User:RogDel/Significant coverage not required
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 | This is an essay on notability. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: The requirement of significant coverage as a criterion for notability is completely unjustifiable and absurd. If a topic has received coverage (i.e. has been noticed) in independent, reliable, and verifiable source/s, however insignificant the coverage may be, the topic could be considered notable, i.e. capable of being noted or worthy of notice, and Wikipedia should have a stand-alone article on it, which makes it easy for potential readers to find the Wikipedia information on the topic through search engines, e.g. Google. |
Why the requirement of significant coverage should not be a criterion for notability
[edit]Significant coverage is a relative concept. One topic, e.g. Albert Einstein, may have more significant coverage than another topic, e.g. Franklin Edgerton, and that is usually because the former is more notable than the latter. While a whole life biography may be written on the former, only a paragraph of an article may be written on the latter. But does that stop Wikipedia from having a stand-alone article on the latter? It surely does not. Then why should anything at all stop Wikipedia from having a stand-alone article on a topic that has received trivial coverage in independent reliable source/s? If Wikipedia may have 100 page long, 50 page long, 10 page long, or even just 1 page long stand-alone articles, why may it not have a stand-alone article with just 1 possible sentence?
Wikipedia's Notability guideline states that "[t]he 360-page book by Sobel and the 528-page book by Black on IBM are plainly non-trivial. The one sentence mention by Walker of the band Three Blind Mice in a biography of Bill Clinton (Martin Walker (1992-01-06). "Tough love child of Kennedy". The Guardian. "In high school, he was part of a jazz band called Three Blind Mice.") is plainly trivial."
Wikipedia should be able to have a one page article on Three Blind Mice with just a 1 sentence description that "Three Blind Mice is an American jazz band of which Bill Clinton, in high school, was notably a part of."
An article like this, however short it may be, does serve Wikipedia’s ultimate purpose. This article is useful. In other words, if a topic has received coverage (i.e. is noticed) in independent, reliable, and verifiable source/s, however big or small, significant or insignificant the coverage may be, the topic could be considered to be notable, i.e. capable of being noted or worthy of notice, and thus Wikipedia may have a stand-alone article on that topic. Also, if Three Blind Mice, for example, does not have a stand-alone article, and is only mentioned in an article on Bill Clinton, it makes it difficult for potential readers to find the Wikipedia information on Three Blind Mice through a search engine such as Google.
Another problem is that, because of the unclear drafting of Wikipedia's Notability policies (WP:N), some participants at AfD will argue that no matter how much coverage there is, it is not significant.
In short, regarding "notability", a topic may be presumed notable (i.e. capable of being noted or worthy of notice) if it is noticed in one or more independent, reliable, and verifiable sources.