Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Describing Notability in plain English

Howdy! I've been meaning to propose something like this for a while, based on an idea of Tamzin's that we fleshed out together – there's a gap in our coverage for people and institutions who aren't quite notable but have a lot of notable creations or alumni. They don't qualify for standalone articles, but there are multiple equally plausible redirect targets, so they just remain redlinks. For example, Neal Agarwal is the creator of Stimulation Clicker, The Password Game, Internet Roadtrip, and Infinite Craft, but there's only really one source directly about him and all of these would be equally plausible redirect targets. Under policy, there could be a list article under the WP:LISTN clause allowing navigational aids, but local consensus enforcement of that idea is very hit-or-miss, so it wouldn't be a great use of time for someone to go around and start creating those lists.

What would fill that gap is a type of article that relies on the WP:LISTN allowance for navigational aid lists, but makes it clear that it's not a pure list, the way WP:SIAs are a special type of list. So I've mocked up the concept of a directory article, a content page that functions basically like a multi-entry soft redirect. See User:Theleekycauldron/List of projects by Neal Agarwal. Would love to hear y'all's feedback, either here or at the proposal talk page – thanks! theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 08:47, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This kind of reminds me of Navigation pages above! This idea of "directory navpages" for non-notable folks was brought up as an argument against navpages, but also fits the "multiple equally plausible redirect targets" spirit, and might absolutely be something to consider. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 10:52, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can't believe i didn't notice that at all! I like that concept, but I do share a lot of the concerns people are expressing about navpages in that section – directory articles are a narrower idea because they play into already-existing notability guidelines. "Here's a bunch of places you could read about this person/event" might be useful some day, and that does fit into the broader concept of a multi-soft redirect, but it can't be written as a list article so it'd require some significant new policy. I'm mostly looking at lists of notable articles that fit into the scope of "projects by [creator]", "alumni of [institution]", "publications/projects by [institution]", "subsidiaries of [institution]". theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 11:03, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Courtesy link: Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 67 § Navigation pages
Keep in mind that I no longer advocate for the creation of WP:NAVPAGEs. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 19:28, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NCREATIVE#3 grants presumptive notability to people with several notable works. I would argue that this criterion applies to Agarwal. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 19:09, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One of the unfortunate conflicts at AFD is that some editors, usually seeing themselves as having high standards, reject the idea that a couple of sources about A, a couple of different sources about B, and a couple of different sources about C can all add up to a decent Wikipedia article about A+B+C. They're usually saying "Where are links to at least two independent secondary sources containing at least 300 consecutive words exclusively focused on whatever we named the article? Because obviously these seventeen sources about the {author's many books|company's many products|singer's many albums|director's many films} can't result in an article that merges all of the {books|products|albums|films} into a single thing and gets titled by the maker's name."

I think we should explore addressing the question of how to evaluate such "merged up" articles directly, preferably directly in the WP:GNG itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:54, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is an important question! The AFDs I've seen tend to agree that WP:NCREATIVE#3 can function as a standalone SNG if sources focus on the creator's works. There is much less agreement about related criteria such as WP:NACTOR#1, and whether a company/organization can pass WP:NORG just by having notable products. I will admit that I previously PRODed an article about a company with two notable products that had their own articles. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 23:14, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a good idea -- actually I was looking for an article on Neal Agarwal given there were so many game articles earlier anyway. I think this kind of thing, listing all the scattered articles relating to him in a user facing way (no, categories do not count) would be useful. Mrfoogles (talk) 22:44, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a better idea than the navpages because these have clearly-defined boundaries. The reason I ultimately turned against nav pages was because they often turned into a sort of poor-man's search result page, with an awkward smattering of tangential sections and no clear inclusion criteria. Cremastra (talk) 23:23, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Compared to "navigation pages", directory articles may be better-thought-out and better-named. Certain existing stubs, such as Infinite Frameworks, could potentially be reclassified as directory articles. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 15:21, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anything we can do to make level 2 and 3 3 and 4 section headings more different? For example see Bantu expansion, "c. 5000 BCE to c. 500 CE " is level 2 3, the remaining ones level 3 4, they look identical to me Kowal2701 (talk) 21:15, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was confused at first because level 2 and level 3 headings are actually quite distinct, but it turns out you actually mean level 3 and level 4 section headings (see Help:Section#Creation and numbering of sections). I believe you can change the display of these for yourself by customising you user css (but I don't know how to do it myself, so can't give you instructions). If you are proposing changing it for everyone, it would help if you could describe what you'd like to change it to. Thryduulf (talk) 21:27, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry got confused because we never have level 1. Longshot but maybe have level 4 unbolded and 5 italic? Kowal2701 (talk) 21:42, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AFAICT Level 4 unbolded looks exactly like ordinary text. That's probably not what you want for a section heading. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:03, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose we could add an underline to the level 3 header, but just the length of the heading not the full page width? Thryduulf (talk) 02:08, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Underlining of text has traditionally been the method to provide emphasis in cases where italic was not available: on typewriters. As that limitation isn't a concern for Wikipedia, personally I would prefer to follow best typographical practice and not use underlining. isaacl (talk) 02:24, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Level 1 is the article title. It's technically possible to have one in the page body but it should be semantically as if a different page. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:30, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree the lack of difference between 3 and 4 is confusing. Cremastra (talk) 21:35, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

also, level 5 and 6 looks the same. (on mobile phones) drinks or coffee ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 ₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ 06:04, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In case seeing them helps anyone:

We actually do use =Level 1s= on some discussion pages, but >99% of the time, you'll only find it used for the page title (and never for anything except the page title in the mainspace). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What’s strange is that on mobile they’re quite obviously different (probably because my text size is giant) Kowal2701 (talk) 05:03, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think people are more concerned with the difference between 4 and 5. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:18, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

4 is bolded and 5 isnt. drinks or coffee ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 ₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ 06:01, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not on desktop. (courtesy link to my sandbox which you can check out on a computer) Aaron Liu (talk) 20:42, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ok so 5 and 6 are also bolded on desktop... which means 4, 5 and 6 looks THE SAME, while 3 is a bit bigger than 4. drinks or coffee ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 ₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ 08:08, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that the best approach for most articles will be to restructure them to use no more than two levels of hierarchy (below the page title, so level 2 and 3 headings). My instinct is that keeping track of where you are in the reading hierarchy becomes noticeably more difficult when a third level of hieararchy (that is, a level 4 heading) is introduced. I think a set of level 4 headings can be workable when the accompanying sections are short and the headings iterate through a small number of parallel items. But in general, less nesting is easier to process. isaacl (talk) 02:39, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

+1 Donald Albury 19:07, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requested articles is pretty inactive these days. Should we do something about it, and if so, what? See also this relevant discussion. Cheers, GoldRomean (talk) 22:46, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Could launch an RFC at WP:VPPR with question "What should we do with WP:RA?" and options A do nothing, B mark historical and revert new entries, C delete everything. Or could WP:MFD the entire thing.

I have concerns about WP:RA being a black hole that tricks newbies and attracts spam. To help combat this, in 2021 I changed Wikipedia:Requested articles/Header to recommend making a draft (via the article wizard) instead of requesting an article at WP:RA. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:50, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProjects have their own lists which I suspect are more active, although this is highly variable and full of black holes as well. CMD (talk) 00:32, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On 'spam', see a tangential discussion on seeking page protection for one of the RA subpages. The discussion did not lead to implementing protection.

IMO the project is a useful addition to WP when/if used 'properly', and WikiProject-specific request pages just decentralize. However its probably fair to say the pages are only used by a few hundred users per year, as compared to the millions elsewhere; so may unfortunately be more trouble than its worth to upkeep. Tule-hog (talk) 03:12, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Wouldn't wikiproject-specific pages just have the exact same problems, with the additional issue of making discovery more challenging? -- Avocado (talk) 21:12, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Someone correct me) but my guess is though that WikiProject-specific lists are made by participants, rather than people looking to advertise, so there's more evidence of notablity. GoldRomean (talk) 19:14, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A look at the page history of requested bios [1], for example, shows occasional additions, and mostly a lot of cleanup efforts. Does any smarter or more experienced editor than me know how to get some stats or info for when most of the requests were made? A lot of them seem very old. GoldRomean (talk) 03:35, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can try to whip up something with my basic Python knowledge. No guarantees though. Ca ^{talk to me!} 14:15, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My fairly recent experience looking through RA for something to write about was one of being utterly overwhelmed by the number of options even in any one subpage (and under any given heading on some of the most populous subpages), and not having a clue how to begin narrowing the field.

I wouldn't totally object to shutting it down entirely, but on the flip side, maybe something could be done to make it more useful. For instance, applying a template to every (or every new) entry with links to search various places for reliable sources about the topic. -- Avocado (talk) 21:11, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The first step to triaging any entry at WP:RA is to determine notability. This means doing google searches and other investigations to determine if there's enough sourcing for the article to pass WP:GNG, or just knowing enough of our WP:SNGs to be able to spot if it passes an SNG. Notability is hard and takes a lot of experience to judge accurately.

A thought occurs to me. I wonder how many of the entries at WP:RA aren't even notable. There's probably a lot of red herrings and rabbit holes there. For example, how many of the companies at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Business and economics/Companies/A-E pass WP:NCORP? I have my suspicions that it's not very many. The one time I tried to write an article about a company on one of these lists, it got sent to AFD and deleted: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lidya (company). I was quite confused as a new user, but on the flip side, it did motivate me to go to WP:NPPSCHOOL and figure out how notability works. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:41, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that an initial screening is key to make the list of requested articles into one that is high-yield, and thus useful for interested editors to go through. (Linking it up to corresponding active wikiprojects would be another important aspect, but of course there aren't many of those.) But this needs willing people to do it regularly, and I'm not sure there's a sustainable way to ensure it gets done. There's already a lot of work to patrol the actual articles and edits that are made. isaacl (talk) 04:57, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we could require each new entry at WP:RA to have either WP:THREE sources or evidence of meeting a SNG, and have a "triage" zone where they are placed until a volunteer checks the sources? That might mean more work, but would likely reduce the load at RA by a lot, and make it easier to write the articles themselves in the future. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:07, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RA is a ghost town. I don't think there's anyone available to enforce a rule like this on its 333 subpages. We do try to do some quality control on the businesses and companies subpages via pending changes protection, but that's just 5 subpages. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:35, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the only reasonable way to go at it would be "mark everything as in triage" (or, more drastically, "throw everything away") and start filtering new entries with sources. Although that is still a lot of effort for a project that has brought comparatively little benefits. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:37, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's worth it. We'd just end up with three URLs for a spammy suggestion (because the WP:UPE followed the directions) and removing a solidly notable suggestion because the innocent newbie didn't follow the directions.

At least with Wikipedia:Requested articles/Medicine (I'm not familiar with very many of the lists), the suggestions are sometimes good candidates for redirects or list entries. Relatively few are obviously bad suggestions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:23, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing it's probably because the majority of company/bios are people looking for self-promo whilst a larger amount of, say, medicine requests, are SME's thinking "hey this topic is pretty important in my field why isn't there an article on it". GoldRomean (talk) 18:42, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Or people wanting information because someone they know is sick. I don't exactly miss the Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool (2010–2014), but we got comments that suggest people turn to Wikipedia to get quick answers.

The basic scenario is: someone texts you "We're at the hospital. They think the baby has Scaryitis". You want to know whether your response should be "What a relief" or "I'm so sorry", and you don't want to slog through a lot of details. So when we don't have anything, or when it doesn't provide information about the prognosis, people aren't getting what they want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:44, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, I guess in general just when people see we're missing content on a topic (which probably should be the way RA is intended to be used). GoldRomean (talk) 01:47, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Me and @Bearian (mostly him) have tried to maintain the crime/law one and revert/remove non notable entries, though it still needs more. As far as I am aware every other one is a ghost town. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:33, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I mean having a group of people who "maintain" the pages is nice, extending that to more pages to keep them in a decent state wouldn't be a bad idea, but to retrospectively remove all non notable entries is a mammoth task that I don't really think is possible. If we were to PCP all the pages and then make sure that these requests went through a proper review beforehand I do think that's a way to enforce some rules if we were to make them. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 06:50, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What does everyone think about an RfC with, say, Option 1: Do nothing/Option 2: Restart, and mark the original as historical or delete/Option 3: Mark historical or delete it all, with more discussions for specific details based on the result (ex. if Option 2, how do we make sure this mess doesn't happen again?) GoldRomean (talk) 23:40, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to Wikipedia:Help desk § Machine Translation Cross-checking?

 – Aaron Liu (talk) 02:01, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Diclaimer: I am not a programmer and cannot comment on the complexity involved in introducing a chess plugin. However, as a user, I believe that such a feature would greatly enhance the comprehension of chess-based pages, particularly for beginners.

Problem: On many chess-related pages, move lists (notations) are presented in plain text, sometimes accompanied by a snapshot of the final or a critical position. While experienced players who are comfortable visualizing the board mentally may find this sufficient, beginners often struggle to follow the game without a dynamic, interactive board.

Suggestion: Introducing a simple, embedded chess viewer or plugin that allows users to play through the move list would make these pages significantly more accessible. This could reduce cognitive load for less experienced players and foster deeper engagement with the content. MrMarshMan (talk) 03:31, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That could be very feasible, especially since we already have Module:Pgn that converts chess notation into positions. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 03:37, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Should this idea be developed further before being posted in the proposal forum? MrMarshMan (talk) 04:08, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The community previously approved the deployment of a gadget written by Kipod (User:משתמש:קיפודנחש), but no interface admin agreed with its deployment. Subsequently mw:Extension:ChessBrowser was developed by Kipod and Wugapodes. phab:T393859 has some discussion on the progress; a key problem is that there needs to be commitment from a WMF team to provide ongoing support. (Now that the (somewhat imprecisely named) template gadgets feature allows for gadgets to be loaded on a per-category basis, the chess viewer gadget could be deployed without requiring custom changes to MediaWiki:Common.js, which was one concern about the original approved deployment.) isaacl (talk) 06:21, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if this is known already, but sources generated by AI sometimes have the access-date parameter set to the model's knowledge cutoff date. For example, this search query finds articles that contain sources with the access date set to October 1, 2023, which corresponds to GPT-4o's knowledge cutoff date. I think this warrants a deeper investigation; perhaps we can create editfilters tagging this behavior. 🧙‍♀️ Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 16:17, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that could be very useful EarthDude (talk) 17:38, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On a quick glance, it looks like some of the results in the query are legitimate, but it only took about 6 minutes to find one clear case of AI-written, low-quality content, so I suspect there are more. -- LWG ^talk 18:05, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An edit filter would be great though, IMO, since I don't think there's a reason editors beyond October 2023 would add that. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:12, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are some legitimate cases when someone might do this, the most common one being xwiki translations. 🧙‍♀️ Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 18:14, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other cases where I've added access dates other than today's date include:

• When I've copied a source from another article or another place in the same article (e.g. merging or moving information from one article to another). In this case I will usually use the original access date.
• When I'm viewing a source on an archive rather than live. Normally I will use the date of the archive but occasionally it will be the date the source was added to the article.
• When I've written an article over several days the date will be the date I accessed that source, which might differ from the date I add that part to Wikipedia (usually only by a few days). For example at List of lakes of Yukon you'll find that the access dates range from 8-11 August despite all being added on the 11th.

In some cases, reference formatting changes may be detected as access dates in the past being added. Thryduulf (talk) 21:38, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't archival dates supposed to be in |archive-date=? Aaron Liu (talk) 01:34, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but when I access a source via an archive rather than directly I will set the access-date and archive-date parameters to be the same. Thryduulf (talk) 06:51, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Still, that's rare enough that a tag would be good. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:34, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This RecentChanges filter also catches a lot of LLM additions. These "Newcomer tasks" seem to draw really low quality edits even if it weren't for that. 🧙‍♀️ Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 20:48, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that we should implement the number of views/edits an article has had whether it's recent or all-time views/edits to the front of the Wikipedia page rather than having to go into page info to see the views/edits. My preference is to put the views in over the edits but am willing to be convinced otherwise. YouTube and many other websites have something similar to this. I also think we could put that date the Wikipedia article was created on the bottom similar to where we put when the page was last edited. I'm opening up a discussion here since I want to figure out something the Wikipedia community can agree on. I look forward to hearing your thoughts below. Interstellarity (talk) 21:28, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think those counts warrant any prominence. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:53, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's the sort of feature that people could do with a userscript if they want to. I agree there's no need for it by default. -- LWG ^talk 00:07, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think prominently featuring how many views an article gets a la YouTube is a good idea. It would encourage sensationalism and a click-baity style that Wikipedia tries to avoid, unlike the entire rest of the internet.

As for the number of edits, I think there is more potential benefit to featuring that on the main article page. An article with few edits could be interpreted as having gotten less attention and collaboration, therefore being likely to have problems, while an article with many edits could indicate an edit war. I think that's worth considering.

Regarding putting when the page was first created as well as when it was last edited at the bottom, I think that is an excellent idea. It would help people know if an article was created before widespread LLM usage or not, and if it was created before our own articles were scraped and recycled creating a massive and largely underestimated problem with circular referencing. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 00:29, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note that on the mobile interface, the time of last edit (and the user who made the edit) are displayed by default at the bottom of each article. -- LWG ^talk 00:51, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There’s a similar thing in the desktop interface as well: This page was last edited on 8 July 2025, at 00:51 (UTC). 2001:8003:B15F:8000:8860:131D:AE7B:4EC5 (talk) 11:59, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edit count and date of creation may be misinterpreted. There is not a direct a link between either and quality, but readers do not know this. CMD (talk) 00:43, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I follow this. Is this something different than the XTools gadget available under preferences on the desktop i.e. XTools: dynamically show statistics about a page's history under the page heading

e.g. Ball shows 2,246 revisions since 2001-07-12 (+17 hours), 1,271 editors, 190 watchers, 10,035 pageviews (30 days), created by: 66.57.42.xxx🐣 · See full page statistics <- a link to XTools

Is the question whether this should be enabled for everyone by default, or is it about the mobile app etc.? Sean.hoyland (talk) 12:29, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a question on it being enabled by default on both mobile and desktop. Interstellarity (talk) 21:17, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anybody who wants it can enable it very simply under preferences — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:05, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Youtube leaves this info visible because it helps to know if a video is popular. Wikipedia articles do not need to do that. Cambalachero (talk) 01:33, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I dont see logic and purpose behind this, why would the Wikipedia, an encyclopedia, the place of knowledge and articles, would need likes and views metric? I beleive that Wikipedia is not social media. P.S. Some user, including me, can see the page info directly below the title Sys64 message this user 09:35, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"I want to figure out something the Wikipedia community can agree on." Seems like the community has already agreed on not having these things. How long an article has been around or how many times it has been edited has no intrinsic relationship to how factual and well-written it is. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:21, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I kinda like this idea. Maybe just making the " This page was last edited on" more visible and at the top of the page instead of lost in the footer is good to start. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 17:04, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Partially as an accessibility feature and mostly as an overall addition to articles regarding albums, I feel it could potentially be useful to add image descriptions to the initial picture of the album cover underneath it. The way I see it, a description would give a brief overview of the album cover’s chosen image similar to an image ID, source of image/photographer/artist and note significance as to why that image was picked. For example, regarding Porter Robinson’s Nurture:

“ Album cover of Nurture. The cover depicts Robinson lying facedown in a field of yellow and white wildflowers. Robinson chose this particular picture due to its bold nature, regarding it as “un-ignorable”.”

[Note: I have not edited Wikipedia before. I am sorry if this is a topic that’s been debated before.] Waffled.on.pancakes (talk) 03:50, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be suggesting a combination of alt text and a caption. In the article you link, the image already has alt text "A blonde male, Porter Robinson, laying in a field of grass and flowers." Whether a caption is appropriate, or the information should be covered somewhere else in the article, is a matter for the article's talk page. Anomie⚔ 11:38, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Namely, women's football. Articles about players and teams are taken to AfD due to "lack of reliable sources" because the sources are unrecognisable or not popular enough. That isn't a problem with the sources themselves, as we have no reason to believe they aren't reporting factual information, but a problem with the general popularity of women's football. If we dismiss sources because they are not "well-known" then we are in danger of erasing a lot of encylopaedic content that is of interest to readers. These alternative notability guidelines would also apply to publications that write about women's football. I used football as an example, but this would extend to women's basketball and other sports that aren't very popular. I don't think it would be necessary for Olympic sports because those competitions and sportsmen get a lot of coverage from the mainstream press.

Also, these alternative (supplemental?) notability guidelines would not be a slippery slope to include all sorts of FRINGE content, but would be limited to women's sports (or a particular sport). Starting small with a targeted topic would ensure that FRINGE topics don't slip through the cracks. TurboSuperA+_(connect) 08:54, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Given the community time that went into bringing Wikipedia:Notability (sports) in line with standard notability guidelines, I do not suspect there will be significant enthusiasm to begin to recreate exceptions. Sources are a different matter, not directly subject to notability guidelines. Sources are not usually dismissed because they are unpopular, this would somewhat eliminate most sources used. If a source is being treated as unreliable when it should be considered reliable, please raise this at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. CMD (talk) 09:27, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You know what? I just might! TurboSuperA+_(connect) 09:28, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When you do… give us specifics. Choose a few (two or three) sources that you think are the most reliable for covering women’s football… so we can examine and discuss those. Blueboar (talk) 20:45, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#impetusfootball.org. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 20:50, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! There's a discussion at the Commons VP proposing the introduction of a new desk for editors to request that volunteers reach out to media rightsholders to request specific media works be released under Wikimedia-compatible licenses. This is an idea pretty specifically tied to Wikipedia (as requests will be mostly in the interest of adding media to Wikipedia articles), so I am posting here to get more Wikipedian eyes on it. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 20:32, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]