Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)

Hi there! It has recently come to my attention that there appears to be a lack of consensus regarding the sourcing needed to meet NAUTHOR. I have seen the following arguments for what meets NAUTHOR:

1. At least three book reviews, spread across two or more books. For example, if author has Book A, B, and C, one review for each book would meet NAUTHOR.
2. At least two books with at least two book reviews each. That is, the author needs at least two independently notable books.
3. More than the above.

In addition to the above, I have noticed a lack of consensus regarding trade publications. Although editors agree that non-trade publications are better than trade publications, I notice disagreement about whether a trade publication can count toward notability. I would love to have a discussion regarding the above to clarify our standards. Thank you! Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 17:42, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

Adding here that this conversation would apply to WP:CREATIVE #3, which states, Such a person is likely to be notable if [...] the person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews, or of an independent and notable work (for example, a book). We can certainly discuss what it means to be "a significant or well-known work or collective body of work", but I believe the main focus is that the author's work has had independent reviews. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 13:19, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

2. If they have multiple notable works they are notable, if not, redirect to the one work. Usually goes like that at AfD though I have seen cases closer to 1 being kept. 2. is the natural conclusion of NAUTHOR as written imo.

Personally, I think the issue with the major book trade publications isn't that they're trade publications but that book trade publications are, while, sigcov, on the shorter end of sigcov. Mentally I usually count the Booklist/PW/Kirkus/LJ reviews as "half" a normal review. But I do think they count, just less than a lengthier review, and it's not because they're trade publications. PARAKANYAA (talk) 17:50, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

I think it's case-by-case. Two notable books is definitely notability, but a prolific author with a dozen books, each with one review, may also be notable. Regarding "trade publications", I assume you're thinking of Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, or maybe School Library Journal. I don't see why we'd give specialty journals less weight than, say, newspapers. pburka (talk) 17:59, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

@Pburka, the reasoning there, I would assume, is that those are often "capsule reviews" - very brief, often not really defensible as sigcov. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 21:45, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

On reflection I think this "how to count trade publications" thread got a bit drowned out in the subsequent discussion. I share PARAYANKAA's gut feeling that a short Kirkus/Booklist/etc review is less of a "slam dunk" source than something longer, but I do consider them sufficient sigcov from which an article can be written. I have some advice on getting information from book reviews which demonstrates how properly "parsing" a Kirkus review can get at least a few useful bits of info; combining multiple such reviews adds up. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 18:58, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Is it possible to discuss the question within Wikipedia:NAUTHOR? Because I think having reviews is useful when writing but it shouldn’t be considered to fulfil any notability criteria, similar to how Rotten Tomatoes and other movies review websites doesn’t make a movie notable.

for me, it is coverage from non-trade outlets, nominations for awards, essays/books that discuss the author and their work. Not just a review.

again if we compare it to academics at WP:PROF, the criteria is not far from that. Especially there, if we just say that an academic (most of them can also be considered authors to some extent) are notable because their work has been reviewed in 4 sources then most academics are notable because that is part of the trade (review, critique).

If we go as far back as WP:SIGCOV, a book about someone satisfies this criteria , a review or reviews about the author books does not. It’s helpful but not significant, especially because many books get at least one or two reviews. For me it’s how your work affected the field (=lengthy discussion or awards nominations or best seller).

I think it might be worth it for us, to discuss some examples of notable, not notable, and borderline cases just to try and reach some understanding. I will try to make a small list and post it later to make the discussion less abstract. FuzzyMagma (talk) 05:44, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Reviews very much do make movies notable per WP:NFILM. Where did you get the idea that it didn't? Reviews are pretty much the sole thing that make books notable per WP:NBOOK? What else would you expect? If a book receives an award but 0 reviews we cannot write a tolerable article - if we have 4 reviews and no award we can usually write a decent article on that book.

Most academics do not receive 4 full length reviews of their work in reliable publications. Not even close. A perusal of the deletion sorting for books and authors shows this is the typical standard. PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:51, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

1. I got it from NFILM. Nothing there mentions this “review-based” criterion. Change it there and I will take this point. Try and build an article based solely on Rotten Tomatoes reviews and it will get deleted, maybe even without an AfD.

2. You will never get awards without reviews. I know this discussion is all hypothetical but let’s be reasonable/realistic.

3. Most academics do get more than 4 reviews, it’s called citations. FuzzyMagma (talk) 14:25, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

1. Reviews are significant coverage.

2. Rotten Tomatoes is a review aggregator, not an independent reliable source of reviews.

3. Awards without reviews are relatively common. Every film or book festival hands out awards. I'd wager short films are more likely to receive awards than reviews.

3. Citations are not reviews. pburka (talk) 14:53, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Regarding your first point, NFILM #1 states, The film is widely distributed and has received full-length reviews in two or more GNG-worthy publications. NBOOK similarly states, The book has been the subject of two or more non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself. The question is at what point the creator of the work becomes individually notable.

Regarding your last point, citations are different from reviews. An academic's work may be cited in other academic's work without being discussed in detail. My own work has been cited a whopping eight times (sarcasm, but true). Each citation is referencing a specific statistic or point I've made in my publication. When talking about number of citations, we use citation count or H-index. This is separate from reviews, which are articles that discuss a specific work at length. For example, this academic article cites Margaret Price's Mad at School, but it wouldn't necessarily be used to establish the book's notability. However, this academic article discusses Mad at School at length (1,351 words), and thus, could absolutely be used to establish notability. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 18:08, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

the killer here is "and": "... widely distributed and has received full-length reviews ..." not just reviwes.

And I agree about your point around citation. I was wrong about that. FuzzyMagma (talk) 11:22, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

I mean, I guess we could also discuss what "widely distributed" means, but I feel like books that end up in libraries or bookstores are widely distributed. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 16:39, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

it will be being a best seller or in some best seller lists. Being in a bookstore (where books normally are) should not count. Similar to not considering a movie notable because you can find it on streaming services. FuzzyMagma (talk) 06:10, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

...why should it not count, if that's the metric you want to use? That's the equivalent of "widely distributed" for books, if anything. But that's a ridiculous standard. PARAKANYAA (talk) 06:27, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. Many books are not widely distributed because they are self-published, for example. I would not consider a film notable solely for being available on streaming services, but if it is available on Netflix, I would consider it widely distributed. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 13:23, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Which makes every movie on Netflix notable and every book in library notable. That sounds absurd to me. FuzzyMagma (talk) 20:58, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

This goes back to your quote just a moment ago: the killer here is "and": "widely distributed and has received full-length reviews". Thus, being widely distributed alone is does not make something notable. If a film is on Netflix but doesn't have full-length reviews, it's not notable. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 21:13, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

I truly believe that I can find 2 reviews for any movie on Netflix. Maybe from dodgy sources but they can be located. Hence why I am (a bit) scared by how you are interpreting this.

In general, I think we might be talking about the same thing but having a different way to appreciate it. I think we both would accept an article with healthy distribution and reviews. But it’s how we would quantify “healthy”.

For me, an acceptable review is a full article length about the book from a reliable source, not a blurb. A secondary point of disagreement might be: what we consider reliable when it comes to trade-specific media. Some of it might be covered in WPs. FuzzyMagma (talk) 21:24, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

Let's go back to the full quote of NFILM: The film is widely distributed and has received full-length reviews in two or more GNG-worthy publications. These are not blurbs. These are not from dodgy sources. If a film on Netflix has at least two full-length reviews in reliable, independent sources, then it should qualify for NFILM. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 21:29, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

Totally agree FuzzyMagma (talk) 11:36, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Netflix has a fairly curated selection of movies (about 5000 at any time), so those are very likely to be notable. There are about 9500 new movies produced every year, and only about 700 from any recent year are on Netflix. I don't know if every movie on Netflix is notable, but most of them are. Is that a absurd? I don't think so. pburka (talk) 23:13, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

NFILM#1: "The film is widely distributed and has received full-length reviews in two or more GNG-worthy publications."

2. Untrue, I've seen it multiple times.

3. Reviews are not citations. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:43, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Let me add slightly to hopefully clarify. Depending upon the field academics publish journal articles (or conference papers in a few fields), books or both. If they publish articles then notability can depend upon the number of citations of these. (There are other ways, see WP:NACADEMIC.) If they only publish books then detailed reviews of them matter, often in journals, and 3 or more of a given book is typically enough; in effect they are notable via NAUTHOR. There can be hybrid cases, e.g. they have decent citation numbers without really enough by themselves, but a book with two strong reviews. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:51, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Can you please give me some example for no. 2 "Untrue, I've seen it multiple times."? FuzzyMagma (talk) 11:23, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Blind Vaysha has received at least six awards and was nominated for an Oscar. I don't see any reviews in reliable sources. pburka (talk) 20:32, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Do you consider Indiewire, AWN, The Warp, RotoScoprs, LetterBoxd, or ThatShelf reliable? (i am not including IMDb or RT)

As I hate these debates traps, I am going to show my hands. If your answer is:

• Yes: then we established (which is already known) that reviews are part of getting nominated to notable award. Award’s panel typically have a critic or someone who review things for a living. Once this is established then w can go back to discuss the point of why reviews should or shouldn’t considered an independent criterion to establish notability (we know notable awards does, but we are debating reviews)
• No: Even better, because this means most review websites are not reliable and once you dismiss them you end up back to relying on non-review coverage from reliable sources to establish notability. So we are in agreement and our different perspectives are just semantics.

FuzzyMagma (talk) 06:05, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

1. Why would it show that?

2. That some review websites are unreliable doesn't mean all of them are. That's like saying because there are a lot of blogs on the internet everything online is unreliable. No.

What? PARAKANYAA (talk) 06:31, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Show what? FuzzyMagma (talk) 17:33, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

There was some book about Edgar Allen Poe that received a very big notable horror award and had, to my memory, either no reviews or a single 1-paragraph review. PARAKANYAA (talk) 06:26, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

I've also seen this with some illustrated children's book from, I want to say the 1970s, and a sci-fi novel from about the same time. PARAKANYAA (talk) 06:32, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Give me names. Your last example failed to demonstrate this point so I need names to check myself. FuzzyMagma (talk) 21:00, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

Just get rid of NAUTHOR and use GNG. It's simpler, and aligns with WP:NOTINHERITED BilledMammal (talk) 01:33, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Why would we want to do that?

And coverage of a book is obviously coverage of a person by extension, so I'd say it would. Interpreting NOTINHERITED in that way would get us utterly ridiculous results where someone can write 40+ books all of which are notable but is themself not, because all the coverage about them is about the fact they write books. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:39, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Well said. pburka (talk) 01:56, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Why would we want to do that?

Because to write a biography we need content about a person - and reviews that do not discuss the author, but only the work, does not assist with that.

And coverage of a book is obviously coverage of a person by extension, so I'd say it would.

NOTINHERITED tells us otherwise; its established that a product, including books, can be notable without that notability passing to those who produce the product.

Interpreting NOTINHERITED in that way would get us utterly ridiculous results where someone can write 40+ books all of which are notable but is themself not, because all the coverage about them is about the fact they write books

No, it wouldn't - if there is coverage of them, as there is of Rowling in this review of the Philosophers Stone, then they would be notable under GNG, even though that coverage is related to the fact they write books. However, if there is only coverage of their books, as there is in this review of the Chamber of Secrets, then the review only contributes to the books notability and not the authors - and would be unhelpful for writing an article on the author in any case. BilledMammal (talk) 02:42, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Content about what a person does is absolutely about a person.

NOTINHERITED explicitly says that this does not apply to creative professionals.

If your desire is we only have articles on authors as notable as JK Rowling, I do not think that is an encyclopedic goal. Also, that article only discusses Rowling in the context of having written a book, so under your own suggestion, why would that count? PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:22, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Content about what a person does is absolutely about a person.

It is, but that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing content about something a person produced, not about their work on it. For example, "She wrote the book in cafes and trains in 1997" is about what the person does, and is absolutely about the person; "The book is set in magical school" is about the work, and has nothing to do with the person.

If your desire is we only have articles on authors as notable as JK Rowling, I do not think that is an encyclopedic goal.

Rowling is only an easy example. I suspect most authors we have articles on already comply with GNG.

Also, that article only discusses Rowling in the context of having written a book, so under your own suggestion, why would that count

It counts because it has coverage of the author beyond "she is the author". Please don't present my position as "book reviews never count for author notability", as that is not accurate; it's "book reviews that don't contain significant coverage of the author do not count for notability". BilledMammal (talk) 03:30, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

That absolutely would have to do with the person?

I do not think that is the case.

Using your definition of when article content is about a book versus a person, the article has no discussion of her besides the fact she wrote the book and is "an unemployed single mother". Not significant coverage! PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:40, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

(edit conflict) That absolutely would have to do with the person?

Can you explain why The book is set in magical school is about the person, and not the work?

That article has no discussion of her besides the fact she wrote the book and is "an unemployed single mother". Not significant coverage!

It has a paragraph on her; in my experience, that's enough for people at AfD to argue WP:SIGCOV. BilledMammal (talk) 03:42, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Going to agree with BilledMammal here. Notability guidelines should be guiding us to a presumption of notability because there are sources from which the biography can be written. If all we have are reviews of their works that do not discuss the author at all then we don't have anything to write the biography from. There are, of course, authors that are pseudonyms. The examples I can give are notable because sources exist about the authors (e.g. Robert Galbraith, Richard Bachman, Ann Cheetham) - but it is easy to posit that we might have biographies about people who simply don't exist, if all we need for the biographies are book reviews. GNG/ANYBIO are enough. Reviews will get discussed at AfD under GNG/ANYBIO, and if the review discusses the author, it will be accepted towards notability. That is as it should be. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 03:43, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

GNG itself is simply a presumption, as are all the SNGs, except for NCORP, which cancels out GNG, and NSPORTS, which does nothing.

I don't see what is wrong with merely saying someone wrote books and then the response to those books. Really many books would be better off merged to author articles instead of having tiny individual ones. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:47, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes, GNG is a presumption, but it is a better one. It requires that the sources be about the biographical subject themself. Why overcomplicate it? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 03:53, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Why is it a better one?

Well, I don't think the status quo is an overcomplication. This would incentivize simply terrible practice on book articles, for one. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:58, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Getting repetitive. It is better because it requires sources contain information from which a biography can be written. It does not preclude that such sources be reviews. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 04:10, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Book reviews by their nature always contain information from which a biography on the author can be written. We are not required to have any particular factoid about a human being for the article on them to exist; for plenty of notable people, we lack family background, education, birth dates. For barely notable people we are in fact discouraged from including such information if it is not relevant to their notability. It is simply ridiculous to have, say, 10 articles on the individual books someone has written, but not an article on the author. PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:19, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

For a biography of a living person, we must, in fact, have secondary sources about the "human" we are writing about. As to Book reviews by their nature always contain information from which a biography on the author can be written, I have read many book reviews and written many myself. No, that is not true. Here's an example of an author with two notable reviews (Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus): and . They tell us nothing about Rice. This is quite normal, although not universal. If a review talks about the author, it is good for GNG. We don't need NAUTHOR. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:19, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

They tell you about Rice; they tell you that Rice wrote a book and critical evaluation of their writing abilities. What else is strictly required on an article about an author? What information would be necessary? There is no specific fact we are required to have to form an article. That is also only one notable review as the Kirkus one is a paid review (but that's quibbling).

No, it would not be good for GNG if you are excluding the aspect of the sourcing that is on the book as counting for the person, because it would not be significant coverage. PARAKANYAA (talk) 08:39, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Well obviously they tell you that the book the review was about was allegedly written by Rice (if that's their real name), but that's not really information about Rice. It is not a critical evaluation of their writing abilities - it is a critical evaluation of the writing in that one book. Are all their books as bad as this one? (Spoiler: yes, they are). The review doesn't tell us that. It only tells you what the reviewer thought of the writing in that one book, and that is, in any case, primary opinion. We can't use that in a BLP. I can't even tell, from those reviews, whether Rice is male or female. If we tried to stitch an article together from such editor interpretation of reviews we would undoubtedly have to employ original research. And I don't see why this is rocket science: if a review does give significant biographical detail of the author, then the review will count towards GNG. We want guidelines to help assess whether an article can be written. NAUTHOR doesn't do that, and inasmuch as you envisage reviews that would allow articles to be written, they are sufficient to meet GNG/ANYBIO. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 15:30, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

It tells about Rice's creative endeavors and that they wrote those two books. Given that authorial notability derives from their published works, this is precisely what we would expect. Katzrockso (talk) 02:48, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

It doesn't tell us anything from which the biography can be written. That's the point. We need evidence that a biography can be written from secondary sources. The guideline does not do that, and inasmuch as reviews may do that, those same reviews also meet GNG/ANYBIO, and the guideline is superfluous. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:28, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

As I stated elsewhere, CREATIVE (NAUTHOR) #3 reads, The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews, or of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series...). This does not indicate that there needs to be coverage of the individual for them to meet the SNG. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 13:12, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

In a discussion of whether we need NAUTHOR, citing NAUTHOR in support is circular. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 13:23, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Alright, let's look at ANYBIO then. The first point states, The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for such an award several times. This does not require significant biographical coverage in independent sources, which is the question we're circling. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 13:26, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

If someone has received such an award or honour, the assumption is that there will be such sources available to write the article, so the guideline allows a shortcut for a (refutable) assumption that sources will exist. There are significant awards and honours for authors too, and if an author receives one, there will almost certainly be sources about the author. David Almond is an award winning author. I haven't searched, but I am certain that there will be sources from which we can write his article (and, indeed, we have the article, because there are). But the existence of a review of an author's product, a book, does not tell you there will be anything from which to write a biography of the author. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes the author doesn't even exist. As I said, ANYBIO and GNG are enough. We don't need NAUTHOR. It doesn't help. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:28, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

But here, you're going based on an assumption. Here, we could look at an example like Draft:Kathleen Jennings, where the author has won several awards, but minimal information is available about her through independent sources. Thus, she may pass ANYBIO based on award wins/nominations without passing GNG. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 16:27, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Thus "refutable". A point too rarely noted at AfD. But we start from the presumption of notability there because it's likely there will be something if the awards are notable. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:51, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm not saying an article can be created in this case and it likely shouldn't from my search into this person, but a biography can be written from sources that don't contribute to notability, while the notability inheres from other sources that don't contribute to the biography. This is how many of our NPROF articles work. Katzrockso (talk) 13:19, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

This is where I feel like we could use primary sources (e.g., an author's website) to add biographical details. Though those primary sources wouldn't contribute to notability, they provide biographical detail, while their works establish notability. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 13:21, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

So basically, we don't need to follow WP:BLP when its authors. And, indeed, WP:OR can probably take a running jump too. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 13:27, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

From WP:BLPSPS, regarding primary sources in BLPs: Never use self-published sources (including books, zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, or social network posts) as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the person themselves. "Self-published blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs. It does not refer to a reputable organisation publishing material about who it employs. I'd say this includes the author's blurb on their publisher's website. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 13:32, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

An astounding assumption of bad faith. Katzrockso (talk) 18:15, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

Hypothetically if consensus were that authors without sufficient biographical material were not to get an article, an author with multiple works that marginally pass WP:NBOOK#1 should get a List of works by Author, and have a redirect for their name to that (there's no single work that the author can/should redirect to). Including the minimally available bio info in that list would be reasonable, and the author redirect should have verifiable bio categories. The end result would be basically the same as just having a single author article with the minimal available bio info and that aggregates coverage and/or linkage of their works, but worse. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 04:14, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

That would not pass NLIST, so we couldn't do that, either. PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:14, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I also agree with this, while acknowledging that there is no chance there'd ever be consensus for it. I don't think it's encyclopedic at all to have a biography where all the actual biographical details come directly from the subject, but that's what happens when you use book reviews that don't actually discuss the subject (or don't at least go into detailed, critical appraisal of the subject's writing directly--e.g. "[subject]'s writing was..." as opposed to "the writing in this book was..."). But the Wikipedia community seems to be very attached to directory-style biographies comprised of background sourced to the person's website plus a prosified list of works, even when it fails ABOUTSELF #5. JoelleJay (talk) 11:18, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

It does not fail ABOUTSELF #5 because the entire article is not based primarily on primary sources; rather, the biographic information is based primarily on primary sources while the author's work contains many secondary sources. ABOUTSELF also begins by stating, Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves. Furthermore, I'm unsure what the meaningful difference is between "Author's writing in this book was..." vs "The writing in this book by Author was..." Neither of these provide biographic information, and any book review is going to state who the author of the work is. Beyond this, we can look at other criteria, such as ANYBIO #1 or #2, neither of which state that we have significant coverage of the individual -- only their work. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 13:52, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

Are you talking about some specific article? When the majority of prose in an article is sourced to primary and non-independent sources, it does fail ABOUTSELF, and this is something that does happen in many biographies.

Critical analysis of the author's writing that directly links themes etc. in the book to authorial actions/choices is much closer to coverage of the author than simple documentation of themes etc. in the book by the reviewer.

ANYBIO is a weaker predictor of notability than the main NBIO BASIC criteria and GNG (compare the "likely to be notable" vs "presumed notable" language). And anyway ANYBIO #2 absolutely depends on SIGCOV: Generally, a person who is "part of the enduring historical record" will have been written about, in depth, independently in multiple history books in that field, by historians. ... ANYBIO #1 (or technically any SNG) can be refuted if it turns out the subject doesn't actually have the coverage required by WP:WHYN. JoelleJay (talk) 13:02, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

ANYBIO is a list of or statements. The subject does not need to meet all three points for them to likely be notable. There are many articles I can point to. One I recently worked on was Kathleen Jennings (illustrator). Jennings clearly has had multiple works receive extensive reviews in reliable, secondary sources, and her works has won awards. Further, as an individual, she has won awards for her collection of work. However, I had difficulty finding significant coverage about her as an individual in reliable, independent sources. This is nowhere near a perfect article, but I believe it would be silly to say we should only have articles for her notable books without having an article to bring together even just her collection of work, for which she has been recognized. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 18:38, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

I am aware of how ANYBIO operates...

If SIGCOV of winners of a particular award is rare, that is a good indication winning that award should not qualify for ANYBIO since it ultimately does not align with requirements in WHYN. I haven't read the reviews, but if they're actually in-depth enough for NAUTHOR then I would anticipate they do have some coverage of the author. JoelleJay (talk) 18:29, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

It's about both, one does not exclude the other.

No, it doesn't have a paragraph on her, it has a sentence on her and then it segues to the book. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:45, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Can you explain why you believe it is about the person? Currently, you're only asserting that it is, and I don't understand why you believe that.

No, it doesn't have a paragraph on her, it has a sentence on her and then it segues to the book.

I think you might have missed it; look at the second paragraph, which contains multiple sentences about her and her work on the book (as opposed to the book itself; The book took shape as she scribbled feverishly in cafes as soon as her baby daughter dropped off to sleep in her pushchair is about her work, while Harry is a hugely likeable child, kind but not wet, competitive but always compassionate is about the work, and does not contribute to notability.) BilledMammal (talk) 03:51, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

"The book took shape as she scribbled feverishly in cafes as soon as her baby daughter dropped off to sleep in her pushchair" is about her work, the work being the book. It's as much about her as "the book is about a magical school is", as it is describing the thing she was doing. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:59, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

It's about her work on the book, not the book, and thus is useful for an article about her in a way that a sentence about the book is not - but as Sirfurboy says this is getting repetitive. BilledMammal (talk) 04:13, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

While splitting hairs here, I'd say that how she wrote a specific book would belong more to a background section on the book's article rather than indicating specific information about the author. However, this snippet does give us the biographical information of "Rowling is a mother." Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 21:00, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

CREATIVE (NAUTHOR) #3 reads, The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews, or of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series...). This does not indicate that there needs to be coverage of the individual for them to meet the SNG. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 20:57, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

It's true that some author biographies might better be called bibliographies (e.g. Wendy Holden (author, born 1961) has very little biographical information, and could be Wendy Holden (author, born 1961) bibliography), but I don't see any harm in using the more concise title. If we didn't have an author/bibliography article, I guess we'd write pages for each of her (many!) notable books, and have no way of linking them together, because the author is otherwise low profile. pburka (talk) 17:11, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

A listicle is fine in that case. Czarking0 (talk) 19:48, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

All of her "notable books" are autobiographies where she just assisted the autobiographee in writing; I think that's quite a different situation from a book actually composed by one author. JoelleJay (talk) 11:25, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

I was surprised that much of the discussion here focuses on sigcov. In some earlier conversation I had with Significa liberdade which partially spawned this thread, my concern was with independent. It is my understanding that at lest in the American and Nigerian publishing industries, nearly all reviews have a level of quid pro quo to them. I don't think that quid pro quo reviews (which often do not even involve the reviwer reading the book) can count towards the notability of any article since they are not independent. Czarking0 (talk) 19:47, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

This is an astonishing claim. Aside from Kirkus Indie, which is clearly labeled as a paid service, can you give an example of such "quid pro quo" reviews in otherwise reliable American sources? pburka (talk) 20:37, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

I did not mention in our discussion, but I am unaware of such "quid pro quo" review publishing outside of paid reviews. I believe reviews in academic journals were brought up as an example, and I will say that this is not the case from what I know as a PhD candidate. Yes, people write book reviews for CV lines and publishing credits, but to my knowledge, they do not say, "Hey, Marge! Could you review my book? If you do, I'll review yours!" Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 21:03, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

I don't mean academic journals. I mean the kinds of reviews publishers print on the back of books. I do not think the authors are involved in the qui pro quo. It is more like I own puffin publishing and Significa owns peacock books. I ensure that one of my authors publishes a review for all of peacock's books that Significa mentioned in our previous lunch and they ensure that their authors publish reviews for all of puffin's books. Publishing a review for books they did not even read is something I have seen several authors admit to on the record. I believe this to be a widespread practice in the US and Nigeria. I am not sure about other countries. I don't have specific evidence as these are things I have read over the years. Czarking0 (talk) 06:34, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

@Czarking0, those are not reviews. Those are blurbs. They are not sources for anything, let alone notability. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 06:42, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

Oftentimes those blurbs are taken from a longer review which I am discussing Czarking0 (talk) 07:29, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

If a promotional quote on the back of the book is an excerpt from a review published in a legit RS, the cherry-picked quote is obviously not really a source but the underlying professional review is fine. Any publication which publishes undisclosed advertising is by definition not RS (see WP:NEWSORGINDIA for example). If you can provide evidence that there is a US based review venue that publishes reviews quid pro quo or with undisclosed payment, that source should be deprecated. But book publishers typically don’t publish reviews at all, that’s something newspapers do. Book publishers do provide blurbs, and I’m sure blurbs have a strong quid pro quo element to them, but as asilvering notes blurbs are not reviews and are not sources. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 07:56, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

Well, Nigeria has its own problems. The problem isn't localized to book reviews. Or anything. Really everything the media there prints. That's more a country issue (ah, brown envelope journalism). As for America... no? PARAKANYAA (talk) 06:23, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

There are certainly some reviews of this type in American publishing, but we don't consider those outlets RS for that reason. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 21:46, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I guess I'm late to the party but so far, the brown envelope journalism issue is yet to get to the art (music aside) industry, so... Best, Reading Beans, Duke of Rivia 06:26, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

There's an extensive debate above suggesting that we can't write proper biographies based purely on book reviews. This is probably true in many cases. However, there's some nuance and practicalities which I think are being overlooked.

1. Even if an author (or filmmaker, artist, other creative) doesn't have enough coverage to meet GNG for a biography, their body of work, or oeuvre, may be notable. We include articles like Isaac Asimov bibliography (chronological) and Works of Agatha Christie; there's no reason we couldn't call some of our author biographies "Works of [low-profile author]". Such a page would certainly include whatever scant biographical information exists. Whether we name them as biographies or bibliographies is of little concern to me, although the biography-style is more concise.
2. Even if the oeuvre isn't collectively the subject of SIGCOV, it's still valuable for our readers to have an article linking the notable works together (minimally, as an aid to navigation). In many cases, it's also preferable, per WP:NOPAGE, to cover multiple works in a single article rather than writing articles for each book or work, especially with no page to link them together.

For these reasons, I believe that the current WP:NAUTHOR guidelines, and the way they're usually interpreted at AFD, is appropriate, practical and encyclopedic. Some editors would like to treat GNG as a "Grand Unified Theory of Notability", but that's not feasible and will lead to perverse outcomes. SNGs are necessary to ensure that encyclopedic topics aren't excluded from the project. pburka (talk) 21:07, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

I agree completely. I think it is by design that NAUTHOR, like NPROF, does not require coverage of the person themselves, because in both cases there is encyclopedic value in connecting together the information about their notable works. I would also add that author biographies are a classic context where an article on a notable topic can be fleshed out with non-independent WP:ABOUTSELF sources.

With this in mind, I see two notable books as the bare minimum for NAUTHOR. If someone has zero notable books, I don't think they can be said to have a notable body of work. If they have one notable book, we should just have a book article; biographical information and non-notable books can be mentioned there. At two books, there starts to be enough information that needs a place of its own, and we have something meaningful to put in a standalone author article. NOPAGE may still mean we don't need a separate bio even for a notable author -- personally, if someone has 3 notable books but it's a trilogy, I'd make one 'series' article and cover the author there -- but at 2+ notable books I think an NAUTHOR pass is reasonable and I think that bar is appropriate at AfD. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 23:28, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for this precise overview. I would also add to it that I believe a biographical article (even with little biographical information or primary sources for biographical information) does something that bibliographic articles do not: they create a narrative. Unlike the two bibliographic articles listed above (or most articles listed at Category:Bibliographies by writer), author biographies may include information such as reviews, awards won, and overarching discussions of the author's work. As such, I believe that makes more sense to live on an article for the author. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 23:32, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

Agree, @Significa liberdade. I think it's much more useful for readers to be able to go to a single article on a mildly obscure author that has a limited amount of information on their biography and five books, than it is for them to to go five book stubs. I'd remind everyone in this discussion that notability guidelines are guidelines we have created to determine what we ought to cover and whether it can be reasonably covered on a standalone page, but that we still have editorial discretion (eg WP:PAGEDECIDE) and that's what this kind of SNG is often really about.

Like LEvalyn, I also see two notable books as the bare minimum for NAUTHOR. I could conceive of an exception whereby someone has a single very notable book that we would obviously want to cover, and several borderline ones - that, I think, would be best handled as an author bio. What I don't think we should do is say that someone is an NAUTHOR pass if they have zero notable books, regardless of how many reviews that is. We only get to PAGEDECIDE once we've actually decided there is at least one page to decide on. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 21:52, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I agree that two notable books is the general rule. I can imagine other exceptions, e.g. a short story writer or poet with multiple award winning publications, but exceptions are, by their nature, exceptional. pburka (talk) 21:59, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

My general take on NAUTHOR is that an author is notable if they have received coverage in independent, reliable sources. Book reviews can count towards this. So for example: an author has put out 10 books, which are not part of a series. Each book has only one review, but they're from multiple different RS publications (let's say the NYT, New Yorker, Guardian, and other mainstream publications) and are of decent length/depth. In that situation even if the books aren't independently notable, the 10 reviews would be enough to establish that the author is notable even if the books don't warrant individual articles. Having an article on the author would give Wikipedia the ability to cover them and their work even if the books wouldn't have articles. This would in turn help prevent the creation of poorly sourced articles on the novels, which absolutely does happen when fans discover the lack of coverage on Wikipedia. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 14:54, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

I will admit that realistically the reviews will typically be from outlets/people that cater to the genre in specific, but are still reliable. So a horror author may get reviews from Dread Central, Fangoria, Kim Newman, and so on. They're more niche than the NYT, but still considered to be very reliable, authoritative sources as a whole. I just don't want this to turn into a case where an author can only have an article if two of their works have articles, which would lead to people making articles that would be forever a stub, just so the author could qualify for an article. I'd like to say that people would apply common sense in a situation like the author example I gave above, but from experience I'll say that there will absolutely be people who will ignore GNG/NBIO because the coverage is made up of reviews. An example of an article that would probably be up for deletion would be the one for Tabitha King, wife of Stephen King. One of her books is notable, but I'm not certain if any of her others would pass NBOOK. She's obviously notable, but would fail the guidelines if we were to strictly require her to have two books that are independently notable enough for their own articles. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 18:34, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

My correction - she does have two articles. But the point still stands that the two articles are kind of lackluster. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 18:35, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

Hi, @ReaderofthePack! If you haven't looked at it already, you may also be interested in the Village Pump discussion linked below this one. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 19:09, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

I see one for politicians - was it cleared out? I ended up going out for about a month for surgery and didn't get on any computers during that time. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 15:45, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

The thread has now been closed with most editors in favour of keeping NCREATIVE. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 01:29, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Tabitha King definitely has multiple NBOOK passes (I see at least four) and is an easy pass of NAUTHOR without 'weakening' it so that an author with many non-notable books can pass. And regarding this concern: an author can only have an article if two of their works have articles, which would lead to people making articles that would be forever a stub, just so the author could qualify -- that is where WP:PAGEDECIDE comes in, and I am a very strong advocate for people remembering that "notable enough to technically have an article" is not the same thing as "absolutely must have a standalone article". If the book articles would be stubs, we can just discuss the books on the author bio! And later if someone wants to flesh them out into standalone articles, they can spin out the separate article then. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 22:39, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

I've always found that having the author's page and including info about barely notable works tends to discourage article creations. We get a lot of people who create articles because they notice an absence of information anywhere.

In any case, I'm aware that if things work the way they should, then common sense will win. But I will be honest in that sometimes people follow the letter of a guideline and ignore common sense. If we put in a requirement that the author have two notable books (or have a ton of coverage on them as an individual), then there will inevitably be an AfD where someone argues that Jane Smith fails notability guidelines because none of her books pass NBOOK, even though she has scores of reviews from top notch publications (but no RS that focus on her specifically). I mean, we had an AfD where someone legit argued that a book series was non-notable and that the reviews for the individual books could not count towards notability. If I remember correctly, they actually had editors espousing their argument as well. The series was eventually kept, but it was not an easily won argument and it took quite a few others coming in to argue for common sense. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 15:55, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly about the article-creation aspect, but regarding your second point... that gets to the crux of the discussion here. I have been arguing for option 2 in the original poll-- multiple NBOOK passes are required-- and to my eye others largely share that consensus, but it sounds like you're adovating for option 1--multiple one-review-only books should also count. Personally, I don't think it happens that someone has scores of reviews from top notch publications without at least one NBOOK pass; when someone has real quantity or quality of reviews, NBOOK tends to follow. What I see is authors, especially in children's fiction, who have a handful of reviews in marginal publications (like some one-paragraph notices in School Library Journal or a local paper). Personally, I am OK with calling these cases non-notable, in part because I've often been unable to do a satisfactory rescue at AfD with this kind of sourcing (and because the higher bar is helpful for weeding out self-published promo). But maybe you have found that satisfactory articles can be written about these kinds of authors? ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 18:53, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

I propose we clean up NPOL to reflect some of the questions that frequently occur at AfD, especially about the type and degree of coverage we expect before creating a stand-alone page for local elected officials and for unelected candidates.

I do think there are some common expectations our community has - largely reflected in our essays around political candidates and common outcomes for local elected officials, but those expectations are not directly expressed in NPOL's current wording. In practice, we expect a higher level of sourcing for these individuals, similar to the higher sourcing expectations we see in WP:NCORP. We frequently want to see more than WP:ROUTINE coverage of candidates and local officials. What we want for these individuals is feature stories that illustrate how they impacted their communities while in office or how the campaign shaped the broader public debate.

But as written, NPOL is ambiguous of the type of sourcing needed and does not provide much guidance to editors about how to handle two classes of individuals that are frequently created. 


My suggested changes serve to clean up NPOL to reflect common practices, not to fundamentally change its meaning.

I appreciate thoughts from the community. - Enos733 (talk) 16:42, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

I would suggest replacing the sentence "Local elected officials [...]" with something closer to the current guideline. Specifically:

"The presumed notability of this guideline does not apply to elected local officials, officials in a state/province-wide political party, or unelected candidates for political office, although such people can still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline.

Rather than maybe having some editors read a guideline expanding notability on top of GNG, I suggest that it's cleaner to just defer to GNG. Davidwbaker (talk) 17:51, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

I think the biggest problem with NPOL and how it's treated at AfD is the relationship to GNG. The SNG says that anyone who fails NPOL can still be notable by GNG, but in practice we usually delete pages about candidates for elected office, despite significant coverage of their candidacy. I propose that there is an unstated consensus that such pages are not encyclopedic, and I think that NPOL should include a subject-specific addition to NOT, namely that Wikipedia is not an election guide or campaign website. pburka (talk) 20:18, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

@Enos733: Thank you for starting this discussion. I agree we need to clarify the notability standards for local politicians so that we aren't constantly dealing with this on an ad-hoc basis at AFD. I have a few observations:

1. I think a presumption of notability for local politicians should consider the size of their jurisdiction or the number of votes they receive. It doesn't make sense to me that a statewide rep in New Hampshire like Laura Telerski would be presumed notable when she is elected with 2500 votes, see ) while Santa Monica Mayor Caroline Torosis (currently up for discussion at AFD) would not be presumed notable despite getting over 17,000 votes (see ). Anyone who is elected with over 10,000 votes seems like the type of person who should be included in the enduring historical record in a place like Wikipedia.

2. It also doesn't make sense to hold local politicians to a higher standard than WP:BASIC. Local politicians receive press coverage because of their contributions to their communities. The press covers politicians because of their important contributions, and they should not be held to a higher standard for notability. I strongly oppose any modification to WP:POLITICIAN that would require retrospective coverage or something more than what we require for any other person.

3. In today's media landscape, we can no longer expect national or even regional media outlets to cover local issues in the way that they used to. Local media is filling the gap. As long as local media is reliable and independent and meets all the other usual standards for sourcing in this encyclopedia, it shouldn't be discounted. And we shouldn't have a higher standard (e.g. requiring coverage in a national newspaper) just because someone is a local politician.

4. I like the added footnote about individuals appointed to a local office.

So, to deal with the population disparities, I propose the following, which incorporates Enos733's proposed language:

I realize that the 10,000 vote threshold is somewhat arbitrary, but I think it's the right number. It's much larger than the vote totals that state legislators receive in many states in the United States. Notecardforfree (talk) 16:23, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

I strongly oppose any criteria based on arbitrary numbers of votes or population sizes. In fact, we should try not to distinguish between elected and appointed positions at all. This is a US-centric view of how governments work. pburka (talk) 16:35, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

That's a fair point. @Pburka: do you have any suggestions for how to deal with the issue that in some places (like the U.S.) you can have state-level politicians who are presumed notable despite representing a population much smaller than local politicians? Notecardforfree (talk) 16:38, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

My understanding is that this discussion isn't (once again) about trying to expand NPOL to include even more biographies, but about clarifying the wording to reflect how it's used today. If we were going to change the scope, I'd recommend excluding most sub-national offices from the guideline altogether, with the exception of legislators and leaders. pburka (talk) 16:46, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

@Notecardforfree, I appreciate your thoughts, but I disagree with where you want to take the guideline (and would prefer the existing language of NPOL). First, I want to clarify the wording to match where the community is today. As there are approximately 500,000 current local officials in the United States alone, I do think only a small fraction are worthy of note for an international encyclopedia. And while subnational and national legislators, as well as local elected officials, play important roles setting rules for their jurisdictions, our fuzzy system of notability suggests we should only draw hard lines when it makes sense. The proposed voter threshold would be unwieldy - a candidate may be running unopposed in a special purpose district and get over 10k votes, but a local mayor in a city of 40,000 might get less than 10,000 votes. And if we look at just population size, a threshold of 10,000 would mean presumed notability for elected officials in over 12,000 jurisdictions in the US alone.

As you are correct that the local media infrastructure in the US and across the world is being decimated, meaning that we will be relying on more information from local reporters. But there is a lot of variety of local reporting - from outlets that have hard working journalists who do lots of independent research to outlets that largely repackage press releases. This makes it harder for editors to evaluate the independence of the article and how much those pieces contribute to notability. This is, in part, why NCORP developed the way it did to stress significant coverage, and why NSPORTS was rewritten to deemphasize mere participation in professional athletics and to stress the need for better sources. - Enos733 (talk) 17:15, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

@Enos733: Okay, I see what you mean about the vote cutoff. You make some good points about that here. I suppose any standard will involve some arbitrary distinctions. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that you can have a sub-national politician from a small jurisdiction at the state level who is presumed notable, while a politician from a local jurisdiction with a much larger population is not presumed notable.

Regarding local news sources, we already have fairly robust guidelines for assessing the independence and reliability of local sources. I think editors owe it to the subject matter of this encyclopedia to take a close look at the sources on a case-by-case basis. Indeed, I've found that good local reporting can be of much better quality than national reporting. And this is especially true when it comes to local politics.

Fundamentally, I strongly oppose any revision to WP:POLITICIAN to a higher notability standard than WP:BASIC. And I don't think the ongoing discussions at the various AFDs reflect a community consensus for such a change. In fact, I've found that editors will very often vote to keep pages about local politicians who meet WP:BASIC. Notecardforfree (talk) 18:36, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

And one more point to add to my last comment ... The recent revisions to WP:NCORP provide some helpful guidance about what it means for there to be WP:SIGCOV of a corporation or a person involved in corporate leadership. I'd be in favor of adding some further guidance about what it means for there to be significant coverage of a politician. @Enos733: your original proposed edits said that politicians need to be the "primary focus of multiple pieces of in-depth, independent news coverage." I'm not sure I'm in agreement with "primary focus." It goes much further than what WP:BASIC and WP:SIGCOV requires. WP:CORPDEPTH doesn't have the "primary focus" requirement. It just says that coverage needs to be "well beyond brief mentions and routine announcements." I think that's roughly consistent with WP:SIGCOV. Perhaps we should add similar language for local politicians. Notecardforfree (talk) 18:51, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

I could go along with "well beyond brief mentions and routine announcements" in place of "primary focus" to mirror the language of CORPDEPTH. This would then read: Local elected officials may be notable if the level of coverage extends well beyond brief mentions and brief announcements, campaign coverage, or routine coverage. - Enos733 (talk) 20:02, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

This sounds like an improvement to me. We may wish to expand the scope to include both "Local officials or candidates for elected offices...". pburka (talk) 20:17, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

@Enos733: Thanks for your work on this. I also agree with Pburka's suggestion about candidates. I'd just make two minor refinements to this proposal. First, I'd remove or modify the phrase "campaign coverage." There are plenty of people who are notable because their campaign activities have received extensive coverage. I'm thinking about people like Lord Buckethead or Bob Kelleher (see also perennial candidate and List of perennial candidates in the United States). I'd also change "routine coverage" to "routine announcements" to be consistent with WP:CORPDEPTH's language. So, it would say something like: Local elected officials or candidates may be notable if the level of coverage extends well beyond brief mentions and brief or routine announcements." Notecardforfree (talk) 21:07, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

@Pburka, I have a separate section for candidates in my proposal (above).

@Notecardforfree, I do not think that SNGs need or ought to be overly prescriptive and cover every scenario. If we do try to either add caveats to broad categories (e.g., the New Hampshire legislature is too large, so we should treat it differently than other subnational governments) or add a section on perennial candidates because of one or two prominent examples, our guideline becomes less useful (as exceptions swallow up the whole point [one of the problems that led to NSPORT crumbling in on itself]).

If a subject is very extraordinary, very well-known, they will easily pass WP:N and we don't need a guideline or policy to point to. Beyond that WP:NBASIC exists on top of WP:BIO, and at AFD, if enough editors believe a stand-alone page should exist and the page doesn't violate our core content principles, the article will remain, regardless of what a guideline might say. - Enos733 (talk) 21:38, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Thanks for your work on this. pburka (talk) 21:41, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

@Enos733: Okay, those are fair points. And I agree about WP:BASIC applying in all cases. So where does that leave us in terms of revisions to the language of WP:POLITICIAN? Notecardforfree (talk) 21:53, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Closers should instead discount the non-policy based votes that argue to delete articles that pass the GNG. Katzrockso (talk) 18:55, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for putting this together—and for your consistently thoughtful feedback in deletion discussions. I'd support the proposal as written or as amended. It would help formalize what I understand to be some consistently applied, but currently uncodified, precedent in deletion discussions that would be very helpful in future discussions. It's a great improvement. PA Uploader (talk) 13:52, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

I am going to boldly make the change. If there is objection, we can always start an RFC. - Enos733 (talk) 16:41, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

I would start an RFC since there is likely to be significant discussion. The problem is that it is easy for local politicians to take advantage of Wikipedia as a political platform for local election advantages. It also allows coverage of standard coverage of annual events and local policy decisions to be framed as coverage of the politician for notability, just because a vote or political position is written about… In many cases we apply the impact people have on their professional field and NPOL specifically doesn’t include local politicians, likely assuming we would ignore basic coverage by local papers as routine. Even WP:Basic when applied without impact, the evidence is usually overwhelming with national coverage. In cases like Santa Monica, there is plenty of opportunity to receive national coverage or at least much more than extremely local coverage which makes the issue even more glaring. I think with WP:Basic for local politicians the evidence needs to be substantial in depth coverage from papers or sources who dot have such a close relationship with the local politicians and don’t cover everything the city does in such routine fashion. Just my thoughts! ~2026-48099-37 (talk) 17:00, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-48099-37, I made the change on 29 August and your comment is the first in response. My goal here was to greater align NPOL for local elected officials and candidates with WP:CORPDEPTH, as I think you agree with. That said, I do acknowledge that any change to any SNG does not makes a change to WP:BASIC. At the end of the day, editors at AfD make determinations of whether the coverage that exists for any subject is sufficient for a stand-alone article (as there is very little black and white in our notability guidelines). - Enos733 (talk) 17:15, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

I agree that the Enos733's change reflects current practice and is somewhat more restrictive than the previous text. I wish to reemphasize that the guideline which can override WP:BASIC is WP:NOT. If we wish to more explicitly limit coverage of politicians, we should either try to add a section to WP:NOT, or add a subject-specific interpretation of WP:NOT to WP:NPOL. pburka (talk) 18:46, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

@EternalSunshineIsPeace, I reverted your edit because it does not appear that you understand the proposal and goal (as per this discussion). If you think the change made to NPOL softens conditions for local pols, then please express it here, because every editor in this discussion thinks it does the opposite. --Enos733 (talk) 18:46, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

You said you would do an RFC, why hasn't that happened? Changing the language from routine coverage to routine announcements and then trying to say it is more restrictive is nonsense. It specifically aligns to the afc discussion on Caroline Torosis and changing the language so her articles on becoming ceremonial mayor count towards her notability. EternalSunshineIsPeace (talk) 21:10, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Also, this was just discussed by many more experienced editors in AFD, the correct path is deletion review, not subverting the process! EternalSunshineIsPeace (talk) 21:13, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

What AfD discussion are you specifically referring to? pburka (talk) 21:14, 4 September 2026 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by EternalSunshineIsPeace (talk • contribs)

@EternalSunshineIsPeace, the language at WP:CORPDEPTH is Such coverage provides an organization with a level of attention that extends well beyond brief mentions and routine announcements. This is the language that is mirrored in my edit to NPOL. I think nearly every editor believes that NCORP requires stronger sourcing than GNG. And, while my preference was to expand on the language even more to specifically call out types of coverage (as per my comments above where I suggested adding campaign coverage, or routine coverage), my sense that may have led to even more opposition (and potentially losing the forest for the trees) again looking at NCORP.I frequently say at AFD that we we are frequently looking for retrospectives of the accomplishment of an elected official.

But in any event, the key word in the edit you keep deleting is "well beyond" (in addition to the section on candidates). Enos733 (talk) 21:38, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Core depth is for organizations, not BLP. Anyone can inspect the language and see that it is much sofer. Routine announcements are defined as single sentence listings in papers in CoreDepth. Routine coverage is much more substantial. A page article on a city council member taking the ceremonial job of Mayor for a single year might invite a full page coverage in the Santa Monica papers but it is routine coverage because the same local papers deliver almost the same profile for every single mayor each year. It is genuinely routine, all of which was just discussed by the closing admin at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Caroline_Torosis . Why should you be allowed to change the fundamentals for the discussion without at least making a real proposal for change and letting users vote on it. This affects 10's of thousands of local politicians and possibly makes every local politician across the globe notable which is exactly what NPOL guides us not to do! ~2026-48037-02 (talk) 21:46, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Are you User:EternalSunshineIsPeace? pburka (talk) 21:49, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

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Should NPOL be changed: See prior discussion. - Enos733 (talk) 21:48, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

I would notify Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), relevant WikiProjects, and—if the proposal is sufficiently broad—Wikipedia:Centralized discussion. Wikipedia expressly recommends this kind of broader notification for policy/guideline proposals, while warning against canvassing editors likely to support one side. ~2026-48037-02 (talk) 21:54, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

A new editor has questioned that these government subjects are not notable. I created all of these articles. Can someone please review these local officials and diplomats briefly, and let me know if you'd nominate them for deletion?

• Paul Clyne
• Sabrina De Sousa
• Larry Persily
• Edward Streator
• Thomas Michael Whalen III.

Bearian (talk) 21:16, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

IMO, only Paul Clyne and Thomas Michael Whalen III fall under WP:NPOL; the others are all notable for other reasons and are probably WP:BASIC or WP:ANYBIO subjects. Clyne held a statewide office, which makes him notable by the wording of NPOL. Whalen is likely notable as the mayor of a large city. pburka (talk) 22:08, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Bearian (talk) 22:09, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

@Bearian Sabrina De Sousa is definitely notable. Larry Persily likely is as well. No comment on Edward Streator.

Mayors of Albany tend to get articles, so Thomas Michael Whalen III is likely fine.

I don't believe that Paul Clyne held a statewide office (don't think that being the DA for Albany is a statewide office). All of the coverage is just election results or WP:MILL. It's probably AFDable, but it also hasn't really been updated in 16 years, so maybe there's more recent coverage? EaglesFan37 (talk) 01:09, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

Ok, send Paul Clyne to AfD. I interned for him when he was an ADA, so I won't !vote. Bearian (talk) 01:22, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

@Bearian I did a pre-check and there is a NYT article from 2007 , albeit just a short article criticizing David Soares, so unsure of what that counts for. The race received some NYT coverage back in 2004 from the NYT as well . Not sure if it's meaningful WP:SIGCOV, but maybe he meets it? EaglesFan37 (talk) 01:27, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

I was thinking about this. I don't want to be pointy, but the point I want to make is that I don't own those articles, and if the community wants to delete them, I'll be a little sad for 7 hours and then move on. I'd rather keep my integrity and good reputation than be tied to any particular person's article. Bearian (talk) 01:44, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

Also, I indirectly worked for his brother, as a poll worker for a couple of years. Bearian (talk) 01:51, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

I'd misread. I thought he was New York D.A. pburka (talk) 01:51, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

No, he was Albany County DA for 4 years, and ADA for a dozen years prior. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met, with an Eidetic memory. Bearian (talk) 01:53, 12 September 2026 (UTC)