Wikipedia talk:Relevance of content

Rationale for this proposed guideline
Wikipedia has many thousands of contributors, millions of articles, and little coordination between them all. Well-meaning contributors often add large amounts of information to articles that are clearly far more relevant to other articles, or with no apparent relevance to any subject. Sooner or later, this material tends to get deleted as "irrelevant" or "trivia". However, with better organization and explanation, much of it could be usefully retained. This proposed guideline aims to advise editors on how to better organize and present information within articles and across articles.

The page that exists at Wikipedia:Relevance is a placeholder, directing people to either WP:Notability or WP:Trivia. WP:NOT restricts certain limited classes of material; WP:Notability covers subjects or articles as a whole; and WP:Trivia says to remove irrelevant items. That's all the guidance Wikipedia has to offer on the subject of relevance.

This proposal is strictly aimed at laying out common ground on the subject of relevance. It takes no stance on whether any type of material belongs in Wikipedia -- it merely offers a baseline for whether material is relevant to a specific subject.

Related idea
I am still thinking about this proposal, which I came across in active proposals. Those interested in discussing this topic, may also be interested in the recent discussion regarding requiring relevance as a measure of reliable sources (Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources). Cheers! Vassyana 18:27, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It is indeed a related idea, although in terms of how they affect Wikipedia, I'd say they're not related. Your proposal suggests that a book on breast cancer is not a good source (or at least not the best source) for information on heart attacks.  Our proposal suggests that information on breast cancer does not belong in the heart attack article.  This would be true even if that information came from a book on heart attacks -- but that probably doesn't have to be explicitly pointed out.  On the other hand, information that details a correlation between heart attacks and breast cancer would probably be appropriate to either of those articles.  And, relating it back to your idea, a book about either subject would be a good source for information on that correlation.--Father Goose 19:35, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed. I didn't think they were overlapping. One addresses the idea in relation to reliable sourcing and the other in relation to notability. I saw this proposal and thought they were complementary, as you detailed. Vassyana 19:40, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Editors are engaged...
What's the thinking behind this new paragraph? Seems to stray very far from "relevance", to my eyes.--Father Goose 05:13, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I thought it could be useful, but I am not wedded to it. WP's main content policy is WP:V. Editors add information - that's how WP grows, and it is a process. I thought this paragraph carried a positive message - encouraging editors to read the article, and add information where it fits best. Newbyguesses - Talk 05:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I pared it down to a much shorter discussion of what I think the paragraph was essentially trying to say in the context of this proposal. Some of it seemed related to spinning off articles from sections (in relation to WP:NPOV), so I linked WP:UNDUE at the appropriate place in the preexisting text. Thoughts? Vassyana 05:46, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * That works better. The proposal as a whole is starting to grow a bit disjointed, with a lot of people throwing ideas into it -- not that I'm complaining.  I intend to do a big copyedit soon, though.


 * Linking to WP:UNDUE doesn't seem appropriate; "undue" is the right word semantically, but WP:UNDUE is specific to a sub-aspect of NPOV, and doesn't really pertain to "article focus".--Father Goose 07:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Undue weight, along with NPOV as a whole, seems an appropriate reference to me. If an article is unbalanced, putting undue weight on a particular subtopic, the article would be lacking the appropriate "article focus". Just explaining my perception of it. Cheers! Vassyana 07:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the majority of cases of "straying off topic" have nothing to do with bias, although I'll retain a mention of when NPOV and UNDUE do apply to article focus.--Father Goose 16:15, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the version that was pageprotected on 19 August worked pretty well - neither too cryptic nor too verbose (at 33 sentences). Still, a copy-edit could be a good idea, there is more that could be said. There is the question of "content" - what fits in an article, and "style" - how to fit the information in, which came up before. Newbyguesses - Talk 23:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

related discussion at WT:NPOV
I'd like to draw attention to related discussion at WT:NPOV concerning e.g. WP:NPOV's shortcoming of failing to distinguish between ideological and systemic bias (or "narrative bias and selective bias"). An example would be pictures in biographies, where pictures of the person as a child or as an old person may be more readily available, but would give sort of undue weight to the article, since most people remember that person when they were middle-aged and at the peak of their popularity. Thought it may be of interest for users working on this proposal. —AldeBaer 14:18, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

A few thoughts
&mdash;gorgan_almighty 09:41, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Firstly, this isn't a proposal for a notability inclusion guideline, so it shouldn't be listed as such.
 * 2) Secondly, I question how effective this guideline would be at solving the problem it attempts to tackle.  For example, the rationale reads "Well-meaning contributors often add large amounts of information to articles that are clearly far more relevant to other articles, or with no apparent relevance to any subject. Sooner or later, this material tends to get deleted as 'irrelevant' or 'trivia'.".  Will this guideline prevent that from happening? I doubt it, because it's normally new inexperienced editors who add stuff like that, and they aren't exactly going to read this guideline first.
 * 3) Thirdly, the entire guideline can be summed up in the sentence "Stay on topic".  Isn't that a rather obvious requirement, given that the topic is clearly defined by the article title?  I don't think we need an entire guide to tell us that.  A single "Stay on topic" bullet-point inside another Manual of Style guideline should be sufficient.


 * Thank you for your comment. I will try to respond to your last two points to try to explain why this page exists.

Point #2) You are correct that it is often "new inexperienced editors" who contribute the bulk of irrelevant and of topic material. It is also often "new inexperienced editors" who contribute inappropriate external links (such as spam), copyrighted material (plagiarism) and create pages about non notable subjects that end up being speedy deleted.  We still have policy guidelines about spam, copyright, and notability.  Policy isn't there to prevent new editors from making mistakes - that's  not possible.  The policy is there to limit the problem of new "trivia" to inexperienced users editing for the first time.  Having explicit policy will discourage more experienced editors from making the same innocent mistake.  It will also discourage revert wars over content that is not related to the topic of the page (it does happen).

Point #3) There has been much discussion about why we need an entire guideline for this. Please refer to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trivia Cleanup and Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not.  It boils down to the fact that no matter how obvious "Stay on topic" may appear, plenty of people have a hard time following it. (To see what I mean take a look at Category:Articles with trivia sections. In my experience, about 9 out of 10 articles in this category have off-topic material mixed into their trivia sections. Sometimes the section is the majority of the article.) With so much off-topic material in articles, simply going through and trying to fix each one is just impractical, it won't work.  We need a policy in order to inform more experienced editors as to how best to add "trivia" (ie, keep it on a page where it is directly relevant to the subject).  And being able to point to policy will make it much easier to clean up "trivia" sections that already exist.

You do make some valid points about the effectiveness of this proposed policy. It may not be enough to discourage some users from contributing of topic material. Relevance to the topic of an article is an important criteria for inclusion though, and many articles on Wikipedia suffer from too much disorganized irrelevant "trivia". Any suggestions you have for improving the situation would be greatly appreciated. Sbacle 13:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd like to get this away from trivia, which is being discussed in too many different places--and where t is quite possible that there may not be any real consensus.  To me, the point of this project ought to include excessive biographic or individual case sections in general articles, or other material of purely subsidiary interest.
 * and I very strongly thing that the only reasonable solution for trivia sections is in fact article by article editing. I have personally started-- I try to do an article or two a week. sure it will work. there are perhaps 10,000 articles in those categories.  If even 1,000 of the 50,000 or so really active editors did one article a month, they'd be cleaned up in a year. Yes it would then be time to begin again, but all articles take maintenance. Patient work by large numbers of people is how we got a wiki & is what will improve it. As with any other sub-article, the place to divide is when the size gets too large. Incidentally, take a look at Citizendium. They are experimenting with the systematic use of subpages for different levels of content. DGG (talk) 06:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The Citizendium experiment sounds interesting. Enacing that here might have some problems. How many articles on George Washington, for instance, could we create following that procedure? Probably too many. And I can agree with trying to ensure that details remain relevant. I would have one possible reservation about the bios of people only notable for specific events, however. If, for instance, a crime victim publishes a book or article about themselves as a crime victim, are they then notable for being something more than just a crime victim, and potentially eligible for a fuller biography on that basis? John Carter 23:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems to be working the other way there--their problem is having too few finished articles, as the process for writing them is rather complicated and formalized. DGG (talk) 03:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Another thought
It seems to me the problem is really that notability only applies to article existence. If it applied to content as well then this wouldn't be an issue. I think it's still important to have a guideline to determine which topics deserve their own separate articles... but notability and relevance are really very closely-related issues -- in fact they probably shouldn't even be referred to by different words the way they are. If content is notable within the context of a topic, that's even more pertinent than it being "relevant". Content can be relevant yet not be notable enough to include.

I think we should propose to change Notability to Topic notability, and add another guideline called Content notability; it would not only be more accurate but also easier for everyone to swallow. People tend to confuse notability with content notability anyway, so it seems they see a need for it. This would address that, and at the same time avoid future confusion. Equazcion • argue/improves • 19:45, 10/18/2007


 * In the abstract, "relevance" and "notability" are very different things; the first is "what does this have to do with that?" and the second is "has anyone even heard of this?". You're right that people sometimes confuse the two on Wikipedia.  I can't help but think that what you're suggesting would just intensify that confusion.


 * Just as you say content can be relevant but not notable, content can be notable but not relevant. Max Weinberg was/is in the E Street Band; this is completely notable, and relevant to those two articles, but not relevant to Bruce Springsteen (the band  listing there is redundant with both the E Street article and the Bruce Springsteen template), and would be even less relevant to Steven Van Zandt, another band member.


 * I do not intend or want this proposal to overlap in any way with WP:Notability. Some people on Wikipedia speak of "notability" when they mean relevance -- I don't think we should compound that error.--Father Goose 20:47, 18 October 2007 (UTC)


 * When I've been using "relevance" I've been including the concept of being relevant to the nature of an a encyclopedic article--not merely relevant to the subject. If we want to make the above differentiation, then I suppose what I mean could also be called "appropriate" -- and its guidelines for that which i think Equazcion and I have in mind here. Personally, I think we should confine the use of the word notable to mean the subject of an article, not the content. DGG (talk) 03:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree on the definitions as you've described them, FG. Notable means "Is this worth noting." Within the context of a particular topic, that means, "Should we be mentioning this? Is it important enough to the topic?" Wikipedians have defined "notability" purely within the context of the larger encyclopedia; to mean what deserves its own topic -- but within the context of a singular article, ask yourself what deserves its own sub-heading, or paragraph, or even a sentence; and the answer is, what is notable to the topic (rather than to the encyclopedia). It may sound like a semantic argument, and maybe it is, but that doesn't make it any less of a valid point. You say people get confused saying notability instead of relevance -- well, there might be a good reason for that, and rather than try to get them to think differently, it might be better to make the rules more semantically accurate instead. Equazcion • argue/improves • 03:31, 10/19/2007


 * I think it's the word notability itself that is the real problem, then. People delete both content and articles with the claim "non-notable", when the word relevance strikes me as exactly right for content ("Does this have any bearing on the subject?").  Meanwhile "notability" is used out during deletion discussions to mean "I ain't never heard of it", which is not the standard we should be shooting for.  I think we'd do better to rename WP:Notability to WP:Visibility, in the sense that the subject must have some kind of public presence to qualify for inclusion in the encyclopedia.  Or maybe "WP:Confirmability".


 * "Notability" is its own semantic minefield; a worse one than "relevance", IMO.--Father Goose 04:18, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * See relevance doesn't make much sense to me, because relevance is really a measure of how pertinent or related something is to another "matter", "case", or argument. For instance, if I were trying to prove that your car got wet last night, I could say it rained last night, and that would be relevant to the argument -- it's something that's necessary to mention if the goal is to prove something specific. I could also say your car is red, but that would be irrelevant. Relevance doesn't quite fit when you're talking about gathering up all the good information you can on a topic and presenting it, as is the goal of an encyclopedia article. Let's say we're writing on article on your car; what's relevant there? The fact that it's red, or the fact that it got wet last night? The fact that it got wet last night surely is related to the topic of "your car"... but is it really something people need to know? Relevance doesn't take care of that, because if you ask me how relevant it is, I say, relevant to what? There's no argument, we're just trying to present all information that people would want to know about something. Relevancy doesn't enter into the picture. We need to ask if this is something people would want to know about, or expect to read about, given the topic at hand -- and that's the very definition of notability. "How important is this to the topic" is not relevance -- it's notability. Equazcion • argue/improves • 04:38, 10/19/2007

Background note
This article has been in serious dispute over whether it's status should be "Rejected" or "Proposal." Through Mediation and painful work on everyone's part a compromise was reached. That compromise listed these terms: - (WikiLen)

Terms for the compromise: Allow 2 months (a period that ends on October 31st) for the project to be worked on, during which time:
 * Rejection tag stays off
 * Proposal tag stays on
 * No non-constructive arguments, or comments suggesting that work on the proposal should discontinue, for any reason (including lack of consensus).
 * Discussion of consensus can continue after the two-month period, when a fresh and objective look at the proposal will determine its merit as a guideline -- without bringing up past events.
 * Discussion of consensus can also continue before that time, but only in the event that the proponents claim to have established a consensus, in an effort to turn the proposal into a guideline.

The two-month period has passed and I look forward to participating again in the work to find a consensus (I chose to stay out of the discussions for the two-month period). I was of the party that argued a "rejected" status had been achieved. —WikiLen 00:34, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Style guideline suggestion
With "a fresh and objective look at the proposal" I find in the past that I mistakenly focused on what was wrong with it rather than what is right about it. This project, "Relevance of content" has good content -- content that should be kept and developed further. It reads as excellent advice, culled from the vastness of Wikipedia policy, on how to keep article content on-topic. For numerous reasons I and others don't think it works as a guideline or policy for edit disputes. My personal assessment is that it works well as a summary of already-existing-policies that impact relevance -- hence my suggestion it become a guideline for the Manual of style. I think it is already polished enough to take on "style guide" status. —WikiLen 00:34, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Just found another option. The tag could be used. Here is an example. I like this better then making this part of the Style Manual. It would: - (WikiLen)
 * Keep "Relevance of content" in the policy realm rather than Style realm.
 * Keep this project from duplicating policies that are already elsewhere.
 * Provide a one-stop shop for policies that impact relevance.
 * Keep this project from becoming a haven for rule (forum) shopping.
 * — WikiLen 16:49, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * My work on this proposal has been on hold for a while. In the long term, I think it's useful to have some form of "relevance" guidance on Wikipedia, but I'd like to avoid it being used to delete any content that arguably has value.  This proposal focuses on putting material in the "right" article, which is sensible, but Wikipedia's existing policy and practice has resulted in the deletion of a lot of content moved into such articles, which is not sensible.  So I've been focusing on reforming those policies before I return to this project.  In the meantime, if anyone wants to continue work on this proposal or something like it, they can, and I'll observe and comment as need be.--Father Goose 18:49, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Putting material in the "right" article (as preferable to deletion) is something I could support. Would you be interested in starting a new essay/guideline/whatzit based on that thesis? "Relevance" has been spinning its wheels, and this may be partly because you are using it as a platform for ideas that don't really work for this topic. / edg ☺ ★ 18:58, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Like I said, my focus is on other things for the time being. If someone else wants to take it in that direction, they can; if not, I might eventually do so.--Father Goose 19:53, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

False claims of Relevance suggestion
The relevance topic is forked into two projects: Relevance and Relevance of content. I suggest the Relevance project it take on a fuller expression of its current spirit. Right now is just says what "Relevance" isn't rather than what it is. I am referring to this line: "At times just because information is true and citable does not necessarily mean it meets the threshold for notability within a given article." I suspect listing other instances of false claims of relevance would be very useful to editors working with new users. See Relevance talk, "Umbrella - more on false claims of Relevance" for details on my suggestion. —WikiLen 00:34, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I think we should avoid the word "notability" as it applies to whether content should appear in an article. As we all know, notability is used as a threshold question for whether a subject is worth having an article about.  Once that is passed, material mentioned in the article has to be encyclopedic, sourced, verifiable, avoid various evils like copyright violation and POV bias, and relevant to the subject; it does not have to be independently notable.  This is already too often misunderstood, and I don't want to further any confusion by starting to use the word "notability" for these other purposes.  We should probably stick to "relevance."  Wikidemo 18:56, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Cooling off period
Two months ago several of us pledged to stand-down from marking this proposal as rejected, to see what progress could be made toward a better product. Nothing significant has happened. It looked promising that we might put together some overall content guidance, but that fizzled as well. I'm not opposed to looking at some manner of guideline for relevance, but we need broader support and more objective criteria. Cheers! --Kevin Murray 19:45, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I've been working toward those goals on a broader front, via revisions to other policies and most recently via WP:WPTPC. Should all that work go well, I'd be happy to revisit work on a "relevance" guideline.  It's possible WikiLen or someone else will continue to promote and develop it at this point.
 * As regards "objective criteria", I'd settle for "reasonable advice". The objective criteria promoted by our Notability guidelines, for instance, do not always produce the right result.--Father Goose 20:19, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with the last sentence to be sure. If we can work the advice regarding relevance into an exisitng guideline that would be my preference.  Thanks for all the hard work that you are putting in on so many projects.  --Kevin Murray 21:08, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

WP needs this guide: a few thoughts
I believe this is an extremely important style guide. I want to make a few points, just so I'm sure I understand what is being covered:
 * This guide should be designed help people to pass the third good article criteria: "3. It is broad in its coverage. In this respect, it: (a) addresses the major aspects of the topic; and (b) stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary details." This says it pretty well, and maybe it should be quoted here.
 * Choosing to emphasize some points over others is a form of original research, and must be discouraged.
 * Relevance can be established through sources. I imagine that this would only be needed if the relevance of a section is in dispute. To be specific, this guideline could specify that:
 * A paragraph or section should have at least one source that establishes its relevance. This source should be:
 * reliable
 * On the same subject as the article.
 * Cover the subject of the section directly.
 * A paragraph can and should have other sources as well. However, these sources can't establish relevance if:
 * They are written about a related, but different, subject
 * They are a primary source about an aspect of the topic (e.g. an academic paper that is not, itself, a survey).
 * Promote a particular point of view of a subject (i.e. they don't claim to be objective).
 * For example, any section in an article about artificial intelligence should have at least one source that is from a standard academic textbook on AI, or a popular introduction to the subject of AI. Other sources from related subjects (such as science fiction or machine learning) can also appear, as well sources written by a particular researcher or that promote a particular school of research. However, these other sources can't establish relevance.

I'm saying, in a nutshell, that relevance is connected to existing policies and guidelines, such as WP:GACR, WP:OR, WP:PSTS, WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE, but is not strictly covered by them. Relevance is an important (and simple) principle in its own right, and should also have the status of guideline. The guideline should emphasize these connections.

Finally, I want to note that, in the areas I have been working, relevance is a serious problem. I am constantly coming across paragraphs that appear to be written by editors who have only a passing familiarity with the subject. My impression is that these editors have read a book about a related subject, or work in a related field, and have written whole sections that emphasize some peripheral aspect or unusual perspective. These sections, in many cases, are well written and even have reliable sources, so I'm reluctant to just delete them. (In other cases, they are sheer speculation or the worst kind of b., of course. I don't feel as bad about deleting these.) Having a clear style guide will help. CharlesGillingham 21:17, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Not really useful
Only summarizes information that is elsewhere. Seems to be restating WP:TOPIC and violating the spirit of WP:NNC even though it won't be a notability guideline. I fear it will be used to keep articles artificially small rather than to let them grow and adapt to new information. &mdash;davidh.oz.au 09:46, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I share your fear. There is a benefit to keeping articles below a certain size, but not if the end result is discarded content.  As I noted below, current deletion policies tend to result in a lot of discarded content when articles are split.  All of that will have to be fixed before a guideline on the issue of "relevance" will not do harm.--Father Goose (talk) 05:07, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Dormant, aka inactive
Although in the long term I think Wikipedia should and will have a guideline on the subject of relevance, for now I am declaring this proposal inactive. I may return to it at some point, but the primary idea it promotes is moving material of questionable relevance into articles where it would have greater relevance. This is an entirely sensible approach; unfortunately, any article subjectively deemed "non-notable" tends to get deleted, regardless of whether it meets the terms of Notability. Due to this, the end result of this proposal would be the permanent deletion of large swaths of content.

If Wikipedia's deletion policy and procedures are eventually corrected, I would be happy to champion this proposal once again.--Father Goose (talk) 20:48, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The historical tag is only for pages that were once approved but obsolete. The proper tag is rejected, which sounds harsh, but this fits the category.  --Kevin Murray (talk) 00:55, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that characterization is inaccurate, but not worth fighting over. Should the proposal be restarted, what label is used in the interim will be moot.--Father Goose (talk) 03:46, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Why the 'rejected' tag?
It seems a bit harsh to condemn this article as 'rejected'. What not just shift it to an 'essay' status? SaltyBoatr (talk) 18:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Salty, that was a common practice for a while, but some people objected to the increasing proliferation of essays. There was a discussion a few months back at the Policy and guideline policy page, where the determination was that these should not end up as essays; however, there is nothing that limits you from starting an essay based on this language.  It should have a different name.  You might be able to develop consensus for redirecting the short cuts there.  I think that an essay discussing the reasons for keeping articles on track would be great.  All that said, if you want to change this to an essay, I wouldn't object. --Kevin Murray (talk) 00:56, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Essay status
I believe that marking this as an essay is a good move. --Kevin Murray 17:44, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to develop a content guideline on encyclopedic relevance
Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Handling trivia. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:31, 14 June 2015 (UTC)