User talk:Zippybonzo/Training/NPP/Jonathan Deamer

Notability in a nutshell

Notable means "worthy of being noted" or "attracting notice." It is not synonymous with "fame" or "importance." Please consider notable and demonstrable effects on culture, society, entertainment, athletics, economies, history, literature, science, or education. Large outlets are likely to have more readily available verifiable information from reliable sources that provide evidence of notability; however, smaller ones can be notable, just as individuals can be notable, and arbitrary standards should not be used to create a bias favoring larger organizations, nor should they be used to provide blanket permissions for all articles about a certain subject.
See WP:NMEDIA - while the material is used for media notability, the message covers a much broader area for reviewers to consider, and why I made it the masthead.

Welcome New Trainee!

Instructions: Jonathan Deamer, below is a quote from the lead at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/School that I want you to consider:

If you are looking to contribute to Wikipedia but do not intend to remain active on New Page Review, then this program is probably not for you.

Users who are less experienced, but who would still like to help maintain the quality of the encyclopedia, might like to consider Patrolling Vandalism instead – an essential function that requires less knowledge of Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Deletion policy, although such knowledge is highly recommended. For training on Counter vandalism, see WP:CVUA.

Curation tool video

Learn the basic flow chart.

When in doubt refer to this flow chart.

If you still wish to proceed with training, your first exercise is to review the curation tool video in the right margin, and also review NPP Tutorial. Become familiar with the flowcharts and curation tool as some of that information will come into play during the Q&A session. If you have any questions after you've read the tutorial and have a basic understanding of the page curation tool, please ping me from your session page. You cannot possibly over-ping me.

Part of the training will involve your participation in a few live NPP reviews that I will assign. You are also expected to read and learn the relative WP:PAGs as presented in the 5 subsections below. You will provide a summary, in your own words, of what you've learned including what you consider to be the most important aspects of each. You will complete one section at a time in the order presented, and ping me after you complete each part so we can discuss your responses or any questions you may have before proceeding to the next part. Please be mindful of the formatting.

Your reactions and behavior are also part of the exam. Keep in mind that WP has no deadlines, so you may work at a comfortable pace. Oh, and here is a suggestion you should consider before you begin. At the bottom of this page is a tip section which is worth reviewing because there are some handy scripts you can add to your user common.js that may prove quite helpful for editing, and reviewing articles.

It may seem overwhelming at first but in comparison to the work we do at NPP, this training exercise is a drop in the bucket. NPP is not a cakewalk and has been referred to as a step toward becoming an administrator. Don't hesitate to ask questions - and remember, the only stupid question is the one you didn't ask. Good luck!!

@Jonathan Deamer:, this will be your NPP training page, if you have any questions, just ask me here or on my main talk page. If you can start Part 1 and then I'll see how you get on. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 19:33, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Notability (Pt. 1)

• Notability

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and so does not have some of the limitations on scope present in one. But that doesn't mean that everything warrants inclusion in the encyclopedia: it is not an indiscriminate collection of information and some information is out of scope for the project. There's therefore a need to decide what's "worthy" of inclusion. This is done with the test of notability.

In essence, this test is about whether a subject has gained been deemed worthy of attention from society over a period of time. The "over a period of time" part is important: a brief burst of coverage may not be enough to demonstrate notability. Once notability has been achieved though, it remains permanently whether or not there is ongoing coverage.

There needs to be evidence for this notability that people can check (ie. it must be verifiable). The evidence needs to come from places the Wikipedia community has agreed by consensus are reliable. A subject may still be notable even if it's not shown in an article or its sourcing, as notability is not about the content of an article; it's a property of the article's subject (or not, as the case may be). If suitable independent, reliable sources exist, then a subject is notable. One should therefore not nominate an article for deletion solely based on lack of sources present in the current version of an article; one should see if they exist elsewhere, including offline. Without these sources, other properties of the subject like fame or popularity alone aren't necessarily sufficient to prove notability.

• General Notability Guideline (GNG)

Wikipedia's general notability guideline is a rule of thumb for determining whether a subject is sufficiently notable for its own article. It states that to be notable, a subject needs to have received significant coverage from reliable sources that are independent (intellectually, commercially etc.) of the subject.

Even then, this only means a topic is likely suitable for a standalone article (ie. "presumed notable"), not guaranteed. There may be reasons a topic with significant coverage from independent, reliable sources doesn't warrant inclusion, such as if it is out of scope for an encyclopedia project.

"Significant coverage" is coverage where the topic of the article is addressed in a non-trivial way such that there is no need for synthesis or drawing one's own conclusions in order to extract from it useful information for the encyclopedia. It should be addressed directly, not just a passing mention. For example, a 500 word article in The Economist about the CEO of a company is significant coverage of that peron. A single line in the article that says "The CEO is known to have a pet cat, Mittens, whom he brings to work." does not mean Mittens merits their own article. However, this does mean the fact that the CEO owns the cat is verifiable, so could be included in an article about the CEO if deemed relevant.

This coverage needs to be published by a source (in this context, writer or publisher) with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy that is viewed by Wikipedia consensus as reliable. There may be sources with no reputation, such as an unknown private individual's blog. This is not reliable. There might be sources that have a reputation for inaccuracy or sensationalism and are deprecated by the community, such as the Daily Mail. These are not reliable either.

Sources should be secondary sources, ie. those that provide analysis or interpretation of events/subjects. The fact that someone at a reliable news organisation etc. is choosing to reflect on a topic is a more objective measure of notability than a primary source written by someone close to the subject. eg. A New York Times article about a scientific discovery is a secondary source, the scientific paper in the journal Nature documenting an experiment done by the author is a primary source.

A source conferring notability cannot be produced by the article's subject or someone close to it - it needs to be independent so we know there is more objectivity. The fact that a band has significant coverage of themselves published on their own website does not tell us anything about their notability in the way that achieving a featured album review on Pitchfork might.

• Specific Notability Guidelines (SNG)

Some subject areas have guidelines in addition to the GNG to help clarify whether a subject merits a standalone article. These subject-specific notability guidelines (SNGs) may create exceptions to the GNG, or operate on different principles to the GNG. An article of this would be the SNG for academia. This states that a person is considered notable if they have "been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area". If this can be sourced reliably, there need not be other significant coverage required by GNG.

As with the GNG, passing an SNG only indicates that a subject is presumed notable, not guaranteed. eg. It still cannot be part of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.

Some SNGs give topic specific guidance on when not to create an article. An example of this is the SNG for people, and its guidance against creating standalone articles for people notable for only one event, eg. Star Wars Kid covers the video created by Ghyslain Raza, but Ghyslain Raza does not meet the SNG for his own article.

One should also note that some Wikiprojects give their own guidelines on notability, but these are best viewed as essays interpreting or expanding on policy; they do not have the same weight of consensus of formal SNGs.

• Organizational and Company Notability and any other SNGs that relate to areas of patrol interest

• WP:RS

• Relative to your work as a NPP reviewer, what initial steps would you take upon arriving at an article to be reviewed?

Wikipedia policy and guidelines (Pt. 2)

• Assume good faith

• Biographies of living people

• Conflicts of interest (including undisclosed paid editing)

• Copyright

• Hoaxes

• Attack pages

Communications (Pt. 3)

This section is relative to Wikipedia:New pages patrol#Related. Also see Wikipedia:New pages patrol#Disputes and consensus.

• Discussions with creators of new pages

• Template notifications vs manually notification/discussion

• Tone, clarity, and knowledge in discussions

• Wikilove/positive comments

• Warning templates

Deletion (Pt. 4)

• Articles for Deletion

• BEFORE nominating

• PROD and BLPPROD

• WP:Soft delete

• WP:SOFTSP

• Speedy Deletion

Reviewing Procedures (Pt. 5)

• Improvement Tagging

• Categorizing

NPP Exercise

Before you begin, read the Notability in a nutshell banner at the top of this page, study it and think hard about the message it is sending. Read it again. If you are certain about your review re: the articles in this trial, please do not hesitate to take action as you would normally do as a bona fide patroller.

I will list/have listed 5 articles for you to review. Below each one, provide a succinct summary of your review beginning with (a) what you looked for first, (b) what issues you found, if any, (c) what actions you would have taken/did take, and (d) why you chose that particular action. The articles I've chosen are unreviewed, but it is possible they will have been reviewed by the time you get to them, so it is crucial to begin your reviews as quickly as possible. Feel free to tag, copy edit and/or find & cite sources as necessary - take action as you would if you were reviewing them for NPP.

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Discussion

Evaluation

Once I have completed the evaluation and you have passed the course, you may apply for NPP user rights at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/New page reviewer, and add a link to this review.

Tips & scripts

• User:Bradv/Scripts/Superlinks - very useful tool – it adds a small linked menu bar on the top right side of article pages as follows: [ History * Log * Filter * Talk Page * Notice * NPP Flowchart ]
• User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft – important script that is used to WP:DRAFTIFY articles (move to draft space), including cleanup and author notification.
• Wikipedia:New pages patrol is the foundation on which we operate. Add the link to your bookmarks menu for easy access.
• User:SuperHamster/CiteUnseen.js - a very useful tool and easy to install. The script prepends a small icon to each citation in the Reference section indicating the grading and type of source; most are in sync with WP:RSP.
• User:Headbomb/unreliable – another somewhat useful tool that grades sources using highlight colors –
• User:Evad37/duplinks-alt - highlights duplicate wikilinks. We should only wikilink once, sometimes twice if wikilinked in the lead and again further enough down in the article that it would prove useful. When reviewing, you can quickly find and eliminate wikilink overkill.

NPP Forums

• WT:New pages patrol/Reviewers
• Discord - where the NPP team hangs out.

Userbox

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