Wikipedia:What is and is not routine coverage

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Editors and contributors to Wikipedia may have difficulty determining what is and is not routine coverage of people and or events.

The guideline

WP:ROUTINE
is widely considered to be a very good guideline. Routine coverages such as weddings, funerals, sports scores, and other "and finally..." stories can be used to add to a notable article some interesting and details about a subject. That does not necessarily mean that such articles are good sources for establishing notability of a subject in the first place.

Conversely, there are many articles of notable events. Coverage in the media may be "routine" to the media (such as routine coverage of the

Winter Olympics
) but that does not disqualify the event from being notable.

Editors should be careful in defining what is referred to as "routine" coverage, especially when determining

notability
.

Examples

Sports

In the world of sports, it is true that many sporting events are routinely covered, but that does not make all coverage of a sporting event "routine" at all. Modern-day sporting events appear regularly in blogs or in local news as sports scores (sometimes called "box scores") without details. Such box scores are examples of routine coverage. Also (as in the case of the National Football League), pre-season games may produce multiple transactions and roster cuts or additions. These statistics are routinely carried in newspapers, but do little to support any notability standard for players.

However, if an article goes into detail about the event, it is not necessarily "routine" coverage. Not every sporting event earns a feature article in the press, and not every professional hopeful gains significant coverage and feature articles.

In other words:

  1. "routine coverage" is not a disqualification for notability.
  2. "routine coverage" may indeed be significant enough to surpass Wikipedia's
    general notability guideline
    .

Politics

Once every four years, the

WP:ROUTINE
guideline.

Establishing notability for "people" vs "events"

Additionally, bear in mind that

WP:ROUTINE is a subsection of the guideline Wikipedia:Notability (events) and therefore only applies to establishing notability about events. The primary guideline discussing notability of people is Wikipedia:Notability (people)
.

Conclusion

Be careful not to make

WP:ROUTINE
mean something that it does not. Just because a news article is written about a pre-planned event does not make it "routine" coverage.

See also