User:JYolkowski/Notability

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I avoid using the words "notable" and "notability" in deletion discussions because "notable" has two different meanings, neither of which is a reason for deletion:

1. "Notable" can mean "distinguished", "prominent", and the like. By this definition of the word, something that is "notable" has some degree of fame, significance, distinction, prominence, importance, and so on. There are some problems with using this defintion of notable to decide whether to delete an article or not, however:
   • There is absolutely no basis in policy that any subject be somehow special in order to have an article or not. None whatsoever. And, generally, this policy is followed. For example, we keep every single article on places, regardless of whether they have any claim to fame or not.
   • Whether someone thinks that a subject is special or not is a subjective decision, which is a poor way to decide whether an article should be deleted. Because people tend to think that topics that they are closer to are more significant, articles are kept or deleted not because of the topic's inherent merits, but whether AfD voters care about the topic. Also, because there are different people on AfD all the time, an article might get kept one week but a similar article might get deleted the next, leading to uneven coverage. These disadvantages also result in AfD becoming more of a vote that can easily turn acrimonious, instead of being a constructive discussion about whether the content belongs on Wikipedia and how it should be represented.
2. "Notable" can mean "worthy of note". A "note" is a written record, so by this definition something that is notable is something that people are inclined to write about. Since encyclopedia articles need to be based on written sources, a concept to represent whether a subject is likely to have enough sources to be able to write a non-trivial article is a useful one. However, using this criterion in itself as a basis for deletion is also not supported by policy:
   • Assuming that an article meets our content policies, an inability to meet a notability criterion by this (and, for that matter, the other) definition of "notable" qualifies the article as "such a minor branch of a topic as not to merit an article". This case is listed in the deletion policy as a problem that does not require deletion. Instead, the solution is to merge the content into a more general article.