User:Paul Carpenter/Notability should come first



When creating a new Wikipedia article, you are going to need to show why the subject is significant enough to warrant an article. We call this notability.

An article that does not have a credible claim of significance is liable to get deleted and obviously you don't want that. So notability is the first thing to worry about before you start writing.

Why should notability come first
No article is going to deleted for lacking headings, an image, a detailed enough history of the subject or even for having imperfect spelling and grammar; in fact if you give it time, another editor might even sort out those issues for you. But an article that has not asserted notability could get deleted at any point.

Quick and easy way to assert notability
If a subject is notable, this shouldn't be too hard to show. Here's the simplest route:


 * If the subject has been written about (not just mentioned in passing) in any newspaper, magazine or journal; so long as it is independent from the subject itself.
 * If the subject has received an award or been included on a well known chart (such as the billboard charts).
 * If you know for sure that subject is the first of its kind, or the biggest, or the tallest.

State this, provide a source, you've asserted notability.

Now you can get on with the rest of your article.