 | This is an essay on notability. It contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more WikiProjects on how notability may be interpreted within their area of interest. |
Notability is a central issue related to contemporary art because contemporary art often refers to biographies of living persons, because of the current coverage of contemporary art on Wikipedia is not extensive (general articles, acknowledgment of the sources) and because the Wikipedia community interested in contemporary art is not particularly large and active. To verify the notability of people, institutions, events, books, journals it is necessary to follow specific guidelines.
Wikipedia:Notability says: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject."
- Can people reading and editing the encyclopedia check that the information comes from a reliable source?
- Are you basing the article on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy[1]?
Notability of People[edit]To define the notability of a creative professional (authors, editors, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, architects, and other creative professionals) you need reliable, independent sources on the subject which state one of the following:
- The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors.
- The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique.
- The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.
- The person's work (or works) either
- has become a significant monument,
- has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition,
- has won significant critical attention, or
- is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.
WP:CREATIVE
Criteria for academics[edit]To define the notability of an academic you need reliable, independent sources on the subject which state one of the following:
- The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources.
- The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level.
- The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g., the IEEE).
- The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions.
- The person holds or has held a named chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research (or an equivalent position in countries where named chairs are uncommon).
- The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major academic institution or major academic society.
- The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity.
- The person is or has been the head or chief editor of a major well-established academic journal in their subject area.
- The person is in a field of literature (e.g writer or poet) or the fine arts (e.g., musician, composer, artist), and meets the standards for notability in that art, such as WP:CREATIVE or WP:MUSIC.
Wikipedia:Notability (academics)
Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page[2]
Writing an autobiography on Wikipedia is strongly discouraged, unless your writing has been approved by other editors in the community. Editing a biography about yourself should only be done in clear-cut cases.
Wikipedia has gone through many prolonged disputes about the significance, factual accuracy, and neutrality of such articles.[1] Avoiding such editing keeps Wikipedia neutral and helps avoid pushing a particular point of view. Writing autobiographies is discouraged because it is difficult to write a neutral, verifiable autobiography, and there are many pitfalls. If you create an autobiography, you must have no promotional intent and must be willing to accept it being neutralized if it is not neutral, or even deleted if it comes to that. If you do turn out to be notable, you must expect the article to stay—you cannot just get it deleted because you are not happy with it. Our neutral point of view policy is absolute and non-negotiable, and all encyclopedic topics are fair game for Wikipedia.
Notability of institutions[edit]Organizations are usually notable if they meet both of the following standards:
- The scope of their activities is national or international in scale.
- Information about the organization and its activities can be verified by multiple,[1] third-party, independent, reliable sources.
Additional considerations are:
- Nationally famous local organizations: Some organizations are local in scope, but have achieved national or even international notice. Organizations whose activities are local in scope (e.g., a school or club) can be considered notable if there is substantial verifiable evidence of coverage by reliable independent sources outside the organization's local area. Where coverage is only local in scope, consider adding a section on the organization to an article on the organization's local area instead.
- Factors that have attracted widespread attention: The organization’s longevity, size of membership, major achievements, prominent scandals, or other factors specific to the organization should be considered to the extent that these factors have been reported by independent sources. This list is not exhaustive and not conclusive.
- Caveat - Be cautious of claims that small organizations are national or international in scale. The fact that an organization has branches in multiple countries does not necessarily mean that its activities are truly international. Example: a tiny fraternal organization with a total membership of sixty members, world wide, is not "international in scale" simply because the members live in separate countries and have formed sub-chapters where they live.
- A company, corporation, organization, school, team, religion, group, product, or service is notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in secondary sources. Such sources must be reliable, and independent of the subject. A single independent source is almost never sufficient for demonstrating the notability of an organization.
- The source's audience must also be considered. Evidence of attention by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, national, or international source is necessary.
- Advertising is prohibited as an official Wikipedia policy.
Although an organization that fails to meet the criteria of this guideline should not have a separate article, information about the organization may nevertheless be included in other ways in Wikipedia provided that certain conditions are met.
Content about the organization can be added into relevant articles if it:
- has the appropriate level of detail and significance for that article;
- avoids self-promotion; and
- only includes information that can be verified through independent sources.
For organizations local to a city, town, or county, content conforming to the above criteria may be added to articles for that locale. For example, a business that is significant to the history or economy of a small town might be described in the ==History== or ==Economy== section of the small town.
Before starting an article on a non-profit organization, please keep in mind the following[3]:
- An article about a non-profit organization should be about the organization itself, not about the cause it supports. See coatrack articles. The details of the cause should be covered in the cause's article.
- It is not enough that the cause be notable: the organization itself must meet our notability guidelines. The greenhouse effect is notable, but this does not mean Wikipedia should have articles about each local chapter of the Sierra Club, or about other organizations competing with it for attention.
- Organizations that have a limited scope and work towards a specific local cause (such as the preservation of a local street park) usually fail Wikipedia's notability guidelines if the cause they advocate is not notable in its own right.
- If an organization exists solely to support a cause for which there is no article in Wikipedia, it is usually better to start an article on the cause than on the organization.
- Contact information and other information on how to donate time, money, etc., to a non-profit organization is better left on the organization's website, not in its Wikipedia article (if any). There are scores of free webspace providers out there; Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not one of them.
- Raw mission statements are often regarded as inherently promotional. In most cases, it is better to state them not in terms of intent, but rather in terms of past achievements, and do so in down-to-earth language that helps the reader understand the organization .
Notability of events[edit]- An event that is a precedent or catalyst for something else of lasting significance is likely to be notable.
- Notable events usually have significant impact over a wide region, domain, or widespread societal group.
- An event must receive significant or in-depth coverage to be notable.
- Notable events usually receive coverage beyond a relatively short news cycle.
- Significant national or international coverage is usually expected for an event to be notable. Wide-ranging reporting tends to show significance, but sources that simply mirror or tend to follow other sources, or are under common control with other sources, are usually discounted.
Wikipedia:Notability (events)
Notability is presumed for newspapers, magazines and journals that verifiably meet through reliable sources, one or more of the following criteria:
- have produced award winning work
- have served some sort of historic purpose or have a significant history
- are considered by reliable sources to be authoritative in their subject area
- are frequently cited by other reliable sources
- are significant publications in ethnic and other non-trivial niche markets
Publications that primarily carry advertising, and only have trivial content, may have relevant details merged to an article on their publisher (if notable).
Notability of artworks[edit]Wikipedia articles must not contain original research[4] Primary sources are often difficult to use appropriately. While they can be both reliable and useful in certain situations, they must be used with caution in order to avoid original research. Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources. Tertiary sources such as compendia, encyclopedias, textbooks, obituaries, and other summarizing sources may be used to give overviews or summaries, but should not be used in place of secondary sources for detailed discussion. Source material must have been published[5].
Use sources that directly support the material presented in an article and are appropriate to the claims made. The best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments. The greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source.
- scholarly material. When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources. Please note that some scholarly material may be outdated, in competition with alternative theories, or controversial within the relevant field[6].
- completed dissertations or theses written as part of the requirements for a PhD, and which are publicly available, are considered publications by scholars and are routinely cited in footnotes. Masters dissertations and theses are considered reliable only if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence.[7].
- mainstream publications
- book publication is most important in humanistic disciplines.
- university-level textbooks
- books published by respected publishing houses
- magazines
- journals. Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view.
- mainstream newspapers.
- electronic media, subject to the same criteria.
- Newspaper and magazine blogs. These may be acceptable sources if the writers are professionals, but use them with caution because the blog may not be subject to the news organization's normal fact-checking process.
- Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications. Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field.
Sources can be online or offline. On Wikipedia, we assume good faith. There is no distinction between using online versus offline sources. Offline sources are just as legitimate as those that are accessible to everyone online[8]
To check how reliable is a source[edit]You need to make sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered[9].
- Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources
- Wikipedia:Search engine test
- Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard
- To check if a source has entered mainstream academic discourse use Citation index to see if it has been cited. The only reasonably accurate way of finding citations to journal articles in most subjects is to use one of the two major citation indexes, Web of Knowledge and Scopus; they are, unfortunately, very expensive. These databases are furthermore incomplete especially for the less developed countries. Additionally, they list citations only from journal articles – citations from articles published in books or other publications are not included. For that reason, these databases should be used with caution for disciplines such as computer science in which conference or other non-journal publication is essential, or humanistic disciplines where book publication is most important.
What you can NOT use as a source[edit]- Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight.
- Self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable.
- Website whose content is largely user-generated, including the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), CBDB.com, collaboratively created websites such as wikis, and so forth, with the exception of material on such sites that is labeled as originating from credentialed members of the sites' editorial staff, rather than users.
- Self-published information should never be used as a source about a living person, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources. There are some exceptions if the living person made a self-published source about himself/herself; see Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Using_the_subject_as_a_self-published_source.
WP:ORPHS
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