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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Notability page.

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Notability page.

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Word to avoid

Regarding this new addition to the guideline: I do question whether we should be mentioning this in this guideline. Or maybe at all. With lists especially, it can be useful to use the word "notable" in the title or elsewhere to signify that it's not a list of all-possible-whatevers: . This kind of issue comes up at AfD, where people often look at the article title and nothing else and assume "List of aborigines? That's going to be millions of people!" Plus, there are no doubt times where it has appropriate use in prose.

These objections were raised in the original VP thread. I would say this addition requires more discussion before it goes into the guideline, not before it's removed. I'm also doubtful of whether it belongs in this guideline, because, as was pointed out in the VP thread, there's a difference between WP:Notable and wikt:notable.--Father Goose (talk) 21:34, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it's not needed, as in general, we're supposed to keep the backstage of WP off what happens on the main article space. A singular topic article does not need a statement like "Person X is notable because of this.". But that's true for all policy and guideline (We don't say "According to the unbiased reliable source the New York Times, the age of Person X is verified..." obviously). However, that doesn't mean we avoid the word when it is necessary to use. It just shouldn't be used when its meaning to tied to this guideline in main space. --MASEM (t) 21:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Normally I'd agree, but we have some lists that are by design limited to "entries that have their own Misplaced Pages article". It's good to note that inclusion criterion, either in the lead or even in the title, and I think sometimes the word "notable" -- more in the wikt: sense than the WP: sense -- is the best way to express it. (It's certainly better than "important".)--Father Goose (talk) 22:11, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Re-reading, I'm now realizing that your "I think it's not needed" was in reference to the new addition to the guideline, not in reference to "using the word 'notability' in articles is not needed". Still, my followup comment wasn't entirely off the mark; sometimes wikt:notability and WP:notability coincide.--Father Goose (talk) 08:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

This guideline, which explicitly says that it does not limit the contents of articles, is definitely not the right place for advice about the contents of an article.

It happens that I also don't think that the advice is necessary or helpful or anything other than WP:CREEPy -- in articles. In discussions, I'm perfectly willing to nudge people into avoiding word choices that might leave someone confused about whether they are discussing the plain-English concept or the policy-based wikijargon, but the average reader won't notice or care whether we describe a subject as being wikt:notable or wikt:reliable or so forth.

It also seems to have been rejected by WP:WTA. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree: Misplaced instruction creep. Hans Adler 07:56, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

As the person who added the text, I feel I should offer some kind of explanation. Firstly, the issue identified at the village pump was that the word notable appears too often, especially in fairly new articles and this often comes from people wanting to show that notability requirements are met. The point we are trying to make is that you don't do that by using the word notable in an article.

I can see that this is partly a matter of style, and hence it looks like instruction creep to bring it up in a content guideline. However, the problem does stem directly from a misunderstanding of this policy so the edit was intended to kill the problem at source.

Yaris678 (talk) 14:01, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

This could be rewritten to addresses the perceived conflict between notable as a reference to the word, and notable as a self-reference to our notability guidelines. Something like:

Notability of a subject is not advanced by describing the subject of an article as "notable". Notability is decided on the basis of facts stated and references provided in an article. Thus, though the word "notable" may be used for its vernacular meaning where appropriate, asserting that a topic is "notable" in an attempt to meet Misplaced Pages's notability requirements has no value.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:19, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Menh. If we say it at all, we should do so very briefly: "Describing a subject as 'notable' in an article does not make it 'notable' by the terms of this guideline" -- but I suspect people who are making that error are not bothering to read this page in the first place, so adding more instruction to it will not reach them anyway. I respect the intent here but doubt its usefulness.--Father Goose (talk) 01:21, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that we should try to say this as concisely as possible. However, I think that we should say that using the word can be a bad thing, rather than just having no effect. Perhaps we should say "Describing a subject as 'notable' in an article does not make it 'notable' by the terms of this guideline. Indeed, the word 'notable' is considered to be a peacock term." Yaris678 (talk) 08:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that this is necessary, but WP:NRVE might be a better place for such a sentence than the lead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:01, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:NRVE seems to be a good place for it. I've put it in there - let's see if anyone else has an opinion on it. Yaris678 (talk) 09:40, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Respectfully disagreed with an addition. While I undersgtand and sympathise woth the porpose, there are two issues: (1) The first part is redundant: per policy notability requires WP:CITE, and (2) the last part is incorrect, if the word "notable" or synonyms or any other peacock terms are attributed to WP:RS, then they are legal in the article. Mukadderat (talk) 22:10, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

P.S. BTW, there are many other words, like "the best", "prominent", "outstanding", "world renowned", etc. Why "notable" is an exception? All claims of notability must be referenced. Period. Mukadderat (talk) 22:14, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

P.P.S. At the same time, I would see reasonable to include an example of the usage of a peacokk term in this section, with the purpose of introduction of the link to WP:PEACOCK, which is indeed a relevant additional reading for the subject of this policy. Mukadderat (talk) 22:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Mukadderat, I'm not sure what your complaint is. The text said "the word 'notable' is considered to be a peacock term." It didn't say "never use the word 'notable'". Indeed, a link is provided to WP:PEACOCK where it is explained when such terms can and can't be used. Yaris678 (talk) 07:57, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

<by accidental glitch, I lost my explanation of #2 (a bit of misunderstanding), so for the moment please ignore it> The main objection is #1: any claims require references to be available upon request, so singling out the word "notable" is redundant. What is more, WP:V does not immediately require refs: only in contested cases. Therefore It would be perfectly legal to write , say, "Albert Einstein is notable " Yes, writing "AE is notable" does not make him notable. Just as "the sky is blue" does not make it blue. However in both cases we can readily deliver references, and I fail to see why the phrase "Lil Pigsty Gangsta is notable in Winchestertonfieldville rap scene" is not a potential claim for notability. Just as with any claims, if you drop {{fact}} on it and someone comes with a ref from Winchestertonfieldville Daily and from Iowa Moonshine Nightly and so on, we are good even the authors are lazy to explain why exactly he is notable (so the article itself may be bad, but we have always been having undercooked texts). In other words, I disagree with Fuhghettaboutit's phrase above: "asserting that a topic is "notable" in an attempt to meet Misplaced Pages's notability requirements has no value:" if the assertion verifiably comes from a reliable source, the article cannot be prodded or speedied: the source must be judged by AfD or article talk page. Mukadderat (talk) 04:51, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

OK. Thanks for clearing up what you meant.

To say that 'any claims require references to be available upon request, so singling out the word "notable" is redundant.' is basically arguing that WP:PEACOCK is redundant. It is a long standing guideline so I suggest you have missed something. Peacock terms can be used but the requirements are stricter than WP:V. The requirements are explained in WP:PEACOCK.

Yaris678 (talk) 08:05, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I received no response to the above post so I stuck the text back in. But it has now been reverted. If people disagree with the text can they please explain why. Much of the disagreement above was about an earlier wording that was quite different to the current wording. The earlier wording was also in the lead whereas the current location seems much more appropriate. So far the only person who has objected to the current wording on the talk page is Mukadderat, and he has stopped talking. Yaris678 (talk) 18:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

It's process creep, based on the above comments. It is not that your concept is wrong, but the opinion above suggests there is no perceived need to include this. If there is strong evidence of an "epidemic" of people saying "this topic is notable because..." then maybe, but as noted, it's already a peacock term. --MASEM (t) 18:40, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Masem, and his latest removal. Yaris678's text is correct, but this page is not a collection of everything that is correct. There is a frequent tendency for well meaning users to conflate WP:N with aspects of many other important things, and so we have to be firm in keeping the page focuses on it's purpose. WP:N is about whether articles should be stand alone articles. It is not about offering editorial advice. There are other pages (usually essays) for that, or if not, write a new one. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:14, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

OK. Thanks guys. It's nice to have a response that actually makes sense! I personally am not that bothered either way but it was rather annoying being reverted without a decent explanation. I think the person who originally brought up the issue at the village pump was perceiving some kind of epidemic but I guess it depends on what sort of article you often look at. I've seen a few of the "X is a notable Y" type in Misplaced Pages:Requests for feedback but I think most articles eventually have that sort of language trimmed. Yaris678 (talk) 13:46, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

It used to be that new articles which didn't assert the notability of their subject were automatically speedily deleted. Is that still the case? Stephen B Streater (talk) 23:17, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe there was ever a speedy for non-notable articles. There is a speedy criteria for articles of specific types (people, bands, companies, and a few others) that typically fall prey to vanity creation that we require that some type of importance is shown. But the same idea of what the discussion above is applies here: we don't need people to write as if to prove to the people reviewing articles for notability or importance of the topic's notability, but just to include it to explain to the regular reader. EG: "John Q. Public is notable because is the CEO of ACME Corp." is not needed when it can just be said "John Q. Public is CEO of ACME Corp.". --MASEM (t) 23:24, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there is a relevant speedy deletion line, but it only applies to certain subjects. See WP:CSD's A7 and A9. Some kinds of articles need to have some indication or assertion of notability to avoid speedy deletion. "X is notable because..." is a common way of avoiding a speedy deletion in these subjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

There may not be an "epidemic" but I certainly have seen this scenario play out numerous times: Article is marked with {{notability}}, prodded or taken to AfD on the basis of notability; the next edit is for creator to add to the article that the person/thing "is notable" without any facts being added substantiating that assertion. I have seen the analogous result play out with A7 tagging; e.g, the creator removes the db-bio/corp etc. tag and adds to the article solely that the person/thing "is important" or "is significant". These are relatively common misunderstandings, and I think we should have some text addressing it as the prior text did, if imperfectly. Whether it is a peacock terms is entirely beside the point.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:28, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

If the sentence provides some credible explanation of how the subject is important, significant, or notable, then the article no longer qualifies for speedy deletion. (It may still qualify for all other forms of deletion.) Merely saying "It's important" is not enough to avoid a speedy deletion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

This tag is an example of what I was referring to. If you don't assert notability, you risk your article being deleted. Stephen B Streater (talk) 07:33, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

That's probably a bad example, since the tagger removed the CSD tag within a few minutes (possibly a mistake?) and in any case, the available sources at that point for that article would never cause it to be deleted.

All we're seeing here is likely novice or new editors that have seen one of their articles deleted, or have read through starting documentation, either case where the advice "show that your topic is notable or it will be deleted" - so far so good. But then they write their new article towards Misplaced Pages admins and reviewers to address that specific instruction (adding "this topic is notable because of X" language) instead of simply writing towards the readership ("This topic is X"). This is just simply poor writing that can usually easily be fixed and certainly, presuming that notability is there, would never cause the article to be deleted. In otherwords, I think that the better place for this advice is in our instructions for creating new pages where notability or importance is discussed, since this is mostly a failing of the novice editor. --MASEM (t) 12:14, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

A reaction to notability being discussed in instruction pages is not where this usually arises. It arises from a direct claim of lack of notability through a prod, an AfD or from a {{notability}} tag (or an article issues tag with notability as a parameter). The one thing all these processes have in common is a link to this policy. This policy page is thus the only place where the vast majority of the audience who does this will receive instruction. I don't think it should be included to address those who say in response "x is notable because he/she (fact)(source)" You're right that that's just poor writing, and those people already understand that it is the "(fact)(source)" that evidences notability. It is the people who misunderstand that taking something which says "x is a y" and changing it only insofar as "x is a notable y", that this would be instructive for. It is not an uncommon misunderstanding.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:15, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Given that the problem is really with two small subsections in WP:CSD, perhaps the A7 and A9 descriptions, or the templates, should be where we address this problem. It seems a little silly to address it on the page that doesn't require any assertion of notability, but to leave it off the page that is apparently the source of the problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not a given because neither A7 nor A9 are directly about notability, though they arise from the same underlying concern, and do not link to the notability policy (for very good reason). When notability is at issue, we see people adding "is notable" to articles. As I've said above, this typically is a reaction to prods, AfDs and {{notability}} or {{article issues}} tags that link this policy, and not any form of speedy deletion. We do see an analogous mistake when A7/A9 is at issue, but it is as to that standard, and not notability, i.e., we see people adding "is important/significant" to articles.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:02, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Fugettaboutit, I think you need to go read the CSD page before we get any further. Here's a quotation that you'll want to be looking for: "This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability." This quotation is taken from A7, but a remarkably similar sentence is present in A9. The bolded text highlights a link to WP:N; you falsely assert above that neither A7 nor A9 link to the notability "policy" (note that this page is actually a guideline, not a policy). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I misspoke in loosely saying a link wasn't present; a link is present in the policy but only to point out that A7 is not the same standard as notability. Of course where most people actually learn of the speedy standard and react is from the speedy tag for db-A7/bio/corp/web which don't contain this note about N). You're missing the point. As someone who has reviewed and deleted about 5,000 articles and tagged as many, I am telling you that we do not see this as a reaction to any speedy criteria, we see this as a reaction to the processes I've stated above, and we see the "is important/significant" mistake when a speedy is in the offing. Talking about A9/A9 is a red herring here.---Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:43, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

RfC to apply notability to article contents

There is a current RfC at Talk:Incidents_at_SeaWorld_parks#RFC:_including_or_excluding_victim_names regarding applying notability standards to article contents. Gigs (talk) 18:40, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Railway incidents guideline

A guideline was been written for railway incidents, but its status as an approved guideline is disputed. See Misplaced Pages:Notability (railway incidents). Fences&Windows 14:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Notability of open source software

There is a huge and somewhat entertaining fight going on at the moment regarding Dwm, and the deletion discussion has just been restarted. I'm not involved, but there was one point made which seems relevant to this page. This software is currently included in 10 major Linux distributions, and hence in my opinion is notable by the fact that many organizations companies have made the decision that it should be installed on millions of computers. Should some guidelines be added for what makes OSS notable? cojoco (talk) 04:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I've just noticed that there are a bunch of notability guidelines for various subjects, but software is not in the list. Would it be worth having some guidelines as to what makes software notable? cojoco (talk) 10:02, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this would make sense. Currently we have the strange situation that the German Misplaced Pages is much more inclusive for open source projects than the English one. In general I am opposed to relaxing notability criteria because it generally means that we get unverifiable articles. With open source software it's different because there is usually plenty of verifiable information to use for the article, just not of the kind that establishes notability per WP:GNG. Computer-related information is more likely to be found in not formally reliable online sources such as blogs, and less likely to be found in formally reliable offline sources. I believe similar problems even exist in parts of computer science.

Dwm is not the first case where we have come to a problematic deletion decision, and it is not the first time that we had the following problem (Foswiki was another recent case):

• A piece of software is widely known as an important representative of its respective category. It is widely distributed as part of Linux distributions or such and is regularly and extensively discussed in "unreliable" sources.
• An article exists uncontroversially in the German Misplaced Pages.
• The English article is nominated for deletion.
• A fan of the software who is not an experienced Misplaced Pages editor suspects evil machinations (e.g. Microsoft sockpuppets trying to keep the competition down) and mobilises other users or developers of the software. Many of these are also not familiar with our processes and arrive in large numbers at the AfD, disrupting our processes.
• A number of Misplaced Pages editors close ranks to "defend the wiki" against the intrusion.
• Due to the ensuing disruption, all arguments as to actual relevance, such as press articles about the software, are basically ignored. The article is deleted based on sociological problems, not notability problems.

To fix this problem, we should do two things:

• Make sure that the special situation of free software (it's not just open source software that is affected, but also software that is free as in free beer) is taken into account when its notability is measured.
• Prevent as much as possible that some of those people most likely to become productive Misplaced Pages editors disrupt our processes in good faith and are alienated as a result.

For the second point, a special deletion template warning about the effects of off-site canvassing might help. Moreover, we probably need a variant of Template:Not a ballot that addresses the specific situation of open source software.

Regarding notability itself, here is how the German Misplaced Pages does it:

Judgement of software articles according to notability of its subject is often proposed, but is hardly every possible since the market is dominated by non-commercial programs (and pirated copies, which has the same effect on number of sold units). Therefore, whether an article is appropriate for Misplaced Pages is decided according to the article's quality.

However, there is software that really should not have an article, not even a good one, due to its lack of circulation. Indispensable for an article is media attention, e.g. in the form of literature, detailed test reports/reviews, serious comparisons or rankings, attention at professional symposia or non-trivial press coverage. All of these provide neutral content and indicate that the software is noticed.

Download or sales numbers or Google hits, however, are of limited value for judging recognition; very high numbers (> 1 million) can be an indication.

— Approximate translation from de:WP:Richtlinien Software

It's important to note that the German Misplaced Pages has explicit advice about what makes a good article on software, which this notability criterion is relying on. Hans Adler 11:02, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

This doesn't seem that different to the GNG. "Indispensable for an article is media attention, e.g. in the form of literature, detailed test reports/reviews, serious comparisons or rankings, attention at professional symposia or non-trivial press coverage." Are you saying that some people are treating the listed examples of media attention as not reliable? Yaris678 (talk) 12:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree it's very similar. Formally it's almost equivalent to what we have. But it also says specifically that the GNG should not be strictly applied to software in the usual way, and that the more important question is whether a good article can be written. One key difference is that it says "media attention, e.g.". In the case of Foswiki we have numerous short reports on releases of new versions in online media sources. IMO they would qualify as media attention, but not for establishing notability per the GNG. Of course they are no help in writing a neutral article, but for open source project we usually have plenty reliable, uncensored/unbiased primary sources such as the source code itself, documentation, a bug database or a public developers' mailing list, and in contrast to obscure historical topics we have lots of editors who are skilled to interpret them accurately.

This reminds me of WP:Articles for deletion/Sam Blacketer controversy where we had similar problems with fundamentalist interpretations of a rule that ignored the motivation behind the rule. The problem wasn't so much notability but some people's claim that in a situation where the press got the situation at Misplaced Pages totally wrong, we had to report what the press said even though we knew perfectly well that it was false. IMO the opposite is true: So long as the article existed, we would have been under an obligation to correct the errors of the press based on our original research of our primary sources. Because it was one of the few situations where we have a highly effective process in place for evaluating primary sources (Misplaced Pages server logs). Hans Adler 13:19, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I feel obligated to point out WP:Notability (software) was apparently unable to get favorable consensus. --Cybercobra (talk) 16:38, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

There should be some exception for open source software because by definition the commercial world is not interested (with some exceptions), yet OSS is important and its bazaar quality means that many forks are required to support a notable hierarchy like Linux, Apache, PHP, MediaWiki. People can quote puff-piece "reviews" to justify keeping an article on yet-another variety of a commercial program, yet these reviews are often written only to fill space and attract adverts – the only review an OSS program is going to get is in a blog or other site that fails WP:IRS. Currently, any rule-bound editor could go through examples like List of text editors and have over half of the items deleted: it looks like only common sense would save even Emacs since I can't see a reliable source that would satisfy someone raised in a Microsoft world that Emacs is notable. Johnuniq (talk) 01:11, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

What utter rot. People will write about things whether they're "commercial" or not (I would note that "commercial" is not the opposite of "open source"); I'd yet to see a single good argument for FOSS exceptionalism here. The problem with the dwm article is simply that the number of people genuinely interested in improving WP's coverage of FOSS (as opposed to using Misplaced Pages as an advocacy platform, or an advertising tool) is too low to properly maintain all WP's high-profile FOSS articles. If the energy which had gone into the utterly puerile canvassing campaign here had been redirected at improving articles then dwm could be FA-class by now. The argument that no reliable source covers FOSS is completely baseless; the problem is that for historic reasons Misplaced Pages has been far more permissive of FOSS (and indeed of the Free Software Foundation's opinions in general) than it is of other software, and as such random people on the Internet have the impression that their bits of software are exempt from the notability guidelines used everywhere else on the project. I can assure you that there are plenty of articles on "commercial" software which are deleted every week; the difference there is that you don't get prominent Internet personalities making comments in ignorance about the result. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:14, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

No one on this page is associated with canvassing, and the fact that the dwm deletion discussion has got out of hand is not relevant to whether OSS articles deserve some special definition of "notable". I am not here to discus dwm but since you mentioned it, I do not see how it could be saved given the current notability guidelines. Presumably your FA-class remark was just to illustrate the degree of (wasted) effort expended at the AfD, but I would like to hear how you think the article could be brought into line with WP:N: what's needed is a couple of reliable sources focusing on dwm, and that is not going to happen because the trade publications and magazines cannot pay their bills by writing about OSS (with odd exceptions for general-interest things like describing Google's platform). Also, what would save the articles listed at List of text editors? Johnuniq (talk) 10:35, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Emacs is pretty old, so there are plenty of publications. But Nano could be in trouble. Hmmm, I'm guessing there are probably several books that mention it. Though the canonical source of information is online, of course. --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:38, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

• Request For Comments: http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:Notability_of_free_open_source_software Unomi (talk) 22:04, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

  Hmmm, I think a lot of OSS devs *do* have WP accounts, actually ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:44, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, they do. I happen to be one of them. — Rankiri (talk) 00:03, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Has anyone else noticed the same pattern of argument that bugs me? It runs like this:

• Open source software doesn't have a marketing budget .
• Therefore OSS can't buy attention from independent media sources .
• Therefore, OSS should get a free pass on proving that someone noticed it.

Paid advertising (whether that payment is direct or indirect) and press releases don't count towards notability claims. If a source is so beholden to its advertisers that it refuses to review or discuss non-proprietary/free/open software, then that source will (and should be) rejected as non-independent by this guideline.

The fact is that if nobody has noticed something, Misplaced Pages should not have an article about it -- because Misplaced Pages cannot, without independent sources, write a fair article, and no article is preferable to an unfair one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:22, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Where do you get that the arguments want to give a free pass on proving notability to Free/Open Source Software? It seems like we just want different guidelines for what constitute notability for FOSS projects. I think we can all agree that a project like mine, Humm and Strumm with two contributors and no working program yet, doesn't deserve a page (actually, as a new member under a different user name, related to the project, I tried creating one...luckily, the editors I ran into were quite nice and pointed me to the appropriate policies without any bad feelings or nastiness. ^_^). Also, I think we can all agree that a project like Firefox or Emacs can be granted an entry. It's the ones like dwm that the controversy is over. These projects may have many users or have had a unique feature that is notable one way or another... The point is, these projects can be notable, just not as defined under our current notability guidelines using secondary sources in print. Free/Open Source Software is largely circulated through the blogosphere. While these are not always verifiable, there are usually enough of them that research can be done. Also, by nature of the FOSS projects, you can double check most of this information yourself. It is unlikely that a major print source would have much more than a mention of the d-bus message system, but it is one of the cornerstones of the modern GNU/Linux desktop. We only have a single Linux Journal reference for it, and a *blog*.

In my opinion, the rules need to be changed to be more forgiving to Free/Open Source Software (and as mentioned somewhere above, freeware, too), because they by nature have a different set of notability guidelines than most other topics, yet calling a lot of them not notable is definitely false, as common sense would say. By no means should we ignore the need for notability, but we need to change it such that notable FOSS projects and freeware can be on Misplaced Pages. I say, the spirit of the rule is the most important part. Remember, they are just guidelines. And it would seem that even Misplaced Pages pillars (WP:NOTLAW) agree with me. Cheers, PatrickNiedzielski (talk) 04:25, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I still have a problem understanding why it's so important for every minor open source utility to have its own encyclopedia article. Is it for attracting more attention and manpower to FOSS projects? If it is, WP:NOTADVERTISING is pretty clear on this point. Many existing FOSS articles already reek of self-promotion and really don't see how loosening the notability requirements to include additional thousands of unremarkable projects would benefit this encyclopedia or any of its readers and editors. Then there's also the issue of double standards. If I recall correctly, all secondary notability guidelines (WP:WEB, WP:MUSIC, etc.) include all the basic criteria of WP:N and then some. This RFC, however, is essentially a proposal to disregard all major Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines in all deletion discussions related to FOSS. My question, again, is: why? What makes open source software so special and fragile that it must receive preferential treatment over other subjects? I'd give you my version of the answer to this question but you probably already know it. — Rankiri (talk) 01:45, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

"If I recall correctly, all secondary notability guidelines (WP:WEB, WP:MUSIC, etc.) include all the basic criteria of WP:N and then some." That's incorrect. Misplaced Pages has several notability guidelines, and they each list different sets of criteria that qualify as evidence that the topic is notable. Other notability guidelines could not contain the criteria of this guideline along with additional requirements, since meeting this guideline is enough to be considered notable. If meeting the criteria in this guideline is not enough to be considered notable, this guideline serves no purpose. Other notability guidelines could only contain alternate criteria or they wouldn't exist.

This guideline says "A topic is presumed to be notable enough to merit an article if it meets the general notability guidelines below. A topic can also be considered notable if it meets the criteria outlined in one of the more subject specific guidelines listed on the right." If software "has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" then according to this guideline, no further requirement must be met. The software is notable. If the software has not, it might meet some criteria in the Web content guideline or another guideline.

I don't know who makes Misplaced Pages notability guidelines, but if people want another one for software, why not? Perhaps notability guidelines could even be thought of as software that people on Misplaced Pages execute. (Why have people and not computers executing it? is another question altogether.) I don't think Misplaced Pages has other notability guidelines (like for Academics, Books, Criminal acts, Events, etc) because people think those topics are "special and fragile" and "must receive preferential treatment." They just list other criteria, for particular topics. This notability guideline lists general criteria, not specialized or limited to one class of things. Your next hitchhiker (talk) 03:33, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

• I should have been more accurate with my wording. What I was trying to say is that even though the additional guidelines offer some secondary criteria for inclusion, most of these criteria are rather redundant to WP:GNG since they still require some sort of verification or affirmation from independent reliable sources. For example, if a subject has won a major national award, it's just a clear indication that significant coverage by WP:RS sources is likely to exist. This guideline doesn't try to circumvent WP:N in the way the above RFC does. — Rankiri (talk) 13:59, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:WEB or the GNG is sufficient to cover any project (software or otherwise) created by users that otherwise does not necessary get universal coverage. Now, to those that challenge this, my suggestion is to find reliable sources that cover OSS better (the various Linux magazines, O'Reilly publications, and so forth) to provide that software to be important. --MASEM (t) 01:58, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, we could use stats from popcon, http://popcon.debian.org/ , http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ to measure how notable it is 'in the field'. Unomi (talk) 02:20, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Just some random, unrelated thoughts:

• I think it is not necessary for every little piece of open source software to have its own article. E.g. sometimes it's better to discuss several genetically related projects together in a single article. An example for this is the recent TWiki/Foswiki split. But when we do that we get organisational problems. TWiki, a project with doubtless notability (large sections of books have been dedicated to it) has split in two projects of roughly equal importance. Only one of them has an article. The article does discuss the other project, but it has only one infobox. That's a serious POV problem since there is an actual conflict between the two communities.
• Of course some open source software has no problems establishing its significance. Since Emacs was mentioned: O'Reilly has published "Learning GNU Emacs, Third Edition", "GNU Emacs Pocket Reference" and "Writing GNU Emacs Extensions"; there is also an Addison-Wesley book. So there is no doubt about notability in this case.
• (copied from a post of mine elsewhere) The General notability guideline is an approximation for identifying articles that (1) are worth having in an encyclopedia because enough people are interested in them, and (2) can be written neutrally. It's good for most purposes, but in the case of open source software there are special circumstances that make it harder to prove that enough people are interested and easier to write a neutral article without significant third-party coverage. (The article Dwm gets 100 hits/day, Foswiki gets 50 hits/day. That's not so much less than e.g. MediaWiki and significantly more than Erwig and Naman Keïta or any other random article which has no notability problems at all.) The German Misplaced Pages takes them into account, we don't.
• Some numbers illustrating the problem:
  • New York State Route 28N: 344 page views in December
  • Carucage (featured article): 371 page views in December
  • QVWM (historically significant software now at AfD, no chance to survive): 392 page views in December
  • Point Park Civic Center (featured article): 617 page views in December
  • Ross Sea party (featured article): 930 page views in December
  • Evilwm (software now at AfD, no chance to survive): 1004 page views in December
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Men (featured article): 1440 page views in December
  • Problem of Apollonius (featured article): 1607 page views in December
  • Sylvanus Morley (featured article): 1862 page views in December
  • Maximus the Confessor (featured article): 2174 page views in December
  • Dwm (software, 2nd nomination for deletion, not much chance to survive): 3009 page views in December
  • Execution by elephant (featured article): 3899 page views in December

I would have listed more software articles, but whereas it is trivial to find featured articles with few page views, I had trouble locating threatened or deleted software articles that are really worth keeping.

• I am not proposing to use page view statistics as a criterion for keeping an individual article. For that purpose they are even more problematic than Google hit counts. I am proposing to let them guide us when we try to find out whether/how to address the discrepancy between the GNG and its ultimate purpose. This is only relevant to the tiny number of articles that are not notable per GNG but that we can nevertheless write about uncontroversially, neutrally and reliably by using primary sources and trivial mentions in reliable secondary sources. Hans Adler 11:46, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
  • This arguments been done before: if we went by page views, which tell us what the reader wants, as opposed to what we're really trying to achieve, then WP would be about porn and DragonBall Z and boy bands, with little academic coverage. The inclusion for WP is the ability to show that a topic is notable, not just that it is factually true or interesting to a certain number of people. --MASEM (t) 14:29, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
    • That's a good point. It seems to me that there are at least three categories of topics that are less notable in terms of GNG than their popularity suggests:

1. Taboo parts of culture such as porn
2. Adolescent culture such as DragonBall Z and boy bands
3. Software.

I think software is different from the other two, but I can't give a good reason for that right now. Hans Adler 15:11, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

• • • • You're missing the point if you're thinking they're taboo. None of these are, we have porn and pop culture articles all over the place. But they are more difficult to show appropriateness in WP due to the lack of traditional coverage in academic journals or published sources, despite the fact they may be popular. But again, I stress the way to get "around that" is to look to non-traditional but reliable sources to assert that the topic is infact notable and work from there (as I describe below). --MASEM (t) 15:15, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly, even articles on Wikimedia's own projects can fall foul of the WP:GNG. Have a look at Wikisource. Yaris678 (talk) 13:08, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

My thought on such problems is that wikieditors need to adopt a "merge first, delete second" way of thinking. In as many cases as possible an article should not be deleted, but have the meat of its content merged into a more appropriate article and a redirect set up. This (1) Preserves the history of the original article and (2) preserves the information from that article. From what I understand the main problem was that wikieditors wanted to wipe dwm from existence as far as wikipedia would be concerned, and that just doesn't seem like a justifiable position. My hope is that by getting dialogue going on more information-retentive policies such negative events might be avoided in the future without compromising the quality of wikipedia. --WCarter (talk) 10:08, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

A reliable source for open source

Actually I think the problem is not that there aren't any reliable sources, but more that people don't agree on what constitutes a reliable source in the case of open source.

Obviously, dead tree media is relatively useless (With one or two great exceptions, such as the books by O'Reilly Media) . The canonical sources of information are all online. Typically full souce code for an oss application can be found online, so verifiability is a fairly trivial exercise. But such sources don't tell us anything about notability.

So we need to think of what kinds of sources we can use to establish notability for OSS, that have similar properties to other sources we already use to establish notability.

How about this: could we count "Included in a major distribution", as a solid notability claim? I guess you could say that being published in a distribution would be (roughly!) the F/L/OSS analogue to being published in a peer reviewed journal. Distributions typically test a package, edit it to make it play nice with other packages, sometimes do some reviewing, etc. Also, the major distributions are fairly notable in themselves. And you could say they are a kind of media, just not traditional or dead tree media.

Within the framework of WP:N, a Distribution has the following properties:

• Significant Coverage : A distribution like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora_(operating_system), Novell openSUSE, etc includes the entire source code, one or more compiled versions, a short summary or review, a screenshot, etc.
• Reliable : WP:RS only lists news organisations and academic journals to be reliable by default. Argh! %-) However, WP:V has a definition. "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. ". Distributions are:
  • Reliable : You could self-assess this, by simply running one and seeing if it crashes... but for several of the top distributions, I'm pretty sure we can point to 3rd party reliable sources attesting to their reliability, insofar we haven't done so yet.
  • third-party: A distribution is a 3rd party
  • reputation for fact checking and accuracy: W're using these sources specifically for assessing notability. A distro maintainer won't spend their time on something they don't think is worth the effort. The time a distribution maintainer spends on a subject is somewhere in between that spent by a journalist(hours/days) and time spent by an academic (months/years).
  • published: distributions typically publish work in physical form, on CD-ROM, DVD, etc. Some also print manuals, reviews, and other documents.
• Sources: In this context, a distribution is a secondary source.
• Independant of the subject: Distribution maintainers definitely qualify here. In fact, the occasional acerbic criticism of "upstream" often makes for entertaining sunday morning reading O:-)
• Presumed, We're mostly using a distro to establish notability. We'll need other sources (possibly the primary source :-/) for other aspects to ensure we don't violate WP:NOT

There is also a separate definition at verifiability: "In general, the best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments." In the framework of WP:V , distributions have the following properties:

• professional structure. Some distributions have people working for pay. The large distribution providers typically have employees or volunteers who apply professional standards at or above the industry norm.
• checking and analysing facts: they're more concerned with source code and bugs, which they check, analyze, critique, often very thoroughly indeed. (I'm arguing on the basis that [[Source code#Legal issues in the United States|code is (free) speech)
• checking and analysing legal issues: Some distributions are more thorough about this than others. Debian is well known for being very strict on licensing issues of all forms (you can compare their policy to our own non-free media policy. Ours is probably somewhat modeled on theirs, albeit unconsciously) .
• checking and analysing evidence: in the context of distributions would mostly be bug reports, feature requests, or legal issues. This is the core business of a distribution, and a good distribution will maintain their issue-trackers religiously. incidentally, open source projects themselves also often run issue trackers. If you'd like to see one: wikipedia has an issue tracker too :-)
• checking and analysing arguments: distributions are not often in the business of analysing natural language texts, of course. In the case where we use a distribution to assess notability: they asses the overall quality of a project, and the likelihood that their users will want to use it, and decide whether it is worth the effort to support.

TL;DR: We should consider inclusion in a distribution as a reliable (bright-line) indicator of notability, because -in the context of notability- distributions appear to meet or exceed the relevant requirements set by WP:RS, WP:N, WP:V

On that basis, shall we add a clarification to the relevant policy page(s)? --Kim Bruning (talk) 13:07, 6 March 2010 (UTC) clarification in response to below: Distributions meet or exceed the relevant requirements to be considered a good publisher, and thus a reliable source on the notability of the subjects they publish. 13:52, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Does being a low-level employee of a major corporation imply notability? Aside from the fact that notability is not inherited, this approach wouldonly apply to the kind of software that can get included in major OS distributions. Many open source projects are written for proprietary systems like MS Windows and most (open source games, specialized utilities, etc) have nothing to do with operating systems. Again, what you're suggesting is a double standard. — Rankiri (talk) 13:34, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I think a low-level employee fails the requirements for RS, N and V.

Open Source projects do not inherit notability from the distribution. Rather, the distribution acts as an editor and makes statements about the projects in a manner that is valid within our RS/V/N framework; as I have just documented.

I agree that not all open source projects are covered by distributions. But not all open source projects are covered by the New York Times either. My argument is merely that the major distributions should be used as a source for determining whether a project is notable, all else being equal.

TL;DR: IMCO Distributions count as publishers, just like newspapers or tv stations, and should be treated as such.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 13:46, 6 March 2010 (UTC) In My Considered Opinion

I have no objections to this, the maintainer aspect ensures that there is some 'editorial control' as it were, someone checked that this program functioned as expected. There is a selection and vetting process in place. Unomi (talk) 13:52, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

• See my earlier comment about low-level employees. There is a selection and vetting process in place in every major corporation as well. As for the claim that major OS distributions act like investigative reporters and always provide some sort of independent coverage for all their components, it's just untrue. For example, Debian's package description for dwm is practically a copy-paste from dwm's homepage: compare and . — Rankiri (talk) 14:18, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

• I saw your earlier comment and I don't accept the analogy. As for the package description, that could simply be because it is correct. Surely you wouldn't argue against peer-review simply because the submitted paper was identical with the published one? Unomi (talk) 14:36, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

• When such reviews provide any independent analysis of the software, they probably already satisfy WP:RS and WP:N as it is. Fedora's description for ack only states that it's a "Grep-like text finder" and that "Ack is designed as a replacement for grep" . Does that constitute significant coverage by reliable sources in your view? — Rankiri (talk) 14:46, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Fedora also lists bug reports and publication dates etc, so a bit more than you claim. Debian does a better job, including some active bug reports, developer information, changelogs, legal information in the form of a copyright file, details about patches that the debian developer found necessary related packages, packages with similar functionality, and (the important one for notability criteria) they have a named developer who is in charge of keeping the package maintained. --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:50, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) The vetting process at a major corporation is not public or transparent. Corporations are not publishers per-se. They do not meet the requirements of RS/V/N. Apart from the occasional wanted ad, HR don't even try to be a publication, reliable or otherwise. I'll rate that argument 1 cuil. ;-)

I have already argued that distributions concern themselves with code, and discussions of code, and why this is sufficient to be considered a valid publisher. Natural language statements are ancillary, although they may be taken account where useful.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 14:39, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

• This position is even less valid. Just because a publisher publishes a book, it doesn't automatically mean that this book is notable. See WP:Notability (books). — Rankiri (talk) 14:46, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, at least we're down from the lofty heights of cuil theory, and are merely comparing apples and oranges now. :-/

The overarching concept in all our notability criteria is that we rely on some sort of selection taking place by a reliable 3rd party source.

You are correct, if you pay a publisher enough money, then they may publish your book, regardless of merit. However this immediately invalidates the comparison with distributors, many of whom won't distribute your software -no matter how much you pay-, unless it meets their criteria.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 15:37, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

• What is it with you and this ludicrous money aspect? Once again, paid advertising and mere acts of publishing have never been considered indicative of notability. And for the nth time, whether the distributors' reasons for including this piece of software were personal, professional, practical or corrupt, their inclusion criteria are still their own. Misplaced Pages's concept of notability should be based on verifiable evidence and not some supposed authority figures who don't seem to be all that reliable or independent to begin with. — Rankiri (talk) 16:42, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, paid advertising and mere publishing are not indicative of notability. We agree exactly.

Yes, wikipedia's concept of notability should be based on verifiable evidence. We agree exactly.

No, we should not base ourselves on supposed authority figures. We agree exactly.

There's no discussion there. This is wikipedia, we do things the wikipedia way. You can assume that as a baseline fact.

The open question is how to apply wikipedia's standards in a more challenging way that we're used to. Can we meet the above criteria (and others) when using electronic sources only, and if so, how? That question was the starting point for this section.

As a quick recap: moving forward from *that* starting point, I pointed out that distributions meet some of our criteria, and thus might be useful. Can you think of further sources or methods? --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:00, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

• Nearly all noteworthy FOSS gets covered by WP:RS press these days. Some less significant packages may occasionally fall through the cracks, but I really don't think that the problem is nowhere near as dire and apocalyptic as some of the FOSS defenders suggest. — Rankiri (talk) 14:34, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

We're trying to cooperate to make an encyclopedia together. Dividing people into attackers and defenders isn't very helpful. :-)

Nothing is ever dire or apocalyptic. Sometimes we can figure ways to improve our process, however.

I think that it would be illogical to assume that noteworthy OSS is covered by the press, reliable or otherwise; because the canonical source of information is online. For instance, if I want to understand how to operate aspects of X11, I would not turn to -say- Wired_(magazine) for my information. That would be silly. --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

• Red Hat Magazine, Linux Magazine, Open Source Magazine, Free Software Magazine, Linux Format, Linux-Magazin, etcetera, etcetera. Contrary to popular opinion, open source software is one of the most well-sourced subjects on Misplaced Pages. Not every minor open source utility deserves to have its own encyclopedia article. If dozens of similar publications and hundreds of books and WP:RS-compliant websites in various languages all around the world don't already cover it, it probably means that the software in question is not as notable as one may think.

Also, by "some of the FOSS defenders", I mainly meant those from the previously mentioned AfD discussion who see the fact of being ranked 5724th in a self-selected, non-scientific popularity contest as an undeniable sign of significant notability that raises some interesting questions about the validity of WP:N and WP:RS. This preconceived line of argument isn't very helpful either. — Rankiri (talk) 16:39, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't read any of those magazines, and I don't accept them as sources, personally. I once won a year-long free subscription to one such magazine; I turned it down even at that price.

I'm not talking about DWM. I'm trying to think of ways to determine reliability of online sources and to determine which sources are reliable and how. F/L/OSS is a good starting point. We're going to have to figure that out sooner or later anyway, as more publishing and documentation moves online.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 02:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Web sources

I disagree with the above.

Whether a distribution includes source code and/or binaries is not by itself relevant, because that's what software is: the sum of source and binaries. The code itself is, therefore, comparable to a quotation from a novel in a book review — it is a part of the primary source, but is not itself a secondary source that is needed to qualify for notability.

However, a distribution might also serve as a secondary source, if it included commentary on the program in the form of the reviews or descriptions mentioned above. The obvious question is whether those reviews would count as reliable secondary sources. I think some distributions might count as reliable sources, but it would need to be determined on a case-by-case basis. The reliability of the software, however, is not the same as the reliability of the distribution when it is acting as a secondary source. Conceivably, a distribution might be rock solid as software but might have a reputation for poor-quality documentation.

I think that the right approach is to a) identify the specific secondary source(s) that are regarded as having significant coverage, and then b) assess whether they are of sufficient reliabilty. I believe it is a mistake to try to bypass this process. Jakew (talk) 14:33, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec)The idea of finding the right sources to justify OSS is the right path to better inclusion, but having an OSS software piece in a big distro is not significant coverage. (Some distros may have a software spotlight of the month, however, which is usable as a source) My suggestion is that people need to identify reliable sources and experts in the OSS community - even if these are blogs or similar websites, but established as OSS experts. (eg the first name that comes to mind is Eric S. Raymond, but I'm sure there's many others.) You just have to look. The situation is not as dire as those worried about OSS articles suggest it is. --MASEM (t) 14:34, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that that is a useful position. :-) I am pretty sure distributions definitely meet several of our criteria, so can be useful as a starting point. And notable blogs work. It might be useful to put together a set of things we can use as sources up on a notability page. "here's sources we know are acceptable/ work for OSS notability and RS questions" --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:04, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Kim, you seem to claim above that Misplaced Pages has a strictly "dead tree" notion of notability -- that sources like these e-pub scholarly journals are somehow insufficient. This is simply not true: Online-only sources are certainly acceptable in determining notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:25, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Some of our current pages appear to suggest that. I agree with common sense though. :-) Can you point out where our use of electronic-published documents has has been documented? Maybe we can link to that from here, for instance. --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

GNG itself says "Sources may encompass published works in all forms and media" -- and has for several years now.

I'm curious about your assertion that other pages make a distinction between, say, a dead-tree magazine like The New Yorker and an online magazine like Salon.com; I'm not aware of any such distinction for any purpose. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Another angle to look at it is through WP:WEB notability guidelines. Specifically, FOSS is "web content" since it is solely distributed on the internet (except for shipping CD/DVD releases by mail, which is also allowed). Therefore this criteria for notability applies:

• The content is distributed via a medium which is both respected and independent of the creators, either through an online newspaper or magazine, an online publisher, or an online broadcaster; except for trivial distribution including content being hosted on sites without editorial oversight.

So the question is whether Linux distributions (BSDs, whatever) are respected publishers and provide editorial oversight. Let's say there are respected distributions; what about editorial oversight, do they provide it?

-- MagV (talk) 17:17, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's make sure that I know how that rule works.

Is Slate.com an online magazine that falls within this rule? If it links to an online-only story at NYTimes.com, is it independent of the creator? Does such a link constitute "distribution" for the purpose of WEB? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm only briefly familiar with Slate, but if it links to a NYTimes article indicating that it's a part of Slate's main content (as opposed to just a link from within another article), then I think yes, Slate is distributing that NYTimes article. And unless there's a hidden motive skewing editorial judgment, Slate is independent. MagV (talk) 20:39, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so it's not good enough to merely link to the content; it has to 'transclude' the content (e.g., get a license from NYTimes.com to 'reprint' it). But transcluding the content would make the transcluded content notable under this provision of WEB? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:46, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this policy is about how much of editorial selection is applied to the content; e.g. if Slate's editors deem some content worthy of inclusion in their magazine, and we trust their judgment (i.e. Slate is respectable), then we conclude notability from that. So a particular method of inclusion is not what's important; indication of editorial approval is. MagV (talk) 22:30, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Application of WEB to FOSS via the distribution analogy basically falters when one considers that most distros do not place any reps or warranties on FOSS outside of anything they specifically have developed for the platform. In otherwords, they have not editorially reviewed the content for inclusion, simply have included it because it is FOSS. Now, if a distro's blog or website talks about why they included software X, or something similar, then that's a starting point, but just the presence in the distro grants the FOSS software no special privileges per WEB to be notable. --MASEM (t) 22:37, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I think, unfortunately, that provision of WEB needs to be scrapped or dramatically re-written.

As it stands -- looking at what it says, which I believe is seriously different from what the author meant -- every single wire services article qualifies for a separate Misplaced Pages article, as of the moment that it gets picked up by a newspaper or magazine. Wire services articles are clearly "content" and they are "distributed via a medium which is both respected and independent of the creators," most usually through newspapers, and their inclusion in the newspaper is the very definition of "editorial oversight", so the trivial-distribution exception doesn't apply.

Again, I'm sure that the people who wrote WEB didn't mean for "Pelosi: Confident House will pass health care bill" to end up with an 'encyclopedia article' about the existence of this simple news story, but they apparently didn't write down what they actually meant, because a plain-language reading of that rule indicates that this little bit of content clearly does meet the standard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that the concept that WP is not a news source would override this aspect of WEB - that is, just because a story is propagated many times over due to being a wire story, we still would not have an article on it because it's just news. If you need to be exact, the duplication of a story on multiple news sites can be considered "trivial" - I would expect an AP story to be duplicated multiple times, for example. Or to put it another way - I don't think anyone's attempted to use this aspect of WEB to push forward notability of news topics, and I don't think we need to worry about this aspect of WEB unless we start seeing that. Basically, it's still common sense at the end of the day. If we don't regularly allow common news, WEB's not going to allow for it either. --MASEM (t) 01:15, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

No, the scenario I laid out has significant editorial control. The decision of a newspaper editor to include, or not include, an article in his (or her) paper is practically the definition of "editorial control". (Note that I didn't cite a news aggregator: the link takes you to a real, live, newspaper, with real, live humans deciding which wire services articles they'll run. News.Google.com is trivial distribution; a story chosen by the editor of the national news desk at a proper newspaper is not.)

If we don't believe that any piece of online content that was independently selected by a respectable editor is notable, then we shouldn't say that any piece of online content that was independently selected by a respectable editor is notable.

I agree that WEB shouldn't authorize such a scenario. I believe that WEB's authors didn't intend to authorize such a scenario. But that's what they said, and they consequently need to fix it. Guidelines are not written for the convenience of people who already know the answers: They must be intelligible to new editors -- including new editors who think that their YouTube video, which was featured by their local newspaper, deserves a Misplaced Pages article.

There are several methods for fixing this problem: WEB's editors could define journalism as not being "content" for their purposes. They could exclude anything that is also distributed offline. They could eliminate the provision entirely. Doubtless there are more alternatives. But they really need to fix this problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

See, I don't call a newspaper editor taking a wire story and including it the type of "editorial oversight" that we look for from reliable sources or creating notability; in the case of a wire story, I would expect that AP or whatever newsservice had done the editorial oversight - validating sources and content - that we're looking for from a reliable source. The choice of what stories to run when that wire story comes down the line is not the same type of editorial oversight we want. I think we're speaking to the same thing, but again, I haven't seen again abuse of WEB written in this fashion to require us to reconsider writing it. That's not say that doing what you suggest can't hurt, but there also may be unforeseen consequences if we're too hasty in that. --MASEM (t) 02:20, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

So what would you call it? I can assure you that anyone who has worked his (or her) way up to national desk editor would be very unhappy to have their professional skills dismissed as 'trivial distribution' or not really editor-level work.

And how would you differentiate 'picking the best news story (produced by a third-party service) for my major newspaper' from 'picking the best widget (produced by a third-party service) for my software distribution'? WEB says that the action that suggests notability is the action of the person choosing to distribute the content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

It is not dismissing the job of the desk editor, but what you're suggesting that is at issue is that stories that are selected by desk editors are suddenly "notable" because the same story is published on multiple websites. News events fall under WP:EVENT, regardless what WEB or other guidelines may attempt to say - it is not how the event is published but whether it receives more attention than just primary, near-term coverage. --MASEM (t) 03:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Again, the fact that any editor could reasonably interpret WEB as meaning that any editor-chosen "content" included in any reputable source is notable -- which is no less than exactly what WEB says -- is a problem that must be fixed. I do not defend this sorry state of affairs: I condemn it as a sloppy failure. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

You're right; that rule, if applied literally, suggest that such article itself (and not the topic of that article) is notable. I don't think that was the intent, so yes, WP:WEB needs clarification on this part. On the other hand WP:WEP provides an example: Ricky Gervais' podcast distributed by The Guardian. I am not entirely sure how to differentiate between distributing an article from distributing a podcast in this case. Also, going back to the original topic, is software a podcast or an article?

Anyone care to move this discussion to WP:WEB talk?

-- MagV (talk) 10:21, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree the Rick Gervais example in WP:WEB is misleading; if his podcast were transcribed, I think it would be quickly recognised that his podcasts are effectively Op-ed, which is a type of trivial coverage disallowed as evidence of notability by WP:NTEMP. Just because an opinion piece is carried by a respected newspaper or website, it does not mean that its subject matter or authors are notable in accordance with WP:GNG. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:57, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

What I understood from that example is that WEB has declared Podcast (by Ricky Gervais) to be a notable, separate-article-deserving subject. Now perhaps it is -- I don't know anything about this podcast -- but that is what I understood the example to mean. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:35, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

His podcast is notable - per GNG and WEB - but the content of his podcasts are not immediately notable. Same is true for things like New York Times or Scientific American - the publication is notable, but the contents are not immediately so. --MASEM (t) 23:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Difference between policy and practice

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a big gap between policy and practices concerning notability? Maurreen (talk) 14:46, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? Angryapathy (talk) 15:39, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

A couple that make no claim to importance: Jamie Owens and Merryland.

A couple for which any claim of notability is in a gray area, at most: Mary Ann Akers and Al Yarmouk. Maurreen (talk) 17:44, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

As no one has appeared to call these articles up for lack of notability (beyond tagging), there's nothing wrong here. If these articles were kept after an AFD, started based on the claim for lack of notability, and remained as in this state, I would say there's a problem. But with 3million articles, we can't patrol every one every day to verify notability; thats just impossible. You're free, if you desire, to suggest these articles for AFD for lack of notability, but you should check out WP:BEFORE to see if you can help the articles first before deleting them. --MASEM (t) 17:50, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying that there is a problem with the articles. I'm saying there is a curious gap between our policy and our practice. Maurreen (talk) 18:03, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Many newer editors are not aware of what notability guidelines are, which is why these exist. there's no gap here that we can deal with without biting these editors too hard (eg we have a CSD criteria that states that if an article doesn't state why a person or the like is important (NOT notable!) we can delete this article, typically on the recommendation of New Page Patrol - but this can be bitey if we applied it to these articles which do not fail that CSD criteria). So it goes back again that it is impossible to patrol every article all the time, thus many will slip through the cracks of things like notability and the like. (Much of the recent troubles over unreferenced BLPs is exactly this - they slip through cracks that are expected of volunteer editing group). In other words, there is nothing we can do about this, beyond accept it that it occurs. --MASEM (t) 18:08, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

• Jamie Ownens -- The article is two and a half years old and has had eight editors.
• Merryland -- Going on four years old, has had more than 10 editors.
• Mary Ann Akers -- More than two years old, has had eight editors.
• Al Yarmouk -- Going on two years old, has had nine editors.

These are all in disparate subjects. We have some wide cracks. Maurreen (talk) 18:18, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Again: volunteer project that errs on avoiding scaring off newbies. We are going to have wide cracks. WP will never be perfect. --MASEM (t) 18:22, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Sofixit. We know that a lot of our articles are substandard and that many may be on non-notable topics, but editors do work their way through the backlog. Do you have a proposal here, or are you just pointing out what we knew already? Fences&Windows 22:38, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

F&W, I was doing neither of those. I was seeking information.

My original question was, "Is it just me, or does anyone else see a big gap between policy and practices concerning notability?"

Your reply included, "We know that a lot of our articles are substandard and that many may be on non-notable topics." That was the first response that actually answered my question. That did the most to answer my question.

As far as "fixing it," that would give rise to a question of whether to seek to change the policy or to seek to change the practice. I am not pursuing that question.

Although your response was informative, you seem to have an underlying tone that I don't understand. Maurreen (talk) 22:52, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is a volunteer community. That something doesn't happen, usually means no volunteer has noticed or acted upon it yet. For example, you or I right now, could nominate any of those articles for deletion, citing non-notability. My excuse is I'm working on other areas of the wiki right now (one DYK, and a half dozen policies guidelines and articles, plus a number of dispute resolution cases), and I also have a busy non-wiki life right now. If everyone bypasses it then it could remain for some time. That's how volunteer communities work. The same happens at other projects, such as the Firefox browser and Miranda IM - well known issues can and do persist for years simply because nobody yet had space or got round to taking them in hand. if we had a guideline on notability, and when AFD came round it was routinelycontradicted or ignored, then one might say theory and practice diverged. But here the "theory" is that Misplaced Pages is a volunteer community and sometimes not everything happens. The practice is the same. FT2  19:48, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I do not see a great gap between policy and practices concerning notabilit.y If you see one you are probably not unique so you are probably not the only one to see a great gap between policy and practices concerning notability. I believe that answers your question as stated. I'm pretty sure also it is an uninformative answer, that is why others have tried to make something useful out of it, they're trying to be helpful. If you have something to say you should try saying it clearly and directly rather than trying to get people to think or whatever it is you might be trying to do. I haven't the foggiest what if anything is the motive for your question. Dmcq (talk) 20:09, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Delete the non-notable, but save the knowledge

As a thought on something that has long bothered me about wikipedia: If something is not notable enough to have its own article, would it not be trivial to at least move the most important information to a more notable parent article? Clutter is reduced but the growth of the wiki is not stunted; the wholesale loss of knowledge is rather unsettling to me. --WCarter (talk) 05:33, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Merging information if the sub-topic is not notable into the larger, more notable is always preferred if it can be done. Not necessarily wholesale verbatim text of the sub-topic, but at least some aspects can be covered. Merging also allows a redirect to be left, keeping the history of the non-notable sub-topic article per the GFDL. --MASEM (t) 05:42, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

That is addressed by WP:PRESERVE. Many AfDs close as 'merge'.

I add that there are occasionally good reasons not to retain information, but they largely amount to "bad" information (e.g., unsourceable libel, outright errors, trivial details, hopelessly unencyclopedic content). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:58, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I would propose then that perhaps a new category of deletion be created: Merge and Redirect. Instead of proposing that an article be outright deleted, propose that important information be merged into another article and a redirect set up. The whole system is currently set up around the concept of removing and never again creating information that while perhaps not important or notable enough to warrant its own article, is certainly worth retaining as a part of the encyclopedia. --WCarter (talk) 23:45, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

You mean as detailed in WP:MERGE? -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 23:47, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

WCarter, there's no need for a 'new category of deletion', because there's no deletion involved. Any editor can merge and redirect articles. You don't need an AfD for this process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Then why is the AfD page so busy all the time? Any given day can have over a hundred delete nominations. More effort and focus should be put into trying to find this information a more appropriate home instead of outright removing it. Looking at Merge vs Delete pages it's clear that all the effort is being put into removing information, not relocating it. The AfD page has a DAILY accounting of information to be removed, while the AfM page only has a monthly accounting of knowledge to be relocated. The default mentality is "this doesnt belong, it must be removed from the wikipedia" and not "this information would fit better in another article" --WCarter (talk) 09:55, 21 March 2010 (UTC)