Wikipedia:News articles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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. |
Articles about items in the news are only considered encyclopedic if they are verifiably of significant lasting and historical interest and impact.
Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia which means that there is no practical limit to the number of topics we can cover or the total amount of content. However, it is also not an indiscriminate collection of information and it is not newspaper.
Many things are in the news and are reported by numerous reliable and verifiable sources that are independent of the subject, yet are not of historic or encyclopedic importance. News organizations have different criteria for their content than the criteria used by encyclopedias. A major crime, sensational event or accidental death may be notable enough to reporters and news editors to justify coverage in the news, but not be of encyclopedic importance.
The guidelines for verifiability, notability and reliable sources, followed to the letter, would mean that any news event which was reported in multiple news reporting services (which is de facto almost all news) in a given country on a given day would be entitled to a Wikipedia article, even if it were the most trivial or sensationalistic story. Notability has no time value, so any story from any time in the past would be equally entitled to an article. The standard guidelines, strictly interpreted and applied to their logical conclusion, lead to an absurd result.
Articles should not be about events that have strictly passing significance and interest. Events which only garner transitory attention do not offer much benefit as archived encyclopedic articles and are best suited for news portals such as Wikinews. While it may be difficult for some articles to determine whether or not the information will have long lasting significance, articles which clearly do not meet these criteria are very likely subjects of extremely short-lived usefulness to the readers and therefore should be considered for either deletion or merger with an appropriate corresponding article on a broader subject (such as merging information about a one-shot news event involving a celebrity with the celebrity's main article).
For those who wish to write about current events, including those which may not be appropriate for an encyclopedia, we already have a sister project, Wikinews, which is specifically intended to cover current events. By allowing coverage of current events which are outside the scope of this project (a general-purpose encyclopedia), we damage both our sister project and our own by making it more difficult for readers to locate articles they desire and more difficult for editors by requiring article maintainence at duplicate Wiki sources (Wikipedia and Wikinews). For example, if every crime that received a single newspaper article was included in Wikipedia, it would result in a deluge of articles that would significantly clutter related categories and list indexes and make it more difficult for readers to find notable crime event information. Simultaneously, it would likely be a massively difficult number of articles for editors to properly verify and maintain. Thus by keeping information of "one-shot" events and the like on Wikinews instead of Wikipedia, we can improve utility for the reader and reduce workload for Wikipedia editors.
To add or contribute to news stories on Wikinews, visit them here.
[edit] Criteria
News items are generally considered notable (meriting an independent article) if they meet any of the following criteria:
- The news item has become the subject of secondary documentation or analysis independent of news services. This includes being the subject of books, documentaries or non-trivial academic study (i.e. excluding non-scientific surveys).
- The news item has set, or has caused to set, a precedent in some way. This includes new laws being passed, novel interpretations of existing law, first tests of new law, notable "first of its kind" achievements, new or increased safety legislation, causing a notable change in societal behaviour or norms, etc. (Predictions that it will set a precedent, however, are inappropriate attempts to predict the future.
- Where a single news wire has been used by several news publications, this should only be counted as a single source in all notability discussions. Likewise, when reporters base their information off other news coverage (for example, "CNN reported that ..."), the coverage is only a single source. Such derivative reports are not independent of each other and can not be used to verify each other.
News items that do not meet the above criteria but involve notable subjects should be included in the article of the subject.
