This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
A fact from County Wildlife Site appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 25 February 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
@BrownHairedGirl: - This article has existed in stub form for a while now, so I expanded it in good-faith a couple of days ago to form a much more comprehensive and encyclopedic entry. Today however, BrownHairedGirl (talk·contribs) placed two tags onto the article - {{notability}} and {{third-party}}. I dispute the accuracy of these tags and reverted their addition, and per WP:BRD am starting a discussion here.
With regards to notability:- this is a conservation designation used and ratified by Natural England , the NDPB in the UK and applied to thousands of sites across the United Kingdom. The designation is unique in it's stipulations as discussed in the article. The fact that many Wildlife Trusts have a designated 'County Wildlife Sites Officer' shows their importance, the article cites official government documents which affirm the importance of CWS in achieving national biodiversity targets etc. Wikipedia has articles on most conservation designations as far as I can see, even ones with a much smaller number of designees - see Category:Protected areas of the United Kingdom for a list.
I really don't understand the second tag - how you can have a primary source for a conservation designation is a little confusing, as their is no overarching body for CWS or any offical website - the closest to that would be the Natural England website, but NE has no role in CWS designation and that's only two out of my five sources - a minority. The other three are a council and two Wildlife Trusts - all reliable bodies which voluntarily involve themselves with the management and designation of CWS. I don't understand what kind of other sources BrownHairedGirl is requesting, though I would like to work with her in improving this article. Thank-you. Acather96 (click here to contact me) 11:45, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Please read WP:N for more about notability. See especially WP:GNG. Notability is not about importance; it is about whether the topic has receive significant coverage in the reliable secondary sources which per WP:V are supposed to form the basis of any wikipedia article.
As to primary sources, it means sources too closely associated with the subject. Sources should be neutral and independent. See the essay Wikipedia:Independent sources.
@Acather96:, AFAICS none of those are secondary sources. They are all involved one way or another in promoting or preserving or designating these sites. As to notability, it is used here in a specific technical sense which means something very precise. Please do read WP:N. The reason that these issues are important is that they relate to what wikipedia is: an encyclopedia, which doesn't do original research. Instead of using primary sources as as a scholar would, it summarises the state of existing secondary research. I am surprised to find myself explaining this to an admin. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:40, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl: - I have read the relevant policies, and having been here a long while like you, can tell you I've read them many a time. I've never edited articles on conservation designations before, so I'm not used to this, in my view, very broad definitions of what constitutes a primary source - I would have assumed that a CWS primary source would have been from Natural England or it's guidelines or the legislation that brought it into existence, and that bodies which were affected by the existence of the designation and hence published commentaries and factual guidance about it (i.e. Widlife Trusts, local authorities) would be secondary sources. At this point I'd like to get a second opinion and await a response from the WikiProject talkpages I've messaged. Acather96 (click here to contact me) 13:57, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The article as revised expanded by you says "in general local Wildlife Trusts, local authorities and other local wildlife/environmental/conservation groups collaborate to select and designate sites". Those involved in designating the sites are not independent sources. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 14:49, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In [this BBC news report], designation as a County Wildlife Site is newsworthy. [Here] the BBC runs a feature on the County Wildlife Sites project in Devon. These are clearly independent. But I am troubled by the idea that county councils and other local government bodies are not independent of the existence of the designation and that the widespread application of the designation by county councils can be dismissed as affiliation per WP:N ""Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by the article's subject or someone affiliated with it. For example, advertising, press releases, autobiographies, and the subject's website are not considered independent." NebY (talk) 14:43, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, in the spirit and sense of Wikipedia's use of the term "independent" in WP:N. They are not employed by the article's subject, married to it, related to it by blood or adoption or otherwise members of its family, they are not owned by it and do not own it or have shares in it, they are not members of it, they are not constrained by dependence upon the article's subject in their freedm of speech concerning the subject nor are they coerced by it. NebY (talk) 15:15, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'd argue strongly that the range of coverage by reliable bodies - often county councils or organisations associated with biodiversity protection - suggests that we can be fairly certain that County Wildlife Sites exist and cover a fairly large number of areas within the country. We know, from sources close to them, what they are and what they do for an area. The third party coverage of them tends to be incidental, certainly (in that it tends to refer to specific sites rather than to them as a construct), but there are plenty of examples in reliable third party sources which allow us to confirm their existence. I would say that I was fairly clear that they meet the GNG certainly. Clearly there's a good chance that we're going to refer to CWS on a number of articles (say about nature reserves) and it makes sense to have a very brief article which describes what they are. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:57, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
BST, that's a straw man. I haven't argued that these things don't exist, or that there are lots of them. I would take issue with anyone who did try to claim that.
That's on a par with NebY's long list of irrelevant comparisons. The article's subject is not a person, so they can't marry it. It is not a company, so they can't own shares etc.
This article articles is about a process whereby a label is applied to geographical areas. The sources are all people involved in implementing that process. An independent source would be one which is not on the playing field: a journalist, an academic, a writer. Someone who cannot look at the process and say "I helped make that".
The problem is that by tagging the article as perhaps not meeting the GNG it gives the impression that it could or should be nominated for deletion (to me at least). I'm happy with the idea of tagging it needing more independent sources - I think that's (probably) achievable. But not meeting the GNG strikes me as too far. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:24, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If there is an AFD, it would be triggered lack of evidence of the availability of reliable, secondary sources about the topic. Warning of their absence increases the likelihod that somebody will add them. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:54, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
