User:Teratix/On notability

A little essay. It remains a work in progress and until fleshed out may not be accurate nor fully reflect my views.

Notability: a history

Wikipedia's notability guidelines have a bad reputation. Off-wiki, the press bemoan how Wikipedia didn't have an article on a Nobel Prize–winning scientist or a chemist who helped confirm the discovery of tesserine – in fact, they have talked about the guidelines enough to make them notable in their own right! They are dismissed as arbitrary and selectively enforced. Editors who argue for deletion are dismissed as "Internet-snob wiki-geeks". Countless examples of apparently unimportant pages nevertheless deemed notable are brandished. More recently, the guidelines have been cited as a cause of Wikipedia's notorious gender gap.

On-wiki, the reception is only a little better. While there is still a consensus that guidelines are necessary, inclusionism – a philosophy that encourages liberal addition of information to Wikipedia, less concerned with notability than accuracy and usefulness – proliferates. Isn't Wikipedia written in pixels, not on paper? Didn't Jimbo say we're meant to be the the sum of all human knowledge? (Although the man himself, wisely, has stayed out of the debate). Efforts to increase the diversity of article subjects have only intensified the criticisms; subjects related to women, minorities and the non-Western world are underrepresented in media coverage, making it difficult to find the sources necessary to satisfy the general guideline and leading to bruising disputes.

Thus, it is worth revisiting Wikipedia's notability guidelines. How did they come about in the first place?

Origins: The first deletions

Wikipedia:Notability/Historical

There was little need for a notability guideline in the earliest days of the project. The vast majority of pages being created were the vital components of a comprehensive encyclopedia and the few that were deleted were mostly gibberish or had misspelt titles. The first deletion policy meekly stated "Do not delete anything that might in the future become an encyclopedia topic."

However, there always has to be a first.

On November 22, 2001, Damian Yerrick nominated an article on KIPS architecture for deletion on Wikipedia utilities/Page titles to be deleted. The modern AfD procedure did not yet exist; deletions were handled exclusively by Jimbo Wales, Larry Sanger and Tim Shell. Yerrick called the subject an "undergrad computer architecture project that doesn't deserve an encyclopedia entry" – the first documented deletion nomination citing the subject's inherent unworthiness to be included in Wikipedia, not merely the problematic content of its article.

Around the same time, a discussion took place concerning an article about a humorous gaming website known as Gamefoolz, which seems to have achieved the dubious distinction of being the first advertising plug ever inserted on Wikipedia. Wales weighed in with a prophetic thought: "perhaps we should develop some loose criteria whereby a website is considered _important_ in some way. An important website is one that deserves an article. An unimportant website is one that doesn't."

Wales's proposed criteria, however, would not begin to be codified for a few years.

A guideline forms

Wikipedia talk:Notability/Historical/Fame and importance

An early version of What Wikipedia is not from September 2002, as edited by Tarquin, hints at a prototype notability criterion for biographies: "People whose biographies are included must have some sort of achievement". This was expanded on by The Cunctator – who, remarkably, still edits today – in March 2003: "A good measure of achievement is whether their lives (or deaths) were newsworthy, that is, that there exist external sources on the people." This is tantalisingly close to the current guidelines that require significant mentions in multiple sources.

On January 23, 2004, a poll was created by Imran, an administrator, asking a simple question: should lack of fame or importance be a legitimate reason to delete an article? The lack of explanatory background information suggests the matter was well known among editors at the time. Indeed, pages on inclusionism and its counterpart deletionism had been created only a few months before, mentioning the inclusionist claim that articles on "non-famous or unimportant people, places and concepts" should be allowed.

95 editors voted: the final result saw no consensus, with 57 in favour and 38 opposed. Supporters argued a serious encyclopedia must have some sort of standard for inclusion or it would be overwhelmed by poor content, while opposers pointed out the subjectivity of the terms "fame" and "importance" and that extraneous information did not harm Wikipedia anyway. Wales voted on both sides, citing a sympathy with the issues supporters were raising but claiming verifiability and neutrality were more appropriate criteria than fame and importance.

Uncle G's essay

User:Uncle G/On notability

The subjectiveness of early notability criteria was a nuisance, leading to many arguments and preventing the concept from gaining widespread acceptance. Enter Uncle G's essay on notability, which answered this important criticism and paved the way for notability to become a proper guideline. The key innovation of this piece was the "primary notability criterion":

An article's subject is notable if it has been the subject of non-trivial published works by multiple separate sources that are independent of that subject itself. – Uncle G

By tying a subject's notability to its coverage in sources, this criterion eliminated most bias in editorial decisions regarding notability. For example, some editors may think an unreliable wannabe Britannica doesn't deserve an article, but if other editors can provide a few sources (showing it's actually the world's biggest and best encyclopedia), everyone can agree it meets the necessary standards.

Of course, it's not perfect. How do you precisely define "non-trivial", "published" and "independent"?

The media take notice

2006, Chicago Tribune: 'Non-notable' the kiss of death on Wikipedia 2007, Slate: Evicted From Wikipedia 2007, Slate: Rescued by Wikipedia 2008, The Economist: The battle for Wikipedia's soul 2015, Wired: How I snuck through Wikipedia's notability test 2017, Entrepreneur: What I Learned When a Wikipedia Troll Deleted My Page 2018, Stuff: How it is decided who is Wikipedia-worthy 2019, Slate: The Notability Blues

Notes

References