, and that each such article must be tested on a case-by-case basis through AfD. Robert K S 07:00, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

"Assert" is a very weak word. the subjects of all articles have to do much more than that, they have to actually be notable. For some types of articles, many of them give so little indication or assertion of any possible notability at all that it is appropriate to remove them quickly on the grounds that notability would not possibly be able to be shown. That's for speedy--it deals nicely with the real junk. I, like most admins, take a share in deleting a dozen of so each day. Everything else goes for AFD or PROD.

Most types of articles have no specific guidelines, in fact, just WP:N. It's the default, and the others are just specializations--and are every one of them not fixed policy but flexible guidelines subject to interpretation. All questioned notability for whatever reason gets tested at AfD, and any good faith registered user such as yourself has the right to bring an article there to test it. I am advising you it will probably stand, on the basis of my experience with the last year's worth of such article brought there, but that is just advice. I am not the person who gets to decide. The question will be argued, and the consensus of the people discussing it there will be followed. I will advise you that the article can in my opinion certainly be sourced, and you might want to try to look for some yourself--it takes less time than the afd nomination process. The rule is that articles are not deleted for being unsourced, only for being unsourcable. An appropriate intermediary step is to place a PROD tag on it, saying something like no sources given for notability -- see WP:PROD for the procedure -- and notify the person who wrote the article to give them a chance to source it. AfD s a blunt and cumbersome tool to get articles sourced and improved. DGG (talk) 07:59, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

You seem not to be getting my point.

It's not enough, in my understanding of Wikipedia, for a subject to actually be notable in order for its article to stand. The article must express this notability somehow. In other words, the article must indicate its own raison d'être. This can be done qualitatively or quantitatively; it can be as simple as a reference to an outside source. For the ACM Multimedia article, it can be something like "The conference was attended by 52,000 people in 2007": such would oppose it to articles that could only claim "I attended this event by myself, alone, in my basement last night". In your edit summary of your removal of my speedy tag, you said that the article asserts its notability. I do not see such an assertion. As it stands, I see an unsourced repository of external links. Robert K S 08:45, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

1. to say something is in some real way related to a major national organization is in any case an assertion or claim to notability. Anything at all that might make someone--not necessarily yourself--think something notable is an assertion of notability. Such a bare association about someone real, that he was for example president of such an association or chairman of such a conference, would be enough to prevent speedy A7, whether or not it was actually notable. There are two levels of notability, the minimal level to prevent A7--which does not require any sort of reference, by the way--and the higher level to stay in WP, which is actual notability per WP:N, and does require it to be referenceable. The place this policy is tested is at deletion review. Any very slight claim is cause for undeletion, if someone does delete it via speedy.
2. but it does not matter for this article, because a conference does not fit under speedy A7 as one of the limited number of classes, real people, groups of real people, bands, clubs, companies, and web content. Nothing else. Not conferences, meetings, conventions, schools, churches, pieces of music, buildings, computer programs, commercial products books, videos, religions, events, theories, essays--as examples of things people sometimes try to use A7 for, but they cannot be done that way. If one wants to challenge anything of these for notabiity, it has to be at WP:AFD or WP:PROD. Even if there were to be an article about a local conference of a city subsection of such a organization--which would almost certainly not be notable-- it would have to go via AfD or Prod.

The reason underlying this is that all of this are generally disputable or need more than 2 people to be reasonably sure. The place this policy is tested is also at deletion review. If some administrator does carelessly or deliberately delete such an article, if it is taken there, it is always undeleted. If an admin were to consistently insist of doing so, he would probably be de-adminned, as he would be for violating any other clear policy. --and there is in fact a proposal to make the procedure for doing so much easier. Even if i thought they were unimportant altogether, I still could not speedy it.

1. The place to urge an expansion of the types of things that fit under speedy or a change in the degree of notability is the talk page for WP:CSD or the WP:VP. there have been no expansions of the criteria the past year or longer. The trend there is, in fact, to restrict it further. You are anyone is welcome to try otherwise. I do not make the rules. DGG (talk) 12:50, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Regarding Sources

Hey David. I had a question about two of your edit summeries (here and here). In the second case (Azeroth), I did indeed look for references, and found only mirrors and references to World of Warcraft (which has its own Azeroth article). More importantly, I understand (and I am open to correction) that is the responsibility of persons adding facts to wikipedia to insure the verifiability of that information by providing sources. Thus, WP:V opens with:

The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. 
All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be 
attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation.[1] The source 
should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question.
If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.

The articles I prod'ed had been tagged as needing sources for almost a year; which, I would think, is ample opportunity for references to be provided. Again, I could be reading WP:V wrong, in which case I am open to discussion about it. I don't have a bone to pick with either of these articles, just trying to clear up the backlog of unreferenced, unsourced material. Pastordavid (talk) 19:19, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

It's Saturday, so let me answer at some length, for I do recognize the problem.

WP:V if interpreted strictly would condemn quite a number of WP articles, and most of the content in most WP articles. There was been a long discussion this Spring, for a suggested Wikipedia:Proposed deletion process for unsourced articles, following one a year earlier, Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles. The idea was to delete articles after X days of a unfilled request for sourcing. The original proposal was x=5, like Prod,or x=14.. As you will see from the talk, it was rejected soundly, on various grounds. the strongest negative argument, as I see it , was that amount of work in the time required was impossible. There were some discussions in various places about how, if the measure were passed, some sort of minimal sourcing could be done quickly--such as taking a standard textbook on a subject and adding it as a reference to every relevant article. The general feeling was that this level of sourcing was not much better than nothing, and it would be much more valuable to work, however slowly, on finding specifics. It was also realized that for any article, online sources would not be available, and perhaps 10% of Wikipedians have access to a really good conventional library--and fewer yet know how to use one.

It is somewhat easier now to source some classes of articles than it was even 6 months ago, due to the greater time scope of the free online NY Times, and the increasing coverage of Google Books Search. At present, my estimate of the time it would take me to do the full sourcing to proper standards of a long and difficult article, -- assuming I was working inside the Princeton library-- and with my years of experience about where information was likely to be found for things in general-- would be several days of full time work, comparable to writing a term paper on the topic. I could probably find some sort of basic sourcing at the rate of one or two an hour. Working online, with those resources remotely available to me, I can in fact usually find something in an hour, but it may not be very good; using free resources only, I could still do it in that time, but it may be just barely passable. I do this basic sourcing to rescue an article occasionally, about two a week. I have not yet had time to do a full article to what I consider the proper standards.

In practice, the requirement for sourcing is asked for only when it is desired to delete an article. But it is always desirable, and we should certainly work to that standard. The first steps will be teaching basic research techniques to undergraduates and high school students, increasing their willingness to consult physical libraries and librarians, improving the libraries they use--and increasing greatly the amount of material available free on the internet, as has been my emphasis in the last 10 years of my actual RW career promoting the open access movement.

But the requirement to source every fact in an article is really only necessarily for truly contentious material, of facts that have been challenged, and is usually interpreted as such. In addition, in some fields of science at WP, it is customary to do similar sourcing in detail, as one would for a professional review publication--personally, I consider such effort misguided and out of place in this sort of encyclopedia, which would do better to highlight the key references and a suitable number of general sources, as for an advanced undergraduate textbook. I think this one of the many examples where our rules do not match our practice. That we do not change the rules reflects first the inability to agree of any significant change, and second the (usually unspoken) desire to leave a wide range for wikilawyering.

As for these articles: "Charity care" I know is sourceable, and in fact I intend to source it. It is a very widely used term, and should give no difficulty. "Azeroth" has me as well as you a little concerned. I am wondering whether to treat it as a spelling variation, but I think it needs some professional attention from the few people here with the linguistic abilities. And I am not altogether sure it is worth that much effort. I am frankly working on the vague memory I've seen it used that way, outside of a game context.

You may then reasonably ask me --as I think you are--why I did not do so immediately. As I hinted above, its because there is too much to handle. I see my present role as a first responder performing triage, as I would rescue people from a natural disaster: pull them out of the rubble, patch them enough to let them survive a little longer, and leave an quick evaluation of what needs to me done for those who will later do the full job. I do it along with the other side of triage--putting the hopeless out of their misery, and not wasting time on those for whom there are unlikely to be the resources.

And that leads to what I now try to do also: recruit others to help in the rescue, and also in the real fixing to encyclopedic standards. I'm trying actively to recruit other librarians.

And in the meanwhile, I want to keep the ignorant bystanders from simply covering up and burying everything that looks like it might cause some difficulty. - - DGG (talk) 23:32, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I got your message

You wrote on my talk page,

Saying someone is a full professor at a major university may or may not be notable , but it is unquestionably enough of an assertion of notability to pass speedy. if you question whether there is enough notability, use prod or afd. (btw, at afd, 99% of full professors turn out to be notable).DGG (talk) 04:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I just want to point out that between the time I nominated the article on Svetlana Leontief Alpers and the time you declined the deletion, the article has been edited, and, in its current version, I would not have voted for deletion in an AfD discussion. Her achievements and status were not mentioned in the version I originally saw.

I was recently involved in an AfD discussion about an article on an academic which resulted in deletion, with me being a dissenter per WP:PROF. The article had COI issues, but those turned out to not have an effect on the final decision to delete. --Blanchardb-^{MeMyEarsMyMouth}-timed 10:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

apologies, since I apparently was not clear. There are two levels. One is the notability required by WP:N as explained by WP:PROF, to have an article in Wikipedia, which requires a substantial reputation recognized by third parties and normally shown by multiple heavily-cited articles in peer reviewed journals in science, or by a number of books published by established scholarly presses in the humanities. The other, applying to all articles, is an assertion or indication of some sort of notability, which is all that is required to pass speedy. Almost anything is acceptable here, even though it will clearly not pass WP:N. Saying someone has published a book, saying someone is a professor, saying someone has an award, any of these all by itself is an assertion of notability. It doesn't have to be proven--it just has to be something that a reasonable person would think might possibly qualify for an article. The idea is to exclude bios saying, for example, John is the coolest guy in my school, or those saying Peter Smith worked as an accountant for 20 years and then retired. We get dozens of each of these types a day, and of course we want to get rid of them as quickly as possible. But anything that might possibly be developed into an article is not speedy. If it asserts something that seems clearly inadequate, the best course is PROD; if the prod is challenged, which usually does not happen if a good explanation is written for the author, then AfD. If the article is undeveloped, then an tag for "expand", or "notability" or "unreferenced" together with an explanation to the author--possibly followed up in a month or two--is the best way.

Clearly, you very well understand the first part about actual notability. As for the second, if you have any doubts about what i am saying, by all means recheck WP:CSD or ask at its talk page. The article initially met only the minimal pass for speedy. Later, as you say, it showed actual notability. DGG (talk) 15:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

2008

Notability question

I've noticed a somewhat disconnect in the way we deal with Band notability v. other notability. For instnace, a non-notable album of a quasi-notable band like Slap in the Face is probably going to be saved with sales of say 1,000-10,000 copies. On the other hand a CFO of a Fortune 50 is probably going to be deleted (same for an adjunct prof whose taught 5,000 students). Seems like the levels are amiss somewhere. MBisanz 05:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Right. WP is full of inconsistencies. The more you explore, the more you will find, and attempts to revise policy pages create more every hour. The practical rule is "what we thing is notable is notable" Nothing contradictory about that one--except for the definition of 'we'. If you care to interpret it as you and i and a few like-minded friends, it'll go rather well, and we'll have the WP we deserve. The Encyclopedie put in what Diderot and d'Alembert wanted & thought they could get away with. They had a consistent principle.

But examples are deceptive. someone teaching English to 5000 people is actually not very important in the world, as all but a few students will forget him immediately. CFO's are important to themselves, and their companies, but how we tell which are important except for the size of the company and the size of the salary I can figure out myself. the ones who get newspaper articles are not necessary the one who are important. A band with 5000 records sold--how is it different from one with 50,000? their fans will think them important, and nobody else. a classical or experimental musician who distributes 500 free copies can be more important in every meaningful sense than either of them. But every single character in Tolstoy, every individual verse in the Bible, every single command in Unix, every compound of Argon --to take a few things things that have been challenged recently--every one of them is in any real sense more important than any of them.

Encyclopedic notability should be defined as importance. That is isn't, is just a fudge to avoid writing articles about what people here aren't interested in. What they prefer not to write about, they call non-notable. If we removed the concept of notability--pr, what is much the same thing, defined it as having 2 reliable sources, then they'd start qualifying what counts as reliable source to achieve the same result.

You may notice i do not touch band and pop musician articles up at CSD. As far as I am concerned, asserting one has recorded a record and distributed it is an assertion of notability. As that isn't the practice, & I don't know enough to argue the matter, I avoid participation. None of these people mean a thing to me, and I cannot reliably tell any intrinsic difference between the ones that are considered meaningful and the others. For that matter, almost no television episode means anything to me either, and everything I learn about them in WP convinces me how right I am about it--but I can tell a lynch mob when I see one & I've learned the advisability of resisting mobbing in general, regardless of their victim. I would never watch hard-core porn except under threat of lethal violence, and the same about wrestling. Let those who do, go their own way here, as long as they tolerate my Austen characters, my medieval bishops, and my 19th century German professors. Again, all examples that are challenged. DGG (talk) 06:31, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem of what to include and exclude is not resolved by presenting synonyms. "Encyclopedic" or its opposite are, of course, circular, generally meaning "I think this belongs on Wikipedia," or not. To the extent that standards are clear, it can mean "Meets inclusion criteria," or does not, but, then, it would be a better explanation of, say, an AfD vote to state the *specific* criterion involved. Without that, it's nothing more than a raw vote, "Keep" or "Delete" says it all. The fundamental problem is that "notable" is about people, not topics, and what is notable shifts from time to time. Today's useless trivia *could* be tomorrow's clue to a major mystery. "Important" adds nothing to this, in fact. DGG has it right that it is about the community, but this, then, makes it impossible to set clear standards so that editors, creating an article, can know what will be acceptable or not. I'm claiming that the problem will not go away, it will get worse, until we realize that the task of an encyclopedia is to categorize and qualify knowledge, to arrange it in an access hierarchy, not to include or exclude any *noticed* knowledge from "all human knowledge." If someone thinks that a thing should be in an encyclopedia, enough to write an article on it, at least a stub, it's notable to that person, and we have, in fact, proof (with AGF). But that does not mean that it should be anywhere other than, perhaps, at the bottom of a hierarchy of knowledge, for the hierarchy is properly based on *shared* knowledge and opinion as to notability. As I've been considering all this over the past few weeks, it's becoming increasingly clear to me. Remember, DGG, one of my major concerns is efficiency. The deletionist agenda is extraordinarily inefficient. Classification schemes could *build* structures that would be relatively invulnerable to vandalism and isolated POV manipulation. Deletionism simply shovels out the alleged garbage that keeps pouring in, which may look simple today, until one realizes that, as Wikipedia grows, so will the garbage, indeed, it may grow exponentially. And so will the millions who are offended when what they think is important is tossed by the community, or, worse, by whomever was active in that particular AfD, who perhaps thinks that what is important to the article authors and their community is not important, period. Given the existing system, DGG's forbearance in fields not known to him is quite correct. If we all did that, we'd have a better encyclopedia and better relations with users. --Abd (talk) 20:17, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Please patrol new pages a little, Abd, before you tell me that "If someone thinks that a thing should be in an encyclopedia, enough to write an article on it, at least a stub, it's notable to that person, and we have, in fact, proof (with AGF)." It will be like the 1:1 scale maps in Borges and Swift. What you are proposing is a federated social networking site. We don't need to do it here, there are sufficient other projects. Why is this different? It's because it's a selection on rational principles. The first screening principle is what is likely to provide information of some social or general value. The second is the sort of information that is descriptive, and objective, and verifiable. You are proposing we take the second without the first. Northing wrong with that. We could also select only the first--anything likely to be important, without caring if its true or objective. There are such sites also. Northing wrong with that, either, if they avoid libel. But there is also a purpose in a source of information that filters by both of them--if you want to join such a project, here it is. There are other projects Some of us work on one or more of them as well as Wikipedia, sometimes with more effort than here, and there is nothing wrong with that either. Someone may edit a little here, and also write poetic appreciations of their friends, elsewhere. In the other direction, there are sites aimed at a more narrow filtering,of the information appropriate for students, or scholars. Excellent projects also, and again some of us work on one or more of them as well as Wikipedia. Someone may edit a little here, and also write attributed more scholarly articles elsewhere, and perhaps also write fan fiction.

I oversimplify a little--what you are actually proposing is a universal networking site, with a layer of an encyclopedia added. But people will surely combine the two--the internet is ideal for doing that. The social networking part is already highly developed, and those who love them will develop them further. We are here to work on the other half, and let whoever will combine them. We do not do it here because in practice there is an intrinsic tension between uncontrolled material, and material with a basis of objectivity. I don't think we can compromise between them, or have a viable hybrid: objectivity requires selection. But that's a more subtle topic, and somehow not quite suitable for New Years Eve. Or the Day After. DGG (talk) 00:40, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

It's unfortunate that DGG seems to be missing that I'm not making a very specific proposal, I am primarily analyzing the existing situation and where trends and principles will take it, unless there is some kind of course correction. I'm *not* proposing a social networking site. And while a literal reading of what I wrote could lead to the conclusion that I was proposing a totally inclusionist position, (i.e., we could presume notability because of the work that the individual put into the article), I did, in fact, add a qualification to that: a presumption of good faith. And what we see in new pages is a lot of stuff that, right on the face, negates that presumption. If I write an article about what my cat had for breakfast, there are several possibilities. (1) I'm pulling your chain, (2) I'm crazy, (3) there is something about it that I think notable, and I'm probably crazy as well, but *maybe* not, but I certainly could not blame anyone if it gets deleted if some special reason it should be notable is not developed. What I'm really writing about is articles that properly require AfD to delete. There is also a problem with WP:PROD because of participation bias, in this case the quite common occurrence that nobody in a position to know the notability of an article notices the PROD tag before the article is deleted. The problem with this, though, is, in my view, only with the obscurity of what has happened to inexperienced editors, the article, to them, simply disappears, and how would they know what happened? With AfD, they can find the deletion discussion....

The system that I proposed, simply as one example of how dealing with the notability problem, not as necessarily the best solution, was that *two* editors considering an article notable, one of them being a trusted editor according to some developed standards, call this a notability administrator, no special tools needed, would be sufficient; notability admins would be expected to know guidelines and to *reasonably* follow them. (The reason to require a notability admin approval of an article is to avoid sock puppet (simple sock or meat puppet) validation of notability.

Now, this is what I think is the real consideration: There is no system resource reason to delete over, say, moving articles to a special non-notable space. The storage requirements are the same, and, in fact, the admin resources required are less, since everyone could access "deleted" articles, instead of only administrators. However, I'd assume that the *fear* is that, then, editors would use Wikipedia as the "social networking site" that DGG mentions. So, to prevent this, we *punish* it by deleting the articles. That'll teach them. However, problem is, this also catches articles created by sincere users who think the topic is notable, and there can even be hundreds of users who would agree, I've seen AfDs that, quite simply, neglected real communities who simply were not enjoying publication *in English*. My opinion, however, regardless of the difficulty, is that we need notability *procedures* that do not require making continual judgements, case by case, in a way that is practically guaranteed to alienate both individual users and communities of users. I also proposed a *different* solution, which is to port AfD'd articles to another site that welcomes *all* documents, such as wikia. The link to the document would then be placed in a list maintained on Wikipedia of deleted articles. But I don't think that is the most efficient solution. DGG, what I'm suggesting is that if Wikipedia does not directly address efficiency, it is going to fail as the scale increases. The existing solution will not scale much higher, and, I'd argue, it's already failing.

What I really propose is that we begin studying how to solve the problem without offending a community every time we make a move, and what I've done is to note a number of considerations that I consider important. Perhaps the most important of these is to note that the function of an encyclopedia is to categorize and present knowledge efficiently from the point of view of the reader; this requires that the most notable information be the most prominent, but it does not, in itself, require any deletion at all, only hierarchy. Ideally, an encyclopedia, if it is practical, should be *totally* inclusive, but my cat's dinner might require proceeding down through lots of layers designed to protect readers from detail that is almost certainly useless and, in fact, that detail does not have to be on Wikipedia, rather, it might involve additional processes, like feeding queries to an external search engine. If I'm reading an article that is at the terminal limit of Wikipedia notability, i.e., it actually has an article here, and I want further detail, it should be very easy to find it *from the article*. A current AfD is the Astronomy club at the University of the Philippines. One of the suggestions is that the information in the article be moved to a list of organizations on that campus. However, there is content on this particular club and its history that would probably be out of place on that list. Someone compiled that information (I think several editors, actually), and I did not find, yet, any other place on the web where it's all in one place (there are some dead links, as one problem). It may be reasonable to delete the article, but it strikes me as a bit rude. Some of what is described is almost certain to have seen local press reports in a very large community, just not in English. The existence of some solution less drastic than eradication from public view here seems better to me. What's wrong, I ask, with having information that would, indeed, be considered notable by hundreds of people, maybe even thousands, and verifiable in various ways, in a lower layer? It might not appear in top-level lists of articles, nor would many current articles if we had such a hierarchy in place. There already is significant categorization on Wikipedia through categories, but, I'm suggesting, the hierarchies need more development.

The problem with the notability criterion is that it is essentially arbitrary. Clearly there is lots of stuff that is easily categorized as not-notable. And there is, at the other end, lots of stuff that is clearly notable. It's the middle that's the killer. Requiring complex process taking constant administrator attention to make notability decisions is highly inefficient; that is the bottom-line problem with it. And that process tends to become heated, to foment dissension. It's inherent: what is notable to one group is not notable to another. I'd suggest that, instead, notability decisions must be made through a much more automatic process, and be much less oppositional and contentious in nature. The notability admin class of editors is one approach. Social networking sites use editor votes to create rankings. Whatever it is, though, it must work efficiently, not waste resources, minimize the effort that it takes to maintain and to improve the encyclopedia. I have seen AfD used to remove articles that anyone in the field -- election methods -- recognizes as notable, they were about familiar concepts, widely considered, among experts, important, and the major problem was that nobody noticed the AfDs, and there was an activist who seems to have realized this, who created a sock puppet to do it, and who successfully killed a whole series of articles on topics important in public debate over election methods, until someone finally watchlisted his contribs. It's a broken system, wide open to abuse, and, I'm sure, what happened in the field I'm familiar with, has happened elsewhere.

Using article deletion to maintain notability requires administrators with the tools to handle it. A "move" solution would not require admin tools, thus the work can be shifted to a wider community. Notability decisions (what belongs in mainspace) then become ordinary content decisions, handled through similar process: policies, guidelines, discussion, editor consensus (which confines the decision to an interested community), RFC, and what should be more rare, mediation and arbitration. I'm suggesting that the notability decision is a crucial part of the creation of an information hierarchy, that is, of the very project itself, and deletion -- which made no sense at the outset of this project since all editors could see all deleted material unless it was truly system-deleted, reserved for legally problematic material -- builds nothing, while categorization of knowledge builds the necessary access hierarchy. --Abd (talk) 05:10, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

At this point in the development of free resources we are not ready for an integrated system for the hierarchical organisation of knowledge. I think we have all we can handle in 2008 with this one particular project, a comprehensive free online user-contributed content open-edited encyclopedia. To have succeeded to this extent is truly revolutionary, and the revolutionary developments to come would be better as separate systems, possibly integrating Wikipedia. I'm not sure that this one will scale much further. I can see an add-on for material not really suitable to an encyclopedia--I think of it as Wikia--since the requirements are different, it does not need the protection of freedom from advertising. There's another way also: if you want a Wikipedia+, there is nothing preventing you from starting one. You can simply take a feed but not remove deleted articles except for copyright and libel. Its legit, as long as you do not call it Wikipedia. Then your experiment can proceed as well.

Like it or not, having a WP articles has become significant to people: we have not intended that it is a certification of importance in the world, but it is taken to be so; we are not an auxiliary to Google, but having a WP article with one's name or organisation in the title greatly inflates page rank; while our material is not guaranteed as reliable, news organisations use it as if it were. Though a second level of material need not intrinsically compromise on this, in practice it will. In terms of our own standards, it will also inevitably compromise NPOV and objectivity and FRINGE. We must not become Wikinfo or Knol. At the beginning we were writing to some extent only for our own editors--we are now writing for the public.

The way to cope with the increasing workload and attain a higher standard of reproducible objectivity is to have more bright-line clear-cut distinctions, rather than rely on the subjective interpretation of "notability", or judging inclusion only by the existence of a limited range of sources. DGG (talk) 14:26, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I def did not see my 80 word question turning into a 2800 word philosophical discussion. In any case, as a user who frequently patrols NewPages and PRODs many of them, there are many many people who follow behind me and have no issue pulling or prod2-ing something I've done. I think we do need to find a way to merge more of the many many small stubs, that on their own, provide almost no information. Also, I wonder if some of our best work, our FAs and GAs would ever qualify for publicantion in field literature, magazines, journals, etc. That would be a great way to raise the perception of our work and bring in more people who can contribute scholarly sources and prose. MBisanz ^talk 15:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

You just stumbled into an ongoing conversation. What I've realized out of all this is that stubs can be merged by anyone, articles can be *effectively* -- and harmlessly -- deleted by anyone, at least in many cases. What I've seen in a current AfD is a situation where the nominator could *more* easily have redirected the articles to a list that already existed. Simpler than AfD, doesn't waste the time of any other editor, and maybe its done at that point, unless someone objects. Notability effectively becomes an *editorial* issue, not an administrative one. If WP:Articles for deletion recommended merge/redirect more strongly before resorting to the highly inefficient process of AfD, then AfDs could be speedy closed without prejudice when editorial processes were not tried. If nobody objects, it's done. If someone objects, editorially, then notability standards can be discussed among those specifically interested (the "redirector" and the one who wants the article back), and only if they cannot reach agreement need more editors get involved. AfD, then, becomes a bit like an RFC on article "disappearance." I see this approach or something like it being essential for dealing with the increasing scale. If AfDs were precedent-setting, the work going into them might be worth it, but they are not. Every AfD is unique, and no precedent is actually set. That's *phenomenally* inefficient. Right now, my first concern is conserving admin labor, AfDs waste it. But in the long run, Wikipedia must become more efficient for all editors; it's a little like a Ponzi scheme (editors start, get enthusiastic, contribute way too much, burn out, being replaced by new generations of new editors; attrition among admins seems pretty high to me.). It works until one reaches market saturation. Maintaining articles is *way* too much work when there is controversy involved. Maintaining notability standards is going to get worse and worse, or, alternatively, the public is going to become increasingly averse to spending time creating articles that disappear and the work is lost. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 02:38, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course merges are preferable to deletion. and in many cases they would seem the ideal way to go -- but

First, since anyone may edit the merged material, frequently the substance of the article quickly disappears altogether. In a contested AfD, often the real question is whether the material itself is encyclopedic at all. When we merge an article of a school into a list of schools in a district, it may result either in a good short paragraph in an article, or a mere listing of the name of the school. Sometimes even the stated intent of those intending to merge is to lose the material. Sometimes, even, as a deliberate strategy, first material will be deleted from an article and moved to a separate article, then that article nominated for deletion. Such merges are really a form of delete, and we ought to find a way to distinguish. ("Redirect" is even worse, it always amounts to delete, not keep.) What we need to prevent this is a better policy on content, and one that is enforceable by a true community decision, not the vague article dispute resolution RfAs and mediations that are often either inconclusive or undone soon after. People are still insisting every item of content and every link has to meet WP:N. It has to be realized that many who want to delete material--and many who want to unreasonably keep material--will use whatever maneuvers are available. As processes go here, there's much worse than AfD.

Second, a redirect does not get crawled by Google. The effect of a name being an article title in Google is extremely significant in its page rank and thus visibility. The word in a merged article text or heading will still be indexed, of course, but it puts the WP page on the material much further down the list, not one of the top entries. We're not a subsidiary of Google, but what we do does have an effect in the world outside Wikipedia.

The more articles we can decide on outside AfD, the fewer AfDs, and we can concentrate on the truly disputable ones, and attract the necessary wide participation. Many of the articles that come there are really fairly obvious, and could be handled by compromise. People will always insist on appealing decisions there, but if we have clear rules it will make those decisions go very quickly. For the actually contestable half of articles at AfD, does anyone thing AfD decides right more than 80% of the time? If we had rough groups of acceptable/unacceptable, & we could get 90% accuracy, we'd be doing much better. Inconsistent decisions are a sign of an immature system. But remember that if we do have precedent, individual questions will become more important and we will see more items appealed to Deletion Review.i think that's as it should be, provided we can get the necessary really wide participation. And if we go by rules, we will need some agreement on what constitutes sufficient consensus for guidelines & policy, and on how to ensure that small groups don't try to set things they way they, but not the wider community, will like them. All I can do for today. DGG (talk) 03:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, DGG. Notability decisions are editorial decisions. We don't involve the community in editorial decisions unless editors are unable to come to agreement. That's *relatively* efficient. Having the community deliberate on the notability of each article is essentially insane, wider community involvement should be reserved for places where it's important to establish precedent (that is a worthy application of community time) and to resolve conflicts. Quite correctly, Wikipedia has a hierarchy of conflict resolution, starting with minimal community effort -- essentially, only the involved editors.- --Abd (talk) 03:24, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that's not quite the way it works, nor the way it should work either.. Article content is for editors, with dispute resolution by the community when they can't agree. Acceptability of articles for considerations of notability or otherwise is for the community. such questions are properly raised on the article talk page first in many cases, in the hope that the editors can improve the content enough to satisfy those who may question the article. Sometimes they choose to resolve it via a merge, often a good compromise. If they can agree on that, it's an editing decision. If not, it goes to the community, via Afd and deletion review. I can't see giving any group of editors a decisive voice in whether their content gets kept or not, no matter how many might agree. DGG (talk) 01:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Can I ask for some advice?

Thanks for leaving a comment on my question about reliable sources on WP:RS/Noticeboard last week.

I have been considering requesting DRV on those two articles.

The fellow whose comment you followed up on? That was the administrator who deleted the articles.

Do you have any advice on how I might do more research, get more opinions, on this interpretation of BLP?

If you don't mind, I have a question about the DRV too.

I haven't participated in many DRVs, just two or three. In the second DRV I initiated one thing really surprised me. I had steeled myself to refrain from arguing for the merits of the article, because I read the rules, and understood that the discussion was just supposed to be about whether the wikipedia's procedures had been followed.

However, although I think I recognized that half or more of the participants were administrators, most participants wanted to discuss the merits of the article, not whether the wikipedia's procedures had been followed properly.

Any advice on tactful ways to keep the discussion on the topic on whether the nominator and concluding admin were properly interpreting BLP?

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 06:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

in any appeals process one other questions will inevitably be whether the previous decision was rational, for it is a procedural violation not to come to a conclusion that can be rationally supported by policy. In US law, this is usually worded, whether any reasonable jury could have come to the conclusion. Thus the actual facts of the matter are inevitably involved. The correct way of handling it when it isnt considered reasonable, is to send it back for another discussion, but there is always the temptation to try to settle things here and now. there is furthermore little point in reversing a delete for something that will inevitably be immediately deleted--the only practical reason for a DelRev in such case is when it is necessary to send the message that the procedure was seriously improper. But I've argued both sides of this at various times.

Thus it is a good practice not to rely entirely upon procedural violation, but also to show that the solution you are asking for makes sense. I've been looking over past results in this series of articles, and it varies from time to time, though articles decided at the same time usually go the same way--and that';s the usual finding in anything similar This is not just consensus changing, but the erratic nature of a process by which in effect anyone who wants can place themselves on a jury for whatever cases they want to decide. and ditto for the Review, except that relatively fewer people have the patience. Most of them are people who have done it a lot, so it is not surprising that many are admins. To a certain extent, many of the ones who choose to be thee go because of a general position on articles or on procedure, and being here a long time does tend to harden such positions a little.

the question then is the articles. Which are they. Articles for deletion/Al Qaida facilitator was basically rejected on other grounds than notability, and could best be rewritten with adequate quotations without going to Del Rev. An ed. there suggested "List of Al Qaida facilitators". Articles for deletion/Saidullah Khalik is more of a problem, along with the other Uighor captives. I'd concentrate on defending the many articles that need it and accept the merge on this one for the time being. DGG (talk) 06:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

New Forms of Notoriety?

I'm interested in your opinion on this: User_talk:Operknockity#New_Forms_of_Notoriety?

Thanks - Operknockity (talk) 06:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Difference between guideline and policy

WP:N is a guideline, not a policy. If one wishes to make it a formal policy, that would need a global community consensus--which is not the least likely to be obtained. Trying to do it by fiat here is unacceptable. Further,more, even for policy--how is policy made, but by consensus? We discuss changes in policy on their talk pages continually, for every possible policy. WP:V is for example a very basic policy, and there would certainly not be support for eliminating it, but what is required for V is subject to community discussion, and frequently discussed. DGG (talk) 18:12, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

You said that in the arbcom case and I never realised WP:N is a guideline and not a policy, but now that you have mentioned it I'm a bit confused what is the difference? I mean I take it just because WP:N is only a guideline and not policy doesn't mean consensus can be used to "ignore" the guideline does it? I'm not trying to be confrontational but just like to get some of your insight that I find enlightening. ^^ --Sin Harvest (talk) 12:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

See WP:POLICY. Policy is "a standard that all users should follow." -- with at least six important escape valves:

1. The need to have interpretations of policy to deal with actual situations--interpretations which can distort it as much as though suitable
2. The widespread lack of knowledge of exactly what the policy says
3. The existence of contradictory policies, offering a free choice for which policy to consider more important in a given situation
4. The high likelihood of being able to act against policy and get away with it, especially in obscure corners or with sufficient backing
5. The tendency of WPedians, as with all groups, to collectively ignore policy that does not conform to what they in actuality want to do
6. The formal recognition of this by WP:IAR,

Guidelines are, on the other hand, are "more advisory in nature than policies", meaning one can follow them to the extent that the consensus wants to at a given time. This doesn't even need escape valves.
But it does need, and have, some ways of making it more effective than just advisory:

1. The widespread acceptance of some of them as if they were fixed policy
2. The social disapproval and rejection that follows the violation of some of the guidelines
3. The widespread lack of knowledge that the actual guideline is just advisory
4. The ability to insist that whatever happens to fit ones wishes in a given situation is actually required.

Then there's essays, merely "the views of an editor or a group of editors". Again, some of them are in practice followed as if they were policy or advocated as if they were, or--indeed--are in fact the effective restatements of what is the actual policy.

However there are the basic principles that we informally refer to as the WP:Five Pillars. Nobody actually gained formal approval for the wording there. They have no authority except that we say that we follow them, and we generally do. WP:N is in essence a combination of "WP is an encyclopedia," (which means what one wants it to mean), with the restrictions of WP:NOT and WP:V, which are policy, and widely ignored Every key word in the first paragraph of WP:N is of ambiguous meaning. that's not accidental: its a reflection of the fact that we would never be able to get consensus for anything more precise.

And every rule can be changed by consensus. Even the practice of obtaining consensus can be changed, and is not absolute. For a description that essentially matches what I consider reality, see [[1]].

The only rule that helps in a practical sense, is that what gets kept at WP:AFD is what stays in the encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 15:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bhaktivedanta Narayana

DGG, the notability of religious leaders is an ambigious issue, I acknowledge that. My question is, where is the line drawn between notable Swami's and Swami's that represent particular Hindu organizations with no outside notability? Much like evangelical Christian preachers, persian Ayatollahs, Chabad rabbis, and many Archbishops of various Christian denominations, Hindu Swami's seek out thier own publicity through websites and self funded publications. At some time or other, a line must be drawn concerning notability of people, Wikipedia:Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 06:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

To be specific, do yo have an idea of where this line is? Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 06:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

notability within the organisation is sufficient. Mater

ial from the organisation with wide distribution is sufficient for notabiity. The problem is how large the organisation must be before this is relevant. I don't know. The RC church is large enough. An individual congregation usually isn't. Perhaps the line is where one can make the distinction between material meant for general distribution and within only the group. If those publications were for the individual "temple in Mathura named 'Sri Kesavaji Gaudiya Matha' " then they would not be notable enough. The really difficult problem is that we are oriented towards the conventional Western rankings and certifications, and do not know how to deal with others, like here, where there is a clear concept of importance, but it has relatively weak externally visible criteria. within the ones that do have formal criteria, we can seek distinctions: for territorially organised christian churches, every bishop is notable; for those where "bishop" is a title of honor only, then they aren't. But I have no adequate landmarks with this and related groupings. DGG (talk) 07:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Would it be constuctive for Wikipedia to have a deletion sorting for religious leaders? When listing articles this central occupation was hard to place among the many others. Is there somthing that can be done about this? It could be a problem that resurfaces again and again. Any ideas on a process to adress this? Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 07:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes,but this should be organized by the wikiprojects for the specific religions, because they know what is worth defending, and can possibly say something more definite. (and it is not just people, it is also linked with the question of the notability of individual congregations.) Of course, the criteria they use will then be tested by the entire community at AfD, as with all other subjects. DGG (talk) 07:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Clarification, Please?

WP is not yet complete. absence from mention in a WP articles is not proof of non-notability. Adding articles like this is how we will correct the situation.DGG (talk) 23:30, 25 February 2008 (UTC) from this Afd. Can you explain what you're saying because I don't follow it at all. I'm not necessarily disagreeing but what I'm interpreting that as is, "We don't have one so we should" which might be true if what he'd done was verifiable. However I know 'just make an article' is not your normal mo, so I'm sure I'm misunderstanding. Respond here or my talk page, I'm not fussy. Thanks! TRAVELLINGCARI^{My story}_{Tell me yours} 00:21, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

you gavethe argument that because he was not mentioned in the articles on bridges, he was not notable. I was attempting to say that the articles on bridges were not complete by a long shot, as is true of most of our technical subjects, and neither were our articles on engineers, and so we needed to work on expanding our coverage on both of them. As he was pre-internet, what we need to do is examine the print sources to see what work he did, and see if it would make him notable. Given the information available, i think it would. DGG (talk) 00:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Whoops then I need to clarify my statement because what I was trying to say was that the engineers involved with bridges created around the time he worked (Golden Gate) and long before (Brooklyn Bridge), both of course pre-internet, are available on Google because they/their work are notable. He/his work don't appear to be.I'd agree about examining possible print sources, however until we can verify his work, which an obit does not for the reasons I stated, not to mention it being the only source, I don't think he passes WP:BIO. TRAVELLINGCARI^{My story}_{Tell me yours} 00:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

"Here's the way I think of it-- The world is not made up of only the most important monuments. Roebling was a famous engineer, and revolutionized the design and construction of bridges in theory and by example. The Brooklyn Bridge--and to a considerable extent his earlier bridges are major works, and all of these are the heart of even the most concise paper encyclopedia--and in their elements, part of basic education. But we write not just for school children. The man who designs any significant bridge is a notable engineer, and, now that we have the space and opportunity to write a comprehensive general encyclopedia, we will write about him also. Irt will take some work to collect the material--let us begin by not throwing out the little we have, but keeping it and building on it--when we have it together, it will be plain that he's notable.DGG (talk) 02:38, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't necessarily disagree with your approach, in fact I'd agree in most cases but I don't think it applies here. What we have is: Dr. Woldemar (Peter) Petri (July 1906 - March 17, 1995) was a professor at the University of Waterloo. It is believed that he was the oldest professor to teach at a Canadian university. He designed many structurally integral bridges and then wrote books about them. Even in the sole "source", the obit from the uni he's associated with doesn't assert any notability for him/his work. His work wasn't on the Brooklyn or other [[insert famous bridge here]], it could have been on a local overpass for all we know. Do you see what I'm saying? There's no evidence it was a significant bridge and since we can't verify he's actually done this, it appears to fail WP:V. Does that make sense? I honestly don't think we're 'losing' anything even if we found out he designed every bridge ever made. But we're entitled to disagree and we'll see where the article ends up. Thanks for clarifying your original comment. TRAVELLINGCARI^{My story}_{Tell me yours} 03:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Stephen Bamford

Hi Dave. I appreciate your response:

"People with articles in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, such as Stephen Bamford are invariably considered unquestionably notable at Wikipedia. Just so you know. DGG (talk)"

Sigh, though. Looking through hundreds of random articles recently, I was struck that there's a need to put in Wiki every highway and city (one of 88 people), every bus stop, every school, everyone who ever had a radio show, who ever appeared on an incorporated sports team, everyone who ever co-authored a song, every song -- and especially, anyone who appeared in a "Who's Who" -- where the purpose is in part -- as I understand it -- to sell thousands of copies to each person with an entry -- and hopefully their friends and family. I could do an estimate, but this would amount to 10,000,000s of entries with little substance. More than anything, doesn't such bulk get in the way of users looking for critical information? For me, it makes Wiki a browsing wasteland (Compared to the Britannica, where there's something fascinating in every few articles.)

I don't think Stephen Bamford, as presented in the Wiki article, is even remotely noteworthy, to be candid. Statements such as "He became an important part of the Methodist community in Nova Scotia, an area that he loved along with his native England." are a tipoff that this is a eulogy, rather than an entry on its own merits. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography includes everyone who was "an important member of a community, who loved where he lived"? Then it should not be considered a good enough reason to put articles in Wiki.

The fact that Bamford may have written the most important Methodist tract of the 19th century would be interesting, but the article doesn't indicate any such thing.

My real concern is that you and I have spent time on this article, and ones like it, which might have been invested in articles of wide reader interest, or where the writers would welcome help with open arms.

Yours Truly

71.198.177.64 (talk) 10:33, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

The current practice with selective national biographies, including certainly the US,UK, Canadian, & Australian, and generally the similar ones elsewhere, is that we include every person who has a full article in them without further debate. This is an extension of the practice that we include what other major encyclopedias do. This does not always apply to people with sections of an article: the presumption there is that we include them, but it is subject to discussion in any one specific case. People with mere mentions, of course, are not necessarily included, although many are, and if they are, the material there is of course highly reliable as a source. There's no doubt about the stability of our practice--I have never known an instance going to AfD where it was ruled otherwise & the few that were challenged, the AfD was generally closed as a snow keep as soon as the presence of the bio was demonstrated.

The question is whether it makes sense. It's a reasonable question. The practice does have the advantage that is avoids a lot of argument. It's based really on the practice with the UK DNB, which, especially in its previous edition, was very highly selective. Personally, I am in fact in agreement with you that there is some reason to not be all that sure about the Canadian NB. I have certainly seen instances where I would not necessarily have included an article from it except for the rule. They seem very inclusive indeed about many earlier figures. Now, is it worth trying to change the practice. At the moment, I think not. I don't think such articles harm WP. There is something to be said for consistency, and we can edit the articles to make the fact of the NB prominent, implying we use it as our standard. And they won't stand out as particularly stupid, for by any one person's criteria, there are many much stupider articles.

DGG (talk) 14:56, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

would you comment

on the criteria for notability of accademic books? If you have time could you comment here Slrubenstein | Talk 11:09, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I very much appreciate the thoughtful and well-informed comment you provided. Perhaps you saw above I suggest a slight change to the policy, but there has been considerable discussion since then and now your detailed comment. Would you make any specific proposals for improving the section of the policy on academic books? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:17, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

will revisit it soon and see where it stands. DGG (talk) 17:27, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Re: Your note to Iceflow & consistency.

I am merely going by the terms attached to Twinkle, which is what I use for placing my CSD tags. One of those tags being "Very short article which provides little or no context".

To me, 3 lines of text, a map and a box telling me its registered as a historic place, does not constitute sufficient context. Also not exactly notable, historic or not. A quote enclosed Google search pulls 3 hits, with the remaining 486 being duplicates. Thor Malmjursson (talk) 03:07, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I just have to say, I've changed my views over the last few months. It is clear to me that having even thousands of deletion or vandalism related edits does not guarantee a candidate's readiness to push those particular buttons.

I see a dichotomy in the deletion process. A bad one. I see articles deleted speedily that should not be. I see articles kept at AFD that should not be. I hate chaos. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 03:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Chaos and inconsistency is characteristic of immaturity and rapid growth, and a certain amount of it is to be expected during the explosive development of this medium. The wiki process, and user contributed open editing in general, is exceptionally susceptible to it, and there is a limited amount that can be done to ameliorate it. But what can be done should be done. Perhaps the first step is to eliminate automated tools for sensitive processes--I do a great deal of deletion myself, and I never use them.

For deletion in terms of notability, we need firm standards, not individual judgment. We need defined levels at which articles are and are not notable, in keeping with consistency and basic principles. Things recognized as notable by official agencies are notable in any reasonable sense of the word, and that the Register of HP and its equivalents in particular establish notability at Wikipedia is a very basic standard. We need to establish similar objective standards based on the nature of the subject at hand for all classes of articles. DGG (talk) 04:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Could not agree more, except I don't know what, "the Register of HP," is. I usually avoid automation for deletion, though it helps with the initial tagging and notifying-- after I've read the article and searched the internet for meaning, notability, context and sources. (But I can't always type a complete sentence without striking the wrong key, so twinkle helps reduce the typo's.)

I think WP:BIO has become more nebulous-- anyone with a couple of local news articles can claim notability. I feel like a person (or any subject for that matter) should have more for an encyclopedia article.

At any rate, Wikipedia is becoming the best source of information period, and is already the best source for a lot of things. That's the most important consideration. Cheers, and may all your edits be happy ones. Dlohcierekim 14:56, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

sorry, National Register of Historic Places

BIO has become very nebulous, especially because one can interpret "significant coverage" and NOT NEWS to produce any result whatsoever for many of the articles you have in mind. We need to make up our mind abut what depth of local figures we intend to cover. We need to make up our mind about whether to cover the central figures of human interest stories. And then stick to it, whatever the decision is. You and I would probably disagree on one or both of these in general, I at least would much rather accept almost any stable compromise rather than fight each of them from over-general principles. (By the way, I use a keyboard macro of my own for some of the standard phrases--my typing is also unreliable. ) DGG (talk) 16:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

We'd probably be closer together than you might think. Yes, the community as a whole does need to thrash out local notability-- something that a narrow constructionist can rely on but which would allow some flexibility. Any standard, even one I loathe, would be better than none. As you say, any result is possible the way things are. A dice roll would be less stressful and do as well. This is why I avoid AFD. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 14:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

as with any democratic type of process, it works better if the good people stay in. The way I avoid stress is my commenting once or twice, and then not looking back--either my arguments is accepted, or not,and then on to the next. I generally do not look back to see what the result is, or I would get too often angry, or at least disappointed. Not that it's a game for me, but that I can be effective only by keeping detached. DGG (talk) 16:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Places

Hi DGG.

I have to say I totally disagree with the proposition that all geographical places are inherently notable. But WP:Notability (geography) and the existence of the discussion at WP:NGL make it appear that large numbers of people who may be reasonable in other ways hold this view. So I am not going to make any further comments on Phulhan.

On a separate note, given your {{Prod2}} on Crowell Tower, I would be interested in your views on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Keele University Halls of Residence.

Thanks, Bongomatic (talk) 07:34, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I do not think all geographic places are notable. Rather all named distinct inhabited geographic places, present or past, are notable. Whether a geographic feature is notable depends on what it is. A river is notable. A creek that appears on a map but has no other significance is almost always not. If people should have written substantial material about it for some reason, it may well be.

A building is not necessarily notable. Almost no college dormitory is notable (except for something like historic or architectural importance). The residence halls in a college collectively can be notable, and is a useful way to handle very large articles, like any other major functional subdivision. Depends on the college and the amount of material.

I support fixed conventions for what is notable, when they can be specified. It eliminates a lot of discussion, and it does not harm the encyclopedia, if they are reasonable distinctions that can be understood and do not make it look indiscriminate. It must then be said that things otherwise not necessarily notable, may be, if they are of significant interest & there are sources to show that. As you know, this is except for some topics not the general Wikipedia approach. I think it ought to be, and we should look for ways to get various topics under a fixed criterion. Among the arguments for using fixed criteria are the imperfect nature of decision making. If we are going to have 20% variability in decisions, then if 80% of the time something would be notable by whatever standard one likes, then we might as well just call them all worth an article. It's a practical way to make an encyclopedia, devoting our efforts to making articles, not on arguments about whether to make them.

There still remains the requirement of V. But what meets V is different from the requirements of notability (for example, all college dormitories are V if you look hard enough. And so are all creeks on a reliable map. And every bus stop. And every person with a birth certificate and a drivers license.) We traditionally avoid these by requiring significant coverage, and define significant in such a way to keep out what we want to keep out.) We already have many exceptions in the other direction for things that meet V, are notable in any reasonable sense, but which we do not want to write about, such as transient news events of no significant permanent interest.

IAR

I point out that by IAR anything can be worth an article (or not worth one, for that matter), if it helps the encyclopedia. I am not sure I like this application of IAR. It's too vague and variable, and can make us look foolish, unless we limit it further. DGG (talk) 12:36, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I have now more specifically looked at the article--about as useless an article as there is in Wikipedia. But that the halls are individually not important--which is certainly true--is not the reason for deleting the article about the group. The content of a combination article does not have to be notable. I look forward to working on cleaning up the large amount of unsuitable content in that category as soon as I can spare time from defending articles on notable characters in notable fiction, and keeping at least redirects for the less notable. when people say I'm inclusionist I mean its usually a higher priority to keep content than delete it, not that all content here should be kept. DGG (talk) 22:19, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Jean Jules Verdenal

hi again DGG,

just for my (continuing) education :) why dont you consider the refs that are there to be sufficient? maybe i'm not being harsh enuf when npp? ;P

cheers Mission Fleg (talk) 08:44, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

as a preliminary comment, articles on people best known as friends or correspondents (or in some cases, lovers) of famous people have proven extremely difficult to sustain in Wikipedia. I am aware of the importance of such people in literary history, but most people here are not. It is usually necessary to find something specifically referring to them, and preferably something specifically mentioning their importance, from the secondary critical or biographical literature about the main figure. Otherwise, it can be reasonably asked, whether they should not be a paragraph in the bio of the principal, with a redirect link as cross reference. Material citing their own letters, or references to them by the principal artist such as dedications, are considered primary sources, and do not show notability here except by inference. Such inference -- in any subject field -- is called Notability by Inheritance here, and is rarely accepted. Fortunately, in this particular article, exactly what is wanted is supplied in the material cited in reference 1. (Reference 1 itself though, is not really a usable source by itself, being apparently an unpublished essay. If it has in fact been published, find the citation and cite that, along with the web link for convenient access.) Reading that essay, I see it provides links to exactly the right sort of material, in the citations from Miller, Ackroyd, Gordon, Seymour-Jones and other writers on Eliot. I see also they provide specific citations that can be used to support a discussion of whether the relationship was sexual--which tends to be considered here a matter of both interest and controversy. So put in this material, with direct citations. And, incidentally, it is asking for deletion to include a line " Verdenal and his life remain cloaked in obscurity,...". Wikipedia operates in an environment of hype and spam, and any such honesty tends to be read inappropriately. DGG (talk) 18:39, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

excellent, thanks for the explanation. cheers Mission Fleg (talk) 07:49, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

List of bow tie wearers

I have not checked all names, but it appears that neither contributing editors, nor editors who participated in the AfD 2 weeks ago, have received a courtesy notification. Is this proper? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 06:32, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Just notify the significant participants, keep and delete !voters both, in a neutral way, giving no hint of your own position. For the nom not to do it it is improper, incorrect, rude, outrageous--and widely practiced. It is not technically prohibited, though in my opinion in ought to be, & by being built into the system. Attempts to get it prohibited or even to get notification automatic have been rejected repeatedly at WP:AFD, out of fear presumably that it will decrease the bias toward deletion via repeated nominations. Time for another challenge to the old ways at WT:AFD if you like. DGG (talk) 07:11, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your guidence. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 09:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Watching your talk page is a wonderful way to find interesting AfDs to participate in. Are you ever the closing admin on AfDs? I'm curious how an admin weighs arguments in a discussion, since it appears that admins and other editors both frequently overlook policies and guidelines that are relevant to the process. Are the closing admins more familiar with deletion policies than most?--otherlleft (talk) 14:28, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I avoid closing afds; for the reason, see my rfa. [2]. I can't really close anything controversial that I care about; people should never closing borderline afds in a way that matches their opinion on disputed guidelines or types of articles no matter how clear they think the balance lies. I've thought sometimes about closing against my view, but if it's going to go against my view, I'd rather join the argument. DGG (talk) 16:17, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I had a feeling you didn't have much opportunity to close debates, being a devoted rescuer. I will have to watch to see who does tend to close to see how the decisions go; I'm just now developing an interest in the process since I reformed my previous deletionist stance. There are fewer reasons to delete than I once believed, although some stuff certainly falls into those criteria!--otherlleft (talk) 16:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

but it's not the case that everything I want to delete gets deleted. There are several whole classes of things where a keep consensus usually goes against me: local institutions such as fire and police stations, medium-importance self-help and new-Age authors, parades and celebrations and pageants, individual college social clubs, MDs and other therapists whose advertising handouts get printed as feature stories, and so on. Even in my main areas, any individual articles are sometimes kept with my dissent. I suppose I should do a count and see just how many, but when it happens i don't make a issue of it and keep nominating till people happen by chance to agree with me. DGG (talk) 18:33, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Like the decent rescue myself, as improving an article improves Wiki. If every article with which at least one person had a gripe were to be deleted, Wiki would be a very empty place. On a side note, I had gotten up to 63 WAX arguments/comparisons/speculation by the nom before I lost count. What's the record by an Admin in one AfD? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 03:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I had to walk away from that debate. I was getting heated about the frequency of times that bad faith was implied on the part of supporters by the nominator, all while not seeing his own actions as straining the credibility of his own good faith. If I ever grow up to be an admin I won't participate in these debates, because I think there need to be more admins that can toss out those sorts of arguments as they close the debates.--otherlleft (talk) 21:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Refining AfD outcomes

Hi. I read your comments at the AfD and DRV of List of Who Framed Roger Rabbit characters. In particular, I noticed your suggestion to alter AfD/DPR. I started a discussion WT:AFD#Merge outcome, based in part on my interpretation of your comments and concerns. Flatscan (talk) 23:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding at the discussion. Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

54]] (T C) 12:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

2009

The notability problem in a nutshell

Though it remains in the policy, there are now many exceptions to: If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it. - quoted from WP:V (There are a number of areas where this is true, but primary among the one that concerns us here is fiction.) There are several ambiguities: the first is the meaning of the plural of sources, for it is accepted and elswhere stated that ones sufficiently reliable third party source is sufficient. Second, there are many cases where it is clear that first party sources such as official documents from government sources are sufficient to show the notability of the agencies concerned. Third, we routinely accept the probability that there will be such sources. Fourth, the sources for writing an article are not in the least limited to third party sources, for the primary source of the work itself is accepted as sufficient and in fact usually the best source for content. Fifth, and crucial here, is the distinction between "topic" and "article"-- a key argument above is whether a spin offarticle on a character is to be judged as a separate article. The sixth is the lack of a requirement that the third party source be substantial. DGG (talk)

and we see how notability is used as an excuse to delete secrets that are merely hard to source like DCEETA. we have the spectacle of people saying that the NYTimes is not reliable, and it's just synthesis. thanks for the kind comments Dogue (talk) 20:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

there seems to be a recent trend to be as perverse in nominating as possible. See today's nominations for the chairman of AOL, and.a major dam. I think they may be intended as a POINTy demonstration that common sense is an unreliable criterion, or a proof by example that WPedians can be shown to be lacking in that mental quality. DGG (talk) 23:38, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

What else? Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 03:48, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Lordship Lane, Haringey

As it was yourself I had a huge argument with about the notability of roads two years ago, can I ask for your opinion of what should be done with Lordship Lane, Haringey? Despite the considerable amount of work that's obviously gone into it, it seems to me to be a patently unviable article. While I know from experience that it is possible to write a valid article on a relatively insignificant road, this really doesn't seem appropriate; the road in question is just a short named section of the longer A109 road, but merging this into the existing stub on the longer road would grossly unbalance it. There are only four notable (by WP standards) institutions on the road (Bruce Castle, Broadwater Farm, Noel Park and Wood Green Animal Shelter), on three of which I wrote the articles, so I'm probably too involved to make any significant pruning or AFD nomination without it being instantly challenged.

Do you have any thoughts on this one? It's a sensitive one; despite it's virtual invisibility, it's obviously someone's pet project about which they feel very protective, and when User:Mattisse tagged it for cleanup in the past they responded quite defensively, so it seems quite likely that any deletion or massive pruning would cause the author to leave in disgust. (I'd be fuming if someone deleted a 50kb article I'd been working on for two years!) Do you think it's better to turn a blind eye to this one, or can you think of any obvious way to rescue it which doesn't involve slash-and-burn removal? – iridescent 15:35, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

fascinating implications in a variety of directions. beautiful though the article is, it needs some basic improvements, like saying which district of Haringey, so I can find it on a modern map (finally did). I think it can be perhaps regarded as an article on a neighborhood, though I am still trying to figure out if it is a significant commercial street. If it is, that justifies it, though obviously not in such detail. That it's part of a major road also doesn't detract--most highways when they go through towns are renamed for that portion Possible combination article: Streets in Haringey? What I want to do right now is to fix up my own neighborhood's article, Boerum Hill, now that I seethe possibilities--it needs work--somewhere along the line, it was missed that most of it is a registered historic district. The availability of Google Street views has some interesting possibilities. For London, I understand there is also [3], though it does have this particular street yet.'

the fascination implications are that now we could do this level of detail anywhere in at least the US and the UK, and I suppose many other countries. Though the US does not have the VCH and the Ordnance Survey, it does have the Sanborn maps with their almost year to year revisions. There's no PD source for them all, though there is for NYC about about 5 year intervals. Then, the question is , why ought we not? Not what in the existing rules says we shouldn't for WP:LOCAL takes care of that, but what we should ideally do. The amount of available detail was not fully comprehended when Wp was founded, and each year i see new things that would make much more possible that anyone would have guess, visionaries though they thought they were. the main problem is that if we did coverage would be very irregular--but so it is anyway. Of course, there's Wikia. Is there a suitable project? If not, should we start one? DGG (talk) 05:59, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Regarding whether it's a notable street, if one uses WP:50k as a general guideline I'd say it's right on the borderline. It's certainly a relatively old street – it's the yellow one running east-west on this map from 1619 marked "Berry Lane", but doesn't seem to have had (or to have) much significance. It runs east-west between two of the major north-south arteries into London Green Lanes and Ermine Street, but doesn't have any particular commercial significance; the big commercial developments are on the north-south roads. I'd say the four places I mention above ([[Noel Park, Wood Green Animal Shelter, Broadwater Farm, Bruce Castle) are the only points of interest (there are also two court buildings which one could probably wring a stub out of, but neither is architecturally distinguished). Personally I think it warrants the level of detail I gave to the individual named sections of A1 road – a comparator I regularly use for "relatively non-notable part of a notable longer highway" articles – but as I said above, this would involve a massive slash-and-burn operation. (The even marginally notable buildings could be kept, but the "Numbers 467 to 483 - Sila Ocakbasi Restaurant, Lordship Lane Internet Cafe, Cross Chemist, Bushey Car Spares, Flower Creations (Florist), Zeming Chinese Takeaway, Posh Pets (Pet Supplies & Dog Grooming Studio), Sinan Kuafor (Ladies Hair Salon)" phone-book style listings would still have to go.

As you know, we have and always will have a problem, in that we're handling 2 million plus articles with rules drawn up for a project with a few thousand articles. My general thinking is still, two years on, the opinion that was forged in the flare-up of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Portland Road and eventually led to the merge-and-redirect into A215 road; that stand-alone articles on marginal-notability topics make the project unmaintainable, and work better as subsections of larger articles in which the assorted sections provide context for each other – and that, since very few people read these articles and those that do are likely to want a lot of detail, the normal arguments against very long articles don't apply. This "enhanced list" approach would, IMO, work as well for any marginal-notability field – discographies of unsuccessful bands, the obscure cricketers who will never expand beyond three line stubs etc – but any attempt to put it into place has (ahem) caused controversy in the past – see the talkpage of Railway stations in Cromer for all the arguments laid out in full. 10,000 active users makes for a lot of inertia.

At some point (probably not until I'm done with the current series on bridges) I might try doing a "massive merge" in one particular topic. Even if it gets reverted, it might at least prompt a debate on how we're going to handle the flood of data we're currently being bombarded with in a more nuanced way than "keep"/"delete". It's a shame WikiProject Integration and Association of Mergist Wikipedians have effectively died, as this kind of initiative is something that's really needed now more than ever. – iridescent 16:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Mowbray Howard, 6th Earl of Effingham?

Is every little peer notable enough for their own article, even if they don't do anything of note? Maybe my republicanism is showing, but I didn't think that was the case. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:15, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

"little" peers such as baronets are not. Major peerage , such as earls, usually have been considered to be. For right reasons or wrong, they have usually been important enough for there to be sources. English major peers until very recently have also always been members of the legislature. , which unquestionably counts. DGG (talk) 14:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I see your point. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:33, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

According to Hansard's database, he spoke in the the Lords three times: once in 1966, twice in 1967; I assume he must have attended more often than that. I reckon that puts him at least on a par of notability with the typical member of, say, the New Hampshire House of Representatives (all 400 of them). --Orange Mike | Talk 16:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, NH is interesting. The proportion to population is 1:3000. Assuming most members are re-elected once, then 1:300 adults there are notable. As you might expect, my conclusion is to use that ratio worldwide. Given 3 billion living adults, that's 10 million BLPs. If 100 billion is the total number of humans who have ever lived [4] then the number would be higher, but since nowhere near as many lived to be adults or lived as long once they became adults, I'll estimate we should have 100 million articles about people. Maybe half, if NH people are more interesting than the average. DGG ( talk )

Historical notability

". Fifth century people are notable per se just by having their names remembered fourteen centuries later. Even if their actual record is scanty, and you can sum up all that's knowable about them in a single paragraph, print encyclopedias brim with stubs of exactly this type. - " [5]. good comment by Smerdis of Tlön, for reuse as needed. DGG (talk) 04:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability of journalists

Hi DGG

I have a poser for you. The nominator of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Theodoulou correctly pointed out that the stub doesn't really assert "WP:N"-type notability, and is unreferenced. Despite a reasonable effort to find sources (including well beyond the Internet) about the subject, I failed to turn up anything usable. Anything based on the number of articles that he has written can be reasonably considered WP:OR. I don't have a strong argument (or, necessarily, a strong view) that this sort of stub article should be kept—do you have any views?

Regards, Bongomatic 06:51, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Journalists have been a consistent problem. They are almost never written about, unless they win major awards. And, of course, Google is no great help in sorting out the very few articles about them from the ones that represent their writings. I do not consider counting articles to be OR--we've done this for WP:PROF for year. And you can get citations also, in Google Scholar. DGG (talk) 14:12, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)

I've started a little infernal voting thing to get a clearer view of how people stand and if we've got consensus either way. Regards, Ironholds (talk) 04:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I assume you are talking about the UK House of Lords? I don't think you should have started yet--I think it needs a good deal wider participation first. I'm reluctant to do canvassing, but the proposal that member of the HoL were never inherently notable as members of a legislature , even before the reform in 1999, is in clear contradiction of historical fact, and an example of recentism run amok. Traditional topics remain notable. If I were to make a joke about that, I could see it as a clear attempt to get me diverted from defending fiction and bilateral relations, in order to tempt me to individually defend each of the thousands of these. WP, the encyclopedia that made not only present, but past aristocracy obsolete by its own fiat. DGG (talk) 04:29, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

We've advertised it wide and far - if people aren't interested in participating, that's there problem. The rule on legislative members was put there for a reason - notability is built on references, and the idea is that the actions requires for someone to become a member of a national legislative body are important enough that the attention of newspapers, journals, other RSs will be drawn to them. The achievement of getting born, however? Not so much. If these people have done something notable (actually attending would be a good start for many of them) then references will be available. I'm not engaging in recentism; take a look at my created articles and see if I think old things are less important than new things. My FA? About a dead man. My GAs? About several dead men, one of them for over two hundred years, and cases started and operated in by dead men. The rule on members of a legislature inherently passing WP:BIO was put there for a reason. Members of the House of Lords who never took their seats, never showed any interest in politics and in one case died so soon after getting the title that he couldn't have gone to the Lords without a bullet train clash with that reason. Please explain, if you will, how a figure who gained his role in the Lords through the death of his father and no notable achievements of his own and died before he could even physically have attended counts as a politician? He was a member of a house that he never attended, and through no achievement of his own. Ironholds (talk) 06:47, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Brian D. Beaudreault

Could you take a look at Brian D. Beaudreault. I de-PRODed the article because I was unsure if he ould be considered notable or not. He has some news mentions at GNews, but nothing super significant. I couldn't find any AfDs on U.S. military officers to serve as guidance, and thought you might have a better idea.

Thanks, ThaddeusB (talk) 04:58, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

the general practice seems to be that under the rank of major-general, and without very high level decorations, they are not kept unless there is some special reason for notability, such as being in charge of a really major newsworthy special operation, or of some personal distinctiveness. I do not see any of this-- he seems to not have any notability apart from his unit. Agreed, it's a notable unit. For some reason I do not understand, the articles on these MEUs do not contain a list of the successive commanders. By analogy to other organizations, I would have thought it reasonable to add them. Army units of the same size seem to have such lists, eg. 1st Cavalry Regiment (United States) DGG (talk) 05:33, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to weigh in for a moment, as the editor who prodded the article. In general, the notability requirements for biographies, and specifically military biographies, requires the individual to have some kind of recognition beyond his or her peers (for example, what makes this guy more notable than the 700 or so other Marine Colonels?). I figured it was pretty black and white: no signifcant awards, no significant events associated with him, no especially notable commands, no major contributions to any field. He could be just about any other officer.

I do agree that MEUs are probably the most notable of Marine units. However, I don't think a reference exists that lists the names of past commanders, at least not accessible to the general public. If one were to exist, I'd be happy to edit the articles and add them. Thanks, bahamut0013^words_deeds 05:37, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

that business, notable beyond his peers, does not seem to be to be logical--a 2nd lt. needs to be notable beyond other 2nd lts, and a lt. gen. beyond other lt. gen.? The 2 groups are not comparable. To revert to my own field, it's like saying we judge the notability of asst. professors by comparing them with other assistant professors, and the top 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/10 of them are notable--in reality it's many fewer than that. You've said two different things above; you've compared to the other colonels, and to just officers. If the group is all Marines officers, then certainly only a small percentage of them are Colonels. 5% ? I tend to look at this as selecting the top rank or ranks of the profession, but we surely don't mean full generals only, or just Distinguished Professors. Numerically, it takes 2 factors: , what is the overall group (e.g. officers or career officers), and what percentage do we want of them. Non-numerically, it takes figuring out at what level it corresponds to some meaning of distinguished. I don't like to go by the GNG, because then the factor is how efficient is the publicity apparatus in the field concerned, and what level publication counts as a discriminating reliable source. At least the US military takes care of one problem for us: the availability of reliable copyright-cleared material, text and especially photos. I wish other fields had something like their standard of free published biographic information. DGG (talk) 06:14, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you may have misunderstood; the rank comparison was just an example. The term "peers" could be as narrow or as wide as the circumstance requires, though we could alter it, to say, just include MEU commanders or widen it to officers of LtCol or higher. There are a great many officers in the United States military, and they are not all notable, even those in the upper ranks. Given that we can't reasonably have biographies on every single individual or even most individuals, we have to pick and choose whom to have articles on... thus the notability criteria. I think my point was rather that this individual has no more notability than any other average officer; and that if we were to judge him notable, we would be changing the standard of notability to include a huge number of other individuals as well. I understand that the "other articles exist" argument is considered weak by many, but at this time, I don't think it makes much sense to have seemingly random exceptions to the rule. I was in no way stating that rank makes notability, though coincidentally, the higher ranking individuals (such as generals) usually hold a post important enough to make them notable.

Perhaps I can rephrase what I said: ...requires the individual to have some kind of recognition beyond his or her peers, adjusted for the size and importance of that peerage. If you'd like, you can take a look at the demographics and make some statistical analysis (3.55% of officers are colonels, BTW). All for grades of general are lumped together, but I happen to know that the Corps only has four four-star generals currently, all of whom have established notability; on the flip side, there are nearly 40,000 Lance Corporals, and I'd be suprised if more than a dozen have biographies. What makes a private notable above his peers may not make him notable enough for Wikipedia.

I am in agreement with you regarding public sourcing. Like you say, publicity doesn't always equate to notability, and lack of publicity doesn't always equate lack of notability. There is one drawback to using military biographical information in Wikipedia, however, being that any given bio is likely to be a few years out of date, but with the proliferation of internet news services, you can usually find an archive of just about every minor press release on the most obscure military individual. bahamut0013^words_deeds 08:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

We were both giving examples to try to find a way of expressing what we meant. I too do not want to greatly increase the standard for individual bios in general--we have too much filling in to do for the people who qualify--just look at all the earlier Olympic athletes without articles. I am not an inclusionist in that sense, though some people mistakenly think I am. But do you think that we should not recognize the standards of a profession, to the extent that whomever they consider suitably qualified for the highest ranks is notable? (At least in those professions that do have ranks of some sort.) IIs it really coincidental that the people at the highest formal ranks have the most important positions in an hierarchical structure?. Even when someone is promoted for reasons unrelated to competence, aren't they still given a job to correspond to the rank?). It's then a matter of picking a rank above which they are appropriate for inclusion, and saying that below it requires something special. (e.g. for business executives we certainly ought to consider a CEO of a Fortune 500 company notable, but below that, it varies, and we can use other criteria--even including that of extensive publicity, on the basis that if there is enough publicity, a user might look here to get information.)

I'm not happy with the concept of notability being recognition outside one's specific area. (I don't think you mean peers in the sense of those of the same rank.) It depends on what one calls the specific area. Army officers known to people in the Navy? or to those who follow military affairs? or to the general public? If it's the latter, almost no one in the military or academic world or business world is notable--just politicians and actors. Where that concept does work is for local figures--a person has to be known outside their village--one place where I completely agree with the current formal standard. DGG (talk) 16:35, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the detail opinions DGG & Bahamut0013. I went ahead and nominated the article for deletion with no opinion expressed myself, see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Brian_D._Beaudreault. --ThaddeusB (talk) 17:41, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Asteroid stubs

I was told:

Please do not re-add speedy deletion tags to articles where they have been removed by a neutral editor as you did with 7528 Huskvarna. If you think the article should be deleted, nominate it at WP:AFD. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:33, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

where it will undoubtedly be kept, like the several thousand other such asteroids in Category:Asteroid stubs. DGG (talk) 19:12, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Before I start the AfD, could someone tell me why a robot was allowed to run amuck and create what appears to be several thousand totally useless articles? Are we letting robots write the encyclopedia now? Does anyone care about these? Does anyone other than robots read these articles? What possible benefit is it to the encyclopedia to clone data that was safely buried in an on-line database and fan it out into inefficient text? Why aren't these merged into the equally useless List of asteroids? What's next, stub aticles for every licence plate going past someone's window? A link to the last AfD nomination for these stubs would be very illuminating. Junk like this I think adversely impacts the credibility of the Wikipedia. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

If I may butt in.. the goal of the project is to provide a free summary of all notable human knowledge. Many things (esp. scientific topics) are notable even if very few people care about them. Not being popular/well-known isn't the same thing as not being notable. In can reasonably be argued that all astrological bodies fit into this automatically notable category. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

1. I was not saying that itwas my opinion that the asteroid stubs should be kept, I was rather telling you on the basis of experience and previous challenges to them that they undoubtedly will be--I would strongly advise you to read the arguments in other discussions both for individual ones and some of the lists. If anything, I think consensus is even stronger for this than in previous discussions. I would give you this advice regardless of my own views on the matter--I try to give the most accurate advice I can based on what I think is likely to happen here. If someone asks me what policy or practice here is , I tell them what it is, not what I want it to be. Anything else would be irresponsible. This is not a robot running amok, which has happened, but a well-considered, well-planned, and accepted project.
2. if you want to know my own views on the matter, I think that all named astronomical objects are important, and should be considered here as notable-- though I admit there may be a problem when it comes to galaxies and individual starts in all of them, especially if the number is in fact infinite. (Even so, there will never be an infinite number with names and identities.) This is an encyclopedia of both the real world and the world of human imagination. The objects of astronomy are basic to the real universe. And a considerable number of people care about them, and have cared about them since the dawn of history & probably before. Even now, astronomy is a major hobby in most countries. Probably 90% of the encyclopedia is of no actual interest to me. And so it will be for any one individual. Our success is as a group project. DGG (talk) 22:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

There's a discussion on this at WT:ASTRO (currently taking up most of the talk page) 76.66.203.200 (talk) 04:53, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Schools notability

Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Schools#Request_for_comments:_Notability_of_high_schools. TerriersFan (talk) 18:22, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Team conflict

User:Colonel Warden already deprodded it before you prodded it. So have a WP:TROUT. It'll probably die horribly at AfD, but it'll be a valiant fight. Fences&Windows 00:42, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Col. & I agree completely about two-thirds of the time and completely opposite the other third. What makes it odd is because I think we both take the same general approach. I generalize from that there's at least a 25 % percent variability between what we any of us individually would consider notable even if we all agreed completely on the guidelines, which makes arguing over individual articles a little pointless. Proposed rule for AfD: keep anything any two experienced Wikipedians will speak for if they promise to maintain it (two not one, to eliminate idiosyncrasy). A lot of decisions will be wrong, but that's true anyway. DGG ( talk ) 04:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned WP:GNG is the best guide, and I interpret it to mean that if you can find several independent, secondary reliable sources directly covering a topic and we can write a decent article based on them, we should have an article on that topic. I never bother looking at all these notability guidelines for people, music, books etc. Of course some topics are bloody stupid, like Michelle Obama's arms, so there are exceptions.

As for "team conflict", I don't think we have another article on the general topic of conflict at work, which would seem to be a notable topic, although we do have Work-life balance, Hostile work environment, Sexual harrassment, and Organisation climate. Seems to me that we need a general article on Work environment and another on Conflict at work. Fences&Windows 16:38, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

What follows is my own view, not current consensus: I do not accept GNG as a guide except when we have no other rational criterion for notability, or as a first rough screen. IUt works better for some types of articles than others; it very often works with people, or businesses. It almost always fails with abstract concepts I additionally think that its usefulness is ending, for with the great ongoing increase in coverage of GBooks and GNews -- which were not imagined in their present form when the rule was formulated, it is much too inclusive. Once we have all local newspapers there from a country--which will happen much earlier in the US than the UK, the rule will become much too inclusive. it will easily be possible to find references for almost anyone & anything. (They were in existence before, but they were too hard to find, and only a few dedicated people did the work, & in a very few instances). We are thus increasingly forced to find increasingly narrow definitions of what counts as significant coverage or reliable sources, and adopt special rules, such as ONEEVENT, which take many people and things out of the sphere of the GNG entirely. It is no accident that this have become needed where the Googles are strongest. Has nobody else noticed that ONEEVENT and GNG are in basic principle of how to decide contradictory? One goes by sources, the other by content. I make a prediction: we will not have WP:N in anything like its present form in another 3 years.

We can and should have a great many more general articles than we do. The main problem is that is much harder to write them adequately. We could have an article on the topics you mention, and on dozens of other related topics also.--even on team conflict, both in the meaning of conflict within a small workgroup or among teams. The question here for an existing article is whether it provides a useful basis for anything. This is especially true when it is a matter of repurposing an article intended to be indirectly promotional, as when someone uses an article on a book to write what should be an article on the subject of the book, but from a narrow perspective, or on a particular company's implementation of a business process for the process. When I see these, I'd very much like for us to take the opportunity to rewrite, but this takes what almost all actual Wikipedia people are most reluctant to do, which is actual research using a range of sources. DGG ( talk ) 18:00, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Concepts can be defined using the GNG too, e.g. One dollar salary is notable because multiple reliable sources cover it in detail. I still feel we need to always refer to what reliable sources say; the tendency for editors to try to define in absolute terms what is notable and what is not is problematic and often distracts from actually looking at the sources.

There's already a bias against local news coverage that I think is sometimes reasonable and sometimes unfair. To make it policy would be tricky. Local newspapers do often have stories about trivial local matters, but how we define local and trivial is problematic. An adaptation to GNG could say that topics must have received some national coverage and in more than one publication, but this would make things that happen in tiny countries more notable than things that happen in large US states!

Of course GNG and ONEEVENT clash; it's pretty clear that ONEEVENT is designed as an exception to avoid having lots of articles about people that focus simply on a single incident. I largely agree with ONEEVENT, but it does mean that we delete articles about people who receive large amounts of national or international news coverage. John Yettaw was kept at AfD, for instance, despite ONEEVENT.

"this takes what almost all actual Wikipedia people are most reluctant to do, which is actual research using a range of sources." Haha, too true! It's so much easier to slap a delete tag on. I've rewritten a few articles from scratch rather than see them deleted, and UncleG did an amazing turnaround with Hell, Arizona, turning a hoax stub into a useful article. Generally there's too few people stepping back and looking at where we need to build the encyclopedia - although some of the WikiProjects do a fine job - and too many treating Wikipedia like a game of who can delete the most articles. I'm not looking at the big picture much either as I'm mostly either WikiSlothing around or firefighting to save notable topics at prod or AfD. Fences&Windows 16:18, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

We disagree about the fundamental basis upon which articles should be included in this or any other encyclopedia. (to avoid misunderstanding, I agree that your view is much closer to the current consensus, as I said earlier) My general view is that one part of what people want in a reference book is consistency: they will accept it if we cover all AAA baseball players, or if we cover none of them, but not if we cover some and not others because of the erraticness of what sources we can find easily among the ones that are published. They'd accept any other rational standard also, such as AAA players who have been on an AAA team for a full season--I take an example of current interest that I don't care about in the slightest. With a reference book, one wants to know ahead of time if it is likely to be useful. I see you understand the problems of interpreting "local" -- there's another one, the NYT/Washington Post are local newspapers for NYC/Washington as well as being national, though the NYC no longer covers minor purely local events. My example of what can happen is that most local newspapers give the lineups and scores of HS football games, with occasional stories about the principal local players. The scores may not be significant coverage, but the features are. "National" is asking much too much anywhere--I once suggested regional coverage as a more appropriate standard, but with the ongoing consolidation of newspapers & rise of internet news sources our standards are becoming less useful altogether. I do not completely rule out publication-based standards--a valid standard for a book or film is whether it had gotten reviews; we could and probably do include all restaurants included in Michelin. ASs for one event, the current exception is "If the event is significant, and if the individual's role within it is substantial, a separate article for the person may be appropriate" I consider that a very broad exception, not taken account of sufficiently. Obviously any event worth an article would be significant, and therefore every person with a substantial role in a significant event should have an article. if their role can be verified. DGG ( talk ) 17:19, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Notability in regards to ghost towns

It is my understanding that any town that ever officially existed is notable by de facto consensus. Is that correct? (question from ThaddeusB)

• Yes, in practice that seems to be what now happens at AfD. It might not necessarily apply to a proposed site that was never inhabited. DGG ( talk ) 21:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
  • We did once have a ghost town deleted at AFD. I don't recall the name offhand. The issue, as I recall, was the existence of any sources at all documenting the subject in any way. Uncle G (talk) 23:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
    • FYI, The town in question - Queen City, Iowa - was sent to AfD shortly after I posted this question. It seems the interested parties didn't believe me when I told them about this de facto consensus instead insisting "no policy says all towns are notable." --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:07, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I saw this one earlier. I'll comment. Try to find a source for the archeology. DGG ( talk ) 01:17, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
      • That's probably a good thing. "If article X then article Y.", which is what such an argument from precedent amounts to, is never a good argument. A good argument would be that the subject is notable, because it satisfies the PNC. All that prior outcomes tell us is that this is highly likely, because of the nature of the subject, not that it is inevitable. Notability is not a blanket. In this particular case, I came across that article doing Proposed Deletion patrol, as DGG no doubt also did. I searched and couldn't find a source documenting any such thing, although I have no access to the one source that was cited. Uncle G (talk) 01:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

• • • • • The author of the page evidently used a historical marker as their source. I undeleted their pic of said marker, which they seem to have intended to release in public domain, but was deleted because they never actually tagged it as such. I added a link at the AfD. (For clarity, I am not certain the pic can stay but it should at least be useful for verifing the contest which can be sourced to the actual marker.) --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:38, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
          • Precedent is a good argument, because the hallmark of a reputable reference work is some degree of consistency. (At least that's one major factor when librarians judge it and how they advise students to judge-- it should say what it covers, and what it covers, it should cover completely.) A person should be able to come here and know what they are likely to find and what not. This is especially important in those areas where we do approach completeness. WP:V is important, but this now meets WP:V. The sources Thaddeus found are fully sufficient. A listing in USGIS is unquestionable V. I should have been able to find it, and I don't know how I missed it; and Thaddeus checked the article history, which i neglected to do--I was wondering where the data came from. This shows, , as does Ottava Rima's work on the article he talks about below, what can be done by basic checking and careful research. As for your essay, Uncle, I disagree with both the general approach and much of the detailed arguments. You set up the straw man that not all places are notable because the plot of grassland to the west of your house is not notable. Right as far as it goes, but nobody is asserting all places, we're asserting all inhabited settlements. All we need is to verify that it existed and was inhabited, which we have done--there have been a number of names on maps proposed as articles which proved not to be inhabited settlements but individual houses, and those do and should get deleted. DGG ( talk ) 01:51, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
            • Precedent is a good argument — No, see above. This is not a court or a parliament. It's an encyclopaedia, and the bounudaries of human knowledge don't follow AFD precedents. the hallmark of a reputable reference work is some degree of consistency — That doesn't mean making human knowledge uniform when it actually isn't. That's the hallmark of a poor reference work, not a good one.

              You set up the straw man that not all places are notable because the plot of grassland to the west of your house is not notable. — No. The argument isn't a straw man. It's the wording that was used for months if not years. It took several AFD discussions to see that the principle was wrong, and ill-conceived. It keeps coming back in other "All X are notable." forms, and time after time it falls down. It's long past time for us to learn from this that human knowledge is inconsistent, lumpy, and unfair, and that we are in the business of documenting it as it is, not as we want to be.

              nobody is asserting all places — Wrong, as already stated. we're asserting all inhabited settlements — and your assertion is wrong. As I mentioned, there has already been at least one ghost town for which no-one could find any documentation at all anywhere. I repeat: Human knowledge is inconsistent, lumpy, and unfair, and "All X are notable." is looking for blankets. We shouldn't be looking for blankets. We should be looking for where human knowledge is properly documented, in depth, in multiple independent published works by authors with good reputations for fact checking and accuracy. Uncle G (talk) 02:50, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

side issues: which ghost town that we couldn't document have you in mind? And where were the arguments that all meadows are notable ? If we used that straw man argument for months and years, we should be glad we outgrew it. DGG ( talk ) 03:24, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

as I said, we disagree very fundamentally & we will probably continue to. What goes in this (or any) encyclopedia depends on 3 factors: can we write an article, is it worth writing about, and is it the sort of thing that ought to be in an encyclopedia (rather, than , say, a collection of original poetry or a game guide). We're not a court (which in anglo-american countries is bound to follow precedent unless it decides not to), or a parliament (which in the same countries is bound to follow a written or unwritten set of fundamental laws, but other does not need to follow precedent unless it chooses & is even expected to do novel things as a primary function). Still, we need a stable method of decision, just as does any publication. The editors in chief of EB can do as they please, but they are still bound to do what their readers expect of EB. We're a community controlled organization, so we are bound to do as the members want, though we expect them to follow certain basic principles about what is compatible with membership, including agreement on at least the general nature of the encyclopedia we're producing. The very fact that we have a meta-rule saying we need not follow the rules if they do not help, implies we are bound to follow the rules in most cases. It also implies that we can have whatever rules we please. We could choose to follow precedent always unless there were a reason otherwise, or to ignore it always and decide everything from scratch. But we have found if we do that we repeat the same arguments over and over, just as Arbcom thinks it has to start every decision repeating the same basic rules. Arb com can do that because it makes only a few dozen decisions a year. But there are 40,000 afds a year. Thus we generally do as we have done before in similar cases, and it is only realistic to say so. There are tens of millions of settlements. There are millions of schools, ditto. There are several million animal and plant species. We cannot argue each one of them, at least if we do anything else--and I am beginning to get to that point personally because of the need to repeat all this many times even after its been settled. So we do some preliminary rough divisions: all animal and plant species are notable. all settled communities are. High schools and colleges are. Olympic athletes are (even if nothing except their record at a single Olympic is known). Songs that chart are. Elementary schools are not. and similarly for other classes also. We even have a rule to keep the obvious non-notables out of AfD, by disposing the ones with no possible claim of importance at speedy. For each possible class, we divide it up. As for the GNG, we make it fit our ideas of what ought to be included by manipulating the definitions of "substantial coverage" and "reliable sources".

I ask you, what will we do when we do have all local newspapers in Google, and there are substantial reliable information about every local fire station and high school athlete. (we will extend what we do now, and say that significance has to be beyond the local community--this is actually abandoning the GNG in favor of a categorical guideline) I don't dislike GNG because its too deletionist. i dislike it because it's haphazard. We only need enough information for V, if the subject is worth covering and otherwise appropriate.

Now, if the GNG is the only rule, I can live with it. I remember when I came here, it was pretty much accepted, and I got rather good at hair-splitting analysis of the nature of sources, I may even have saved the same proportion of worthy articles as i do now. But I wanted to stop pretending that the exact nature of a publication mattered to notability. I'll argue however I need to, using, as I am sure you do also, my own internal guideline for what is worth trying to argue for. DGG ( talk ) 03:21, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

evaluate shirechurch?

Bunzyfunzy (talk · contribs) is requesting unprotection of Shirelive. The new version of the article appears to be improved, though it at least resembles the old version. Can you take an objective look at it? I know you were involved in the DR. tedder (talk) 13:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

they are possibly notable, however, they do not have the references to prove it, and the article remains somewhat promotional. The information present shows 3rd party coverage, but of very borderline significance. The most significant verifiable story is a negative one, used as a ref in the article for the an item of data [6], but with the negative information not included in the actual article. Assuming it were added, there might be a case. But what really bothers me is that I cannot even verify the basic facts about membership. The Church's website is remarkably uninformative about even minimal specifics. (What is probably the key website, Some of the other articles linked to in List of the largest churches in Australia are in similar shape, almost equally unverifiable, and the membership data in that article are equally unverified for the most part. The basic website for them, http://megachurchwatch.org/ does not seem to be working, at least not today, though it does have many links in google. I would need to see this site to know what to do about the article in terms of our present rules--it may link to actual data..

Our present rules, though, for churches in general are extremely unsympathetic to articles about them. Other language Wikipedias seem to accept that they will be significant in their communities--we do not. It's our general problem on deciding about local coverage, where our rules rely on the more or less random presence of findable web sources. I sometimes think we need a peripheral Wikipedia layer for items meeting V, but N being based on general assumptions. DGG ( talk ) 17:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, DGG. The solid explanation you've given is very helpful, and it matches what tan said on the RFPP. tedder (talk) 20:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The last statement by DGG here is intriguing - a "semi-meta" level for verifiable articles that don't meet current notability standards. I don't think this particular article meets that (the V is too weak), and there would be inherent problems in keeping advert articles off, but interesting nonetheless. Only poked my head in here because Tedder commented on the RFUP thread that you had made a comment. Tan | 39 01:48, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the spam would be a problem , but there are two ways: first, V will require that all vague praise be sourced, so we can still deal with promotional language; we could have a rule on content--do we or do we not include schedules, phone no.s, how many named people etc.-- and some general rough standards for N that don't have to be argued article by article, simply say OK all asst professors, any college team membership, all local chapters of Notable organizations, all business streets, all bus stops, all and maybe some of the things we now do accept in Wikipedia-- I could see moving most high schools there, and subway stations; and topics we quarrel about such as baronets, & characters in games --It could raise, not lower, the standard of notability in the main Wikipedia!-It would at least be a good directory. There's not really anything out there that does it adequately, and people need that sort of information also. It could be a separate project, Wikidirectory--just as we moved out dicdefs, and quotations, and so on, except that the WMF really doesn't want any more splits, as there are already too many projects to keep track of. Could we do it within Wikipedia, perhaps as a namespace? DGG ( talk ) 03:48, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

"Wikidirectory" was my first thought, but upon further thought it seems a bit nightmarish to moderate. Would it command the interest level that is required for the legions of vandal fighters, admins, etc that this project has? Probably not. Combined that a split is discouraged by WMF, this probably isn't the best route. A namespace strata, on the other hand, seems to work in my mind. I'm not quite sure how one would set it up... Tan | 39 17:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

ask for a favor: Jews and Hollywood

Hello David. You know the only time I stop by here is to ask for a favor. I am currently scheduled to be out of the country for a week or two, with very limited internet access. In that I am presently involved with an article Jews and Hollywood in which you commented on at the AFD here. I’m asking if you could review the current discussions, at both locations, and monitor both pieces and employ your calming advice to both sides of the discussion. As always, appreciate your help and advice. Take care, and again, thanks in advance. ShoesssS ^Talk 19:40, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I will watch & comment, though you probably will not really agree with what I say. If you do want someone to represent your position, please ask someone else. The subsequent course of the discussion has made me a little less moderate. DGG ( talk ) 02:49, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I do not think we are that far apart in our opinions, it is more on how we approach the outcome. Do I believe that Wikipedia has a place for an article that addresses these concerns, yes. But believe balance from both sides need to be forwarded. Regarding asking your advice on this particular piece was not to get a strict representation of my point of view. But rather I have always found your advice balanced and fair. Even if we disagree from time to time. In my opinion no two editors ever should walk locked-step with one another. That is just the beginning of a cabal. In the mean time, I am off, will not think about Wikipedia for a couple of weeks. But will check on the job you did when I get back:-) And again, thanks for you insights. ShoesssS ^Talk 10:18, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that success in the job i do will in this instance not be achieving a compromise for the article, but in re-awakening a fundamental commitment among some Wikipedia editors to the principle of NPOV writing, and lack of political censorship. What happens to an individual article or two is minor in the scheme of things here, and in any case I am not sure about how good the initial approach to the article may have been, & I am not at all satisfied by my attempts to establish a dialog with the initial author of it. The claims at the AfDs that Jews did not take a leadership position in the development of the movie industry are either ignorant or hypocritical, as is the denial that some Black leaders as well as some professional bigots, took exception to their role. This is racialism disguised as resisting racialism. More critically for Wikipedia, a refusal to use the works of anti-semites, bigots, and other unpleasant people as sources for their positions is fundamentally opposed to NPOV writing--that applies to not expressing our POV about what we despise--not even about what every individual person here unanimously despises. To use an example I've used before, we do not need to say that Stalin was a tyrant; we just report his actions, and everyone capable of reading and thinking will understand. DGG ( talk ) 02:12, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

The point of resolving conflict is to restore good relations, and considerations of which party was more in the wrong can be irrelevant--either with response to the particular exchange or the fundamental issue. As predicted, this has escalated, though I have not yet commented myself at the Request for Arbitration. DGG ( talk ) 01:28, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello David, sorry to say, not the outcome I was hoping for, though not through the fault of your arguments. As an editor once said to me "the voters have spoken, and now the voters must be punished." ShoesssS ^Talk 22:06, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Incredible result, actually. Some further challenges to articles about Judaism, e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marriageable age in Judaism show similar lack of objectivity. I've commented there. I would simply rewrite from scratch, but not my field & too much else is happening. DGG ( talk ) 03:20, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Jews and Hollywood comment ===

Just wanted to say I agree with the comment you just posted. I'm baffled by this whole situation. I figured Wikipedia was the last place where I'd see over-sensitivity to such a subject. You've stated pretty much what I would have liked to say long ago, and would have, if I thought I could make it come out as well as you just did. Equazcion (talk) 23:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

In checking how frequent this is , I noticed that Jewish exceptionalism & Israeli exceptionalism are both red-links. DGG ( talk ) 02:46, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Outline infobox and header template for deletion

Thanks for your comments on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Outline of Louisiana history. In your first comment you write "... and Karnac's templates help considerably". Actually, Karanacs has nominated it for deletion as soon as he noticed it! Your input on Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 October 21#Template:Infobox outlines would be very welcome. Thanks, Cacycle (talk) 01:14, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Similar things happen frequently: Someone will see an article they dislike, try to fix it, decide it cannot be fixed , and nominate it for deletion. Sometimes they're making a serious try hoping to succeed, sometimes they're trying to demonstrate it's unfixable, and sometimes they're trying to take over the article to destroy it before trying to delete it. It is often in good faith. DGG ( talk ) 01:24, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes. In this case it looks like the 20 or so outlines were nominated as a test run and that the same nominator (Karanacs) also nominated the template that addresses several of the main concerns of the outline opponents on some spurious grounds. It would be great if you could have a look at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 October 21#Template:Infobox outlines. (BTW, Karanacs was not involved in the creation of any of these pages, only in their proposed deletion.) Thanks in advance, Cacycle (talk) 16:19, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems the dissatisfaction with one particular outline triggered an over-reaction (in the manner of, i don't think the tone of this article on xxx; let's remove all articles on that whole class of subjects, or I think article Y has a NPOV against a particular ethnic group; let's remove all articles that might possibly have a NPOV about this group.) Personally, I sometimes think we might do better if we concentrated our efforts on fewer systems of organization. As a librarian, I think systems of organization are necessary for browsing, not searching--excellent evidence from 100s of studies has shown that in all information systems, keyword searching does as well as anything more elaborate for finding specific known topics. (There's an exception--the typical term paper search: I need a biography of someone--anyone-- who _____.) How people browse is almost by definition idiosyncratic, or it wouldn't be called browsing. Our systems amount to partial solutions to the general problem of predicting what someone would like to read next: e.g.. Having read about one President, I may well be interested in the succeeding one, or events during the period of his administration. But I may also want to read about some other people who came from the same state, or went to the same college, or have the same ancestry, or died the same year, or are famous for the same type of thing (such as, the famous speeches of other presidents besides Lincoln). I consider this an example of the [[AI-complete| general artificial intelligence] problem, which we here are unlike to immediately solve. DGG ( talk ) 20:09, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Noleander reply

DGG: Thanks for offering your email address. I may take you up on it in the future, but at this moment, I am swamped with work, home-repair, and a math team I'm coaching. Wikipedia takes way too much time :-) I'm not sure how typing just 100 words can take 30 minutes (I guess its all the other stuff I have to read :-) Anyway: Thanks for participating in the ANI discussions, and I'll just let those play out. I dont have enough time to even participate in the ANI discussions properly. --Noleander (talk) 02:13, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I would feel enormously more confident defending the work you do if we were in direct communication. I'm not going to let those articles go in any case, & I intend to talk about the problem that people see in them here at the NYC meetup in November. DGG ( talk ) 03:27, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

(Cutting in) Why? Can't you determine for yourself David the difference between substance and a lack thereof without privatizing your relationships with other editors? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 23:03, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I am unimportant, so there is no need to defend my articles. What is important is the encyclopedia, and ensuring it provides accurate, uncensored information to users around the world - especially to those that need it most. That needs defending, and censorship needs to be confronted. --Noleander (talk) 03:45, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

As you will notice, I said said defending the work you do, not defending you. In terms of defending you, I'll defend people unfairly attacked not necessarily for their own sake, but to persuade the attackers not to do such things to others. In this case there is, as you say a principle involved, one I think a tremendously important principle, both in the RW and in Wikipedia: anything can be discussed if it is done properly & the more outrageous the subject the more the need to discuss it. Not everyone feels this way--a great many people in Europe seem to think that things may not be discussed if they are too upsetting to people's sensibilities (not libel, but sensitivities as one of a group). The model case is of course the laws against spreading Holocaust denial. Now, I think the people who espouse that theory are either doing it to be peculiar, or to be obnoxious, or stupid, or have a genuine prejudice against the Jews, or the desire to do them as much harm as possible. That does not affect whether they should be permitted to publish, and we to report on it. I recognize no exceptions. The making of genuine child pornography is a crime, because of the harm to the children in it, but I consider laws against simulated child pornography indefensible. We prevent speech that poses a direct harm to people, and nothing else. (I follow JS Mill in this line of argument--I suppose I would be best described as a left libertarian. Many of the people who share my politics do not agree with me, and would ban material supporting things or groups that they and I equally despise--the result of this is my inability to participate in the politics I would like to. Even if I were to accept them, they would not accept me. Wikipedia, like the American academic world, is a place of freedom from this, and I have consequently spent most of my career in one, and am finishing it in the other.

I am aware of using used some examples that might provoke strong reactions. I do not propose to discuss them here, unless they arise in practice with respect to Wikipedia articles.

otherwise I can only say that by concealing yourself you give rise to the view that you might fit into one of the 5 unsavory classes a few sentences up. Personally I don't care with respect to what you write, but there are people in some of those groups whom I will not defend; I am not naïve about possible motivations. As far as my talk p. is concerned, this topic is closed. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You may not be important, Noleander, but this has little to do with you. It doesn't even have that much to do with this particular article. It's people's reactions to them that have me worried, and this is (or could be) representative of a larger issue. One way of dealing with the encyclopedia is dealing with these issues when they occur. The next time I want to write something about anti-semitism or anti-christianity or anti-cancer-research or anti-anything-else-that's-considered-sympathetic, I would like to not be encumbered by concerns that if I don't do it just the right way, I'll be labeled "anti-[something]" myself.

I have to admit the POV fork argument has me rethinking my position on whether or not the article(s) should exist, as that's an actual policy argument.

Nevertheless, I've only seen that argument from one or two people, and only once 4 days of arguing has passed, when I invited it myself with my "little essay" that spelled out a thought process the intelligent people in this discussion probably would've had a long time ago, had this issue not involved religion. The overall response has been so very disheartening. Many people, in fact it seems like a majority of those involved, seem so on-the-lookout for religious persecution that they lose objectivity when matters of religion arise. Notions of proof and policy go out the door, to be replaced by "demanding proof ... is a blatant sign of bad faith", and "I suggest we all let our conscience do our talking" (actual quotes -- from admins).

Hopefully this is an addressable issue. Freedom of information should also be free of political encumbrances, in my opinion; but maybe that's just a pipe dream. Equazcion (talk) 05:20, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I didn't notice your "topic closed" prior to my posting this, DGG. If you want to remove my comments here you may. Equazcion (talk) 05:59, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

no problem--just an edit conflict. But I think the matter involved is ethnic persecution, not religious persecution. The Jews are are a people, what Wikipedia calls an ethnoreligious group. At present in Wikipedia the ethnic aspect of conflicts seems the greater problem. DGG ( talk ) 12:56, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

review bio please

DGG - would you review the bio at [7]. I think everything is referenced and the verbiage has really been cut to the bone. I would welcome your further edits, if you would be so kind.^Д-р_{СДжП,ДС} 16:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

the difference between a CV and a Wikipedia biographical article, is that the CV includes everything possible, and an encyclopedia article focuses of the part that actually constitutes the notability. There'sstill a way to go. DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there any possibility that you could actually just fix this for me? This is the crux of the reason people shouldn't do their own bios. I acknowledge that. I need help, and someone to move it to prime time when done.

Also, I need an admin for a user called Platinumphotographer so I can get a photo uploaded to a page with his bio. I can't load the photo, and the system won't let him do it until he's a confirmed user. Can you confirm him so he can upload? He's done the ten edits. ^Д-р_{СДжП,ДС} 18:14, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I will deal with the article; as for the photo, I cannot find the user account, either as one word, or as Platinum photographer. DGG ( talk ) 19:13, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Thats ok, another admin did find it, and we were abel to get the photo up. Remember at CU, I asked you if the Founders and Senior Officers of Notable International Agencies are per se notable and you affirmed that they were? Please look at the discussion at [[8]] (bios). They have really re-written my bio to take out most of what I ruly thought gave it notability, and then refused to move it a page. See my arguments re the FICS Medal, WP:ANYBIO, criterion 1, and also 2, these guys disagree. Can you help ?^Д-р_{СДжП,ДС} 23:14, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

sorry for the delay. What I can say definitely is that the chief executives of major international organizations are always held to be notable. There is no formal policy to this effect, but if the organization is important enough they are always held to be Whether this extends to every agency with an article in Wikipedia is disputable, because some will be barely notable. I think one criterion for "major" would be the principal organization in a substantial area. I do not think there is really consensus for it being a general rule in every case. In general I think it might be best if they were assumed to be, but I doubt everybody agrees--there are always some people who say no such notability can be assumed. As for "Senior officers", this does not hold, and I certainly hope I didn't say it did--there is considerable difficulty in getting articles for anyone who is not the head of the organization, for anything much less important than , say , UNESCO. (for anyone who does not know, CU=the Nov. NYC meetup, at Columbia University). I've now revised the article, and asked some questions on its talk p. If you want to do the last two steps I mentioned there and put it in mainspace, go ahead, but do not be surprised if it will need defense at AfD. The community decides, not me. DGG ( talk ) 01:22, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

And Happy New Year to you!!!

I left a message at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Edwin_E._Jacques. I hope you will reconsider. Even though I trust your experience as a librarian, I will dare mention that there are many people in Wikipedia (let's say soccer players who play in the 6th category of Ruanda), that are less worthy of being in wikipedia than Jacques.sulmues (talk) --Sulmues 22:47, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

it's futile to compare notability in one field with notability in another. There are probably several million people who unquestionably deserve to be in Wikipedia in terms of our clearest unambiguous standards, and who are lacking articles. In my field, every present & past holder of every named chair in a research university; in other fields, every member of any state or provincial legislature, or mayor of a medium size city--worldwide, and going back to the beginnings of records. Besides people, there is every Supreme Court case, every high school, every state park, every book that won a significant prize --all of them, for all countries, going back. Even just in the English speaking world, we have the potential for at least doubling our size; for the proper international coverage, perhaps five times that again.

In this particular case, my role as administrator is not to decide personally on notability, but to enforce the community policies and community decisions. The article was rightly or wrong deleted at AfD ; the new one is essentially the same and does not answer the objections. Whatever my personal views are, it may not be reinserted until it does. If the article were substantially better, with one or two additional really good references, then you could put it in, and I explained to you the way to do that without arousing immediate objections, by writing it in your user space first. Even if I though the deletion totally mistaken, I would still have to do the same and offer the same advice. DGG ( talk ) 23:32, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

GNG question

In an AfD, you made a comment about GNG possibly leading to over-coverage and I wanted to ask you about that. I agree that it is being used to shoehorn in otherwise non-notable people. In an AfD I'm involved in, the artist was the subject of an article in 2008 about how he hasn't made it big and was hoping to make it soon. In 2010, he still hasn't even released an album. But based on that one single article, GNG is being used by all the keep !votes. Based on their strict interpretation of GNG, if my local paper (which passes WP:RS writes a profile of a local karate teacher when he opens his new building, that should pass GNG. The coverage is "significant" and the source is reliable. To me, that's ridiculous and not what GNG was intended to accomplish. I don't even know how to begin to get something like GNG amended or clarified. Do you think it is even worth making the attempt? Niteshift36 (talk) 15:14, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

To me, the real problem is not the inclusion of borderline articles, which does not ultimately matter very much, but the use of Wikipedia for promotional purposes, inevitably exacerbated by Google, which destroys the reliability of our content. This needs attention not just to removing promotional articles, but promotional content. To some extent promotional and encyclopedic coverage and content overlap: the description of a product or a performer does both. to some extent, this can be overcome by more structured articles offering less chance for expansive writing.

My position is that the GNG is unreliable in both directions, and should be used only as a rough guide, and in those cases we cannot figure out anything more rational. We should, instead have inclusion criteria based on what is worth encyclopedic coverage. This is unlikely to be adopted, as in most fields we are not the least agreed on what is worth encyclopedic coverage. When we think we do, we have been more likely to express it by the vague provisions of WP:NOT, which is a very indirect approach and leads to endless discussions with incompatible results. This is probably preferred by many people here, as the inconsistency offers a chance for getting one's way by argument or influence, or even just by chance. In practice, the arguments usually turn on the exact interpretation of the nuances of the WP:RS criteria and the very variable consensus on how to interpret the over-generalities of NOT: given the contradictory guidelines, is possible to justify almost any result. (However, in my opinion It really does remain appropriate that something intrinsically not usually worth coverage can be worth coverage if enough ouside attention is paid to it.)

My solution for this is twofold:

First to make decisions not on the basis of whether something is worth an article, but on what extent the coverage of something should have, from the spectrum of a mention in a list, a sentence, a paragraph, a sub-article, a full article, a group of related articles. the about-to-be-approved modification of WP:AFD into Articles for Discussion with an explicit remit to cover merges as well as deletions will be a first step towards this. (The difficulty here is that the outside world unfortunately but understandably views "having an article in Wikipedia" as a measure of true importance, both personal and commercial, a view unavoidably brought about by the present Google search algorithms. Ultimately we must align ourselves with the way the real world wants to use us for; we are now too important to disregard our effect--our play is now being used for serious purposes, and we must act more responsibly.)

Second To have a WikipediaTwo, or Wikipedia Supplement, for local, more detailed, and less consequential things. Just possibly, Google may decide to give this an intermediate weight. In combination, I can see people or institutions having just a mention in Wikipedia having fuller coverage in WikipediaTwo. I have previously called this supplement Wikipedia Local, but it has more general applicability than that. This should be able to satisfy the inclusionists, in permitting coverage of a wide range of disputable subjects, and the deletionists, in keeping those disputable articles out of the main Wikipedia. DGG ( talk ) 16:00, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for that much more detailed and thought out answer than I expected. Very interesting take on it. I guess my frustration is seeing people who have done nothing and simply aren't notable can be included solely because a single writer in a single paper (regardless of which one) decided to write a piece about the person. In essence, that is WP:ILIKEIT once removed. That particular writer decided they had enough interest in the topic and decided to fill some column space with it. In the case that prompted me to ask this, it was an article about the guys inability to be successful. If we take this to the next step, my local paper, again a reliable source, has done pieces about local residents losing their homes to foreclosure. They're the main topic of the piece, so under the current interpretation of GNG, they must be notable. Do nothing. Accomplish nothing. Meet no standards set down by the criteria for that particular profession (ie WP:MUSICBIO), no problem. All you have to do is attract the attention of one reporter and you're in Wikipedia. Niteshift36 (talk) 16:11, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

• • You can always argue that a single "I liked him" article from a local journalist is not NPOV, and a single source is not enough per WP:GNG unless it allows NPOV coverage of the subject. A counterexample is perhaps OggConvert, where the (2nd) AfD voters decided that the sole but fairly critical review was NPOV enough for a separate article. Ahem to "given the contradictory guidelines, is possible to justify almost any result". Pcap ping 16:38, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Also: I find it pretty problematic to have biographies assembled from news coverage. E.g. Elonka Dunin and Hildegard Puwak are written mostly from news coverage, but the latter also passes an inherent notability guideline (WP:POLITICIAN). Despite that, it's damn hard to write a balanced bio of Puwak, because 99% of the sources are about the corruption scandal. Pcap ping 16:48, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

• Please let me expand on my POV a little. First, let's use WP:MUSICBIO as an example. Criteria #1 is that the artist be the subject of multiple published works. That criteria seems totally illogical if we are to follow the idea that a single published work is sufficient under GNG. Second, the idea of a single work being sufficient under GNG in this case seems to be at odds with WP:BLP1E. If 10 different reporters, from 10 different papers write about someone doing something, we delete it under BLP1E (a policy I support). In the case of the Cash Prince, the article is about no event, yet you feel it falls under GNG. If we apply GNG in the same manner to regular bios, most should never be deleted because they were covered in a reliable source. The fact that it is one event shouldn't matter because they get in under GNG. Niteshift36 (talk) 01:00, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

but we do not follow the guideline that a single source is enough, unless in the case of a source both fully reliable in terms of accuracy and known to be very highly discriminating in terms of editorial control for the subject involved--and even then we normally ask for substantial coverage. The NYTimes is often regarded as such a source for many topics, and the specific source there is a full length feature article. I certainly would agree that we would not go badly wrong including a Wikipedia entry for every person who is the subject of such a profile. DGG ( talk ) 01:14, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

• My devils advocate moment: GNG says nothing about how discriminating etc. It simply says reliable source. The Idaho Statesman in Boise is a reliable source. If they did a similar length article on a local band, they should pass GNG. Now we are applying opinion about which reliable sources are more important than the next? Is this a "some animals are more equal than others" moment? Doesn't it strike you as somewhat odd that a single reporter from the NYT wrote about this guy (not about anything he did, just that he hasn't made it yet) and we can't find any other paper in the country that wrote about him? Like I said, if he'd done something, this would be BLP1E, but since he hasn't actually done anything, we can't even apply that. Niteshift36 (talk) 01:31, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

You've missed the devilish subtlety. That's implied by "independent of the subject", by "The number and nature of reliable sources needed varies depending on the depth of coverage and quality of the sources" and by NOT INDISCRIMINATE. The interaction of the various policies is a black box from which anything can come out, or perhaps more precisely a magician's hat out of which a clever & experienced person can draw what is desired. The written rules are an incomplete version of what we actually do, and the ones that make the difference are well hidden; this is the usual way systems work--see for example Cloture. Thus we see at Wikipedia very fervent debates on what seem exceedingly minor changes in wording. But remember, that the practical working rule is that you can do whatever you can get consensus for, which is perhaps more honestly worded as , whatever you can get away with. DGG ( talk ) 03:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

By the way, if you want to see how WP:GNG can be used to bludgeon real world notability, have a look at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/GT.M. Pcap ping 10:14, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Felicia Tang (2nd nomination)

An AFD where you recommend deleting and I recommend keeping? Is that a first? (: Stifle (talk) 08:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

actually, it's not just an chance event on this one--there's a principle there, for me: I think the GNG applies only when there is real notability in something for it to apply to. Once the other hand, it there is something actually significant, then I think we should be flexible about the nature of the sources. I explained this in the question just above: the GNG is a kludge, valuable perhaps 5 years ago, but the current information environment has destroyed its usefulness. (I argued the other way, for my first few months here, until I realized how artificial it was : I remember saying, why do we have the GNG if we're not going to use it? I now know why we have it--it's impossible to get enough consensus on anything else, because everyone has their own ideas of what ought to be in the encyclopedia. So we use it only when we want to, and use generalities like NOT NEWS instead when it gives a better result. This gives us a set of rules that can justify almost anything, positive or negative. And when no rule gives a result local consensus likes, we ignore the rules.

as an admin, I will not decide against the current practices, and therefore close afds only when it's obvious, just as I said i would in my RfA. But in discussion, I will say what I think we ought to do. My hope is, that I can help newcomers see the guidelines for the facade they are. The way to persuade people to change is to use selected individual instances to show what's wrong. I choose those where there is either some chance of convincing people, or where in a particularly absurd result a protest may be useful later on to show that there is an alternate view. DGG ( talk ) 13:56, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Recent prods

You said -

"It might help your deletion rationales if you modified the sentence"Non-notable, non-consumer niche market software." non-notable is one thing, and a good reason for deletion. But being non-consumer or even niche is not a valid reason. Everything is notable (or not) in it's own field."

I've already written a fairly long essay on the subject; I don't link it all that often any more, but it explains my approach to these things at greater length.

Generally, I don't think that businesses should get encyclopedia articles unless the "average Joe" would be surprised at their omission - i.e. they're at the IBM / McDonalds / Bernard Madoff level. Being "non-consumer" and "niche market" do impact notability, at least in my opinion. Being sold only to businesses rather than the general public means that the customer base is limited. "Niche market" means the same thing. It also suggests that any coverage will only be in trade publications; those publications seem to depend a lot on press releases and are often comparable to local newspapers in their audience, and we don't count local newspapers very highly to establish notability.

Being a web-based encyclopedia, we get more IT people than dentists. It's easier to learn about software than about brands of dental drills on the Internet. But individual dental drill makers probably are never going to be notable enough to rate encyclopedia articles. The makers of non-consumer, niche market software shouldn't get a pass just because they're easier to research online. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 17:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

That view is simply wrong. I would normally word it that I don't think it is completely correct, but what you are saying is antithetical to the basic concept of a comprehensive encyclopedia. This is a general encyclopedia, not a consumer encyclopedia. I do not see why a limited computer base implies non-notability . Notability is after all not popularity, and the notability of something is in its field. Physicians are judged by the notability other physicians afford them, and elementary schools by their importance as elementary schools, and the various types of creative media likewise. Classical music has unfortunately a relatively small share of the music audience, but we judge it as classical music, not by the general public importance relative to rock music. Businesses are part of the world too, and trade publications can be extremely reputable, and in many cases much more responsible about product reviews in their field than general publications. To see really bad reviews of software, try general news sources. (of course there is PR in trade publications also, but it affects all sources. A local newspaper can be 95% PR.). Nothing should get a pass, but sources for things are found where they are found, and nothing should get a rejection because of the type of publication. I think your chosen example is a very good illustration of what we ought to be writing about, and if I had the interest and the time, I would take you up on the challenge for dental machinery--I may do so anyway, though I'd have to do some orientation work first. DGG ( talk ) 17:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Again, we would appear to disagree, but I tend to think that my position is closer to the consensus interpretation of policy than yours is. While Wikipedia is not simply a "consumer encyclopedia", it is neither a grand compendium of all that can be confirmed to exist, either.

Suspicion of the motives for inserting these articles is part of it, too. When I see articles newly created and fully formed, complete with the software infobox, I gather they've been prepared by publicity people offline. You may recall how a month or so ago an offline website came to light with rules about how to insert articles about minor computing research projects into Wikipedia, and helpfully supplying a template for them. I do get the impression that this is the tip of an iceberg.

My real concern is not so much with notability as with nonsense. You see these articles tossing around buzzwords, jargon, and catchphrases, trying desperately to look like they're riding the crest of trendiness, and creating vague, meaningless texts as a result. If it does something important, it can be described in English; and if it is important, its importance can be explained in English in the article. But when you see an article that consists of a few sentences of lede saying that a software package falls within a product category, and the bulk of the article that follows is devoted to a features list, that's a sales brochure, not an encyclopedia article. I just don't feel that by acting against those non-articles, I'm doing anything other than depriving their promoters from a free venue to publish advertising. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 20:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if I may jump in here, I think the general consensus is that most of these types of things should be covered in some way. The main disagreement is about how they should be covered. Some say individual articles, others say as part of one large article. In that regard, both approaches have their own strengths.

On a personal opinion level, I don't think "advertising" about products "no one had heard of" are really a big deal. I'm not saying adverts disguised as article shouldn't be dealt with - they certainly should. I just don't think we need to worry about promoting something by letting it have an article. If "no one" has ever heard of it, "no one" will see the article either. Whatever the creators goal, the end result won't be an uptick in business for them on our account. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:44, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

In fact, Smerdis, I do not think we would disagree on that many specific cases--I think almost all of your work in this direction to be excellent. That off-WP page you pointed to is a very troubling case, and some of its progeny can politely be described as lamentable. I am following up the articles it points to, & intend to do my best to see that they are justified by WP:N or deleted. You might see my comments on them. (I admit that I took in good faith some of the framework articles I first encountered, and I was insufficiently stringent about them--I've learned there. ) I devote about half my time here to getting rid of spam, most of it by companies--you can see what I am at work on presently from my user contributions. I have no tolerance with promotional editing--but I have a certain limited amount of patience in dealing with it, for I think it can be often rescued. (And even COI editors can sometimes be taught to contribute good articles--I know I've taught some of them, though certainly not the majority that I've dealt with. You would probably agree with my view that I think the use of Wikipedia for promotion is a much greater current threat than the inclusion of some questionably notable articles. Everyone will understand that in any project of our sort there will be a grey area about what is or is not worth including as far as importance goes. But being used for promotion affects our reliability. We are now a seriously used information resource, like it or not, and since the world has given us a striking degree of responsibility, we must live up to it. We need to improve our quality to what is expected of us in many respects, including this. DGG ( talk ) 00:57, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

2010

Multiple Islam-related deletions

I was initially thinking of keeping the deletion requests together and had no idea of how to go about it. I was trying to be very cautious even while nominating the current set as I don't have a very deep knowledge about early Islamic history. Right now I will wait till the current discussions are closed and then bring up the notability issue on the Wikiproject Salaf page - many pages about non-notable individuals (as I see it) seep to be under the wikiproject. Do you have any better suggestions? Thank you very much -- Raziman T V (talk) 10:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Your user page as a box that says "This user is muslim and think that Muslims need to go back to the fundamentals of Islam". I see you keep a legit alternate account for work on Islam-related articles. Nonetheless, it seems you are working on deleting those you consider the least important, not in trying to find source for them. If the articles on the individual Companions of the Prophet are your idea of what will be most easily deleted, it is my opinion that you have misconceived the purpose of an encyclopedia. Every similarly important figure in early Christianity has an article--and the amount of contemporaneous documentation for the first century of Islam is much greater than for the first century of Christianity. To be sure, fewer works in English have been written about early Islam (especially google-accessible works), but I am pretty sure that for Arabic works, the proportion is just the opposite--though they may not be on the internet yet. If you can read Arabic, my suggestion would be that you look for sources in that language for these pages. If not, I recommend that you encourage those who do to work here on these articles. I find it curious that recently there has been a number of deletion nominations about figures in Judaism--from self-identified Jews; there's a bias here--many people are sometimes stricter about what they are most familiar with--myself included: I tend to be rather skeptical about articles on librarians and libraries. . . DGG ( talk ) 22:58, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

You are perhaps right - When one knows about a topic, they are more prone to consider what they don't know as unimportant. But please don't get the impression that I consider those articles as can be most easily deleted. I have read a lot on Muhammad's companions during my Madrassa days. So when I come across a name which I have even heard before, I do not even think about getting it deleted. But there are individuals with articles about them on Wikipedia with the "supporting source" to be just the mention in one Hadith. I am unable to see how they comply with Wikipedia's idea of notability. I see that the current discussions are going in the direction of "Keep" and I am okay with it. But it will be great if we have some sort of centralised discussion on what can make a person in Islamic history notable. Perhaps there is something more to it than saying that every Sahabiyy is notable. With all your Wikipedia experience, what do you suggest that I should do? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time, and best wishes -- Raziman T V (talk) 09:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Look for information on the less important ones--this is sort of the universal answer to whether Wikipedia should include something. Most Wikipedia articles are written rather carelessly--if a single supporting source is given, this does not mean there are no others, and you need to search for them. And then you need to see how this source is discussed in other works. . What people learn, should not be limited to what is in their formal education. Wikipedia not only provides the opportunity for sharing what you already know about, but for learning more in order to share it. At the end of my graduate work, both in biology & librarianship, I knew a great deal about my own specialty, but considerably less about even closely related topics in the same field. I learned about many of these, because I needed to teach students in broader courses, I've learned about still more topics, by working on Wikipedia articles about them. If a madrassa education is at the level of a religious oriented undergraduate college in the US, a graduate of that will have adsorbed a great deal of the general principles and ethos of their religion, will have read thoroughly their sacred scriptures, and will have a general knowledge of the history of their religion and the basics of theology. The Muslim religion is noted for a long and rich tradition of scholarship beyond that level.

My own feeling is that Wikipedia has greatly under-included traditional scholarship in all fields. I think we need articles on all individual figures in all of the different sacred scriptures, and of all people about who anything is known or speculated from the early history of the traditions.

As for people in ancient and medieval times, as a general rule information has survived primarily for those who might reasonably be considered notable: those who have left a literary or artistic heritage, or been in leading political or military or religious positions. (There is one continuing problem: we often have names of the spouses & sometimes other relatives of such people, but know nothing more than dates of birth death & marriage.) But as we get nearer to the present, we come across a great number of people who are named only in surviving funeral inscriptions, property and tax records, and legal disputes; the extent of this varying by period and region. Historical scholarship in the past worked primarily with aggregates of such records, or with selected representative individuals. But with the availability of data processing, there are many projects trying to build up the complete network for some particularly well-documented areas (eg [9] [10], and an historian can extract a surprising amount of information even from mere genealogies. The question is where to stop, as far as we are concerned at Wikipedia. My answer to the question is WikipediaTwo an extension for local individuals and other detail. The difference from Wikia is that it would be verifiable, NPOV, and free from advertising. DGG ( talk ) 06:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I had a look at the Sahabiyyeen list on Arabic Wikipedia. There are articles about many more individuals, but most of those are very poorly sourced. But if we go through them properly, I think it will be possible to at least get enough information about notability and minimal biography. But the problem is that my Arabic is very very poor - All I can understand on reading nearly properly is the Qur-An. I tried Google translate as well, but the quality seems to be very poor. But I will try my best to do what I can to improve those articles. I used to work basically on Astronomy-related articles on Malayalam Wiki. I think this can be my major field of work here.

I agree with your view that we need more accessible information about all these individuals. But I am not sure whether Wikiipedia would be the right place for that. Perhaps, as you said, an extension...

And thanks for all your time. I can understand that you are a busy person but you have been very kind to me and have spent a lot of time discussing with me. I hope I will be able to deal with my co-Wikipedians in such a manner. And I will try my best to take your advice and improve these articles and their sourcing. Perhaps it will help improve my Arabic as well....

Thanks again and best wishes -- Raziman T V (talk) 11:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm always glad of an opportunity to explain something that I care about deeply, and I thank you for the opportunity--and the way you facilitated it by your excellent questions. DGG ( talk ) 17:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Deletion criteria

"on the basis of the various comments below, I simply cannot tell if he is notable, so I am back to undecided. DGG ( talk ) 02:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)"

Not being able to determine notability would a reason to delete, right? I don't understand your neutral comment. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 13:06, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Wrong. One should only !vote to delete for lack of notability, if one thinks that on balance the person is not notable. When I can not decide what to do, I defer to others. DGG ( talk ) 18:19, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

You're kidding me, right? You think that everyone in the world should have an article unless we can prove that they are not notable? This is turning Wikipedia policy on its head. Articles should only be written if the subject matter is known to be notable. This is particularly important since the default to no consensus is keep. By burdening Wikipedia with these articles we have overwhelmed the volunteer work force making it impossible to maintain and improve the quality of our articles. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 18:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I only speak/read English

With regards to the edit comment you used with this edit, you said "in national Historical Buildings register, as the fiWP clearly says; that's a RS for notability. Please check other Wikipedias when relevant before nominating for deletion." How was I supposed to know this when I only speak/read English?--Rockfang (talk) 22:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, what I did was to a/examine the article for their references and external links sections, which are similarly located in all Wikipedias, and then, b/ try Google translate . It doesn't provide a good text translation for a finished article, but it can deal with something like this. (some people use msn translate, or the various other programs, but I find Google Translate tends to do fairly well for Wikipedia articles or newspaper articles.) It is very unfortunately frequent for people making enWP articles based on those in other Wikipedias to not bother with the references and links. when I see them lacking, I normally add them even when I cannot translate them. Fortunately html is a universal format. The presence of a Wikipedia article on a national subject in its national Wikipedia is an alert, though sometimes it can be spam or promotion--and some Wikipedias have even looser citation practices than we have. I was giving a hint, not blaming you. DGG ( talk ) 23:03, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, your edit comment seemed a bit rude when you said "..as the fiWP clearly says...". Not everyone speaks or reads Finnish. Also, just because an article is notable on one language's wikipeda doesn't mean it is worthy of an article on an other language's wiki in my opinion. I assume (I haven't actually checked) that the Notability guidelines on each different language wiki may have different standards/criteria. If I may make a suggestion, you might want to consider making future "hints" on the relevant editor's talk page more often.--Rockfang (talk) 23:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, they have different notability guidelines; some are more stringent, some have no notability guidelines at all. We do not always keep articles other Wikipedias keep, and v-v. But it's always a reason to at least check the other article. In this case, regardless of the Finnish guidelines, about which i know nothing, the information provided in the article--the external link to the national historic buildings database-- is what makes for unquestioned notability in the enWP--I would think most WPs would consider the same, but at any rate we certainly do. I apologize for sounding impatient, but the present deletion spree on unsourced articles has me a little overworked trying to rescue the notable ones. I realize this wasn't part of it--but the damage that group of editors did is affecting a good deal of Wikipedia. It's not the least your fault, of course. DGG ( talk ) 23:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Roger that. I understand.--Rockfang (talk) 00:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Graham Jones (politician)

Please reply to the points raised here. Regards, Ironholds (talk) 19:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I just now gave an extended argument for this at another AfD, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jon Powers, an AfD where it is being argued that even though the unsuccessful candidate has sufficient RSs for notability, he is none the less not notable:

I think that the GNG is obsolete. It was adopted as a screening device long before G News archive and G Books had the wide-reaching coverage they do today, under the assumption that only the few very most notable things would have conveniently accessible sources. This is no longer the case, and we need to decide what will replace the GNG. The question then would be whether we wish to regard major party candidates as notable regardless of whether they are successful. My view is, as usual, that we should compromise: the candidates for the major offices are notable, and I would include certainly all national legislatures and all state or provincial chief executives. I would not include candidates for seats in state or provincial legislatures--here we should include only the winners--so for about 90% or more of the political offices we think confers notability, only the actually successful candidates would count--giving us only a ten percent expansion on coverage. I consider that a very conservative extension--I am not a radical inclusionist. DGG ( talk ) 20:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Notability drive

We are going to find at the election night that suddenly a couple of hundred people become notable, people will be coming to wiki and lookig for these people and will likely create them when they find them not there, its fall out from the blp wars, Jennings has gone already and I had the admin put it in my user space, and we likely are going to lose Jones as well so I put that in my user space for the time being, regards User_talk:Off2riorob/Graham_Jones_(politician) .. User:Off2riorob/Tammy_Jennings Off2riorob (talk) 22:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I've commented above that we are going in the wrong direction here. The most useful thing you can do is to concentrate on getting sources. Recall that we do want to keep out campaign advertising. DGG ( talk ) 00:40, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Interesting AfDs

Impulse Tracker and Scream Tracker. Basically, what do you when you have number of source say that X is an notable program of type Y, but there's no in-depth coverage in any secondary source? If Wikipedia really wants to be a tertiary source, then the coverage should not exceed that of secondary sources. On the other hand, it doesn't seem that unreasonable to rely on the primary source (the program's own documentation) to write most of the entry, and just use the secondary source to substantiate the claims of importance. Pcap ping 22:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The policy is WP:V, and what is considered a RS is a detail that need needs to be sensibly interpreted for different subject matter. There are cases where primary sources are sufficient, and the exact distinction between them is not always certain. I consider that in some web and computer related areas we the guidelines as stated are not appropriate, and we have appropriately been interpreting them flexibly. As for WP:N, it too is subject to interpretation. For a good while we have possibly been too permissive here, but we are in my opinion, currently seeing an over-reaction driven by a few determined editors. Personally I think this subject area is one where we should be as inclusive as practical, because we are in practice the best reference source for most of this. DGG ( talk ) 22:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pelangi Kasih School

Would you explain to the editors at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pelangi Kasih School why we keep high schools? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I replied there, and I'll copy the argument here, for reference:

The rationale for keeping all high schools is that in practice we can find sufficient material to show about 95% of them notable by our usual guidelines, and it is not worth having elaborate and time-wasting debates like this to exclude the other 5%. Any established school will have some notable alumni; will have some athletic victories; will usually have won some academic competitions and placed either high or low in some academic standings; the decision to found a school will normally be discussed in news sources or in sources about the founding group or agency; the construction of the school will have been a major project, and also have resulted in public information; the appointment of the successive heads will have been newsworthy; the school will have been a place where some noteworthy things have happened. Any of these is enough for notability, and it is extremely rare that some of this cannot be found. When Wikipedia was started it was sometimes difficult to find such material with the limited research facilities most people here were able and willing to use, for it required research in local print libraries--and very few Wikipedians have proven willing to use libraries at all, or anything not freely and obviously available on the internet. But now with the growth of Gbooks and g news such material is in fact widely and freely available on the internet, and anyone who looks carefully will find it. The information is perhaps more readily available in some countries, like the US, than in others, but the basic principle remains, that the material will always be available. when ai first came here, I did not understand this, but I soon realised that the attempts to distinguish just which schools were below the bar for the thousands of them was a useless enterprise, when almost none of them really failed it. Any attempt to discriminate would make more errors than it corrected. Wikipedia is not the arbiter of what is important--we are not equipped to do this. All we can do is include information that might be of value to someone about those things which can reasonably be considered to be of some importance. why should a large nation not have thousands of notable schools? Notable is much less than famous. We are not an abridged encyclopedia.

In terms of accumulating rubbish, it actually works the other way round. By including basic information we encourage the addition of more. By including basic information about towns and villages and schools and other institutions and things and people we encourage people to improve them. Many more people will, in practice, be able and willing improve an existing Wikipedia article , than are able to properly start one. The continued existence of Wikipedia depends on the continued recruitment of new editors, and this will be primarily from students. Very few active editors remain for more than three =years--they very reasonably develop other interests--writing for Wikipedia is rarely a career. If we do not replace those who leave, we will die; if we merely replace them, we will be static. There is very little here that will not be greatly improved by wider participation--this focus of=n wide participation is the basic idea behind open editing, what made Wikipedia worth starting and makes it worth continuing. Working on local topics is the ideal way of getting started, and what we have always recommended to beginners. Wikipedia is not harmed by the inclusion of borderline topics: it is harmed by the inclusion of spam and prejudice and error. The way of preventing these is to have more people working here. and the way of working here effectively is to add good material. It is more valuable doing this than quibbling at Afd. In the time it has taken to have this discussion, we could each of us have started or improved at least one article for each of us. I will now return to doing that, and so should all of us. DGG ( talk ) 16:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow, thank you for providing such a good summary for why we keep high schools. Cheers, Cunard (talk) 22:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Well youre prepared to use your time to say it and I respect your right to say it but at the Indonesian project we beg to differ regardless - but hey thanks for the effort - wish we had you at the Indonesian project I couldnt even get one other ed interested in fixing the BLP issues :) - and I find some of the one liner non ref BLP's damned nuisance - If the school stub stays because of your non voting block of text well I wont hold it against you - it may be fine of the US project but I think its pointless at the Indonesian project whatever you say SatuSuro 00:04, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

There are no national blocs here, or at least there are not supposed to be. The Indonesia project at enWP is not independent, and the same notability standards apply just as much there as in the US. Nobody is forcing you to spend your time writing these articles--you might do better to leave them be and do what we both agree is necessary, look for references for unreferenced BLPs. . Other Wikipedias may do as they please, of course--some have stricter rules about notability than this one, some have no guidelines at all about it. DGG ( talk ) 00:14, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Project based issues abound - and regardless of the universality aims - various cultural differences do affect projects and the sorts of edits they get - in the death project the undue is the amazing obsession of the US cemeteries - no where else on the wikipedia has such a corpus of unreferenced lists of cemeteries exist - as much as the aim of universailty is there - it doesnt happen - Oh and I have a very low opinion of the BLP mess from jimbo down - I am not going to sweat over whether someone comes in and deletes one liner bio stubs en masse from the Indonesian project - there are so few eds there - so youve done your bit and i respect that but the 'universality' of schools and N in my opinion is completely grabbing the horse by the wrong part of the anatomy - but hey good stirring words - and you spent your time doing it. As to what we do with our time - I think the great value of WP is that different people have quite different ideas what to do with it - and hey good work anyways! SatuSuro 00:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:OUTCOMES

Howdy! After reading Wikipedia:OUTCOMES I don't see where you understood that all secondary schools are inherently notable. The closest related statement I found is

Schools are frequently nominated for deletion. Most elementary and middle schools that don't source a clear claim to notability are now getting merged or redirected in AfD, with high schools being kept except where they fail verifiability. Schools that don't meet the standard typically get merged or redirected to the school district that operates them (North America) or the lowest level locality (elsewhere) rather than being completely removed from the encyclopedia. See WP:ORG.

As the OUTCOMES page states these are not policies. The schools that I nominated all seem to be not particularly notable. Having 25 students in a building does not make for notability to my mind. I would like to understand why you feel these schools are notable. You may also want to see the discussion on this matter on WP:JUDAISM and weigh in over there.

Once we are sure we understand each other we can discuss restoring PROD, moving to AFD, or just dropping the topic completely. Thank you for your help, Joe407 (talk) 19:34, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

What matters for practical purposes is what the community feels. Every secondary school that can be demonstrated to be in real existence, present or past, has been kept at AfD for at least the last 2 years, though a few have been nominated either to test the consensus, or by those who did not realize it. The reason for this is that in practice we can find sufficient material to show about 95% of them notable by our usual guidelines, and it is not worth having elaborate and time-wasting debates to exclude the other 5%. Any established school will have some notable alumni; will have some athletic victories; will usually have won some academic competitions and placed either high or low in some academic standings; the decision to found a school will normally be discussed in news sources or in sources about the founding group or agency; the construction of the school will have been a major project, and also have resulted in public information; the appointment of the successive heads will have been newsworthy; the school will have been a place where some noteworthy things have happened. Any of these is enough for notability, and it is extremely rare that some of this cannot be found.

When Wikipedia was started it was sometimes difficult to find such material with the limited research facilities most people here were able and willing to use, for it required research in local print libraries--and very few Wikipedians have proven willing to use libraries at all, or anything not freely and obviously available on the internet. But now with the growth of Gbooks and g news such material is in fact widely and freely available on the internet, and anyone who looks carefully will find it. The information is perhaps more readily available in some countries, like the US, than in others, but the basic principle remains, that the material will always be available.

As for what I think, when I first came here, I did not understand this, but I soon realised that the attempts to distinguish just which schools were below the bar for the thousands of them was a useless enterprise, when almost none of them really failed it. Any attempt to discriminate would make more errors than it corrected. Wikipedia is not the arbiter of what is important--we are not equipped to do this. All we can do is include information that might be of value to someone about those things which can reasonably be considered to be of some importance. We are not an abridged encyclopedia.

The question is whether yeshivas count. All other religious schools do, even small ones. If they serve the purpose of a secondary school, it does not matter what subject they teach. It would be prejudicial to omit those of one particular religion.

I recognize the special nature of some of these schools as branches of others. The rule that we have been applying is that a separate campus is not a separate organization, but a separate administration is. If the school has a headmaster, it is separate. If the school operates in cooperation or under the very general supervision of another institutions it is still separate: most schools operate in such a manner--in the US secular world, a superintendent or a school district; for Catholic schools, either the diocese or the founding order. I think the founding order situation might be the closest analogy.

This applies to schools, not schoolmasters. In the general opinion here, which I share, headmasters are rarely notable, except for famous schools. Many articles on Roshi Yeshivas have been deleted except when they can be shown individually distinctive or the school famous.

As to the promotional nature of some articles, a factual article is not promotional but descriptive. Information about academic standing is not normally considered promotional, if presented fairly and reasonably, and neither are lists of famous teachers and alumni. When a school article contains promotional material, or information not of encyclopedic interest--such as how to apply--we simply remove it from the article--I do this to almost half of the school articles I encounter.

For institutes of higher education, the same rules apply, though the distinction is made between vocational schools and those that grant degrees. One of the articles nominated is on a kollel, As I understand it, this name could refer to a wide range of possibilities, so I'm taking this to AfD; I don't recall we have discussed one previously DGG ( talk ) 21:46, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Well argued. Thank you for your thoughts. I recall a comment on one of the policy pages that as a community we are better served by having no article on a given topic than a biased and poor one. In many cases I would tend in this direction. I am ok with editing down these articles of any and all promotional, POV, OR, and un-sourced statement but in most cases we will end up with a large number of stubs. If that much. In many cases the entire entry is OR and lacking RS. How do you propose to deal with those? Joe407 (talk) 22:36, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

There indeed has been such a suggestion, but if it had been followed, we would not have an encyclopedia. Articles grow: Just take a look at the early history of any article. This is what Yeshiva University looked like at the start in 2002.

These articles will grow when people work on them: motivated either by familiarity with the subject to expand out knowledge, or by inquiry about the subject to look for information to add to ours. Most of us are here because we came for information, and realized we could add to it. There is need for deletion, but much more need for addition. Deletion is easier: I have deleted 7 articles so far today, but only been able to rewrite a single one substantially. My advice is to source what you can; it is folly to remove what is not harmful merely because you at present cannot source it: I have found references for many unlikely articles, but where I have failed, others have often succeeded. DGG ( talk ) 23:40, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Understood. Let's see if people are able to add to these. I think that the OR is endemic. As an example I went to Birchas_chaim and edited it down to "Just the facts". As you can see in this diff, I left some OR and unsourced stuff. The article would have been naked without it. Do you think I should remove the OR? Joe407 (talk) 23:52, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

You are asking me if you should remove "The curriculum is mainly the Talmudic texts and commentary. It also includes Chumash, and Halachah." Tell me, do you truly think this unsourceable, that there has never been a published statement to this effect? Do you consider the statement likely to be false? Do you consider it to be damaging? DGG ( talk ) 00:07, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the sentence "It was founded by Rabbi Shmuel Zalmen Stein in 2001, after his father, Rabbi Chaim Stein, asked him to open a branch of Telz Yeshiva in Lakewood.". It seems a classic case of OR.

I'd also comment that looking at the article now, what makes it notable? The fact that it exists?? Are there any assertions of notability given about the subject that come from a RS? I don't see any. Joe407 (talk) 00:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, again I ask you, do there has never been a published statement to this effect? Have you checked for material on these rabbis? Do you consider the statement likely to be false? Do you consider it to be damaging? Have you checked for material on these rabbis that might contain this information? This is a little more interesting because it brings us into BLP territory, and some think, equally wrongly, that every unsourced statement involving a living person should be removed. I agree that this should apply to every potentially damaging statement, and should be interpreted broadly, but I think this a classic example of what should not come under this rule.

As for notability, I've already given my argument. How is Wikipedia the better for its removal? More especially, how is Wikipedia the better for spending effort trying to remove borderline articles rather than doing more positive writing, such as the good writing in the area you have been doing? One may possibly think that it makes the more important organizations look insignificant because their articles are no fuller or better than the less important. That concerns me also--we do not really have rules about this, relying on common sense, which is sometimes lacking. The solution is to try to find more additional material on the more important subjects. That said, I often find it satisfying to remove some junk, just to get started each day, but If you want to remove articles, look for the utter junk at the very bottom. New Pages has a good deal of it, and the unsourced BLPs offer many opportunities this way. DGG ( talk ) 00:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Point taken. Thanks for the discussion. Joe407 (talk) 01:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Argument for Deletionism

I fully support the founding principle of Wikipedia that any subject is worth coverage if it is notable and verifiable. The ideal is to create a huge repository of knowledge on every subject under the sun, and then some. But I am concerned that the number of articles keeps growing and the number of active editors is not growing in proportion. There are too many stale articles for the editors to maintain, and the problem is getting worse. If this is the case, while the number of articles will grow inexorably the average quality will keep dropping. The credibility of the project will decline and constructive editors will turn away. The quality will drop further in a vicious cycle. The project may collapse under its own weight. Too many trivial or out-dated articles, and not enough constructive editors.

One solution is to ratchet up the inclusion rules. Not because minor topics are unworthy of articles, but because with available resources Wikipedia cannot ensure any reasonable level of quality for the minor topics, and consistent poor quality turns away both readers and editors. No article is better than a bad article. Thoughts? Is there a discussion somewhere on this subject? Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 03:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Talk page stalker here . . . I think the argument about whether or not "no article is better than a bad article" has been debated ad nauseum but you propose what looks like a novel solution to me, by raising the standards for inclusion. Where I think that idea falls short is that the standards we presently have are inconsistently applied. We only debate the merits of an article if it is nominated for deletion, and as the present debate on unreferenced BLPs shows, plenty of articles that some editors may feel should be deleted can sit for a long, long time. Notwithstanding the process for arriving at higher standards, I think they may cause such an AfD glut that it would scare away editors from all parts of the deletion/inclusion spectrum. I'm also not clear if you envision raising the notability standards, the citation standards, or some other measure that I can't think of at the moment.

Okay, DGG, you can have your talk page back now.  ;) --otherlleft 03:43, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

(ec) @Aymatth - I disagree that no article is better than a bad article. There are thousands of very good articles on very minor subjects (obscure fossils, small villages, minor sporting teams, take your pick) where wikipedia has risen above the blandness that is the internet. It has taken nine years to get this far. The best Featured Articles did not spring up overnight, and have only really started appearing since 2006-2007. I'd say lack of articles turns away readers much much more - see the failures of citizendium, knol and other online pedias. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

@Aymath also: to extend a little what Cas has said:
I. — we tend to do better on the minor subjects--in my opinion because they are what the actual writers we mainly have can easily write about. and, since most people stay only a few years, the continuation let alone the growth of Wikipedia requires continually getting new editor, and working on minor subjects is the and way to start beginners.

II — On traditional important subjects, we can prove you wrong also by a random (literally) featured article: in 1976 The Raft of the Medusa was a redirect to this: [11] , where the total relevant contents was "Artist Théodore Géricault decided to make a painting based of the incident and contacted the writers in 1818. The painting first appeared in the Paris Salon in 1819 and was a sensation. It currently resides in the Louvre." It became a Featured article in Jan 2009: [12], and in the subsequent year, its been cleaned up a little further to [13]

III — But you know it perfectly well: on your talk page you say "I sometimes start an article or expand a stub, sometimes try to improve articles on subjects that seem to have potential but are poorly written, organized, referenced, not neutral etc". I think you may have since gotten disheartened by the size of the job, but remember there are quite a lot of us, and potential for getting many more. Do what you can do, and recruit others to join you.

IV— I joined probably with the same intention you did: to improve the deplorable quality of articles--with a focus on use of second-rate referencing and outdated information, on both large and small articles. But now I have to spend almost all my time here defending articles so they stay long enough that I or someone else can improve them. I am beginning to get very impatient about it, about those who actively obstruct people who try to help. It is bad enough when someone does not source an article, but to both not try to source it and to delete it so nobody else can source it is far worse. It's destructive. It's shortsighted. It says it helps, and it does the opposite. The way to improve the average quality is to take something and improve its quality, and let others do likewise, and, for those of us who can, if someone needs help doing it, help them, not blame them for doing it sub-optimally. We talk about "do no harm" -- we should start by doing no harm to the people who actually do the work here.

V — I've worked in education all my life, and I know that everyone starts off ignorant and unskilled, and most people grow a good deal from there--although, throughout history, not as much as the formally educated of their time hope. Wikipedia offers a way to accelerate that, and draw more people into the base of growing knowledge. We can either drive people off and kill off articles before they have a chance to grow, or we can choose Life, so that we may live, we, and those who come after us _{(Deuteronomy 30:19, my paraphrase.)} DGG ( talk ) 05:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Not to use your talk page as a soap box DGG (delete it if you so wish), but Aymatth2's reasoning would have killed Wikipedia in its infancy, with its lack of faith in altruistic contributions and incremental improvement (WP:IMPERFECT). A great number of seasoned thinkers had written off Jimbo's vision precisely on these grounds, and a good dose of perceived naïvety, and the success of Wikipedia is indeed amazing. Soapboxing further, I originally came to Wikipedia to contribute with specialist content - much against my will I'm increasingly drawn into run-of-the-mill Smallville politics, bureaucratic argumentative reasoning, deplorable us-and-them mentality; and ahh, a frenzy sourcing articles on software, politicians, bands, books, idioms, concepts, (most unbeknownst to me) against tight deadlines. Power.corrupts (talk) 08:48, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I can but strongly agree with you. A thind that every editor should remember is that featured are 0.15& and good articles 0.1%[14]. The rest is of average, mediocre or dubious quality. Yet without them wikipedia wouldn't be able to exist. An example, I wrote about some battle in Afghanistan; the sources named some warlord. He had a two-line stub, that was sufficient to include in the article. Would I had needed to go through the sources it would have taken considerably more time. Without all that "junk" or "cruft", wikipedia would no longer be wikipedia, but a just a copycat of Britannica. Sorry for climbing on your soapbox and ranting.^walk victor falk ^talk 14:13, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive messages. I was feeling a bit downhearted when I wrote the above - just a mood. There is a huge number of good articles. I was thinking narrowly about biographies of living people, articles about current political subjects and to a lesser extent articles about places. These need constant attention to keep up to date and are often poorly sourced and subject to vandalism. Their numbers seem to be growing faster than the number of editors. But probably the great majority of articles once written will steadily improve, and do not really need much maintenance. Worth thinking about though, when starting an article: "is this useful as it is, and will it remain valid if nobody ever updates it?". Personally, I feel good when I am researching and adding content and see others improving what I have done. I get depressed when I look at the AfDs and debates. I should just stay away from them. Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 14:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Don't stay away--just make a practice of looking at one a day and only one. (someone else recently said this on a talk p. , but worded differently.). I think every article needs maintenance -- its just that some get it automatically because of the great attention. The maintenance on many articles is however pretty rudimentary: someone will update a statistic, but not look for other things that need updating. Almost everything needs attention: there are no subjects that can be guaranteed to remain static. My estimate is different from yours: I'd guess that between 90 and 95% of articles do not get enough good attention. Fortunately, some topics will remain basically correct even if not up to date, and this includes the ones you mentioned as problems: articles on towns will have the basic geography right, though not further developments, and will still be useful. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080531043017AAOkk6G about people who do nothing further will still be correct. If a minor politician is elected to another office, the article is almost certain to be updated--and ditto if he is involved in a major crime. (There is one special class that is worth systematic updating: people charged or convicted of crimes.) Current political subjects in my opinion, are along with current popular music, the things that get the most attention--they need constant watching for NPOV, which is somewhat different question.

Fortunately, there is a solution -- in addition to the usual recipe of increased participation. The use of semantic data, as in infoboxes, permits automated updating searches and even automatic updates. For example, we could probably change all US population figures after the next census. The growing usual of standard identification numbers of many classes of subjects, such as published authors, will do so also. I think Wikipedia should gradually make the transition to structured writing. I think the easiest first step might be a program to expand infoboxes into sentences. This sort of thing is where I will need to learn a great deal, for I am not an expert. (There's another possibility--just as we automatically add ISBN numbers, we could add references to reviews, using google news or worldCat. There will be a problem though about permission to make such use of their data.) DGG ( talk ) 17:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

DGG, I always appreciate your sound advice. But one AfD a day? Here's the deal. I have a set of about 400 articles on my "to do" list, of which I usually start one or two a day, although I often get side-tracked into other sets of articles, and sometimes get sidetracked from the sidetracks as when Gbedu led naturally to Sakara Records and then to Zestafoni. Anyway, when that backlog is cleared, one a week. Any more than that could pose a mental health hazard. :~) Aymatth2 (talk) 22:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

(butting in) We-ell, see how your mood holds up. The mood in the trenches at AfD is miles removed from the collaborative atmosphere at many wikiprojects. I find I only do it in short runs before I need a break too, and then avoid it for months on end. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

one trick is to comment on ones where you have no personal interest of your own on the actual subject matter, as long as you can understand what the article is talking about. It also helps to look at the article and the deletion rationale independent of what anyone before one has said, and not go back to see what people think of your argument. Now, I do that a little, but mainly I do concentrate on the ones I care about, one way or another. The needed emotional attitude is to not get upset when a good article loses, because it will often happen--but I hope not quite as often as if I were not there. I find in helps perspective in that to try to compensate my inclination to keep what is keepable by making sure I find some that are not keepable and argue against them. I usually start out by looking at CAT:CSD, and delete a half-dozen that need it, to make sure I don't get too inclusionist. On the same principle, the reasonable deletionists try to improve some dubious articles. DGG ( talk ) 01:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

That's the kind of balance I try for as well - don't get into a mindset of "must delete" or "must preserve" because each article should be considered independently according to its sources and relevant policy. Is there an easy way to check one's own AfD participation record to see trends?--otherlleft 14:47, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Notability and standards in general

Philippines–Romania relations has been nominated for deletion again here== You are being notified because you participated in a previous Afd regarding this article, either at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Argentina–Singapore_relations or at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philippines–Romania relations, and you deserve a chance to weigh in on this article once again. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 00:22, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

You certainly do, DGG. I do as well. Like Virginia Wolfe, let's not have our ideas forced into a corporate or sociopolitical mold but instead exercise our first- and second-amendment rights over at that AfD. -- Hoary (talk) 00:57, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I did not use to need these notifications, because i would routinely look at all AfDs. That is no longer the case, because of the urgency of preventing the deletion of sourceable BLPs on clearly notable people, without any controversial elements. I see this as one of the consequences of our misguided shift in emphasis. To remove a few dozen harmful errors in one place, we will need to stop all the work of dealing with the much large problem in general. If we institutionalize the shift, then there will be only two likely results: people who care about preserving content will spend all their time doing so, and not be able to make other contributions to the encyclopedia, and the quality of the encyclopedia will decline; or they will decide to work on other areas here instead, and we will lose content and alienate new contributors, and the growth of the encyclopedia will stop. DGG ( talk ) 01:39, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Evil deletionist ogre that I am, DGG, I'm increasingly inclined to agree with you. When it comes to people, it seems to me that a huge number have no celebrity but genuine noteworthiness, and that presentation of reliably sourced assertions of their noteworthiness would constitute small but worthwhile articles. What particularly rankles is the contrast between the requirements made for the notability of people of kinds I'd regard as noteworthy and the blanket acceptance of some kinds of minor sleb, not to mention fiction. Just very recently I came close to blowing my cool here and in this edit, in which I undid half the good (?) work of an author who had simultaneously (i) checked the claim of membership in Magnum Photos and added a link to a portfolio there and (ii) stuck a "Notability" template on the article. Now, I understand and occasionally even sympathize with apparent retardation, but am utterly baffled by the behavior of a keen editor (thousands of edits, barmy star, etc) who can understand that somebody is a member of Magnum, point to a portfolio there, and at the same time question his notability. What kind of insanity is this? Or perhaps the editor is so ignorant of both (a) the knowledge that I'd impute to the man on the Clapham omnibus and (b) photographic quality that he'd take Magnum to be something like Flickr or Photobucket. Ideas such as this (which I have very frequently) lead me toward warm support of deeper coverage of Star Wars trivia and the like: the ability to edit there should keep such people amused where they won't affect articles of more concern to educated adults. ¶ Photography is a fascinating area of WP: now that it is widely accepted as Art (capital "A") and there is very big money to be made by a celebrated few, schools are churning out hundreds of people with degrees in it, and a seemingly high percentage of these graduates are less concerned to work hard at taking memorable photographs than to fabricate CVs that will impress the gullible. Thus (I think) it is that one Ron L. Zheng -- no, I'd never heard of him either; he entered my consciousness via his conspicuous inclusion in Category:Japanese photographers -- has achieved ersatz Wiki-notability via the "Best Books 2009 Awards" and the "Eric Hoffer Award", examples of a "distinction"-for-money industry that reminds me of degree mills and the "American Biographical Institute". -- Hoary (talk) 02:57, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

i also did some work on those awards, after some more checking of their websites. More generally, I would not assume that most people at Wikipedia had heard of Magnum at all--and most of the ones who had would not have known the significance. There are areas I would make equally foolish mistakes, but at least I have the sense to stay out of them. I soon learned as a librarian not to show the least surprise at what people did not know, and to find ways of informing them that would not make them embarrassed. DGG ( talk ) 04:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, yes, you're probably right. The Clapham omnibus no longer runs. I believe that I knew at least something about Magnum when I was less than one third of my current age (I'm not called "Hoary" for nothing), but I am contentedly ignorant of such fascinating matters as sport(s), fashion, (super)models, pets, cellphone standards, manga, anime, game devices, video games, hard liquor, royalty, religion, reality shows, science fiction, perfumes, aromatherapy, swords and/or sorcery. Well done on "Eric Hoffer Award"; I've since done some more digging so take a look at its talk page. Somebody else involved in it is one Robert Gover; in view of his much earlier achievement, this is a sorry spectacle. -- Hoary (talk) 14:00, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

A modest proposal

Perhaps Wikipedia should reverse its inclusion policy, so that anything other than copyright violations and libel can be included. Every article would have a disclaimer at the top along the lines of "this is un-reviewed spam and is probably on a non-notable topic and written with a significant bias without sources to back the claims herein." Then articles that miraculously are on notable topics, have sources, and are written in something like a balanced fashion could be nominated for Wikipedia:Articles for Inclusion. Articles that the community approves would be added to a category Category:Encyclopedic articles and have their templates removed.

In this fashion, we could all stop worrying about whether new articles are spam, on notable topics, are neutral, etc, and focus our efforts on article improvement (and of course, making sure that Encyclopedic articles remain encyclopedic). ^Bongo_matic 01:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

a more likely one

What you are wanting is a general purpose wikia, not an encyclopedia. The point of an an encyclopedia is to be a usable reference work, with a reasonable degree of trustworthiness. Trustworthiness implies both freedom from advertising, and a NPOV. Without it, why would anyone believe anything that is here? Its not just a matter of having references, because references of some sort can be found for anything. The question is notability, and I think to some extent a trustworthy reference work is also expected to have a certain standard of inclusion, so that people will have some confidence that's what in it is worth the description. A work that includes the patently unworthy will always be suspected of including spam, and promotionalism is the destruction of reliability. There is a place for web sources that will describe anything, and that place is wikia.

What I rather suggest is a Wikipedia Two - an encyclopedia supplement where the standard of notability is much relaxed, but which will will still require WP:Verifiability, and NPOV. It would include the lower levels of barely notable articles in Wikipedia, and the upper levels of a good deal of what we do not let in. It would for example include both high schools and elementary schools. It would include college athletes. It would include political candidates. It would include well-known as well as what we consider notable neighborhood businesses. It would include individual asteroids. It would include anyone who had a credited role in a film, or any named character in one--both the ones we currently leave out, and the ones we put in. This should satisfy both the inclusionists and the deletionists. The deletionists will have this material out of Wikipedia, the inclusionists will have it not rejected. DGG ( talk ) 04:18, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I have seen your W2 idea before (and think it has many merits). While my suggestion was tongue in cheek, it is really the same. Everything starts out as a W2 article but needs to be accepted by the community to get into W1.

My more ambitious goals actually turn in a different direction—a direction I know you also think would be useful—which is to have the data in Wikipedia (whether references or content) better structured so that different views / combinations could be shown in different contexts. ^Bongo_matic 05:27, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm with you there also. It would probably require a rewrite of the entire encyclopedia, which might not be a bad thing. Wikipedia is a Web 1.0 project, after all. Our method of working is a major accomplishment, but it won't be the definitive way. DGG ( talk ) 05:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

baseball stubs

I have been going through a batch of new articles. I have come across a number of baseball stubs, and some short articles that are not new where I have to question the notability of these articles. These are mostly about defunct minor leagues and defunct minor league teams. It appears these are based on only pages within one web site - Baseball reference.com. Here was one page that is essentially an external link or a source Mountain state league encyclopedia and history. Right now it appears that one editor is creating a large number of stubs about minor league teams, along with coaches and players as part of the content. These persons may or may not be notable. How would you handle this situation? If you want to take a look the editor is User:Alexsautographs. Here is one of the pages of a seeming large number Caruthersville Pilots. Here is an article begun on one of the persons Harrison Wickel I am about to go through the whole lot and tag them for notability, but I guess I want another opinion. Steve Quinn (formerly Ti-30X) (talk) 04:18, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I would bring it up at the workgroup. Given that the basic standard for athletes is fully professional, for the players to be notable it would be necessary to find something that might determine this. I would rather doubt it for players in a class C or D league. Try to get agreement at the project for what to do, & then do it in small batches. Remember to check that for each of them they don't happen to be notable for something else entirely: they might for example have become a successful businessperson or politician. There is of course the interesting possibility that if all the local papers for the period were available, that they would meet the GNG. DGG ( talk ) 04:38, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Can I get a second opinion from you? London Hotels....

While trying to clear up the never ending morass that is Unassessed London-related articles, I've come across Category:Hotels in London. It seems to me that at least 1/3 of the entries here should never have been created, and I prodded what appeared to be the worst offenders; however, most of those now seem to have been contested.

The creator is citing Articles for deletion/Covent Garden Hotel as a precedent for keeping them, but to me that "keep" appears to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of WP:N as "anything mentioned in the press warrants an article". Middletown, NY is a notable topic and Walmart is a notable topic, but Wikipedia shouldn't have an article on Middletown Walmart, despite the fact that it's easy to find mentions of it in reliable sources; likewise, Radisson Hotels and Heathrow Airport are notable, but to me that doesn't make Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel notable, even though it has no doubt been covered by reliable sources at some point (even if the news coverage is just "New hotel opens"). To me, while obviously the "big name" hotels like the Ritz, Dorchester etc warrant their own article, there's no need for Wikipedia to be hosting unexpandable sub-stubs on generic individual branches of chains which would be far better served (and of far more use) as paragraphs within List of hotels in xxx.

Before it goes to what will no doubt be a foul-tempered bulk AFD (the creator of most of the articles is already bombarding me with personal abuse), can I get a second opinion from you on this one?

(NB; I've also made an identical request from User:MRSC, in his capacity as de facto coordinator of WP:LONDON) – iridescent 15:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Hardly "bombarding you with personal abuse". But if we tried to work together to expand some of the 5 star London hotel articles which should meet requirements first instead of doing anything hasty then I would not snap at you. Justification for the existence of many of them is not based on Covent Garden hotel. It is based on the number of sources and coverage in reliable publications which I believe most will pass on.. The question is would articles like Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel be happily unaminously deleted or would people really rather than they were at least tried to be improved first... ‡ Himalayan ‡ ^ΨMonastery 16:18, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I can see it both ways. On the one hand, we can find 2 substantial RSs for every substantial building, if we really check all possible newspaper sources, including trade papers. Sooner or later, they'll all be in GoogleNews/googlebooks; at the very least , for every building erected or planned before 1920. If we're going to hold to the GNG, we have several choices A. use an increasingly stringent definition of what we consider RSs for WLOCAL -- such as requiring regional sources, but that wont have any effect in large cities B. Make a special provision about LOCAL requiring more than RSs, such as RSs showing notability in particular ways C. Abandon or supplement GNG in favor of distinct criteria that would exclude such articles, such as hotel rating level. D. Use combination articles E. Accept the articles, but require substantial content F. Simply accept the articles . G Use a WikipediaTwo or WikipediaLocal project as a supplement to Wikipedia.

The GNG was originally adopted as a restrictive measure. This is no longer the case. The increase in easily available reliable web information has killed it's usefulness this way. It is now a rule that will increasingly work the other way around. Many deletionists try to elevate it into what they consider a basic policy on principles that are not specifically exclusionary, but rely on confusion of WP:N with WP:V ; many deletionists and others think that in principle it is the only logically defensible way of having a guideline --I wonder whether they will stick with it when it yields the opposite result to what they really want, or yield a result that contradicts their own intuition?

What I really want in G, above, a supplement that will maintain WP:V and WP:NPOV and other foundation principles, but not have a WP:N barrier. The inclusionists will be able to get in essentially everything, the deletionists will be able to remove a good bit of borderline content from the present Wikipedia. (and, btw, I do not consider Wikia an equivalent, for even if we had one that did not fail WP:V and WP:NPO, I remain committed to a free encyclopedia, free in particular from advertising either in the articles or surrounding them.

But we have to deal with the present structure and the present question . Whatever may have been said elsewhere-- which I am deliberately not looking at--what Himalayan says above makes sense to me: it is a combination of my choices C and E above--rely on ratings level, and work for better content. Covent Garden Hotel is at present a very low quality article--the AfD seems based on the possibility of there being a better article. The present one does, in my opinion, violate NOT TRAVEL and NOT PROMOTIONAL. I would have had to support keeping it however, because that is fixable. I would have said weak keep, as Peterkingiron did for the same reason. DGG ( talk ) 18:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Hotels are a tricky subject because they are businesses. It is easy to see them as adverts, I've seen hundreds of new hotel stubs deleted because of WP:NOTTRAVEL and DB-ADVERT. But I think those hotels which have historical signifiance in notable buildings like the Langham Hilton etc are obviously notable landmarks. What is the most difficult is writing a full article about them using reliable independent sources which are not trying to sell it to you. Unfortunately most hotels relay little about its actual history and focus more on what they have to offer. That's the difficulty. ‡ Himalayan ‡ ^ΨMonastery 19:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's where the problem is. You need to find information not published by the hotel. There will usually be an article in local secondary sources when the building was approved, finished, and especially when it was opened. There are books about hotels. There are also discussions sometimes in reputable guidebooks that could be considered RSs. I'd consider Michelin such a source, for example--they are known for being NPOV. DGG ( talk ) 19:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

For instance One Aldwych would seem like a notable building. I think there must be books with a decent coverage of them.. I've requested some photos from flickr anyway but those stubs which can be significantly improved should be. ‡ Himalayan ‡ ^ΨMonastery 15:05, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Here you go, EXACTLY the sort of source these stubs need to be turned into decent articles.. ‡ Himalayan ‡ ^ΨMonastery 15:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC) 22 Jermyn Street is now "notable" too. I think they probably all are, but just need expansion as with most articles... ‡ Himalayan ‡ ^ΨMonastery 18:54, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

yes, and essentially any other major building of any public or architectural or engineering interest. Thanks for doing the work here. I will remove all the other hotel prods today. DGG ( talk ) 19:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

OK thanks. I'll try to expand as mamy as I can my workload is just so huge that I get sidetracked from writing the articles on them I had intended. I've successfully contacted 22 Jermyn owner Henry and he has promised to send much needed photographs of the hotel. Some of the historical buildings, even if they have only been hotels for ten years are quite intetesting if adequate history can be found. ‡ Himalayan ‡ ^ΨMonastery 20:01, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Good thing is articles like The Bentley London are turning up some interesting sources in google books. Some really quaint books like guides to Britain's best teahouses etc. There are a lot of books mentioning such hotels.. ‡ Himalayan ‡ ^ΨMonastery 21:24, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

CSD A7 and schools

In removing the {{db-org}} tag I had added to The Baan Dek Montessori, you asserted that "schools are not eligible for speedy A7." Why is that? I see no indication of that at WP:CSD#A7. Are schools somehow not organizations? Furthermore, looking back at the page's logs, I see that it has in fact been deleted before under criteria A7 (and twice prior to that under G11). Am I somehow missing some change in the interpretation of CSD criteria? John Darrow (talk) 05:01, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)Quoting directly from WP:CSD A7, emphasis added:

“ An article about a real person, individual animal(s), an organization (e.g. band, club, company, etc., except schools), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. ”

Tim Song (talk) 05:03, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Interesting; I missed that among all the bold text around it. Given that A7 has been applied to the exact same article before, could anyone provide a link to when the school exception was added to the A7 criteria, and any discussion involved in it being made so? John Darrow (talk) 05:16, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It was added initially because school deletions for lack of notability were always contested in good faith by established editors -- and are thus never uncontroversial. It has subsequently been generally accepted that in practice notability is almost never a valid reason for deleting a school via any method. High schools are now always treated as notable, because 95% of them are if one looks hard enough, & it isn't worth the debates to weed out the others, lower level schools are almost always not notable enough for articles, but are treated by merging into the school district, town, diocese, or the like. Every time in the last 2 years this balance has been challenged at AfD, it has been decisively upheld, even though our way for formally adopting guidelines have enabled the small minority of opponents to block formalizing it. The few genuine AfD debates are whether an institution is a school or merely a tutoring establishment, or whether it has a real existence. School articles are occasionally listed for speedy deletion as promotional, but this is almost never valid, for they can almost always be stubbified to remove the promotion. Same goes for copyvios: a noncopyvio stub can be easily substituted. Even in most cases of vandalism, there's an unvandalised core to revert to.

Personally I wish we applied similar principles to determining notability of other classes of things.

As a personal guide also, there is more than enough true junk to get rid of, and ewe should concentrate on it. Borderline notable articles do not harm Wikipedia. Promotional ones do, and likewise copyvio. And of the acceptable articles, probably most of them need better sourcing or updating or removing soapboxing --and these are almost equally harmful. There's too many important things to do to bother about borderline notability. DGG ( talk ) 05:46, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

• High school articles also tend to have vandalism occur. I think this is because students there think it is funny. However, the articles themselves are worth while, although they often need more sources.John Pack Lambert 22:46, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Politicians

Of course I do a quick source check first. However, Wikipedia also already has an established rule that normal coverage of the election doesn't constitute sufficient sourcing to claim notability for the individual candidates — which means that politicians that I tagged don't have very strong evidence of notability that can be added, because they don't have significant coverage as topics in their own right.

I certainly don't think that being elected to office is the only way that a politician can obtain enough notability to merit an encyclopedia article. There are plenty of unelected politicians whose articles I'd completely defend, as well as several that I came across during the same batch that you noticed, but didn't tag either because sources were present or because the article made a stronger claim of notability beyond just being a candidate — such as being the leader of their party, or being involved in a controversy which garnered them more than just brief mentions in generic election coverage.

I certainly don't disagree with the principle that in an ideal world Wikipedia could be a place where we actually had articles about every candidate in a major election whether they were elected or not. But the problem is that such articles are usually written as generic profiles, and quite often cut and pasted directly from the candidates' own campaign brochures at that — they're rarely written in properly encyclopedic style or referenced to actual media. And even if we wanted to, we just don't have the resources to actually maintain well-written, well-sourced articles about every person who's ever run for office in every country on earth. Bearcat (talk) 06:29, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I do not interpret the established rule to mean that material about the election is not sufficient--I would accept that material giving the election results without more than mention of the candidates is insufficient. Excluding material about the election for politicians is like excluding material about sports events for athletes.

I think it is accepted that the routine uncontroversial unchallenged biographical facts about a person can be taken from material of which he is the author, if presented in some medium that gives evidence that it is not fabulous entirely, such as an official web site, and I would extend this to official campaign literature. (obviously this refers here as always only to facts, not to opinion about the virtues and importance.)

If we have people writing the articles, we have sufficient people. Maintaining this is no more or less of a problems than with other articles--even if we used sighted revisions, as we probably should, we would still have the problem of updating--a problem none of the current BLP discussions mention much, because we have no way of solving it for any sort of article, unless we restrict Wikipedia to the famous.

I'm nowhere as comfortable about election candidates in Canada as the US, because it is not really a two party system, and which parties are the major contenders seems to vary from election to election. (I am in particular unwilling to assume that the Greens are at this point a viable major party.) Additionally, at this point the G News coverage for Canada seems not as thorough as for the US, and very few US libraries have adequate printed material. I try to work in areas where I can help offset systematic bias, but this aspect of it is too large a problem for me. DGG ( talk ) 20:23, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

BTW, you seem to have missed a few by your criteria, such as Bruck Easton, but with such a large number of nominations, I cannot check them all. DGG ( talk ) 23:04, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course a self-published source such as a campaign brochure can be used to support basic biographical details. But an article can't rely only on a self-published source if the person doesn't actually meet any notability guidelines (the most basic one of which is that the person has been the subject of substantial coverage in sources independent of themselves), and an article can't just be copied and pasted directly from a self-published source without substantial revision and outside sourcing.

As for Easton, I really don't believe there's ever been any sort of consensus that being the president of a political party (or the chair of a government agency, for that matter) automatically qualifies somebody for an article if the person themselves hasn't actually been the subject of substantial coverage in their own right, any more than being CEO of a notable company automatically qualifies a person for an article if the only sources we can add are their own biographical profile on the company web page and a few cursory mentions in 300-word news briefs. While it's certainly legitimate to have a difference of opinion about whether that, in and of itself, should suffice as a claim of notability, there isn't currently any consensus that it actually does — so that comes down to a difference of opinion, not to me being objectively wrong somehow. The party president is an internal bureaucrat whose role is to manage the day-to-day operations of the party's office, so it's a role that exists largely outside of the public eye; it's not the same thing as being a party leader. Bearcat (talk) 00:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed that about politicians, it's a difference of opinion; i too recognize that the notability of politicians is unsettled--based on what happens at afd, there does not seem to be a consistent consensus. But I really do not agree at all, though, about being head of a notable company or organization, though it could be argued whether his NGO is a notable one. I certainly think that managing the affairs--even the internal affairs--of a national level political party is notable. DGG ( talk ) 00:32, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I've thought a few times in recent weeks about doing a bit of a rewrite on WP:POLITICIAN — I don't think the consensus is actually inconsistent, so much as it isn't as well explained as it could be. Bearcat (talk) 23:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I've actually started working on an update of the current notability criteria for politicians, which is meant to provide more detail than is currently present at WP:POLITICIAN. I'd actually welcome your input and/or suggestions if and when you have some time. It's at User:Bearcat/Whatever for now, though I'll move it to another title eventually. I'd stress that I'm not attempting to invent new rules here, but simply to codify in more detail where consensus currently stands for various types of politicians. Bearcat (talk) 01:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Your viewpoint would be constructive: amateur radio organizations

Your viewpoint on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of amateur radio organizations would be an asset to hear in the followup conversation that is now taking place. I know that AFD was a while back, but 13 of the AFD mandated stubs have come themselves to AFD (not a mass AFD unfortunately, but ...) There was a move to temporarily close them all while overall discussions take place. Might I ask you to weigh in at Talk:International_Amateur_Radio_Union#AfDs_on_stubs_for_member_societies ? Exit2DOS ^{• Ctrl • Alt • Del} 00:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The general rule is that national organizations in any field and for any country are notable , but nothing under that unless them is some special circumstance like very good sources for notability In my opinion., there are sometimes countries where the national association for a sport of hobby or whatever is so small, that they might possibly be an exception, but it's simpler to permit them all. . It's established practice that there is nothing wrong with a stub article, either. If all that can be said is very little, we say it. Most encyclopedias have had very small articles, amounting just to listings or definitions. Diderot's Encyclopedie did, and most Brittanicas. We have real problems in that most of our articles on anything are inadequately sourced, or not up to date , or both, so why should we bother about trying to eliminate 100 stubs or thereabouts. If only marginal notability were the worst difficulty we face! Live and let live is the only practical way of coping with a very large scale voluntary organization like ours. DGG ( talk ) 02:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Please don't promote the existence of poor quality articles!

It promotes the existence of poor quality content such as plagiarism and violations of the neutrality policy if you are encouraging editors to do an internet search and then add a ref to the existing article content if they see evidence of notability in the on line source. This is a poor way to edit and one that should not be encouraged. It is this mentality that has caused Wikipedia to have growing number of poor quality article. While the situation is worse with BLPs, this applies to all articles that are poorly sourced (including completely unsourced material). Editors need to be taught the correct way to write a good article. Article content need to supported by a specific reference. I'm not seeing that happen at deletion discussions and for that reason, I think that the current deletion processes are a major obstacle to raising the quality of Wikipedia content. So, any changes to the deletion process need to consider how it will effect the overall quality of the material. For this reason, I can not support demanding editors look and add a single source instead of identifying the article as unsourced and prodding it. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 06:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

You seem to think I advocate the unfortunate practice of finding anything with the term or the name and adding it without any caution. I do not do that, and you know I don't , nor have I ever advised anyone to do so. But otherwise, couldn't disagree more. Articles grow incrementally; we start with one source, and find more--you know the way articles have grown under Wikipedia editing. The best way to get them growing, is to start them off. I do not see how that plagiarism is in the remotest likely by taking an article and looking for sources. If you mean that the material might be a copyvio, looking for a source is likely to detect it--and it should certainly be normal practice to check for it additionally in the usual ways. We should certainly add it to the minimum suggested requirements. But for simple bio articles, when I do find copyvio, I normally simply rewrite it, using the original page as a source and listing it as such. Not that people are obliged to do that in a normal check, but i do it. similarly I do not se how NPOV is at all likely either, any more than in any other article. the basic facts will be documented by the source--if there are interpretation problems they will be evident. I do not advocate a bot like approach to this.In fact that's why it takes a little time to get it right, and why reasonable time must be allowed. I find I can do it at 4 min . each for simple articles, but I'd expect much people to take 10 minutes. If it were done without due caution , it would take about 1 min each, and anyone screening articles at that speed, whether to add or delete, is normally going to fast , unless they hit a run of total garbage so bad it doesnt need checking

I wish to demand editors look and see if they can find sources--I never said that finding one is optimum. It depend what they find. if there's an article on a prime minister, and I find one unquestionably reliable official source for the person holding the position , it is enough. if it's an author, and I find a book but can't tell if it is self published, it is not enough. I expect to find about 1/3 sourceable and possibly notable, 1/3 sourceable but unlikely to be notable, and 1/3 unsourceable--and they get kept, sent to prod or afd, or deleted, accordingly. It's perfectly reasonable to prod , saying I looked for sources via [this search] , but couldnt find anything significant. It';s perfectly reason to do that and say this is what i found,but it doesn't show notability. It's perfectly acceptable even to speedy, saying nothing here gives any indication of possible notability even if it were sourced. You know I work carefully. I want to help others work carefully also, and I'll be glad to join with you in any reasonable scheme for doing it. You probably mean, people might take what I say, and use it carelessly.-- but people can take any advice and work carelessly. They can delete careless, and they do, as much as keep carelessly. I came here in the first place to raise standards, in the light of my experience and training in knowing what real standards are--and my experience in teaching them. I have not forgotten my initial goal. DGG ( talk ) 06:56, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I did not say that "you" are doing it but I do have concerns that some editors that are less familiar with good writing practices are being encouraged by your comments to rescue articles that would be better off either deleted or re-directed. Unless an unsourced article is re-written to match the newly found source, there is a significant chance that misattribution will occur in some instance---and that is plagiarism. It is important to remind editors of this point. Instead, I see with these discussions the idea being promoted that it is possible to save the article by doing a internet check for notability and adding one source. The way that you say that you are doing it is fine if you are rewriting the material. But the problem is that right now we are being pressured to re-write material incompletely, or not touch the article at all. I'm not as optimistic as you are that gradual article improvement is happening across the board. Instead, I see a growing backlog of poor quality articles with no plan in place to improve them. Speaking of neutrality violation, it is poor writing to not give a well balance over review of the topic. This is especially a problem for articles that are rescued by people that are not knowledgeable about the topic and not spending time doing extensive research. We need to recognize that converting unsourced material into a good article is not something that can happen in every instance even if the person is notable. In those cases, I have no problem with either deleting the content or redirecting to another related articles until someone finds good article content. Keeping poor material is not the best solution for the reader. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 07:28, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I do not think your specific concerns are justified, as I have already explained. Misattribution and POV problems can occur at any point in almost any article, and often do. We both know how this is a continuing concern throughout the encyclopedia. They are obviously not good, but they cannot be avoided in a crowd sourced project, and our susceptibility to these will always be among our limitations. (Myself, I am concerned more about other problems, which are equally pervasive and in some cases much more harmful: outdated content, hidden promotionalism, unbalanced content, obsolete sources.) If some day an encyclopedia of proper scholarly standards can be built on the basis of Wikipedia, that will be excellent, but it will be a very different encyclopedia, and it remains to be seen if it can be done with our methods. Myself, I think such a work will always need editorial control,not our present methods. The concept that a definitive encyclopedia can be constructed at all is probably beyond the nature of humans, who will never agree on what presentation of a subject is definitive, and the very nature of scholarship implies that the understanding of not just science, but all aspects of the world, will be continually changing. Even without questions of interpretation, I do not see how any work can ever be completely up to date and completely accurate.

I see no reason why these articles will be more susceptible to it than any others. We will at the worst be adding 20 or 30 thousand low quality articles to the existing million of them. I am not concerned that every article be of high quality, just that it can be passable--it can be improved later. Almost every current article was at one time in a minimal (or, in many cases, sub-minimal) status, and has been improved over the years, and will need to continue to be improved. The basic concept of a project like this is that we supplement each others work, and that articles grow in this manner. If you seriously propose to go through the encyclopedia and remove every article that is not up to good article status at present , I think that is a very different encyclopedia than most of us have in mind. Had this been the original goal, we could never have gotten started. Were this the practice now, we would never be able to expand coverage into new or developing areas. I remind you of the experience of Citizendium, which has very high standards for approved articles, and consequently has approved very few of them.

To make our differences clear, I think that finding a reference for verification of the key aspect of notability of an article is quite enough to keep it from deletion. That is indeed all I ask people to do as a minimum. I try to do better on the topics of my own choice, but if I need to work quickly, I too actually do stop at that point. Most of my work here is in fact salvage. I'm a populist, not an intellectual aristocrat, in the present context. Wikipedia is a place where articles are made by people not knowledgeable about the topic and not doing extensive research. It's not idea, but the world seems to find it not merely adequate, but better for its general purposes than anything else available. Our strength is our wide coverage, not our quality. When we upgrade quality, it must not be at the expense of coverage.

I hope you will not retard progress on this issue by trying to impose your dream of a different encyclopedia upon the present project. DGG ( talk ) 16:48, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

On a more positive note, if you do want to make a step towards quality that might be compatible with this project, perhaps you can help me figure out a practical method for the periodic revisiting and updating of all our articles. As time goes by, this will be a problem that whose severity will inevitably increase. and it won;t be easy. As only one aspect, essentially every number in the encyclopedia needs to be checked to see if it is still accurate. every author and artist needs to be checked to see they have not produced further work. Every statement with a date after 2000 is likely to need changing, and every statement without a date is needs checking to see if it needs changing. Every reference list needs checking to see if there are newer works, and if the old ones are still the best. Every external links section needs checking to see not just if they are alive, but if they are still the best for the purpose. DGG ( talk ) 16:48, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Legislative notability

I am asking you this because you seem to be fairly knowledgeable, and despite what I said before I think you try to be fair and even in moderation. I think it is clear that state senators are notable, and I assume state representatives are notable. I am wondering though, would you consider candidates for such offices notable. What about for US congress. Would they need to be major party candidates for US Congress.

My guess is that major party candidates for US congress who lose are notable. I would also say that candidates in primaries would be notable at least if they made anything like a real campaign. State legislatures I am a little less certain, but I am thinking that candidates who lost the primary would not make the cut, but major candidates would. 3rd party candidates I am even less sure on. I would say if there is good documentation behind it to show that they actually did more than just have their name on the ballot, and especially if they got noticed, probably they would rate being mentioned.

One other thing. I am hesitant to go on an all out article making spree because of the time when 18 or so of the articles I had created, including one that was on someone who had been the majority leader of the Arizona State Senate, were deleted without even warning me that they were going to be speedy deleted. I tried to get some people to bring them back as user files so I could at least work on them and hunt down more sources, but no one did.John Pack Lambert 03:04, 28 February 2010 (UTC) Now here is the better signatureJohn Pack Lambert (talk) 03:17, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Members of any state and provincial legislature are notable. (Having a normal citizen's knowledge of the politics of my own locality, and assuming others places may be similar, I can see that this sometimes represents an extension of the concept of notability we might not do in other subjects, but it's well accepted here). You can, in my opinion, therefore can safely go ahead adding your state senators.

Which was the article on the Senator that was deleted? I have been looking at many of the other articles of yours that were deleted. I am going to get Chris Clark (editor), Sidney E. Mead, & Vincent of Scarning. restored, as i have sources. In some other cases the reasons given for deletion were incorrect, or a very over-broad use of CSD A7, and you could try re-creating them-- but there's no point without good sources.

I certainly think that candidates of major parties for a national legislature in a 2 party system ought to be considered notable, & I would extend this to state governors also. This is not quite accepted yet, but recent discussions have seemed to move in this direction, and sufficient search in local newspapers will almost always find information. At least for the US much but by no means all of this has been on line for many years, though through proprietary databases--it is now increasingly visible, being listed in the Googles. I would be very reluctant to extend this to members of state legislatures, and even more reluctant to try to extend it to candidates in a primary. I strongly suggest you do the ones who have been elected first, and make the articles as complete and well-sourced as possible. Remember to explain the person's political views, but not advocate for them. DGG ( talk ) 01:37, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

There are so many incumbents (past and present) for whom we have articles, that I am extremely reluctant to yield to the idea that we should open notability to losing candidates for the national legislatures. First things first, is my feeling. Look at all the redlinks among even members of the U.K. parliament, and even cabinet ministers of many non-Anglophone and developing nations! (It has also been my experience that otherwise-unnotable candidates for Congress tend to get that first article written by their press agent or campaign manager, who sees us as a great chance for free publicity for their man/woman.) --Orange Mike | Talk 00:59, 4 March 2010 (UTC)losing major-party nominee for his state legislature

I think you meant, so many office-holders for which we do not have articles. I agree it's more important to find these than to find the losing candidates, but i see no harm in letting people do so if they want. Unfortunately, one of the things that will inevitably always be a problem at Wikipedia, is getting people to write articles unless they want to write them. As for promotionalism,. ditto for the winners. DGG ( talk ) 01:28, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

List of proverbial phrases

DGG - When I came across the AfD for the above article I was encouraged by your Keep comments and thus closed the AfD as a Keep. Since then I have written a Lead-in with concise inclusion criteria based in-part on what you said--I can find sources for all these. If you concur with the inclusion criteria I stated in the lead-in, I will help begin the process of finding sources for entries that meet that criteria. Please modify the lead-in if necessary, no pride of authorship here. Thoughts?--Mike Cline (talk) 23:19, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the criterion, i'll work on them as i get a chance, but "similar to proverb" is not that great as definitions go, & I'll see what I can find to replace it. ` DGG ( talk ) 23:43, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I just sucked the defintion from the Proverbial phrase article.--Mike Cline (talk) 23:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

A quick question re Notability of Govt Agencies

DGG-Trust you are well-To make a long story short (I should add that the the List of proverbial phrases if I can find a source). My watchlist highlighted a recent edit to an article I am following with a wikilink to: Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and an edit summary of: I know it's a redlink for now, but there should be an article for it. I agree with the editor and began thinking about creating the article. That thought process first led me to examine notability guidelines but all I could find was WP:GNG and WP:ORG and nothing specific to Government agencies. The next step was to examine some related articles--I could find at least three--Oregon, Kentucky and Arizona. There may be more, but these illustrate my question adequately. In each case, the sourcing (what there is of it) are agency websites or derivitives, not 3rd party sources. Taken at face value, each article would fail the WP:GNG or WP:ORG guideline. That they haven't been deleted nor nominated for deletion leads me to believe there is some unstated consensus (or obscure reasoning) re articles on government agencies. I want to create the Utah article, but would like to be better versed in the nuances of articles on Government Agencies. Any thoughts. Thanks--Mike Cline (talk) 22:17, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

As I understand our usual practice, first order divisions of state or provincial governments are generally individually notable. Subdivisions below that almost always should be incorportatesd into the main agency article. but sometimes are notable, depending on their function and the amount of secondary coverage they obtain. The activities of first order agencies can always be documented by third party sources unless their functions are entirely internal and do not deal at all with the public or affect general politics. The sources may not be obvious and may not be on line yet. For example, a state wildlife agency will certainly be discussed in publications of state or regional conservation and hunting organizations. And there are usually court cases that will have reached the appellate level. The best approach will usually be through the State library, but any library in the state will be able to help. DGG ( talk ) 22:29, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

DGG - Thanks. I am confident I can find 3rd party sources. I was just curious as to the apparent lack of specific WP notability guidelines on government agencies and thought there might be some secret handshake here. Appreciate the response. --Mike Cline (talk) 22:38, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Sabrina Online

"There seems to be a notable award, which is enough to support both articles." Even if there's nothing at all in the way of sourcing? Dan & Mab's Furry Adventures had its article deleted despite the comic having won the same award; the award itself does not confer sufficient notability it seems. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 03:33, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

then the other article should not have been deleted either. DGG ( talk ) 04:06, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi DGG, my $0.02 here. First of all, being a notable award is different from being a significant award. Second, the NYT reference (which you said was automatically "always sufficient"—something that I can't believe you think is the case—is (in its entirety about the award):

And there are contests too. The fifth annual Web Cartoonists Choice Awards took place at http://www.ccawards.com/2005_ceremony.htm last month. The master of online ceremonies was a Web cartoon character and so were all the award presenters. Otherwise, it was much like the Oscars. There were too many award categories (26) and some commercial breaks, and all winners were rewarded with the Web equivalent of Hollywood fame: a live link to their sites.

Do you think that satisfied the "Depth of coverage" criterion of WP:ORG? ^Bongo_matic 04:12, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

The place to argue this, is at the AfD, where, you may be interested to see, I have just changed my opinion.

But you ask two more general questions about standards: As used in Wikipedia "notable" is an stronger term than "significant" and I used it as such. (for example, an indication of "significance" is enough to keep at CSD, but keeping at CSD certainly does not prove notability). I do not recall my mentioning the NYT in this discussion--I assume , therefore, that this is a separate question.

Yes, I am convinced the standard is that a NYT article about something is conclusive proof of notability--the only possible exception might be a very short article about something of purely local interest, especially in one of their local editions, and even that is debatable. However, that's not the usual problem; the usual problem is inclusion in a NYT article--as with other sources--depends on whether there is "significant" coverage (this is a routine Wikipedia guideline, with which I agree). I consider "significant" to mean, more than a simple inclusion on a list or inclusion as one of many examples, but to some extent the dividing line here will always be a question of judgment, about which people can and do reasonably differ. And there's another exception: quoting someone in the NYT or any other source does not prove that person's notability, though routinely or frequently quoting someone as a source in important articles on a subject can establish them as an expert and thus can indicate notability. I don't know why you can't believe I think all this: I've said it very frequently. DGG ( talk ) 05:00, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure we disagree. I was referring to your comment in this deletion discussion for the award, where you stated, "The NYT is always enough, if there is other evidence to support it." I think this article, where the quote comes from, cannot possibly be viewed as an "article about" the award, and hence your statement that the "NYT is always enough" does not seem to be an accurate reflection on your view (stated here) as applied to that case. ^Bongo_matic 05:35, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I should note that what appears to be the only other reliable source mentioning the awards at all is this book, where the entire mention appears to be "Librarians can also consult the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards (http://www.ccawards.com/) and the Eisner Awards, which have had a Best Digital Comic entry since 2005."—not even a full sentence! ^Bongo_matic 05:41, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

And how do you confer the artist being notable? I don't see it. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 16:12, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Notability for list entries

Hi there. In your edit summary (here) you wrote: "They are clearly notable...", however you have not documentated how the people in the list are notable. Could you please document / explain how the names on the lists are notable? Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 15:40, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

The heads of government of a country or state or substantial city are always notable. DGG ( talk ) 16:04, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

As already mentioned several times in this Afd, Nigerian traditional rulers are not politicians, they are not heads of states/governments. They do not have any political power, they are not elected by the Nigerian electorate, they do not hold any political office. Thus this aspect of notability which you've mentioned does not apply to them. By the way, Nigeria is a Federal republic and traditional rulers in Nigeria are excluded from the Nigerian Constitution of 1999. Amsaim (talk) 17:33, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Would you call Karl Rove or James Carville politicians? I would suggest that running for office is not the sole requirement for being considered a politician. Geo Swan (talk) 14:20, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Being elected is not a necessary condition for ruling. And where there is a head of state as well as a head of government, we include both. If traditional rulers are excluded from the formal government, that is clear proof that they maintain a political role of significance, though it may not be officially recognized. If earlier ones were deleted at at AfD, Wikipedia does not necessarily follow precedent, and if the articles are sent there, I will certainly argue for keeping these and restoring any which might have been deleted. Because of cultural bias, not to mention the current WMF initiatives to extend our reach to parts of the world where Wikipedia is currently underutilized, we should, in case of doubt, include topics like these. Among other reasons, it will help give new users from the area topics to expand. DGG ( talk ) 18:14, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

The nearest equivalent is higher nobility. We've justified the UK nobility by their sitting in parliament, which avoid the problem except for the most recent few years. I think we could justify anyone of the rank of baron or over, in any century, in any country, on the basis of their normally possessing substantial jurisdiction. I know there are some people here who are very restrictive in the matters involving notability of noblemen. I think that narrow-minded--a sufficient level of social leadership--earned or inherited-- is notability, however intrinsically worthless someone may think it in 2010. We cover all periods, and if the position was regarded of distinction in the past, the holders in the past remain notable. I consider the current ones do also, because I thin our anti-aritocratic bias a bias against which we should guard. DGG ( talk ) 16:32, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

And there is another misunderstanding: the items in a list do not necessarily have to be necessarily notable. The division "notable / non-notable" is an illusion of precision. Combination articles are a good way of handling semi-notable things, as a practical working compromise, and some lists are a type of such combination articles where the individual items are described very briefly. They're particularly good in cases where we may not have information to make a substantial article,--which might apply here, though I am no expert. DGG ( talk ) 19:58, 12 September 2010 (UTC) . DGG ( talk ) 19:58, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

2011

my view on the notability of murders and murderers=

"murder is a mighty strong fact" — Samuel Johnson, 1768.

Despite what my favourite author says, murder/murderers these days are not necessarily considered sufficiently important to be notable at Wikipedia. Murders/murderers of multiple people are--when I came here 4 years ago, it was often successfully argued that ≥2 victims made them notable (I think that's about 10% of the total) --our standard seems to have risen, so I'd say it's now ≥3. Murdering in special conditions that excite human interest makes for notability-- murder in schools, or accompanied by torture, or committed in exceptional manners, or greatly disputed cases, or of (or by) those who are famous, and so on. (none of these apply here. )

Murderers who are executed are always notable, as I see it. That very few people actually are executed, even among murderers, makes the cases of particular interest & notability, and almost all the world considers such executions notable instances of barbarity. This is my fundamental position, but I no longer argue it , as the argument is very rarely accepted here. Executions under any special circumstances are however notable, even here, and the argument is accepted often enough that I will argue it.
This particular case does not quite fall into that category, as she has not yet been executed. But that she should even be sentenced to death is exceptional because of her status in one of the protected classes, and legally interesting, as there seem to be so few of the usually aggravating circumstances that the sentence appears a matter of particularly outrageous injustice, even as a sentence. A jury verdict like this with respect to an adult male in Florida and some other US states would not really be notable to the same extent, as it is relatively common. But a woman is normally given the benefit of the doubt , and here it seems she was rather the object of local prejudice. In southern states, local prejudice has a particularly ominous implication, as a continuation of lynching, that affects the way people look on it. (I'll put off for the moment the question of whether the articles should generally be on the murder or the murderers) DGG ( talk ) 02:03, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that DGG. I think we have fundamentally differing views as to the notable elements relating to this and similar cases.

• "that she should even be sentenced to death is exceptional because of her status in one of the protected classes". This is a factual inaccuracy, I believe. She wasn't pregnant when sentenced to death (nor was she even pregnant when charged—the chronology is pretty clear that she gave birth in March and was arraigned in April).
• "murderers who are executed are always notable". Why should there be de facto notability for this class of individuals rather than letting the guidelines apply?
• "she should ... be sentenced to death is ... legally interesting". This leads to the conclusion that it ought to be covered, not that she ought to be covered, or even that the case be covered. The case is not legally interesting (it provides no legal authority on any proposition of law). As you point out, the jury verdict is interesting, but it is an interesting fact about the Florida criminal justice system or jury process generally, but not about the specifics of the case or individual.

You have gone to lengths to explain that you don't think that tabloid-style coverage of the subject is appropriate, but what else can there be in an article focused on her or the case, rather than putting the verdict in the context of capital punishment in Florida (or generally)? ^Bongo_matic 01:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

For the Carr article, I think I suggested rewriting to change the emphasis at the AfD. We may not be that far apart on this particular article. That can often be the case in coming from different directions.

More generally, I just above argued why women should be considered a protected class for this purpose

I also explained why I think each executed criminal (at least in the 21st century) is notable. I recognize there may be an element of more judgment involved., but it's the moral judgment of most of the world, & whether it's my own is irrelevant. We can continue this on the talk p. of the essay i propose to write based on the above. DGG ( talk ) 01:59, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Question about GNG

Hi DGG

I wrote these comments in a current AfD discussion.

I would be very interested in your views on two questions:

1. . Does the nature of the source of significant coverage (i.e., the prominence, reputation, scope, readership, etc.)—beyond likelihood of factual accuracy—in fact bear on GNG-based outcomes at AfD discussions?
2. . Do you think that such factors should bear on whether a subject is said to pass GNG?

Thank you, ^Bongo_matic 01:39, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

of course the differences matter; both for justification for facts and for notability, sources are not in a reliable | non-reliable dichotomy, they're in a spectrum of reliability. We usually do in practice take account of this. More at the discussion. DGG ( talk ) 03:48, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Didn't see your comments—did you save the page? ^Bongo_matic 04:07, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

It should be there now. DGG ( talk ) 05:04, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Appreciate your taking the time. ^Bongo_matic 05:09, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

And just to chime in... I fully agree that the GNG is a valuable tool by which we measure notability. But I also see that the SNGs are themselves valuable tools we are encouraged to consider when sigcov is lacking. I am in full agreement that both require verifiability in reliable sources, and such suitability of a source is dependent upon what is being sourced. I see GNG and SNGs as two related keys that open the same lock. Where's the argument? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 06:24, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

in general, yes, but it varies by subject. Sometimes the SNGs are there as a shortcut so we don't have to evaluate details of sourcing; sometimes they're there as a further limitation, often together with WP:NOT ; sometimes they're there because conventional sourcing yields paradoxical or useless results ( A good example is the standards for athletes, which does all 3: first, if they've major accomplishments, we don't have to worry about souring details beyond WP:V, because we know they'll be there; second, because it eliminates people from lower levels of the sport, even though local news sources may cover them; third, because for some early Olympians all we can really do is find WP:V in the records & it would be weird to eliminate them while including those of a slightly later period. In some cases, the relationship is unclear: for Politicians, it remains debated to what extent minor officials with local coverage count. Anyway, I've described what I think is the general view--as I did at that AfD.

My own view of what ought to be done is a little different. I would discard the GNG except as a backup if nothing will work, and judge by actual importance, measured if possible by something objective, (Such as the charting requirement for popular music--perhaps it lets in too much, but better that than continual debating about individual songs.) Unlike what the guideline seems to say, importance does make for notability--I consider them synonyms. Popularity also makes for notability, but it's not a synonym, because the unpopular can also be important and therefore notable. DGG ( talk ) 06:38, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

borderline notability

(from a Deletion review: [15]

(There will always be some level of borderline importance where notability will be uncertain, and some articles at that level will be kept and some not. Changing the bar higher or lower will not remove the difficulty, just move it to a different level. The only alternative, in most fields, is having an arbitrary cutoff that may or may not correspond to anything real, and produces the same result. Those cases where we do have an absolute qualification that corresponds to something true in the external world are quite limited: recordings & athletes, for example, and the advisability our our doing this is continually debated. I personally like true rational standards, but I do not see how one could be rationally constructed in this area, computer programs. When there is no natural standard, as with most Wikipedia article topics, we have a standard solution: the WP:GNG General Notability Guideline, which relies entirely on the presence of references providing significant coverage from independent published reliable sources. The difficulty comes with evaluating the meaning of significant, independent, and reliable; most contested AfDs revolve around those three words. (This criterion gives results that are sometimes arbitrary, depending on what happens to be accessible to the people here; there is particular difficulty with some subjects, where often little is formally written in such publicly accesible sources. It will sometimes seem that the only ones that get articles are the ones that have serious problems that attract the reporters.)

What I advise in such cases is waiting until you have two truly substantial independent full product reviews from known reliable sources--in which case WP will want an article, regardless of what the reviews say about the quality of the product--we only judge the attention that is given it. As for the Cornerstone page, I assure you we will look at it. You could even yourself nominate it for deletion, but it will appear fairer if someone else judges whether to do that. DGG ( talk ) 10:20, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

2012

Query: Shopping Malls and merging

Hi DGG. I PRODed a 1-sentence, zero-ref article on a small shopping mall that, to me, appeared to meet our PROD requirements. You declined the PROD, writing "merge available--its at least a good redirect". But you didn't merge it or redirect it yourself.

The creator then deleted your merger suggestion, with the edit summary: "added a basic citation, but everyone knows that merge templates never involve discussions (that's why i actually created it in the first place".

Now, the creator has a point about merges -- If I'm to believe what I read on the internet: "There are currently around 16,000 articles tagged with merge tags. Only about 5% have any discussion and only about 1% of the tags actually link to the discussion. Merges routinely languish for years, with several unresolved merges over three years old."[16]

But what we've just done has been a complete circle (j...), and used up three editors' time, leaving us much where we were before it all started.

I believe that the mall is non-notable under our notability standards, and that deletion is the best course -- we don't, under our standards as I understand them, keep (or even merge or redirect) every mall in the world. The process has simply resulted in the expenditure of time, returning us to square one. How would you suggest I proceed, as I believe the article lacks notability sufficient to meet GNG, and though one might redirect or merge it and I would accept that I don't believe that the better course given its lack of notability?--Epeefleche (talk) 07:32, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Your concern about using up three editors' time gives me pause; have you stopped to consider how much editor time your recent Schools AfD spree caused? At a rough estimate, about 80 hours. 10 of them were mine. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll simply say: a) those AfDs brought about results (mostly deletes and redirects, that brought the articles in line with our policies), whereas this did not advance the ball at all -- which is a primary point I was making above; and b) your comment does nothing to aid my discourse with DGG on the above. We could of course have a longer conversation on the points you may wish to discuss--I would be happy to, but perhaps this is not the place -- this is a thread I opened about the above issue.--Epeefleche (talk) 09:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

epeefleche, I was about to write to you, that I agree one =hundred percent with you that these small and medium size shopping malls are not notable. About three years ago I made a major such to try to get a guideline where we would require 1 million square feet as a general guideline for notability of such falls, what amounted to la=super0regional or very large regional status (I'd guess the proper size cut off has gone up a little since then). =--and merge the others; usually not with the town, but articles like school district articles: shopping malls in Bergen country, or like groups of schools under single ownership: the chain of shopping malls . Consensus failed, as it usually does for such general compromises, because one or two people insisted they were all notable,, and one or two people insisted they were none of them notable at any size, and there was a good deal of squabbling among the others at what size to make the cutoff. But most mall AfDs since then have gone as the failed guideline suggested, at about one million square feet.

I consider them much worse than elementary schools, because of the opportunities for promotionalism, with the usual contents being long lists of all the secondary tenants.

What I urde=ge you to do here is to redirect. I will support you very strongly in any reasonable merge/redirect for articles in this subjetin any forum here , if you will let me know which ones are being questioned. In one of the AfDs I commented on yesterday, I see that your AfD was necessary, because having a separate article was strongly defended. Most of the time it will not be: that's why I changed your prods to suggested merges--that;s what you should have done all along.

But you raise the true issue, you will accept a merge, but you do not believe in it. I will call you on that as long and hard as I can,for what you are saying is disruptive both to established policy and my concept of Wikipedia. With respect to established policy Deletion Policy is unambiguous that any alternative to deletion is preferable to deletion, especially a merge or a redirect. This policy was established before I came here five years ago, and it is the basis of my own view, the extension and understanding of that, that the true issue is not keeping or deleting articles, but how much space to devote to subjects. And to the general policy idea behind Wikipedia, that we operate by consensus, again well established 45 years ago and the basis for extension and understanding of that, which is that consensus means compromise. Consensus is the only way a cooperative project not based on authority can operate, except for the development of less formal lines of power that amount in the end to authority, and which are just as destructive to true cooperation as elected or appointed formal authority. This is the real danger to Wikipedia Five years ago there were such informal power groups, and as a newcomer I was outside them. Though sheer survival, I am less totally outside them now, but I never wanted to be in them. I'm a teacher fundamentally, and I want less to have do my own work in my own was, but to show other people how to work constructively, with my own way as just one of the possible examples , and then encourage them to do so, developing their own way. The success of a teacher is not the students who become followers, but the students who become independent. (And, though a little off the topic, the informal groups of 5 years ago are being now superseded by additional formal organization, acting through the Foundation, and I think nothing more important to our long term survival than to resist them--even in the rare occasion they do something which happens to be right, for they destroy our initiative, without which our principles will not survive. It's not that I would rather be right than be President, but that if I became President, I know the temptations, and I can predict that I would no longer be right.

as for the schools AfDs, the ones that resulted in deletions were not in accord with our policies, in particular the WP:Deletion policy on alternatives to deletion, and the main question there , which I am considering, and probably Kudpung is also, is whether to make new merged articles and redirects, or challenge every one of the deletions at deletion review. I don't like spending time in the very arcane style of deletion review discussions, especially with my usual colleague Spartaz not very active (reliable not in that he usually agrees with me, but that between what he says and what I say, we can generally make the issue clear). The first choice will take another large amount of timer, the second, possibly more, though they may settle the issue after the first few of them. At the moment you have the advantage that I and Kudpung had ha=work to do which we think even more important than dealing with individual deleted articles, while you are clearly focussing on deletion.(for me, its building up the proper content in articles on organizations, and removing the long existent spam from them) For me, every thingI have to argue with you is something I'd rather not be doing. DGG ( talk ) 17:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your usual thoughtful response, DGG. Some thoughts ...

I'm glad we are in accord that these small/medium malls that lack indicia of notability are non-notable. Too bad that your proposed guideline failed -- it sounds reasonable. I think that generally the way to go -- if there is a consensus -- is to reflect it in a guideline. That smooths the process. Please alert me if you re-suggest your guideline, with the added support that you can no doubt muster by pointing to the last 3 years of experience.

If we can't get consensus for a guideline, as reasonable as the guideline might be, that forces us to the unpleasant task of considering alternatives. I recognize that some editors, in such circumstances, will encourage others to act BOLDly, and unilaterally take action such as a redirect or merge. I, personally, could save myself much time if I were to do so.

My hesitation is that -- especially where I know that there may well be a lack of consensus, or have reason to believe that may be the case -- I am hesitant to take action that lacks transparency, and that relies solely on my view, without even having another editor agree with my view, and results in the dramatic impact that a redirect (for example) has. I would be much more comfortable if we had a speedy-like process, in which a sysop (or even another editor) confirmed my view. But I'm not keen on unilateral action (by me, at least) that redirects an article where I have reason to believe that if it were listed at AfD the result might be delete, or keep, or merge. I care more about the action being taken being in accord with consensus than I do about the result being the one I propose -- and I'm happy to accept whatever the consensus is. My focus is driven by an effort to apply consensus-driven rules, or seek consensus where we appear to lack it.

To my mind, the main issue (the true issue, as you put it) is whether or not a stand-alone article should exist. AfD calls for articles to be nominated for deletion, but as the possible alternatives closes at AfD suggests, it often turns into a 2-step process: a) should there be a stand-alone article (a keep); and b) if not, should it be deleted, redirected, merged, or the like. My focus is on "a", and to my mind that is the most important issue.

To some, it appears to be very important whether the article that they agree should not be stand-alone should be redirected. To me, that's not the world-beater of issues, and the impact is far, far lesser than whether the article text is removed from mainspace. If we were to discuss it at length, I could no doubt build a strong case for suggesting that redirecting "Mall X" to "New York City" does little to inform our readers of anything of moment. But it does little harm, at the same time, and if editors feel strongly that every mall (no matter how small), and every nursery school (no matter how insignificant), and every person (no matter how non-notable) should be redirected to "New York City" and the like, my general view is that there is little harm in them engaging in that activity. Even if it adds -- IMHO -- little or nothing to the goals of the Project. But, as I said -- what you view as the main issue is one that IMHO has little impact, compared to the issue of whether the stand-alone article is excised. At the same time, I view it as of such low importance that I don't see much value in spending time arguing it either way, and I generally don't argue against a redirect these days ... it accomplishes 99% of what a delete does, w/regard to a non-notable article.

As to merges -- see my initial comments above. It appears to be, as the editor in that post indicated, a "catastrophically failing merge process". Plus, I don't see much benefit in merging content on a non-notable mall into another article. And I certainly question the merging of text that is not referenced at all, and which has been challenged, into another article -- that violates our core policy of verifiability.

As to the school AfDs, let me give some thought to my response before posting it. Both to allow your page to breathe, and to fashion a more thoughtful one. I'm interested in exploring ways in which we might improve/streamline the process, whether through additions to our notability guideline or otherwise.

Oh, lest I forget. The circumstances here. I (and you) believe the mall is non-notable. I prod it. You delete the prod, but tag it for a merge discussion. The article creator deletes your merge tag. ... Now, I still think it non-notable, and am in favor of deletion (still) though I would be fine w/redirect or merge (my main point being it does not meet our notability requirements, and thus should not be a stand-alone article). I agree with the creator that adding the delete tag likely -- per his comment and the above -- would simply add it to a 16,000-odd merge-suggested backlog, which seems unhelpful as those seem to languish (again, per the above) for 3+ years. What is your suggestion? Should I now, given my thinking, take it to AfD?

Best, as always. --Epeefleche (talk) 19:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

We have those streamlined ways already. If anything positive has come out of your AfD spree for schools, it is that where the 'redirect' closures far outnumber the 'delete', it serves once more to reinforce the long standing precedent that is followed by those who know about it. Non notable schools do not a toxic redirect make, and I am surprised that after ten years and 5,000 pages of policies guidelines, and essays, some information pages, such as those that state in an accepted banner "While this essay is not a policy or guideline itself, it is intended to supplement Wikipedia:Deletion policy", that these exceptions are still disputed. It is not logical that an AfD can be closed on a consensus that conflicts with policy, but it happens. Precedents, like the uncodified common law of Britain, should be respected. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

However, there is a unsolved question, which is how to handle a disputed merge., both in case where there is a real objection to the merge, and in cases like these, where nobody can seriously object. I have repeated suggested changing Articles for Deletion into Articles for Discussion, where these would go, and a request for a merge would be as legitimate as a request for a deletion. It was passed once or twice, but not impleeted due to the difficulty of changing all the templates & my own failure to follow up promptly enough. It remains the best solution. The alternative I prefer is to bring them there anyway, either following the fundamental rule of IAR, which is another way of stating WP is NOT A BUREAUCRACY, or my preferred alternative of evading the need to use IAR in most cases, by using NOT BUREAUCRACY creatively, by asking for "merge, or alternatively, delete" instead of the more usual way, delete, with alternative of merging. The other is the traditional article talk page discussion. notified not as a policy RfC, which is always asking for anywahere from 3 to ∞ months of discussion usually getting nowhere, but a discussion on a particular group of merges--say, 5 shopping malls in New zealand. DGG ( talk ) 06:28, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

There is of course the possibility of simply applying a merge template to any individual article. If the merge proposal has not received any response after a reasonable time (and many won't because such articles are mainly created by SPA who never return) the proposer can BRD and go ahead with his/her merge & redirect. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:49, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Of course, for the ones that are not defended. But this is a technique capable of great abuse, and I will not use it in a controversial situation--or one that might become controversial if attention were called to it. It's been the technique of those trying to destroy content about fiction: first merge the articles, then reduce the content in the merged articles into a single short paragraph, then turn it into a bare list, then remove the redirect on the basis it does not link to anything substantial. But I do not consider elementary school merges as controversial, and I do place such merge tags. I've tried it with shopping malls, but it seems they get watched.

More generally, it is more important that we not remove information someone may find of value, than that we keep out everything that is valueless. The only material necessary to remove is that which contributes negative value. The only valid objection against our becoming a directory is that it degrades the worth of what is important; my feeling is that if it avoids the negative effects of promotionalism and nonsense, it's much less of a priority than removing the pervading promotionalism and out of date information in the encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 04:09, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Coomer Lake among others: Geographic notability

I see that you've deprodded the 4 lake articles I created under the guise of WP:NGEO. I created all 4 of these (among a host of others) in my early days on Wikipedia. I reviewed them the other day and I realized how insubstantial they are. For example, Coomer Lake is a small residential lake adjoining a neighborhood. I've seen unnamed duck ponds that would compare. The others are similarly nonnotable. As you know, NGEO is also just an essay not a guideline.

I actually do think that there is inherent notability for most geographical features, but obviously there's some limit to this. The tributary that forms during a heavy rain in my back yard is not notable. I realize the USGS database is a tempting brightline, but... and I'm speaking from experience here... articles like the 4 I created years ago, and am reviewing now, are the perfect example of how that criteria alone isn't enough. And on that note, they don't even begin to have sources beyond the trivial listings in atlases, maps, and.... the USGS geo names database.

I'm not trying to remove useful content here, but these articles are 1 line stubs, if you can even call them stubs. If I saw these created today I'd certainly prod them. I'm frankly a little confused about your objection to their removal. I think in most cases I could get away with a G7 on all of them since I'm the only one who ever added content to them. I'm open to discussion of course, but these don't have any potential for growth beyond what's already there largely because they're simply not notable.

I've created dozens of geographical articles, most of which are notable, but in my early zeal I went too far and I'm trying to correct that now. I find it strangely hilarious that my own prods are being removed now, 3 years later. Shadowjams (talk) 10:56, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I noticed that also, but after I deprodded. You could technically G7, yes, and I thought of it. But what I really should have done is simply redirected/merged a line to the town or whatever. Isn't that what the essay WP:N (Geography) suggests in exactly such cases, where there's no more information? Though technically just as essay, I think it reflects current practice. That way, someone who looks it up will at least known whre it is. (One's in a park, so perhaps the park should be the article., and if it too is insignificant, included in the town article, e.g. The town has several parks, including Park X, which contains lake Y., ...) DGG ( talk ) 14:15, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

That's a really good idea... I'm actually surprised I didn't know about that. I'll do that in the future cases. Thanks. Shadowjams (talk) 19:07, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Notability in general

Preliminaries

I would be interested in your reaction to my thoughts, expressed here. Please note -- I gather you misconstrued them; they are not at all a criticism of you.--Epeefleche (talk) 07:17, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

certainly I interpret them not as a criticism of me, but of my position on how to handle AfDs in general and school articles in particular. tThis will need to be continued later, but there are several issues involved: multiple rapidly-spaced AfDs , use of Prod in preference to deletion, when prods expected to be contested should be taken to AfD, the present state of our school article compromise, whether I still support the school compromise, and what my position would be if it failed. That last point gets especially complicated, because it involves our general handling of local organizations, and I am undecided between two radically different alternatives, I am probably going to post your comment, and then post my responses to the various issues separately. It will take a while. DGG ( talk ) 16:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I am as always interested in your thoughts, and they promise to be quite interesting, and will of course naturally lead to a number of related issues. Ones I would suggest we not lose sight of might well include how we encourage clean-up of articles that have been tagged for notability or for zero references for years but still remain, whether we might introduce a speedy-like process for redirects of existing content (in which someone approves the redirect), the costs-benefits of redirects vs. deletes, how to address the merger backlog, and a possible notability guideline for schools (should we have one, why don't we have one, what might it say), to name a few.--Epeefleche (talk) 18:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Even though it's how we got started on this round, the notability of schools is not the most important problem on your list. I'm going to add a related one which is even more important, and harder than any of the others: how do we deal with the 1+ million Wikipedia articles that need revision?

There is, however, one or two simple things to say: First, if they pass speedy, redirect is always better than delete, if a redirect is possible. The ones where a redirect is not possible are the trivial organizations or individual where there's no higher body to redirect to. (The exception, as always, is sometimes for BLP do no harm where we need to get the name out of the indexes). Even for copyvio, there's delete and then redirect the title. Second, the common thread here is what should we do when we know we need something done, but do not have the people to do it properly? There are two possible answers. One is to restrict the articles to what we can deal with properly--the course I'm told the deWP is taking. Unfortunately, the interests of the English speakers are such that this would only lose us yet more editors, in a declining spiral. It also loses us our key virtue: that we're comprehensive. Our methods will never let us really be accurate, but we can be comprehensive. Citizendium would have been a nice complement to us, if they had been able to attract enough people. The other solution is to get more editors, and that means encouraging beginners to write on otherwise trivial topics. Like even elementary schools. It also means changing our culture--see the item below. DGG ( talk ) 22:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I see from what I have been writing that I cannot answer your questions without treating more fundamental questions also; it will be a rather long essay. I am writing it in sections, and may soon move it elsewhere.

The Basis of Inclusion

General note

I am proposing things only within the bounds of the fundamental policies: Wikipedia is a comprehensive modern uncensored online encyclopedia, part of the free content movement, free to everyone to use and re-use, where material is verified, written from a neutral point of view, respects copyrights, and tries to do no harm to living individuals; anyone may edit, but we do not engage in personal attacks, treat all editors as equals, and determine the rules by consensus, making exceptions as necessary for the benefit of the encyclopedia.the English Wikipedia, though written in English, has universal coverage with respect to space, time, and medium of expression.

There are good reasons to have web encyclopedias with other principles, but they should be kept separate from Wikipedia. We have a new idea that successful beyond anyone's expectations, and we should extend these principles as long and as widely as possible, and not risk losing what we have accomplished. Anyone disagreeing with them should work within our limits or work elsewhere. I'll be glad to give my opinion on the merits and disadvantages of each of these, but that's not part of the present discussion.

1. The general principle of inclusion.

There are two reasons for a policy of limited inclusion. First, if we carry inclusiveness to the limit, and discuss all individual people and organizations, we risk verifiability and NPOV, leaving ourselves open to promotionalism. Second, thee is a general public expectation that an encyclopedia include only what is in some way important, and the reputation for quality depends on meeting the expectation. Though on the web there is no limit to the amount of material that can be managed, beyond a certain point even its inclusion raises questions of credibility.

Still, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to provide information, and we aim at providing whatever information anyone might reasonably expect--this has very wide boundaries, and the limits must include everyone's expectations. No two people will agree on the limits, and if we interpret consensus to include only what everyone wishes included, we will have only an abridged encyclopedia. Some see no point in having information of medieval rules whee little is known beyond the names and dates; some see no reason not have coverage of some aspects of contemporary culture. Some have no interest in politicians below the national level; some have no interest in uncommon plants or animals. Nobody has interest in every sport or every form of music or every type of book; nobody has interest in the geography of all regions. We can either cover only what everybody has interest in, or include all the possibilities. Since in web format people need not carry around the paper of an encyclopedia that covers material they do not care about, nobody can reasonably object to its inclusion. we tolerate others interests so we can tolerate our own.

Inclusion, as an applied problem

Here's where things get difficult. If there are 5 billion people, and 1/5 of them are in school, and the average size of a school is 500, then there are two million schools. We have the space to cover them, if we have people to write them. There are probably an equal number of other public local institutions, and a similar number of local businesses. There are probably a million at least of sports teams. About one million books a year are published. There are probably tens of millions of living people who have done something of some importance in their life, and only a small minority of the people every alive are living today. We could cover them. The software is capable of it. there will not be information on all, but after somewhere between 1900 and 2000, there will be documentation for most of them.

We can try to find some manner of discriminating between the ones we do cover and do not, but this will be arbitrary. We though we had a clever idea, of making the distinction at the point where there were two or more reliable sources with substantial coverage. This only sounds clever: on most subjects it does not correspond to common sense. For much of the world, those things clearly notable have one good source at most; for some topics, everything notable or not has two or many more. We have dealt with this by juggling the definition of the key phrases, "substantial coverage" and "reliable sources". Assuming any sources at all, I or anyone experience in the art can construct an argument for including or including almost anything by a sufficient dextrous juggle, and policy-based reasons both for including or excluding almost anything can be presented.

We currently judge by consensus at WP:AFD, that is, consensus of the policy-based arguments. Any experienced closer knows how to disguise a super-vote as a evaluation of which arguments are based on consensus. But since consensus there is in any case a matter of chance, a question of and who has the energy and determination, almost any way of deciding there is equally invalid. I spend a lot of time there, and I know the system: I defend what I think should be in Wikipedia; I oppose whatWikipedia I thing should not. It's a global judgement, no matter how I may word it to fit in with the expected rhetorical style. . DGG ( talk ) 22:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Class assignment: Supreme Court cases

Hi, I just prodded an two line article on a Supreme Court case then when I went to warn the creator ( I saw that you had speedied a previous version with some advice here. Obviously I don't know if anything came of your advice but what's up there now doesn't seem notable to me and I'm not aware of anything that makes SC decisions automatically notable. Most might be but not every one? NtheP (talk)

the current opinion is that all US SC decision are notable, because they set the unquestioned national precedent. . Certainly all modern cases are, because the court deals very selectively with only the most important cases, and including the 1998 decision in question here. There might be some question for the period before the Evarts Act was passed in 1891, since until that time the court was not able to be selective: it had to hear any properly appealed case, however unimportant. But even for that period, no such articles has been deleted at AfD and I would argue very strongly for continuing that practice; the number is finite, and we're not paper, and an encyclopedic article can be written about every one of them.

This article as submitted is however a special case, My deletion was for being essentially empty. It was a one sentence article that did not even include the fact it was a supreme court case, not even in the title. The entire contents was "This case challenges the legality of citizenship in the United States for children born out of the United States when one parent is of legal citizenship." Now, perhaps that was a little pointy of me, because I did recognize the case from the title & I could have added it.

This and similar articles are being submitted in response to an assignment offering a certainly number of points of credit in a course for adding any article in Wikipedia. Attempts to get a dialog started over this have not been successful. I intend to try once more. I am trying to think how. I am going to delete as a test edit (A2) using IAR; I do not like using IAR as a speedy reason, but I think this is a permissible instance, which the rules do not otherwise cover, because such articles damage the encyclopedia, and I see no other way of getting communication started about them. Do you think you could help me by trying to find any others that have been submitted this way? Of course, any admin who disagrees with me can revert after notifying me, as with any of my deletions, and anyone who thinks I have exceeded my authority can take it to AN or AN/I, and I will go by the consensus. DGG ( talk ) 18:47, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, DGG: I did a search on user pages and found several users with very similar user page statements - but the first one I checked out was listed at Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Intro to Political Theory (Edward Erikson)/Students and started work on United States v. Valenzuela-Bernal in October 2011. Perhaps the single-sentence ones are the ones who've left the year's assignment until deadline week? PamD 19:09, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

It seems you are right. The other articles are generally much better. At least equally important, the advice given to them was correct, to write the first draft in a sandbox, and not add it until it was several paragraphs and had been checked. I've looked now, and a few others added sub-minimal outlines instead, but most seem to have followed the instructions. (Obviously, in any course, a few students will perform inadequately, but it's surprisingly few in this case--they seem almost all of them be doing very well.) Fortunately, I had not yet gotten around to deleting this one. I will instead leave an appropriate message. Pam, I thank you for checking what I should have checked myself, and I feel rather ashamed of my carelessness.— Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs) 19:31, 29 February 2012

Thanks for the clarification about SC decisions. This side of the Atlantic isn't as clear cut and not every decision of the UK Supreme Court or prior to that the judicial committee of the House of Lords would necessarily meet the notability criteria. The majority would for the same reasons as US ones but not all. It looks like class assignments should have been listed at Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Intro to American Political Thought (Edward Erikson)/Articles but not have or they have the grammar and syntax wrong. The others I've seen seem fine. If you want to remove my PROD feel free. NtheP (talk) 20:14, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually , I disagree about the UK also, Appeal in the UK is discretionary in almost all cases, and was so long before it was in the US. (I know that was the case as far back as the 18th c., but I do not know about earlier). So the same reason would hold, Are there any AfDs to the contrary, because if so, I want to revisit them, probably by writing a new article that more clearly shows the notability. Similarly, I have always considered that all public Acts of either the US or UK legislatures were notable, though I agree this does not necessarily or even normally apply to all bills that are not enacted. (Presumably the same is the case in other jurisdictions also, depending on their procedures). I think the general idea behind my opinion is the concept that matters of the highest level in anything are notable. We can't always determine what the highest level is, but in this topic we can.) DGG ( talk ) 20:47, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I've not seen any articles deleted at AfD relating to UK decisions. The reason there may be a few cases that would escape is where there are subsequent proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights where the case would have to have reached the UK SUpreme Court before the ECHR proceedings can have begun. But I admit this is almost a hypothetical situation. What I do think there is, is a gross under reporting of UK cases on Wikipedia, chiefly I suspect because there isn't as convenient a tool as supreme.justia.com NtheP (talk) 21:26, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 April 28 (Sports Events)

Is it worth a post at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) to see the level of support or not there is to extending the scope of the encyclopaedia to cover all top level professional sports events ? As if there is support the work, pain and disruption at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mixed martial arts/MMA notability would be for nothing. Mtking ^(edits) 03:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

We should look at the general problem first. I have no idea if there is consensus for a change. If there is such consensus, then the furore over this particular sport will have served very usefully to get the discussion going and bring about the change the community desires. If there is not such consensus, then the determination that there is not, will be a good first step in dealing with this particular sport. In practical terms, there is such a strong interest group here for this sport that they have the potential to swamp individual decisions unless the general community is involved. I strongly think that we are all part of one encyclopedia project, and that our specific standards require general agreement. The decision to cover athletics particularly strongly or weakly, or a particular sport more or less than others, has to be with the explicit or tacit approval of us all. An example is the recent discussions involving PORNBIO, where the general community has I think made it clear that the previous permissive standard for inclusion no longer has general support. Whether I think something should be covered in great detail or not, it's not practical to renew the general question over every individual article. I would rather have an accepted standard I didn't actually agree with, than argue continually. We're here to write an encyclopedia , not argue over how an encyclopedia should be written. We need some meta-discussion of how to do the work and what work to do, but it shouldn't overwhelm us to the point that it interferes with doing the actual work. DGG ( talk ) 03:25, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we will have to get a larger consensus, it is the only way that changes will ever happen. Part of what I've been trying to do is to develop a set of core ideas that the contributors at the MMA articles can agree on, so a more comprehensive and clear objective can be put forth to the community as a whole. Jumping to an RfC too quickly without a clear goal and at least a rough consensus will just make it messier. I'm preparing for it to be ugly (ie: socks) when it does happen, but the better prepared we all our, and the clearer the objective is, the more likely that it will succeed. I have been quite impressed with how effectively the admins around here can flesh out socks and deal with disruptions in general discussions. Whatever the consensus eventually becomes, hopefully the questions can be answered for good. Or at least for a while. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 21:55, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I think the current AfDs show we're beyond the point of trying to resolve it by discussion among just those interest in MMA. I think we can better see what the opinion is about a basic change in the overall guideline for sports events when divorced from the particular MMA issue. I'm in a bit of a quandary her about the general guideline: I think Wikipedia disproportionately covers sports as it is, but perhaps this is just my personal lack of interest, which I should not impose on others. And based on our general principles of what we include, I can see no basis to cover them at the level of individual events. (I'd also consider accepting articles on events, but strengthening the criteria for individual athletes to significant participation, not mere professional appearance.) Anyone who wants to carry it further is welcome. If anyone raises an rfc I will make a comment, but otherwise I'm really not all that interested. There are things I care about more, that urgently need attention. DGG ( talk ) 22:07, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

You and I strongly agree as to the criteria. Currently, a footballer who plays in one game is "automatically" notable, whereas a professor has to jump through many more hoops to qualify. Part of the issue is coverage. Newspapers cover sports because there are many who buy them solely for the sports coverage. It doesn't mean sports are more notable, only more marketable, and ignores the greater impact on society. We need to find a way to level the playing field, if you will pardon the expression. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 22:14, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The way I have usually tried to level the coverage in Wikipedia is by trying to cover the weaker topics at the same level as the ones we cover more intensively. There are others who want to increase the overall required level for BLPs; I wish to have the same broad and inclusive coverage for all. This still leaves open the possibility than some areas may be covered too intensively, but the only place I have supported doing this so far for BLPs is Pornbio, because the article tend to verge on TABLOID, and I am getting pretty sick of our flirting with that level--our rather hypocritical flirting at that, for it's very hard to establish articles with serious information on sexual practices. Everywhere else where I accept restriction is really in the nature of a compromise, for in most cases I prefer any reasonable compromise to continual argumentation.

The ultimate compromise, and what I really would suggest is a 'Wikipedia Two - an encyclopedia supplement where the standard of notability is much relaxed, but which will be different from Wikia by still requiring WP:Verifiability, and WP:NPOV. It would include the lower levels of barely notable articles in Wikipedia, and the upper levels of a good deal of what we do not let in.

It would for example include both high schools and elementary schools. It would include college athletes. It would include political candidates. It would include neighborhood businesses, and fire departments. It would include individual asteroids. It would include anyone who had a credited role in a film, or any named character in one--both the ones we currently leave out, and the ones we put in. It would include every game in a season.

This should satisfy both the inclusionists and the deletionists. The deletionists would have this material out of Wikipedia, the inclusionists would have it not rejected. Newcomers would have an open and accepting place for a initial experience.

But it would be interesting to see a search option: Do you want to see everything (WP+WP2), or only the notable (WP)? Anyone care to guess which people would choose? DGG ( talk ) 22:32, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

• Speaking only from someone that has a background in marketing, I would guess the default selection, as most are just trying to find the information and don't bother to read the fine details or click anything except "search". Since we are stepping into wiki-heresy, I might as well ask: How would you differentiate WP1 from WP2 on a given page? How would I know that the article I'm looking at was WP1 "approved", and nearly WP2 "acceptable"? Banners? Background color? Warnings? Would people care? Does that drag down the overall average quality of Wikipedia or improve it? Would we have a new discussion board to decide when an article is unfairly rated WP2? Do all articles start at WP2? I guess I'm trying to see how serious you are about this. An interesting theoretical discussion, although I lack enough information to have an opinion on it. Now, I HAVE thought about a "Sportapedia" with similar goals, but Wikipedia would just offer results from both WP and SP, and link you over to completely different but somewhat integrated website. Kind of like wiktionary or commons. Then only the clearly notable stuff would be here, and might could be mirrored over to SP. I had not thought about it enough to answer most of the questions, however. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 22:55, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I have thought for a while that there should be a wikimedia project for sports "wikisports" for want of a name, which (if they use cc-by-sa) could take all of WP's sports related content as a starting point and develop from there and WP could retain the articles that are truly encyclopaedic. Mtking ^(edits) 23:03, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't really think its a good idea to divide up Wikipedia by subject, this is supposed to be a general encyclopedia.  ::Actually, my really preferred solution is to keep WP as general and amateur and inclusive as possible, and have a separate encyclopedia that would aim for high quality reliable content on things worth the effort. It couldn't be prepared the same way Wikipedia is, because it would require review by knowledgable people, and some sort of centralized editorial control to maintain standards, though the contributions to it would still be open. There is a project with such goals, Citizendium, and I joined it at the same time I joined Wikipedia, as one of its original group of editors (by which they mean people who approve article content). It still persists, though I am no longer active. I consider it failed, doomed by excessive bureaucracy, by the failure to have a central authority whose decisions would be worthy of being respected, and by having initially an incompatible license with Wikipedia. Perhaps at this level subject encyclopedias are in the end more practical, because they can be done under the auspices of existing reputable organizations. At the amateur level, we want to collect all the amateurs--and the addvantage of this is the wide variety of fields most of us work in. DGG ( talk ) 23:15, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

But to divide it up by perceived levels of notability is not without problems as well. Almost like "Wikipedia" and "Wikipedia Lite", or perhaps better stated as "Wikipedia" and "Wikipedia Major" or some other term that simply escapes me right now, if the regular Wikipedia allows everything. Not saying that is a bad thing, but the potential problems with logistics and politics makes my head hurt. Now I'm more confused than ever. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 23:29, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Of course the possibilities are confusing. We've made something that has never been done before--the new factor is not the availability of revolutionary technology, but the mental revolution in the use of communication media that the technology has facilitated. There is no reason to think progress stops here, and necessarily the way to go from here is not obvious, or we'd be already doing it. The key feature of our model is the trust in amateurism, the fundamental concept of crowd-sourcing. We should do what can be done that way. What cannot, is for others. What I see is our danger, is being submerged by apparatus. Where I see that danger coming from, is not as much the apparatus-obsessed people on WP, but the WMF, who think the solution to problems is an ever-increasing number of professionals. DGG ( talk ) 02:16, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. I hadn't looked into the deeper political issues here before now. At a different level and one I have considered, I worry that "professional admins" run off a lot of good amateur writers, which is why I get involved at ANI and in disputes, to prevent people from getting ham-fisted or piling on. It is a way I think I can actually benefit the project. I have a higher tolerance for mild rudeness (short of personal attacks) than other admins, so I overlook two editors equally being being rude and simply focus on the solution. Sometimes, you need to allow a little heat to get things done. I see too much blocking for heated discourse that is unnecessary, turning people off of staying here, and removing any chance of them improving enough to become the next excellent contributor. It is easier to block than discuss, particularly if you block one side of the discussion that was baited. Earlier, a quality editor told me to "bite him" and reamed me out at ANI. Instead of getting mad at him, I went to his talk page, apologized for the misunderstanding, then he came to mine and thanked me, telling me that I was the first admin that ever reached out to him in the 5 years he has been here. I was flabbergasted. Not the same thing you are talking about, but there are some interesting parallels that run throughout this bureaucracy that isn't a bureaucracy. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 18:32, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Ambassadors

Could you show me where it says ambassadors are automatically notable because. Bgwhite (talk) 07:40, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)I'll be interested in that ... I PRODded someone recently who was ambassador to several countries but didn't seem to pass WP:DIPLOMAT,which seems to say that being an ambassador per se is not enough for notability. He was unPRODded after more content was added, don't know whether it's the person you're concerned with or not (current Thai ambassador to US I seem to remember). PamD 11:54, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, found him, Chaiyong Satjipanon, and I see Bgwhite has been there recently too. PamD 12:04, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

All that is needed to remove a prod is a disagreement that it should be deleted without a community discussion. Prods are for deletions that nobody is expected to contest. The way I judge it, is that it's the highest level of the profession. If you want to go by GNG, I would not rule it out without looking for sources in the country the person is accredited to as well as that which he comes from. In the past we've made the distinction between ambassadors who are notable, and consuls, who are not usually. As always, the community will either agree with me, or not. DGG ( talk ) 16:12, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I deProded Chaiyong Satjipanon because being the ambassador to six nations, including the United States, would appear to be notable. I also found some Thai refs.

The one I did prod was an ambassador to Uganda and was a career civil servant. I highly respect DGG's opinions and have many written down as reference. However, deProdding with the edit summary saying "Ambassadors are notable" is misleading. Ambassadors are not automatically notable, especially where the majority of ambassadors for the U.S are political appointments who donated the most to a campaign. I have no problem with stating in the edit summary that you believe this person is notable, but don't say "Ambassadors are notable" as it sounds like Wikipedia policy. Bgwhite (talk) 00:15, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

What I say in an edit summary when I deprod is the reason i deprodded. it is not intended as a statement of policy. I consider ambassadors notable; I can't say consensus would support this 100% of the time, for consensus at AfD can depend on how carefully the matter is researched & argued—and on who happens to show up. I see no reason why an ambassador to the US should be more notable than an ambassador from the US -- or indeed any pair of countries. Checking, it seems about half the US ambassadors are career civil servants; the others are political or civic or business figures who are often even more notable for their outside careers. DGG ( talk ) 00:39, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Notability for products and companies

You have been mentioned at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avaya Application Server 5300 Ottawahitech (talk) 14:49, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

And mentioned very rightly. These are examples of the series of deletions trying to remove all coverage of the products of the Ayaya corporation, a $5 billion annual revenue telecom firm split from Lucent. If they were done being brought by experienced editors here, I would have though it hostility towards this company, a type of vandalism that has been rather frequently seen, and is now being engaged in mutually by sockpuppets from two universities on opposite coasts of the US. Rather, I think it an obviously good faith attempt to alter the content policies of Wikipedia, which of course anyone has the right to try. Bringing AfDs is an accepted method for trying to see what the degree of support is likely to be. (Personally, I would have brought fewer at a slower pace, but this is not so blatantly unreasonable as some deletion sprees.)

The apparent goal would seem to remove WP coverage of all major physical products and product lines by major companies, or , that failing, reduce not just products but lines of business to single lines on a list, leaving but one article for the entire company and everything it does. Alternately, the goal might be to remove all information ultimately deriving from a company, which amounts to almost the same thing. conceivably its rigid adherence to the misunderstood letter-of-the law about the GNG, as if it were a fundamental invariable policy like Not Censored, rather than its actual state as a very general guideline with many exceptions; and ignoring the purpose of notability guidelines, which is to rationally sort out what is worth an encyclopedia article.

I do not normally support individual product articles except for very notable products; most should be merged into combination articles on the product line- but merged in a way to preserve, not destroy, the information. The article about every commercial and noncommercial organization, or every creative person, or every political and religious concept, serves in some extent to promote it by providing accurate information about it. We have enough problem with the true advertising and promotionalism for all of these, promotionalism which magnifies importance, while providing a minimum of actual information. All relevant WP policy and guidelines are designed to permit and indeed encourage neutral description.

I look forward to WP not just reversing all previous deletions and over-merges of these products, but the much harder & longer job of writing them for the hundreds of thousands of products in all fields of commerce and technology for which we need articles . Our model is Diderot and D'alemberts Encyclopedie, famous in the eighteenth century and still in ours for the detailed description and illustrations of technology of the period--and the long continued detailed coverage of technology in succeeding encyclopedias.

I am here hours a day trying to remove promotionalism from the encyclopedia, and instruct writers with possible COI how to do it properly. There's an enormous amount of it. Mistaken interpretations like this do not help--they use time and effort that would is critically needed for removing the real junk, and in writing good articles. I'm no inclusionist about spam--I've deleted about 5,000 spam articles about products and organizations. DGG ( talk ) 20:13, 11 December 2012 (UTC

• @DGG, you are doing a great service to Wikipedia, thank you!

It is not easy to determine what this drive to eliminate what is mostly Nortel articles is motivated by. But, to me at least, it is becoming rather clear that it is not all in good faith. How else do you explain the fact that even though I have brought up, time and again, that Nortel is a defunct company, the same people who magically appear in all these deletion discussions keep voting Delete because of spam, do not seem to understand that a defunct company by definition is not in the promotionalism category? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:10, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

True, it does sound absurd, but promotionalism is a very broad concept--the company has successors, who manufacture similar products. And there is probably even a market for used ones. Hobbyists could still write an article on, say, the Apple I in a promotional manner, because they so much like it. The reason these articles are not spam is because they are informative not promotional--the true question, which is open to good-faith argument, is how much detail belongs in the encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 20:19, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

2013

Local interest topics

Hi DGG, I noticed on some AfD's that you believe local interest topics are not suitable for inlcusion in Wikipedia, and I'm wondering why. When you find the time, I'd love to hear your reasoning. I think they are, on the same account that - for example - articles on insect subspecies should be included. They may be of interest to just a small group of people, but they are of interest. I quite often fidn your reasonings comelling though, so I look forward to hearing how I am wrong on this one! Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:01, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

this will take till tomorrow, for I want to give a full explanation; it's been a while since I last wrote it out, & I want it to represent my current view. But as a starting point, using your example, I think you probably meant insect species, not sub-species. I would not support articles on most insect sub-species--we will have enough work to do with the actual 900,000 known full species. (and the estimated 10 times that number that have yet to be identified). The subspecies should be handled the way anything but the most highly specialist books handle them: as part of the article for the species. There will of course be exceptions, when the particular subspecies has been much studied. DGG ( talk ) 21:08, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem, take your time - good is more important than fast. The reason why I think we should include it, by the way, is point one of the five pillars: "It incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers" (emphasis mine). Now I realise that 'it incorporates elements of' doesn't mean 'it should include everything in', though if it is verifiable I don't yet see any objection to including it, and including it does seem to further our mission. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:24, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

from my holiday address (greetings from Koh Pha Ngan. You may be jealous now) a polite ping. 180.183.220.31 (talk) 09:01, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't mean to rush you, but have the feeling you may have missed this. So a quick second ping. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:17, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

your comments at the Malafa AfD

I really appreciated your thoughtful reply. I think that rationale is similar to what bothers me about these poorly sourced construction/building articles i've been nominating for deletion; many of them rely on forum pages for their referencing, and if they really were notable that wouldn't be necessary. That's a higher standard, strictly speaking, than WP:N, and I'm getting my proverbial ass handed to me ratio-wise for that reason, i think. there are territorial issues coming out that are interesting as well, but that's another discussion.

One thing I am particularly interested in, though, is rooting out the bad articles and the bad actors. When an article is CSD'd as promotional, non-admins can no longer go back and look at its history to see who created it, or did the most work on it, cross reference dates and times, etc. And unfortunately, it sounds like the only way to get the ability to look at those sorts of things is to get the mop. personally, I really don't think I'm up for that sort of responsibility at the moment for a number of reasons, but i find it curious that there's no permission like e.g. rollbacker to allow folks to do this sort of research.

I have other thoughts on the nature of this endeavor, etc, but i'll spare you them for now. partly i wanted to say that i appreciated what you said, and partly i wanted to gripe, i guess. anyway, thanks. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 04:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

If this particular article is deleted, I will have no hard feelings. But I think we have lots of articles with input by COI editors, but in most cases, especially high profile articles, experienced NPOV editors are watching and reverting COI edits.

When you nominate for deletion articles about giant malls covered by reliable sources for decades, and stand your ground when reliable sources pour in, your credibility with active AfD participants is bound to suffer. But I will support your well-founded nominations any time. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:57, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

"in most cases, especially high profile articles, experienced NPOV editors are watching and reverting COI edits." -- I have not found this to be true except on the highest of high profile articles.

as an example: Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center had what looks like pretty consistently good but not huge pageview numbers. 80+ per day would actually be pretty great for a non-WP advertising website. and until i took an axe to it it was composed almost entirely of unreferenced PR nonsense.

I do not recognize the "it's been here for a long time, therefore it's notable" excuse. that has put me at odds with other editors on a number of occasions. but i've also, in my short time here, seen enough to indicate to me that that really is not a valid justification for keeping an article. when an article is an orphan, or has limited inbound links and 0-5 views per day, for instance, that excuse cannot possible be used to justify the keeping of an article. the flip side of the coin that, as far as i can tell is never mentioned, is that if not saying anything is justification for keeping an article, then after a few years someone should have stumbled across it and, if it were truly notable, added some reliable sourcing that would help said article establish GNG.

But noone makes that argument, apparently.

-- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 08:21, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• My own comprehensive response to this is forthcoming. DGG ( talk ) 15:33, 29 August 2013 (UTC) (see below)

(talk page stalker) The level of activity from disinterested editors depends on how interesting the topic is to Wikipedia's editor demographic, not how important the subject is. However, larger companies may - in some cases - be more likely to be a topic of interest to more editors. OTOH, many consumers but few CEOs edit Wikipedia, so a consumer company like Symantec is more likely to be closely watched than an enterprise software company in the same revenue category. CorporateM (Talk) 02:11, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The followings is not a comprehensive response, but I wish to at least stay something: disagree that a re

1. That there is relatively low interest in a subject is not a grounds for deletion. That there is relatively little current interest is a particular poor grounds. This is an encyclopedia--a work of permanent record, recording whatever is notable, whether currently or in the past. Page view numbers are not the standard: if an article is used once a year by somebody it's presence is justified on the grounds of helping users: the relevant policy, one reflecting the technological basis that makes WP possible , is NOT PAPER.
2. That WP will reflect the interests of the contributors is inevitable. But as an encyclopedia it should try to compensate for the imbalance to some degree. I interpret NOT DIRECTORY as meaning that we do not include directory information in a non-selective indiscriminate manner: I think we should include directory information as a starting point for articles for organizations above a certain size, which may well vary by industry. The possibility of doing it in a systematic manner is greater than it used to be, because of the possibilities given by wikidata: it is now quite feasible to enter basic information about geographic and political entities and also people and organizations in a standardized form to be use by all WPs; while converting this information into text articles (or accepting infoboxes as article stubs) is not yet an accomplished procedure, but I think will be soon possible. We then need to decide what we want to use. But expanding such articles beyond stubs will depend on local interests: an example familiar to me is the very different amount of information given here for different universities.
3. I consider the GNG a very poor standard for inclusion; it is very indirectly related to any rational meaning of notability, especially because the availability of the limiteed range of sources we consider reliable for the purpose reflects in large part the limited searching interests and abilities of the editors here, and the differences between different subjects. When I first came here 7 years ago I thought it very clever--but I have since then realized that in practical application it is totally dependent upon the meaning of "substantial" and "independent", and we can make whatever arguments we like for these with equal validity. What is kept in any borderline case depends upon the skills of whoever is doing the argument and the prejudices of the immediate audience at the time, rather than upon anything rational. We would do much better having objective determinable standards.
4. The current challenge is to prevent the further corruption of the encyclopedia by promotionalism, and this will be much easier when we remove the existing. I am open to the possibility tat this can best be done by having a relatively stringent standard of notability in some areas. Though as I've just argued, we could build articles on very minor subjects by accepting directory content, we'd then still face the challenge of keeping promotionalism from getting added to them. An encyclopedia with variable coverage is merely an incomplete encyclopedia; an encyclopedia containing advertising is unreliable and worthless. DGG ( talk ) 05:43, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Notability/ promotionalism

Hi DGG, You've nominated several of my articles for deletion or speedy deletion. I'm always careful to write neutrally and cite everything that I write. Obviously, I think the topics that I choose are notable, but you disagree with me on some points. I find the notability guidelines to be somewhat vague, so if a topic has enough information written about it in newspapers, magazines, or similar media to create a short article, then I go ahead and create one. Is there some other measure or guideline that you're using to determine notability? Are there a certain number of sources that you look for, or does a magazine need a certain amount of circulation? Guidance is appreciated. Thanks, HtownCat (talk) 17:52, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I rather expected to hear from you, and I've delayed nominating further articles until I could see your response. There are two separate but linked problems in articles about organizations, their leaders, and their products: notability and promotionalism:

The basic problem of promotionalism is that WP is addressed to the potential readers, giving them the information they might want to know upon seeing mention of a subject (for example, at the most basic, where is that company and what does the company do?, or which organization is that & what do they advocate? ). A promotional article is addressed to a prospective user or purchaser or supporter: This is what we do, and here is why it is valuable that you buy our products or support our endeavors. Encyclopedia articles are characterised by plain description, promotional ones by praise, or the sort of detail one would need only if one is considering a purchase. Promotional articles are intended to give a favorable image of the company, such as describing its ostensible social purposes or community contributions.

the basic problem of notability is deciding whether something is worth describing in an encyclopedia at all. It doesn't correspond to importance in the world, but to whether it should be included in WP--we can;t after all judge the world, but we must decide what we want to put in our encyclopedia. . In a few cases we go by a general decision--for example, the decision that all named populated places are appropriate for articles. In some others, we go by outside evaluation: for example, that a holder of a distinguished professorship at a major university is notable, or someone chosen to compete in the Olympics. In many cases, there are no such firm standards, and we go by the WP:GNG, the general notability guideline, which requires substantial coverage by multiple independent third party reliable sources. (some people say this is the only real standard, and everything else is just an assumption of what will meet it). the key words there are "substantial" , "independent" , and "reliable." A substantial source is more than a product listing, or a mention of an event taking place, but a significant discussion, such as a full product review. How substantial it must be is of course a matter of judgment, which is decided by consensus at WP:AFD. An independent source is one not derived from the subject--not the subject's web page of product literature, or what its principals write, or the press releases the put out. A reliable source is one using editorial judgment, rather than simply publishing press releases or gossip. Again, these terms are matters of judgement to be decided at consensus.

In all but extreme cases. nobody can predict accurately how consensus will go--I will nominate an article for deletion if I think there is a substantial probability that it will not be considered suitable, --but even after 7 dears of experience at it , sometimes I am wrong, either because I made a misjudgment or because the community wishes to interpret things differently. The community decides, and another administrator judges what the community has decided. Guidelines are necessarily subject to interpretation, and what really matters is how the community decides to interpret them--after all, we make our own rules collectively, and we can decide how we want to use them , and if we want to make exceptions. The best way of learning this is to observe afd discussions on similar topics, to see what arguments succeed, and what the practical standards are.

Some things are deleted immediately, by the concurrence of two administrators, rather than an AfD. One relevant example is blatant promotionalism, which is an article so much devoted to advertising or promoting something that there appears no way to fix it without rewriting. (As an admin, I have the technical ability to do it without concurrence, but I rarely use it unless there is some immediate hazard, such as libel or copyvio) . We also immediately remove articles on people or companies where it seems obvious on the face of it there is no possible indication of any importance or significance, --a much less demanding standard than actual notability,. Again, normally two admins will concur in this. If such deletions are seriously disputed in good faith, most admins will reverse the decision and send the article to AfD for a community opinion.

I said there was a connection between the two: A key reason we have a notability standard is that for most things that are not notable, there is nothing much to say except directory information or promotion. It is critical to WP that it not become a mere directory or a place for advertisement--we want to provide information that people can trust, so we require sources and objectivity and some degree of significance. There are many other places on the web for advertising, and google does very nicely as a web directory.

There are additionally some factors that can affect how people here view an article. We tend to regard an attempt to write simultaneous articles about a borderline notable company, its products, and its executives likely to be an attempt at promotion--it is much better to have one strong article. Also , it is considered possible that someone writing articles about a wide range of barely notable subjects may be doing so as a paid editor. We do not absolutely prohibit this (though many people here would like to do so), but we strongly discourage it, because it is extremely difficult to be objective about what one writes with such a strong conflict of interest. If by any chance you are such an editor, I can explain to you how best to deal with it so as to get the articles accepted--I am one of the relatively few admins here who are willing to assist paid editors who come here openly in good faith and are willing to learn our standards. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 21:29, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your detailed response. If I am not completely sure whether a subject is notable, should I submit it to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation?

I really thought I was careful about keeping promotionalism out of my articles. I would like to improve them, if given the chance. Is there a way that I can edit the deleted articles and then submit them for approval to be posted? I've read something about restoring articles to a userspace, but I'm not sure what the procedure is for that. I absolutely do want to contribute quality articles and nothing that other editors might view as promotional. Thanks for your help. HtownCat (talk) 20:02, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I will take a look next week. You should first check if there are good references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, because otherwise a rewrite is useless. DGG ( talk ) 04:19, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

2015

Notability

Of course you can point out that the argument may benefit me, but I don't think increasing notability requirements is the right way to go. Well, if I had my way, I would consolidate all of them into a single notability guideline of just a few paragraphs, rather than creating unique guidelines for different subject areas. The myriad of guidelines for different subject areas tend to reflect the biases of the community, setting a low bar for reporters, authors and academics, and a higher one for org's and business executives. I rolled my eyes at the reaction when I tried to delete an over-the-top promotional page about an open-source project.

But in any case, what I would suggest is instead that the burden of proof for notability be shifted to the submitter. Right now the AfD nominator is expected to investigate the article-subject's notability before nominating. The burden is that evidence of notability exists, somewhere out in the world, which means tons of research to delete every spammy article about a trivial org. Instead, the requirement should be that the article itself contain evidence of notability and that it be deleted if evidence is not provided in the article, shifting the burden of validating notability to the author, rather than the community. CorporateM (Talk) 20:28, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

The basic WP:GNG guideline is the same for most types of articles, the way it is applied is what varies widely, and it is those differences in appliation which reflects the biases of the community. That's all that I am suggesting: that in dealing with commercial organizations especially we interpret the term reliable sources to not include sources which are dependent on PR. (sources that are straight PR are of course excluded from all areas). I'm not even proposing this as a formal guideline at this point, but I intend to argue at individual cases that some sources, such as local business journals, or reports on funding, be disregarded for showing notability.

Most of the special guidelines are attempts to correct bias, not increase it further: the Athletes guideline, for example, is a way to limit what would otherwise be the overcoverage of college and high school athletes. WP:PROF is away to limit what would otherwise be the great undercoverage of researchers.

What I am suggesting is merely an empirical adjustment in interpretation, not a fundamental revision. My view on how I would truly like to go is entirely opposite to yours: I would eliminate the GNG entirely as too dependent upon interpretation have have guidelines for subjects which truly reflect what is of encyclopedic importance. I am not suggesting this, for the general feeling is opposed to it. (and in practice, it would immediately create a immense number of arguments in particular areas--the virtue is that once it were settled, it would decrease them.)

Establishing the burden of notability is already on the contributors to the article in practice: we almost always do decline articles where nobody can find sources showing notability, except for the correction of parts of the world or topics where this is accepted as particularly difficult. Establishing the rule you suggest would increase our already strongly existing cultural bias. It would also be opposed to the basic principle of WP by which non experts work together to gradually develop articles, by requiring an article be sufficiently well established immediately. It would prevent the formation of articles on many topic areas, including most historical topics except by those with access to research libraries. It would also immensely bias WP in exactly the wrong direction: towards news events, internet phenomena, popular artists, and minor sports figures. DGG ( talk ) 23:08, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm.... - I do not have experience in areas like sports figures, so I am not privy to the circumstances unique to the subject area. I've heard that the German Wikipedia does have revenue requirements for companies to qualify. I think there would be more support for it than you would think. However, I would do something more along the lines of making the assumption that an org is not notable if they are below a certain funding/revenue threshold, allowing for exceptions when there are reliable sources to justify it - as oppose to a hard and fast rule. CorporateM (Talk) 23:53, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I thought about revenue requirements. These depends a great deal upon the part of the world and the industry. The deWP deals with a more homogeneous range of topics than we do. They have been mentioned sometimes in afd discussions for financial companies , for example to explain that under $1billion of assets managed is not a big deal. DGG ( talk ) 00:01, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Notability Journalists, etc.

Was looking into whether Weijia-jiang, a Channel 2 reporter for CBS News, would qualify for a page. I haven't seen anything substantial about her, but I'm also surprised she doesn't have a page already. Journalists, like academics, open-source, or historical societies, fall into one of those categories I feel editors will argue in favor of a page regardless of source material, because their work benefits Wikipedia and there is ::Academics have a fairly clear heirarchy within the profession, and this can be very helpful. Journalists, less so. an enthusiasm to support them here. Then I looked at WP:AUTHOR and was curious how "widely cited by peers or successors" is interpreted. Seems like it would be an extremely easy criteria. On one side of the coin, I'm rolling my eyes that we have so many specialized criteria that appeals to the community's interests, but I also need to provide someone with fair advice on what is considered acceptable on Wikipedia, which isn't always the same as what I would support. CorporateM (Talk) 01:05, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Academics have a clear formal publicly available hierarchy within the profession,and this facilitates understanding their relative importance. Journalists do not have this. the only clear criterion I know is awards at a national level--as for people in any subject. That's of course a little too restrictive here, but I do not know how to supplement it. What y0u link to is not citations,but bylines. Various CBS local stations acknowledge the name of the CBS reporter reporter whose story they reprint. That's not influences, just syndication. It would mean something if NBC used him as an authority than that his own network does, but not all that much, because journalists normally use others reporting where they themselves did not have contacts. Academic citing people have a formal way of measurement, reliable databases to record it, and accepted standards of significance. Journalist have none of these. Academic judge each other by means of such citations; journalists do not. What's much more to the point is that academics and public figures sometimes cites journalists as being experts. Again there are not quantitative standards like there are in the academic world,but sometimes a journalist is indeed recognized as an authority--unfortunately, as applied at WP, that tends to mean random quotations, not the quantitative comparisons possible in the academic world. Outside the academic world, some fields do have built-in standards--for example, politicians (being elected) or athletes (palying on a recognized major league team) . Some have recognized external standards, like charting in some fields of music. But most do not. DGG ( talk ) 05:27, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I have some knowledge of considerations in that migtht be used in establishing notability (in the Wikipedia sense) of television journalists.

• (1) At the top, signifiers are awards like the Peabody, two of the Edward R. Murrow awards (international and Washington State University)...
• (2) The specific job held in specific programs (anchor and managing editor of the Evening News; a combined position in the case of CBS News), specifically named positions (Chief White House Correspondent...
• (3) Named correspondents with the most prestigious television news shows, length of service at the network level. If nothing else, a correspondent for one of the top network news divisions—three over-the-air news networks likely have fewer than 300 correspondents in total. There may be a distinction in general title at the network level—entry into that level as a reporter, with a negotiated contract (with agent) after three years.
• (4) Correspondents named as foreign correspondents.
• (5) Aside from on-screen fame as notability, producers in television news have a role that is more wide-ranging than an editor at a newspaper, and are eligible for some of the same national awards as correspondents.

In the interest in giving an quick, and, I hope, useful reply, I'd add this: a television news correspondent at the network level with more than 6 years services should be considered notable in the Wikipedia sense. Large market (say, the top ten) local stations are a 'depends'. Local station news departments are a feeder network for network news, with the stations owned by over-the-air networks being a richer source because of the exposure to national audiences through on-network-air when called on to provide national coverage for localized stories: experience counts.

Of course, events may move some television correspondent and anchor classes not mentioned into Wikipedia notability. I've tried to avoid specific examples as best I can, in the interest of neutrality. But for the example given by CM: no, come back in five years.

For other types of journalists, face recognition is less, as is the money—perhaps in recompense, deciding Wikipedia notability is easier to decide. — Neonorange (talk) 06:43, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Do yo mean these are factors to be taken into account, or do you mean meeting any of these is enough (as in the WP:PROF analogy) and thus mean to include all foreign correspondents? DGG ( talk ) 13:19, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I only consider notability for US television journalists; I don't have knowledge of that field in other countries.

I looked through WP:Notability (people) and could not find a good fit there for television journalist. Better guidance is necessary, I think. At the network level, this is an extremely competitive field, with individual work product appearing on a cycle as short as one day. There is constant reviewing and critique of every broadcast(inside a network), with comparison to coverage from other sources, from print to directly competing television networks (along with informal internal peer review). There is an important difference between network and local (for journalists); for local, there are five slots for each story—for network, five stories for each slot. Which leads to "publish or perish".

To directly answer your question: at the network level, either (2) The specific job held in specific programs (anchor and managing editor of the Evening News; a combined position in the case of CBS News), specifically named positions (Chief White House Correspondent, for example, or (3) Named correspondents with the most prestigious television news shows, length of service at the network level. If nothing else, a correspondent for one of the top network news divisions—three over-the-air news networks likely have fewer than 300 correspondents in total. There may be a distinction in general title at the network level—entry into that level as a reporter, with a negotiated contract (with agent) after three years or (4) Correspondents named as foreign correspondents) is sufficient. Note: I would also suggest considering time in current and prior positions.

Big market local television? A more difficult question; more likely to get independent print or digital coverage; less likely to be notable. For this sector and below, significant major national awards may tilt the balance.

To speculate about the hard data of citations for academic publishing, consider a network television story published, and not retracted as some sort of vetting. Academic criteria are hardly applicable, considering the vastly shorter 'publication' cycle of television journalism, and the different skill sets involved. Of course television journalism and academic publishing meet entirely different societal needs, and ought to each be evaluated on this differing basis. But I ramble.

I will compare the list of television journalists with Wikipedia articles against those who I judge to meet the criteria I scribbled above if you think this would be useful. — Neonorange (talk) 15:57, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks so much @Neonorange:! I just got off the phone with her friend and explained both my perspective on in-adequate sourcing and the more thorough requirements you have outlined above. This type of work is important, because in my role as a paid editor, I am often able to prevent disruptive editing before it happens through good consulting.

DGG, I disagree with your argument that academics should have special notability requirements because there is a structured hierarchy in job titles. The same is true in business, which has VPs, CEOs and heads of divisions, etc. We could easily create a similar criteria for business executives, whereby any CEO of a $1 billion+ business qualifies for an article, but we do not do so, because there is less enthusiasm for having those articles by our editor demographic and because it's OR for us to evaluate a person's significance ourselves, rather than defer to the existence of independent source material. CorporateM (Talk) 19:24, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

According to WP:ACADEMIC, more than the structured hierarchy of job titles is involved, CorporateM. Citation metrics is also an important tool for assessing notability of acedemics. The general principle is that a professor is considered notable if their published academic research work is widely cited by other researchers. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 19:42, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I was referring to "should" as oppose to what is current consensus, acknowledging that my viewpoint is not the accepted standard. Most editors contribute in a manner that reflects their personal POV; the difference between a POV pusher and a regular editor is whether their POV is reasonable and supported by strong sources. This is often the nature of COI, that such editors tend to have unreasonable viewpoints that are not supported by strong sources and they are therefore much more likely to be POV pushers.

In my view - some of the worst POV pushing comes from POVs that are supported by the majority of our editor demographic and are therefor not seen as POV pushing at all. So, for example, most of our editors would support very low standards of notability for topics they have an interest in, while exerting much higher standards for topics they don't personally feel are significant.

@Jimbo: had an excellent example of this, regarding 100+ articles on Linux, while the queen's dress was not deemed notable, despite having an overwhelming body of literature. Another example - one day I sent a good dozen articles to AfD. Most of the company pages were deleted, but the most promotional of them was on an unknown open-source project, which had a landslide KEEP. Editors actually argued that the article can't be promotional, because it's not a commercial product, but it was the most promotional off all of them.

Sorry if I'm going on a tangental rant. CorporateM (Talk) 20:01, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Consider all human activity as information processing, and Wikipedia is a free market of ideas. In the Wikipedia ecology the only scarcities are good sources and good editors—article space is effectively unlimited and the pool of potential editors is effectively so. Unlike television news productions, there is an unlimited number of slots for what seems an unlimited number of sources.

For biographical articles, perhaps a rule of thumb could be—if the article helps the subject's career, it's too soon. The academic criteria are satisfying to me because, failing all else, they have a strong statistical base in citations; Wikipedia, without an editorial control function can hardly do better. And the same for professional athletes in the top-most leagues or competitions. Criteria for business executives are less satisfying because there are few hard data points; those that exist are open to interpretation. Possible criteria for television journalists end up in the middle; lots of published work, but little critique.

In a more direct response to CM, I believe pushing certain categories of articles is not POV, it's enthusiasm, and not destructive. There's no competition with other categories. On the other hand, that enthusiasm may result in low overall quality of a category—in some cases that might not be all bad.

And, it turns out, at CBS News, all the present correspondents are blue linked, along with a large number of past correspondents. So I will not need to cross check. — Neonorange (talk) 22:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Take another example that was on a historical society and written almost entirely out of primary sources, press releases and promotional brochures for tourists. As it happened, all their artifacts were sponsored by selling "meat juice" as a "health tonic" centuries ago. I can only imagine how much sickness and false health claims paid for the exhibit's artwork. But since we didn't have any legitimate RS', and editors wanted an article to exist on a subject they are enthusiastic about, we mostly ended up being a mirror for the org's own promotion. A company article in the same circumstance would never stand.

The point of comparing two categories of articles isn't that they compete, but to show how rather than mitigate the community's biases, we have embraced and even codified them into our policies. Creating articles on subjects that don't have strong sourcing leads to using weaker sources, which always leads to NPOV problems. We should insist on stronger sourcing everywhere, as its our best defense against POV pushers, even when those POV pushers are ourselves. CorporateM (Talk) 00:48, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

CM: Is it fair to say that you dearly wish for specific Wikipedia policies or guides to point out whenever advising clients or colleagues who don't want to hear no—when they see thatweakly sourced and promotional articles exist? When speaking of bias, I think lack of coverage is a bigger problem than poorly sourced coverage Wikipedia is without a pervasive editorial policy embodied as a group of editors educated to the importance of proper sources, and trained in the tools to find those sources. I edit the articles I think are broadly important—and tend to avoid articles I think less worthwhile. Rather than more policies, I'd dearly love to have more resources for research, and see examples of good research given special prominence—Main Page II, with discussions of good articles, and how they got that way. — Neonorange (talk) 02:37, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I intended to advocate for fewer policies, not more; a prior discussion on Jimbo's talk page showed quite a bit of support for consolidating on a single notability criteria that merely says we need credible, independent RS' to be the primary basis of the article (per our sourcing policies). If those independent RS' do not exist, I consider it a major problem to create articles based only on primary sources, rather than delete the page as being unsourceable. As you say, we have unlimited space, so I don't see why the significance of a topic should be considered, or especially why as Wikipedians we should be evaluating a subject's significance ourselves. Analyzing an academic's citation count, rather than deferring to the judgement of the sources, is just OR and feels wrong. We should only be evaluating notability in the context of the strength of the sources.

Regarding ranked articles, most editors agree they are almost always produced as a result of a single editor's focused efforts. I'm not sure what you meant with your question about "other stuff exists". Naturally I do have a sometimes frustrating job of explaining to companies why they shouldn't have the same promotional article their competitor has. Recently a few people within on of my client orgs were upset their competitors had dedicated "Award" sections, which I refused to create on their page; at least one of those dedicated "Awards" section was created by a paid editor that alleges to be ethical. But people and companies always look at other articles about people and companies, not at open-source, military history, academics, etc. CorporateM (Talk) 04:36, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

there seems to be a lot to respond to here:

1. I am not arguing that "academics should have special notability requirements because there are fixed job titles". I am saying that it is easier and less ambiguous to apply hierarchical standards of notability where there is a fixed and generally hierarchy, as there is here. There are many such I've seen used in WP; judges of various courts, executives of companies, competitions, football leagues, church leaders, historical buildings, US roads, -- and probably many more I have never happened to encounter.

2. My basic idea is that we should judge more by objective standards than the GNG. I think "notability" is importance. I think we should do several successive things:

a. Develop objective standards for all the classes of articles, and call it "importance". Where there is disagreement on the standard, as there will be in many cases, resolve it by compromise. (I prefer the concept of compromise to consensus, which can mean almost anything.)

b. User the presence of reliable sources in a more defined way only as a backup for those things unimportant but where there is great public interest

c. define this public interest criterion much more strictly, as substantial national coverage by general interest reliable widely used sources--which is possible because it will be used only as an exception.

d. Remove the entire concept of "presumptive notability" Replace it by "objective importance in the real world"

I reject utterly the idea that we need fewer policies for notability: trying to use the same policy for everything gives wildly disproportionate coverage if taken literally. What we need is more defined policies, so we need fewer quibbles and exceptions. The goal of the standard should be to permit unambiguous and consistent decisions. The idea is to argue less about bad content, so as to be able to write more good content.

3. However, I do agree with CorporateM that we need to concentrate much more on content. The depth of coverage should be proportionate to the degree of importance, provided always that sufficient reliable sources exist for verification. Personally, I suggest "amous" as the criterion for includign extensive details. For awards, we need lists of those are worth including (which will be a lower level than those proving importance, but still of some substantiality.)

4. In dealing with the argument that articles of the level desired already exist, I generally word it: "There are several hundred thousand of articles in WP accepted in earlier years when the standards were lower that we need to either upgrade or remove. The least we can do is not add to them. Do you want your organization to be a good example, or just another bad example?" (June 2015)

Sierra Vista Mall

Do you think it's worth pursuing the close of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sierra Vista Mall (5th nomination) (by contacting the closer or possibly del rev)? The closer's argument is that there is no clear interpretation of what constitutes "local" vs. "regional" coverage (play to the semantics/letter of WP:AUD). I thought the arguments clearly stated how the mall's coverage was still of "local interest" (best evidenced by the fact of how its larger import could be unclear at all). – czar 14:46, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

It rarely hurts to ask the closer, but I generally do not recommend taking a non-consensus close to Deletion Review, and , at Deletion Review, I rarely vote to overturn one unless it is truly perverse. .Just wait a few months and nominate again. But in any case the argument would be that publications serving the San Joaquin Valley are local not likely to have readers outside the valley; publications serving the State of California are regional, being of interest to neighboring states also; A major SF or LA paper read nationally is national. The Oakland Tribune is arguably more than local, and it is certainly outside the Valley, but Tribune Business News is not the Tribune. If one is going to get technical about wording, the rule is that at least one non-local source is needed, which implies that one source is not always enough. In practice, the result of mall decisions depends on how hard they are argued. W

More generally, the majority disputed afd decisions hinge on the exact interpretation of the sourcing rule, and in most such cases a decent argument can be made in either direction. That's why I support going by objective criteria. In the case of malls, size. We have failed several times to get consensus on a general rule. If we did, and it were > 1 million sq ft≈100,000 sq metres, this would be deleted with no argument; if it were 500,000 sq ft it would be kept with no argument. In either case the effort debating it could be used for more important purposes. DGG ( talk ) 15:27, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't think sqft is the proper metric (assuming WP:42 is not enough of a metric already). Malls in the Boston area will be low-sqft, and that goes triple for malls in Hong Kong. By constrast, malls in Dallas or Minnesota (e.g. the Mall of America for a 'famous' example) will naturally have far more sqft, because real estate is cheaper and the dense-packed-mall-layouts are not necessary.

  Something like average-visitors-per-week ... or maybe peak-weekly-visitors-during-the-year to account for the seasonal nature of malls i.e. december 25th ... would be a better metric than sqft, and similarly, annual revenues is a good proxy for visitor-count slash mall-importance. Physically large does not equate well with wiki-notability, but number of people involved (or as a proxy number of dollars changing hands) does a better job methinks. If we do this, I recommend the visitor-count or dollar-count cutoff be low enough that at least one mall per tiny-city-of-population-10k is theoretically able to get a wikipedia article dedicated to the mall -- in the USA there are about 600 such tiny-cities, according to the KGB.[17] Or, actually that brings up another idea, see below. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:14, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

proposal: Businesses of Greater Clovis, California

  Or... now that I think of it... we could just use *that* as the threshold: every city with a population of 10k+ people, such as Charlotte Amalie would be permitted by the hypothetical WP:NSHOPPING wiki-notability guideline to have a safe-from-AfD article called Businesses in Charlotte Amalie. Such a 'listicle' would obviously include the 'major' malls (with WP:UNDUE being calculated based on sqft or visitor-count or most pragmatically revenues-per-annum since that latter figure is often available -- or simply in the usual wiki-fashion by the amount of ink spilled in wiki-reliable sources), as well as other major employers like hospitals/schools/banks, notable tourist traps, oft-reviewed restaurants, and such.

  Obviously, these business-in-XYZ-summary-articles will be a goldmine for linkspam, so if we go thataway, I would suggest beginning with a Businesses in CityName, CountryName guideline that sets a temporary initial threshold of 100k+ population minimum for the associated metro area; we even have an on-wiki list of such areas, and for the USA the total as of ~2008 was roughly 267 such medium-cities of 100k+ people (total of 295 as of July 2014 data). Borderline-notable mall articles and such, could be merged inot the business-of-XYZ articles, with exceptions for Mall of America and other not-borderline-exceptions. This temporary approach would cover about 90% of the states and territories in the USA... California where the Sierra Vista Mall is located tops the list with ~70 cities of 100k+ population in 2014:

• 6+: CA TX FL CO AZ NC IL VA WA MI NJ OH TN
• 4or5: CT GA KS MA MO NY PR AL IN LA NV OK OR PA UT
• 2or3: IA MN SC WI KY NE NM
• one: AK AR DC HI ID MD MS MT ND NH RI SD
• zero: AS DE GM ME NI VI VT WV WY

  Later, if that 100k+plan worked out, we could expand the threshold to include the additional ~~300 tiny-cities in the USA with 10k+ people through 99k people. Most of the states and territories exxcluded by the 100k+ rule, would be included by the 10k+ rule, including Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands which is the capitol and has 18k population nowadays.

  If the scheme *does* work, it could be a good recruiting tool for the type of editor naturally-interested in shopping and tourist attractions (plus editors WP:COI-interested in the retail industry and microeconomics), as I mentioned at the AfD for the mall. Furthermore, this scheme could also be a good way to help decide borderline-notability-questions about startups and such with WP:PRESERVE in mind... rather than a binary question of bangkeep or bangdelete, we would (almost always since I'm proposing a geography-based scheme) have the additional option of merging Circle_(company) into the Businesses in Greater Boston article that was a spinoff from Boston#Economy.

  And in fact, wikipedia already has Greater_Boston#Major_companies as a spinoff-list from Boston#Economy. So my proposal is that we expand that to be a spinoff-article that gives some details about the companies mentioned, then do the same Businesses of Greater CityName thing with 300 or 600 more cities, based on a population threshold of 100k+ or 10k+ respectively. Both thresholds would permit bangmerging Sierra Vista Mall into a broader Businesses of Greater Clovis, California article ... which at population 102k people just makes the upper threshold.

  Anyways, food for thought here mostly. Ping User:Czar, User:Brianhe, User:Widefox, User:Kudpung, and User:CorporateM, who may have comments about this crazy proposal.  ;-)     p.s. Not sure if DGG wants to host a big discussion, here on User:DGG talkspace, please let me know if you'd rather see this taken elsewhere DGG. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:14, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

All I can see is the COI hell that would inevitably result from these sorts of lists (many more anons adding their businesses than caring about an esoteric guideline). More concretely, I don't think a NSHOPPING guideline would ever pass consensus—especially since I think (or hope?) we're moving in the other direction (away from content-specific guidelines) post-OrangeMoody. I'd also say that these types of articles are closer to directories in function (what Wikipedia is not). If any such article was necessary, it would need to extend naturally (in summary style) from the city/town article's "Businesses" section. czar 15:26, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I submit to you that we are already in the COI hell of which you speak.  :-)     Orangemoody was a symptom: the only way even wiki-notable companies like Countly can get their articles approved, is by spending months and months learning all the wiki-policies, or by hiring some kind of wiki-consultant for cold hard cash. Because the COI-handling-facilities are so borked, we are quickly tilting the wiki-culture towards forcing honest disclosed-COI-editors into retirement, which will leave only the dishonest undisclosed bad apples. Agree about avoiding WP:NOTDIR, and agree about extending the Clovis, California#Economy section in summary-style, but disagree that WP:NOTEWORTHY is that hard even for a reasonably tiny business to surmount. The idea here is that the Businesses in Greater Clovis articles will become a place where

• #1) we can put 'quasi-local' organizations like the Sierra Vista Mall, that will be better-watched by the anti-COI-hawks than a dedicated Sierra Vista Mall article possibly could, and
• #2) we can also upmerge borderline-wiki-notable startups like Countly into Businesses of Greater Istanbul (or Greater Long since they have relocated to London nowadays), rather than let them molder in AfC as potential victims.
• There is even the possibility that #3) companies who clearly pass WP:GNG, such as Circle_(company) and the other bitcoin startups, could be down-merged into a paragraph of the appropriate city.

I'm not arguing this idea is a panacea of bliss, there will still be plenty of COI-encumbered clueless wiki-beginners (not all of them IP-anons dern it! ;-) but I think it is a better way to manage things than the hardline approach to handling COI, which I will unfairly mischaracterize as ban-'em-all-and-let-the-great-jimbo-sort-out-the-wiki-bodies. See my argument at the AfD, that the mall-article (and the businesses-of-xyz even more so) could be #4) a recruiting-tool... this is an expansion on that, which will also double as a way to mitigate the COI-encumbrance-problem, by putting all the COI-eggs into one basket, as it were. Whether it is a better idea, than what we are quickly moving towards, remains to be seen, but I do agree it is different from what we are quickly moving towards. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 19:08, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:NOT business listing COI magnet, WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Suggest AfC or some other place is better location for discussing new articles (no idea why I'm pinged). Widefox; talk 16:11, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

There is no way of preventing promotionalism in an encycopedia that permits anonymous editing. There is no way of preventing undisclosed COI editing either, for the same reason. We have been able to detect those we have, because they've not understood editing here well enough to avoid detection--and because all edits on borderline notable subjects of certain types clearly merit investigation. If we lower the standard of notability, it will be all the easier for them.

We are not in great need of people who will write on local subjects; we are not in need of people who will write on barely notable subjects. We are in need of people who can write on the clearly notable subjects that not enough people have been interested in, and the obvious area properly receiving current attention here is our continuing gender bias. But what we need even more are people who can rewrite the existing promotional editing on the clearly notable subjects. Almost all articles on major corporations and nonprofit organizations need complete rewriting. They've been contaminated by PR from various sources: the PR people who have written many of the articles, the volunteers who write like PR editors because they think that's what we want here, and the inevitably PR writing based on the RW sources being PR in the first place.

It's unfortunate that a few honest paid editors have gotten undue suspicion. But, quite frankly, I would very strongly support eliminating all paid editing whatsoever. Their fundamental mission is not really compatible with a NPOV encycopedia.

However, the proposition that we write as volunteers basic factual articles on all clearly notable organizations is a reasonable idea. If we do it, we shouldstart at the top, not see how far we can go to the bottom. DGG ( talk ) 04:58, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Well expressed. The only substitute for the editorial supervision that Wikipedia of necessity lacks is to depend on high quality sources that do have editorial supervision that insists on fact checking, a skeptical attitude toward press releases, and disclosure of COIs. The most reliable of sources are characterized by strict insistence on declaring C.O.I.s, and even the appearance of C.O.I.s, and the use of press releases as no more than sources of questions to ask. The more time spent working on articles written from a source-rich environment (the truly notable), the better our instincts become for working in less information-rich environments. This should be the starting point for pulling out the effects of systemic bias by developing skepticism toward hand-outs and coi claims. (The NYT public editor has just written a piece on two Times published book reviews in which the reviewers assigned had undisclosed COIs).

Wikipedia needs properly sourced articles on corporations—for completeness; the same reason Wikipedia needs any article. But not so much that non-NPOV, poorly sourced articles need be allowed. Wikipedia has accessibility, reliability, and completeness to offer. Completeness is getting out ahead of reliability—this is a perversion of our goals. While it may be admirable to strive for completeness (an impossible goal), reliability back-stopped by adequate cites to WP:RS is existential. —Neonorange (talk) 06:19, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Inherited notability

....

I don't agree with the inherited notability argument above, or that notability can be measured by job title or award. Her notability can be established using the traditional method of evaluating sources, which in my view is the only basis from which notability should be measured. However, I don't question her notability, only whether her publication being nominated for this particular award is significant enough to warrant inclusion in her profile. I wasn't sure what you meant to say in this regard. Is the National Magazine Award known to the public? David King, Ethical Wiki (Talk) 02:19, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

What I think is the correct way to look at inherited notability is that the fact that a person is notable, doesn't mean that everything they do is notable; even a notable person does many less important things. But the way a person becomes notable is by doing important things, so that someone who has done sufficiently important things is notable. The nearest formally recognized analogy here is WP:PROF, where being editor in chief of a major journal is fully sufficient proof of notability. I would extend that to all media. The National Magazine Award certainly wasn't known to me before I looked at this. Based on the information in our article, i would say winning one should certainly be included. For finalist, it needs the recognition of the Nobel or the Booker or the Academy Award. DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

2016

20:12:39, 1 July 2016 review of submission by Brenda haines

• Brenda haines (talk · contribs)
  • Draft:4imprint plc (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Hello, DGG. First, let me say how incredibly helpful the detailed responses have been on your talk page. Thank you for taking such time and care in helping all of us improve our submissions and generally making Wikipedia a stronger tool.

My colleague, Leah, has been working on the 4imprint, PLC, article. (In the interest of full disclosure: Leah and I work together and the article we are referencing is for a client. I realize that automatically poses a question about neutrality, so I want to be completely transparent about that.) We are genuinely interested in editing the article to make it a high-quality submission. Based on the feedback my colleague has received to date, we recognize the need to make significant edits to the article to meet the notability requirements and that it may not be possible at all. I've read your talk page description of notability and it has helped me understand in greater detail the chief issue we are facing here. My questions related to this are:

Is it possible for trade industry publications to be considered reliable, independent sources? Or, must the sources be mainstream media sources/scientific journals/research publications in order to qualify? (We currently use several trade industry sources in the article, which is what prompts my question.)

Likewise, can local media sources (e.g.: those that cover our geographic region) contribute to the requirement for "substantial" coverage? Or, by their definition are they unable to do so? For example, if a subject is covered substantially in a local newspaper story with a modest circulation, does that source generally add to or detract from the subject's notability?

If sources are used in another Wikipedia article on a company in the same industry, can we deduce they would be considered reliable and independent in another article? Or, do you use other factors to determine whether the source is considered reliable and independent in different articles? With gratitude for your guidance, Brenda ( User:Brenda haines 20:12, July 1, 2016‎)

Brenda haines, there is no simple clear answer. Each article is considered individually, and the standards to be applied are interpreted by the participants in the particular discussion. And just as anyone can contribute to WP, anyone can join in a discussion. The net result is considerable variability , with particularly great inconsistency in some fields, such as organizations--and most particularly the one relevant here, commercial organizations.

The reliability of sources is discussed at the Reliable sources noticeboard, WP:RSN, and, as is typical for WP, the information is found in the very extensive and unorganized archives of that page. As compared with discussions of an individual article, the discussions here tend to be more focussed and usually attract expert participation.

The suitability of trade journals for showing notability depends on the journal,and on the article. A long objective discussion of a company, or a major product review, can sometimes count, especially in a journal of known importance and objectivity. But most articles in trade journals are not written in this manner,but as announcements of celebrations. Similarly for local magazines and newspapers. Almost all such magazines rely on routinely covering everything in their area, and are not written as objective independent discussions. For both, we are particularly dubious about interviews with the ceo, which normally are just a platform for giving the person an opportunity to say what they like about heir company. This is especially true for local business magazines. This is also true of local editions of major national news sources. There is a difference between , say, a national story in CBS and a story in a local affiliate of CBS; I am particularly doubtful when I find something that was from a local affiliate is cited as just "CBS". Even the NYTimes coverage of local NYC businesses especially in its local editions is more uncritical than its coverage of national ones.

Do not go too much by other articles. There are several hundred thousand articles in WP accepted in earlier years when the standards were lower that we need to either upgrade or remove. And even now, many articles get in that would be deleted if more carefully examined. In particular, most of our articles on firms involved in any manner in advertising or publicity are considerable problems.

But an equally important problem with your article is not the sourcing or the notability: it's the promotionalism. (Our current system does not make it easy to specify the very common circumstance that the two problems usually go together. One useful definition of promotionalism is that a promotional article is written to say what the company wants to say, whereas an encyclopedia articles is written to tell the reader what the general reader might want to know.

Promotional articles for non-notable companies are marked by an inclusion of minor awards: this usually indicates there are no major ones. Promotional articles focus of funding of the company, rather than what it has actually accomplished. They include many minor notices, trying to list everything they can find to make the company look more important. They tend to focus on rapid growth or future plans, rather than attained importance. It is much better to list only what is major. This is especially important for charities. There is no point in listing the minor charities all companies do in their communities. Similar for routine good practices, such as employee relations, or now-routine environmental standards.

as you will have realized, these requirements are much harder to meet for specialized b-to-b companies such as yours. There simply are not as good source as there are for consumer product companies, or those in fields with general interest, such as electronics or aviation.

In your particular case, there might be notability: there usually is for companies on the London stock exchange, and firms with a half-billion USD revenue are very often notable. In your case, you have a good source for market share in your field. That is not a formal criterion, tho it is one I would like to see us use more. (You need to indicate the relevant geographic area--I gather it's in the US.) There are some technical factors also that would make a better impression. See the technique for using multiple occurrences of the same reference is WP:REFBEGIN, and enclose urls in [ ] not < > -- < > is indeed the print standard, but it doesn't render properly in Wikipedia. Avoid using the name of the company repetitively in the article. I like "the firm" (not the Firm) once each paragraph and the rest of the time "it" or "they". Avoid using adjectives of praise or importance; avoid using jargoion like "in order to grow the business"

As you know, I am not all that happy doing work other people are paid for. But I am interested in helping people learn how to use WP effectively, and WP articles are a specialized form that people need to learn, for there is no type of business writing that really matches. People learn to write to achieve a purpose, but writing for general information is a very difficult purpose to do well, because there is no obvious focus. And, as you've said, what I write here is seen by others also. Let me know when to see the next version: I judge the usefulness of my approach by how much articles get improved. DGG ( talk ) 03:16, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

DGG, thank your for answering my questions and providing additional insights and references. That context is very helpful. I will the materials you've cited and work on revisions... with the goal of submitting an improved version for your review. Brenda Brenda haines (talk) 17:34, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Question on Notability (philanthropists, etc. )

David - are people considered notable when, on several occasions over the years, they have given multi-million dollar endowments to universities for professorships, medical research, and libraries like the Smithsonian, even though they may be low profile business leaders (founders and/or chairman and/or are council for notable companies & universities) but highly recognized as philanthropists? ^{Atsme📞📧} 21:24, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Normally they have done something notable to acquire the money. Anyway, "multi-million" is not nearly enough to be called a philanthropist these day, certainly not if its the main notability. Using that term would seem to be puffery, and articles stressing it would normally be press releases. DGG ( talk ) 22:59, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

It just seems to me there's a serious imbalance between what we're allowed to make notable, such as a relatively unknown sports figure or porn star while we delete BLPs about philanthropists who create endowments, support research, and/or help build and support educational programs, libraries and various other beneficial institutions to help advance humanity. ^{Atsme📞📧} 02:18, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

There is a very great imbalance, and I do not know anyone at WP who does not consider our imbalance absurd. But every person here has a different view of it: some consider us to have a prejudice against sports figures, because we do not accept articles on most college athletes; some against some forms of popular music, because we do not accept people who are considered interesting, but not yet made a hit recording ; some against academics, because we rarely accept associate professors; some against authors, because we rarely accept them if they self-pubnlish; some against politicians, because we do not accept them even though they are a major party candidate for national office unless they should win; some against artists, because even those who will be considered significant do not for many years get into museum collections; some against local topics, because we do not consider local branches of nation organizations; some against geographic features, because we do not cover every street in a city; some against porn stars, because we use too narrow a list of awards, some against video series, because we do not make articles for every named character, and so on. And for every one of these there are people who consider that what we do include in that field greatly excessive. For each example mentioned, I have my own position (though in one or two cases it has changed in one direction or another over the years).

Some of this is the inevitable result of relying on the WP:GNG, because the availability of references of the type we want varies in different subjects--even though in practice we do adjust for this informally, by varying the meaning of "substantial coverage," and "independent" for favored or disfavored topics.

Myself, I think such reliance is an obsolete survival of the early unsophisticated days here , before people realized the difficulties that would come from our size and importance -- in fact, before people realized that our size and importance was even conceivable. We need to cover the most important in each field, and do it by some quantitative standard applicable to each. We have a fe: nSPORTS, NPROF, etc. tho we insist or trying to modify them or use them together with the GNG, which can yield some rather odd results, but does have what some people here consider an advantage, of giving plenty of room for argument. We would still need to balance the fields, andI can only think of the principle I quote from Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman:

"So long as a man rides his hobbyhorse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him — pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?"

But increasingly, I have come to thin notability is not the main consideration for coverage: to quote myself this time, from many AfD discussions:

Small variations to the notability standard either way do not fundamentally harm the encyclopedia, but accepting articles that are part of a promotional campaign causes great damage. Once we become a vehicle for promotion, we're useless as an encyclopedia

As applied, those topics lending themselves to promotion are those where we should be the most cautious, and the most restrictive. I include philanthropists, a title that anyone can claim who has a few million dollars and wishes the tax and publicity advantages of disposing of some if it to anything the world considers a useful purpose. DGG ( talk ) 04:10, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

DGG - at what point do we consider a business leader successful? Would being long time Chairman of the Board for more than one notable investment firm that have articles in WP make that person notable? What about a professorship named in a person's honor - would that make them notable? What about someone who establishes multiple million dollar endowments to universities and hospitals and an unrestricted endowment to a notable educational endeavor at a highly notable library? Would that qualify? What if that person has done all of the above and there are articles in independent RS that verify it? Would that establish notability? How much does common sense play into determining notability? ^{Atsme📞📧} 00:55, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

My own view is that it depends upon the position, the notability of the company, and the degree of prominence in other roles--political, social, and so on. With respect to position, I consider ceo or the equivalent much more notable than any lesser position -- whether chairman of the board is equivalent depends on the company. A company that barely makes it in WP is not usually notable enough to be assumed to have a notable ceo, but a company large enough that it would not be challenged might well. As for notability of investment companies & other financial enterprises, I think the minimum figure we usually accept for notability is $0.5 Billion assets, but not always. I would never challenge one with $1 billion. I repeat: "multi-million" is a very low figure these days. Anyone who pays estate tax in the US has at least $5 million in assets, and if they leave half of it to charity, it's multimillion. The head of a billion dollar investment firm would be expected to be able to give many times that.

As always, these arerules of thumb--WP does not presently judge this way,t though I wish it would. DGG ( talk ) 01:17, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

^{DGG} forgot to ping you. Atsme📞📧 03:03, 13 July 2016 (UTC)}Ok, one last question (this time, *lol*) - what if they co-authored a book that focused on the business they're in (investments) in addition to all the above? Can we use a combination of things for subjects that are low-key but notable because of their leadership roles in business plus philanthropy over the course of 30 to 40 years? ^{Atsme📞📧} 02:01, 13 July 2016 (UTC)