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NLIST for List of X in <country> lists
For complex or cross-category lists (like List of X in <country>), NLIST currently states: There is no present consensus for how to assess the notability of more complex and cross-categorization lists (such as "Lists of X of Y") ....[1] A few/some editors might take this to mean that the notability of a List of X in <country> list may be assessed in some way other than by X in <country> meeting WP:GNG or WP:SNG. This makes sense in theory, buuut in practice, editors seem to overwhelmingly prefer to assess notability only by X in <country> meeting GNG or SNG (cf table). Imo NLIST copy should prolly reflect this apparent consensus for at least this sort of complex/cross-cat list, as it's frustratingly vague/unclear at present imo, but I'll only leave this here for record's sake.[2] - Asdfjrjjj (talk) 04:43, 16 August 2025 (UTC) Asdfjrjjj (talk) 04:43, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a very interesting point that you've hit on in a what is notable sense, is it that list of items in country constitutes an X of Y list or an list of X alone and something that I was debating myself as we discussed in a previous AfD. I agree that some more clarity might be beneficial. Going through the list, I was expecting the keep/delete outcome results to follow what might be considered "large or popular topics" but it doesn't seem to necessarily follow. Thank you @Asdfjrjjj for doing some of the ground work in collecting a list of these cases. Bobby Cohn 🍁 (talk) 22:13, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Asdfjrjjj, mostly, when I see editors asking questions about this general subject, I find that they are looking at the list as if it were an ordinary article. However, lists serve two separate functions on wiki:
article content – helping readers learn more about X
navigation – helping readers find the article they're looking for
Almost all "List of X in <country>" articles are the navigation type. They exist for readers who say "I don't know what the name of that is, but I know it's an X in <country>, so let me scan down this list – Ah, there it is!"
The last time we seriously attempted to work on explaining notability of lists (over a decade ago), we didn't finish the job. This is one of the things that we didn't find wording to explain. There are some significant m:inclusionism vs m:deletionism factors involved. Also, some editors have a gut reaction to a "List of" page (because it superficially looks like an "article") that they don't have for a Category: or WP:NAVBOX that contains exactly the same information, so they're happy to have a "Category:X in country" and a navbox template for X in country, but as soon as it's a List of exactly the same thing – well, now you have to prove to them not only that the list is accurate and verifiable, but that there are lengthy sources carefully analyzing this group of X in that specific country, because now it is an article (in their eyes) instead of a way for readers to find articles (especially the ~67% of readers on mobile, and therefore who don't see categories or navboxes).
I realize that AFDs over this can be frustrating because there's no clear Official™ Written Rule, but please use common sense, and encourage others to do the same. Maybe some day we'll gather our collective energy and figure out how to explain the difference between a navigational list and a content-focused list, and then tell editors to leave the nav lists alone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A few thoughts on this…
In some cases, these articles started out as a “list of X” article where all X are notable. However, as that list grew it was deemed appropriate to split it into several sub-articles (by Y)… and someone decided that the Y should be “by country”. If they had chosen some other Y (say alphabetical) no one would question the notability of the list. In such cases, perhaps the solution is to go back to square one, and restructure the set of sub-articles using a different Y.
Perhaps we need a better way to distinguish navigational lists from informational lists. This could be done by renaming purely navigational articles as “Index articles” (as in Index of articles on X or Index of X in Y. Meanwhile, informational lists could continue to be called “Lists” (as in List of X etc). We could then write distinct guidelines for “Index articles” vs “List articles”.
IMO the dilemma is because I don't think that the issue can be solved using our existing framework. The reality is that even if a list is pure OR (a creation of the editor) and there is no independent coverage of the topic of the article (the overall synthesized creation) we often generally accept it as OK; i.e. not excluded by notability rules. If we wanted to work on this we'd probably need to start by acknowledging that decisions about notability incorporate other criteria (such as degree of enclyclopedicness) besides the notability guidelines. Then criteria that measure degree of enclyclopedicness could be utilized. One measure might be how close RS's come to making that compilation even if no source actually did it exactly. Another would be likehood that someone would come to an enclyclopedia to find that list.
I feel like that's exactly what the second NLIST paragraph (for informational or complex or cross-category lists) might've been meant to carve out - the intersections of some categories (X of Y) seem so fundamentally encyclopaedic that even w/o that particular intersection existing in IRSs, it'd still be of value in an encyclopaedia. But at least for intersections involving geographic entities (eg X in <country>), that doesn't really seem to be the majority opinion in AfDs.[3]
Partially agree with Blueboar re point 1 - I was also thinking of these List of X in <country> lists as basically all being one giant List of X, just split along geographic lines for manageability. Did not really consider notability of individual list members though, as I feel I've seen a bunch of X in <country> lists where that's not a membership criterion.[4] Not sure re Blueboar's point 2 - dunno how often editors confuse info vs nav lists, but might be seen as WP:CREEP to require differential naming, maybe? - Asdfjrjjj (talk) 19:15, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've been wondering if the solution is a new template, along the lines of {{disambiguation}}:
This list page primarily exists to help readers navigate to other pages. Accordingly, a majority of the entries should be links to other articles.
We could add some CSS-based text with instructions about sourcing requirements (e.g., "Unlike Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages, inline citations are permitted on this page. However, please do not remove uncited entries unless you have a reason to believe they are actually wrong"). [I base the last sentence on the fact that an entry in a 'list of fruit' that has no citation is not Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged by any reasonable person, when clicking on the entry takes you to a page that says 'This is a kind of fruit'. I grant that there are about three-quarter million registered editors here each year, and that in any group of humans that large, there will be some unreasonable ones.] WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:34, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How much bureaucratic procedure should we put around this? Boldly create the template and start using it, or have a big conversation/RFC or two first? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like the template for lists that would unambiguously be navigation lists. That said, I am not sure that the template helps resolve the question of when a cross-categorization list should be created - as I do think we should err towards requiring some sort of independent reason for the list, rather than the cross-categorization being original research. - Enos733 (talk) 20:47, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, I think you mean that WhatamIdoing's idea looks good but you don't want it to be a substitute for continuing to work on the broader question. If so, that is also my thought. North8000 (talk) 11:58, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
^Though qualified later on by: Editors are still urged to demonstrate list notability via the grouping itself before creating stand-alone lists.
^This seemed to be more fitting than WP:SAL talk. Thank you Bobby Cohn for helping me notice this, and sorry for all the grief (not sticking to consensus reading of NLIST) in that AfD! I was gonna make this a discussion per your suggestion over there but don't think there's any need really, per the table here. As an aside, there's a couple lists I wrote before that one that also fail NLIST per this consensus interpretation, but I'll AfD those pronto :)
^Though maybe there's a bit of selection bias going on ofc, both for nom'd lists, and participating editors.
^And ofc it's not a required membership criterion, though some editors seemed to vote in AfDs as if it were, maybe, but those seemed like honest mistakes rather than substantive stances.
^This is meant to be a complete list, but mistakes could've been made ofc. Info was not double-checked so could be mistaken too (esp summaries in Description column w/c required some interpretation). This list excludes lists of words (glossaries, gazetteers, so on), of numbers (results, stats, so on), and of people. It also excludes lists which were full or partial duplicates, disambiguation lists, split lists. The NLIST? column here answers the question, Was NLIST one of the reasons for nomination?
^Possibly 3/4 but fourth editor (said "If any of those incidents are really notable then we need articles on them instead.") seemed to want list members to be notable, rather than list set/group itself.
^Possibly 2/3 but third editor (said "Not enough entries to meet WP:NLIST") seemed unclear.
^Possibly 4/4 but fourth editor did not explicitly agree with nom.
Does Notability only apply to article topics or details and sections within an article?
Throughout my five years editing on this website, I have seen so many instances of a detail, sentence or section being removed from an article, even through it was verifiable with citations to reliable sources, under the rationale of "not notable". Even one item in a table with several others was removed under this reason. There are so many of these that I can't possibly remember the dates of these events and give you diffs as examples. This is all despite the fact that this page opens with the following: "On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article." Can all of us set the record straight? User:HumanxAnthro (BanjoxKazooie) 21:47, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When editors say "not notable" they don't always mean "not WP:NOTABLE". I may say I'm "involved" in a situation, even though I couldn't be WP:INVOLVED as I'm not an admin. If there's confusion between the common meaning, and the WIKIPEDIA meaning, of a word the best idea is to ask for clarification. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°22:34, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not simply list articles, although that's happened a few times. Individual sentences in articles proper, more often than not. Words do have multiple meanings, sure, but I'd imagine WP:Notability being such a 101 concept of this website that if an editor was experienced enough, they would get what the word means if mentioned on the site. User:HumanxAnthro (BanjoxKazooie) 02:04, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia “notability” only applies to whole topics. Unfortunately, “notability” is also a plain English word with a different meaning.
“verifiable with citations to reliable sources” is not sufficient for inclusion. Not everything verifiable gets included. You’ve not used the words “secondary source”. Why not?
Lists are particularly vulnerable to attracting WP:LISTCRUFT. Verifiability and reliability are not enough. The requirement is that others have demonstrated interest. “Others” implies independence, from the source, the author, the publisher, the funder, and Wikipedia. “Demonstrated interest” means secondary sources exist; mere repetition of data is not good enough.
Personally I wish we could drop WP:PSTS down to an essay, it's probably one of the most misused pieces of policy we have. It's mainly an excuse for people to label something they don't like as "primary" to dismiss it instead of actually discussing the merits of inclusion of some piece of information. But too many people who edit in controversial areas like to take advantage of that, which is why they got it into policy in the first place and I know it's not likely to ever actually go away. Anomie⚔01:26, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"it's probably one of the most misused pieces of policy we have. It's mainly an excuse for people to label something they don't like as "primary" to dismiss it instead of actually discussing the merits of inclusion of some piece of information" I don't know if I've ever encountered exactly that, but the closet thing I could think is is a bunch of users in WP:WikiProject Songs and WP:WikiProject Albums calling year-end lists in music magazine and publications "self-sourced" to them, even though they count as secondary sources and that's not how year-end rankings work or what self-published is... That's a reason why I'm not a member there anymore... that and other reasons. User:HumanxAnthro (BanjoxKazooie) 02:16, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
“self-sourced” is serious and goes to WP:SPS, and has nothing to do with primary/secondary source classification.
WP:PSTS is intellectually fundamental to what it means to be an encyclopedia. People misusing primary source, note an article link, is a different matter to be responded to on the merits of it being a primary source or not. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:28, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:PSTS is just a heuristic for differentiating the types of sources that probably have useful context and analysis from those that don't, which unfortunately a lot of people have convinced themselves that it has some intrinsic Truth to it (or at least act like it because they can misuse it to more easily win arguments). Often enough they don't even agree on whether something is actually "primary" or not, e.g. WP:VPIL#AfDs on current event articles.But I know I'm not going to change those people's minds, at least not without far more effort than I have the energy to put into it, so I generally just make the point once if I see a discussion where it's relevant and then disengage. Anomie⚔14:27, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you mean “secondary” sources, it’s good to mention it. Secondary sources, assuming independent and reliable, or reputable, is very strong justification for inclusion, under both WP:PSTS and WP:DUE. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:34, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Not everything verifiable gets included". When it comes to articles topics, absolutely, but if what it's just part of an article with a topic that HAS had its notability established with secondary source coverage in other areas? What if it's a production section entirely sourced to a DVD commentary or WP:INTERVIEWS? User:HumanxAnthro (BanjoxKazooie) 02:08, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sourced to the DVD commentary, or Wikipedia:INTERVIEWs? That’s a very good question, and I am very sure that there is not simple answer that can be given in general. I think the answer comes down to judgement of independence. Commentaries and interviews may or may not be independent. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:39, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's true, but everything in a production section is facts about the making of a film. That is different from judgements and opinions by an outside party which is what WEIGHT really applies to. If it's just a section of that but not an article being created, is that really OK? I would imagine it is because the making of a movie, album, or video game is an expected section as determined by each WikiProject's respective MOS. User:HumanxAnthro (BanjoxKazooie) 11:55, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Very heavy weather being made of this! It is well established that "notability" ONLY applies to the whole article (or list). Within articles WP:DUE is the relevant policy. But many don't understand this and confusingly use the wrong term. Johnbod (talk) 03:18, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:DUE, “Due or undue weight” is very important, but usually it goes to weight, or balance, not to the extreme question of whether something deserves no mention at all. Where something is argued to be not worth the briefest of mention, I have seen the most convincing argument to be that inclusion of the information would be WP:OR, that is, there is not a single independent secondary source for the content someone wants to add. Either there is no secondary source for the information, or there is no independent source of coverage. I have in mind mainly commercial topics, and data about a company’s business statistics. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:50, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
None of the above are wrong, I would just add that I think sometimes we as editors get sloppy and see a statement added with poor sourcing, or clear lack of weight, and remove it as "not notable", which is more true to the non-WP version of the word and likely not meant to evoke WP:N's meaning. I haven't really seen any editor try to remove a section of an article for failing WP:N-notability, so I think when one sees the wording "not notable" being applied to a section of an article, assume the editor meant "not DUE" or similar aspect. We all should be more careful in using "not notable" given the possible confusion but also I wouldn't be trying to policy this as I'm sure most editors are using as shortcut speech and not evoking WP:N standards. Masem (t) 12:37, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's been multiple WP:PEREN attempts, just that there's really no good single word that replaces what WP:N encapsulates, in addition to the procedural disruption it would cause (the amount of effort to correct throughout P&G versus the value). It leaves us with situations like this case, but which should be easily explained if that confusion comes up, and us experienced editors should be mindful of casual use of "notability" when not actually referring to WP:N Masem (t) 12:59, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Such a rationale is unconvincing, there is not 'one word' insistence to a guideline or policy title. Nor are we unable to handle change, we are a wiki, although inertia is strong. And editors (we designed it this way) will always have different experience levels. --Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:14, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I find it helps to differentiate between “Notable” and “note-worthy” (or “worth noting”). “Notable” relates to the article subject and whether we should have a stand alone article on that subject. “Note-worthy” relates to information, and whether we should mention it in a specific article. Blueboar (talk) 14:26, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just saying we've tried multiple times to find alt wording for "notability" and no single term has been found that has the simplicity of what "notability" is not only at WP:N but across all current SNGs, particularly in considering that it would be a sea change in terms how to reflect it in P&G. If we found a magic word that everyone agreed was far superior than notability, I'm sure we'd want to do that, but we've yet to come to any consensus on other alternatives. Masem (t) 18:04, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Masem, have we actually made any attempts to change the title of this guideline, or have we only talked about how nice it would be if we'd done it in the past, and then never actually tried to change it?
there's been actual multiple discussions on what term to use instead of notability, but no single term ever gained consensus to get to the next stage of the implementation. Masem (t) 11:56, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the most recent one that I remember, we talked about changing the first sentence/paragraph to introduce a second term, e.g.,:
(current) On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article.
(future) On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants a separate, stand-alone article.
Just search "rename", in the archive box and I see at least six distinct attempts in the first few results. Masem (t) 17:27, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The recent one was about 70% against renaming the page, but glancing through it, I see nobody saying that we shouldn't change the first sentence to say something like "On Wikipedia, notability is the article inclusion criteria, which editors use to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article." WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because notability is not an inclusion criteria. it gives the wrong impression to what notability is meant to do, as we don't have any inclusion criteria guidelines anywhere. Its about when a topic has enough information for when a standalone page makes sense, or otherwise the topic should be included elsewhere where it may be appropriate. Masem (t) 13:15, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What's your definition of "inclusion criteria"? For example, some editors might see it as "criteria by which we decide whether this individual fact can be included anywhere in any part of any Wikipedia article". Others apparently do see it as meaning "criteria by which we decide whether it makes sense to have a separate, standalone page for this subject". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Notability vs. inclusion criteria
I see that Wikipedia:Inclusion criteria links to this page on Notability. The bar for content inclusion must be lower than the bar for article creation under WP:N, but I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be a written policy or guideline ("P/G") for inclusion (or am I missing something?) Maybe the criteria are, unfortunately, dispersed across many other P/G pages, such as WP:RELEVANCE. At the very least, I think this page should have a section distinguishing content inclusion from WP:N, and pointing editors in the right direction. —RCraig09 (talk)05:09, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've been wondering what the exact scope of WP:NOPAGE is supposed to refer to. Is WP:NOPAGE supposed to be a reason to delete content or determine whether something should be included in another article? I think that the examples provided in the guideline are narrow in scope and refer to topics in which standalone pages would require too much background context and repeat content. However, I have seen it interpreted in different contexts as a reason to remove notable content altogether. Katzrockso (talk) 14:28, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Slatersteven, I intentionally didn't invoke examples because I'm attempting not to relitigate any prior discussions had about the topic, I was just trying to gain a better understanding of editor consensus on the guideline and its scope. Katzrockso (talk) 22:27, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I assume it's Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrée Bertoletto, which might make a good study for how badly some of this guideline is understood. See, e.g., the claim that the subject "fails NOPAGE" (which isn't technically possible) or the assertion that "(old) local news" doesn't count as SIGCOV. We really need to put a definition of SIGCOV into this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:01, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and in this specific scenario I'm confused by the application of the guideline. I didn't want to bring up the specific example because I am not trying to forum shop. Katzrockso (talk) 03:07, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Katzrockso, I've pulled the RFC tag, as you don't need sitewide notifications going out for this. This is a high-traffic page, and folks can answer your question without needing the RFC infrastructure to alert them. As a starting point, I'd like to suggest that you glance over WP:UPPERCASE, to get an idea of just how wrong Wikipedia editors can be about what the "rules" say. Just because someone gives WP:NOPAGE as their excuse for doing what they believe is best doesn't mean that NOPAGE supports them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:17, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a big deal, and starting an RFC is actually a reasonable thing to do if you don't get any responses.
When you say above that other folks have used it to remove content altogether, are you saying that they're blanking a ==section== of an article, and giving you an edit summary that mentions WP:NOPAGE? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:52, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I created an article that contained some unique information, and someone BLAR'd it instead of WP:Merging it, and they gave me NOPAGE as their rationale, then I'd assume this person was saying that they believed that Wikipedia should not contain that unique information anywhere at all. NOPAGE would be, at best, a very partial explanation, and I'd expect a fuller discussion to involve assertions of WP:UNDUE detail or that it had some Problems that may justify removal.
If I created an article that only duplicated information in another article, and someone BLAR'd it to the article that contained that exact information, and they gave me NOPAGE as their rationale, then I'd assume this person was saying that they believed that Wikipedia should have one big page with everything instead of multiple small pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:N states that passing GNG or an SNG does not guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors are to use discretion to determine whether the subject is deserving of a stand-alone page. To me, I think of the example of someone who may be profiled a handful of times in a local paper, perhaps because they won awards at a county fair, or maybe because there was some coverage during the subject's life and the subject did happen to have a staff-written obituary written after their death. Objectively, those subject might pass GNG, but the question falls back on whether the subject is "worthy of notice" for a global encyclopedia and deserves a stand-alone page. --Enos733 (talk) 21:49, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that's a great example that I didn't even think about (so I guess this is tangential to my broader focus of the initial inquisition). I guess the question in regards to the scenario you're putting forward is if someone were to create an article on this individual that satisfies the GNG, is there some underlying need to delete or merge away the article? Let's move away from the example of the county fair, as that seems that it could be quite ROUTINE coverage and not exactly unambiguously qualify under the GNG. Say a person was profiled in their local newspaper as a result of their small business (e.g. a flower shop, a massage parlor) and later received a staff-written obituary, as you described. The information that could conceivably fill the article per the available SIGCOV is limited to some biographical details and the functioning of their business, perhaps including a short history of the business as well. The subject is notable, the article is well-written and sourced and has no reasonable opportunity for expansion. How would we apply "editorial discretion" to such a page? Katzrockso (talk) 02:15, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly via unwritten rules. There's no need to delete or merge away the article, but different people will show up with their own preferences/biases about what "should" be in Wikipedia. A lot of the underlying arguments in such cases are in Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions (e.g., "a local flower shop is not important"), but AFD regulars are usually pretty good at finding an excuse that sounds more acceptable. That is, my real reason might be that I think having an article about a local flower shop is beneath Wikipedia's dignity, but I would never post that at AFD; instead, I'd say something about how the sources we've found are too short to constitute WP:SIGCOV, or that they're all WP:PRIMARYNEWS (except for this or that paragraph, which I ignore), or that the local newspaper isn't WP:INDY, or something like that. And, of course, if the subject is something that I think Wikipedia needs, I might interpret things another way: Yes, the sources are short, but they're more than Wikipedia:One hundred words, so that's okay. Yes, most newspaper articles are primary sources, but there is this or that paragraph of secondary/analytical content, which I emphasize. Yes, it's a local newspaper, but it's insulting to say that those journalists are more beholden to their advertisers than any other newspaper.
And so on. Wikipedia is run by humans, and sometimes humans make a decision first and then look for reasons to justify it, rather than the other way around. For the source-citing equivalent, see WP:FETCH. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No disagreement here of your analysis based on what I've seen in online discussion-based platforms over many years, but I think it is a very unsatisfactory resolution to a very important question. This seems to run into issues with WP:NOTPAPER if we don't have clear guidelines for inclusion/exclusion, which notability is supposed to (at least in part) address. If there is disputes regarding inclusion/exclusion of an article, WP:POINT suggests that people who want an article to be included "explain why the subject meets inclusion criteria" and those who want an article deleted should "bas[e] [their] argument on policies and guidelines". Giving facially P&G-based arguments that are in fact a mere reflection of the 'arguments to avoid' seems to eschew these suggestions altogether. I'm not sure if there's a good solution, and I defer to your expertise on this question, but it just appears to me to present an overarching problem. Katzrockso (talk) 08:43, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not unusual for someone to quote something from WP:N and then claim that it's in the GNG itself. Having the GNG crammed into this page makes it just a little harder for people to understand that everything else applies to the SNGs, too.
I suggest that we split the GNG section to Wikipedia:General notability guideline, leaving all of the non-GNG parts on this page. If we want to keep the GNG's section heading, we can add a link to WP:General notability guideline and simple description about the general concept if we want to (similar to the SNG section).
Note: If we do this, both the newly shortened WP:N and the newly re-located WP:GNG will be tagged as official guidelines. This will not demote the GNG to essay. I mention this because of my experience with an unrelated split proposal a couple of years ago, in which two editors were very concerned that splitting a policy would make one of the resulting pages stop being a policy. If we do this, we'll paste {{subcat guideline|notability guideline}} on the top of both guidelines, and they will both be 100% just as much a guideline as they are right now. The only thing I'm talking about changing is the where the words are – I propose no changes to the words, no changes to the meaning, and definitely no changes to the status.
We don't need more guidelines. We need to simplify existing ones. I'm seriously considering proposing a PAG Revision Commission that can go through all the PAGs, consolidate and cut, and then present to the community for an up or down vote. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:02, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This wouldn't expand the rules; it would merely turn one long page into two shorter ones.
Well... In the real world, people publish thick books as style guides, and Wikipedia covers more types of information than most, so it's hardly surprising if we have a lot of stylistic information to cover. I thus don't see the ~150 MOS and naming conventions pages as anything other than the number of pages necessary to do the job.
For other things, like the Wikipedia:Large language models proposals, for the last five or ten years, editors seem to be interested in having more rules, rather than less. Creating a rule seems to give people a sense of control. I think you'll find it's difficult to get them to give it up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:43, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but those style guides are generally coherent and well-organized, not a mishmash of bizarre rules and narrow caveats that are added in after RfCs. My understanding is that en-wiki is pretty uniquely rule-oriented over other wikis. voorts (talk/contributions) 19:49, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe, but enwiki is pretty uniquely spammed and pressured in ways that almost none of the others are. (Also, only a small percentage of our ruleset is connected to an RFC. Most of the rules were written, and most of the policies and guidelines tagged, before I wrote the WP:PROPOSAL process, and smallish changes don't require an RFC, or even a prior discussion.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:02, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Opposed. Without covering the various alternate cases that the SNG sections delineates, WP:N is met either with the GNG or by meeting one of the SNGs, so the first thing that should be presented at WP:N is the GNG (and how to interpret that), and then acknowledge the existence of the SNGs. The rest of the page is then addressing what notability is or isn't on more broader terms. Its also to the core of what WP:N is for is that we are ultimately seeking significant coverage of a topic to consider a topic worthy of a standalone, and that's why the GNG is front and center; separating it out would make it far harder to make this connection. Masem (t) 13:12, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Per Masem, GNG is more a core aspect of notability than something separate, and it is unclear how a new user would benefit from GNG being a separate page. Further, it's not clear that "everything else applies to the SNGs, too". WP:NRV, NTEMP, and WP:NSUSTAINED are clearly written in relation to GNG. WP:PAGEDECIDE is generally bypassed by SNGs. WP:WHYN describes the reasoning for GNG, not various SNGs. CMD (talk) 03:28, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
