Wikipedia:Amnesia test
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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline, it simply reflects some opinions of its authors. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page. |
If you're thinking of starting an article about something, chances are you know a bit about it already. But editors that have been around Wikipedia for a while will know that many articles are deleted for failing to satisfy the notability criteria. So, before creating the article, they may try to make sure that should the article be nominated for deletion, they can satisfy Wikipedia's myriad notability guidelines (including WP:WEB, WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, WP:WINI... and we haven't even started on the proposed guidelines yet).
If you do a Google search for most subjects, you'll usually turn up something that could, at first glance, appear to help your article meet Wikipedia's criteria for notability, specifically "significant press coverage" (WP:BIO), "multiple non-trivial published works" (WP:WEB, WP:CORP) and the like, and thus be safe from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Nonetheless, before you set fingers to keys, it's a good idea to take the following steps:
- Forget everything you know about the subject. If you cannot forget, act as though you know absolutely nothing about the subject.
- Re-read the 'non-trivial published works' and 'press coverage' you found, and learn everything you can.
- Start writing your article. If you find that you have nothing to write, don't write anything.
- Make sure to cite the sources you used!
The notability guidelines are there as a means to ensuring that an article can be verifiable (which requires reliable sources) and neutral (which requires at least one person independent of the subject who thinks it's worth writing and maintaining an article on them). Meeting them is not a standard for inclusion.
