Wikipedia talk:Notability (ELIT)

Hi,

I took the main threads from wP:notability (book) as this is the closest thing to electronic literature I could find. I rewrote to reflect electronic literature's requirements. I did not use:

{{hatnote group|{{redirect|WP:NB}}{{redirect-distinguish|WP:NOTBOOK|WP:NOTTEXTBOOK}}}} {{Wikipedia subcat guideline|notability guideline|Books|WP:BK|WP:NB|WP:NBOOK}}

1. The book's author is so historically significant that any of the author's written works may be considered notable. This does not simply mean that the book's author is notable by Wikipedia's standards; rather, the book's author is exceptionally significant, and the author's life and body of written work would be a common subject of academic study.}}

LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 20:08, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Mostly because (1) I am not sure we are using this yet or who would be responsible for saying we should use it, etc.

(2) I want to have a notability guideline for electronic literature writers. And I don't think we should list every electronic literature work for every electronic literature writer.

@ Lijil and @Rosiestep Here is my first attempt at a notability guideline, and we will discuss this at our upcoming Third Thursday Wikipedia-thon. LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 20:12, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

I suggest changing the header (What I did not use for our purposes), substituting another word for "our". Theoretically at least, there should be no undue attachment by any editor or community of editors to this potential Notability policy. --Rosiestep (talk) 22:12, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, could you change the header to something like "First draft of notability guidelines for e-lit, @LoveElectronicLiterature? Otherwise I appreciate that you based this on WP:NBOOK, and agree that the book's author being so significant is not particularly relevant for e-lit - I think that means Shakespeare. Otherwise we need to follow general Wikipedia policy - we can't say WP:OR ( original research) is OK, but we can explain what type of description of a work's reading interface and functioning is ok without its being original research, just like a plot summary is not seen as original research and doesn't require sources other than the book itself. I'll have a closer look over the weekend! Lijil (talk) 01:51, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! I renamed that section in the chat--good catch. Yes, the problem is that Wikipedians should at least have experienced the work itself if at all possible (and often it is not possible). However, every reader experience of an electronic literature piece will be different. So if Wikipedians want to describe the electronic literature work, what should they do?

Plot summaries are really difficult for electronic literature. Thanks for looking at this! LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 03:36, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

LoveElectronicLiterature, header change noted; this is good. Perhaps rephrasing "I" and "we" statements would be a good idea too: I am not sure we are using this yet..., and ... who would be responsible for saying we should use it, etc., and I want to have..., and And I don't think we should... Note, the header titled "Book exceptions" also has "I" and "we". --Rosiestep (talk) 03:48, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

I think e-lit works can be described similarily to video games (which also often have non-linear plots where not all players will experience the same parts of the game but you can describe the general themes) and to artworks, where describing the media used (oil paints, video art, digital animation, etc) is typical. For electronic literature describing the modalities used (e.g. are there links, is there digital animation, is there generative poetry that changes every time you see it) is fairly straightforward. Maybe we should look at some examples we think work well - we could make a style guide to go along with the notability guidelines. I have a template I use when I create new articles about works of electronic literature, for instance: User:Lijil/Elit work Lijil (talk) 04:27, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Books are not electronic literature. So while I did refer to most procedures in the book notability, we need to make some exceptions:

Book says "Wikipedia should not have a standalone article about a book if it is not possible, without including original research or unverifiable content, to write an article on that book that complies with the policy that Wikipedia articles should not be summary-only descriptions of works, contained in criterion 1 of WP:INDISCRIMINATE."

As everyone who interacts with an electronic literature piece will have a different reaction to everyone else, relying solely on second-hand experience or citations just doesn't work all the time. So we may need to include the Wikipedian's interpretation of the work. We can avoid this as much as possible, but the door should be open.

• The CraftLit podcast https://craftlit.supercast.com/'

Traversals of works? As much of electronic literature is written and developed on software that quickly becomes obsolete, traversals and play throughs may be the only primary sources available. However, these traversals also often function as reviews. To have an official traversal (such as those from the Electronic Literature Lab from the Washington State University Vancouver USA) is in itself a nomination for notability.

Agree about traversals as they are (selectively) published along with extensive scholarly apparatus in the volumes of Rebooting Electronic Literature (Grigar et al.) Richard Holeton (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Traversals and selection for preservation (which often have documented launch events) would seem to be proof of notability (I am thinking of Harry Ransome, Po.Ex, the Next, ebr gatherings, launches, and keynotes). ~2026-22461-03 (talk) 00:04, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

I suggest changing the name of this section from "Oral sources" since the discussion is broader than that. Richard Holeton (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Not sure where this goes but: I suggest sources should include relevant scholarly organizations that host conferences and PUBLISH conference proceedings. These should often have DOIs and/or ISSNs and typically archive past publications. Examples include:

• ISEA https://www.isea-symposium-archives.org/publications/
• ICIDS https://icids.eae.utah.edu/, sponsored by ARDIN https://ardin.online/membership/
• The old Digital Arts and Culture conferences, not sure if anything is archived from them https://elmcip.net/event/digital-arts-and-culture-conferences
• Maybe ask Nick Montfort and others for more suggestions? Richard Holeton (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Sources no longer maintained?

• Electronic poetry center https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/
• Iowa Review Web?
• Journals now resurrected in the NEXT? (Beehive, Cauldron and Net)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by LoveElectronicLiterature (talk • contribs) 12:49, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by oral sources, @LoveElectronicLiterature? I don't think we can accept a Wikipedia editor's personal conversation with someone, or a Wikipedia editor's memory of an unrecorded conference presentation. That is unverifiable and original research. However, Oral history that has been published, or an interview that is published in a journal for instance, would be fine. And if you mean a video traversal of a work, i.e. video documentation of how a reader can interact with a work as done by The NEXT Museum then I wouldn't even consider that "an oral source" but documentation and in some cases a review. I agree that when a scholarly archive selects a work for documentation through a transversal that supports a claim for notability. Lijil (talk) 04:35, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Hmmm... yes. I mostly meant "not written down" as an oral source. Second Tuesday Salons are records of looking at works, or the ELL 15 anniversary video coming up next week, or other interview series (sometimes the transcript is in EBR or other publications, but it may not be). And yes, maybe we should rewrite to be "video documentation" like a video game playthrough? thanks! LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 13:27, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't think it matters what medium a source happens to be in so long as the two or three sources used to establish notability are:

1. verifiable: WP:VERIFIABILITY explains that it doesn't matter what the medium is so long as it has been published in a reliable source. That can include a recorded video of a peer-reviewed presentation that is published on a website, or a traversal of a work of electronic literature that is archived in The NEXT Museum. We can use self-published sources as sources of information about the person who published them, so if someone posts "I was born in 1993" on their blog or puts a video demo of their latest work of e-poetry on Instagram we can use that as a source per WP:ABOUTSELF to verify when they were born or that the work exists - but it doesn't help establish notability.
2. reliable - WP:Reliable sources. For works of e-lit these sources will usually be reviews in online journals like Electronic Book Review and Drunken Boat, or the work may be discussed in a scholarly article (search http://scholar.google.com to find this) or in a book (search http://books.google.com).
3. independent - WP:INDEPENDENT explains that to contribute to notability, a source can't be closely connected to the subject of the article. For works of e-lit this would usually mean that you can't use articles written by the author of a work (or a YouTube video of the author demonstrating the work) to establish notability of the work, but you can use them to describe the work.

Lijil (talk) 14:31, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Actually, @LoveElectronicLiterature, there is a RFC right now that I think relates to what you're asking about? Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#RfC: BLPSPS and spoken Lijil (talk) 14:44, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for this! I cross posted, because their question is pretty much the same as ours on interviews. They asked: In other words, here's the situation: An article subject appears on a video interview, and makes a statement we want to use in our article. We're sure it's the subject, we're sure the subject is saying it, and it's only about themselves, but the article subject isn't publishing the video, the interviewer is, and it's just the one interviewer, not a company. Can we use the statement? --GRuban (talk) 14:13, 6 April 2026 (UTC) LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 14:52, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

I took the liberty of moving your comment there from the RfC definition into the Discussion section. Please do state your opinion in the Survey section there, and more detailed discussion in the Discussion section. --GRuban (talk) 16:28, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Would personal correspondence be an acceptable source of information for something that is comprehensively documented? For instance, there are serious records of notability for BeeHive, ebr, New River, etc, but I could see where gaps of knowledge could be filled in through personal correspondence. I have been asking someone about the first issues of Hyperrhiz, for instance. The Journal exists and the archives are numbered and organized, but there are two issues of Hyperrhiz that were published in Rhizomes.net. These proto-issues are not documented in the Hyperrhiz archive and the editorial policy for those collections are quite different from the Hyperrhiz became. But documenting that proto-history would be relevant for researchers and would disambiguate any confusion that could arise for people trying to understand the issue. If I had to guess, I would think the only definitive source on those first two issues would likely be Ellen Berry and Carol Siegel. ~2026-22461-03 (talk) 00:11, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

As this page has just been drafted and needs significant work, as well as comments from other editors, I added the Under construction template as a hatnote. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:59, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

For transparency and greater visibility regarding this proposed policy/guideline, see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Literature#Wikipedia:Notability (ELIT). -- Rosiestep (talk) 22:30, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you - I also put a note on the talk page of Wikiproject Electronic Literature in case people who follow that didn't see this. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Electronic literature#Shoudl we propose notability guidelines for works of electronic literature? Lijil (talk) 15:23, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

@LoveElectronicLiterature proposed criteria 4: The work has been presented in a notable institution (for example, the Library of Congress, the British Museum). As electronic literature is global, notability for an institution does not depend on having an article about that institution in Wikipedia. (for example LAMI in Lima Peru).

I am not 100% sure we should include this. Criteria 1, two or more sources with significant coverage seems like a pretty straight forward criteria - do we need this in addition? If we keep this criteria, I suggest deleting the second sentence. Whether or not a Wikipedia article actually exists for an institution, I think we should require that the insitution be notable by Wikipedia stanards.

Also, what do we mean by Institution? I mean, a university may be notable, and exhibitions may be held there but have very varying levels of curation or selectivity. If keeping this criteria I think we need to be specific about the exhibition being selective and curated and maybe even notable by Wikipedia criteria. Lijil (talk) 05:01, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

I can see this as a useful parallel to the WP:NARTIST criterion than sees notability when an artist’s works are held in the permanent collection of an institution. Books don’t get collected that way but some pieces of electronic art do. I think we should borrow the NARTIST wording and say been represented within the permanent collection of a notable gallery or museum. The “permanent collection” part is a much higher curatorial bar than an exhibit; anything that meets this criteria should definitely have an article. I’d exclude libraries/archives like the Library of Congress because they have a preservation focus rather than a curatorial on; the LoC gets a copy of literally every book published in the US, so most of their contents are not wiki-notable. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 05:20, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

That is true about a book or a work preserved in the Library of Congress. However, in 2013, the Library of Congress featured 27 works of electronic literature (Electronic Literature and Its Emerging Forms – at the Library of Congress) and in 2023, the British Library featured an exhibition of 10 works of elit. (MIX 2023 – Electronic Literature Lab) so I wonder if we could word a criteria like: was especially presented at libraries and museums? The other issue with permanent collections for electronic literature is that they are active. For example, it takes 10 Mac Classics and a person checking every hour to present HyperCard works. So a permanent collection is often out of the question for these works. @Stellawisdom-- what do you think? How should we present electronic literature presentations at a major institution as a criteria for notability? P.S. I don't think it should be the major criteria? Thanks! LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 13:23, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

I like @LEvalyn's idea of using the same wording as WP:NARTIST. We need to make guidelines that align with other Wikipedia policy. I don't think that being in one of those exhibitions necessarily makes a work notable - I think that two reviews/articles discussing the work or its being taught at two universities is a reasonable bar that includes a lot of works. Lijil (talk) 14:35, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

I wrote this on the discussion for using video interviews as a source for materials and determining if interviews are a self published source at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#RfC: BLPSPS and spoken

But I wonder if we should add specific examples in our guidelines? Most of our electronic literature works are actually in the medium. For example, Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden was written and published in the 90s and does not run on any computer past 2000. Now, the Electronic Literature Lab and the NEXT Museum revamped the work. But the new work and the older Storyspace version are substantially different. So, we now only have traversals where the authors themselves through the electronic literature work and explain some of the piece and how the older non-accessible version differs from the newer version. These traversals also serve as reviews as noted academics such as Dene Grigar will comment on the piece and review it while the piece is running. This can be equivalent to reading 6 pages out of War and Peace--they definitely can not go through a complex piece in an hour. However, we should be able to cite that Traversal. Traversal of Stuart Moulthrop's "Victory Garden" Oh and the vast majority of our older works are not revamped for modern computers.

Moreover, almost all of our works are self-published in the traditional definition as they are housed on individual websites.

So I think we need to be quite careful here. I would welcome your insights into our very draft (not ready to be proposed) possible criteria for notability for our odd little field. Wikipedia:Notability (ELIT) - Wikipedia LoveElectronicLiterature (talk)

LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 13:34, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

I don’t think this needs to be part of the notability guidelines. Victory Garden is very clearly notable. You can cite almost any source you like so long as you also have

• At least two sources that have significant coverage of the work (like reviews or scholarly articles) or you can show that at least two university classes have taught the book

AND

• Any factual claims are supported by a reliable source.

But we could make an overview of common sources for e-lit where we explain what they’re reliable for. In my opinion, traversals and video documentation of a work should be seen as reliable sources about a work if they’re published by the author on any platform, or are peer-reviewed, or are published by a reputable journal or publisher or archive. Lijil (talk) 14:25, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

I would be inclined to support this. One thing I think worth noting is that the some key databases are useful. I would be reluctant to prescribe a crude metric like (is it indexed in two databases) as a way of proving notability (in some cases, a work may only be indexed in one place, often for reasons of translation, but it still may be widely discussed in within that nation's critical community and be visible internationally, as well). But often times, a work being widely indexed is strong evidence of notability. ~2026-22461-03 (talk) 00:23, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

I agree that electronic literature is a unique field and we need to have standards that reflect our particular needs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eabigelow (talk • contribs) 16:14, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. A work does not necessarily exist in the same way as a print book. ~2026-22461-03 (talk) 00:14, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

It’s not clear to me why Eastgate is listed as a collection rather than a publisher. MarkBernstein (talk) 19:54, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Good point, @MarkBernstein. I had originally been thinking about notability criteria as being part of a collection, and I was including the Eastgate publications as a collection. The question would be: Are all Eastgate titles notable? Or even, are all Electronic Literature Organization Collections notable? I would tend to think not--but perhaps we could say that being in a collection is one marker of notability and that other markers would also be required? LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 03:11, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

I can't find many examples of articles about electronic literature being deleted. I searched the history of Article Alerts for the Electronic literature Wikiproject, and only four e-lit related articles were nominated for deletion in the two years we've been tracking it. Only one was deleted, and it wasn't really about e-lit, it was a Perl coding community. I tried searching the AfDs for deletion discussions including the words "electronic literature" and found two e-lit works (A Million Penguins and Counterfeit Monkey) but both were closed as speedy keep. I also got help to search all current articles in subcategories of Category:Electronic literature that had been AfD'd - this would only find articles that weren't deleted (thanks to @Cryptic for the script, which he shared in response to my question here). Anyway, there were very few other examples in that search, and most were interactive fiction games. Based on this it looks to me as though the current system is working pretty well. Maybe we don't need separate notability criteria? Lijil (talk) 10:59, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

The AfDs that were speedy keep were only that because we argued for exceptions to rules. So I do think we need this. I have also seen bots automatically dismiss citations that were "questionable." I'd like to have this--even if it remains in draft form. We could keep this as a part of WP:ELIT as well--I am not sure if there is a formal method for notability criteria? LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 19:28, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Actually, I am not sure the problem is escalating to AfD. It is more about the warnings, such as the ones on Snack Time!

Is there a way to determine how many of our WP:ELIT articles have these warnings? LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 19:56, 12 April 2026 (UTC)