User:Noroton/draft proposal
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I'd like to make this a proposal on the talk page of Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) to be added to the section "Alternate criteria for specific types of organizations":
[edit] Proposal: "INHERENT NOTABILITY" standard for school districts, public high schools, hospitals, local governments
Proposed language:
[edit] Governments and public school districts, public high schools, all hospitals
Public school districts, public (government-run) high schools, hospitals (except for private psychiatric institutions) and local municipal governments are considered inherently notable and should not be deleted solely because they may not have multiple, independent sources of information. A single, reliable source of information is sufficient for these articles, and the source may be the institution itself, although efforts should be made to gather information from multiple independent, reliable sources.
I expect at least the high schools part of this to be contentious, but I propose that we make it part of the guideline that articles on these subjects be considered so noteworthy that we can start articles on them without multiple independent sources. Alternately, we could say that in these cases, we could use the subject itself as a source.
There already appears to be a consensus that all of these institutions (except for high schools) are inherently notable, and they almost always survive deletion nominations (and hospitals and local governments never seem to be even nominated for deletion).
My reasons:
- For these institutions, independent, reliable information almost always exists, although it isn't always easily available on the Internet. We can expect that it will eventually be added. The basic notability criterion at WP:N that multiple independent, reliable sources exist.
- Inaccuracy tends to be less of a problem when sourced information comes from the institution itself because, while these institutions often will not publish negative information about themselves that would be embarassing, the scrutiny that the institutions get tends to keep them honest about the information they do give out. The chances that a Wikipedia article will be inaccurate because it relies on the subject itself is greatly diminished if the subject is as responsible as these institutions tend to be. To repeat: Eventually, given the prominence of these institutions in their communities, sources that are independent can be expected to be added to the articles.
- These institutions, including high schools, are universally so important in a community that it diminishes Wikipedia not to cover them.
- Bad articles can be fixed up by other means; short articles can still be merged into larger articles if not enough information exists; other problems with articles can still be fixed in ways other than deletion.
