This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Arj (talk | contribs) at 20:55, 23 September 2006 (Change to proposal boilerplate; see talk.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 20:55, 23 September 2006 by Arj (talk | contribs) (Change to proposal boilerplate; see talk.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) | The following is a proposed Misplaced Pages policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. | Shortcut
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| Notability |
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| General notability guideline |
| Subject-specific guidelines |
| See also |
- To read the essay on evaluating notability, see Misplaced Pages:Notability/Arguments.
Based on several sections in the policy on what Misplaced Pages is not, it is generally agreed that topics in most areas must exceed a certain threshhold of notability in order to have an article in Misplaced Pages. The terms "importance" and "significant" are also in use, and for practical purposes on Misplaced Pages they are similar.
Several guidelines (see table on the right) have been created, or are under discussion, to define more precisely what these thresholds should be. They generally assert that a minimum standard for any given topic is that it has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, where the source is independent of the topic itself.
Articles on subjects with borderline notability are frequently merged into list articles (e.g. List of esoteric programming languages), or into an article on a related subject (e.g. articles about not-well-known relatives of a famous person tend to be merged into the article on the person itself).
Articles on non-notable subjects are frequently nominated for Proposed Deletion and Articles for Deletion, and the article's merits are discussed, assessed and frequently ultimately deleted via those processes, as can be seen through precedents.
Notability or lack thereof are subjective, but both are valid arguments in discussions such as on WP:AFD, as well as for the creation of subject-specific guidelines.
See also
This page documents the status quo. There are (and have been) several proposals to alter the status quo, such as:
- Misplaced Pages:Notability proposal, a failed proposal.
- Misplaced Pages:Notability/Proposal, another failed proposal.
- Misplaced Pages:Non-notability, an active proposal to use only verifiability in regard to whether "non-notable" subjects should be included in Misplaced Pages.