Wikipedia:No amount of editing can overcome a lack of 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: When notability is legitimately invoked as an issue in a deletion nomination, the problem usually cannot be solved by more editing. |
When articles are listed for
This means that unless information is added to an article to show that its topic meets the relevant notability guideline, or unless the notability issue was invoked in error, there is nothing that can be done to save the article. Not a
Editors who protest against deletion nominations of articles they create are often closely related to the subject. Our
For example: If an article had been posted in 2001 (Wikipedia's first year) about the American recording artist and record producer
In fact, if the current notability guidelines for
Wikipedia has more than 6.7 million articles now. Many of those do not do justice to the importance of their subjects (we believe the technical term would be "crappy"), but at least they do establish that the subject has been noticed by third parties before the Wikipedia article was started. Bad writing is not an argument for deletion except in
What to do then?
It depends whether you have a relationship with the subject or not.
If you don't, then, as far as Wikipedia is concerned, you can only wait. You may have started the article out of admiration for the subject, but if you are the only person who has noticed yet, then the time is not right for a Wikipedia article, even a brilliant one. Perhaps you are the first person to have noticed a performer, a politician, a business, etc. enough to write a neutral article about that subject. But if you are first to notice, then Wikipedia is not the right place to spread the word about something worth noting. You may want to try your luck at Facebook, Twitter, or a personal blog, as such websites are specifically suited for you to say what you want to say. After some time, a
On the other hand, if you do have a close relationship with the subject, or if you are the subject, and you would like to become the subject of a stable Wikipedia entry, that's one motivation to become the best you can be in your field, and that is where you should concentrate your efforts. If you become prominent in that field, then by the time you come back to Wikipedia you might find that someone else has started a Wikipedia article on you, and that article may have already survived a deletion discussion. As a bonus, you will have spared yourself the drama of fighting to have the article about you or the subject you are close to stay in Wikipedia.
Of course, there is nothing keeping you from creating or editing an article about yourself or a subject you are close to (and editing is actually encouraged if you find blatant inaccuracies—though it is strongly discouraged otherwise), and Wikipedia does have several partly autobiographical articles about unquestionably notable people, perhaps the most well-known of whom would be
But providing sources can
It is sometimes the case that editors will either fail to find or fail to seek sources before placing a {{notability}} template on an article, or on occasion even before starting a deletion process. In this case, editing the article to include more and better sources can help. These sources can also simply be provided in the deletion discussion or on the talk page, as mentioned, the quality of the article is irrelevant to questions of notability.
See also
- articles for deletionnomination. The foregoing essay assumes that the nominator has done that. If not, look at the potential sources listed in the deletion discussion.
- independentsources substantively treating that topic. This essay covers three common mistakes in using sources to show notability.
- Wikipedia:Minimum coverage - An essay explaining what minimum coverage would be needed to write a proper article, and by extension, how to handle topics that don't meet those minimums.
Notes
- Lewis (baseball)