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AFDs for news stories(May 10-September 19, 2007)

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Note: this list includes articles about people, things or incidents which were newsworthy and have 2 or more press or TV citations, but some do not judge to be encyclopedic. In a few cases, there are news articles about the subject, but no one bothered to add the news sources. Edison 15:57, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edison 16:50, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Other policies and guidelines with similar provisions

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Since the discussions on this guideline proposal occurred, two official policy pages have had certain provision added similar to ideas expressed here, and have been cited in AFDs, as has this (now) essay: WP:NOT#IINFO In WP:NOT says 10:News reports. Wikipedia properly considers the long-term historical notability of persons and events, keeping in mind the harm our work might cause. The fact that someone or something has been in the news for a brief period of time does not automatically justify an encyclopedia article. While Wikipedia strives to be comprehensive, the policies on biographies of living persons and neutral point of view should lead us to appropriately contextualize events. The briefer the appearance of a subject in the news the less likely it is to create an acceptably comprehensive encyclopedic biography. Even when news events themselves merit an encyclopedia article of their own, additional biographies of person(s) involved may not be necessary as they could largely duplicate relevant information. Timely news articles, however, are welcome on our sister project Wikinews." This provision was added on May 28, 2007 [2] by User:Jimbo Wales tp Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.

This agrees with the WP:BLP section "Articles about living people notable only for one event" which says "Wikipedia is not a newspaper. The bare fact that someone has been in the news does not in itself imply that they should be memorialized forever with an encyclopedia entry. Where a person is mentioned by name in a Wikipedia article about a larger subject, but remains of essentially low profile themselves, we should generally avoid having an article on them. If the reliable sources only cover the person in the context of something else, then a separate biography is probably unwarranted. Court cases, crimes, and natural disasters, for examples, should be presented as unified articles that involve all sides, based on reliable secondary sources, and not primary-source material interpreted only by Wikipedians. Marginal biographies on people with no independent notability can give undue weight to the events in the context of the individual, and create redundancy and additional maintenance overhead. In such cases, a redirect is often the best option." This was added there by User:Kusma [3]on May 28, 2007, based on earlier discussions.

These policies can be used to argue for deletion or redirects for articles about someone who was in the news (however widely covered) for some unusual manner of death, for having some rare disease or medical condition, or for committing or being the victim of a crime, for some embarrassing incident, or for being an internet meme because of a photo or video. It still leaves no obvious basis for arguing to delete a story which had multiple substantial coverage in reliable independent sources, but was a "watercooler story" about some freak occurrance such as a cute animal in distress, which tends to be a ratings booster for TV news shows, but of questionable encyclopedic nature. Clearly, if a child got a pumpkin-shaped bucket stuck on his head and was an internet meme and TV show and newspaper article subject, we have a basis for deleting an article about him. We should be equally able, through a policy provision, to delete a similar story about an animal.Edison 18:42, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank goodness some good has come out of this debate. For a time I felt as if we were discussing this in a vacuum and not achieving anything despite a large support base. Glad to see it's been implemented somewhere at least, and being cited in AfD debates. At least it shows that others agree with the line taken by the guideline when it was first proposed, and in most cases are !voting in favour of excluding one-shot events, while keeping (in some form or other) those with potential significance. Zunaid©® 10:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus?

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Looking at the above results, and more importantly at some of the arguments put forward at AfD discussions, it is clear there is no consensus amongst editors about where (if at all) the threshold lies between "newsworthy" and "encyclopedia worthy". Thus some of the results reflect not the strength of the argument, but the strength of the numbers that pitch up. This is worrying. How do we reach a happy medium? Zunaid©® 10:52, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The results show that in the collective judgement of editors who participate in AFDs, there are some articles based on news stories which appear to satisfy WP:N and WP:A, with multiple independent reliable sources having substantial coverage, which may be newsworthy but are not encyclopedic. Murders are highly newsworthy. Any murder gets coverage in all local news media. If the victim is a child, it is likely to get national news coverage. If a child is kidnapped, and especially if the child is white and from a middle or upper class family, the coverage is likely to be international, such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Madeleine McCann. Missing white females are especially likely to get extensive news coverage. If the case leads to a "Megan's law" the creation of "Amber Alerts" or other corrective measures then the case had an enduring effect on society and seems likely to get kept in the AFD process. The new policy WP:NOT#NEWS has been cited in numerous cases where a newsworthy story was deleted on the grounds that it was not encyclopedic. The article are likely to be reoriented as the "case" or the "murder" or the "kidnapping" or the "suicide" rather than a memorial article about the person, whoc like most of us has typically not led a notable life prior to the crime. Edison 14:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The policy WP:N#TEMP says "A short burst of present news coverage about a topic does not necessarily constitute objective evidence of long-term notability." This undercuts claims that a subject is notable because there were lots of news stories about it in a short period after the story broke. Edison (talk) 04:52, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

NOTNEWS vs NOT#NEWS shortcut confusion

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As evidenced in Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2009_March_4#YouTube_cat_abuse_incident, the WP:NOTNEWS essay and WP:NOT#NEWS policy are the source of significant confusion. WP:NOTNEWS should definitely be a link to the policy and the essay should be moved to another obviously-not-policy shortcut like WP:NOTNEWSESSAY, perhaps with a disambiguation link so as not to break existing links intended for the essay. Are there any other suggestions for a better shortcut name? WikiScrubber (talk) 19:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not convinced this page needs a shortcut at all. WP:News articles is fine. Meanwhile, the NOTNEWS shortcut is definitely causing confusion with NOT#NEWS. I'm just going to be bold and redirect WP:NOTNEWS to the appropriate section of WP:NOT. I have nothing against essays (or even {{failed}} proposals subsequently labeled as essays, which is what this page is), but we want to avoid presenting them in a way that causes them to be confused with "official" guidance.--Father Goose (talk) 22:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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