Wikipedia talk:Notability (events)

Moved to WP:VPM

Please consider offering feedback in the discussion Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Possible issue with standard interpretation of NPOL, as it deals with material related to WP:ROUTINE. ~ Pbritti (talk) 01:43, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

It is beyond time we go hard on enforcing the notability guideline for events. Too many articles, mainly shooting articles, get created way too fast then somehow get !voted keep at AFD despite obviously not belonging. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 22:33, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Even if there’s enforcement, people will still vote keep. Even on older events in non-western nations you have a sizable contingent of people, including admins, who vote based on death toll because to do otherwise would be western bias and racist or something, or who will piece together an article based on no significant coverage at all, and that will still somehow get voted keep. Sometimes AfD is wrong but it’s about consensus so that is all that can really be done about it. What "obviously" does not fit clearly varies... I considered vandalism to be in that category, but others do not. I'm not even a deletionist when it comes to events I just like consistency and there is very little. About new events there isn't much to be done that would change anything except banning articles on anything in the past few years like frwiki does. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:41, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Consensus is harmful, but that's another discussion for another day. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 22:50, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Well, it’s what the project is built on, so if you’re going from that start we might as well ignore the concept of notability (formed of consensus) altogether. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:56, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Well, one admin. One that received a formal warning at ANI some years ago about lying at AfD, which they have ignored ever since. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:21, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Would be helpful to survey a bunch of recent event AFDs and determine the results to determine what we need to inform AFD closures of the issues. Masem (t) 00:45, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

WP:NPP and WP:AFC might be a good place to look. Reviewers in these areas should be aware that real-time news coverage isn't helpful, and that articles failing this should stay in draft space. Relisters at AfD could request that !voters address these things more directly when relisting, encouraging them to present secondary sources if they want their !votes to be valid. We should encourage people to write about the event in the context of the main subject as well. For example, if a bridge collapse is part of the history of a bridge, then shouldn't it be covered in the bridge's article instead of its own article? Making an article about a bridge collapse right after it happens is the equivalent of an inappropriate fork, even if the content was technically never actually in the main article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:20, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

The problem with this is that this is kind of contradictory if you look at policy; WP:NOTNEWS says "Editors are also encouraged to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events." Initially, there are only going to be news sources on something. The problem with this whole deal is that it involves some amount of crystal balling either way, because we are encouraged to write articles on significant current events, but we cannot truly determine whether an event will or will not be significant unless we can see the future. With something like "man murders current head of state" that will plainly be significant, but everything below that we just have to do our best. It's always going to be awkward. I find the provisions at NEVENT useful in this regard for a sort of guideline for what to do in the meantime. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:25, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

I'd argue that "significant current events" is closer to Gaza war than "some guy stabbed someone". Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 01:56, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

And now we've just had Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2025 New York City shooting where several people demonstrated they don't understand how notability works by saying these news sources meet GNG or that it's special and therefore notable because of their own made up criteria (location where it happened, people died, etc). These sort of WP:CIR !votes should be discarded, not appeased. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 17:15, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

I think we are due a much wider discussion about consensus. Because some recent closes at AfD have been really off (in the sense that they've ignored the guidelines). It's not about blame in that closers are only doing their best, but it is about how clearly spurious arguments are seen to be part of a consensus. JMWt (talk) 17:28, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

I wonder if we can be more specific in WP:NEVENTS. For example maybe the guideline could give a timeline: pages on minor events will not be considered for notability until six months after the events. Pages on major events need to wait a week.

Of course there's a discussion to be had about what is considered a "minor" versus a "major" event, but at least that's something to be discussed rather than waved away. JMWt (talk) 12:17, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Meanwhile, the guidelines at Wikipedia:In the news states that "Any event that is older than the oldest entry in the current 'In the News' box is considered stale", which leads to rapid and possibly premature article creation of current events. At the current moment, the stale article cutoff point is five days. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but it does raise a point that there's a real tension between efforts to delay article creation for current events and the value that ITN brings by keeping readers informed with up-to-date and in-depth context. Not to mention the increase in Wikipedia engagement that results. RecycledPixels (talk) 15:35, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, sadly I think this just shows which parts of the worldwide audience matters to us, collectively, on en.wiki. JMWt (talk) 15:51, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

ITN is not supposed to be a news ticker but to feature quality articles on topics that have been in the news. That can include new articles on breaking events, but it should not be taken as encouragement to create articles on an event to try to make it into ITN. Masem (t) 16:23, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

There is currently an RfC on WP:BLPCRIME at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons § RFC: Amount of coverage in reliable primary news sources. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:13, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Hey all, I am in dilemma reading Inclusion criteria and Lasting effects and it feels like my brain doing a lil gymnastics. The Inclusion criteria rules says: 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 or a news service. Lasting effect rule says: Events are often considered to be notable if they act as a precedent or catalyst for something else. So I just wondering does the rules only apply for page to exist in first place or does it also applies to the information we include within the page itself? Like should we be cautious about adding information more like breaking news or short-term developments without lasting coverage or significance? NicoR8 (talk) 12:28, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Notability is specific to whether a stand-alone article should exist. In fact, when there are articles that fail LASTING, keeping some of the content but merging it into another page is sometimes the ideal solution. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:25, 8 May 2026 (UTC)