Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability

WikiProject Notability Welcome to WikiProject Notability! We are currently working on a significant backlog of 198 months for 56,609 articles and need your help!

The Notability Project is a WikiProject based on Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability. The aim is to get more editors involved and to support those currently involved in fixing, merging, or deleting (as a last resort) apparently non-notable articles with the ultimate aim to correctly place all articles based on their verifiable notability. The project also aims to simplify the filtration process and explain it more clearly so as not to confuse newcomers and to encourage participation.

Scopes and goals

WikiProject Notability aims to sort articles of unclear notability by improving articles that are notable and then removing the notability tag. If the article is non-notable with no significant coverage in reliable sources found after searching and is inappropriate for a merge then deletion is sought by either Speedy deletion, Proposed deletion or Articles for deletion.

Articles assesssed to be Featured articles or Good articles have already been carefully checked for notability, and to a lesser extent so have B class articles. Therefore, articles of unclear notability are mainly in the stub class, start class and to a lesser extent C class categories.

We welcome input from any editors who would like to help out, either on a regular basis, or one or two articles when you have time. The greatest contribution to the project is inviting members, as this helps build support and ensures that there are people to clear the backlog.

How to help

1. Find an article to work on. Articles are sorted by date. Many editors choose to work on the oldest articles first, so that articles will not sit around too long in the category. The to-do list at the top of this page should contain the oldest set of articles. Alternatively, you may want to use article categories by date or article listings by WikiProject categories.

User:SD0001/shortdescs-in-category can be used to view short descriptions of pages in the categories – so that you can pick articles you're comfortable with.

1. Check to see if the article contains a copyright violation. There are a few red flags that indicate text was probably illegally copied into Wikipedia - this actually happens quite frequently. User:Kjkolb/Copyvio has a quick guide and you may also like to use copyscape.com or Earwig's Copyvio Detector for finding copyright violations. Instructions for reporting violations are at Wikipedia:Copyright problems.
2. Check to see if another article exists on the subject. If so, then you can consider merging that article to the original.
3. Find sources if none are cited in the article. Make full use of Google Books, Google News, Google Scholar, Google Web, JSTOR, LexisNexis, and any other search tools that you may have access to. Use variations on the article's title and other keywords from the article. The {{find}} template could be useful in this regard.
4. Sort! You can mainly use common sense, but adhering to the guidelines of WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:BAND (from where the most frequent violations come), and other notability criteria.
   1. If the article meets notability requirements, or if the article simply needs expanding, remove the notability or importance tag and replace it with an appropriate tag. If not, the article might need to be deleted. Please use deletion as a last resort.
   2. If the article meets speedy deletion requirements, add the appropriate db tag.
   3. If the article should undeniably be deleted, add {{subst:prod|Your-reason-here}}, replacing "Your-reason-here" with an appropriate reason.
   4. If the article might encounter some controversy when being deleted, add {{subst:afd1}} and then proceed to follow the steps to file an AfD discussion.
   5. Do not remove the notability/importance tags during one of the above deletion procedures.
   6. If an article is kept as the result of an AfD discussion, the {{notability}} tag should be removed. {{importance}} tags indicate that some rewriting of the article is required and should not be removed until that has been done. However, if the result is "no consensus", retain all tags, as the issue is not decided.
5. Enhance your edit summary As soon as you are done sorting, add to your edit summary:

Sorted as part of the [[WP:WPNN|Notability wikiproject]]!

Special handling

Some articles with notability questions need special handling, as described below. (These instructions may be updated on short notice.)

• TV episodes and characters: Due to controversies in 2007 and 2008 about their notability, articles about TV episodes or characters from TV shows should be handled with special care. It may not be possible to sort these articles on the short term. If you find such article on the end of the backlog (say the oldest 2-3 months) and cannot sort it, please add the parameter "cat=TV" to the notability tag. This will move the article off the backlog and to a special category, Television articles with topics of unclear notability, where it can be handled appropriately. Example:

{{notability|episode|date=June 2007|cat=TV}}

Current progress

Articles with topics of unclear notability

All articles

56,621

Join the project

Please add your signature to the bottom of the list of project members.

Userbox

There is a userbox that you can add to your user page once you join:

{{User WikiProject notability}}

displays as

NNThis user is part of the notability sorting drive.

Invitation template

There is a template that you can add to a user's talk page to invite them to join this project:

{{WikiProject Notability Invite}}

displays as

See also

• Wikipedia:Notability
• WikiProject Reliability
• WikiProject Stub improvement
• WikiProject Unreferenced articles