User:Mike Cline/Imagining a new way to look at the question of Notability

Imagine a WP where when the new or experienced editor begins the creation of an article, they are asked a simple question: What is the article class?  Once that question is answered, the editor is then provided detailed notability guidelines for that class of article to help guide the writing and sourcing of the new article. Imagine that class-specific notability guidelines enjoyed a wide consensus within the community, and that with a bit of help and mentoring, new editors routinely created articles that complied with those class-specific guidelines, and that the mere fact that they exist and had been woven into the article creation process might be a significant deterrent to the creation of non-notable articles. Nothing is likely to completely prevent the creation of non-notable articles, but imagine for a bit, that there might be a way to significantly reduce the number of articles that require deletion because they are on non-notable subjects. Would that be a good outcome for WP? I believe it would.

Today, apart from the core policies of WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV we judge the appropriateness of an article for WP under WP:Notability, including WP:GNG and various Subject Notability Guidelines (SNGs). I believe these guidelines, as vague or open to wide interpretation as they maybe, actually provide an excellent framework to begin changing how we convey the idea of notability to our editors. That change, in my view, contains three elements:

1. Identifying and codifying classes and sub-classes of articles. Our Wikiproject and category structures already provide a foundation for this effort, the goal of which would be to create a list of article classes and sub-classes that would cover all the articles in WP. Even miscellaneous might be a valid class if we could not pigeonhole an article into another appropriate class. Developing the class, sub-class structure would be done via our usual method of consensus and ideally be unencumbered by any discussion of class-related notability guidelines.

 2. Developing notability guidelines for each class of article. By far and away, this would be the most difficult task, but again our WP:GNG and SNGs provide a beginning. For those classes and sub-classes identified in step one that do not enjoy SNGs, the community would have to decide: What are the notability guidelines for article in class X? This would be difficult consensus building and not everyone would agree with every guideline, but that's how we operate.

 3. Developing and implementing a mechanism to allow the review of class-specific notability guidelines during the article creation process I see this more as a technical and procedural implementation. When creating a new article, instead of a blank edit space, the editor must first chose an article class and be given the opportunity to review notability guidelines for that class of article. The article creation process would not and should not enforce those guidelines, but it should certainly make them available to editors during the process.

This is a strategic idea whose time has come
One only has to participate occasionally in our deletion processes to know that the concept of notability, especially as applied to random subjects is a moving target. Experienced editors learn what notability means for the classes of articles they are interested in. New editors usually learn it the hard way, through contentious editing and deletion discussions. Strategy is always about end-states, future states that most if not all can agree on. The strategic goal of these ideas is simple—create a mechanism around the concept of notability that reduces the number of non-notable articles created while at the same time providing guidance to editors (especially new editors) on class-specific notability guidelines, guidance that in my mind would significantly improve the overall content of the encyclopedia. The tactics to achieve this goal are many. We already have many mechanisms in WP to explore the idea, and should we chose to adopt it, many more mechanisms to implement it methodically. What is needed first however, is a broad consensus to adopt a class-specific notability guideline strategy. Once there is consensus to do that, we can all put our heads together finding ways to efficiently and effectively implement the strategy. IMHO, the time has come for WP to seriously consider a Article Class-specific Notability strategy.--Mike Cline (talk) 16:06, 11 November 2010 (UTC)