Wikipedia:Bare notability
This is an essay on notability. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This page in a nutshell: Be cautious with creating articles that are borderline notable. A subject that seems to be barely notable may really not be notable at all. |
Bare notability, that can also be referred to as Semi-notability, refers to when an article seemingly just minimally meets
- The article is presented with very few references and few can be found;
- The article has plenty of references, but the references do not support the subject itself but rather pertain only triviallyto the subject, or
- The "references" provided are not considered valid sources for establishing notability(e.g., they are Facebook pages, blog pages, or promotional websites).
Articles that fit one or more of these descriptions may be in danger of
Any registered user has the right to propose an article for deletion using the
Improving an article with bare notability
The best ways to prevent an article on a subject with bare notability is to improve it so its notability seems more obvious. A good approach would be to ask yourself, why would anyone want to read about this subject? Or what makes this subject important enough to be included in an encyclopedia? Notability must be asserted bluntly and definitively. The best way to accomplish this is to back up your assertions with reliable sources:
- Search the web for more sources on the subject: If a plain Wikipedia's reliable sources criteria, try using other forms of searching, such as Google Books, Google Scholar, Google News, or Yahoo! News. It can be exhausting trying to search through hundreds of thousands of results for something that may meet these criteria, but narrowing your search can help. For example, if you are looking for references for an article on jazz saxophones from the 1930s, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo will find more targeted websites if you search for "jazz saxophone" +"swing era" or "jazz saxophone" +"big band" (in each case, use both sets of terms in quotes). If you are searching and not finding enough hits, try changing to a variant term for your search. For example, if you are looking for references for an article on bluegrass double bass, but you are not finding any good sources, if you use variant search terms like "bluegrass upright bass" OR "bluegrass bass fiddle", you might get different results.
- Look off the web: Using books you already own or visiting your local library can produce additional information. A library might hold useful books or periodicals, or be staffed by professionals willing to assist in researching subjects. Many local libraries provide access to online resources such as verifiablebecause they are accessible to anyone with access to the internet, so when an off-web source is used, use references that provide as much bibliographical information as possible.
- Look for an expert: Place the {{expert}} tag on top of the page. This helps in the search for someone who can provide more reliable sources.
Significance of coverage
The stumbling block in this scheme, then, is the precise definition of "significant coverage". How much coverage does a topic need, and in how many sources, before this coverage reaches the level of "significant"? Here, too, we may consider the needs of a potential article: if we must create an article using the material extracted from this "significant coverage", then we may define "significant" as "sufficient to serve as the basis for a good encyclopedic article". In this way, the concept of notability becomes entirely a practical one: we include topics on which we can create legitimate articles, and exclude topics on which we cannot.
Semi-notability
Not all topics need an article of their own, however. Suppose that we have some topic, X, which has a small amount of reliable secondary coverage; we can, for example, extract only three sentences of usable material from it. Should X have an article? Probably not; an article that remains a three-sentence stub forever is not a particularly good idea. Should X be omitted from Wikipedia entirely? Perhaps not; we do have some legitimate material about it, after all. A neater solution would be to include mention of X in some broader article or list; if all we want to write about X is three sentences, then a source which only allows for that is perfectly suitable for our purposes.
We may thus define our terms as follows:
- Non-notable
- A topic is "non-notable" if there is no usable coverage of it in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject.
- Semi-notable
- A topic is "semi-notable" if there is some usable coverage of it in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, but not a sufficient amount to write a good encyclopedic article.
- Notable
- A topic is "notable" if there is enough usable coverage of it in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject to write a good encyclopedic article.
In this system, notable topics would get their own articles, semi-notable ones would be mentioned in other articles, and non-notable ones wouldn't be mentioned at all.
Our "notability guideline" would then become:
“ | A topic is eligible for coverage in Wikipedia commensurate in extent to its coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject; topics for which there is insufficient useable material to support a separate article should be mentioned in broader articles or lists to the extent that the available sources allow. | ” |
Why notability?
The notability guideline is among the more contentious ones in Wikipedia:
“ | A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. | ” |
But what is the purpose of turning to the concept of notability in the first place? Notability is not a goal in and of itself; rather, it's a shorthand term that covers the availability of sources for an article on a topic. If a topic has no coverage in "reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject", it will be virtually impossible to write an encyclopedic article regarding it, since it is the material from such sources which must form the core of any article.
An alternative view: Don't be cautious with creating articles that are borderline notable
There is no practical difference between "bare notability" and other cases.
An article that satisfies Wikipedia's notability requirement simply is notable, even if the level of coverage does not exceed the minimum level required. Such an article cannot be validly deleted on the grounds that it is not notable due to lack of coverage (because deleting a notable topic for non-notability would be a paradox). Such an article is in possible danger of being deleted unless editors ignore the actual notability rules (in which case the grounds for deletion would be Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, not non-notability; and any editor proposing deletion on such grounds should expect to meet some resistance). Regardless, notability needs to be satisfied for an article to be retained.
An article does not need to assert the notability of its subject.
Since editors are encouraged to be
Biographies of living persons
Some editors are of the opinion that barely notable is still notable for most topics, but that Wikipedia's