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Notability
General notability guideline
Subject-specific guidelines
See also

A subject is notable if it has been documented in multiple, non-trivial, independent, published sources, or if it satisfies one of a number of additional subject-specific criteria. The guidelines in the table on the right have been created, or are under discussion, to set out more precisely what these additional criteria should be in certain areas. Notability is used to determine whether a subject warrants an individual article in its own right on Misplaced Pages.

For some specific topics (i.e. people, bands, groups, clubs, companies, and websites) articles are required to assert their notability in a verifiable way that satisfies the relevant notability criteria. Topics that have specific notability criteria are determined by precedent and by specific guidelines shown in the table on the right.

Notability is a consequence of the official policies that Misplaced Pages is not a directory of businesses, websites, persons, etc., and that Misplaced Pages content is verifiable (from independent sources).

Primary criterion

One notability criterion shared by nearly all of the guidelines, as well as Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is notTemplate:Fn, is the criterion that a topic is notable if it has been been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself.

  • What constitutes "published works" is intentionally broad and includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, television documentaries, published reports by consumer watchdog organizations and government agencies.
  • The independence qualification excludes all self-publicity, advertising by the subject, autobiographies, press releases, and other such works directly from the subject, its creators, its authors, or its inventors (as applicable).Template:Fn
  • Triviality is a measure of the depth of content contained in the published work, exclusive of mere directory entry information, and how directly it addresses the subject.Template:Fn

Dealing with non-notable topics

Topics that do not satisfy notability criteria are dealt with in two ways: merging and deletion. The most appropriate route depends on how the subject fails to satisfy the criteria. The use of notability in the deletion process is one of the more contentious issues on Misplaced Pages.

Merging

A topic can fail to satisfy the criteria because, though it may be found in reliable, non-directory sources, it is mentioned trivially rather than being a main subject of the published works. Information which is given only superficial treatment or which is tangentially mentioned in discussions surrounding the actual focus of a work, is not sufficient to build a full, sourced encyclopedia that stands independent of the main subject. One common recommendation across all notability guidelines is not to nominate articles on such subjects for deletion but to rename, refactor, or merge them into articles with broader scopes, or into the articles that discuss the main subject, which may be created if they do not already exist.Template:Fn

Deletion

A topic can fail to satisfy the criteria because there are few or no reliable published sources independent of the subject. Without such sources, a proper encyclopedia article cannot be built at all. Such articles are usually nominated for deletion, via Proposed Deletion, Articles for Deletion, or (for articles about a non-notable person, group, band, company, club, or website that does not even assert the notability of the topic) Speedy Deletion.Template:Fn

Topics that are not the subject of any published works at all are simply unverifiable and must be deleted.

Rationale

What notability is not

There are several things are commonly conflated with notability, or that notability is sometimes erroneously thought to be.

Notability is not subjective

Notability does not equate to "I've heard of it."/"I've never heard of it." or "I think that it is notable."/"I don't regard it as being notable." A Wikipedian who judges an article based upon those subjective criteria is not employing a notability criterion. None of the notability guidelines contain any such criteria.

Notability is not judged by Misplaced Pages editors directly. As is the case in other aspects, when it comes to notability Misplaced Pages is a reflection of what exists in the world. The notability of a subject is judged by the world outside of Misplaced Pages: a subject is notable if people in the world deem it notable enough to publish non-trivial works about it.

The application of the aforementioned primary notability criterion allows Wikipedian to determine whether the world has judged a subject to be notable. If someone independent of the subject has gone to the effort of creating and publishing a non-trivial published work about it, then that someone clearly deems the subject to be notable. Thus by applying the primary criterion Wikipedians determine whether a subject is notable not by considering whether they themselves think that it is notable. They determine whether a subject is notable by looking for the existence of multiple non-trivial, independently sourced, published works on the subject.

See also

There are (and have been) several proposals to alter the status quo, or essays discussing various points of view on the issue such as:

Notes

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