Wikipedia:Notability for Beginners

Notability for Beginners or What Belongs on Wikipedia and How Not to have your article deleted

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, but saying that doesn't mean much - it doesn't say what belongs on Wikipedia. The official guidance is a mix of WP:Notability to say what belongs there and WP:NOT to say what doesn't. But those are full of Wikipedian Jargon - and there's a reason WP:OMGWTFBBQ leads to a page. This short essay is to cut through the jargon and provide a simple guide.

In order for a page to belong on Wikipedia you need to show two things.

• That some unconnected people will find out about whatever you are writing about.
• Some reason for them to care.

The reason people should care about your article is by far the more important one. If you are writing a new article and give people no reason to care it will likely be deleted within a few minutes (under speedy deletion criteria WP:A7 or WP:A9 - don't worry about the names!) by the New Pages Patrol. If you didn't put up a Work In Progress banner your page will probably be gone within five minutes. Alternatively, it may be nominated for deletion under a process called WP:AFD (Articles for Deletion) - but that gives you several days to improve the page while the nomination is discussed.

Some way for unconnected people to find out about the thing this is about

Wikipedians have decided that the only things that should have an article are those that people who are unconnected with the subject have created content about already. Wikipedia is not the place to tell the world about the cool thing you and your friends have just made up, your self-published book or how awesome your cat is.

In order to want to look something up in an encyclopaedia you need to have seen it, heard of it or seen it in something they are reading. It's also assumed that people will only look something up in an encyclopaedia if they can't necessarily ask the person telling them.

Note that the following are not ways of finding out that are considered to lead to people looking things up in an encyclopaedia.

• Word of mouth - you can ask the person telling you.
• Blogs, message boards, Usenet, Amazon/user submitted reviews or Youtube - you can comment in reply (I can understand not wanting to discuss things in Youtube comments).

You also need the source to be considered reliable and independent - and it needs to cover the subject in detail.

• "Reliable" generally means something with a reputation for fact checking what it publishes - it's assumed that the Weekly World News is read for amusement, but nothing more. In contrast, The Guardian is generally regarded as reliable source for most things.
• "Independent" means that it was created by someone who was not directly connected with the subject. For example, an advert or press release is not independent of the company that produces it, but an article in the local paper about the company is.
• "In depth" means that there is more than a passing mention or entry in a list or directory. Generally speaking, if there is two or more paragraphs about the subject then the coverage is considered in-depth.

Some reason to care

Why do you care about the subject of the article? Why is it interesting enough to you to spend half an hour writing about it? Tell me that and as long as it isn't personal to you I'll want your article to grow. Even if I don't find it inherently interesting I'm glad you do and know there are others who will.

So how much of this do you need?

For most things you need only two things:

• A couple of (reliable, independent, in-depth) sources to show that other people do or did care enough to create content about it.
• A couple of paragraphs of prose, backed up by your sources, to whet someone's appetite and leave them knowing more than they did when they read the title.

And that's all you need!

There are some subjects though that have additional guidelines that are less or (more usually) more strict than this though. For example:

• In the case of a place you need little more than to show that it's more than a spot on the map. People generally care about where they live (although you might not be able to separate them).
• For music and other art you usually need more than this, e.g. it's important to make sure that Wikipedia has an article on musical artists before you write about their songs and albums. See WP:NSONG (the guideline for songs) and WP:NALBUM (the guideline for albums) as examples.

Things that don't make for Notability

Every article that is deleted is deleted for a reason, and there are some very common ones. Often people try to defend their inclusion with one of the following reasons:

Someone/Something is notable in the community

This is not a claim to notability on Wikipedia - all it means is that community members are likely to mention them. And if a community member mentions a person or thing in conversation you can ask them directly. If it's written down on the other hand you don't have them in front of you to ask. People only need to research via Wikipedia if they are outside the community, so you need to show that someone from outside the community has written about it.

We need this to raise publicity or awareness for....

If you need a page for publicity or advertising then it's demonstrating that you don't think that people will have heard of whatever without Wikipedia. In other words people aren't going to look you up on Wikipedia. Exactly the opposite of pages that belong on Wikipedia.

It exists

Lots of things exist. Most of us have used toenail clippings. No one wants to hear about mine. Or yours.

They are notable because of X Event

If someone or something is only notable because of one thing then they probably belong with the thing they are notable for. WP:BLP1E (acronym for Wikipedia: Biography of Living Persons 1 Event) is the policy for people. If they are notable for two reasons then they can't fit in one article. Likewise characters in TV shows for example - they roll up into the TV show unless you can show people have done things with them separately from the show.